about the people,
the human beings behind the commits.
I'm here today with Kim Maeda.
She is a Senior Director of Developer
Relations at FusionAuth.
Welcome to the show and tell us a
little bit about yourself.
Hey, Chris.
Thanks.
And thanks for that introduction.
I guess, where to start?
Like you said,
I've actually been working in identity for
a little while.
I've also worked at AuthZero and Okta,
as well as on DevRel at various other
startup companies.
in between.
And I kind of had always found myself
gravitating back to identity.
So I think recently I finally made the
decision of this is my career.
I will probably be working in identity for
the remainder of my career after kind of
yo-yoing back and forth a bunch from it.
What is it for you about identity
management authentication type stuff that
is interesting?
I think for me,
and probably for a lot of developers,
that's the thing that we want to think
about the least.
Yeah.
Well,
I like being the person who thinks about
it so that other people don't have to.
There are plenty of things like that for
me, like DevOps.
I know enough DevOps to be dangerous
because I had to learn it in order
to operate my DigitalOcean VPS.
But it's just really not my thing.
I'm not good at it.
I don't retain the information.
I had found that with identity and access
management,
I do actually retain the information.
I like being a part of critical
infrastructure.
Because everybody needs it.
It's one of those things that no matter
what language you use,
no matter what stack you're using,
at some point you're going to come across
a need for auth in some way.
And so, you know,
some of the other jobs that I've had
were very specific to, like,
a certain language or a certain framework.
And, you know, it was...
It was a lot of like,
people love this thing.
They want to showcase what they've done
with it.
And interestingly,
like when I actually started my DevRel
career in auth,
so I hadn't kind of experienced things
out,
communities outside of that community
before.
And then when I did, I, you know,
initially I had been like, oh, it'll be,
you know,
it'll be awesome because there's,
you know,
hundreds of thousands of people are really
excited about this thing.
They want to showcase their knowledge.
And what I found was I just didn't
find as much like critical meaning in it
for me.
Like it was great to help people use
things they already loved and already
cared about,
but that criticality was gone.
The sort of idea of if you get
this wrong,
you will be in big trouble like you
could potentially have a huge disaster on
your hands if you get it wrong and
i think that kind of pressure is something
that i really enjoy being in a space
that has that around it because i do
not think that everybody should become an
off expert i don't absolutely don't think
so um i think that because i don't
want to be
Most people don't want to be.
But that's, you know,
that's why tools exist.
But also there's, you know,
certain things that you should probably
understand in order to be competent.
And there's a significant difference
between like knowing everything and
knowing enough that you're confident that
what you've done is secure and that you've
done things right.
And I like kind of trying to find
that balance of confidence where people
can be sure that they can have faith
in what they've done so that they can
move on and not have to think about
it anymore versus, like,
here's the Oath spec.
Read it from beginning to end.
Right.
Yeah.
Taking a little bit of a step back,
I think,
I want to dig into your history a
little bit more, but, like, just from,
like, a big picture, like,
from the perspective of somebody who maybe
isn't a developer who like is listening to
this or who you might just encounter,
you know,
wherever at a conference or even just in
person like in the line of the coffee
shop,
like when you talk about what you do
or what
like,
the practice around what you do and talk
about in your role in developer relations,
like, how would you break it down to,
like,
the explain it to me like I'm five
sort of prompt, you know?
Like, what is the high-level, like,
definition of what it is that you are
trying to get people to do?
I guess I think there we unpack that
a little because I think there were a
couple of questions in there.
Probably I have I often do that is
just like slide five or six more questions
into one question.
Yeah.
Okay, so maybe if we back up,
I think like the initial question was kind
of an explain like I'm five.
Yeah.
What do I tell people my job is?
Yeah.
So for people who don't like relatives and
family, friends and people like that,
I basically say, you know,
when you get online and you need to
log in to a website or something like
that's the service that my company
provides.
Yeah, that's fair.
And then I usually get a bunch of
questions about, like,
why does everybody have MFA?
Like, why do I need this thing?
But that usually leads to further
interesting conversations because,
you know, then you can explain, like,
why there are, you know,
these additional security precautions for,
like, your bank versus, you know,
I don't know, like,
making a reservation at a restaurant or
something like that.
Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's basically what I tell it.
And then as far as like,
I usually don't go as far as like
defining authentication and authorization.
Most people, like you said,
like most people aren't really interested
in that level.
But, you know, if I do,
then I basically, you know,
would say like,
authentication is proving who you are,
who you say you are.
And then authentication is what can you
actually access?
Yeah.
What can you access and do?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And you're at FusionAuth,
and you were formerly at AuthZero and
Okta, and those are, you know,
from where I stand in the tech world,
Okta and AuthZero are kind of pretty big
players in this space.
What was interesting to you about
FusionAuth specifically?
so i actually joined auth zero when they
weren't a huge player in the space um
i think i was like employee number or
something and i got to experience kind of
that startup rocket ship phase and that
was really exciting to me it was it
was my first time working at a startup
um and
it was,
we were moving fast and we were breaking
things and we were trying to break into
like the IM industry to become what they
have become now, you know, which is, I,
I think it's awesome that they've
succeeded to that degree because I
remember when nobody knew who we were.
Right.
while working there.
And I think that the thing that really
excited me about FusionAuth,
there's a couple of things,
but one being the start,
I like working at startups and I like
working at startups that are at roughly
this stage.
Because everybody makes a huge impact.
And that was kind of one of the
things that going to bigger companies and
then working at corporations,
I felt like I could probably make an
impact,
but it was going to take me like
two or three years to do it.
and at a startup you can really make
and show that impact quite early and
everybody can do it like anybody from IC
all the way up to you know like
VP can have that impact and show it
and everybody can recognize it and see and
you can see what you've done for a
company and I think that kind of
More instant gratification is something
that I really like about working at
smaller companies.
And then like why FusionAuth,
especially after working for other IDaaS
companies.
One of the first questions that I asked
when I was approached about the role was
what makes FusionAuth different?
Because I think after Auth Zero got
acquired for six billion dollars,
there were a lot of IDaaS companies that
popped up.
And there's way more of them now than
there were when I was at Auth Zero,
by far.
And so they all kind of do the
same thing.
And so my first question is,
why FusionAuth?
Why are we different?
And really,
it comes down to we're downloadable.
And so you can run the FusionAuth
authorization server as a part of your
core infrastructure.
And the advantages you get from this,
as far as security and the ability to
own everything and to end,
are often things that you would...
When people care deeply about that,
if FusionAuth didn't exist,
they'd usually be reaching for open source
solutions,
like KeyCoke and that type of thing.
And I thought it was really interesting
and differentiated that we do on-prem for
free.
If you want to have an on-prem
conversation with a lot of these SaaS
companies, that's, you know,
locked behind a big sales call and it
will cost a lot of money.
Right.
But yeah,
so we also have like a cloud offering,
but it's single tenant.
So the customers who are on the cloud
don't share infrastructure with the other
customers.
So it's dedicated instances,
which I think is also cool.
But for myself,
I'll probably always just download Fusion
whenever I need to off like into the
future.
Because it was one of those things where
I didn't realize how much I liked that,
like owning it,
until I actually had it running on my
machine.
And I could put in a config file
and spin up a new environment really
quickly.
I could make changes to the environments
and do all of this transferring of
configuration and things like that.
That...
I just wouldn't have been able to do
with a SaaS product.
And that level of ownership,
there is a movement out there in general,
the local first stuff where people are
really focusing on what can they own and
run.
And I hadn't really been part of that
community.
It wasn't necessarily something that I
thought too hard about.
Most of the companies I worked for were
SaaS companies.
So I didn't, I think,
realize how much I would like it once
I could actually own and control this
thing that also is being governed by a
body of people who know auth really well
and will make sure that nothing bad is
happening.
Whereas when you implement
Homegrown,
you're kind of at the mercy of your
own knowledge.
So you could have,
it was like you could have the local
thing, have your cake and eat it too,
which I definitely appreciated and
actually hadn't used an auth solution that
did that before.
Yeah,
I was actually just thinking about how for
any SaaS product that you're integrating
into your site or whatever,
if it's hosted somewhere,
then if you're working locally,
you have to figure out some way of
either authorizing that local connection.
It'd be a huge benefit just for local
development and local testing.
to be able to stand it up on
your own thing.
Or like in CI even.
Just like multiple environments,
like anything like that.
And I think the configuration thing is
something that maybe at Fusion Earth we
don't talk about enough.
You can have this configuration file
called a kickstart and it's basically a
JSON file that makes a bunch of calls
to the API.
when you run it.
So you can put in like a custom
theme.
You can have it create specific users.
You can have it create applications with a
specific ID.
Basically anything the API can do,
you can put into the kickstart and it
will do it for you automatically.
Like as soon as you spin up,
as soon as you like run Docker compose.
And so you can duplicate environments
extremely easily that way.
And, you know, change things that, that,
make an environmental change that then you
can just give everybody that Kickstart
file and a bunch of people can have
the same config in a couple of seconds.
And that was something that,
especially for me in DevRel,
creating demos and that type of thing,
instead of having this huge long setup
where first you go into apps and then
you have to copy and paste this client
ID or whatever,
I can just set all of that up
for you and you can be productive right
away.
which I love,
but it was also funny because when I
first started at Fusion,
not the very first time I used it
and it ran a kickstart and I was
like, Oh my God,
a bunch of things just happened magically.
Like,
how do I have all this stuff set
up?
Like, I didn't know where it came from.
Um,
I think just because we don't talk about
the kickstart very much.
Um,
But having done a bunch of things with
FusionAuth now,
it's one of the highlights for me of
the setup process is having the ability to
do that.
You give full access to the API.
Developers can access anything in the API.
And that's part of the role that we
play in DevRel is when a magic thing
happens, demystifying the magic part.
Like, yeah, it is magic.
But also,
let me walk you through all of those
things that just happened that made the
magic that you're seeing so that you don't
have to worry about these things.
yeah yeah and i think that's that's kind
of like the philosophy around how i think
about teaching people stuff about auth um
i know for me like probably the first
example of something that i was like this
is a black box and i really don't
understand it was jason webb tokens like
how they're signed and and that part was
like every article that i ever read was
just like
And then you sign it and magic.
And I was like, but what's happening?
What does that mean?
What does those words mean?
Yeah,
but it was interesting because it's not
that I wanted to do it myself.
I didn't want to have to write the
code that would actually execute all of
that.
I'm totally fine using a library.
But it was just this mystery thing that
was a secret thing.
And I like exposing those secrets,
not so that people can go do it
themselves,
but so they understand how things work.
And then they can have that confidence,
again,
like that it's being done right and that
they understand what's been done,
even if they weren't the ones to actually
like write the code, stuff like that.
Yeah.
What was your, um, tell me about your,
your journey into tech broadly and then
transitioning like into like developer
relations as a focus.
I feel like the,
the story of how we got,
we get into dev rel is always sort
of like.
Often a meandering sort of journey.
A lot of people just fall into it.
Or they're doing DevRel for a long time
and their role doesn't say developer
relations.
Exactly.
They recognize that's what they've been
doing forever.
And that actually wasn't the case for me.
So I had...
actually gotten my degree in animal
behavior neurobiology that is totally
lends itself to developer relations yeah
as a child i i was like i'm
gonna be a doctor and then i was
like i'm gonna be a scientist and then
i went to college for science and i
really enjoyed it like i loved it um
but then as i was you know kind
of reaching the end of my degree
it was abundantly apparent to me that if
I wanted to continue to build a career
in the things that I was interested in,
most likely it would mean that I would
need to get a doctorate and I would
also need to teach.
So I would need to teach college while
in the summer I got grants and did
research.
And the irony is at the time I
was like, well,
I probably don't want to teach.
I don't want to teach people.
So, you know, looking back on it now,
I probably would have loved it.
Maybe I would have become a college
professor instead.
But at the time I was like, oh,
well, maybe,
maybe that's not like the thing that I
want to spend the next eight years doing.
And so I had taught myself how to
code as many people did.
I think when I was in like fifth
grade,
I went to summer science camp and they
had like
an hour or something that they spent
teaching us HTML.
And this was even like CSS was not
a thing yet.
Yeah, right.
And I had then, you know,
gone on to make five hundred GeoCities
sites on every little thing that I was
interested in.
Had the like a little under construction
gif and the guest book and the page
counter.
Yeah.
So basically anything that interested me,
I just made a GeoCities site about it.
And that whole time, as a kid,
it never somehow occurred to me that that
could be a career.
I was just like,
this is a thing I do for fun,
and I'm going to be a scientist.
So then that perpetuated, though,
all the way kind of through college
because I had decided, okay,
maybe I don't want to be a professor,
so I'm going to get a second degree
in human bio and dietetics.
Um,
because it overlaps with a lot of the
science that I already had.
And while I was doing that degree,
which was going to take a much shorter
time because I had a lot of prereqs
done, but while I was doing that,
I got a job at the university doing,
uh,
front-end development and design and IA
and I was doing that like to you
know pay the bills and it was at
that time I still didn't see it as
a viable career like I had a job
doing it and I was still like and
I'm gonna be you know a dietitian now
yeah um
And I guess it took a while of
me suddenly realizing I wasn't getting
paid enough for my work to actually go
and start looking at like other real jobs
doing that.
And I had basically a full-time job before
I graduated and it was a full-time job
at a digital agency, not in science.
And I was, you know,
leaving a little bit early to finish my
last classes for this other degree.
And I think at that point,
I shifted my focus for the degree because
I was so deep into getting a second
degree,
I wanted to still walk away with one.
So I switched to digital media arts and
communications.
and knew everything that they were
teaching us because, you know,
they were teaching beginning code stuff.
So it was easy.
But that phase, I think,
was when I realized, oh, okay, like,
this is going to be my career.
It's not anything like what I thought it
was going to be, you know,
when I was a kid or even when
I entered college.
Yeah.
So then I worked at digital agencies for
a while.
I did more front end development and then
eventually did engineering management and
architecture and that type of thing.
And then I had a baby.
And I,
so I was gone for like three months
and I came back and I just remember
like the designer met me outside the door,
like in the parking lot when I was
coming back and he was like,
wait until you see this.
So I got in and immediately basically
started working a hundred hour work weeks.
Yeah.
I was getting home at, like,
two in the morning.
It was absolutely ridiculous.
So I was missing milestones, like,
for my kid.
And I, you know, had said, okay,
I can't sustain this.
And so I applied for jobs and...
I had met some people at a conference
that I had just attended for work to
learn stuff.
And they said, oh,
we work at Auth Zero.
You should apply,
especially if you like to write and make
tutorials and stuff.
And I was like, oh, yeah,
that sounds fun.
So I joined Auth Zero on the content
team.
Basically,
we were developers who could write.
So everybody was an engineer.
Everybody knew how to code.
And...
got to write about pretty much anything
that I found interesting as long as I
could tie it in some way back to
off.
And even in those, in those early days,
like we even didn't always write about off
at all.
Like there are old articles on that blog
that don't have anything to do with off.
Um,
Because I later went to a conference and
somebody was like, where do you work?
And I was like, Astero.
And they were like, oh,
I love that blog.
They didn't even know we were an auth
company.
They just liked the blog.
So eventually, I got to...
a few leadership roles and managing
additional teams and had the opportunity
to speak at a conference because we had
an advocate who was on his way out,
but he had already made this commitment.
He didn't actually work at the company
anymore at the time of the conference.
He said,
do you want to speak with me?
Because you do actually still work there.
And I thought it sounded terrifying.
And thought I should definitely do it
because it sounds terrifying and it seems
like something I should do.
And it was terrifying.
But I found out that I really,
really enjoyed it.
So I started applying to speak at more
conferences.
I started traveling and speaking and
eventually ended up leading Global DevRel
at AuthZero.
having come from doing a ton of DevRel
while I was not on the DevRel team.
But yeah, ever since then,
I have only had DevRel roles after that.
I mean,
developers who write is kind of like one
of the,
or two of the qualifications like that I
would list under the role of like
developer relations, anything, you know,
like it's such a small Venn diagram
because most developers are super,
just very technical, uh, very like,
like
sort of focused on their area of interest,
but not necessarily able to make the words
good.
And it often takes somebody like,
me like i i wanted to be a
writer or something creative right like
when i was a kid i wanted to
be a writer or a rock star one
of those two things um and uh and
not a rock star in the tech bro
sense yeah no i like a literal i
said that out loud i'm like wait a
second i don't want to be that kind
of rock star um
but uh but yeah so i i you
know did a lot of writing and so
and as a developer i did a lot
of writing too but it was never part
of my job until you know i took
the role and i was like yeah i'm
doing this because i've been doing it but
also because i'm good at it and it's
fun and it gets to flex the muscles
the creative muscles that i don't get to
do in like an engineering role
Yeah, yeah, totally.
And that's what like,
I found it really refreshing to coming off
of doing all like production production
work for external clients, who, you know,
were various levels of difficult to work
with.
Yeah.
I'm not even sure there was anybody who
was like really easy to work with.
I think it was all just levels of
difficult, but you know,
I loved it because the work changed all
the time.
Right.
And so if you had one hellish project,
like hopefully in a year,
you wouldn't be on that project anymore.
Yeah.
But I really kind of was still able
to sort of get that doing the writing
because we could basically write about
whatever we wanted,
whatever we were interested in.
So anything that I wanted to learn,
I was just like, okay,
I'm going to write an article about this,
a tutorial on how to integrate auth with
X new thing that came out because I
want to learn that thing.
Right.
So I got farther and farther away from
production code.
I obviously haven't done client work since
then.
And once in a while,
I kind of miss getting some wireframes and
getting a design and slicing it up and
doing all the things.
I still get to write a ton of
code in these types of roles.
And that is another thing that I really
value about being in DevRel is I still
get to write code,
but I also get to teach people and
do talks and things like that.
And things like this.
Yeah.
my brain completely stopped functioning
for a second.
There is a thing that I was going
to ask.
Oh, my God.
Tell me about making small things.
Yeah, so I make miniatures as a hobby.
It was a pandemic hobby.
Ever since I was really little,
I had the dollhouse that my grandparents
made me, like handmade.
And I always loved making little things
for the dollhouse.
Like I'd make the little Play-Doh hot dog
in a bottle cap or something.
And so I always was interested in,
in little things.
And during the pandemic,
I think I was just like looking at
stuff on Instagram and stuff.
And I was like, Oh,
people make this amazing, super realistic,
tiny food.
And it was so real and it's so
cool.
And then I watched a couple of tutorials
and I was like, Oh my,
they're using polymer clay.
Anybody can buy polymer clay.
Like it's not a special magical thing that
you, you know,
need to be super experienced in to even
get your hands on.
Um,
and so I started making miniature polymer
clay food and got quite into it and
then started making other things as well.
Um,
I've made like a Catan board and stuff
like that.
Um,
and had gotten kind of i oh through
the course of like the tiny things uh
covid thing i started getting into
mechanical keyboards and uh
Artisan keycaps.
So I started experimenting with making
artisan keycaps with polymer clay.
And there's a lot of kind of thought
and design that has to go into that
because you need to design them in a
way they're not going to break.
And then from there,
I actually started getting into resin
casting.
So now I resin cast artisan keycaps as
well as make the tiny food and game
boards.
Oh,
I remember the thing I was going to
say.
And it sort of tangentially relates,
because we were talking about speaking,
and you were talking about being
terrified.
And developer relations,
from my experience, but also from, like,
I've been speaking at events for long
before I was a developer advocate.
But it involves a lot of speaking or
being in front of people or whatever.
I,
in high school and into college a little
bit, was really into theater and film,
and so I was all about being in
front of people,
which is another thing that most engineers
are very much...
very introverted,
would much rather just sit in a room
that is dark and stare at their computer
and just type code without interacting
with another human being for most of the
day.
Whereas I definitely enjoy being around
people or being in spaces where I can
talk to people and have conversations and
things.
And so that makes the speaking thing
slightly less of a nightmarish,
horrifying thing for me because it's just
a form of being on stage thing.
So all that to say,
where on the sort of introversion,
extroversion spectrum do you see yourself?
Because I have a suspicion.
I'm an outgoing introvert.
Okay.
So I love to speak.
I love to interact with people.
I love to be out and about and
doing these things.
And then I need a little bit of
time by myself in order to recover.
Yeah.
So I don't, you know, the classic,
I think,
definition of an extrovert is you get
energy by doing those things.
Yeah.
And then introversion is when you get
energy by being by yourself.
Mm-hmm.
And I think people often confuse
introversion and shyness because you can
totally be an extremely outgoing
introvert.
It's just that the way you recover from...
It drains your energy to do that instead
of giving you more energy.
So that's definitely where I'd classify
myself.
But as a child,
I think the words painfully shy would
probably be accurate.
Like...
like, painfully shy, like,
hide behind my parents, like,
in public when somebody talked to me type
of shy.
So, you know,
it surprised even me that this was
something that I was actually really
interested in.
Yeah.
Like, as an adult.
But I think speaking,
if you are introverted,
speaking at conferences is actually an
awesome way to go and, like,
have give people a reason to talk to
you yeah like it's i've been to
conferences alone it kind of it's hard
especially if you're an introvert yeah to
find people to talk to and stuff like
that but if you apply to speak at
an event and you get up and speak
people will come and find you and talk
to you and i think that that doing
a lot more of that also helped me
to be less shy um so yeah
Yeah, it's definitely a thing.
I remember having a conversation with my
father-in-law who would have identified
himself as an introvert,
but also he was a pastor.
He was very much in front of people
a lot of the time.
it was just something that he like he
learned to adapt and to be that role
even while it's not necessarily like the
natural role but like because of social
circumstance because he's male because of
all sorts of all sorts of other reasons
um and and where he was in this
sort of organizations and things that he
did uh he just sort of gravitated to
that thing and just like learned how to
kind of learned the techniques he needed
to kind of muscle through in a way
I definitely find when I go to events
and I'm around people all day long,
I definitely need that time to recharge.
It's like super, it's like exhausting.
But I also,
I just always find it interesting because
like,
Part of the role of developer relations is
the relations part.
It's the interacting with other humans.
And so it's built in.
But I don't think that that necessarily
means that we're all super extroverted.
We are also, many of us,
still coders at heart.
I wouldn't even say that probably more
than half of the people that I know
who are in Deverell are introverts.
Because it's basically a discipline that
puts you in a position where you will
be pulled out of your shell by external
factors and you don't have to force
yourself out of it on your own.
And I think that that really has...
Obviously,
I've gotten more comfortable with all of
this stuff, but...
I had kind of an interesting revelation.
I went to Cedar Point.
I don't know if you're familiar with Cedar
Point.
It's a massive roller coaster park in the
Midwest.
I love roller coasters,
and I was riding the biggest ones,
and I realized I don't get nervous about
going on roller coasters anymore.
Like, at all.
And, like, there's no physical reaction.
I'm just like, hey.
But I... And I realized, like, how much...
You know, people are adrenaline junkies.
And you can get that adrenaline the, like,
couple of moments before you walk on stage
in front of, like, a huge crowd.
And I had this kind of revelation about
the roller coaster thing is, like, oh,
like...
That was part of why I like roller
coasters is like feeling that feeling
before you get on.
And I think that's why I like those
few moments before like peak scary is
like, you know,
the moments that you're walking up to the
stage.
Yeah.
And and I was like.
I haven't spoken in a while because of
the pandemic,
at least not like out in an actual
physical event.
And I'm about to do a couple of
events and I was kind of like,
I hope I get nervous,
which is kind of funny, but yeah.
Yeah, that's awesome.
That's a really interesting insight.
Like I wouldn't even have thought about
that connection, but like, yeah,
that like the minute that the
rollercoaster doesn't make you nervous,
then it becomes less enjoyable.
Yeah,
because like a lot of it is kind
of the hype,
like building yourself up to do this
thing.
Well, and a really good example,
like I remember the first,
I think the first roller coaster that I
had ever been on was probably Space
Mountain at Disneyland.
And this was probably...
maybe the eighties or early nineties.
So it was,
they've done a couple like renovations of
it since then.
And it's much less dark and much less
scary.
But at the time it was like,
you go in and it's pitch black and
there's maybe a couple just like tiny
little lights that are like stars that are
going around.
And there's like a loud whooshing like
wind noise and you can't see anything.
And I remember like, and so the sound,
the sound of people screaming and not
being able to see anything and it was
i remember being terrified but i was like
muscling through it and so i i did
like i tell my partner this and she's
like you're weird um because like i closed
my eyes and that made it better somehow
i'm not entirely sure how because you
couldn't see anything anyway but it made
it better for me and then that's how
i got through that that
initial sort of terror of like roller
coasters as i would just close my eyes
but like now but like i remember that
like it was so um there's so much
of of that it wasn't even like it
wasn't even the ride itself like the ride
is almost fine it was like all of
the lead up it's like the the ramp
up the hill is like hearing the sounds
and hearing all of the other stuff and
the sound of the coaster itself and like
everything that was the scary part like
once you get going it's like it's thirty
seconds of your life like it doesn't even
it's nothing yeah
So I guess that click,
click up the hill is what the walking
up to the stage is like.
The anticipation.
Yeah.
And I hadn't realized just how big of
a component that was in my enjoyment of
roller coasters until I went and didn't
feel it anymore.
And I was like,
this is actually really disappointing.
What am I going to...
I'm going to have to do...
more crazy like something because i this
is like not i'm not getting nervous um
skydiving yeah i mean like we've talked
about it a bunch of times actually like
me and my husband um so
Yeah, I've been taking aerial classes,
aerial arts classes.
And so for me,
heights is a thing for me.
But now I can climb up a silk
or whatever and be up at the top
and not feel super scared.
But one of my instructors recently went
skydiving and took lots of pictures.
And I'm just looking at the pictures like,
nope, nope, absolutely not.
Nope, I can see.
Fun for you.
Yeah, yeah.
Well,
that's kind of like where I was lukewarm
on it for a while just because I
was like,
I just don't need to do that.
But now that the roller coaster thing is
not exciting, I was like, maybe that now.
What events are you speaking at?
You mentioned that you have a couple
speaking gigs.
Yeah,
so I'll be speaking at JSConf and ng-conf.
And they're co located.
So they're both in the same place in
mid October.
So just like a couple of weeks.
Yeah, yeah.
Coming right up.
And then where where can people find you
on the internet and find your your tiny
things?
My tiny things are on my,
so my like art name or whatever is
M-I-H-I.
It's mihi-mini.studio.
So it's mihi-mini-studio is what it's
called.
But in general,
I think maita.kim slash connect is where
I, it's, you know,
my equivalent of Linktree is where I'm
mostly at.
And these days, like, social media-wise,
I spend more time on LinkedIn than other
platforms, honestly.
Yeah.
Not that it's a bad thing.
I'm acting all disappointed or something.
Right.
No, that's true.
It's been great,
but it's just funny because I never really
thought of the platform like that before.
Right.
No,
there's a certain point where I started
using LinkedIn more for just using it more
period, honestly,
because there was a long period of time
where we're like, okay,
when I'm looking for a job,
that's when I care about my LinkedIn.
But yeah, now I sort of...
check it more frequently and possibly more
than other things as well.
Well, thanks for coming on, Kim.
And thank you,
everybody who might be watching this or
coming to this later or listening to this
on the audio version.
And yeah, we'll see you on the internet.
Great.
Thanks so much for having me.
Yep.
Thanks.