Kirk's style of advocacy

Kirk Pepperdine: I don't know if I'm really that different from many of the developer advocacy guys that I know, in the sense that they're just out there doing a job and they're getting paid. They're still deep into the tech.

I think one of the differences is that I actually engage in a lot of research on a particular topic. I know that there are other advocates that are like me. They don't get paid for it and it's not their job title, but they do research. I might do research for two weeks and then something interesting will come up and I'll say, "Ah, that's something cool to talk about!" as a side effect.

I might look at something for a year and be playing with it and poking it. Then, finally, something will come out of it.

For me, it's not like someone says, "I need you to talk about our product X." I don't have to scramble to learn, sort, figure out, and throw together a talk. That's where the difference is: the talk is the endgame. I'm doing the research to help my clients and a talk coming out of that is a byproduct of the entire process.

Geertjan Wielenga: What kind of work do you actually do? What does your day look like? What is your job if it's not directly developer advocacy?

Kirk Pepperdine: My job is to know as much about the space I work in as I possibly can. I work in the computing space, building large software systems and deploying them. That's specialized down into Java and specialized down into making sure that everything runs smoothly. It's performance tuning, if you want to make it less abstract; that's my job.

I spend every morning reading for about an hour. Sometimes it's tech and sometimes it's not. Most of the time, it's going to be some technical-related thing that I'm interested in knowing more about. After that, the days vary, but if I'm not on an engagement then I'm going to be pulling out a problem that I know exists and seeing what I can do in terms of researching it more.

There are a few open-source projects that I've been tinkering with, so I might do something with them or it might be just product development: writing code.

If I'm on an engagement, then, of course, my time belongs to my client. If I'm engaged in a workshop, then that's a pretty clear process where you're just in a room with a bunch of people, working with them to try to improve their understanding of how to efficiently and effectively performance tune a system.

Geertjan Wielenga: In addition to that, you're also really involved with the conference scene, the community, and various conferences like JCrete. How did you get involved with all that?

Kirk Pepperdine: The same way everybody else does: I just showed up. You find like-minded people and you discuss tech.

Geertjan Wielenga: Why don't you simply do your work and go home at the end of the day? Why are you involved in the community at all?

Kirk Pepperdine: The people who I have a shared common interest with are showing up in the community. For me, this isn't a job; it's not really work. I can actually get paid to do this, which is quite amazing. It's a dream. How many people can say that they really enjoy what they're doing?

There are all kinds of really good things about this industry. I'm sitting here right now in Sydney looking at one of the harbors. Before we started talking, I was just looking out the window and developing software. I was thinking, "This is wonderful because next week I'll be in Atlanta and I'll be able to meet up with a whole bunch of different people, who are essentially friends."

We're all in the tech space and it's just great. For me, a conference is a chance to meet up with people, meet new people, and just talk about tech. Basically, I use giving a talk as a means to actually attend a conference.

On this trip, I'll be speaking at a JUG. I'm going to meet these people here in Sydney and it's wonderful.

I like to turn my talks into discussions and if that works, we'll have a great time. I'll get to meet a whole bunch of interesting people here in Sydney, which is fun.

JCrete started around 12 years ago. Heinz and I were talking about having a conference where we could get like-minded people together in the same place and create a fun environment. Life gets in the way sometimes and it wasn't until about five years later that we really started putting the whole thing together with the pushing of John Kostaras. We built a JCrete community and everything is open. We want to make sure that everything is shareable under Creative Commons and it's non-commercial.

Nobody there is directly trying to sell you something. There are no vendor booths. We've had people say they would like to sponsor the conference and we've turned them away. Everybody in the conference is on an equal footing. When you go to other conferences, you get the speakers' room and all this other stuff. I can tell you now that the only time I use the speakers' room is if I'm looking for someone. I generally don't stay in there because I want to be out where things are happening.