Gabriela Rehoutova: Building communities that make tech talent visible

Pauline Bertry 0:13

Hi Gabriella, welcome to the den. So happy to have you.

Gabriela 0:18

Hello. Thanks for having me. Thanks for the invite.

Pauline Bertry 0:21

Thank you so much. I mean, I think that this is one of the conversations I'm gonna be the most excited about out of all of the ones that I led because I think the way we met was so interesting. And I really, really, really wanted to learn more about what like what you are doing and what your story is. So thank you so much for finding time. And I think it's gonna be just fair if I ask you to to tell a bit about your story, about how your journey started, what you're doing now and what are the aspirations for the future.

Gabriela 1:01

So my name is Gabriela, I'm based in Prague. And well, how it all started? I studied kind of international relations, but that wasn't something that I would probably w want to work in. But my husband he he was already in tech and he proposed when I was when I started looking for a full-time job, he proposed me entering ITE space. And I was like like me, IT you must be kidding. But then I realized I I don't need to start as any technical role, you know. Well, I didn't have any particular experience with that, so or any knowledge, so that wouldn't make any sense as well. But on the other hand, well, IT is a whole bunch of roles, it's not not just technical roles. So I first started as office coordinator at STRB, which is a Prague-based agency working, well, not not anymore, but back then working especially for US startups. So I started there and it was funny because there were guys coming to ask for some cables, you know, and I was totally lost. So every time I that's my funny story. Of me entering IT. So every time I was looking for some cable or or some cord, I went to the storage room and I was googling it, like, what how does this special one look like? Or I texted my my husband, like, is this the correct one or should I keep looking better? So yeah. and then I started like entering the the space of events and communities and even there in as a CRV, I started taking care of the internal community, then the external one, which includes the partners, the the potential hires, you know, the the community around the the company, the the the other communities that are somehow connected, etc. and then I felt that there is time to move on.

Pauline Bertry 3:16

Yeah.

Gabriela 3:17

so I moved to to Meuse where I spent the last six and a half years. I also managed to have two two little humans to

Pauline Bertry 3:28

Very cool.

Gabriela 3:29

to bring them to to this this world. So I to the same yeah

Pauline Bertry 3:31

To create your own community, right? To create your own community.

Gabriela 3:37

yeah yeah yeah exactly. So So it was a really long stage of life which ended some two, three weeks ago, where when the company had quite a big layoff and me and my team were part of that, which was sad, but on the other hand, well, that's life and I'm really excited what what's coming next because yeah. That that's the only way how you can basically approach approach that.

Pauline Bertry 4:09

Yeah. Very cool. But I mean as I told you when when we when we first met, to be honest, I know very few about community manager role. And I mean of course I know the word community and I know the word manager, but I don't have a lot of exposure to to how this works, like what the role is responsible for, what does a community around the company even even means, etc. And I think now with like all of the changes that are happening in the world with like AI in the workforce, et cetera, it is becoming increasingly more important to have those communities of people. So like could you tell me a bit more about your role and what you did

Gabriela 5:01

Yeah, yeah.

Pauline Bertry 5:02

as a community manager in the past?

Gabriela 5:05

So like in in this tech world as we operate it, we took care not only about the internal community, which was the R and D team, the data engineers, software engineers, All of these technical people and also the the prospects, the communities around that, the partners, the conference organizers and all people basically connected outside of the company to the team or to to that company. so a like community management can have multiple forms, I would say. Like the traditional community management is basically managing the social media with

Pauline Bertry 5:48

Uh-huh.

Gabriela 5:49

the online communities. So that that is w one part. But usually in tech companies there are also like two two ways of how the communities are handled and how they look like. At Muse we had well basically two community teams. One was like the customer facing one, which was dealing with all their like questions and concerns and stuff like that. And it it supported the customer support teams and and such things like that. and then it was our team, the RD community management team, taking care of all the teams I was

Pauline Bertry 6:36

No?

Gabriela 6:37

talking about before. and our role it was, and well basically in in similar teams are to make the work of the R and D teams visible to let people grow in the ways that they would be speaking at conferences, meetups. Well, this is also because of the visibility, right? Visibility

Pauline Bertry 7:01

Yeah.

Gabriela 7:02

of the c of the company as well as as the individuals. So it's a great opportunity for them to grow because well if you prepare conference talk You definitely need to, well, you don't need to, because some people already know, but you learn a lot during that

Pauline Bertry 7:23

Yeah.

Gabriela 7:24

whole process. So it's a great opportunity for everyone to do such thing. and we also let people write blog posts, we organize like mm some development trainings and workshops, like public speaking trainings, blog post writing. trainings and stuff like that. And like the past year I also led a LinkedIn empowerment project, which sounds pretty cool, but it's anything like special or something like that. It it's just a tr training with a bit of peer pressure. So there was a group

Pauline Bertry 8:07

Yeah.

Gabriela 8:07

of pe group of people, usually people who were quite skeptic towards LinkedIn, who didn't really like posting and all that all

Pauline Bertry 8:18

Yeah.

Gabriela 8:19

that stuff connected to to that to that platform. So I made some of them start posting and be more confident and polish their profiles, which is something you really appreciate having already polished and nice and and stuff when you like found yourself in a situation like we did some time ago.

Pauline Bertry 8:43

Yeah, definitely. And I mean I'm I'm also super curious, like I understand why this is beneficial for employees. So of course, like I mean you tell me if someone like I'm employed and someone coaches me how to do my LinkedIn, I mean I say thank you, I take it, right? that's a no brainer. But what is the benefit from this exercise for the company, like how does a company see the investment in into this and like what is the return on that investment for them? It doesn't need to be like monetary of course, but

Gabriela 9:21

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 9:22

what is in it for for a company?

Gabriela 9:25

Well I think l like it's it's pretty beneficial on multiple levels. One

Pauline Bertry 9:30

Mm-hmm.

Gabriela 9:31

way of looking at it is of course like employer branding, that's like the biggest basically biggest one. And yeah, we went to conferences r representing the company, so news being a remote first meant that we had people everywhere, all around the world, but we had like some hubs here in prague we had another one pretty big in Spain and well our team sitting here in Prague meant that we were visible just here basically. well obviously online and some people were went to to local meetups and stuff but last year we decided to go and represent the company at the conference to have really a boot there, talk to people Which is wonderful way of connecting with the local communities. So with that we did that. and yeah, for the company it's visibility, it's another way to reaching out to prospect candidates, of

Pauline Bertry 10:40

Hmm.

Gabriela 10:41

letting people know, Hey, we are here, we are this company, we offer this and that, you know, not only like the usual benefits of the companies,

Pauline Bertry 10:51

Yeah.

Gabriela 10:51

but also you you can talk actually talk to people about the tech stack, about how you work inside the teams and stuff like that, which is which is pretty nice. And we always wanted to be as much honest as as we could. So we always brought real people, real engineers to the place

Pauline Bertry 11:13

Yeah.

Gabriela 11:14

to to to the stance To talk p to people and bring their unique experience because well if I would be standing there alone, they would never get the full experience, you know, because well

Pauline Bertry 11:26

Yeah.

Gabriela 11:27

obviously I can share the tech stack, but I can't go really deep into all the tech details. So it's always good to have their people who can do that.

Pauline Bertry 11:40

Yeah.

Gabriela 11:41

And also for them, for most of them it was a great entering. space, let's say, to or or entering point to join the community activities because well you just talk about what you do at the company, how the company works, and it's something you know. You don't need to like present any findings or you know like cover any topic. You just talk about what you do and stuff you know better than anyone else.

Pauline Bertry 12:12

Yeah.

Gabriela 12:13

so it i it it was a nice starting point, I think, because the the people who were at the booth they usually s well it it meant they spent some time even with me. So when people from the conferences or career fairs were too busy they were not at the booth. it was quite nice team building and I had time to to start proposing, you know You can write a blog post on that topic. I know you you are an expert in that field, so that would be great if you could cover it. Or there is a meetup where you could cover like the similar topic and stuff like that. And yeah, of course, I could share how we can help them to to achieve their that because it wasn't just about like proposing these opportunities but also guiding people on on on the way to get their to put together the talk proposals, to polish their their link LinkedIn profiles, their bios and stuff like that. Also to select the right cover photo, you know, and things like

Pauline Bertry 13:27

Sorry?

Gabriela 13:28

that. Like the the cover photo because sometimes the event organizers wanted a nice profile picture so

Pauline Bertry 13:36

yeah.

Gabriela 13:36

even stuff like that because so sometimes you can see it at various events that there are profile pictures of of the people that are not really representative I would say.

Pauline Bertry 13:49

Yeah.

Gabriela 13:50

So we help even with such tiny details.

Pauline Bertry 13:54

That's that's so cool. And so I I mean I heard a few things. So I heard one element is around like the digital presence, so the blog,

Gabriela 14:05

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 14:05

the linked in, the posting. another one is about like expert presence offline with like the conferences, etc., with an objective of bringing similar people in. And what about like connectivity inside the organization or like helping people get closer and connect to each other, like how how did this play together as as part of the community management as well?

Gabriela 14:37

I I will maybe get back a little and some

Pauline Bertry 14:41

Uh-huh.

Gabriela 14:42

sum it up what the role is about because I I I

Pauline Bertry 14:44

Please.

Gabriela 14:45

I went right in the details and didn't cover it on the like general level. So I would say the role is a mix of marketing, of employer branding, it's a mixture of some learning and development, some yeah, like connecting people all I don't know, it's probably some HR whatever. it's super cool mix of all these things when no day is s the same as as the previous one and you

Pauline Bertry 15:19

Yeah.

Gabriela 15:19

you haven't things you wouldn't probably imagine managing that day. so this is like a general not description but coverage of what areas we usually were covering. and yeah, as as you mentioned, it's it's some online presents, it's all of that. but to connecting people, we played some role when the R and D team was smaller.

Pauline Bertry 15:52

Mm-hmm.

Gabriela 15:53

we also helped with onboarding so when someone joined the team, we took care of the onboarding on the RD side because like the general

Pauline Bertry 16:05

Yeah.

Gabriela 16:06

company onboarding was made by by the people team, which was kind of HR HR and all these roles, so we call that people team, and they prepared a great onboarding for everyone. We called it a new higher orientation and we brought everyone, no matter from where, here to Prague for three days. It was a kind of a boot camp basically

Pauline Bertry 16:36

Yeah.

Gabriela 16:37

to share all the knowledge, you know, because some some people were not really well I didn't say that but Muse is basically a property management system solution in a nutshell. so there were people coming who weren't really from the hospitality area, yeah. So

Pauline Bertry 16:59

Yeah, different industry. Mm-hmm.

Gabriela 17:01

so part of that boot camp was was also some hospitality training and like really they did they did all the trainings of how we communicate inside the company. what channels we we use, that's like what tools

Pauline Bertry 17:19

Yeah.

Gabriela 17:19

we use and stuff like that. So yeah, like the general onboarding can we did the specific on R and D side. But as the team grew, when when I left we had more than 500 in engineers. So it's quite a big team compared to

Pauline Bertry 17:37

Yeah.

Gabriela 17:38

what I started in. because when I started we had some let's say 50, 70 people in tech.

Pauline Bertry 17:45

Wow. Crazy.

Gabriela 17:48

plus there were some twenty probably thirty in product. so it it was completely different, you know. so yeah. and with the team growing we also handed over these connection activities to Well, on one side to do people in because i it was mostly led by them or oper operated, and on the other side it was part of the manager's role. So we

Pauline Bertry 18:24

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Gabriela 18:26

didn't like in the past years we didn't play play a massive role in that.

Pauline Bertry 18:32

Yeah.

Gabriela 18:32

We offered some help and some guidance if if asked for, but We weren't the ones leading in, basically.

Pauline Bertry 18:41

I love it. And I mean I I have a lot of follow up questions, but let me start with

Gabriela 18:46

You're

Pauline Bertry 18:46

the one that is the most interesting for me. What what's your favorite part of the role? Like what is one things that was keeping you up every morning and like yes, I'll go I'll go do it.

Gabriela 19:00

Well I would say I love being here like around the the tech people because Yeah, yeah,

Pauline Bertry 19:05

And I'm engineers.

Gabriela 19:07

yeah, because it's so much fun to to spend some time with them. And also I also have one at home so I I quite know

Pauline Bertry 19:14

Yes.

Gabriela 19:16

no the group. yeah, but I love connecting people, which is the biggest and best thing in all of that. So what we did and what I was really proud of and excited about was that there was a guy in our team, well not not our team, but in the RD team, who wrote a blog post. But usually we didn't really have many people reading reading the blog

Pauline Bertry 19:44

Yeah.

Gabriela 19:44

posts. but you know it wasn't the goal basically. It the goal wasn't to do have thousands of people reading it, but the goal was on one side to have people write that because they gained some skills alongs along the way. on the other hand they had something they could present themselves with. And yeah, it it was quite beneficial for the prospect candidates to see how we how we operate, how how we work, how we think about certain things. But there was this there's this story. So a guy wrote a blog post and a year later there was another one outside of the like outside of the company in the product I scene asking for a specific use case which I remembered that blog post covered. And

Pauline Bertry 20:44

Okay.

Gabriela 20:44

I was like, hmm, interesting. But I wasn't really sure if that that is exactly what he is asking for. So I was texting the guy, the author of the of the blog post, and he didn't really respond. I was like, okay, never mind. I will share it and let's see. Worst scenario could be that I will say sorry, this this

Pauline Bertry 21:07

Yeah.

Gabriela 21:07

isn't the match, and just don't don't care, let's delete this. Let's pretend it

Pauline Bertry 21:14

Yeah.

Gabriela 21:14

was just a mistake. But it wasn't. it was quite a match. So I I shared the the blog post under his LinkedIn post asking for for this use case. And they connected the the author of the blog post, shared the whole story, the whole experience of the team, how they used the the tool, it was basically some tool. So what was our experience, how it helped us, and it was really a great use case and great connection and that guy came back to me saying hey thanks hey it was really great that I could share my experience, like an extra experience, because well he covered that in the blog post he wrote a year ago, but

Pauline Bertry 22:01

Yeah.

Gabriela 22:01

then he he saw that that is something someone really appreciated him putting it together and

Pauline Bertry 22:09

Yeah.

Gabriela 22:10

it wasn't just a finish line, you know, of him writing it and publishing it. But there was something extra come coming back back to him. So yeah, i it brought in brought him something something more than just being the author of the blog post.

Pauline Bertry 22:28

Yeah. And I mean I find I want to go back to one element that that you were sharing because I mean I grew up with the engineers, right? So I studied computer science same as you, my husband is is a software engineer, so I'm pretty used I'm pretty used to being around as well. And I think often like it's such an interesting crowd of people that they They're generally the sweetest people you can you can find on earth. They're super like happy to share and to kind of coach others and to to contribute to the development. Like this is why like I think IT is the only industry where you have open source as a thing. Right. And what I'm still observing is that a lot of people in in this role or in this industry, they don't really have the skill set that that you were mentioning to to build this presence, to build this

Gabriela 23:28

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 23:30

like shared knowledge space and i'm wondering from from your experience like what are the like what are the three or five kind of tips that you have to help them develop those skills because i think That that's like such a fundamental thing for like all of the managers even to have in in their in their pocket whenever they need to coach their junior team members on

Gabriela 24:02

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 24:03

certain things. Like what are the what are your secret sources to help those guys get more present?

Gabriela 24:11

You know why secret sauce is secret?

Pauline Bertry 24:14

Mm.

Gabriela 24:16

Because it's secret. No, no, no. I I mean

Pauline Bertry 24:18

You should- I mean I told you I asked you which topics you didn't want to go into. You should have told me.

Gabriela 24:26

Yeah, it's I I think it's pretty hard to convince these people to

Pauline Bertry 24:32

Yeah.

Gabriela 24:32

to focus on such things, you know, because well, they really need to know the why.

Pauline Bertry 24:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's

Gabriela 24:43

So well being part of a company you can't just come to them saying well there could be because well you don't usually know anything but you well usually the biggest not trigger but big biggest force to to make them do stuff like that well besides them really want to grow is that you know there can be a point where you would need to have some personal brand

Pauline Bertry 25:23

Hm.

Gabriela 25:23

Which can help you well n not only in in job searching but also well but it's connected to to to that growing part. when they want to go to a conference as a speaker or to to a meetup. And I was always s like telling them, hey, if that would be you with a similar topic and another guy who would be at least a little posting or on these social media about his expertise, they would probably prefer

Pauline Bertry 25:55

Yeah.

Gabriela 25:56

like them over you because you

Pauline Bertry 25:58

Yeah.

Gabriela 25:59

are that shy guy they don't really know about. You know, when you have some kind of evidence, y it looks you you look more like an expert than someone who doesn't.

Pauline Bertry 26:13

Yeah.

Gabriela 26:14

So that is one and I think the most important thing to to remember the evidence and also it looks much better when you start building that evidence. Well at but it it doesn't really need to be an evidence for someone else. It can even be an evidence for you, you know.

Pauline Bertry 26:36

Yeah.

Gabriela 26:37

So build something like that from the moment or or at the moment things are happening. So If someone would be willing to start with public speaking or blog post writing, that is the time to start. Because well, we had so many guys who were like super active. They were mentoring, they were speaking at conferences, they were writing blog posts, and all they did was just reposting the blog post shared from the

Pauline Bertry 27:10

Yeah.

Gabriela 27:11

team account. And it was all and I was like Hey, you need to post about all of that. No no not just going like taking the the simplest way. Just go and like share it. I I know it can be really hard for Jim because I I know like for us it it's much easier to go and post to put together the

Pauline Bertry 27:33

Yeah.

Gabriela 27:35

the post but please dedicate some time to to share things like that. You don't really need to overthink and just share, hey I'm gonna speak at this and that event. It the talk will be about this and that. And it it's all it well well you will forever have it there. Well

Pauline Bertry 27:56

Yeah.

Gabriela 27:57

of course people can Google you but well why they would do or why they would need to do that extra step well it's another like blocker for them, you know, to

Pauline Bertry 28:09

Yeah.

Gabriela 28:09

get to know you. So it's much easier when well I'm still thinking or talking about that LinkedIn, but it can be a website or whatever. Just like put the things there that are like actual like current or whatever. So it was really nice when we ran the last round of the LinkedIn Empowerment project and there there was

Pauline Bertry 28:35

Okay.

Gabriela 28:36

there there was a guy and I I told him exactly this like you are super active But people don't know about it. Well, we do because we kind of like co organize the things and help you run that, help you prepare for it. But people from outside they have no idea how like how active you are. So I told him like, Hey, because I was also managing our social media accounts because we we

Pauline Bertry 29:01

Mm.

Gabriela 29:02

had a specific R and D team one on Instagram and LinkedIn

Pauline Bertry 29:08

Mm-hmm.

Gabriela 29:09

and I told them, Hey, I saw on Instagram yesterday that a year ago you were speaking at a meetup and you didn't post about it at all. So just go and celebrate that anniversary because it's your only chance basically to get back to it, you know, because

Pauline Bertry 29:26

Yeah,

Gabriela 29:26

people don't really care if you

Pauline Bertry 29:29

Remember.

Gabriela 29:30

if you today share about a meetup or conference you spoke about three years ago, like, hey, really?

Pauline Bertry 29:37

Hmm.

Gabriela 29:38

It's weird. So just start building the evidence on the go rather than well, you can go just go back and like i in the moment you need it, just like

Pauline Bertry 29:51

Yeah.

Gabriela 29:52

spam all the platforms with with all your I don't know, the five or ten year history, you know.

Pauline Bertry 29:58

So true. I have a question to you. so I generally work with companies who are like digital agencies or consulting boutiques. so they are like the knowledge knowledge service providers,

Gabriela 30:13

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 30:14

right? And in most cases, I mean there are different size of companies, the most cases the ones I interact with are like somewhere between twenty and 150, maybe 200 people. So different different sizes but still still a human sized team, right? And I think the the elements that that you are mentioning are very, very dear to them generally. Like it's how do I build a brand that is present, that is there, how do I bring the best people in? How do I encourage my people to publish and to contribute? The challenge is in most cases they're not that lucky to have someone like you

Gabriela 30:58

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 30:58

to run this. So generally it's like a founder, maybe one person in the people team, mostly focusing on like the payroll and and the admin part, sometimes on the recruiting. And then you have of course like the VPs, etc. But people who are like managing the the content. And I think the topic of like how do we keep the warm pipeline of candidates, how do we make the company present, how do we make our people visible, like all the things that that we discussed are very much like on top of their their agenda. I would say this is maybe like the second item on the agenda after how do you grow the client work. And Generally they don't really have resources to kind of go and think about what are the like I don't know five things they they need to do as as they start thinking about it. So for someone in in this kind of situation or for a company of this size and this type, where like what's what are the like three things, five things to start

Gabriela 32:14

I would say one thing would be that usually in on the team there is someone with already some community experience or how we call it. So someone who already did kind of mentoring talk at a meetup or stuff like that. And that is usually your person. so this

Pauline Bertry 32:33

Mm.

Gabriela 32:34

can be someone who will be cheer kind of a cheerleader for others and a role model and someone who would like basically be the one running it all just from

Pauline Bertry 32:46

Yeah.

Gabriela 32:46

behind because those are there are people passionate and really already in like people active in in the tech tech community you know so these are your people on the other hand I think Well, if you have a job post out, you should try to add something extra which is unique for your company and which shows people from outside what how you work, what is it all about, something that really people look at that and say, yes, this this is why I want to join the team, join the company, whatever. Because well, if I would be looking for a job as a dot dot net engineer, I would just look at the companies and say, Okay, these four companies, whatever, they are looking for a dot net engineer. What I'm looking looking for, okay, so I want to be on a smaller team. Is it something they are covering in those job chop posts or not?

Pauline Bertry 33:58

Mm-hmm.

Gabriela 33:58

So if there is a company covering it, it's something I'm like leaning towards you know

Pauline Bertry 34:04

Nie, towarts.

Gabriela 34:06

and also if they if there is some blog post edit for for example it it's not necessary to have a specific b like because we we had an R and D website like specifically for for blog posts for there was also a section for podcasts and stuff stuff like that. You don't really need it at l like at the beginning or even further. You just need something something extra that would show people how you operate s and yeah.

Pauline Bertry 34:42

I love it. That's

Gabriela 34:43

Something extra.

Pauline Bertry 34:45

great. And I mean there is last topic where I've I would love to go to go into together. I think like the very natural question is like what about AI? Because I think now like it is reshaping so many areas, including how people interact, how people are present, how people connect, etc. Like from from your experience because I mean I think you said you joined six years ago, meaning like

Gabriela 35:17

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 35:17

AI wasn't at all i like part part of the picture. Now it's like on every corner. So how did the transition go and where do you see it going in in the future?

Gabriela 35:30

AI was probably one of the reasons why our team was reduced so that's a bit tricky, but well, as you mentioned, well, e even a year and a half ago we had people who ask if they can put together a blog post using AI, and we are like, hmm, interesting question, let's think about it, you know. And today, I would say that like Well, most of the blog posts that we were publishing were put together using AI in a way. So it it really changed a lot. And also there are things you can use AI for. And some of them we also like refuse to use AI for, which were for

Pauline Bertry 36:15

Yeah.

Gabriela 36:16

which were for example like dry ground because well Every time someone from the team went for a conference or or a meetup, we really wanted them to have a dry run, to try

Pauline Bertry 36:26

Yeah.

Gabriela 36:27

try to talk before or at least to to say it out loud at least one once before going on the stage, which I think is really important. Well you can just sit in front of your notes, in in front of your presentation and think about what what you are s like telling, but on

Pauline Bertry 36:47

Yeah.

Gabriela 36:47

the other hand, it's nothing like really delivering the talk to people.

Pauline Bertry 36:54

Yeah.

Gabriela 36:54

And I know there are AI tools that would give you really particular feedback, but on the other hand it's different to talking to real people and no matter if that is online or offline

Pauline Bertry 37:10

Yeah.

Gabriela 37:10

or whatever, but talking to people, they give you give you the human feedback, you know, because

Pauline Bertry 37:17

Yeah.

Gabriela 37:18

well They can tell you, hey, like this well, this doesn't make sense. Well that is what also AI can tell

Pauline Bertry 37:26

Yeah.

Gabriela 37:27

you. But like that feeling from the talk, I think it's something you only Can be described from from a human.

Pauline Bertry 37:37

Yeah.

Gabriela 37:37

So that was one of the things I think like AI can't really replace human thing.

Pauline Bertry 37:45

Yeah.

Gabriela 37:46

And I'm really curious, maybe I would be proven wrong in some time, probably yes, but but I think these human connections are still really important, and also in the age of AI, which we are entering pretty like massively and pretty fast. I think the human touch and human connection is really important. Well and even for me, I know that talking to all our computers, platforms, etc., it's great. And it helps us a lot to like simplify or all the processes and the boring tasks we need to do. But on the other hand, like I still need people in my life.

Pauline Bertry 38:32

Yeah.

Gabriela 38:33

so well and even when you get a f feedback, just a feedback like created by AI, it's different to what people usually tell you because

Pauline Bertry 38:47

Yeah.

Gabriela 38:48

it doesn't really include the emotions, you know, and and the face expression and all that again extend. Or all that extra feelings you may absorb. So

Pauline Bertry 39:02

Yeah. But there on on this one specifically, there is actually a pretty interesting article by Anthropic. So they I mean I don't remember the details,

Gabriela 39:13

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 39:14

but they were studying the the responses people had with AI and they found that like AI had been experiencing a lot of sophocacy towards his owner, meaning that like let's say I'm describing the situ like let's say we had a fight,

Gabriela 39:41

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 39:42

and I'm describing the situation to my ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, like explaining the situation, even if I'm describing it in an like unbiased way, which is

Gabriela 39:54

Yeah, of course.

Pauline Bertry 39:56

untrue. And you are describing the same situation to a different AI, which is your AI. And in my case, he will be more torn towards like defending my position. In your case, he will be more turned to defend your position. And I mean they they claim they they fixed it, so of course we we cannot know. But I think I mean I think having AI as a like first layer. kind of feedback is of course helpful because th that that's an average human knowledge. So if if you are like below average, having this average knowledge give you some input and some feedback is extremely helpful. But then if you want to go beyond average, you need to have much more than what it what it can give you.

Gabriela 40:49

Yeah, absolutely. And also for for the Dryans, we also tried to always bring more people to the table. so we asked, well, there was always someone from our team, there were also a peers of the speaker, you know, and we

Pauline Bertry 41:06

Yeah.

Gabriela 41:06

also tried to bring someone who wasn't really involved in the specific like area or or

Pauline Bertry 41:14

Topek.

Gabriela 41:14

topic so they have like the really distant view point of view

Pauline Bertry 41:20

Yeah.

Gabriela 41:21

so yeah I well of course as you said of course AI can give you some feedback and I also think that we are already quite used to have some like ha to have AI check

Pauline Bertry 41:38

Yeah.

Gabriela 41:38

on the presentations and give us some like you know feedback before we go out with that to bring it

Pauline Bertry 41:46

Yeah.

Gabriela 41:46

to to others just to to have a proof it's all fine and all correct but still like the people can tell you like hey I know you put it there in this way but people can get this and that feeling from the there or I don't think is this this is like precise or this is the way how it will look like eventually

Pauline Bertry 42:14

Yeah.

Gabriela 42:15

when you deliver the talk. So yeah. But we'll see how the future will be. I mean

Pauline Bertry 42:20

Of course, of course. I I mean I'm I'm also very very excited about that. And I mean I think last question. So for someone who is looking to like as an individual or as a company or as a like manager, etc., to create this like community experience for people around them. what is one thing or one topic or one kind of advice you would give them, something they could try in the next 72 hours?

Gabriela 42:58

I would just say just try because well like I what what I love about the the tech people and the tech communities is that they always strive like for better and for more.

Pauline Bertry 43:12

Yeah.

Gabriela 43:13

So well it's also because not only that they would do that by themselves, but also you know the the whole environment forces you to do that because well the technologies evolve and you can't

Pauline Bertry 43:28

Yeah.

Gabriela 43:29

just stand still basically. So this is also the reason why tech people are more into things like that, more more visiting the meetups, the conferences, reading all the forums and g get getting

Pauline Bertry 43:47

Yeah.

Gabriela 43:48

all the experiences from other people because the experience of someone who went through that is something really beneficial for you. And yeah, and even when i it's it's great to go out there and listen to the same problems which sounds ridiculous but it's it's pretty good to hear that the grass is not really greener elsewhere,

Pauline Bertry 44:18

Yeah.

Gabriela 44:19

you know, and that we all have the similar issues in our companies. And in our lives, so well it's not n no not just an advice to to take people but to everyone. If you wanna try, if that is something you would want to to try, just go and try. Try it today, tomorrow,

Pauline Bertry 44:40

No.

Gabriela 44:40

just look for a meetup, just for look for an event. And this is also how we met, right? Because

Pauline Bertry 44:47

Yeah.

Gabriela 44:50

we went for a meetup and I was really not expecting getting so so much of it and I was really I I just went there open minded and curious what what's out there. Well what's the worst thing then that can happen? You just leave right. Well

Pauline Bertry 45:08

Yeah, yeah.

Gabriela 45:10

probably not when you are a speaker standing on the stage.

Pauline Bertry 45:14

Yeah, I mean worst case scenario you ja you

Gabriela 45:14

So I I would just think it

Pauline Bertry 45:16

you get good food

Gabriela 45:19

Yeah, but I I yeah, I I just squeeze it to to events, but well even with posting on LinkedIn, even with

Pauline Bertry 45:27

Yeah.

Gabriela 45:28

blog post writing, just try it. Well you can always delete it. well I read a LinkedIn post that it's not something people really recommend these days, that it can bring like really br break your algorithm, but well, who cares? well for example I'm not I'm no influencer, so I don't really mind ruining my algorithms.

Pauline Bertry 45:51

Yeah.

Gabriela 45:53

So it can can't make much damage. but I would say just just just try. Like what's the worst thing that can happen? Like maybe some someone

Pauline Bertry 46:05

Agree.

Gabriela 46:06

won't like it. There is always someone who won't like it, and probably and usually those people who are like the loudest haters are the ones that never try.

Pauline Bertry 46:17

Yeah.

Gabriela 46:17

And like

Pauline Bertry 46:18

That's that's also something I observe. I agree very much. All right. Look, thank you so much for for sharing your stories. I would love to see more of the communities that that you are building getting bigger and nicer. and I mean I I I guess I wish you very nice Tuesday, spend time with the two humans that you brought into your community. And see you later.

Gabriela 46:47

Thank you very much for having me. Hopefully you learned something new today. You will walk away with with

Pauline Bertry 46:51

I did. Thank you so much.

Gabriela 46:54

some some knowledge or at least some ideas. And yeah.

Pauline Bertry 46:57

And community community like start of the new community. All right. Thank you.

Gabriela 47:03

yeah. yeah. Thank you very much and yeah. See you around.

Pauline Bertry 47:07

See you. Bye bye.