Building Communities and Legacies with Mohammed Aboullaite – Techstrong Unplugged EP48

Welcome back to Textron Unplugged. My name is Cassandra Chin and today we're here with Mohamed Abbu. Thank you for having me.

Can you introduce yourself? Uh, of course I am Mohamed. Uh, I am originally Moroccan, lost in Stockholm, Sweden.

Um, much different count country in terms of culture and weather obviously, but uh, it is what it is. Uh, I work as a backend engineer in Spotify. I'm also one of the Java champions ha north to be part of, and also Google developer experts in Google Cloud Technologies and also a community member of different communities.

So how did you initially get into technology? Um, it wasn't actually planned. I wasn't one of the kids, like you for example, that is really into tech and got involved in an early age.

Uh, I was just like a, a normal kid following school, uh, the Moroccan system. And uh, then, uh, there was like, kind of my study path was either mathematics or software engineering. And then I ended up in software engineering because like mathematics was too much theoretical for me.

Too much. Yeah, concepts, um, software engineering was much more fun 'cause like you can have hands-on experience, build stuff, play with it. And then when I tried it first that Sparkle started where it's like you build your first hello, your first, your first hello or demo your first HTML website and that like sparkle joy.

And I was like, yeah, this is, this is probably where I want to be. And uh, here I am. That's A lot of fun.

Yeah. How was your experience with communities? Communities?

Uh, so that part I got, uh, involved at an early age and, uh, my first involvement was while I was civil students in Morocco, Java user group together with Bodi, which you already know, and Faisal, which are the f both of them are founders of the infamous Devox Morocco conference. And so I got involved at an early stage, right when I was, uh, a student. I was attending some, the meetups that they had.

We had monthly meetups. And then after graduation, I sit still kept involved after a few years, they, um, had I I, they gave me the great honor to be a ju leader, so I joined them as a JU leader. I'm still am, uh, Morocco Jug jug leader.

So yeah, so it was an early career move from my side to be part of the community and eternally grateful to bother Fa and also another guy who, it was called Hassan, who basically, so I worked with him in my, probably the first company that I worked at. And we were trying Docker before even the first release. 0 release.

And then we kickstarted the Docker community and he supported us to kickstart that work. So I'm eternally engaged for, for those three guys, for the mentorship, the community involvement, all the guidance that they gave me throughout the years. I think it's really great you had people like that supporting you.

Exactly. I think mentorship or finding the people that could mentor you, especially in your early career can, it's a decisive and very important moment in your early career. So find a mentor that you trust that is supportive, that you can always go to, to ask for advices, both personal and career advices.

What is, uh, discussed with them? What's your next move? Where, what bad?

Discuss with them technology, discuss with them everything. And having that mentor, uh, person that you trust or could be not only one person. I had three mentors basically, which each, each one of them, uh, I went to for a specific, uh, type of questions, but eight of them helped with me in a specific way, in a different way to be the person that I am today.

So having a mentor, especially in early career, it's really important. Do you ever feel like you give back today? I'm trying to, uh, by staying involved in the community, um, both Morocco, Doug and Devox Morocco.

Um, I'm also very proud of a project that I started together with, uh, Moroccan based community guys, which we called gigs, blah, blah. Uh, so basically this is an initiative that discusses, uh, for, uh, new joiners or early or beginners in IT industry. Everything in tech, uh, DevOps, Java, backend front and ai, you name it, and Moroccan dialect and Moroccan language.

Uh, when I started 11 years back, maybe more, all the resources that I had to learn was either in French or in English. There was not that entry level. The entry level was a little bit complex.

You need to learn the things, especially in the beginning with a for real language. 'cause like it's a second, third language for us both for us and English. Uh, so behind gigs, blah blah, me and a couple of folks, we said how we can change that.

Why we not provide a platform for the Moroccan youth, especially the one interested in software engineering. To have a platform where you can tune in every week. Now it's like, it's a weekly podcast where we discuss everything around technology, uh, livestream.

We allow them to ask questions in specific topics. We cover wide areas of topics who are almost in our 200 episodes. We're going week in, week out to discuss with the Moroccan community, especially the youth ones around everything in tech.

So I feel like that's one way of me giving back to the community for all the things that I've learned got from it. And uh, saying a small thank you to the, to the community, especially the Moroccan community that's helped me so much. How Long has this platform been in development?

I think it has been more than five or six years. Uh, it started around 20 18, 20 19. And the idea was basically to have, as I mentioned this, uh, monthly on Devo.

So we started as a monthly cadence once a month and then we gained a lot of Memento, a lot of people got interested, then we started to have it every other week. And then we turned out to be weekly. And a lot of people got involved, a lot of people joined.

A lot of people went because that's live, people come and join. But it still, since four years or three years at least, were week in, week out, we took August off because we want to have a break. And then we have that every week, week in, week out, uh, discussion around, uh, everything in, in Moroccan dialect.

So it's been almost five years, maybe more, uh, in, in the making. Is this closer to like an open source project or a made up? Uh, so we started online and we stayed online because the impact is bigger.

Uh, Morocco is a large country, not as large as the US for example, but it still has a large country and move in from one city to to another. It's quite challenging. So if you have a physical meetup, the maximum GA is 2050, let's say 100, let's say 1000.

But you're still limited for the impact you make to the local community within that city. Uh, and then you need either, some people need to travel and travel can be cumbersome or we need to move around different cities to share the knowledge and make it, uh, yeah, do the stuff that we want to do. And both ways, almost ideal, they are kind of limited online is offering us this scale, even if we lacking the, uh, face-to-face hallway track discussion or so allowing us that you can tune in online from the convenience of your living room and join us in the discussion.

Or if you miss the episode, then we publish it the next, it's silly YouTube in Twitch and then you can follow it from your favorite podcast platform. Apple PO Apple Podcast, Spotify, uh, Google Podcast. But that's scaled now.

So we offer different mediums where we can listen to the podcast. So online is definitely, uh, the way that's helping us to grow. And that's mainly from an impact and scale, uh, point of view.

We organize, we used to organize maybe less now because some of us went different ways, but we used to organize meetups just for that to meet the community. And every year we organize an conference, which is online. It's the same concept, but it's just like five days, five days of specific topic.

We have five tracks full day of, uh, a discussion around a specific topic, we call it blah, blah. And then we have another day, which is offline. So we gather the whole community during one day in that community conference where we meet everyone together.

So we try to mix and match best of both words, having that all online experience allow us to scale and reach as much people as possible. But we're all also trying to keep that, uh, face-to-face discussion, meeting the community where they are, uh, and having those lats and brilliant moments in real life as well. I think it's really great that you can scale and reach a lot of people while not losing that face-to-face time.

Exactly. I mean, there are pros and cons for both options, but yeah, we, we try as much as we can to have the best of both words. I believe you also helped run the Devox Morocco conference.

Yes. How was your experience with that? Um, I'm very proud of that project and how it grow.

Uh, kudos to the founders, uh, bother and faisal for the amazing work they did during the last 12 years or so. So it was originally called Reb and I the first ever reb I was an attendee there, so I was an attendee, uh, in the two or three editions. And then I joined as part of the team in 2014 or 15.

And that was a great experience for me. Uh, and then Devox Morocco is, is a Devox brand, so you have all the great stuff from all the devox around the world in Morocco. Uh, all the speakers you included, you are giving a keynote in there, sneak peek.

So it's, it's gonna be, it's one of the greatest technology conference, not only in Morocco but in the Middle East region and North Africa. I probably should say the whole Africa as well. So we have a variety of tracks, uh, sex tracks, so maybe more covering a variety of things.

Backend, frontend, DevOps, ai. Now everyone is speaking about AI from technology experts to share their knowledge. So I think it's, uh, it's a really important, uh, conference and that's added a lot of value to the tech ecosystem, not only in Morocco, but in Africa as a whole.

I think you've really given back to a lot to the developers of Morocco. I am trying to, I, I, as I told you in the beginning, I love being part of the community. I feel like the community gave me a lot, uh, and I've tried to give back and help as much people as I can from the community work that I do.

'cause like at the end of the day, what people remember is the legacy that you left and leaving that good legacy, uh, as small as it can be, is something that I'm always looking forward to. And I hope that, uh, through that work, through that diversity and variety of work that I'm getting involved with, that I can try to leave a good legacy for the Moroccan youth and the Moroccan ecosystem as a whole. Thank you for all you've done for the Moroccan community.

Thank you for having me. And uh, it's been such a great discussion. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Cheers.