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Dominic Duffin - Finding value in challenging ourselves

Season 7, Episode 7 | March 16, 2023

In today's episode, Dan and Bekah talk to Dominic Duffin about the impact of non-traditional learning experiences and the importance of community collaboration.

Dominic Duffin

Full Stack Developer, community builder, remote worker and aspiring polymath. Passionate about open source everything, decentralization, peer-to-peer tech and cryptocurrency. Also to be found playing board games, studying paper maps and riding public transport.

Show Notes:

This week Bekah and Dan sat down with Dominic Duffin, a Full-Stack Developer, Co-founder of ArtTechChat Twitter chat, Salon Host at The Interintellect, and Open Source contributor, and chatted about the the value gained in creating a learning environment wherever you go and the importance of participating in community experiences.

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Transcript:

Bekah:

Hello and welcome to season seven, episode seven of the Virtual Coffee Podcast. I'm Bekah, and this is a podcast that features members of the Virtual Coffee community. Virtual Coffee is an intimate group of developers at all stages of their coding journey, and they're here on this podcast sharing their stories and what they've learned here with me today is my co-host.

Dan:

What up, Bek? How's it going?

Bekah:

Hey, it's fantastic

Dan:

Uh, great, I'm glad to hear it. Um, it is going well over here too. Not that you asked, but you know.

Bekah:

you didn't even give me an opportunity to ask. Okay, so next time.

Dan:

Next time. Okay. Sure. Uh, well anyway, we have an awesome guest for you all today. Uh, Dominic Duffin, he has been a long time Virtual Coffee member, um, and big contributor to a lot of our things that we have going on, throughout the year and. . Yeah. And Dominic is, well, he's a full stack developer. He's co-founder of the #ArtTechChat, um, Twitter chat that you might have seen, uh, which is really cool. And, uh, it's open source contributor. And well, and on his bio he says, aspiring Polymath. , which is really cool. And I think he talks about being a polymath, um, or aspiring to be a polymath in the podcast episode. So, um, you get to hear all about what that actually means if you don.

Bekah:

Yeah. And we talked about, um, different ways. Learning non-traditional learning methods, the importance of community and how that helps you to be a better learner and to grow and to have the support of other people as you do all those things. So it was really great to have that conversation with Dominic and, and learn about his experience.

Dan:

Yeah, totally. I, I, I found it very interesting. Dominic was homeschooled and, has a lot of positive and, and, and strong feelings about that experience. And, I found it very, very interesting and, rewarding to talk to him about it. See things from his, perspective. It was really cool.

Bekah:

Yep. And no more spoilers. So we start every episode of the podcast, like we start every Virtual Coffee. We introduce ourselves with our name, where we're from, what we do, and random check-in question. We hope you enjoy this episode. Today's random check-in question is, what is your favorite way to eat a potato. My name is Bekah. I am a neurobiologist from a small town in Ohio, and my favorite way to eat a potato is mashed.

Dan:

Amateur. Amateur neurobiologist, right? Yeah,

Bekah:

I do it in my spare time.

Dan:

uh, cool. Mashed, um, gravy.

Bekah:

Um, gravy is good, but if you wanna put some like bacon, uh, cheese, sour cream sauce, like hot sauce,

Dan:

so you're doing like baked potatoes style except with mashed potatoes.

Bekah:

Yeah,

Dan:

That's cool.

Bekah:

good way. Brown butter is even better.

Dan:

Brown butter. You gotta, you gotta brown the butter. That's always the secret. Yeah, I learned that from Game of Thrones. Um, hi, I am Dan . I live in Cleveland where it is just raining in the winter, which is my least

Bekah:

70 degrees here. 70 and sunny? Yeah.

Dan:

It was supposed to get warm yesterday, and it never did, and now it's, it just rained really hard all day. And there's my, my, my backyard. It's just a lake. Uh, it's just a nightmare. Anyway, I, I do web development stuff and, um, my favorite way to eat potatoes. I don't know. I mean, I like lots of forms of potatoes. My least favorite way is. I know this isn't the question, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Like, what, what is the, um, they're like, where it's like sliced in thin slices and they're like, there's, there's a name for it. Um, yeah. Scalp potatoes, hate that. Uh, I don't know why. Just don't like it. My most favorite, um, I don't know. I mean like, I like a fry, you know, like, I like a good fry. I like a good tater tot. Um, I like a good potato pancakes.

Bekah:

funeral potatoes,

Dan:

I, I haven't been to a funeral

Bekah:

you know what that

Dan:

I'm not sure.

Bekah:

I don't. I don't. It's

Dan:

no. I don't know what that is.

Bekah:

potatoes and I think it's baked with like mayonnaise and cheese and cornflakes on top, and it is.

Dan:

that,

Bekah:

Delicious. Like it's probably

Dan:

that sounds really

Bekah:

but it's very tasty.

Dan:

I had a, oh, what is the, a, a a Groton, how do you say that?

Bekah:

Yeah,

Dan:

I had a, um, I went to, and I went on a date, uh, a couple weeks ago, and they, It would, like, one of the sides was potato, a Groton, but it was like this, like barrel . It was like, I don't know what the, it was like the size of like a medicine bottle kind of, you know, like, like I'm holding my hand up. I know the listeners can't see it, but, uh, perfectly shaped. And then like, it had the, like, the cheese and stuff inside and it was, it kind of sounds like that minus maybe the cereal, but, uh, it was really, really good. Um, very fancy though. Um, but yeah, I'm, I'm kind of a potato, you know. Uh, what. , what, what is the word for somebody who likes? Just like, all I don't like,

Bekah:

head,

Dan:

I don't like, uh, no, no, no. I don't, I don't like seek out potato all the time, but like I've, I rarely find a potato situation inside a dish that I don't like. You know what I

Bekah:

don't think I've ever found one.

Dan:

yeah. Yeah. Unless they're undercooked, then that's no fun. uh, anyway, that's

Bekah:

sweet potatoes, but not raw white potatoes.

Dan:

You, you eat raw, sweet potatoe.

Bekah:

You can, I have, yeah.

Dan:

like just like, like an apple

Bekah:

Yeah. Uhhuh. , exactly. I just bite right into it. No, I don't do it like that. Like shave it a little bit. So it's thin, but it's

Dan:

yeah. I think I've seen that. I

Bekah:

eat it straight. I don't like eat a pile of like raw sweet potatoes.

Dan:

unwashed get

Bekah:

Mix it in a salad or something.

Dan:

Oh, man. All right, Dominic, why don't you go ahead.

Dominic:

Yeah, so I'm Dominic. I'm from the United Kingdom. I currently work as a full stack developer at a main e-commerce focused web dev agency based in the uk. and I don't eat potatoes, so it's a very easy answer to the intro

Dan:

Oh

Dominic:

Um, although maybe once every few years I have a package of what we call crisps in the uk, but really only once every few years. Um,

Dan:

Is there a reason you don't eat potatoes? You just don't, don't like 'em or, you

Dominic:

yeah, I think I just, I just don't like them really. Yeah. . Um,

Dan:

that's fair.

Dominic:

so yeah.

Bekah:

Huh. I would really like to not like potatoes, cuz I just eat a lot of potatoes.

Dan:

Yeah, definitely a lot of spare calories coming through with potatoes, , the ways you have to make them, to make them taste good,

Bekah:

Yeah. Yeah. Don't eat 'em straight though. It'll make you sick. Um, uh, welcome Dominic. It's really great to have you on the podcast this season, and we always like to start with your developer origin story. But before we jump into that, why don't you give us one word that describes your story?

Dominic:

rollercoaster.

Bekah:

All right. All right. Now tell us more about that.

Dominic:

Yeah, so I think like, I, I'm kind of taking it from that, that I feel like I've. Had both slow periods and then fast periods that have gone faster than I expected, really? So, I mean, I first started. Actually building my first website. I think I was about 15 or 16, and I was building a website for my mother who's an artist as a project, sort towards the end of my home education time when it seemed like a good idea how we got online and I was getting interested in, in the web development software, Adobe Dream Weaver, to do some kind of real project with it. Um, and after that, I did that actually just using the graphical user interface, but you can click on a thing and you can see the code, which kind of got me interested in seeing the code and realize that sometimes you can actually do things quicker if you just tweak that rather than clicking on the buttons in the Gooey. Um, And from there I started relatively slowly over a period of several years, learning a few bits more here and there of different coding stuff, dabbling in different things, most of which I didn't really continue with very much. So I made one or two projects, like I think I, I did a calculator in Java and then didn't really learn any more Java. Um, . I did some kind of a very small project in visual. Basically I, well, I can't even remember any of the syntax now. Then I got a bit sort of more proficient with the html, CSS and JavaScript and build a few just personal fund projects. Started working on some collaborative projects from around 2019. Then, There came a time when I thought, I didn't think I was ready to really like look for a job, but that it wouldn't do any harm to get some interview practice. And actually the first interview I got led to a job, so

Dan:

gosh,

Bekah:

Nice.

Dominic:

kinda very fast. I'd been going very slowly for quite a long time, and suddenly it went very fast and I think. In the couple of years since then, I've learned a lot more than I ever have studying through tutorials or taking university courses. Some of the modules I've done at the Open University are computer science type ones, but I think like I've learned far more, far faster just by actually working on a job and realize maybe at the same time that you don't actually have to be ready when you start your first job. You get the right one. Um, and there was a very intense sort of first three to six months when I many times felt like maybe I couldn't really do this. It was too much. But then I got through it and I got more confident and yes, that's sort of been a high and fast period for the last couple of years or so.

Bekah:

I really like that idea, uh, that you talked about the first three to six months being like, I don't know if I can do this. Cuz I think my experience was very similar. I'm like, I was not cut out to be doing this. I don't know what I'm doing. Or

Dominic:

I think a lot of people actually go through that phase. I, I know at least one person who in their first job, mm. In the first few weeks, actually went to their boss and said, I can't do this. I think I'm going to have to quit. And he told them, yes, you can do it. And they stayed on it. Um, and I bet that's not the only person who's thought like that.

Bekah:

that's great. And I love that they were willing to have that conversation with their boss and their boss push back, because I think that there are probably plenty of people out there that are like, all right, fine. See you later. And then you just have lost out on that experience.

Dominic:

Yes.

Dan:

sure.

Dominic:

I didn't quite get to the point of having that conversation, but there was sometimes days when I was wondering during the first three months or so.

Bekah:

Yeah.

Dan:

great. And so you, so you had maybe like a supportive, uh, structure. The people that hired you, you know, were ready for somebody who's still in the learning phase of things, or, uh,

Dominic:

Yeah, so I think, I think it was also probably helpful that in some ways I was in that relatively unusual position that. I'd spent quite a lot of years doing aspects of it, but I didn't necessarily have an, the kind of level of experience that Mm meant you knew how to do stuff, but I also knew what I was working with and. Um, and I mean, I've always been interested in trying to think of my own ideas for what to do as I never really liked following a tutorial project. I never made any of the, the classic tutorial projects like to-do lists and that sort of thing.

Dan:

Yeah, that's probably, probably better off . Sorry, Bekah. . Go ahead.

Bekah:

You talked a little bit about having some collaborative experiences while you were learning. Can you ta tell us more about that?

Dominic:

Yeah, so I think the highlight of that was working in an. Community group called Pass the Pen and there was a few months when we were working on an escape room, which is still up on Code Pen, I believe. Not certain everything still works. You know what it's like with web things, stuff can disappear. But um, how that worked was quite a few people contributed. Hmm. Puzzles, which would be solved. And then three of us, me, one other person and the organizer were then working together to incorporate all these puzzles into the one escape room game, which is a surprisingly complicated experience when you have, like, these things did not necessarily work together. Like they were all different styles. We had to try and make something coherent out of this. Um, and that was quite interesting. I think we did a, a reasonably good job. Um, and it was interesting and useful, I think, to get the experience of working together with two other people on a real project where there were things that have been decided that in that affected what we had to do and that kind of thing.

Dan:

Yeah. That's awesome that, that's so cool. So did you just find that. like randomly, uh, you know, Google

Dominic:

got involved in that community early on in its inceptions through people I've met on Twitter. Um, and I, it has been very much paused, I think in the last couple of years. Theoretically, maybe stuff will be done in the future. I don't know.

Bekah:

Yeah, that sounds really interesting. And you, it sounds like you've done a lot of really cool things through the connections that you've made online. And one of those things that I was hoping we could talk about is #ArtTechChat, which, um, I'll let you explain it. So go ahead and introduce it and

Dominic:

Sorry. I have been co-organizing for several years now. It is a Twitter chat covering topics in art, design and technology. Every Sunday we do a different topic each week and we post questions, people answer and we retweet as basically the format. Um, I think that we've had a lot of interesting conversations with quite a variety of people. It's possibly not being, Like busy as some other Twitter chats. But I think we've also covered some quite niche crossover topics that I said to very interesting conversations among small groups of people. Um,

Bekah:

I really love the questions that you ask. I don't, I try and catch it Async. Um, Sundays are just, I'm not on a schedule on Sundays, so I just like usually forget about everything that happens, but the questions that you ask are not ones that we commonly see in tech, and I think that's really great cuz you hear a lot of people talking. The same things all the time. So even sometimes I don't answer, but I read the questions and I, I sit there and I like think about it for a long time and like, what does that mean? And how, how do I understand that thing? And so, you know, at the very least, like I appreciate the ability to think deeper about these topics that are, are not always on my radar. Uh, how did you get started with #ArtTechChat? Chat? How did you decide to start it?

Dominic:

So I, I came up with the idea one day, um, and. I decided to suggest it to who I had met through the CodeNewbie Twitter chats, and within about a couple of weeks we got it started after a few months. , she had quite a lot of other things happening in her life and bowed out, so I Mm, brought on board. Mm. Someone who'd been regularly participating. Shannon Krak, with whom I've been co organizing it ever since. Um, and yeah, it was one of these things where I just came up with the idea and actually decided to do it.

Bekah:

love that. That's awesome. I think sometimes we overthink the things that we're doing and then we don't ever get them started or then we start them, but two years after that, we initially had the idea and they're like, why didn't I do it then? So.

Dominic:

Yeah. I mean, I have plenty of ideas that haven't ever gone anywhere, so yeah,

Bekah:

All right.

Dominic:

you never have time to do everything.

Dan:

Right. Never been in that situation before.

Bekah:

I was just like, like, I

Dan:

Hey, that's my

Bekah:

face. I was like, wait a minute. I'm thinking of all the things that I haven't done yet. Like what? What should I be doing right now?

Dan:

What, what made you like wanna lean into like the art, the art. You know, tech crossover, you know, you see mostly the Twitter chats that I see and I'm obviously, my Twitter feed is mostly tech people, you know, so it's, so, it's a lot of, you know, just tech stuff, right. Or JavaScript or CSS or whatever. But, um, I really like that. I really like the concept of, you know, of, of leaning on the art side of it, because I think it gets lost a lot of times. Um, so I, can you speak a little bit about like, just why. What made, you know, what drew, what drew you to combining the two and, and, and trying to get a community going around that?

Dominic:

Yeah, I suppose it probably comes from my background growing up with my mother who's an artist and going to art events with her, which gave me some kind of insights into the art world as well, and. I had, I mean, I'd done quite a bit of small scale creative coding and things in my earlier coding days and followed quite a few people in Twitter who did that sort of thing. Um, so I suppose it just seemed like a sort of natural idea for an area to look at doing things.

Dan:

Yeah. That's so cool. I, I, I mean, I appreciate that. I, I went, I. Like, I lived in the creative arts house in, in college, right. The, it was like a on-campus housing. And, um, what I, I always love the, don't know, the combination, you know, when you, when you combine art with, with different mediums and different things, and that's one of the reasons I've always kind of appreciated the #ArtTechChat, um, you know, experience that you, that you put together that, that, that you work on. It's, it's really cool. It's really cool stuff.

Bekah:

I wanna maybe jump back in time if that's okay. And I know that your education wouldn't be considered traditional. Can we talk a little bit about your home education experience and how that you think that might have impacted your journey?

Dominic:

Yeah, so I think it allowed me to go further faster on the areas that interest of me, without having to waste time on things that. , if I'd been in school, I would've had to do and then would never have done anything with afterwards. Um, and so I think that was probably helpful, but also I think it gives you that hmm. Sort of thinking outside the box type of approach to things. And I feel that probably I wouldn't necessarily account with some of the same ideas if I hadn't had that start.

Bekah:

Yeah. I think the idea that's really fascinating for me right now. We have, I have four kids and my 13 year old, we decided to, um, home educate this semester. And I was talking to him yesterday in the car and I'm like, okay, well what are the things you don't like? What are the things that you do like about it? And one of it was the, what you're talking about to be able to pursue the things that you're interested in and not waste time on other things or having to deal. You know, staying focused in a period of time where you can't stay focused. And one of the things that I think is really great about different forms of education is that usually when you go to. I don't a regular school. I'm not really sure how else to say it, right? Like traditional education. When you use a traditional education method, you are taught to think in certain ways, and when we're all thought taught to think in certain ways, then it does become much harder to think outside of the box. And that's exactly what you're talking about. When you have the room to grow in a way that works for you, then you're going to. Maybe approach things differently or be able to see things that other people don't. And I think that's a really great strength to develop in any industry, but especially in the tech industry.

Dominic:

Yes, I agree with that. I think that it. , it brings different perspectives that can push innovation forward, and I, I, I kind of feel that, I've noticed that there seems to be, hmm. A greater number of people in and around tech who come from non-traditional educational backgrounds than I found in other fields where I have awareness of, and I wonder whether there is something about non-traditional education backgrounds develops a kind of mindset that works well in what the tech industry is doing. It's only a theory, but I, I think it might be like that.

Dan:

Yeah, I think there's definitely something to that. Uh, you know, the, the thinking outside of the box stuff that, that you guys were talking about and is, is absolutely one of it, you know, and, and, and I think another piece of it is, um, self, self-driven learning, right? Um, which I think is one of the most important things, uh, important skills or I don't know, attributes or whatever, uh, of, of a developer at least, um, is the. Like ability and willingness and almost maybe excitedness about being able to like find something and learn something new on your own, you know? Right. And find a problem, you know, see a problem and say, okay, well here's, here's. There, there's gotta be a good way to solve this, you know, and, and, and go and find it on your own and, and, and then do it. Right. Um, that sort of self, self activating, you know, learning process, um, is, is is such an important thing for developers to have. And, um, I, I think I, my my assumption is a lot of non-traditional education paths will kind of instill that naturally. , you know, without, like today we're gonna work on self-driven learning, right. That's like not, you know, not like a lesson plan. You know what I mean? But just,

Dominic:

saying today we're going to work on this. It's the opposite of self

Dan:

right,

Dominic:

director learning. Yeah, and I think also like the tech industry and. Development and things. It's one of these things where you are not going to spend three or four years at a university and learn everything you need to learn, and then you're just going to use that to do the whatever job you do afterwards. It doesn't work like that. There's always going to be something new to learn, and a lot of the time you're going to have to do it on your own. Hmm. Because of some things that you need to do. And if you don't know how to do that, that is going to be a disadvantage.

Dan:

Yeah, absolutely, and, and you know that Then that's I think the other piece of why lots of times. The tech industry or the develop, you know, programming industry or whatever, will collect people from things like this, you know, um, all non, non-traditional learning paths. Neurodiverse people, I think, uh, is that there's not really a clear path to become a web developer in a traditional. Model. There's like, there probably are web development degrees somewhere at a university that you could get. I'm not sure, but like, it's, it's very much still a, a thing that almost everybody picks up on their own. And then they maybe, maybe some people do a bootcamp for a, a little bit or, or, or do, you know, other things. But they're, they're starting to become a little bit more structured, but they're all still, like a bootcamp is, is still a non-traditional way to learn a, a thing, you know? And, um, It's maybe becoming traditional in our field, but not in the world, you know? And, um, and, and so people that come to this are oftentimes people that are. Not following a traditional path in their lives, you know, uh, whether that's right out of high school or, you know, right out of, you know, becoming 18 or whatever, or right out of, or career, you know, changing their career to something else, um, later in life or, or anything. Um, it's one of the things I love about, about the tech industry. So it's cool to hear you talk about it.

Bekah:

Yeah, and I think too, as part of that, what. It is valuable to know how to code and how to do the technical things, but it's valuable to bring different insight into what you're doing because ultimately most of us are building things for non-technical people, and to have some sense or understanding of what that looks like and different aspects of the world helps to inform what we build, how we build it, and making good user experiences for other people. I, I think another part of. This a different approach to education is being able to learn the value of things that challenge us. And I think that you can do that and that idea of like self-exploration. Yeah, some people might just choose the easiest things out there, but when you find something that you're interested in, I think you're more likely to. Tackle things that challenge you, whether that's in your opinions or your capabilities to work on a project. Um, have you found that you dove into some things that you found challenging and, and got that reward?

Dominic:

Yes, I think I did. Tend to go quite deeply into the things that I was actually going to do. And I remember when I had a tutor for mathematics in the run up to examinations, I took in that at the school leaving age, um, that she would often comment that I seem to actually like what she called the horrible questions in work that she would set from the books and. yes. I wouldn't necessarily just like try and do all the easy ones. I actually managed the challenge of, hmm, the hard questions because I'd actually decided that mathematics was one of the subjects I wanted to study. Um, and yeah, I think. . I generally did like going in. I mean, I also remember quite a younger age, my grandfather bought some school curriculum books and initially the idea was I would have the ones appropriate to my age, but I found those quite boring in the subject. I was interested in straight onto the ones. Hmm. For 14 to 16 year olds. Um, And so I was reading the material for people who take those exams several years before I actually took them. Um,

Bekah:

Love that. I have a, I have a brother that's two years older than I am, and I am, I'm slightly competitive. Um, but I

Dan:

Slightly.

Bekah:

um, anytime he brought home a book from school, I would read that book just because I'm like, see, I can do it. Like, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna read this book. And it's even harder than that one. Um, so . I also find that being motivated by more challenging things can be really helpful in the learning experience.

Dan:

Yeah, it's a good way to stay interested too, right? Uh, the my experience. Yeah. There, there's something like that can be kind of satisfying to like, knocking down all the easy answers really quick, you know? But those ones where you really have to dig in. Um, obviously if you're interested in it, become kinda much more satisfying. Ultimately. I recently am been on a Sudoku journey again and, uh, have been, have been actually pushing myself to get, you know, get further down into the, into the harder ones. I'm on the, I'm on the, in my little Sudoku app. I'm on the pro section now, so,

Bekah:

Oh, watch out.

Dan:

blasted pass expert, you know,

Bekah:

Next thing you know, you're gonna be introducing yourself at the beginning of the podcast as Dan from Cleveland Sudoku expert.

Dan:

professional Sudoku player. It says pro in the, in the app. So I'm pretty sure that means there's somewhere I can get sponsored. You know, I can get, I'm gonna start wearing like a NASCAR jacket, you know, except with Sudoku sponsors, you know, it's

Bekah:

Also, if anyone's listening that sponsors Sudoku Pros, you can also sponsor the podcast. So

Dan:

Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.

Bekah:

Sorry, Dominic, we, I will blame Dan Um, one of the, another one of the things that I'd love to talk about is your contributions to open source. So you've done a lot of volunteering for Virtual Coffee and you put together some great resources and documentation for people who are involved in open source. So can you talk a little bit about that journey?

Dominic:

Yes. I mean I spent probably two or three years before I started looking at employment. I was looking at kind of contributing to open source. Initially. I find it quite challenging to get into because there seemed to be quite a lot of stuff you had to learn how to do around process and things, which when you are coming in from. not having ever contributed to a project, it can all be quite overwhelming and confusing. So it wasn't really until the Virtual Coffee Octoberfest initiative that I really started to make any kind of serious contribution. Um, and I think it's having that kind of group of people who can guide you into things is very, very helpful for getting started. And since then I have tried to keep up making contributions. I have contributed to. Some good projects. I think, um, probably the highlights would be, so what's the work I did in Elm with Kirk on the quarter app? I think that was that first year. And then work I've done on your postpartum wellness app back, which in React native kind of seems to be a good fit for being slightly different from what I do day to day, but also similar enough that I, that the skills are transferable. Um, yeah, I think contributing of open source is very helpful for learning and building confidence, and it gives you actually the ability to get exposure to how development is really done. Whereas a lot of educational pathways, you might learn how to write code, but you don't learn how to actually be a developer and the processors that writing code is done within. and open source contributions are one of the ways in which you can get exposure to that without actually having a full-time job.

Bekah:

Yeah, I said that, uh, a couple of times on the podcast. Y I went to bootcamp. It was self-paced and I didn't have that opportunity to interact with other people and code and to dive into code bases that were larger than the projects that I was working on. And so if you. Do contribute to open source in your learning? What, I mean, I think it's valuable to contribute to open source throughout your career, but especially if you're learning and you wanna get a sense of what it's like to be on a team, that's a really great process to familiarize yourself with and to grow in that way. And I, I've appreciated all your contributions and I know that, you know, I, I don't, I know some stuff about React native. It's always a learning process for the project. You know, to be able to work through that with you and the other contributors has been really a really great learning experience for me as a maintainer, because I also feel comfortable having the conversation and sometimes saying like, Hey Dominic, I have no idea what I'm doing here, so maybe we can talk th through this thing together. And, you know, it's helped me to kind of develop this project that's I'm, I am very interested in seeing through.

Dominic:

Yeah, I mean, I thought the one biggest thing that opensource forces you to do is to get comfortable with GI, a thing that's often not really taught. Um, yes.

Bekah:

Sometimes I just delete entire repos to not deal with any of those problems.

Dominic:

Yeah. Which you can do when you're working on your own projects.

Bekah:

Not

Dominic:

a when you can't do it though. Yeah.

Bekah:

Yeah, would not recommend doing that on somebody else's project. , um,

Dominic:

Um, yeah.

Bekah:

Yeah, but it is really helpful. And then having people have Virtual Coffee there to walk me through some of the times that I've made a mess of things has been super helpful as well, because I, I think that, you know, there's always the tendency to think that you have to figure out everything yourself and, and you don't. There's plenty of people out there that are willing to help. You just have to ask for it.

Dan:

I was, uh, so I have like this question that I've been trying to formulate in my head and I don't really have it all the way worked out, but , um, one thing that is, Is recurring over your, your career, your portfolio, all this stuff is, is like this idea of connection, right? You have the, the art tech spaces. You have the, I I see you've done some, some, some community things on inter intellect, which is, which is cool, and maybe I'll ask you about that a little bit later. But, um, and also like for listeners that, I'm not sure if we mentioned this, but Dominic's been running our Virtual Coffee, Twitter chats as well, right? And, um, a lot of, a lot of reaching out and you were. When you were talking about your, your coding journey, you had that, um, that code pen, you know, little, little thing that you worked on in, I, I, I guess my question is like, I not having gone through the homeschooling experience myself, right. Uh, always like one of the downsides and I, I have kids, you know, and you always think about all sorts of different possibilities for your kids here. And one of the like, potential downsides that I see is the loss of, of connection, right? You're in. House just with you and your parents or whoever is whoever is the one that is, um, you know, homeschooling you. And sometimes obviously there's, there's millions of different situations. Right. But that seems like one of the, one of the things that might be maybe somebody would miss versus a traditional schooling where you're kind of in a classroom with other kids all the time and. I, I've just noticing this connection , with, with, with you, with your work where, where a lot of your efforts are around connecting with other people and it's, and it's really cool. And I, and I was just wondering, , and if this doesn't make sense at all, you could just say, sorry, Dan, I don't understand what you're saying, but, uh, if, if there's something like between your, your. Your upbringing, you know, and your, your, um, experience with homeschooling and your current, like, your current comfort and, and, and, uh, effort to, to connect with people, um, online, you know, in, in different, in different spaces.

Dominic:

Yeah, I mean I obviously, I dunno whether there is a connection or not, but one thing I think that the homeschooling does do is that it actually gives you a broader range of experiences of connecting with people growing up. Because if you go to school every day, you might have a greater number of connections and time spent connecting and socializing with people, but with a very narrow peer group of people who are all your age. and thinking and doing very similar things, whereas when, like in the homeschooling module, and you typically don't just stay at home every day, um,

Dan:

I sort of assumed not, but

Dominic:

you kinda get this experience where you, you spend time out in the real world and. you talk to and connect with people of all different ages instead of that narrow group. So you might get a lower volume, but you get a higher range of it. And so I think that actually then creates a sort of more of a natural ability to connect with a wider range of people in a broader range of situations that you are not molded into this idea that. you connect with your peer group of people who are very similar to you.

Dan:

Yeah. Yeah, that makes, that makes total sense. Um, and, and you know, this is just making me think about it, right? I , this isn't something I've thought of before, but, um, Along with that, it's, and this maybe goes back to, or connects with a lot of the, like, self-directing learning stuff that we were talking about as well. Um, when you're describing what you were just describing, um, it seems like more of an active connection, right? As opposed to when you go to school, traditional school, it's a passive thing, right? I mean, it's like you're in the classroom, you know? I mean, some people handle that different ways, but it, it's like you don't have a choice. You're there, right? And. In, in the, in the, that's homeschooling model. You're, it's, it's much more sort of active and, um, intentional. Right. Intentional connections. Um, and so maybe that's, maybe that's part of it. Maybe you're, you're just sort of naturally get better at, or, or, you know, make that more, more of a natural process, you know, as opposed

Dominic:

I think,

Dan:

just sitting around and hoping somebody will be in your classroom or something, you

Dominic:

Yeah, I mean, growing up I tended to have very little interest in other children, and we used to go to meet up events where home educating families in the area got together. But I always preferred to sit at the table where all the parents were rather than do things with the children. I don't know if the parents like that quite as much as I did. because I sometimes would like to be involved in the conversations that they might have preferred me not to be, I don't know. But um, yeah.

Bekah:

Yeah, you know, I'm reading this book, or I'm listening to this book right now, I think somebody at Virtual Coffee recommended it, reclaiming conversation. And it's been really fascinating and challenged a lot of my own thinking. And part of that part of the book is that I'm on anyway, is talking about how our kids are losing. Um, I would, I don't think she uses the word emotional intelligence, but that's what it sounds like and the ability to have conversations. And part of that is because they're communicating differently. Um, and, and this is like, please, please, this is a simplified version of what she's saying, right? She's taking a whole book. Um, part of that is they're not having face-to-face conversations with people, but part of that is also they're not hearing other adults have conversations either, because it's not just that kids are, have their faces looking at devices all day. Adults do as well. And there's value in being able to have conversations with other people of different age groups and backgrounds. And we had a lot of that before with our children, parents, and their children. But it's happening less and less, and it's. Impacting the emotional intelligence of the current generation that's growing up. And I think that what you're talking about, Dominic, um, says a lot about developing the emotional intelligence, developing core skills to be able to communicate with a wide variety of other people. And I, I imagine gaining empathy because when you're in a classroom, like you're saying, you're talking to a group of students that is very similar in all of the things that they're doing, right? It's very. These are, this is where they're at, this is the level that they're at. And in the same way that you might want to pursue like my, my son, um, He's really interested in, uh, yesterday for English class, he listened to a Brandon Sanderson, uh, world building video. Right? He's not gonna get that in eighth grade, um, or maybe, probably ever, but it's probably like higher level thinking. And so he's pursuing something that is at a much higher level. Than what he would get at school. And in the same way, when we have conversations, we can pursue our interests with people who are at a higher level in thinking those things through as well. And so the, my tangent, wrapping it up here is that, um, we have. Having the ability to have conversations with people in different backgrounds, different age levels, probably goes a long way to developing your communication skills that benefit you throughout whatever career industry you're in.

Dominic:

Yeah. I think another thing is the. sort of random conversations you can end up getting into out and about and often. Hmm. When people hear that you are doing a non-traditional education, they actually get quite interested and we'll talk about the things they do in their lives. I remember, cause we like, we used to travel a lot on buses and. I remember one, we would sometimes do things like quizzes out loud, and there were some passengers nearby one day who said that they would ask us a question and we kind of got talking about things. And I learned some like really quite obscure facts about cedar trees and their qualities relating to masks. Just the kind of random conversation you suddenly have with someone who knows something about a topic that you didn't know about and you didn't. , you would probably know I've actually got talking to them. If you hadn't been doing something maybe slightly non-traditional.

Dan:

I love that. I, I love that idea of just those random connections and how, you know, how, how. Non-traditional stuff. It can, can just foster all that stuff is it's, it's so good. I dunno.

Dominic:

Yeah, and I think another thing that is, not having a car actually also helps you to build up, get, like you actually get talking to people when you have to use public transport and that you can sometimes be of being a bit disadvantaged if you don't have a car. But sometimes I also wonder whether, actually it's no disadvantage in always being inside your own metal walls with four wheels. Um,

Dan:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I, no, I mean there's, you know, it's a lot of places in America. It's very hard to do that, you know,

Dominic:

Yeah.

Dan:

I, I've always, I've always. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, uh, but you're right, and, and you know, that connection, you know, and those just sort of happenstance things that can happen. Uh, of course there's always, there could be some bad things that can happen to you. Sometimes conversations on the bus. I've experienced a few of those,

Dominic:

Yes.

Dan:

but those are part of the learning journey too, right?

Bekah:

Well, honestly, it isn't, and that's like a part of the book too. She's talking about we don't have hard conversations and oftentimes we default. To having most of our conversations in written text because we have more control over them. But that inhibits our ability to communicate in hard subjects, but also to recognize how we're feeling about those subjects ourselves. And so even really terrible conversations that you have. Although, you know, maybe you wish that you didn't have to have them. It is a learning experience in how to communicate with other people and how to navigate those particular situations. So I, I think that that idea of al also, like I'm terrified of talking to strangers. So , I, I've done a lot more in the last year. I've done a fair amount of traveling and out of necessity at. Sometimes I just don't hear what they're calling over the PA system, and so I have to ask somebody, and oftentimes that leads to a conversation with that person that I would not have had otherwise. And so I do appreciate, um, Having those conversations and taking each experience as a learning experience. And I think that in a lot of ways, kind of that whole reframing the education experience is something that you take with you your entire life. And, you know, if, if you have had a bad experience, maybe, um, it's okay to sit in those emotions where you're not feeling great about it. But then thinking about like, okay, what have I learned from this? and how can I take this moving forward, um, can help us navigate some of those, um, you know, challenges that we're going to have in the future.

Dominic:

Yeah. So I think that makes sense.

Bekah:

And so, you know, with all of these different learning communities, you have art, tech, chat, art, tech, chat, , Virtual Coffee, and inter intellect. How do you think that being in involved in these different communities has given you different opportunities of maybe thinking through things or learning?

Dominic:

Yeah, I think it's been very important and I don't think if I hadn't been profound communities online and been part of those that I would actually have thought in terms of doing things like applying for jobs at the time I did and that kind of thing, and I think I would probably not have. Had the experience or the things to put on the resume that mm, made me seem attractive to someone either. Um, so I think it has been very important and I think that there's a lot of things I wouldn't have learned without it.

Bekah:

yeah, it really gives an opportunity to dive into, you know, maybe ideas that you wouldn't have had otherwise. Um, which is great cuz you don't wanna live in an echo chamber because that's, although it might feel safe and comfortable, it, you're not growing in that situation.

Dominic:

No. No, and I think also like. when you are learning, you often, a lot of times when you are learning to code, you might just be doing your own projects on your own. But actually a large part of the work of being a developer is communicating with people to make sure you're writing the right code. Because you could write very good code, but it might not be doing the right thing, in which case it's not actually very useful. Um, and you have to learn that by actually working with people.

Bekah:

Yeah, that's

Dan:

Totally.

Bekah:

Well, Dominic, um, it's been really great chatting with you, and we have just a little bit of time left to wrap things up. So if you could describe yourself in one word, what would it be?

Dominic:

Paul.

Bekah:

All right.

Dominic:

I've kind of

Bekah:

bit about what that is.

Dominic:

Um, so it's, I, it comes from the word polymaths, which is about like when you, you're kind of in, you do multiple things, which I kind of see myself in that way. That I would not just focus on one thing, that I have many different interests and I'm interested in trying to develop a situation where I can pursue. Different strands of things where they relate to one another and that in a sense fits into quite all the different things I do. And looking at crossovers between different subject matters. Um, I think also, I mean to go back to the inter intellect and the salons I have hosted there, which are typically on tech adjacent subjects, looking at tech and other. Disciplines related to other interests I have around economics and governance and collections and that kind of thing. Um, yeah.

Bekah:

That's awesome. I really love that word. Thanks so much, Dominic, for being here with us and, and sharing your journey. This was really, really fascinating.

Dan:

Yeah. Thank you Dominic. I, it is, it's great to have you on it. It had been, it had been too long, so we're I'm very glad to have you here. Uh, all right, well, we will talk to you later.

Bekah:

Bye.

Dominic:

Hi.

Dan:

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Virtual Coffee Podcast. This episode was produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel. If you have questions or comments you can hit us up on Twitter at VirtualCoffeeIO, or email us at podcast@virtualcoffee.io. You can find the show notes, sign up for the newsletter, check out any of our other resources on our website VirtualCoffee.io. If you're interested in sponsoring Virtual Coffee you can find out more information on our website at VirtualCoffee.io/sponsorship. Please subscribe to our podcast and be sure to leave us a review. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week!

The Virtual Coffee Podcast is produced by Dan Ott and Bekah Hawrot Weigel and edited by Dan Ott.