Lessons Learned While Learning Live

Hello, hello beautiful humans. Welcome to Lessons Learned for Learning Live. Picture this. You're about to go on stage and tell people about an idea that you just learned. Or you're going on stage because you're about to learn from someone you've never met. What feelings are going on there? I'm curious. Because I know learning something new—scary. Not my favorite. I mean, it is my favorite, but it didn't used to be my favorite.

I never thought it would be that cool. Learning something new is very scary, talking in front of people, either it be to a screen or to a crowd of 10,000 people, behind the screen or in person, is terrifying. And also, uh, not knowing. Not knowing is not fun. Because there's this whole shame and sti—well, okay, we'll go through that another time. But it makes me go, um, I don't wanna do it. I don't wanna do it. It doesn't sound great. Then why would anybody do it? Why is it that scary? Like how do we combat this, the not fun part?

So, to understand the scariness, it's the fear of the unknown. It's a big part of it. It's We don't know what's gonna happen. We can't predict it, therefore our body doesn't know how to react. Fear of judgment. Dude, do I have a lipstick stuck around my teeth? Could you, could you tell me? If I do, I can't see myself right now. So y'all are gonna have to deal with it and you can judge me for it. It's okay. It's the human experience. Patience and practice. Patience and practice. This is really funny because this is my third time recording this talk and I'm excited to talk about the Q&A with you but I can tell you that my patience with inanimate objects is very small. But hey, I'm getting practice.

And then there's those physical responses. Literally your body doesn't know what to anticipate. It's that fight or flight or freeze or what are we doing and then you have the pressure to perform. Are you gonna do as good as last time? Are we gonna be able to outperform the other person? Are we gonna hit those numbers? Are we gonna close those sales? The pressure to perform.

And all of those for myself go to the fear of failure. Dude, what if nobody sees it? What if nobody comments? Oh gosh! What if I don't get it? These are all things that get stuck in my head almost every time before I start to strain.

And now? Ew! No, thank you. That's not fun. It doesn't sound fun. It doesn't sound fun. So let's talk about what we are gonna talk about today because there is some pretty cool things we're today like the double edged sword of public learning. Is it good or bad? Or is it both? Understanding your own learning techniques.

Okay, y'all, we're going to say this multiple times throughout this presentation, talk, whatever you want to call it. We're talking about learning techniques, also learning styles. I'm not saying that learning styles is an exact science. That is a debate for off this talk, but it is a great place for people, including myself, to get an idea of some avenues to go look into. And then we are at TypeScript Congress. So what are the lessons I learned from TypeScript and learning TypeScript? I'm excited about that one. And last but not least, continue to learn. Like what are we going to do to continue learning? It is so important.

Oh, and hey, by the way, my name is Jen Janon. Yay, sparkly jacket. It makes me happy. Even though this is a really old photo. I just happen to be wearing it again and it makes me happy. All right. I am a developer advocate at Ivan, who is the trusted open source data platform for everyone. It's actually pretty dope. So hit me up if you are curious about that kind of thing. Also tGN tech where I am the host that is helping break barriers by getting in learning to get into tech.

Wow. Words and I. We are friends sometimes, but that is where I go to learn things. And I also learned a lot from my podcast, Shit You Don't Want to Talk About. It is pretty dope because I have a lot of conversations about stuff people don't want to talk about or learn about or struggle with in all three areas of my life. It's pretty dope. And if you scan that barcode, it's to a link to link tree, you can connect with me, it'll have all of the information for the shows questions, all of that if you're curious about it.

But I know I know you're more curious about what's the good and learning live because like seriously, we're we're kind of struggling right now. In this next bit, I'm going to be sharing some clips that will help you see different bits of the stream and my experience learning. Like, there's good because you get to share knowledge. And this is a clip from my very, very first episode with eRae, where I didn't know the difference between I'm giggling because this was getting my journey, baby Jen of I didn't know the difference between HTML, CSS or JavaScript. And here's a quick clip. I think that's a big part of the paralysis too is it's like, if you start learning something and you're like, okay, so this teacher is showing you how to do it, yet they're talking at you because it's, you know, recorded, it's not virtual where you can learn with them. It's very difficult because when you go to Google things, then they're like, oh, you do it this way, this way, this way. And it's always, at least from a beginner standpoint, I'm just like, I don't know what you just said. I get that it might be a different way, but I don't know why and what it meant compared to, like what this specific lesson is talking about. Yeah, and I think that's one of the biggest challenges when you're self learning is understanding the why. And once you understand the why, then you can figure out, okay, this is the same thing, but in a different way because of X, Y, Z. But if you don't really get that why just yet, and the most difficult part is to learn why we're doing things a certain way, then it's tough. And that's why I do prefer there are learning groups and things like that where people learn these. I think that's a big part of the parallel too is if you started learning. I mean, as much as I learned from Yuri, these just kept coming up and having to learn and upcoming fear of mistakes. Okay, the fear didn't go away. It didn't go away at all. It just makes it slightly less scary. Even five episodes in with Anthony and this still happens. Well, welcome. Wow. Welcome. Wow.

Anthony, you're like the our very first episode, I totally butchered saying hello as well. So can I blame you for this? Must have jinxed you. I can't irritate you. Yes, welcome to teach. Welcome. Wow. Wow. Anthony, you're like the our very first episode. I totally butchered saying hello as well. So can I blame you for this? Must have jinxed you. I can't irritate you. Yes, welcome to teach. I really am keeping that clip forever if anybody asks, I'm saving it and it shows how I'm gonna make mistakes. It's gonna keep happening because I can't me and words don't always get along and it's gonna happen even in this next part where increased understanding and Jay is on the show to teach me about Python. And y'all it's kind of clicking not clicking and but it's starting to.

So now let's do the same thing where we do in options, change true or true false to false false. Okay so now do you think it's gonna return true or false? True. Why? Because out at least one of them are false. No because any remember any is looking for at least one to be true. And since it's not using the word true therefore it's not true. Exactly it's false. Okay. Yeah and I mean we can run this and see like if you're you're false. Yeah like what you're saying makes sense I think it's just like saying true there will be a false there that is truthful. Yeah. Yeah um I still struggle with this. I definitely still struggle with all of it and yet it oddly somehow starts to make sense. It's it's it's it's interesting but we all have to figure out how we learn ourselves.

It's it's it's it's interesting but we all have to figure out how we learn ourselves. So a bit about how did I get here because you don't just like wake up one day and be like yo I'm gonna go learn live I mean some people might it may happen it didn't happen like that for me.

The first you know 30 years of my life uh yes I am an older millennial was a lot about I don't know what I want to do I was in sales for a bit that was fun but way too stressful. I was in tech support for a bit also fun didn't pay the bills that I needed. I also traveled and did other cool things and it was a lot of fun and then you know I get back from a trip and on my near 30s I'm like yo I want to do something about human connection and to do this I must learn videography. I got an internship at a a production studio pretty dope right except it cut all of my pay and then Covid hit and it was just a shit show that year.

So the end of 2020 I had brain surgery and then took a detour to a new company and it was super dope. I worked with APIs and had a lot of fun and between all of that I took eight months to try to figure out how to start shit you don't want to talk about. I mentioned that because that is a key time frame. Eight months, eight months! It took me eight months. It takes other people longer. It takes practice. The starting is the hardest part in my opinion. But what happened after that? What about 2022? I got laid off. And then I met the Denver API people because I used to live in Denver and they were like, yo, dude, come be an API Denver meetup co-organizer. I was like sweet. But they definitely did not sound like that. They are very French. All three of them that were the co-organizers at the time are all from France and my last name is French. I try to say that was why they let me become a co-organizer. They're not convinced, but story for another day. Ori, one of the co-organizers was like, yo, if you could be like describe your dream job. And I was like, you know seeing other people succeed advocating for them, making sure that things are accessible for those who can't normally get into understanding it or being able to have the same access. And he's like, and you like tech? I'm like, yeah, it's fun. It's always fun learning. It's like, yo, that's a developer advocate. I had a dream. It was like, I finally came up with something that I could work towards and a goal. And then I reached out to people. My bubble, my dream was a little busted.

It was, it was like, oh, you can't just go get a job in DevRel. It's not just like you wake up one day and you can go get a job. No, no, it takes a lot of work. That's also another story for another day. But the first three people I met were like, yo, dude, you don't have content, you don't know the tech or know how to code, so you're probably not going to get a job here. Like you got the personality, but you got to have everything else to back it. And I was like, oh. Within a week, Teach Gen Tech was launched because I needed content. I needed to learn. And I started meeting people that were willing to teach me. Yay.

Then I met Laura. Laura is such a dope soul. She came on the show and started teaching me Python. And little did we know that there was much more that was going to go into learning than I ever imagined. Some of which being learning styles. As a previous math professor, she was teaching me how a lot of people don't get algebra. And I was like, really? And learning how we learn is such an important tool in our toolbox.

As a heads up, as we said earlier, these are learning styles. Go do your own homework on this. It's a good starting point. How to study. I honestly never knew how to do use flashcards. It was pretty cool. I dropped out of high school. You know, I winged it. I never actually learned how to keep up with it. And when are you productive? I didn't know that people were productive at different times of the day and not everybody can be a night owl or a morning bird. Is that an early bird? Why is the night owl an early bird? Can it be morning owl? Anyway, learning will be neurodivergent. Thank you to Wesley Faulkner, also taught me this during one of my first conversations with a devrel because I had no idea that I could be ADHD and dyslexic and learn to code. It was great. Patience and practice. Patience with myself. Still working on that one. Embrace the frustration. Yeah, this, like, no, no bro. Like I still struggle with this. Inanimate objects are not my friend. Majority of the time. I'm learning. We're getting there.

One of the biggest things I could say to really get started was learning my own learning techniques. So if you're getting started and you're like, yo, I want to go start something new. How are you going to get there? How are you going to learn it? How are you going to get started? A big way that talking with Laura about made me realize that especially with me being dyslexic, I found out that audio is really good for me. Not the only way I learned and some people that's why there's a lot of controversy around learning styles. I just happened to learn through audio a lot better because.

Text is really hard for me. Visual for myself was watching a lot of videos. That is very one to many. So I can consume it and watch it many, many times. Kinesthetic to me and made more sense of like if I were to go actually have someone teach me to do it or code myself and the learning these different pieces of me helped me embrace them and know which ones to use when.

Same with sleep and productivity scheduled also some have heard of them called Chronotypes. Again this is a great starting point not any like saying this is the end-all be-all. I found out that even if I wanted to be any of these other animals that I was a lion. Yeah waking up super early and being more productive the first half of the day and then I'm dead for the rest of the day. It's it's not fun I wish I could do more but knowing this I can embrace it. Knowing how to work with my neurodivergent yeah yeah. It's fun it's stressful it's hard it's I'm not alone and talking about it I was like oh all right that's dope other people have it too and how to use and find tools that helped me with all of the above. Like different alarms or text-to-speech or you know I do a lot of my streams with my iPad so I can write notes. All of these things are different ways that I have learned that go into my own learning techniques and this all leads up to why Typescript? How does Typescript help? That's kind of a weird thing to help. Think back to when you were learning Typescript. Do people say that don't you need to know JavaScript to know Typescript? Well it would probably have been helpful but you know I like to do things the hard way and that's really fun. So I'm learning both at the same time. Also, Typescript gave me structure in the show and in my code which is awesome and weird all at the same time. One of the biggest pieces that Typescript gave me was my community. So many people that I was learning from and associating with knew Typescripts. And so, by all of that, as you already know, Typescript gave me structure. With types. Okay. This one slide was for me. Just for me. But there's also a big part of the community of why I started learning Typescript and why it also made it a lot easier for me to was having someone on the show that also can be punny and goofy and break things down easily from a very complex point of view to a beginner point of view. I'm doing a talk at Typescript Congress and I'm going to use this quote. At least maybe like the last sentence. Typescript provides a set of types. Yes.

You do it. You do it. I'll clip it. You do it. I thought we were doing it in unison. Not that... I don't know. It's like a call to action situation.

Okay. Well, Typescript provides a set of type system tools for interfaces to help model the wackiness. That was great. Josh says it was great. I think it was a little painful. Either way, it was a little fun and Josh Goldberg is the author of Learning Typescript. And this book and Josh and my open source guild community raid... Open source raid guild? Yeah, community. OSRG. It's in the link tree if you want to come join the community there. All of these different people from so many aspects of my life knew Typescript. So it made it a lot easier to start learning because that's who I was around.

So what other things did Typescript give me structure? It also gave me structure in checking errors. Which I mean it does. It's pretty cool. That's what it does. And learning errors. Understanding AVIs. Earlier I mentioned that I worked at an API company. I also worked at the Denver API meetup. Or was one of the co-organizers. And it never quite clicked and learning Typescript and putting structure to all these different technologies really helped.

It also made me learn that Python. Learning Python and Typescript at the same time, not my jam. So I stuck with JavaScript and Typescript.

Now to continue learning, we always have room to grow. Your mindset matters so much. And please always remember that. I am so amazed at some of the guests that I've had on the show that are have done such cool shit in their lifetimes and accomplished so much and they come on the show and they're like, yo, I learned something today from the show. I'm like, wait, what? You learned something? That happens. That's cool. And always being open means we'll grow together.

So, top lessons I learned over a year of streaming and a hundred episodes later is I don't know if this is good or bad to say at TouchCorp Congress but it's not as scary as they say. I mean, it's still a little scary. You know, learning and livestreaming have some things in common. They're fun. They're nerve-wracking. They're super frustrating. And we're going to wing it. You're going to wing it. Some part of it's going to be a wing it. And then we have learning how I learned. That is something that I wish I could give everyone that would be so helpful. And last but not least, doing things outside your comfort zone is kind of like a muscle. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Or the more you do it, you don't have enough time to become a crab again and shell. I don't know. But it does seem to be getting a little bit easier.

So what are four things you can do to start live streaming today or tomorrow or if you ever want to look into it. Gear. You may hear an audio difference between all of the clips that I gave you. Gear is a big piece of it.

Just starting with a wired headphones with a mic, like I'm thinking the Apple headphones that used to come on with all the phones. Those are great. Just make sure they're wired. Bluetooth gives it issues. You can hear it in some of those. It's really annoying.

Figure out what you want to talk about. Do you want to ask questions? Do you want to deep dive on research like finding out why elephants can communicate? Elephants might be a big reason to really like Postgres, but also elephants are just really cool and databases are cool too.

Where do you want to stream? There's so many different options. So choose one. Figure out which one you want to choose. Which ones are pros and cons? And share your excitement. Your excitement will get others excited and engage and it will just make learning together so much easier. And thank you for joining Lessons Learned While Learning Live. Together, we will break the barriers of getting into tech. And click that QR code if you would like to connect or see any more of these resources. The deck will be sent out and I look forward to your questions.