Building A Network with Rynn Mancuso
Tags: codenewbie, beginners, career, podcast
Published: 2022-02-24 15:04:43

[Rynn Mancuso](https://twitter.com/musingvirtual) is a Developer Community Manager. They began their career as an Accessibility Engineer working on [Women Who Code](https://www.womenwhocode.com/) and building a WordPress community locally at [Tech Liminal](https://techliminal.com/), and have built developer communities at [Mozilla](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/), [Wikimedia](https://www.wikimedia.org/), [Tidelift](https://tidelift.com/), and [New Relic](https://newrelic.com/).

This season, we’re helping you level up your interviewing skills! Each week [Lauren Lee](https://twitter.com/LoLoCoding), [Danny Ramos](https://twitter.com/muydanny), and industry experts will offer advice on navigating career progression within tech.

Do you have ideas about how we can make our show better? Or would you like to be a guest on an upcoming episode? Reach out to our #devrel team at devrel@newrelic.com. We would LOVE to hear from you with any questions, curiosities, and/or feedback you have in hopes of making this the best show possible!

👉 Give us a follow: [@LaunchiesShow](https://twitter.com/launchiesshow)

{% podcast https://dev.to/launchies/building-a-network-with-rynn-mancuso %}

**Topics Covered On This Episode:** 

- How Communities Have Changed Since The Pandemic 
- Advice For Introverts and Extroverts
- The Importance of Social Media to Achieve a Career in Tech
- Networking & Finding Community
- Community Engagement
- Finding a Mentor
- Leveraging Your Network

Links:

- [Alternate ROOTS](https://alternateroots.org/)
- [LiveJournal](https://www.livejournal.com/)
- [Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/)
- [DEV Community](https://dev.to/)
- [Slack](https://slack.com/)
- [Twitter](https://twitter.com/)

**CTA (Call To Action):** Join the [New Relic Community Slack](https://newrelicusers.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-dh3gka4g-hxFc2GZ4PTXnarex27ZbUQ?utm_source=launchies#/shared-invite/email) and tell us…

List what are key things you're looking for in a community that you want to join. Share them! What you do want? What don't you want?

👉 Follow [Launchies](https://twitter.com/LaunchiesShow/), [Lauren](https://twitter.com/lolocoding), and [Danny](https://twitter.com/muydanny) on Twitter! 


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**Transcript:**

Danny Ramos: Launchies is a tech podcast dedicated to helping early-career developers or soon-to-be devs.  

Lauren Lee: We'll share insights on how to navigate these early opportunities and bring on experts from the tech industry to give advice on general career progression.

Danny: In the first season of our show, we focused on how people launched into their tech careers.

Lauren: And now, in Season Two, we want to offer advice on your career progression.

Danny: The next 12 episodes will be all about the interview and landing your first job. 

Lauren: Hello.

Danny: What's up? What's up?

Lauren: How's it going? 

Danny: It's going good. It's Monday. [laughter]

Lauren: I put an 8:00 a.m. call on your calendar for this.

Danny: I didn't even know how to respond. I'm like, you know how it is. It's 8:00 a.m. on a Monday. [laughter] And I didn't know about this until last night. Well, it's my fault. I didn't look at the calendar. But I was like, hmm, let me see how my day looks tomorrow morning. And I was like, ah, Lauren scheduled an 8:00 a.m. meeting.

Lauren: There's a way to see this in that you're starting your day with the Launchies community, and what a great way to kick off the week.

Danny: It is a little cold in the Bay today. So I just need the warmth. I need the warmth of the community around, a big group hug, so to say.

Lauren: So let's give that for Danny, my deepest apologies. [laughter] I am on the East Coast, and it is midday for me. Well, I wanted to see your face and talk about networking, and community, and the opportunity to leverage the folks in our world while navigating the job hunt.

Danny: And this is today's theme for Episode Two. This is not --

Lauren: Oh no. That was just my musings of what I was wanting to do. [laughter]

Danny: I was like, this is what Lauren likes to talk about, just a cup of coffee. Let's talk about community and networking and then go about our day. 

Lauren: This is going to be a great episode. I think folks are going to have a lot of takeaways and hopefully feel good about; I don't know; I think there are a lot of pressures to know everyone in the industry and just have...I remember being obsessed with getting to the 500 mark on LinkedIn because once you hit that number, it stops counting them, like people that are in your...and so going to meetups and being like, "Hey, do you want to connect on LinkedIn?" [laughter]

Danny: Yeah, I remember that from the Twitter Spaces that we did recently about how to break into DevRel as a junior. A lot of people had brought up like, oh, it's just really difficult to...because you end up comparing yourself and thinking like, oh, people in DevRel have to be like influencers. And I'm sure it feels the same way when you're going into tech. You're like, oh, this person with this many followers or with this many people in their community they're going to get the job because they know people, and they have that network. 

But this episode is really about just how to begin, where to start to get into those networks. What are some networks that interest you? Maybe you'll end up growing from there, or maybe there's a way to find a mentor. What are just the different approaches of finding community like blogging, Twitter, open-source, those types of things?

Lauren: Well, the conversation took a really cool turn in that we really explored the positives of the world going online and how that opened up doors for all these communities that may not have been able to gather in person previously in years past. And so, I think that that is a really cool way to spin the reality that is now, and it's got me excited to check out some new communities. So I have some good follow-up action items, and I hope everyone else does after listening.

Danny: Oh, absolutely. Rynn, thank you so much for being here. We're really excited to have you as our second guest. Please tell us about your background. What got you interested in community management, community in general? Was there anything in your life that got you to the point to where you are today?

Rynn Mancuso: Sure. So honestly, I got into online community from doing offline community. I was involved, and this is back in the late 2000s, in a community for artists in Atlanta called Alternate ROOTS that focused specifically on getting out there in the community. And many of these people weren't technical at all. 

And so what I was doing was helping these folks who were storytellers, generally older folks, visual artists who would involve whole communities in murals in developing and sharing their work online, creating even a website for the organization. And so I really learned from them a lot about the power of community and, at the same time, the power of technology to really enable community to reach a larger audience, and so that's how I got into community management. 

At the same time, I was working actually on the LiveJournal support team. And so I really saw the power of it, both online and offline, went to graduate school, focused on community, and my degree was in digital media, and moved out here. And, of course, the social media revolution was really just beginning in 2010 when I came out here. And so for a while, I was really involved in that, did a large [inaudible 5:52] on social media, worked for Oprah Winfrey for a minute, which was totally wild to be a community manager for her.

Danny: What? 

Rynn: What? I know. [laughs]

Danny: You're just going to throw that in there? Just casually like, oh yeah, and I also worked for Oprah, no big deal. [laughs]

Rynn: Yes. Oprah's community, speaking of the power of community, it's wild. People will write Oprah and be like, "You're my only hope. I was going to give up on life, and then I saw your show." 

Lauren: Oh my gosh.

Danny: [laughs]

Rynn: She's just so into their space.

Danny: So you went from helping older folks get their work online, and then you're just working beside Oprah, you know, you're drinking coffee alongside her.

Lauren: Rubbing elbows.

Rynn: [laughs] I wish it were that cool. I did not ever meet her. Our team worked for her, and it was great. But yeah, you have to remember Oprah is a master community builder because she was in everybody's living room with her community as her studio audience, and everyone was like, we're just an extension of that audience. And so, working for her online really gave people the sense of being part of that studio audience.

Danny: I really liked that you worked within the art community at Alternate ROOTS. Was there something that you were passionate about, like in the arts world, that put you there, or did you just find yourself there?

Rynn: I actually was passionate. So my other passion besides building digital community is accessibility. And so I was there because I was working on inclusion for disabled people. And I was specifically at the time working on accessible dance. 

Lauren: Oh my gosh, cool. 

Danny: Wow.

Rynn: Yeah, that was another really powerful community building because a lot of times, folks with physical disabilities have been actively discouraged from participating in any movement activity. And so they've been told this just isn't something they can do. And so to really create a space where people with physical disabilities as well as people with mental or cognitive challenges who might have been told, "Oh, keep your brain covered up. You must act a certain way at all times," were sort of allowed to dig in and fully express themselves through movement. It was really a truly amazing community to build. 

Lauren: I love that.

Rynn: I could tell stories about the power of community all day. [laughs]

Lauren: And so this show is focused for folks that are ready to launch into their tech careers and today focusing on that how do you leverage community or how do you participate in community or build a network? So that that process feels a little bit more collaborative or that you know the community that you're launching into even before you're in it necessarily for a full-time job. So I'd love to hear your thoughts around tips you have in that regard; just for folks that are, I don't know, it's a tough thing to navigate. Plus, I imagine that communities have really changed in the past few years also in our new reality.

Danny: I think one thing to point out that I really, really liked was that when you are curious about communities, and much like what you did, Rynn, was that you were really into accessibility. So you went to the accessibility space and then made and found your community there. Whereas someone who is new to this and doesn't know where to begin...let's say you're really interested in gaming or really interested in people who contribute to open-source; you can find a community there and get your foot into the door and just --

Lauren: Let your passion drive it like where you show up for community. Gosh, that throws me back to when I was navigating all of it. I had no idea what I liked. So I speed-dated meetups. I would go to a different one every single night of the week. 

Rynn: [laughs] Amazing.

Lauren: I was living in Seattle, so I could. There genuinely was a back-end meetup one night and then a Ruby meetup the next day. And I could just go and check the vibe of each group [laughs] and like, oh, those are my people. Or wow, I really don't want to go back to that one again. [laughs] So that was really, I mean, I was very fortunate that was an opportunity given to me because you want to be passionate about what the community is. It has to happen.

Rynn: Yeah, I totally agree. Especially if you're in a large city but also now that everything's online and we've got Clubhouse, and we've got Twitter chats, and we've got webinars, and we've got lots of ways to connect with things. Speed dating different communities is not a bad way to settle on a technology you want to work with because I think just as important as you really liking the technology is you liking the community. Because it might be that you have decided you want to make contributions to languages, and you want to go fairly deep with languages. 

And so maybe you want to be in the Rust community, which is quite a lively community and can be a great one to join. And you go feel it out by going to Rust meetups. But maybe it turns out that you're not really a Rust person, and you want to be contributing to Ruby Core or something, and you go ahead and explore where those intersections are. 

Because chances are that whatever your general technical area of interest is, there are going to be 15 different ways to apply it. So you want to pick the thing that you want to apply it on, a community that you want to be in, that you enjoy showing up to every day. And I would say think of showing up to a community is a little bit like showing up to work. You got to like your co-workers. These are going to be your co-workers in terms of open-source contribution, in terms of helping you figure out problems. So you've got to like the other community members. 

Lauren: That's great advice.

Danny: That is really good. Yeah, I didn't even think about it that way. I always separated the two in my mind where I was like, work is work, and then my community are all my friends. But of course, I'm going to put them through the same type of step-by-step process. Like, do I like these people? Do I like being here? Do I like hanging out with them? Do I like talking to them? Do we share the same values?

Lauren: For sure. And gosh, I wonder, Rynn, if you can speak to now how things have changed, what do you miss from that kind of in-person stuff? But what also are the positives, or what have we embraced since the world has gone online? And we can have these virtual conversations with people across the globe.

Rynn: The biggest thing for me has honestly been seeing small communities get more connected and galvanized. And that was something that we saw really at the beginning of online communities back in, you know, as soon as it became possible with LiveJournal or whatever for just the average person to connect to other people. We would see people meet people who were like them. And you're living in a small town, and you work on an incredibly specific technology. And no one else in the town works on that technology. And all of a sudden, you're connected to people.

And I think we had an acceleration of this during COVID. Because once we had injected into communities, people who maybe were not that into hanging out online before...and it's meant some spaces get worse. People have, in some cases, brought polarizing opinions into internet communities that were less present there, to begin with. And we've definitely seen an uptick in negativity. 

But we've also seen tremendous positive things happening. For example, dance communities are coming online for the first time. People are dancing over Zoom and connecting over Zoom with people in other countries. And your grandmother is maybe coming online and dialing up to the internet for the first time. And it's really been a pretty amazing change.

Danny: Yeah, it's been kind of really interesting to see because I started my tech journey all online.

Lauren: Great point.

Danny: And seeing these communities grow it's actually made me more excited for people who are more introverted like my younger brother. He's now interested in communities because of things like Discord because he talks to his friends on Discord, and he can do that in the comfort of his own space. He doesn't feel like he needs to go out and do anything. And for me, I'm like, I missed these in-people interactions. I need to have people around me at all times. But then I forget about the people who maybe don't necessarily find that as comforting as me.

Lauren: Right. And your brother is like an active member in his community. He's a participant, and he's valued, and he's participating just as much as anyone else in there. So he's not differentiated because of his introversion or extroversion. It's really beautiful if you think about it. I love that.

Rynn: Right. I'm a very extroverted person, which I think has led me to be more comfortable seeking out community. Although honestly, I know many introverts who are really good community managers. I think sometimes introverts can feel more comfortable in an online community and being able to respond asynchronously. 

And that's another thing I would say, consider what communication methods the community uses and what is right for you. For example, if you were trying to join an open-source or open standards community whose primary method of communication is a weekly call and you don't have a good time processing audio information, like, you don't learn best that way, maybe that's not the best community for you. Maybe you need to go one community over to the folks who have a weekly Slack stand-up.

Lauren: Sure, yeah. And being open to playing around with what works for you and also knowing yourself and setting those boundaries too like, this isn't for me, and that's okay.

Rynn: Very much so.

Lauren: As you said, there are so many communities. And something really lovely about tech is that people want to help each other. If you have a loving space, that might be the place to ask for help while reviewing a resume or finding a referral to apply to a job or find your next gig. And so you really want it to be a place that you've put a lot of thought and care into participating in.

Danny: Yeah, I really like what you had said, Rynn, about the communication style and seeing if that feels comforting for you. If the community that I wanted to join was like, okay, we're going to go into breakout rooms immediately, and no one has their camera on, [laughs] I'd be like, I don't like the way that makes me feel. I don't know if I want to do that.

Rynn: Sure, yeah. And it's tough online to pay attention to your feelings sometimes because you're so in the computer and in your head. But I think in terms of finding something that is a fit for you, it's really important to step back and really think, how did that make me feel? 

The other thing I'm going to say is every time you go to a community for the first time, sometimes you can tell it's totally going to turn you off, and this is not your thing. But I would encourage you, if you feel uncertain about something, to go back two or three times because it may be that you were anxious. You didn't know how it was going to go. So go ahead and participate in three Twitter chats on C++ if you're debating what language to get into.

Lauren: That's great advice. That brings up a question I have around for folks that are brand new to tech. And where would you recommend someone gets started with navigating all of this? Where do we start?

Rynn: There are really great tech communities designed specifically for beginners or learners, and that can be a good place to start. I would say also, going back to what Lauren said, if you can find a community that's strong locally where you are, maybe there's a big company in your town that hires lots of people who use a particular language, it could be good to make that the first language that you learn because you'll be able to get lots of support and build connections both online and offline. And then, for your second language, you could feel more empowered to make a larger, more focused decision.

Lauren: Absolutely. I think it's really helpful to have people that are going through similar things that you're also in the weeds with, whether it's looking for a job or learning a new language. It feels nice just to have people to be like, yeah, today sucks, doesn't it? Or like, wow, I got another rejection letter, I don't know. There's value in finding people that are in the weeds in similar places like that, I guess.

Rynn: Yes, I'm going to memo this here, but there's a community on Twitter right now learning to code, and somebody is going live twice a week with them on Twitch streams, and they're all learning to code together. And a space like that can be really wonderful because Twitter, you also talk about your life. And so you're able to tweet when you're frustrated with the hashtag and get support.

Lauren: Yeah, because it stinks to struggle alone. I mean, that's just a human truth. So that's going to be the same while job hunting. [laughs] That's just the reality of the situation.

Danny: Speaking of Twitter, I wanted to ask you, Rynn, has there been a more successful approach in your eyes to building community, or joining a community, or more engagement? Have you seen it more on Twitter or just on Dev.to answering questions or, like Slack groups, open-source? Are there ones that you've seen that have been more successful for people who are just starting out or just successful for you in general?

Rynn: I would say Stack Overflow they are working on it, but I would not necessarily suggest engaging a lot with Stack Overflow as a beginner because they have a lot of really complicated rules about what kinds of answers get accepted and voted up. And you might want to treat it as a read-only mode site, unless you feel really motivated by that kind of community. 

Wikipedia is a similar community. They have lots of rules to maintain answer quality and article quality, both of them. And both of them can be wonderful welcoming places, but they're probably places that you want to go to work on something that you're already an expert in. Because learning their rules is so complex that that's where you're going to be doing your learning.

I would say Dev.to is really a great place to learn in public to go ahead and post your learnings and posts where you're stuck. And you can blast out your Dev.to posts on your Twitter or whatever, like, get people's attention on it. Dev.to is sort of like Medium for developers if you've ever been on medium.com. It can be a really great empowering free-form space.

Danny: For me, I was always suggested like, oh, go join different Slack groups. And for me, when I was first starting out, I actually found that really useful. It was nice to just get the opinions from people that I didn't even know. So I was like, I had no real strong connection to them. And I would just throw my resume in the Slack group. Like if they had a resume channel, I'd be like, "Hey, can I get some feedback on my resume? How does it look?" 

Lauren: Take a look. [laughs]

Danny: Yeah, like, please. "I don't know you, so don't feel bad if you are afraid to criticize me or something. I want all the criticism." 

Rynn: The anonymity of it is nice. 

Danny: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I just see this little, tiny square photo of them looking cute and smiling. So I'm like, whatever. 

Rynn: Absolutely.

Danny: They're nice. 

Rynn: I've also found Slack to be really positive. There's a great Slack for developer relations. There are a couple of different Slacks for community management. And all of those have really been my lifeline because often, when you're working in community, you're the only person who knows about community within your organization. And so you really need to talk to other people in the field. 

And I think that can also be true...sometimes, in a technical role, you might be the only technical person in your organization, like if you're supporting a non-profit or whatever, and you really need that connection. Or it might be that you're the only expert in your particular technology. And Slack groups can really bridge that gap of loneliness. And I think Slack groups can also learn together, learn in public. I took a course together with a cohort from a Slack group once, and that was really wonderful. 

Lauren: That's nice.

Rynn: And I think I got more out of it than I would have because it turned out the course covered a lot of information that I already knew. But I was able to get on calls with these two people and help explain the information to them. And for them, the information was all new. And I felt really empowered by being able to do that and got really positive feelings. Whereas otherwise, I would have just blown through the class and been like, yeah, whatever, didn't learn anything from that. But I learned I have some valuable insights to share with people. And sometimes you learn you know more than you think.

Lauren: That's great. There's something really powerful about teaching a concept to your peers and realizing, oh, I get this, and it helps you really solidify your understanding of stuff, I suppose. Danny and I have a great debate going around social media for a career in tech. Where do you land on that? And whether it's necessary or helpful or, I guess, a good thing. [laughs]  How do you feel about all that?

Rynn: I think especially with COVID going on, you can't go out to meetups to get your next job. You can't literally go shake people's hands and be like, "Hey, I want to be an engineer at your company." And I think right now; social media is a really helpful place to connect with folks who you might not otherwise connect with. 

And you can kind of meet somebody on Twitter in a Twitter chat. You connect with them on LinkedIn; you see what their background is. Now you've had a few exchanges with them. Maybe you're able to ask them to hop on a half-hour call with you to network, or maybe you're able to ask them to join you in a Slack and have a text chat or over at Google Hangouts or even over Twitter DMs. 

So I think that social media can be wonderful. At the same time, I realize that it is not for everyone. I think if you are a new person trying to break in and social media is not for you, then that is fine. I would definitely say maintain a LinkedIn, even if you don't log into it all the time just because that's a nice, little web presence. It's a nice way for people to see who you know, for you to connect to people and keep track of who you know. But I don't think that if you really are someone who feels repulsed by Twitter that you need to be on Twitter. 

And I would say if you're not going to be on social media, maybe an open-source community is best for you. Maybe making contributions to Kubernetes will get you Kubernetes jobs. That is fine. And there are lots of people around all those open source and open standards communities who make great contributions who don't go on social media. But you definitely need a way to be connected to people. And I think right now, given that we are all inside due to COVID, it's not going to be in person, so it's got to be an online option.

Lauren: I think Danny and I can agree on all those points, right?

Danny: [laughs] I am just such a Twitter fiend. I think from just everyone needs one. Why wouldn't you just use it?

Lauren: Because it's overwhelming. [laughs]

Danny: It is overwhelming, and I think I'm just naive because I'm just like, my experience with Twitter has been okay. It's fine. But I know that people have bad experiences with Twitter, and I forget that.

Lauren: Oh, the privilege.

Rynn: Right.

Danny: I'm over here, just like doo, doo, doo. I'm just going to share my feelings; I don't care. [laughter] So I forget that there's a bad side of it.

Rynn: It's totally people who, and we have to acknowledge for good reasons, like they've been stalked or something like that. They can't be on Twitter or can't be public on Twitter. And I think we need to be aware that those people exist and be inclusive and remember that they're losing out on an opportunity.

Lauren: Definitely. Tailoring things to what works for you feels like a really good theme that I'm pulling from today. I'm hearing you say that a lot, that just know what is good for you and prioritize that. The comparison game can be so toxic that if we allow ourselves to think that we need to be like other developers that we see in our network or whatnot, that's not going to work. And so listen to yourself and decide, oh, I think I want to be a part of this particular community for these reasons. That's a great way to navigate things.

Danny: Yeah, I actually really like the idea of someone being in their space and thinking about it to themselves like, okay, so I'm thinking about joining a community, and this is what I would, like, take some time to write it actually out so you can see it and say, I want there to be this, this, and this, and I want to feel these feelings, blah, blah, blah.

Lauren: I like that.

Danny: And that could be a call to action when we get there.

Lauren: I was just going to say that. [laughter] Danny, you took the words out of my mouth. Is this our call to action? List it for us. What are those things that you're looking for? Because for sure, what I want is going to be so different than Rynn or Danny both of you want. And then declaring it to the universe might also be an interesting exercise also so that you can maybe even learn about some of those communities. 

Rynn: Exactly. Yeah, I think declaring it can be really helpful. It's probable that somebody knows about the community that you should join.

Lauren: Yeah, I really like that.

Danny: I mean, they're probably going to share this on Twitter, unfortunately. [laughter]

Lauren: Oh, stop.

Danny: Or an email chain. I don't know. What else?

Lauren: Okay, you're done. Okay, you're done. [laughter]

Rynn: If you're not comfortable on Twitter, it's really fine to join...I would say consider the big affinity Slacks. Consider women in tech. There's a Slack for that. There's a Slack for LGBTQ people in tech. There's a smaller Slack for disabled people in tech. I would consider starting out with one of those communities because you'll have something in common with the other members and be able to go from there. If you're not a learner of community, that's a good place to start.

Lauren: For sure. I know we wanted to touch today on if, say, the scenario, someone's looking for a mentor but doesn't know exactly how or who to ask. Do you have any tips when it comes to community on finding folks that might be supportive of your journey and might have insights on how you can maybe progress your career?

Rynn: One way you can get lots of eyes on you, and I did this with Women Who Code when I was an accessibility engineer I found it...actually, the first front-end meetup of Women Who Code, the meetup previously to me, had been all Ruby. And so I was like, I'm having a hard time finding a job right now. It was the Great Recession. The recession of 2008 was still going on, and the industry was pretty down. And I couldn't find a job as an accessibility engineer. 

And so what I did was start up this group, and I brought in a lot of people who were learners who knew even less than me, which helped reinforce my own feelings about learning, and they learned together. And the most important thing was I didn't have to know everything because it turned out that once this just emerged, there was a real need for it. And other women who were more experienced developers would come in and get engaged and want to teach.

So I think just starting a space where you can talk about problems, whether that's your Twitch stream, whether that's a Slack channel where you all decide to maybe go through a set of tech lessons, whether that's a Twitter Space where you're just all like, well, we're going to do this one five-lesson course that's supposed to take an hour. We're going to do this tonight, three hours, and we're all going to talk together. I think that can be a wonderful way to get exposed to new people who might be mentors or might just be lateral connections. 

I think building mentorship is a process, like, over time of how you show up, and people will see that you are showing up in a way that is holding space for other people. If you're not a holding space for other people type, sometimes the thing to do is for you to publish your project in public, whatever this is, and let people gather around. 

And something I wanted to add about being in public is going back to touching on some other issues is don't try to be exactly like the influencer in your area. Just be your best self. Bring your best self and get people right next to you to appreciate you.

Lauren: That is really lovely advice, and I think it is a daily practice that we need to say to ourselves sometimes, too, and that's okay, or remind ourselves, I suppose.

Danny: Rynn, let me ask you, how does your job change when things come to open up again? Can you completely do your job from home in the comfort of your space? Or do you have to go out and be within the community in person and do things like that?

Rynn: It's a mix. So different community management positions have different mixes of this. For example, if somebody wanted to get into community management, one way that a lot of people get in is being Yelp city hosts. And if you are a Yelp city host, you are at a different event in your city every night, driving folks to sign up for Yelp. You go to a bar and get the patrons in the bar to write up reviews. That's an example of a community management job that is very much out and on the road.

And my job I could still do a lot of it from home because the reality is we're global. A lot of folks can't connect in person anyway. And I think it's about figuring out what's the right balance for you and seeking out that job. Maybe you do want to travel. Maybe you want a job that's 25% travel, and you go to a different technical conference every month, maybe you don't. That is okay. 

I would definitely say developer community is a way to connect to other developers all the time, even when you're at home or whatever. So I highly recommend this career track if you're interested in DevRel and don't want to hit the road. I definitely hit the road sometimes when I choose to, but it's not my key OKR.

Danny: [laughs] Is there a piece of advice? Let's say I'm listening to this in my car right now. I'm feeling hyped. I'm hearing you talk of all the cool things, and I need one more piece of information, one more couple sentences to be like, I'm going to go join a community. What would you have to say? What do I need to know? I want to learn more.

Rynn: So I think really my best tip about community is, again, go out and experiment with different communities. Don't be afraid to try different things and jump around. Don't feel bad if you don't succeed or don't really connect with one community. Understand that the next community is going to be different. Go ahead and focus as much on am I excited about the technology as am I excited about the people and the way that the people communicate with each other? 

And have fun. This really should be joyful. I appreciate that maybe you're more introverted, and this is challenging for you. And maybe you have to set a goal that you're going to go out and try to engage with one community a week and reward yourself with some thinking time after that where you don't have to talk to people. But when you find the right community, you will know it because you will enjoy it.

Lauren: That is beautiful. It's a great way to, I guess, wrap up our conversation. Rynn, thank you so much for sharing your insights, your experiences, and your wisdom with our Launchies community today.

Rynn: Thank you both so much for having me on the show. It's been great.

Danny: All right, everyone. So we had referenced a call to action before in Episode One, and we did in Episode Two, but it's kind of mixed in. So I'm just going to rephrase it.

Lauren: Sure. Do that for listeners. I love that. [laughs]

Danny: Say it again. So today's call to action is to sit down and list what are the key things you're looking for within a community that you want to join? And share them. Share them with us on Twitter, even though I got some beef about Twitter. [laughs]

Lauren: Let's brainstorm other places people can share them. How about in our podcast reviews? Give us five stars and list out those qualities, and we'll read them on the next show. Why not? I'm sure there are others. That doesn't have to be the only one. But oh, I know. They could join the New Relic community Slack. The link is bit.ly/nrslack. So that's bit.ly/N as in nuanced, R as in...oh, Relic. I could just say as in New Relic. [laughter] 

Danny: Nuanced Relic, it's actually a new release. [laughs]

Lauren: Come on, stop. That is not how someone should read out a link, holy cow. But okay, you get what I'm saying. Actually, just go look at the show notes because you might not understand what I just said. 

Danny: Oh my gosh.

Lauren: But join our community in Slack, and let's have a conversation there because that would be a great place to meet other folks that are enthusiastic about this sort of topic. So yeah, that could definitely be a place to encourage the dialogue or Twitter; that's fine too. [laughs] 

Danny: And our Twitter would be @newrelic Twitter. And be sure to follow our personal handles. I'm @muydanny.

Lauren: And I'm @LoloCoding. And we also have a conference called FutureStack coming up. The CFP is open, and the deadline for submission, I believe, is March 1st. So be sure to go check that out and apply to speak or register to attend. Love to see you there. But, Danny, this has been such a joy today. I have loved today's episode. 

Danny: So much fun.

Lauren: Thanks for, as always, being a phenomenal co-host.

Danny: Aw, this is only Episode Two. You're getting me all emotional; come on. [laughs]

Lauren: Episode Three, I am stoked to continue these conversations. You want to give a little preview to listeners? 

Danny: Yeah, so Episode Three is going to be all about finding where to apply. And so obviously they tell you, "There are so many jobs out there. There are tons and tons of jobs. You'll be able to find one." But it's hard to narrow it down. What am I looking for? What is the company that I'm interested in?

Lauren: It's the blank page syndrome when someone is like, oh, I'm overwhelmed about where to apply. And someone responds like, "Oh, everyone's hiring." It's like, well, that's not helpful. [laughter]

Danny: Yeah, you're like, okay, but do they like me? Are they cool? Am I going to like being there?

Lauren: Yeah, exactly. And we'll also touch on some evaluating, how to evaluate a company, how to research employment and business practices. And I think it's going to be a cool conversation, so yeah, stay tuned. But with that, thanks, everyone. Thanks for tuning in for another week and another episode of Launchies.

Danny: Take it easy.

Lauren: Bye.