Diversifying DevOps – Hugo Castellanos, Latinos in Tech Podcast

This is Textron TV. Hey everyone, welcome to another techstruck TV interview, you know our next interviewee and this next segment is really an anticipation of devops world, which is happening this week up in Orlando at the world Marriott. You know, we're gonna be up there meaning Tech Strunk TV, we're gonna be streaming live during the event.

So do if you log into Tech strong TV, you'll see us up there live. We might even have this channel in life. After his presentation there, but for today I we're trying to and we've been doing this now for a couple weeks both here on texture on TV and devops World.

We're trying to give you a flavor of what to expect at. com is devops world and it's predecessor. Jenkins world was always a major Stakeholder flag holder in the year, you know for for devops enthusiasts in years past.

It's been remote in California a lot. I think the most recent one before covid physical devops world was over at the Moscone Center. And when I was an amazing amazing event, I remember almost like it was yesterday this year.

We're on the East Coast over in Orlando. If you still time actually to register if you are planning to be in the Orlando area or near maybe Atlanta down here in South Florida Tampa Bay Area anywhere, you know, Orlando has a great new airport. They just opened a beautiful new terminal and there's still time come on down to devops road.

You can get details. com. Check it out right now though.

I want to introduce you. This gentleman his name is ug. O Milano and I mispronounced that he's gonna do it much better than me.

We'll go. Give us your name. Island thank you for having me my name is Ugo Castellanos.

You can call me Hugo that's fine. I know we we speak many languages here in the tech world. We speak JavaScript and Python and you know Spanish English French.

What have you just happy thrilled to be here and looking forward to devops world? Absolutely. Thank you so Ugo before we jumps World in your evolvement in it a little bit about who you are and what you got going on.

Yeah. So Mom musician turned hardwar engineer turn podcaster. I started my career in music in Central Florida producing bands and working recordings Studios had some really good mentoring Mentor boss of mine.

Push me to get my doubly degree and I got my dream at the time of getting a job in Silicon Valley. So working hard way engineering for almost 10 years places like, you know semiconductor industry and after doing that for quite a bit, you know when 2020 happened I decided that I want to live from my life my own terms. So I decided to embrace podcasting as a career and that's what I've been doing since and I relocated to my hometown of Orlando, Florida and I Having a blast I'm having a blast.

So right now I'm running Latinos Who attack it's a podcast about the Latinos are working the tech industry that work at places like Google Facebook Cloud bees. I've had Cloud Beast people there before and it's all about how can we bring more talented into the industry from unconventional sources. I must strong believer that you cannot be what you cannot see So the idea the goal of Latinos attack is to bridge that Gap be that Beacon that shows people.

How can you bridge your career into Tech? I love it. I love that.

Man, you don't know this but down here in South Florida. We're based in Boca Raton, and we do we work with a Tech camp or tech school called Boca code And these are people there's a oh, he has a variety of courses that they teach there but we offer something called engineering that changed scholarship where we pick a underrepresented Community member and we sponsor their 12. They have this intense twelve week cohort on becoming a software developer and it's about a 10 or 12,000 course and we we picked one winner of each one fall and one spring semester winner and that we just actually gonna announce this Falls winner in the next week, but I from where you're coming from with that.

I love that. I love the cause and I it's so good that you you went after Silicon Valley you did your thing. And now you brought it home and and you doing it for the community.

Of course. Orlando has a vibrant vibrant Hispanic Latino Community many many folks who might know Puerto Rico have a migrated to the Orlando area over the last, you know, five six seven years, maybe more defined. Yep, and that's great.

I mean, it looks same thing down here in South Florida, right we have Huge I mean, you know, that's that's where we live. So I love what you doing. I think it's so dead on we'll talk more about that.

Even off camera. I want to talk to you. But let's talk devops world now if you can a little bit.

So how did you first become aware of devops world Cloud bees? Well good. Let's start.

Yeah, so so 2021. I I had a an informational interview with Marcos Grimaldo. He's a he's part of the cloud Beast team and he mentioned the come the conference and at the time 2021.

We were just coming out of the the pandemic right? Like we're still in the middle of all the challenges going on logistically worldwide. So conferences were not really in my mind at the time.

I was more concerned about okay. I just move back to Florida just bought a house. I'm learning to work remotes how a lot of us, you know, a lot of us went through that transition and then late 2021 early 2022.

I started going back to conferences in person to talk about what I've learned. My my main skill is a technical marketing. So talking about public speaking talking about how to do elevator pitches for students for college students.

And then I started going back to technical conferences in Myspace. So things like podcast movement and then Cloud bees popped up and I'm local I'm in Orlando so I have to go to devops world. So it's one of those things that it was a perfect alignment right place right time and I look forward to going and adding some value to the the conference.

Absolutely, and it's great. It's great that we You know look Orlando's a huge conference area to begin with right? We have all the hotels and Conference facilities and everything and I I think it was so great the cloud bees, you know decided To do this show in Orlando, you know because as I mentioned earlier the Heritage that was doing it on the west coast and I think before covid came they were actually planning one in Las Vegas, which look I don't have anything against Vegas either but for me personally, it's a lot easier going to Orlando than than flying and flying home from manually.

Yeah. It's about the community. It's about finding a place to get us together.

I it's funny. I just got back from podcasting conference in Dallas and people are in the group chats sharing all the info about a tourism in Dallas. And listen.

I'm not here for tourism. I'm here to connect with others. I'm here to stay in the conference rooms.

I'm here to Network. I'm here to add value. So there might be a little bit of that like if you last day of the conference you skip out early and you go to one of the attraction parks, that's fine do your thing, but I think it's important to be engaged, you know, especially if you're you know your company sending you and all that.

Um also a big part is the the global aspect of it, you know, like guys, it's no secret that remote work is it's what's happening right now and a lot of people relocated from Silicon Valley to different parts of the country to Texas and the South and I mean, whatever parts of the world. Yeah, so and case in point, you know, when when I look at my podcast because I run Latinos Who attack and I also run a Spanish podcast called connexiones podcast. My audience is US Mexico, Argentina Colombia Spain all over the world.

I have people in New Zealand that listen to my content and to my Spanish one of the great things about the internet. Yeah. Yeah, it's worldwide and it's Evergreen, you know, like because those tips where I thought somebody the tricks on, you know how to get referrals in tech jobs.

Those are good in 2018 2021 2030 So the fact that that company there forever, it's it's what keeps me going. absolutely, and you know, it's also important to remember we'll go that that we're one world. But we don't you know, though the Earth spins at one speed round and round when it comes to things like devops and other areas of Technologies.

Some areas are more accelerated than others. Right? com and Tech strung TV on our you know, Geo kind of analytics.

I mean certainly devops is mainstream in the US devops is very mainstream in Mia, you know Europe. I've done, you know, I've done devops events and devseek apps events in China and Singapore and we put on the devops India Summit every I mean India is a very technically Advanced country, but you know what there are places in Africa and there are places in Latin America South America. Where devops is Just Happening Now right?

It's just starting to happen. It's starting to bloom. It's starting to really take root right?

Maybe they're 18 months three years behind. Where let's say Silicon Valley is or something like that or London? And it's important.

important that there are people like you out there talking Tech with them and in the language, you know the language they speak we You know, we I don't think we should underestimate how important that Global audiences and and how you know, we can help accelerate. adoption and their success with this stuff Let's zero in specifically on devops world though next week. What are some of the things you're going to be doing?

So I'm gonna be hosting a workshop on sourcing talent and sourcing Global Talent. I find that there's been a number of communities that have sprung, you know, Grassroots communities of tech people globally in not only across the us but also all of Latin America and Europe and I think that those are great sources potential sources of talent But again, you can have the best talent, but if people don't know about it, then what what's it good for so when we talking about the conventional talents and how to tap into it for devops and security rules. There's a big.

Task of Education about what is actually what does it mean to work in devops? You know, if you ask my niece, you know, hey what those Uncle Hugo do for work? Well, he starts at a computer for eight hours a day, you know, and and that's you because you're my computer world, right?

But again when you go to that second level of okay are you doing yeah. Are you running devops? Are you running testing?

You know, what are you doing? You know, so amen. So it's it's a big task of Education.

They're gonna be talking about how to tap into those communities for recruiting purposes and when you talk about People that want to work remote and they will not apply to your company unless you give them the option to work hundred percent remote great. I know of the top of my head I know six communities that are only of people like that, you know, like tech people have the tech skills people that are willing people that speak the language, you know people that doesn't matter they live in Uruguay or Mexico or Portugal but complete completely profession in English, so I'm gonna be teaching about how to tap into them. And also, you know some of them conventional ways of tapping into talent.

I find that we have this. This concept of scripts these scripts this negative scripts that we have that we internalize that. Oh if they if they didn't go to a Stanford or an MIT.

Are they really good? And yeah, that's that's not true, you know Talent comes from anywhere. But you need to give them a job.

You need to give them a chance. So so that's what I'm going to be talking about. I'm gonna be doing a worship on that on Thursday 29th of September.

I look so much forward to it. My first time at devops world and a one of many more to come. That's fantastic.

What a great idea for a workshop too, right? you There's such a talent shortage, right we have that's over here. How many jobs are open in cybersecurity how many more developers we need?

And we you know what, there's only so many kids who go to Stanford or MIT or any of these You know fancy well-known kind of programs like that the bulk of the people for these jobs. A lot of them are self-taught a lot of them go to a lot of they don't go to a university. They may go to something like the Boca code school.

I was talking to you about Right here in Boca Raton and they're taking an intense boot camp, but you know what I find is a better measure for Success who go passion. If people are passionate about that, they have a burning fire in their belly about wanting to do be a cyber security person or become an abstract person or software developer or QA or whatever. That that goes a long way towards success and that's what companies want to harness.

Right, they want people who are passionate who take pride in what they do and and that's a great indicator of success. I love what I'm gonna be up there, but I'm not gonna be able to sit in on your Workshop. Unfortunately, I'll be doing interviews all that day.

But I want you to stop by the booth. It's up by our interview. Oh, sorry.

Okay Center there and we'll talk about how the workshop went. It sounds fantastic. Let me ask you I know you said it but I'm gonna ask you to repeat it for people who want to clue in or tune in to your podcast.

What's their names? And where do they listen to them? com is where they have access to all the good stuff show notes tools interview guides all that good stuff.

And only for your for the show Allen. I am actually launching the fourth season of Latinos Who attack to match Hispanic Heritage Month in 2022, so I'm gonna be putting new episodes starting the first week of October so excited for this and thank you for having me. For you man.

That's fantastic Google. Keep up the great work. I look forward to seeing you later this week up in Orlando, man.

Likewise Allen. Thank you so much. All right, keep up the great work.

Thanks Latinos. Who code is that? It Latinos who Tech who Tech?

Excuse me. It's not only code. That's not only code.

There's that much. It's more detecting coding that yeah, there's the Dark Side of tech marketing too. You know, there's the Dark Side of sale tomorrow friends are in Tech marketing, but hey including me.

We'll see you this week in devops World. Hope to see you this week at devops world as well. It's in Orlando Marriott World Center.

com for more information for now though. This is Alan Shimmel for text drunk TV. We're going to take a break.

We'll be right back.