Pj Metz
Developer Community Manager
San Mateo, California, United States
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Pj Metz is a former high school English teacher and current Program Manager of Student Communities at GitHub. Pj spent 11 years in the classroom teaching High School English. Then, in May of 2020, he started learning to code and began to live stream his sessions learning C# and Node.js shortly after. His previous role at GitLab was all about bringing DevSecOps into the classroom by making GitLab available to educators around the world, followed by time spent as a community manager for ProjectDiscovery helping the bug bounty hunter community learn and grow. He has presented on a variety of topics at several events like Start.Dev.Change, Codeland, DevOpsDays Chicago, DevRelCon, and Orlando Code Camp.
Pj loves 80’s music, including modern music that sounds like it was made in the 80’s, 90’s internet culture, and poetry. He’s a published poet and a musician sometimes. He loves chatting and being on podcasts, shows, and live streams.
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You're not an Imposter, you're a Life-Long Learner
We talk about imposter Syndrome a lot in tech, but as much in schools: students don't seem to often have imposter syndrome. That's because imposter syndrome comes from the expectations you hold for yourself. Students KNOW they're students and thus expect to be learning. We are all always learning, but imposter syndrome seeks to tell us that we should already know better, even when it's impossible to do so. This session will give you a toolbox to replace that thinking with a desire for opportunity rather than the pre-conception that allows a confidence killer to take root.
Drop Your Insecurity and Get Into Security: Notes from the New Kid
Many hands make light work, so the adage goes. And while it directly flies in the face of other idioms like, "Too many cooks in the kitchen," it's well known that we need bodies to accomplish goals. It wasn't one person who launched a rocket directly into outer space, it wasn't one person who turned the punch cards of weaving looms into an M2 Macbook ... these accomplishments were envisioned and executed by teams of people.
So where are they in security? The Us Government has said we need to fill 700,000 open cybersecurity roles in the coming years. These are well paying jobs with plenty of opportunity for growth. Why are so many positions open? Well, as someone who just joined, let me tell you about my gigantic terrifying anxiety and presuppositions about security that kept me from joining. And how I eventually took a leap and did it.
Am I out there pentesting and hacking and donning a cloak to social engineer people's passwords? Naw, I'm the community Manager! Have I undertaken work to start learning that? Yes to Pentesting, no to the cloak. I can hack now!*
This talk aims to talk about what keeps people out and how we can get more folks into security, and thus make a safer internet and world for everyone. Attendees can expect to learn about ways we can help bring more people in to a career where they'll learn how to keep bad folks out and have some concrete ways we can dispell myths about security and bring the excitement we all already have to the wider world.
*I mean, script kiddie stuff, but I'm working on it!
The DevOps Poetry Slam: Selections
Pj will present selections of DevOps-based slam poetry in an effort to show how the two are related. Pj will do some loud performing in this one, so come through if you like Poetry, Devops, or yelling.
What I learned as a Newbie: Lost in the Docs
When I first started learning to code, I had a wealth of resources around me: two mentors, a paid online learning module with Codecademy, and an ever-growing list of friends who would show up to my streams to help me learn. Notice I didn't say docs:
I couldn't depend on docs to help me when I was lost because I was new and almost every doc went completely above my head.
"Ah, but Pj, docs aren't for brand new coders! It's for people looking to learn about something specific! It's for experienced developers!"
I disagree. Docs are for everyone.
This talk will aim to answer questions like:
"What am I assuming about the person reading these docs?"
"How can I help make my docs better?"
"Who's job is it to make the docs?"
"What SHOULD docs function be?"
While this talk focuses on docs, it is not a presentation strictly for Technical Writers. This talk is for everyone who ever read a doc top to bottom and didn't find what they were looking for and then found the answer in a 10-year-old Stack overflow question.
BSides Orlando 2023 Sessionize Event
Pj Metz
Developer Community Manager
San Mateo, California, United States
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