Vue.js Global conference: An interview with Gift Egwuenu

what is up welcome back to yet another video so in this video i am interviewing gift iguano and i'm doing that interview because i'm collaborating with the fjs global conference this is a conference organized by the same organizers as the excellent fugs amsterdam conference so i get to interview really good speakers that they selected we talk about their talk we go a little bit in depth on the deck so the guys can use that as promotion and then afterwards i have free reigns to talk to these amazing people and gift is one of them and i won't make the intro too long you'll just have to watch the interview i had a lot of fun and gift is such an inspirational person so without further ado this is the interview with gift eguenu for fujias global conference hello gift how are you welcome to the show thank you so much for having me i'm doing great i'm so happy you're here and so could you please um say your name the way it's supposed to be pronounced for the audience because i know for a fact when i record this intro i'm not gonna say it the right way and every interview i ask it like this so would you mind pronouncing it the correct way yeah sure it's gifts oh it's it's it's not so far from what i thought it would be nice so i might actually do that right what do you think it was i thought it was like a guenu something like this yeah that's correct actually yes it doesn't happen very often that i have it correct in those interviews so that's very nice um so um your name sounds quite exotic would you mind telling the audience where you're from yeah i am from nigeria which is in west africa originally i'm from a different state in nigeria called delta states but right now it is in lagos lagos nigeria okay yeah so you moved there when you were young or did you move there to get a job or something like that actually i was born here so my parents were here yeah okay cool so as you know this this interview is kind of in context for the 4gs global conference of in on which you are speaking so i kind of want to talk to you about your talk and then we can make sure that the organizers have a little bit to cut out right so to promote your talk and then after that we can go off and do whatever so what is your talk about okay i am going to be speaking about great song so my talk is um jump start for doing static side generation with great song whoa that is like my favorite stack right now which is really cool because i'm using that stack at the moment and i i'm so happy so if you had to do like a little elevator pitch of like i don't know not that long like what would the audience learn from your talk great i am also very like passionate about great song so um this talk would be um an introductory talk so i'm going to introduce the audience to greet some which is a static site generation tour for vgs i'll talk about like the benefits and the possibilities what you could build with gridson and how you can leverage the jumpstart to build blazing fast um releasing fast website see here blazing fast they are honestly i had like i didn't even do that much and i had a hundred percent score on google i saw that i am also a nerd so i i kind of work at that but that's pretty cool right yeah um so will you also be discussing um what kind of third parties work well because of course the gemstack site is kind of static and imagine i want search or user account or something like this um how would you do that yeah that is also going to be part of my talk there the great thing with the jumpstart and everything is that they're like a lot of third-party apis i can plug into your application to make it even more dynamic so for great sum one thing i really like about gridstorm is that there are so many um different um sources like for instance if you're using forestry the um cms there is like a gridson source plugin for that so there are different apis that you could integrate into your gridsum app some of them are already built as plugins that you could just install in your grid some app while others you like have to go through the route of like um installing it like as you would naturally build like a view js application but yeah i really like that the ecosystem just so many different things that you could do with the jumpstarter exactly to me it feels so nice that you if you don't want to think and just implement it and use the graphql locally it just works and if you want to go more complex you can just make like another little app that's your source plugin so will you also discuss source plugins and if so how are you planning to explain okay i i'm going to discuss source plugins i specifically wanted or i'll specifically talk about the different things that you could do so for instance i use um netlife cms which i think already has like a source plugin that i could plug into my gridsum app so i have like an illustration of how this would work i also have um different code examples to show you how you do naturally like in implement different source programs you might talk ah cool so do you have like a favorite cms to combine gritsum with or does it really matter right now i would be biased if i say i have one actually i've used several other ones apart from netflix cms but yeah i would say right now i'm using netlify and i say works well for me but i know that um the other one that i've tried i've tried forestry in the past and i've also tried um sanity so yeah okay yeah so i've used um netlify cms quite a bit myself and then i noticed when my site started to grow it was actually the interface it wasn't that easy to work with or it seemed to have some if i copy pasted some stuff into the text field it didn't really work how do you feel about it because i feel it might not be like it's great for simple stuff but it's not really finished maybe what do you think so what i do is i'll say my workflow is different so what i do is when i'm writing i would write like on a different application and copy so i use paper paper by dropbox and then copy the markdown which is already pretty formatted on to netflix ms so i don't naturally just write in it so for me it works exactly yeah yeah because i tried like this extra thing i had this little app that used netflix cms2 where i would log for each date my weight and i could make like a little graph and it had a bit of metadata around so i didn't really use the simple netlife like let's make a page but it actually had like a special field and that was quite challenging to use but maybe i'm just like doing some crazy stuff probably that's generally me so um [Music] as you are really not well of course you're not from europe or the us and this is where a lot of the internet stuff happens right it originated in europe and i think the internet is kind of a medium that like makes you free and it doesn't really matter where you are but i can however imagine that if you are where you are that you might sometimes feel a bit like the underdog um of like of the communities do you feel the same or am i just privileged and why did i only think that what is your take on that that's quite interesting so i have i have different stories to tell please please as many stories as possible okay so i started my career in tech um about three years ago and i became active in the community like a year after that and back here in vegas the good thing is that i'm mini lagos which is like the center of tech in nigeria so there are a lot of like communities there are google developer communities there there's different communities actually so i started attending meetups and from there i became active on twitter where i discovered that there i thought that they were just communities in nigeria but then i found out that there are communities all over the world there are conferences that as well i did not know that there were conferences i found out that your conference is from twitter and then i had like this crazy goal in 2017 that i need to actually attend one conference i don't know how it's going to happen but i'm going to say i said i applied for a lot of um diversity um applications so some conferences you can have that yeah exactly yeah you do feel that you need that right so you kind of play that card to get in because this is kind of interesting right i've interviewed quite a lot of women and we've talked about this the diversity thing and me as a man always thought yeah that's kind of annoying that you have to do that even though you're amazing at your job right and you know what they all told me i want to know if you think the same it's like yes i actually use that diversity card to get in and then show them how awesome i am and now i'm getting into all these conferences just sometimes playing that card but now they start to know me and i just i conquered the game let's say do you feel the same or is it different for you yeah i would say that that's exactly my expels what my experience has been like i got my first opportunity to attend a conference through this um process of like applying which i never thought would happen so like i said i applied for a couple 2017 in 2018 and when i was accepted the only barrier for me going to those conferences where because of my visa like ah yes yeah these are issues is something else so yeah that did not work out but also i did not give up so what i did was i decided that since i cannot go to these conferences why not study community here in lagos and have like the same experience try to create the same experience that i feel like people that go to conferences have so the one that really started everything for me was view victims i yes exactly yeah sorry i just acknowledged it because i love you fixing because it's such a nice concept would you mind for the people who don't know it explain what few fixings is and now it's called front-end foxes by the way yeah sure front-end foxes is a community that helps women or those that identify as search to getting to tech not just getting to take also like have a community of closing tech people that are interested in your growth so we also organize um workshops at conferences for people that are interested in learning safe view reacts and any other front-end technologies okay so you started up the the one in lagos and then what happened it started pretty much well the only the only thing that i found difficult was like securing venue and you know the whole logistics of like starting an event or yeah i was able to get that running and so far i've done about four workshops so i i did i did right side out with meetups where i would invite women and the thing was finding women was now difficult to attend this event i would i would um create a meet up link where people could register and i'll get like 80 percent guys and maybe 20 women and it was very difficult always telling people this is not a an event for me this is not like at some point they would come and come to the event and then i have to turn them back like i literally have to explain and explain and then some people were coming at me telling me that why is there a community for women and why is it not for everybody well this is because there is no official view meet up in nigeria that i know of so when i started view vixens everybody thought it was now the view mid-top so everybody wanted to attend that that was like one of that was one of the struggles i had to deal with but yeah right now i feel like a lot of people know that what we are doing and what we stand for so we don't i don't have so much of that problem anymore but yeah it was really great doing those workshops yeah so so you also do the jam stack meetup and stuff and so what if let's say where i am right now if i wanted to start some sort of community thing like what would be the first thing or the best thing that i should do in your opinion okay i would say the first thing to do is to first of all start a community that you're actually interested in so for instance sure you i'm interested in you jumpstart i'm very interested in jumpstart so that is that makes sense to start like a meet up on those technologies right but if something you're not interested in does it make sense to do that because you don't have one you don't have the interest so how do you expect to build of that community so yeah the first thing is to be very interested in whatever community you're trying to create okay well that that's kind of actually it sounds like a bit of an open door right but i think it's actually pretty important because a lot of people might want to start something because it's right now everybody does it or this is this yeah that i might get more views on twitter or something but actually if you're not passionate i can imagine it's really hard to actually because i'm assuming it's not the easiest thing to do because you've had to push quite hard for this right it's actually no easy i literally every time that i organize these things what really makes me happy at the end of the day is when i see people actually get knowledge from putting putting together those events or when people reach out to me and thank me that they really enjoyed having that workshop so that that really makes me happy but in terms of like what makes it difficult i think the most difficult thing for me organizing this is logistics finding a venue and then most of these things are free right so you have to pay for i have to pay for launch and yeah but it's great that right now i usually just get sponsorship from companies which that has helped improve everything a lot yeah so this is cool um so we just discussed this actually so we're just gonna go there because it's allowed i think if we if we publish this video on the right time because i didn't notice but you actually told me that you kind of transcended this location where you are and you made yourself so famous and good at your job and seen by people that you now actually landed a new job and i personally am very excited about it because i know where you're going to work and i know these guys are awesome in girls would you mind explaining um what's happened yeah sure so it's actually very interesting i um i left my job last month that was like end of last month and then i made it to it which is like some i felt like people do this right and i've never done it so i'm looking and before i made that sweet i had applied for over 100 rules where i was just getting rejections every day oh wow yeah it was quite difficult so i went on to um i sent out the streets saying that i'm looking for opportunities and if anybody knows of any available opportunities that they can reach out and that was when luke reached out to me and asked if i would be willing to work for partially people so for the people who don't know the passionate people is actually the company that's behind the fugees amsterdam event and the event that we're doing the the interview right now for so through your community you actually reached out and it worked and i'm yeah i'm super proud of you i think it's awesome i'm not even it's not my place to be proud you need to do that yourself but for me to see that it's super cool so congrats for that and so you'll be moving to amsterdam right yeah eventually like postcode 19 yes oh yeah yeah i'm so so excited so you've already i guess had a quite a lot of contact with them have you noticed any cultural differences already between you guys um so i've had like conversations with some people on the team and i feel like it's i've not started officially but i really feel like it's going to be a great journey for me i haven't noticed any yet but i feel like it will come up when i eventually start um working with them or when i move because i know that like moving is going to be a very big step change everything yeah so i feel like you you'll come up for right now i don't have any you will see um because i'm from amsterdam so i know how these people are and i moved from amsterdam to paris which is only five hours you move a whole continent right so for you your role is gonna change and for me my world already changed but it was just five hour car drive so i think it's it's an enriching experience and for me it changed my life for the for the better and i hope that does that for you too um so if you had um a big big billboard right and you put it on the highway where let's say a lot of people drive to work every day and like millions of people would see it what would you write for them on that billboard interesting so this year i had like i have a mantra which is do the work i i'm trying to like do this in terms of like how my entire journey is my career and everything basically i would like to put that phrase they do the work and what it means is you shouldn't let anything stop you from actually doing what you want to do like i'll just give an example you have like a project and you want to complete it but then you keep stalling and keep postponing it i've been in that i've been in that um situation and i know how it feels just have so many side projects and you don't get to do anyone but yeah just telling yourself that i could actually do this and putting all the work and they find out that oh this wasn't that difficult at all and yeah just that's the mindset that i want people to have go ahead and do the work i like it because i guess people like you and me we do because we're in the community and we see all this new stuff we constantly start new projects and i noticed myself also i tend to prefer the details over the full thing and so i like like a little interface with the form or something to make that perfect i like to just nerd on that and then suddenly oh i don't have a place to post the form to right so i think this is a very nice it resonates with me so thanks for that and i hope it resonates with the viewers also um and i know you are doing a lot of um conference style things however you didn't travel that too many that many right but you still probably get a lot of stickers what what do you do with them right now i would say initially i used to be like a very sick thicker nerd i really liked but right now i'm not in the face anymore even my laptop i took them all out so what i do is i i give them out i give them out so like i said i organized this meet up so i just use that as swag when i do those meet ups again it's the way to go i at one point got all the stickers i put them on my laptop i went to some fancy client office opened my laptop and i feel like this does not kind of fit i don't know so at one point i got a new work laptop that was much faster and then i didn't actually put the stickers on and now generally when i'm on a conference i'm the only one without stickers but then i get to give them away to my colleagues just like you so yeah thank you very much for talking to me is there maybe anything you would like to plug because i know for example you have a great youtube channel you have a great blog um why don't you plug to the people what you think um they should see from you yeah sure i i would say i have a youtube channel and it's my name gift if we know i also write um technical content on my blog that's also my name giftable.com and yeah you can also follow me on twitter i think i have like nice things going on there you do i know my handle is laura gifts um with an underscore oh i wanted to ask you where does that name come from okay it's different story my name is gift right my first name is gift so i got laura from oh my god i watched oh boy here we go [Laughter] when i was when i was in secondary school i think that was when i stay using this name or my first year in uni i remember i watched this series and her name was laura and i i really liked her so i just picked up that name and it doesn't really have it doesn't really have any specific meaning it was just that at that moment i really enjoyed the movie and i just took care of me i love this like when you're young you choose something and you're stuck with it and exactly people's like game handles like you're a playstation gamer and then at the playstation one you chose some crazy stuff you cannot change it so i'm guessing it's the same right it's also my email address and i don't want to change it yeah it shows your your history i like it yeah all right so thank you very much and um i hope to see you in person soon because i live quite close to amsterdam so whenever i'm actually there next week but i'll probably miss you but next time thank you very much and i'll see you soon i hope see ya thank you