Welcome to the first episode of season two
of Community & Code.
I'm Chris Reynolds,
and I'm so happy to be kicking off
twenty twenty six with this conversation
with Taryn Almendarez.
Taryn is a longtime Drupal community
member, a friend of mine,
a former developer advocate and the human
being behind the handle Nine Lives Black
Cat.
In this episode,
we talk about how online identities shape
who we become.
We talk about developer advocacy and how
it's like therapy for developers and how
accessibility becomes real the moment you
need it yourself.
And we talk about why community events
shouldn't default to venues and activities
where alcohol consumption is assumed as a
default.
We also get into Taryn's Twitch streaming
and what it looks like to intentionally
build a community where people can show up
as their true selves.
If you haven't already,
click the subscribe button wherever that
might be in your podcaster to make sure
you get these updates in the podcaster of
choice or on YouTube or wherever you're
consuming this.
And without further ado, here's Taryn.
Welcome to Community & Code,
the podcast where we talk to the human
beings behind the commits.
And today I'm talking to Taryn Almendarez,
who is a long time Drupalista.
I believe that's the appropriate word.
She's worn a lot of hats,
I'll say that.
She's been involved in Drupal community.
She's done developer advocacy.
She's now currently working as a
consultant,
and that can mean a million different
things.
Welcome to the show, Taryn.
Tell us about yourself.
Hi, Chris.
Thanks for having me.
So yes, I'm Taryn Almondares.
It is pronounced like Karen with a T.
I've done this so many times.
I felt it like immediately turn on, right?
Right now, I am...
What all am I doing?
So I am the owner slash operator slash
founder slash I needed something to put on
the taxes.
I own NLBC Works,
which is a consulting firm doing like
technical marketing.
NLBC refers to my name on Drupal,
Nine Lives Black Cat,
which was my gamer tag.
And I didn't realize that they were going
to print it on my badge at DrupalCon.
And then my street name is out there,
but I've just been embracing it.
I'm also a Twitch streamer.
I'm also a mom.
I used to be very involved in politics.
I do a lot.
I wear a lot of hats and a
lot of wigs, a lot of wigs.
Yeah,
maybe the metaphor is a little bit
different with the wig collection.
Tell me about what drew you to Drupal
specifically or originally,
or like maybe your origin story into tech
just generally.
Yeah,
I think that the origin story into tech
is going to be a little bit more
interesting because like like it is with
most people that are in Drupal,
it's like I need a job.
And then there was a job and I
needed to learn Drupal.
So I did it right.
Come for the code, stay for the community,
as they say.
But in the background,
you see how I have like all this
anime stuff.
A lot of it is from Sailor Moon.
And what happened is that when I was
like fourteen, fifteen, I told my parents,
hey, mom.
I've been watching.
Hey, mom.
Hey, dad.
I've been watching this show.
It's called Sailor Moon.
And I just found out Sailor Moon is
from Japan.
And they're like, OK, that's cool.
And I was like,
I want to learn how to speak Japanese
because Sailor Moon speaks Japanese.
That's why her mouth doesn't match when
she's talking like, OK, here's some books.
And I was like, OK, cool.
So I'm like teaching myself Japanese.
Right.
Because I'm just like,
that's who I've been.
That is who I've been my whole life.
I want to do a thing.
I go and do it.
And then I'm like, mom and dad,
do you know what I found out?
You can make websites about Sailor Moon on
the Internet.
I want to learn how to make websites.
And they're like, OK,
here's a book on how to make websites.
And so that's what I did.
So see, I never got a book.
I just got a GeoCities account.
And I was like looking at like the
source code of everybody else's GeoCities
account and then like copying blocks of
HTML into my site and then figured out
eventually that those things meant stuff.
Nice.
I got to that point in the Neopets
and MySpace era, right?
Yes.
That was a huge part of why I
learned CSS.
And I was like, oh my God.
I remember when I discovered PHP,
I was like,
what do you mean I don't have to
copy this same text from the website over
and over again?
I can just have it called.
It'll just show up.
I was so proud of myself.
When I learned that PHP was a thing,
I had been doing copying and pasting.
Perl scripts and CGI bin type files.
I didn't know what any of this stuff
did.
I just knew that I could go to
a website and I could search for a
thing and like,
do you have anything that does this type
of thing?
And there would be a script that came
up and it was like,
copy and paste this stuff and change these
things.
I'm like, okay,
I can copy and paste stuff and change
things.
So like when I learned that PHP was
like a language that sort of kind of
did that stuff, except like better,
it didn't require these weird libraries
that would break.
I was like, oh, okay.
This is, this is, this is,
this is actually sustainable.
This is like,
this is like something that I can actually
maybe do.
So I know, like, I don't know.
I'm trying to think of – so what
is happening right now is that my brain
sees a camera in front of me and
knows that I'm recording a thing.
And it's like,
you need to ask the next question.
It's like, no,
as you're trying to get asked questions,
it's like, but we have to do something.
We have to do the thing.
I mean, you can ask me questions.
Usually I'm the one that asks questions,
but I'm happy to toss it over to
you.
I mean,
obviously we're both pretty practiced at
being the host.
Oh, yeah.
talk about uh so so yeah you uh
i mean we worked together once upon a
time and again now but uh previously you
were uh kind of in my role at
the company that i am currently at doing
the thing that i do at that company
my job i canceled him i didn't literally
take your job he didn't literally take my
job as a whole long story but
But like,
what drew you to that side of development?
Because it's very different than the
actual like working with people and
clients and like, and I've talked to like,
I talked to a bunch of dev rels
on this podcast, like,
so what what drew you?
And what do you see as as sort
of the extension or the like,
where dev rel fits and sort of like,
developer experience?
I love this question.
So what happened is that, you know,
for me, coding is like solving puzzles,
right?
Figuring things out.
How does this work?
And the thing that I really enjoy is
solving puzzles for other people in ways
that like help them to get what they
need done.
It's why I really loved my job when
I was working at the city of Dallas
for their civilian retirement fund, right?
And I did that,
but then I wanted to do cooler things
that were more dynamic that would help
more people.
So I moved on to another job and
then another job after that.
And I was at Lullabot at the time
and I was trying to figure out like,
what's the next step for me?
Because on a lot of teams that I've
been on, right,
I was a front end developer,
which was a whole different change from
like being a webmaster.
And I know I told you I wanted
to talk about like identities on the
Internet.
Right.
So I became a front end developer.
I'm solving all these problems,
but I'm also being the person that's kind
of like the business analyst hat.
I should have had a bunch of hats.
I also have ADHD.
It was a huge part of my personality
reigning back in.
And I was like, okay,
what do I do next?
And then Fatima Khalid,
who was the developer advocate before both
of us.
So it's like a chain of web developers.
It's a chain of developer advocacy, right?
She's like, you know,
you might be interested in being a
developer advocate.
And so I was like, oh, well,
what is that?
And she said to me,
it's like you get to be a therapist
for developers.
And I was like,
I can do that because I have cried
over code a lot.
And I would love to hold someone's hand
through that.
I'd like to be there for them.
A therapist for developers.
That's the first time I've heard it
described as that.
I think I like that.
I don't know that I like the pressure
associated with being a therapist for
developers.
It's like, it's not you.
It's the semicolon.
I promise.
That's fair.
Yeah.
How did you really feel about that commit?
Yeah.
I mean, I, I think,
I think that's true.
I think that's a, an interesting take.
Um, uh, I think that, and obviously like,
so Fatima, um, we, uh,
we also have worked together a little bit
and I had her on the Pantheon live
stream, which we can, uh,
link to in the show notes or whatever.
Uh, um,
cause she's over at GitLab now and you
were at GitLab.
I was at GitLab with her for a
while.
Yeah.
It's like,
I'm following Fatima everywhere she goes.
I promise it's an accident.
Yeah.
Um, but what, what, uh,
There's a big difference between,
because part of what DevRel is,
is also kind of being the public face.
And we can talk about your public faces,
because there might be plural.
Was developer relations sort of like an
introduction,
or were you already kind of out in
the world with your face plastered on
things before becoming a developer
advocate?
That's a good question.
I kind of was, actually.
Like, in small parts.
Because what happened when I went to my
first DrupalCon is that I met this guy
named Kaleem Harris.
I actually have a LinkedIn post about it.
I'm going to tell the story in small
parts.
So I met Kaleem at my first DrupalCon,
and he explained, you know,
if you want to level up in your
job,
you need to get out there and you
need to go and, like, give talks.
And I'm like, I'm sorry, what?
Because before, like,
I could not order food for myself at
a restaurant, right?
Like...
I'd be like, hello.
And I would make my dad order the
food until he was like, you know what?
You're going to learn the skill.
And then he just kind of walked away.
And me and the person at the restaurant
are like staring, right?
But I wanted to get better.
I loved the work that I was doing
and how it was helping people.
And I said, well, you know.
I think I can do this.
There were problems that I encountered and
that I learned about working for the city
with regard to web accessibility.
And I was like,
I figured out some of these problems.
I know that a lot of other people
have these issues.
And by me speaking up,
I can help other people to fix their
problems.
So I did my first talk.
It was called like Government Issues.
And that is a short version of the
name that I will keep to because I
listened to a lot of Fall Out Boy
growing up.
So it was a very long title.
Almost all of my talks have very long
titles.
But I did that at Texas Drupal Camp.
That was my first camp that I spoke
at.
It was in a smaller room.
And it was kind of scary,
but everyone was really cool about it.
So I did that, I think,
three times that year.
And then...
I remember the reason why I kept doing
it is because not because like of the
attention that I got,
but because people would come up and be
like, you know,
thank you so much for talking about that.
I'm dealing with this problem too.
And this gives me a way to solve
it.
Or I tried this and it didn't work
for me, you know,
or here's something that I tried and it
didn't, it, it did work.
And I remember actually at one of my
first triple cons,
a Pantheon employee heard me talking about
how my senior developer at one position
that will remain nameless for now said to
me, well,
we have to just back up our files
manually because you can't use Git.
Git is resource intensive.
And that Pantheon employee was like, no,
that person's peeing on your leg and
telling you it's raining.
They didn't say it like that, right?
That's my way.
But anyway,
seeing like that being a developer
advocate maybe that made the impression on
me that you could help people like both
to know like how to fix a problem
and how to navigate issues like how to
know like what is solvable and what is
not and like when's it time to push
the ejector seat that's a eighties kid
reference there but um that that really i
feel like that's what
uh,
inspired me to be in and stay in
developer advocacy for as much as I could.
Yeah.
I mean, I think a lot of us,
uh,
myself included that have been doing the
work of developer relations for long
before we had the title of developer
advocate or evangelist or whatever you're
going to call it.
Um,
And the thing that has come up a
couple times on this show this year has
been,
I guess maybe last year when this episode
is being released,
is the idea that speaking as a way
to overcome social anxiety and things like
that,
but also speaking as a shortcut
for introverts at an event because when
you present something at the event,
you don't actually have to start
conversations because other people will
just come up to you and start talking
to you.
So you don't have to like super go
out and be outgoing and initiate
conversations because people will come and
talk to you instead.
So you're an introvert?
I am not, personally.
Although I'm a bit more of an ambivert,
I think, these days.
But I definitely have always been more...
Well, I mean, I guess the thing is,
it's weird.
I like being around people.
I've always been doing... In high school,
I was doing theater.
I've always been really social.
But I...
In situations where I'm around people that
I maybe don't know or in unfamiliar
situation,
I'm very much going to like stick to
the walls and wallflower unless I'm pulled
into a conversation or if I have allies
around me, right?
Yeah.
so so like i mean and and that's
a thing that i've that i've even like
even this last year too like um it's
a thing that i've i've been working on
when i went to i went to press
conf uh last year um and i was
going by myself uh and um because no
one else from pantheon was going um and
i knew that i would know people there
But I didn't I wasn't going with anyone.
So I didn't have like a de facto
like social group to fall back on.
Like, you know,
I kind of knew that there but it
wasn't like official or whatever.
And and so I just told Courtney Robertson,
who I'm hoping to get on this podcast
at some point.
Courtney, come on, come on, come on.
um i just uh she's a developer advocate
at uh godaddy and i said i i
said don't let me wallflower and so when
i got there she just like made it
her job to introduce me to like every
single person and pull me over and like
and that i mean it helped and we
like and and what was really cool that
came out of that uh was um there
was like a handful of us that were
either um vegan or one person uh was
um kosher um and
the the way that the event was set
up is like everybody kind of goes off
off campus or you know off off venue
to go out and get food so we
just kind of like had our own little
vegan collective which we called veg press
uh and we just like ate lunch together
and then sometimes a couple nights had
dinner together and like that was it was
really cool because to have that sort of
like okay well i know this is taken
care of because like there's a bunch of
other people that are in the same boat
as me which is also like super valuable
for for like pro tip for anyone who's
like
like in that situation like yeah find find
your find your allies find your find your
people i have a similar story to that
which is like i feel like this leans
into the identity thing right where
the way that you identify or like parts
that of you that make up your identity
end up kind of determining like who you
end up being social with so toward the
end of the first stint that i was
at a pantheon right i was pregnant and
i was very early in my pregnancy and
we went to an event and most of
what was getting brought out was like
there was water
Was there water?
But then there was beer.
And I couldn't say anything, right?
And it's like, I can't drink this beer.
So what ended up happening is I went
and talked to one of the people at
the restaurant.
I was like, hi.
I'm pregnant.
No one at my job knows.
Could you please bring some lemonade out?
Right.
And so what happened is that the other
people who did not drink either for like
health reasons,
religious reasons or professional reasons,
whatever reason it was,
I met a bunch of people that I
would not have met if I had not
had the pitcher of lemonade at my table.
So it's really interesting like how that
works out.
Yeah, I've not...
My partner and I have stopped drinking a
couple years ago.
Yeah.
And the last year going to events,
it's been very interesting being...
Previously, I would try to...
I would just not drink.
I would just get water and I would
just be whatever.
But like...
This last year,
and because I was going to a lot
more events this year,
it was very interesting being the sober
one in the room and finding other people
that are also not partaking of the open
bar or whatever drinks are being,
and also finding, okay,
so
going to places and like all the parties
are always at bars almost always at bars
right it's always a thing so it's like
okay uh how well has this particular venue
planned for people in my situation like do
they have an actual like mocktail uh list
or do they have or they just have
like yeah you can have a coke well
i don't drink coke either but like i
guess in a pinch you know
Yeah.
I know this reminds me of another part
of my identity, right?
For a while,
because time is wibbly wobbly now.
I was the lead of the Drupal Diversity
Inclusion Initiative.
And one of the things that we made
sure to do, right,
because even at DrupalCons, right,
we're inclusive and things of that nature.
But there are a lot of parties and
in tech,
a lot of parties involve drinking.
um years before that i had gone to
see a talk by a gentleman named victor
yoko and he described like why it was
so important for reasons of like people
who don't want to drink right and he
talks about like how um i don't want
to like misquote anything but like there
are people who yes they don't drink
because they don't want to because
pregnant
other things,
but also how some people are alcoholics.
And by not offering a non-alcohol-centric
opportunity,
you are excluding somebody from a room.
You're excluding them from networking,
right,
to being able to contribute to your
project.
And that always carried with me.
And so every year,
the Drupal Diversity and Inclusion
Initiative at DrupalCon,
we have a board game night.
Like,
that's our way of getting together and
hanging out, right?
That's our way of having fun.
If you want to order alcohol, you can.
It is optional.
And it's been so great.
This last DrupalCon in Atlanta in twenty
twenty five,
we had it at a like this little
hole in the wall bar.
That was also like a barcade,
but they had plenty of like mocktails.
So everybody got to do whatever they
wanted to.
And the thing that brought us together to
have fun was just like all of the
games that were there.
Yep.
And it was quiet too.
So it's like we can choose.
I know there's a lot of people with
sensory overload stuff.
So, yep.
Our identities bring us together and drive
us apart.
I, that reminds me of,
I was at a company retreat many,
not many years,
a few years ago for a company that
I worked at before Pantheon.
And
know at night after a day long of
like you know doing work sessions and
stuff in person um obviously we go to
the bar we go to whatever and get
together and hang out and drink um and
i had a friend who um drank heavily
um several nights in a row and then
got completely trashed and the next day
he's like i'm not doing that again and
i i need to not do this again
and i was like okay um well
why don't I be your sober buddy?
Like you don't drink and I won't drink
for the rest of the trip.
And like,
I don't have any particular reason to not,
but like, I'll, I can,
I will do this to make sure that
like you have somebody,
an ally that's doing this with you at
least.
Yeah.
And that seemed to help.
And I think,
I think that he's been sober ever since.
So I think, I mean,
like it just takes like somebody to,
to like just caring about like,
people like and that gets into like yeah
the the substance abuse thing where like
um like i don't i i wouldn't necessarily
characterize him as an alcoholic at the
time but he was conscious enough of the
sort of i don't want to say destructive
behavior but like the consequences of
like his actions that he wanted to make
a choice to do something different.
And then he did.
And I like to think that that I
helped a little bit.
Yeah.
But, you know, regardless,
I think he's in a better place.
And that's awesome.
And like people have a million reasons to
make those decisions.
And I think that it's
it's always important especially for like
event planning type stuff to consider the
full spectrum of human beings because
there's a lot of different like a lot
of us a lot of different places on
your journey that you could be for a
lot of different things yep i know the
reason why i ended up getting so deep
into accessibility um you know i i knew
you know everybody knows like you see
little things like oh this is handy at
parking right that's what it was when we
were kids and
One summer when I was a receptionist
working for this place that monitors pool
phones.
It's a whole thing.
But I was there.
And as a receptionist,
I'm like this with my phone all day,
right?
And I got swimmer's ear,
which I did not realize I could get
if you weren't swimming.
But there we are.
And the thing about that was I lost
hearing in this ear for like a good...
I want to say it was at least
two months.
And so I couldn't put, you know,
how I have my earbuds in today.
I couldn't do that.
And if I wanted to watch a video
or tutorial or something on YouTube,
if I was not able to like sit
and listen to it, like out loud,
I had to have subtitles.
And that made me realize how much stuff
on the internet is not subtitled.
Yeah.
And it, it just,
I looked more into like,
how do you do this?
How would you even get this going?
And, you know,
I had a disability temporarily.
Right.
Most people do not realize like,
think like you're either born able-bodied
or you're born not able-bodied right and
it's like no every so often like even
pregnancy is like uh determined as a
disability temporarily right and i can
tell you the way that my ligaments change
because of the chemical composition of
things flowing through my body yeah that
was a disability it was not fun um
also the the heartburn that no one told
me about chris i'm sorry for the heartburn
that nobody told you about
But, you know, they tell you about, oh,
yeah, you're going to get nausea.
And it's like, OK,
I can deal with that.
Just heartburn, relentless heartburn.
Right.
But we can talk about being a mom
in a bit.
But, you know,
there's all these things that can happen
to you, either long term or short term.
And it affects your abilities.
Right.
But it also affects how you identify,
like how you see yourself.
You know, I know like.
Me going through pregnancy,
that changed a lot of how I understood
my world,
how my husband showed up in our
relationship.
saw alien the alien movie prometheus and
when they like did the thing and they
tried to like she had to get the
alien spoiler alert if you haven't seen it
it's been like a long time but okay
okay okay okay so in that movie like
first of all i did not know it
was an alien movie i freaking hate aliens
i'm terrified
aliens like we can talk about like never
mind i won't do it i just don't
that is my biggest phobia but the alien
like put the baby inside of her or
whatever right and she's like i don't want
this in here so she goes to the
machine to like get the c-section and like
if c-section cuts her and i'm like no
never want that nope never not at all
and so in my care instructions on the
little whiteboard they had they're like
what do you want us to have and
it's like uh no poking no cutting and
i did that on purpose
Because I wanted people to ask.
Like, it would make it so it's like,
why is this up here?
What does this mean?
So I could be like,
I don't want an epidural.
I don't want to have a C-section.
And you know what I ended up with?
An epidural and a C-section.
And, you know,
I had the greatest OBGYN because,
you know,
TLDR is that the way that my body
is shaped after like after you don't have
babies for like thirty some odd years.
Right.
There's another identity thing.
Sorry, if you're watching this,
I promise this makes sense.
So I am thirty eight this year,
thirty eight this year.
When you get past like thirty five and
you get pregnant.
Chris,
do you know what they label your pregnancy
as?
Yeah.
Isn't it like I want to see like
an elderly,
some stupid geriatric geriatric.
You have a geriatric pregnancy.
Yeah.
So this is the thing, right?
And I was,
I had to get like special ultrasounds,
right?
And it had to be covered because I
was at this age and all these other
things, right?
And
That changed how people interacted with
me, how that pregnancy went.
But because I spent so long not pregnant,
my body's like, I don't know.
We don't open this door.
What?
And I'm sorry.
Hopefully, if you're listening to this,
this is a part of life.
Whatever.
Why am I apologizing?
And so my daughter, she was having...
Whenever the contractions were happening,
it was lowering her heart rate.
And it's like I had to get over
my fear so that she could be born.
Right.
I had to have a C-section.
And I think the greatest gift that my
doctor gave to me, right,
was not trying to push me into it.
But when I signed up to meet with
him, I have ADHD.
And I had also learned a couple of
years before that,
that I have generalized anxiety disorder.
And I was like, what's a gad?
So because he knew these things, he said,
hey, Taryn,
I know that this is not the thing
that you wanted to do.
This is what we need to do.
And I'm going to give you time to
process it.
And, you know,
just the fact that he stood there holding
my hand and he listened to me,
I was like,
I didn't want to do this.
And he's like, I know.
Like I wanted to like just have my
baby naturally.
And it gave me the time to accept,
you know, yes,
this is the thing I need to do
in order for this other person who is
now like the biggest part of my identity
to be here.
The person I've been waiting like thirty
some odd years to see.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Going back to the original point too,
not to downplay your point,
but the original point of the idea that
disability or accessibility needs are not
for people that are permanently disabled
or permanently have accessibility needs.
I remember seeing a couple of different
talks at WordCamps and whatever talking
about accessibility and talking about the
idea that if the sun is really bright
and it's shining on your phone and you
can't read the text on your phone,
that is also an accessibility issue.
There's a full spectrum of things that
count as accessibility.
It's not just this one thing.
It's not just the handicapped car that you
put in your
your car and need the special parking
space that you have.
I mean, that's part of it.
Sure.
Right.
There's a million different things that
they can apply to.
Um, and,
and where we are is different day by
day.
And I think that that's definitely a thing
that, um,
is is an important part of of
understanding how accessibility applies to
uh web development the thing that that
brought me to the internet that brought
you maybe to the internet a lot of
us a lot of the people that might
be listening to this um yeah yeah okay
i kind of want to ask you questions
now okay you can so thank you so
i wanted to talk about identity stuff but
i also want to know like because we
know each other but like
Were you on AOL chat rooms back in
the long time ago days?
I didn't do AOL chat rooms.
I predated AOL chat rooms.
What?
I did BBSs.
In fact,
I paid for a BBS subscription to a
BBS before I paid for internet access.
what?
I didn't know that this was a thing.
Yeah.
So, so there is a, there is, um,
I, I think, so I first,
I first learned that these things existed
like, uh, through a friend, um,
and I would access things in the library.
And then I saw that you could like,
oh, you just need a phone, like a,
like a modem.
And then you can connect to the phone
line and then you can dial this number
and it connects you to this like chat
room where there's other people.
And there's like a network
at the time of these local city-based BBSs
in different places.
And so I went to the San Francisco
one.
And then eventually,
because I think server costs and whatever,
they started charging for access to their,
and also I think because it was part
of a network,
So I started charging for access and it
was like twenty bucks a month or
something.
So I was paying twenty bucks a month
to connect via, you know,
telephone to this one specific BBS server
before I
realized, A, that you could do that over,
I think, Telnet or something.
Yeah, I know Telnet.
Which I learned later that you could do
that over Telnet.
But at the time,
it was direct dial to the server.
And I paid for that for at least
a couple months before I got my actual
first internet access.
And when I got internet access and I
realized you could just do that over
Telnet,
then I was doing that all the time.
But yeah,
so I never did AOL chat rooms because
I was in the old school text-based PBS
rooms.
Oh, okay, okay.
So,
and the reason why I know about Telnet
is because, okay, so for my brain, right,
the internet kind of started with America
Online.
And then there was Earthlink.
I had Earthlink.
My parents used America Online.
I think it was because it was in
a PC magazine or something for ISPs.
I didn't want to do AOL.
I had a friend that did CompuServe.
um that's right yeah yeah um and i
was like i don't want to do either
of those things and i i did figure
out pretty early on that you didn't need
to because like at the time aol presented
itself like this is the only way you
can access the internet this is this is
the gateway to the internet you have to
do it through our weird browser
application that does all the things
um and like no actually actually there's
stuff that's already on your computer like
a browser that can do this and your
computer already has like an email thing
and like yeah oh man i remember getting
earthlink yeah and it's like wait you can
just get online you just do it yeah
I also did tech support.
My second real job was retail after
college.
And I left retail because it sucks.
And I did tech support because I'm a
nerd and I know computer stuff.
And so I could probably do tech support.
And so my first tech support job was
for MSN.
So again, back to the dial-up stuff.
So it's like a different flavor,
and also MSN was awful.
But slightly maybe less awful.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Maybe.
What was I going to ask you about?
Oh, so about Telnet.
I really want to talk about Telnet because
I never get to talk about Telnet, right?
So I know about Telnet because when I
was in the AOL chats, right,
I learned about role play games and stuff,
right?
And I got to play like games like,
you know, Yasha and stuff, right?
Just making up my own storylines with
people.
Cause I loved writing.
And then I also love sci-fi books.
And I read all of these books by
Anne McCaffrey,
the dragon writers of Pern.
I've read like a bunch of other stuff,
but I, when I think about it,
that is another reason why I got into
code because I joined the Pern world mush
and
if people don't know what a mush is
it's a multi-user shared hallucination
it's a place where people used to go
and we used to do like role play
and like come up with characters and
scenes and like we had to like organize
everything and everyone and I was dolphin
rider as one of my characters I had
Salus and Anastasia they had like very I
got dragged once I was like a sixteen
year old girl getting dragged for shit
because I would describe my character's
eyes as like emeraldics
I found the forum post and then I
showed up and I was like, hi,
it's me.
Yes, I know that I'm not really good,
but I'm trying to get better at writing.
And they're like, oh my God, like,
oh my God,
it's so great to see you here.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, I saw it.
I just spoke up, but there was that.
But as a, as a,
I ended up being a dragon writer and,
And a werewoman.
I was a gold rider.
So if you don't know about Pern.
If a gold dragon chooses you.
You are going to be one of the
people that becomes a werewoman.
And that leaves an area.
And so I got to be like.
in character as one right and i will
never forget like the day that like my
dragon hatched and like it touched my mind
in the game right and i was like
i got chosen and my dragon is so
beautiful and she was uh the gilded lily
that was her dragon description i think i
still have it somewhere if i find it
i will send it to you for show
notes yeah but i learned how to code
my dolphin oh nice yeah i learned
object-oriented programming through being
a dolphin writer
back in the day, like,
cause all of that stuff is text-based.
So there wasn't like, yeah.
So like it was, uh,
we use terms like multi-user shared
hallucination.
Now they're actually like things that
legitimately like could be described as
doing that for real.
Um,
arguably sore as a multi-user shared
hallucination, but, um, I like that.
Uh,
But, yeah,
and there's multi-user dungeons.
There's MUDs.
I think there was a couple MUDs that
were operating out of the BBSs that I
was doing.
But, yeah, that's real old school.
I think that maybe is a segue, maybe,
into you mentioned earlier at the
beginning of the show that you are a
content creator with capital Cs.
I guess so, yes.
Talk about doing that stuff.
I mean,
I feel like that kind of comes out
of like an extension of, you know,
DevRel is often kind of like the face
of the company in a lot of ways.
And content creation is often part of the
work that we do,
but like you're doing it for like,
not just like representing a company,
but representing yourself or a version of
yourself.
Like talk about getting into that sort of
stuff more.
Yeah.
It's really funny because before I was on
here, right, Chris sent me a message.
He's like,
you should apply to be on my podcast.
I was like,
I don't know what I talk about.
And he's like, whatever you want to.
And I'm like, okay.
And as I'm filling out the form,
I'm like, wait,
should I be on here as Taryn Almondarez
or should I be on here as Nine
Lights Black Cat?
And then I realized, oh,
I do have something to talk about.
Like just all the ways that identity forms
and is shaped by like, for me personally,
I don't identify as things first.
I do.
I feel I want.
And then I find out eventually that that's
an identity, right?
I did not know that people paid people
to make websites.
I remember that I wanted to be a
school teacher because I wanted to help
people.
And then I learned how to code.
And then people were like, you know,
people will pay you to make websites for
them.
I'm like, why would anyone do that?
That's weird.
And going into, wait, I lost my thread.
Hold on.
I got it.
So, okay.
So I tend to do before I identify
and I lost it again.
Come on, dude.
Okay.
Hold on.
Do before I identify.
Your question to me was...
Getting into content creation.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So I do before I identify, right?
And...
When I lost my job at GitLab,
which is like a whole story, right?
See it on some other podcast,
not this one.
But I lost that job and I needed
something to do.
But I also realized like...
a lot of what I had been doing
or how I was identified was by what
other people told me, right?
Like they gave me titles.
They told me at one point,
somebody was like,
you can just pick whatever title you want.
And I'm like, I'm sorry, what?
And they're like, we will pay you money.
Just,
and you can have whatever title you want.
And so I actually had to think about
what it was I wanted to be called.
Like what label did I want to put
on the thing that I wanted to do
for someone?
And then when I lost that job,
I was like, well,
I know that I enjoy teaching people.
I love being a developer advocate.
I loved putting together the materials and
facilitating trainings and stuff.
And I realized that with the skill set
that I had,
I could do my own business.
I could run my own business.
often when I was working with people,
I was telling them, well,
this is what the problem is.
Like they would, they would tell me like,
here's all these things that we know are
going wrong,
but we don't know how to solve it.
And so I realized like that,
that's what people call a consultant.
Like sometimes I will Google,
what is the person that does this, this,
this, this, this,
because being able to have a label and
being able to be like,
I tell people I'm a technical marketing
consultant.
And so some of them, like for me,
I don't,
I feel like saying technical marketing
together tells people,
I help you sell things,
but I'm helping you with the technical
side of this problem.
And then consultant means I don't
necessarily work for you,
but I work with you.
Those things communicate what it is that I
do.
And it gives a person an identity that
they can attach to it.
And so when I knew that I was
going to be unemployed for a while and
that I wanted to not like just jump
into the next job as I had done
for like many years,
especially like being a mom,
I wanted to be able to define my
own path.
I was like, well,
there are people who stream on Twitch and
I've watched Twitch streams and I can help
them with things.
And I already have all this equipment from
when I was a developer advocate.
I can stream.
I've been streaming.
So I just started streaming.
I learned more about how to put setups
together.
And I started playing games with people in
between.
So yeah.
So on Twitch, I am nine lives,
black cat.
I brought my name back, reclaimed it.
Right.
I freak out every time somebody Googles it
and they're like, holy crap, you were get,
get love.
And I'm like,
do not mention my real life in this
chat ever again.
Don't do it.
I'm getting more comfortable with it.
Right.
I'm going to talk about fragmented
identities too.
That would be cool.
I know we don't have a lot of
time, but you know,
I ended up doing content creation as like,
a side effect of this is what I
want to do.
This is what I want to give to
the world and to like the community.
I think that's why I'm so,
I'm still in open source.
I keep getting sucked back into open
source is because it's not about like who
I am.
It's like what I want to do and
what I want to give into the world.
And so that's how I ended up being
a Twitch streamer.
I am, what is it?
I am the cozy crash out coworking
streamer.
Like there's a whole thing.
And like,
We have our bad luck battalion in Nine
Lives Black Cats Twitch chat.
I've actually been doing a lot of stuff
to prepare us for next year, this year,
when you see this,
because we just hit five hundred
followers, which is big to me.
Right.
It's not like a big number.
But for me,
I'm intentionally building this community
of people that want to have fun and
play games and be silly and also like
want to get shit done.
Like those are the core of like.
the identity of the battalion.
And we like to say that we make
our own look.
So yeah, that's why I do content creation.
That's definitely a far cry from like the
traditional sort of be like launch a
Twitch stream and get a million followers
and like, you know,
like intentionally building a community of
people that like,
Like just building it with intention,
right?
Like figuring out like who you want,
who you want to be include and who
you, and like cultivating that.
What sorts of things do you do to
help foster that community growth and the
intention that goes into it?
I know I spend a lot of time
thinking about who are the people that
need this?
Like,
I know for myself as a person with
ADHD,
having somebody that I can body double
with, that helps me to get things done.
And I know that I don't do silent
co-working, right?
I chat with them throughout it.
I keep people encouraged.
I share the struggles that I've been
through.
I was diagnosed late in my life with
ADHD.
I also spend time
I'm not just working on my stuff.
I encourage the viewers to come and ask
me questions.
It's like, well, how do I do this?
I am a streamer.
And that's sometimes against streamer
etiquette to mention that you stream.
It's like, if you're a streamer,
please come to me with a problem because
I love fixing problems.
And we will fix things online.
Sorry, we will fix things live.
Sometimes people will send their issues
and then we try to get that
solve there.
To that end,
we use a co-working bot that is the
SuperSleep bot.
It's really cool.
It's a Pomodoro timer and it keeps us
focused and moving and it's really cool.
One of the things that we're going to
be doing this next year,
because the nature of my work has changed,
we're doing like
five hours of co-working from like,
ten a.m.
until three p.m.,
and it used to be when I was
unemployed, right,
we would do two hours of co-working,
and then we would have like, okay,
you finish your task,
you have two hours to like, play games,
like,
you're rewarding yourself because you ate
the frog.
Now, we're doing a change where,
and I think that it'll work,
and if it doesn't,
we can always try something else,
which is important, like,
when you get perfectionism in your head.
you got to say those things out loud.
We will be doing something where in the
evenings where we play gameplay,
we're going to acknowledge like,
here's all the people that came and
co-work today.
And here's what they got done.
Like, it's not just about games.
Like we are all of ourselves.
We're not just gamers.
We're not just people that have jobs.
And it's kind of,
it's kind of tracking along with my
journey and understanding that like,
I don't have to fragment myself.
I don't have to fragment my identity.
I can show up as my full self
and still be valid.
And I realized that that's really
important for me to model to the people
that are following me,
because that's a type of leadership too,
being your whole self.
Well,
I feel like that is an excellent note
to end on.
Before we go, Taryn,
where can people find you online?
Oh, my gosh.
Pretty much all over the place.
Everywhere.
A little bit.
I am on Twitch.tv.
Twitch.tv slash Nine Lives Black Cat.
I'm also on Instagram under all those
things.
So if you see Nine Lives Black Cat
on Drupal.org, yes, that's me.
Twitch, yes, that's me.
Instagram, yes, that's me.
TikTok, yes, that's me.
None of that stuff is my fault.
It is all of the audience's fault if
you see that.
I am also at nlbcworks.com.
That's my technical marketing that we do.
Sorry.
That's my technical marketing consulting
firm.
It feels so weird saying that.
It's like,
this is the place where I hung my
shingle.
And then I'm on LinkedIn.
And I'm also on Axe.
And I feel like there is some sort
of a, what's it called,
reality thing that you were doing.
Oh, my God.
I have too many identities, yes.
I have also been a contestant on...
these live reality games they are like an
amateur version of like the two that i
was on are olympia which is kind of
like the challenge uh i am on season
three of that one none of that is
my fault that's all i had to say
and then i am in season two of
destination mole which is part of the
destination adventures brand where i am
now one of the heads of videography well
i'll show notes there's too many
identities i'm so sorry chris i'm like
hexadecimal from reboot right just
right well thanks again Taryn for coming
on thank you all for listening or watching
this in the future or in the past
or whenever it is that you're watching
this and to everyone at all we'll see
you on the internet bye