when we were kids you always had that kind of geek person in the movies that has several screens
and it's usually a hacker or something like that but I always wanted to be that person and
because I thought that I was good at programming from school and from seeing my friends programming
and so on I thought that I was pretty good at it and then at my first internship like I remember
my mentor at the time he just gave me a very basic simple task and I think I spent like
around 10 days working on it and I couldn't do it and also I think it tests your passion because
it's hard like to deal with this stuff like to be to feel stupid about something and this is like
what makes you like gets into web development and go with it for a long time. A job that everyone
wants to do but every time I speak with people like I tell them like yeah it's true but at the same
time you have to like it because if you don't like it it's one of the most depressing and the most
difficult jobs that you can do. The BGS which is the job script community for in Brazil which is the
biggest one for JavaScript so when you are going to a conference where a lot of like-minded people
are there so we'll feel a lot of that you are not alone in this world. There's a lot of people
that are doing the same stuff that you are doing and also they are loving what they are doing so
I think this is one of the things that is good about going to in person. Every time I go back
from a conference I feel like super energized and super motivated because like I have so many
ideas and so many new things I want to test and try and so it's totally worth it. I would like just
to go home and build something like a build a library or build a product. Conferences so I think
we did three React Brussels, two React Paris, two BGS Confs and also last year we did React Africa
for the first time. And one thing that I would like to ask you is the Moroccan food better than
traditional food but what's happened behind the scene like I think because it's like a months
like before doing the start doing the conference, months of preparation, months of
going confirming with the speaker, confirming with the venue. I can imagine the stress that would be
like a behind Ronnie at the conference. The most annoying part for me is the sales start working
on a conference around nine between nine and 12 months before the conference happens. At first
we'll be just four or five people and we'll we'll be coding so we don't need much and then like
not even a year later organizing a conference where we had more than 200 people attending
online. For me that was a huge milestone. It's like you are becoming a hero in someone else's story.
Yeah but when you want when you will change and become like someone who is not shy you will see
what you missed because you will see a lot of things that was blocked because of the personality
that you have. Hi, welcome guys. Let's go to podcast. A podcast where interview software engineer
to share the outro point of story. And here we are on episode number 10 and we have Emma Blamber.
He's a software developer. He studied computer science and how he's got his bachelor degree in
computer management at the University of Tunis. He's the founder of BGS, a conference for
JavaScript developer at the conference behind REAX Paris, REAX Africa and REAX Brussels.
And we will catch up more about Emma's story after this intro.
So thank you, Emma, for accepting my invitation. It would be a pleasure hosting you for today's
episode. So can you give the audience an introduction about yourself? Yeah sure. So first of all thank
you for inviting me. It's a honor and a pleasure to be here. So my name is Ayman. I'm a front-end
developer. I'm half Tunisian, half Russian but I've been living in Brussels for maybe 12-13 years
now. I also founded the community BGS which is a JavaScript community. They are based in Belgium,
we organize events around JavaScript, hi-ketons, conferences, meetups and codec competition
and this kind of stuff. And a few conferences that we organized are REAX Paris, REAX Brussels and
REAX Africa. Well, I have my own consultant company so basically I create web and mobile apps for
different customers and yeah that's global aid. Awesome. So thank you for your introduction.
And the first question that I usually ask to my guests is how was the first interaction with
computers especially as someone being a web developer? Yeah so for me the thing is like
I've always dreamed about being a kind of IT person so I don't know if you remember but
when we were kids you always had that kind of gig person in the movies that has several screens
and it's usually a hacker or something like that but I always wanted to be that person and so
since I was a kid I wanted to do something related to computers and I also loved computers,
gaming and so on. And so I think around the age of 11 or 12 that's when I was first introduced
to coding. It was at school so basically we just tried coding as part of the computer club
of the school where I was studying and I loved it and since then I started coding from time to time
mostly JavaScript and HTML at the time and then when I got my baccalaureate this is like a
huge exam in Tunisia where after you pass it you decide where to go for university. I decided to go
to computer sciences applied to management because I thought that computer sciences are great but you
kind of need still the business and economy and finances and accounting knowledge to be a good
entrepreneur later on and so that's why I did those studies so that's how I started.
Interesting that's great yeah I think yeah the stuff that you mentioned earlier about like
this the movie stuff I think a lot of people can relate on because we see like the metrics or like
Mr. Robot I think it's not Mr. Robot back then but like a similar movie you will see someone who
just type in some stuff in the computer and you will be curious about doing it yourself also
to be able to get the same exact like a screen and stuff because it was like the curiosity and the
stuff was really interesting back then and the second thing that like you got like your bachelor
degree in computer science at the University of Tunis and after that you start working full-time.
How was the first experience working full-time as someone the working as a developer?
Yeah so the thing is like I started working before even finishing my studies so my first
experience it was actually an internship that I did and that was really really how can I say like
not horrible but very tough for me and very difficult because I thought that I was good at
programming from school and from seeing my friends programming and so on I thought that I was pretty
good at it and then at my first internship like I remember my mentor at the time he just gave me
a very basic simple task and I think I spent like around 10 days working on it and I couldn't do it
it was basically just adding a watermark to some photos you know like and so I was like
going home almost every day almost crying you know like feeling stupid because like that's how we
spend our life as developers it's stupid all the time because you can't do something and then you
have to learn it and then the next day you learn something new and you feel stupid again. Yeah that's
true and so yeah like the first the first week it was very difficult and but then I got used to it
and it actually became part of the the fun and the game of it you know like you start every day
feeling stupid at the end of the day you kind of feel not that stupid as you used to be and so
you kind of evolve every day and you basically fix kind of puzzles and enigmas all day long
which is very interesting I think and it's never boring because you you kind of learn stuff every
day and it's super interesting so yeah that's that was my first experience interesting yeah
the stuff that you mentioned about coding and the feeling stupid because like I think even like
as someone who is like a got experience in like our development sometimes it would be stupid because
there is like a something that is like a simple or bug that is simple and you feel that you're
stupid because you can't focus I think I feel like coding or like a developing software is like a game
it's like a sometimes it's like a up sometimes it will be down so it's like either you are like a
fixing bugs or like a dealing with bugs I think this is like the fun part about being there
as a developer and also I think it tests your passion because it's hard like to deal with this
stuff like to be to feel stupid about something and this is like a what make you like a gets into
web development and go with this for a long time because it will test your passion about doing this
stuff if it's not for you you will end up like a living early because it's pretty hard to feel
stupid a lot of time and even like experience developer still have like this feeling of because
it's like the it's like the momentum so you are building the momentum to be able to get stuff done
as a developer yeah I totally agree with this like and like you mentioned something that is
really important you have to like it to be able to do our work because our work I mean like I'm
it's true that working in 90 and being a web developer has been an amazing work in the past
maybe 10 15 years because you get paid a lot to there is a lot of opportunities you can evolve
quite fast and so on you can you don't need a degree in most of the companies the companies
don't care about your degrees for web developers at least and so it's true that it became kind of
a job that everyone wants to do but every time I speak with people like I tell them like yeah
it's true but at the same time you have to like it because if you don't like it it's one of the
most depressing the most difficult jobs that you can do if you if you don't like coding at the base
and you're just doing it for the money which is fine but just be careful because at some point it
can become very difficult yeah that's true because like I think if you are doing it for the money
you will see a roadblock at some time because I think at some point you will have some issue or
some bug that is like driving you crazy for like a couple of days or a week to be able to just get
the solution for it and this is like where the passion will be coming from if you have if you
are liking what you are doing I think you will be seeking for it for a long time and also the
thing about programming is like a rewarding so if you fix the bug you will feel like a very happy
about yourself because you fix this bug that is was annoying you for like a quite some time so it's
like a because like this like I mentioned it's a it's a game because you will get reward at the
end of fixing the bug you will see that this code is working it's solving a problem and this is
where like a rewarding that the effort that you put in when you start doing the project
yeah I thought so very great and how what was the first programming language that you deal with
at the like your early career yeah so when I started I was doing PHP with the framework called
symphony I don't know if you know but it's pretty well known one yeah and I was also doing the front
end using JavaScript and jQuery so yeah that's how I started I think I worked as a kind of full stack
uh for about four to five years and then I decided to focus more on the JavaScript part and the front
end part and I switched so yeah since then I just backbone web components react angular all of them
I don't think I used Vue though that's great I that's great because like a lot of because when I
started doing learning how to code I think it's the early of 2019 or like something like this
and I start with the JavaScript using like a backbone js so it it wasn't a lot of
not a lot of tutorial about react so it's it's about like a mostly about three query which is
I was like a bit not hard but it was a bit limited to what we can do but I think learning
JavaScript and after that learning jQuery gave me like a good foundation of JavaScript
so it was easy for me to transfer learning to react and other stuff I never for me I never
learned and use the angular so I use but I never use angular because for me it was like a bit
complex syntax it wasn't like the prettiest one to be able to to like get me into the angular
word but yeah yeah for like so I use angular js like before before using react but since
I started using react so that's my like weapon of choice because I'm very productive with it
and that's that's why why like that I know how to do things I don't even have to think to do
something I just do it because I'm just so used to using it even though like the past two or three
years with react server components like there are a lot of changes and so on but I think we're
like going in the right direction even though not everyone is able to use react server components and
not any app needs them it's still kind of nice to see where the react ecosystem is going
yeah yeah that's true awesome so I think we cover a bit of the backstory of how you are becoming a
web developer and those are what I would love to get more about the bjs which is the the
JavaScript community for in brasil which is the biggest one for JavaScript and I would love to
know what is the backstory or the idea of the bjs came from yeah so basically like when I when I
came to brasil's a few years 12 years ago I wasn't really into conferences so I've never been to a
conference mainly because we don't have those in Tunisia I mean we have smaller ones but
it's not the same and so a friend of mine at the time told me hey let's go there is a conference
and after them let's go and first I didn't want to go but then he conversed me to to join him for
the conference and I loved it like it was it was more like a festival or a concert than a conference
and I loved every part of it the social part of the talks the interactions the networking
opportunities and so on and so when we went back to brasil's I wanted to go to similar events but
then I was looking online for similar events and I couldn't find any meetups or conferences that are
focused on javascript in brasil's in Belgium and so I procrastinated on the idea for maybe
two or three years then I ended up creating bjs and starting organizing events in brasil's
interesting I think that this is like a the good thing about going to developer conference
as a because as a developer we say a lot in like a dust with our computer at home especially if you
are working remotely so I think we are just living in our own bubble but we don't like
those don't have a lot of like an in-person interaction so when you are going to a conference
where a lot of like-minded people are there so we'll feel a lot of that you are not alone in this
world there's a lot of people that are doing the same stuff that you are doing and also they are
loving what they are doing so I think this is one of the things that is good about going to in person
because online is good but in person is is incomparable because you will not see the same
person in person all over online because you will have like a chemistry and they're like a
proximity to the person because it's in person and we are human yeah I totally agree with that
like the I love in person events because the atmosphere that you get and the the way you
interact with people is way better than just online you know like you can see you can even see it
in at your own work you know like it's not I'm not as friends as with my colleagues as I used to be
with my colleagues when I used to see them every day before I started working from home my friends
were my colleagues because we spent so much time together but now like sometimes I barely talk with
them apart from the actual meetings that we have about work and so in person interactions are
amazing for for the networking part and so on but also people are way more easy to access let's say
in in person conferences than if you see them online or something because they are just there so
we can just say go and say hi and then you're talking to one of your best to react contributors
or one of your best instructors or speakers or wherever yeah that's true yeah this is like a why
I like I recommend a lot of people especially someone who just gets started to go outside of
their conference zone and go to conference and even like it doesn't have to be conference even like a
local meetup so you can see a lot of people in the same city or in the same country as you
like are working and also as you mentioned it will be good for networking because like having
a conversation in person is not the same as online because online the barrier to entry to the person
is low so a lot of people will reach out to the person but in person you will like a limited person
that can reach them in person so I think it will be a great idea to just say hi or introduce yourself
to the person you will be you it's like a remarkable because you will meet someone in person is not the
same as meeting someone online you will like remember at least what they are wearing or something
like this like a special about the person it's like a different than online yeah and also like
you create when you meet people in person you create real connections you know like you meet
people at the conference and then you go for a drink together or you go party together or you go
discover the city together and I have a lot of friends people that I call friends I actually
just met them at at a conference or at a meetup and you can also learn a lot from in person events
because you're kind of like in a very motivating and atmosphere let's say so you see a lot of
people creating a lot of people are passionate about what they are doing and what they are
experiencing in their in their work and so on and so this helps you kind of like get motivated and
say like oh look like this company this company created for example a library to solve that problem
we have a similar problem in our in our company maybe we can use their library and make it even
better or maybe we can create our own library and so it kind of like every time I go back from a
conference I feel like super energized and super motivated because like I have so many ideas and
so many new things I want to test and try and so it's totally worth it yeah that's true because
you will have like a fresh energy and also fresh idea so you just would like just to go home and
build something like a build a library or build a product because you will see a lot of people
building the same stuff and you think like I can do it also myself so it's like a great to to like
it's like a boost of motivation it's like you will have like another dose of caffeine
that's great and talking about BGS like the name of BGS I think it's like a the short form for like
a Belgium JavaScript yeah so it's a Belgian Belgian JavaScript community so but it also stands for B
JavaScript so it's kind of like yeah it's just a it's like a to play on the words
that's great and when it was like the first edition of the BGS conference like at which
you are talking oh yeah so at first we started organizing just meetups so it was local meetups
in Brussels here we were I think for the first meetups we were maybe 50 people
so we did three meetups and then covid hit and so we started doing our meetups online
I actually took that as an opportunity so like because everything is happening online so I started
contacting popular speakers like Swix like Britain then Bayer like Tejas Kumar and so on
and I just asked them like hey we have a meetup would you like to join it it just happened that
most of them accepted and so we started having quite nice speakers at our meetups and then at
some point I said like okay now we're doing meetups and so on online why not try to do a
conference and then the fact that it was covid and so the conference had to be online I saw that
as an opportunity because you know like if you're going to organize a conference in person you need
to fly people from everywhere it's a lot of money you need to rent the venue catering and so on
while here it's just like people record their talk and then we connect together and just discuss
the talk and so I saw it as an opportunity and I said yeah let's go let's do it and we did our first
conference it was in 2021 it was the React Brussels so React focused conference and I think we were
around 250 300 attendees online and it was a great success everybody loved it everybody
loved the atmosphere so on and that's what motivated me to later organize our first in person
conference which was bgs conf and that one was javascript focused and that one happened in 2022
so right after covid and since then I think we organized yeah I think 10 conferences since then
yeah I mean like it's it's awesome to organize conferences like it's it's very it's very rewarding
but it's also a crazy amount of work especially that as I said like I have my own company so
I already work for 40 50 60 hours a week and on top of that I have to manage everything
related to the conferences and so on so it's like crazy amount of work interesting that's great I think
yeah you mentioned I think it was like great timing for the bgs because you will have like
some with the covid hit you will have the online event so it will build up the community for bgs
so when you will be doing the in person you already have a speaker that's already attend
the online event and already have like community of attendees so already have like a I would say
proof of concept for for the conference instead of spending a lot of money in person because
as you mentioned it will be taking a lot of time a lot of money to people to render the venue that
will host the event and also like a sponsor in the speaker to be able to attend the event like
with hotels and the flights and it's a lot of things to be able to be aware of and you mentioned
that the first edition in person was in 2020 22 true yeah yeah okay and after that a lot of events
happened there and currently I from from the website is currently react Brussels react Paris
and the recent one was the react Africa which happened last year in Casablanca so we have these
three that react focused and we also have bgs conf which is our javascript focused conference
last year we didn't do it because it was to mention it was too close to react Paris
and so we decided to skip it but the idea is that we will probably at some point start doing it again
as well but we did several editions of of these conferences so I think we did three react
Brussels to react Paris to bgs conf and also last year we did react Africa for the first time
that was awesome awesome and how was the experience doing the react Africa because I think this is like
the first version that is outside of Europe because you have yeah and Brussels how was the experience
doing our conference in Morocco and how was the community I couldn't make it like last year
but I would love to get your feedback yeah so the the best thing for me that I loved about react
Africa is the community the people I met there be it from speakers local speakers attendees
even people that just wanted to help with the conference and so like the the community in
Morocco is very passionate a lot of people love front end development and javascript in general
and they are willing to help and contribute and speak and share their knowledge and so on
so that part I loved a lot for I think what we struggled with in terms of organization
was sales because there is a big difference in how how you sell tickets between Morocco and
how we do it in Europe for the other conferences and the main thing is like in Europe is the
companies that pay tickets to their employees to go to conferences and so when you're trying to market
to people even though the price for a person might be expensive for a company it's not that
expensive because it's part of the let's say learning budget of companies for their employees
but something that we noticed in Morocco and I think it's the same in Tunisia other
Middle Eastern and African countries is that even when trying to go to attendees and ask them hey
maybe next time we can help convince your boss or your manager to buy tickets for you or something
they were like no no no I don't want to disturb my manager or my company with this so it's kind of
like part of their own budget where they have to buy the ticket on their own budget to attend
the conference and that was difficult for us because you know like when we organize a conference
we cover for all speakers to fly and to and also accommodation for them there is scattering food
renting and so on involved there is marketing budget and so on so our prices cannot be very cheap
and so that also impacted ourselves last year because tickets were quite expensive
especially if you buy them from your own pocket makes sense got the point yeah that's true that
they don't think I never work at like a Moroccan company I can like know the reason but maybe like
there is like a bureaucracy or like yeah I think like I think in Tunisia it's it's the same it's
a similar thing it's just not in our habits to go ask our manager hey I want to go to a conference
pay me a ticket I don't know but it's it's it's just a different way of seeing things and then also
like probably a lot of people can ask their managers but then they just don't want to go
through the trouble of making it approved by 10 people and this kind of stuff yeah I also think
that the culture of sending people to like conference is not like a well developed that's why
it's a lot of people are afraid of making that decision because they will be putting themselves
in the shot to be able to get like approval for to go or to the conference and maybe also like
when they are going to conference they are like using their vacation days instead of like
like asking the manager to for a paid for a paid day because it's like they are going on their own
so it's a it's a bit hard for them I can like I relate but yeah this is what is happening
and one thing that I would like to ask you is the Moroccan food better than the Tunisian food
I think like I mean Moroccan Moroccan food is very tasty but like we had this kind of
not fight but it was a kind of fun fight on Twitter when I was saying that Tunisian couscous
is the best and like people didn't like it so we started like making fun of each other yeah
but that that's just like the story between Tunisians and Moroccans we always fight about
which is the best couscous and so on yeah it was fun yeah yeah I'm not I'm not saying that I'm just
joking here just like to because I think everyone has their own taste and everyone will have like
their own preference for food and like a doesn't have to be a debate about because it's your preference
it's not like you are not representing Tunisian that's really good the other question that I would
like to ask you about it's the behind the scene of running a tech conference you mentioned a couple
of things you mentioned that you need to sponsor the speaker flight and accommodation you need to
figure out where the venue will be also we need to figure out the catering and other stuff that
is go behind the scene and people are just showing up and goes to the conference attend the talks
and like a network and go back to their home but what's happened behind the scene like I think
because it's like a month like a before doing the start doing the conference month of preparation
month of going confirming with the speaker confirming with the venue I can imagine the stress
that would be like a behind the running on a tech conference yeah I mean like the main stress of at
least for me for conferences is the sales part because basically as personal company or whatever
when you organize a conference you just take a bet and say okay this year we're gonna have 200 people
200 people from where you'll see you don't know so you can I mean like usually you check your last
year's edition and so on but there are so many factors but that it's just a bet you cannot say
you can have 1000 people this year and next year it might be a crisis in the tech sector like we
we have now or it might be another conference at the same time or it might be the speaker lineup
and you get 200 instead of 1000 and so it's very difficult to predict how many people you're going
to have but that's the first step you have to do because according to the amount of people that you're
going to have you can evaluate your budget you can decide on the conference room because you
cannot put 1000 people in a 200 person conference room and so that's the second part is finding a venue
which is usually very difficult it's one of the most annoying parts for me because
there is always something that's not right and the problem with our conferences is that
you need a room for the conference itself and then you need another room that is similar
and that can get the same amount of people for the sponsors and for the networking part
and so it's basically like two rooms and most of the issues that we have is that usually
in most of the venues they are not these these rooms are not synced and so like
sometimes you get conference room that is nice sometimes you get the other part that is nice
but it's difficult to find something that is really perfect and then you have to think about
lots of other cases the location is it accessible or no the hotels next to the venue because you
don't want your speakers to be one or two hours away from the venue so there is a lot of things
that you have to think about when trying to find a venue so that's usually our second step
while doing that you can also start contacting speakers where you can so the way like for speakers
it depends on the conference some conferences do it differently for us for example
what we do is that we select between three and five speakers that are usually very popular and
so on that we invite and then all the rest goes through the CFP some other conferences they do
everything through CFP or everyone is invited only and for us it's important to keep the CFP
because we want and that's actually one of our roles for the CFP every time we do a CFP we need
at least one local person that needs to be selected and also one person that speaks in an
international conference for the first time these are two roles that are very important to us
and then we basically like vote yeah we also have anonymized CFPs so basically like when voting
like you just vote on a talk title and talk description you don't know who's the person
behind it and this is like to get the chance to have a more diverse speaker lineup which I think
is why our speakers are always so diverse like they come from all over the world and so yeah
speakers usually like especially for the well-known speakers like you need to send sometimes lots of
messages and lots of emails and sometimes go through your contacts like you contact an old
speaker speaker who spoke at your conference one or two years before and you ask them if they know
a certain speaker and then that's how you get in contact with them so yeah that's also a part
that is very difficult because you need a lot of going back and forth to find the right speaker
lineup and then yeah the most annoying part for me is the sales and marketing that's where
you basically need to start promoting your conference promoting your content running ads on
different platforms contacting people contacting sponsors and so on and it takes a crazy amount
of time to do all of this create the content posting on different social media contacting
people talking to people trying to understand why they are not buying tickets if they are not
buying tickets and so on and trying to find solutions so yeah it's a it's a lot of work and
takes I think we usually try to start working on a conference around nine between nine and
12 months before the conference happens but like not every day yeah yeah makes sense that's really
hard yeah I think I can imagine especially like a contacting like a speaker also because the
conference you will have like a similar to a chicken and egg problem you will need a good lineup of
speaker to be able to get the person to attend the conference and you need the people attending
the conference to be able to convince the speaker to attend the like to go to your event and it's
like a lot of things that will happen in between so it's a lot of problems so yeah it's a lot of
work behind the scenes especially with the venue because you might have picked the venue but the
venue also have a similar event in the same time that you are looking for so so you need to negotiate
also like as deal with them you need to confirm with the venue first also you need to confirm with
the speaker each one and you need to contact them over twitter link then also through like a contact
it's like a lot of like a lot of follow-up emails and the message to be able to go to confirm and
yeah there's a lot of work like running a tech conference and yeah it's 12 months to be able to
just get there it's it's a lot of work yeah that's that's really great I think we cover the great ground
for like the first part of the episode which is behind the scene of flying a tech conference
can we get some numbers that you would like to share with us about the conference maybe number
of attendees even like each number that you can share with us yeah so yeah in terms of number of
attendees I think for react parents we're usually at 300 a little bit less than 300 people I think this
year we almost were I think we were at 300 almost 300 people for react brussels we're usually around
200 250 and for react africa last year we were around 100 people attending the conference usually
for the online audience because our conferences are hybrid so we have people in the venue but we
also have people watching online we usually for the online people we usually have between 100 and 200
people attending what other numbers do you want to do maybe number of speakers like I think
yeah number of speakers I think across all of our conferences we probably surpassed the
150 maybe 200 speakers for the attendees I think we're probably around 3000 attendees across our
for all of our events that we did what else three no two continents three countries so
for this year for example we're still studying the possibility of organizing react africa
not in Morocco this time somewhere else but we're still discussing it it's not yet confirmed
we're also discussing the possibility of organizing conference can't really say but
in another continent not Europe not not Africa so yeah there are there there is still a lot
to work on and a lot to plan but hopefully little by little we hope to be able to organize conferences
everywhere not everywhere like meaning like but I mean because like the idea behind the
conference that we organize is that little by little we want these conferences to be accessible
to everyone and for people like me in Tunisia be able to experience this kind of atmosphere and
these kind of conferences and start liking conferences makes sense yeah got the point and
you mentioned that like I currently are thinking about expanding to other countries what is like
the the metrics that you take in consideration if you're mind-sharing to be able to pick another
country yeah so to be honest for for react Paris it was the proximity with Brussels and also
the ecosystem of Paris is amazing and like it's a very huge city that there was a react conference
there maybe before covid but then there was a scandal with that conference and they stopped
doing it and so for for Paris it was like just the proximity and the fact that we know there is a
community there a react community there but usually what we do is that before we decide to go to
country or city we check the community there the ecosystem there so a simple thing that I usually
do is I just go on LinkedIn and I just search for react developers in Casablanca for example
and then you have kind of a rough idea how many devs you can have in that area and then
if we see that there is actually a lot of devs in certain area but no conference then we start
looking little by little into the possibility of organizing conference there because there is also
a lot of administration and other stuff relate to that that makes it way difficult way more difficult
and so on and so you need to look into that and the legal part as well and is it easy for people
to travel from abroad and I know do they need a visa is it expensive so a lot of questions but mainly
the main our main concern usually is like is there enough people there for us to organize
the conference makes sense yeah I got the point because it does make sense because we need to
cover the expenses of like doing the the conference because it's a lot of work a lot of money on the
table so you need to at least like have people that will go there especially because you are
sibling the local and also the global one but you are betting a lot on the local one because it
will be easy for them to go to the conference in the country instead of someone flying out from
other country to go to the conference so we are betting on the local markets first to be able to
go to the conference which makes sense because you need to like cover the expenses of running the
startup which take a lot of money and the resources to be able to do that makes sense yeah and I think
the last question of the episode will be about the lesson that you learned building and running the
tech startup not the tech startup but the tech conference like the reax africa or reax paris
and reax brazil oh yeah listen sir I learned a lot that like
the main thing that I learned is that cultures are different and that's very important and what
I mean by that is that you're not going to run a conference or a community or a business the same
way you do it in Tunisia or Morocco as you do it in Belgium or or France and even like
even inside of Europe with the European Union and so on there are a lot of differences between
cultures as well like you cannot compare the culture in Belgium with the culture in France
it's a very easy example that I can give you is that when doing marketing you have to choose
different channels that you're in different social networks where you're going to promote your
conference for example in Belgium people most of the developers don't have social networks
they are not on twitter they are not on facebook they are not on instagram I mean yeah maybe they
use instagram but not for tech stuff they use it for like cooking and traveling and so on and so
it's way more difficult to market to Belgium developers than to market to French developers
that are mostly on LinkedIn like but if you go to the US for example then it changes and most
developers don't even have a LinkedIn because they are on twitter and so all of these differences
like you need to study and you need to try to understand and you need to have a lot of different
not tracking but like to you need to analyze all of what you're doing to know how is it working for
each of the different countries and cities where where you're doing business and that's like
as I said a very very difficult difficult thing to do if you have businesses in different countries
in different continents because you need to adapt to each culture to each administration and to each
systems and so on so yeah that that's the main thing that I can say that's in terms of in terms
of learnings like the journey to organize these conferences has been amazing in terms of learning
like that it can be daunting and very difficult and you cry more than you laugh let's say but it's
totally worth it in terms of in terms of learnings because you learn so much and you get to experience
adventures and journeys that are priceless yeah that's great makes sense I think that's really
good for like to share with the audience and like what like I noticed from the story of
and the backstory of running a tech conference it's similar to running a tech startup there is like a
lot of thing that is similar to not only tech startup but entrepreneurship on you know there's
a lot of things that is hard about this stuff and a lot of people who doesn't know behind this
scene of this thing it's a lot of things that happen behind this interview to make it what people
are expecting to to see and also talking about all of the things that you mentioned I would love
for you to like a pick three milestone that you think was pretty impactful for you running
the bgs and the react conference that we mentioned maybe you like a have someone this is special
for you as a speaker there is some numbers like some people that's like a thing you met during
the conference anything that you would love to share as milestone or like something that was
impactful during that time running the tech startup the tech conference the tech conference
yeah I have I have a few ones but for me like the first conference that we organized the online one
the the first one that we did that was a huge milestone for me because at first when I started
bgs it was like yeah I mean I was talking to the person who gave us the the venue for the meetups
at the time and I was telling them like hey at first we'll be just four or five people and
we'll we'll be coding so we don't need much and then like not even a year later organizing a
conference where we had more than 200 people attending online for me that was a huge milestone
which basically motivated me to continue and to organize uh in person events second milestone
I would say is organizing conference in Morocco uh in Africa so that was also huge for us because
it's a different continent uh continent it's a different culture organizing conference almost
everything done remotely because like you can't just go there I mean because Paris is just an hour
and a half of the train so if I need to do something I'll just go but here we're talking about flights
and so on and so everything had to be organized remotely uh so that was huge as well and then
the third thing that always motivates me is the fact that there isn't a week or or two that doesn't
that passes without me receiving a message from someone telling me hey thank you for what you're
doing thank you for this because I met that person at your conference and now I don't know
like it can be they become friends or they started going out together or they started a business
together or they got their first job in tech because they came to our conference and these are like
just they they make your life uh amazing to just receive a message like that out of nowhere uh
that's like super super rewarding yeah that's true it's like you are becoming a hero in someone
else's story yeah that's really great and the last question will be if you mind sharing some tips
and resources that you would love to share with the other people especially in the dev slash
entrepreneurship profile so someone who would like to go maybe do a little like a conference
go to build their own business something in this between this if you would like to share
some tips and resources for that yeah uh so there is a book that I recommend uh which is called uh
personality isn't permanent and that book is basically trying to explain that uh if you if
you are categorized as someone example as someone who is lazy uh you can change that it doesn't
it doesn't mean that you have to stay lazy your entire life um and that for me like is very important
because I see a lot of people that tell tell tell me or when you ask them hey why aren't you doing this
or they just tell you yeah I'm just like that or that's just who I am and I think it's okay to be
who you are but you can change if you want to change of course you can change who you are uh
which is uh great for me for example this is really important because I always struggle with
weight for for the long time like I gain weight I lose weight and so on and so
for for a few years I was like just saying yeah it's in my genes I just have to be big so
but like it can it kind of convinces you that you can change that and you can change your habits
and you can change who you are in that sense um so that's a book that is very important in my opinion
and then uh in terms of um entrepreneurship I think the best at least for me the best way to
learn is to just try things don't put your life on the line of course like don't just go throw
all of your career in the in the bin and start a business but like you can start especially in our
era like you can start a business just during your free time uh online and uh try things
probably 99 of the things you try won't work but at some point something will work and uh and then
you keep doing that and you learn other stuff and you try other things and they don't work and then
another thing works and that's how I learn like I'm not the kind of person that goes and
does research for five years before doing something I just do something then I see how
how it goes and if something happens I'll adapt to it change my trajectory or wherever and continue
I think that's very important trial trial and error basically that's great I think the first
book that you mentioned it's really great one because I never like uh read this before but
just like the idea that you mentioned about because sometimes you are feeling maybe you are like a
a shy person let's say and you are just thinking this is like I'm a personalized I am a shy person
I cannot talk to someone but it's not like you can't change it if you want but when you want
when you will change and become like uh someone who is not shy you will see what you you missed
because you will see a lot of things that was blocked because of the personality that you have
so a lot of things we unlock because of that so sometimes just think about it think about it twice
and it might be the problem or the blocker for the goal that you would like to achieve because
for example if you would like to maybe to like achieve something and that's something that you
would like to achieve with your personality it will be very hard or impossible to do so maybe
change the personality like something in personality to be able to make it like achievable
so I think this is like a great thing to mention and the other thing that you mentioned about
like a go in and try to solve because as much as like you learned over the book but into your
the theory is good but in practice it will be like a difference you will see a lot of challenges
a lot of things a lot of rejection at first a lot of knows a lot of things that will be
challenged at first but this is like how you will be learning this stuff so you will be learning the
hard way but I think when you learn it you will like never do the same mistakes so it's like the
best way to learn but as you mentioned don't like go with this full time unless you like already
secure some good deal and stuff because it's not like it's not a short term solution it's a long
term so it's not like a sprint it's a marathon so just like a go step by step and build something
on your free time and it's like going doing good and you can go it for going with it full time you
can do so and let the other one go yeah totally agree so I think we are on the finish of the
podcast so thank you so much amen for taking the time to be able to share your story running the
tech conference and everything that you mentioned over the podcast and this is like your final word
yeah thank you everyone who is listening or thank you for the invitation it was an honor to be here
and I hope to see you in one of our next events or maybe speak at one of our next events maybe at
some point yeah thank you thank you