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Christina Keelan - WTR 9
Women’s Tech Radio - Episode 9
Christina Keelan |WTR 9
January 14, 2015
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DESCRIPTION: Christina is the community manager for rethinkdb and discusses the various tools and experiences she’s had with its global community!
ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio, episode 9.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they are successful in technology careers.
ANGELA: My name is Angela.
PAIGE: And my name is Paige.
ANGELA: Paige, I would like to know, what is your favorite video game?
PAIGE: Of all time?
ANGELA: Sure, of all time.
PAIGE: Okay, probably still Legends of Zelda.
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: I think that I spent more hours playing that game than almost any other game.
ANGELA: Wow, okay.
PAIGE: I have fond memories of sitting in my basement as a kid and playing away.
ANGELA: Is that Nintendo?
PAIGE: Yeah, Nintendo.
ANGELA: Regular Nintendo?
PAIGE: Yes.
ANGELA: NES is what they called it?
PAIGE: Yeah, gold cartridge and NES.
ANGELA: Oh, yeah right, the gold one. Yes. Yes. Yes. I had that one.
PAIGE: Nice.
ANGELA: Mine is -- I did have some old games like that, but Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong for Super Nintendo.
PAIGE: Yeah.
ANGELA: Seriously, all three of them. I just -- I would sit on a banana chair with my remote control and just play it for hours and hours.
PAIGE: That’s hilarious that you played on a banana chair.
ANGELA: Yeah, okay, because of the monkey?
PAIGE: Yeah.
ANGELA: Well, today we are interviewing?
PAIGE: Christina Kellan, and she is a community manager at RethinkDB.
ANGELA: But before we get into that interview, I’d like to talk about DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean is a simple cloud hosting provider, dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. The users can create a cloud server in under a minute, and that is just $5.00 a month for 512 megabytes of RAM, 20 gigabytes SSD, one CPU, and one terabyte transfer. DigitalOcean has data centers in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, and London. And the interface is simple intuitive control control, which power users can replicate on larger scale with company’s straightforward API.
PAIGE: And if you’d like to get started with DigitalOcean and a $10.00 credit, use the code wtrdecember at checkout.
ANGELA: We started by asking our guest what her role is at RethinkDB.
CHRISTINA: I am the community manager. I wear a lot of hats over there right now, because we’re still in our startup mode. So, I’m doing everything from organizing events like conferences, podcasts, webcasts, meet up events. We do a lot of user outreach. We have this really cool project called Shirts for Stories where users tell us what they’re doing and we send them shirts. So I get to spearhead that little project, which has been great. Lots of social media. It’s pretty awesome being able to talk to everybody on Twitter, Facebook, you know, all the usual outlets. I’m just doing a lot of -- a little bit of everything right now while we’re still in our early stages of our community. I’ve only been there for about -- I think seven or eight months now and I’m basically the community team. We’ve just very slowly been growing. Well, it’s been picking up a lot lately, but that’s where we are right now.
PAIGE: So, you’re an open source company, correct?
CHRISTINA: Yep. Yep.
PAIGE: And being an open source company, how do you feel like that impacts the role of community for you, or how community is involved?
CHRISTINA: Oh, it’s huge. It’s so important. We have - It’s actually kind of cool, because just like a little side story -- we have some people who actually work on our team now who contributed, you know, building drivers for us, just as their own open source contributions, and then they ended up becoming a part of our team. They hired and flew out here, and now they work for us. So, obviously open source is amazing, amazing, amazing for community development with our company. I’m able to reach out to everybody, like in GitHub, find out a little bit more about them. Kind of, while they’re contributing to our projects and then reach out to them on Twitter and send them shirts. You know, maybe they’re speaking at their local meet-ups and I get to help make sure that they’re able to make that experience real exciting for their community and their areas. It’s really kind of awesome, because we’re still small enough to where we can have that really great communication with people and talk to them really, you know, one of one, Skype with them. Somebody mentioned, today actually, that they wanted to use us in Hackathon, and I just told them to email me and we’re already getting them set up, and it turns out he wants to speak at a meet-up and it just really starts evolving from there. So, these early stages with projects like this are really, really exciting.
ANGELA: Are there any online tools that help you do your job best with social media? I know like Hootsuite would be a really obvious one, where you can send you message out to a bunch of different platforms at once, but is there anything else?
CHRISTINA: Yeah, you know, I actually don’t use Hootsuite. Which we’ve gone back and forth on everything that we want to use, and we’re kind of in trial and error mode right now. I mean, things that we love, I use things like Tweetdeck for Twitter and whatnot, which is pretty helpful for me. But we love Slack so much at our office, and we can get everything feeding into there so I can see what’s going on with Twitter while I’m also talking to everybody on MyTeam. While I’m also talking to people -- I’ve contributed closely with Compose and they set me up on their Slack, and so we’re talking all over the place. So I would say Slack and -- I don’t -- I’m not stoked off Tweetdeck but it helps me. You know, just all those little -- those guys for now. Nothing too exciting just yet.
PAIGE: Do you find one platform more influential for your community than another?
CHRISTINA: Well, I do know that our community uses GitHub, IRC a ton, Stack Overflow. I know that they’re reaching out a lot in those ways. A lot of our engineers, they’re so amazing, they’ll be in IRC like literally 24 hours a day there is always somebody in there. So that’s probably one of the best ones as far as that goes. And I think -- Twitter has been really great for us too. We don’t really use things like -- we’ll update things like Facebook or whatever. Meetup has been amazing as far as getting people involved in events, especially outside of the bay area. So, you know, those guys have been really helpful too.
PAIGE: So you guys use Meetup to run stuff other places as well?
CHRISTINA: Yeah, we have our Meetup for office events. Then we have one that we started for San Francisco groups so then people could -- actually, we just had our first out of state group get started, which is in Israel, which is amazing. So, they’re able to use what we’ve built sort of as a template with our San Francisco group, and then they’re able to create it in their community and just sort of build their event similarly. We also have this really cool project that we’re trying to do where it’s sort of like a meet up in a box. So, the folks who are getting events started around are are able to get a box sent to them with some t-shirts, some raffle prizes, just so that -- we take our -- the experience that we’re creating for our users is something that’s so important to us beyond just the technology. We want them to feel warm and welcome and comfortable and like it’s family, because that’s how we feel when we’re in the office. And that’s how we feel we’re building this product. And so, we’ve created this little meet up in a box so we can send it to people to recreate that environment when we’re not going to be there to help them with it. So hopefully it works out. We’ve only just recently sent them out, so it’s all just started to get built up. And like I said, same with Meetup.com, we’re able to kind of get -- we’re able to find out who’s putting those events together. We also have people who reach out to us on Twitter a lot, mostly though about events.
ANGELA: So, do you find -- I find with social media things that it is not an 8:00 to 5:00 job.
CHRISTINA: No.
ANGELA: Okay, you agree.
CHRISTINA: Yep.
ANGELA: How do you manage that? I do social media for myself and the also for Jupiter Broadcasting, the maker of Women’s Tech Radio. So I have two different twitters. So I have to constantly log out of Instagram to log into the other one, but doing it from my mobile is the easiest because I have three kids. Do you run into that issue of multiple profiles? Do you run separate browsers? What do you do to manage that?
CHRISTINA: You know what, and that’s actually why I mentioned Tweetdeck earlier because I do my personal account and then I do the (unintelligible) account and Tweetdeck has actually been really helpful at that. I know that it’s a little overwhelming when they look at it initially. They’re like, oh my God so many tweets all at once just coming right at you.
ANGELA: Yeah, but so is Twitter. Twitter just in general.
CHRISTINA: Oh my gosh, even looking at it on my phone, it’s just sort of like blasting you. And I’m guilty of it too. I’ll send out like five tweets in five minutes and I’m like, oh I need to lay off a little bit. But I’ve actually found that Tweetdeck has been really helpful for that. I’m able to look at multiple accounts at once and it manages pretty easily. And then, like I said, with Slack we’re able to feed it through there. So, if I’m busy talking to people on there and trying to organize stuff in Slack then I’m able to check out Twitter too. You just kind of -- I found a little bit of a rhythm for it, so it’s definitely crazy because you’ll be bore at 3:00 in the morning with crazy insomnia and you’re looking at your phone and you’re like, oh so and so talked to me, I better reach out to them. I better shoot so and so an email because they mentioned something. Or go and make sure that I’m answering any questions that are on there or forwarding any questions. But I think that’s sort of the funny thing about the tech world in general is that it sort of never sleeps. That’s what one of my bosses told me. I was like, oh yeah, you don’t’ say.
ANGELA: Especially with a worldwide audience.
CHRISTINA: Absolutely. I mean, there’s days where I’m talking to somebody in Brazil and then the next minute somebody in England, and then the next minute is just somebody in Los Angeles. So, you’re on a lot of time zones at once, but that’s sort of what’s so exciting and fun and motivating about it. I love it.
ANGELA: Yeah, I totally understand, because we when we do our shows we try to time it so that people -- not this show in particular, because it’s prerecorded, but our other shows we try to do it live so that people can participate and it’s really hard to find the sweet spot, because everybody is all over the world.
CHRISTINA: It’s so, so hard. We have that problem too, because we do -- we’ll try and do a nice -- you know, like a webcast to coincide with a release so that people can ask questions.
ANGELA: Oh yeah.
CHRISTINA: You know, maybe a couple days after. They can play around and then they can ask us questions right after, and talk to the founders or whoever built it. It’s really, really awesome, except I feel bad for the guys on the other side of the world who are logging in at 3:00 a.m. to make sure that they can chat with us, but that shows this amazing community, and this amazing loyalty, and this amazing support. And I think that’s why we love it so much. I’ve worked in other industries before, and literally the world does shut off at 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m. Like, you can’t send an email after that point. But, you know, I’ll send an important email at 2:00 in the morning if I have to and it will get answered at 2:15.
ANGELA: Right.
PAIGE: So, is this your first job in a tech company?
CHRISTINA: Oh yeah. I actually have- -- it’s really strange, I have a background in social work and in fashion design so -- but surprisingly, they actually work -- it was a perfect mix to go into community, so it doesn’t really feel that odd except for all of the tech that I’m learning now.
PAIGE: Do you find yourself kind of learning the field as you go through? Has that been difficult for you?
CHRISTINA: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s -- there’s days when I will just have those moments where I’m like, oh my gosh I suck at this. What am I doing? They’re going to be so -- you know, you have those freak out moments which are totally irrational and I have the most amazing cofounders that I can tell them, I’m having a moment and they’re like you’re fine, what are you doing? So, it’s really awesome to have that support, but that’s why I joined some local groups like Women Who Code. Obviously, I’m not able to create the content for a meet up for Women Who Code, but I can utilize my other skills. Like, I can help reach out to people in the community to help be a host venue or to help provide some resources and support. And along the way, then I can go to those meet ups and I can sit, and I can learn Java Script for a couple hours. You know, and I can meet other women who did similar things. Learning the different paths that they took to get to the tech world, I’m finding that not a lot of people have -- it’s not totally different for all of us. A lot of us do come from drastically different backgrounds. For one reason or another we ended up in this world and it’s actually worked out amazingly. And so that’s why I’m so excited to help out -- to participate in this podcast or to help out with Women Who Code, or to be able to do what I do with Rethink because it’s just such a motivating, exciting world to be a part of. And to continue to learn and never stop learning, and never stop being inspired by these people that you’re working with. It’s crazy. Because you think, oh I graduated college, it’s done. You know, you go into your 9:00 to 5:00 job and that’s it, but it doesn’t feel like that. Not a single day or week go buys that something exiting hasn’t happened. I love that. Oh my gosh.
PAIGE: Yeah, it’s just so vast.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, it’s amazing. And all the different roles that you can play here and it’s wild.
PAIGE: So, do you find the women’s groups is helpful for you in comparison with just a generic meet up?
CHRISTINA: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, a huge part of my job is helping to put these meet ups together, but with Women who Code and with RethinkDB. Two completely different audiences. And no one is better than the other, necessarily, it’s just that when I’m with Women Who Code I’m able to sit, I’m able to learn. I ask the questions and kind of share similar stories. And then when I’m at the RethinkDB, I mean, we’re a database company. It’s so, so complex. And these people are brilliant. So, a lot of the stuff that I’m learning from them is really just that at this point. I can’t necessarily just dive into that and know exactly what’s going on after six months of being in the tech world. So, it feels pretty amazing being able to work with all of my Women Who Code peers. I mean, I have never felt embarrassed to ask them a question. I’ve never felt nervous or scared or intimidated. They’ve all been so warm and welcoming and open with all of their advice that it’s really -- it’s wonderful. It’s really, really nice.
ANGELA: Now, are there any particular websites or resources that you use to kind of understand some of the technology and/or are there any Twitter accounts that you follow that are resourceful for you?
CHRISTINA: I’ve been playing with Code Academy, which has been great. One of the -- a woman that I spoke with recently at a meet up actually went through Hackbright in San Francisco, and I know that they have part-time night classes that I was thinking of maybe doing in the spring. It was a huge success for her and she ended up getting a great job afterwards. So, I’d like to maybe participate in some sort of a schooling --
ANGELA: A boot camp?
CHRISTINA: Yeah, some sort of like part-time -- part-time for sure, just because I have to work full-time too. Which is sort of the hard part of that. Code Academy has been helpful. It’s sort of introducing me to everything. But, to be honest, since we host so many meet ups and we have so many different speakers there, I feel like it’s school all over again. I get to learn and ask the questions in this great, live environment. And that actually has been some of the best. For me, personally, I learn really well that way. So going to Hackathons as a host, but being able to learn from what people are building. Or going to a meet up as a host, but being able to learn from the speakers and ask them questions afterwards. Those have actually be probably the best resources for me at this point. But like I said, hopefully now I’ll have a stronger background. So then once I go into some sort of a boot camp, then I’m able to have a better knowledge and understanding of what I’m stepping into.
PAIGE: Getting that knowledge and being in the tech space, what has been the most challenging things for you?
CHRISTINA: I think the hardest part is -- I’m sure a lot of people are like this, and a lot of women in tech too, we’re sort of big critics of ourselves.
ANGELA: Yes.
CHRISTINA: We always want to do a lot more, more, more, more, more. And for me, one of the biggest obstacles was coming from a non-technical background into a role that I felt like I wanted to learn everything that first week. You know what I mean?
ANGELA: Right.
CHRISTINA: I wanted to know everything. I wanted to be able to understand everything that first week, first month, first three months I wanted to be able to go into and like, look at me I’m programing and coding and I can do it all now. I know that that’s just impossible to do. I actually had a really wonderful conversation with one of our founders about this. Trying to explain to him, there’s days where I just feel sort of nervous or insecure because I can’t really speak the language as well as I would like to. It feels sometimes like being dropped into a country without knowing anything about that native language and then all of the sudden you slowly start learning it, and you become comfortable. It’s sort of this great emersion, but at the same time you can’t help but beat yourself up a little bit at times. But that’s why community s is important. I mean, our community is so supportive. They’re so helpful. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had a bad experience. I’ve had some sassy people say funny things, but not anything that’s been awful. Everybody has been so supportive and I think that it’s really kind of a beautiful thing that people want to help each other learn and grow. And then I feel a little bit better when I get neurotic about not knowing how to build RethinkDB, which is just impossible. At this point. Who knows what happens in another year or two.
PAIGE: There’s so much. So much to learn.
ANGELA: Yep.
CHRISTINA: Yeah.
PAIGE: Always.
CHRISTINA: It’s very, very intimidating at times. It’s like learning an entirely new language without having any background in it, but you do it. You just have to do it. You can’t really sit and overanalyze it and stress and beat yourself up. YOU just have to get over those moments and move on and keep going growing with it. And then you’re still growing with your community too. You’re growing with your people. And I’m growing with my coworkers and the engineers. We’re all still growing and learning together.
ANGELA: Right. They really kind of become a family, huh?
CHRISTINA: Oh yeah.
ANGELA: Especially, I think having the social media aspect, you’re making a very public post and it’s really hard to do that without checking with somebody. Am I saying this right? Is this the right phrase? Is there a better way to say this? Does this even make sense?
CHRISTINA: Yes.
ANGELA: I totally understand. I always -- I constantly ask my husband, is this really the right way? And there’s phrases that I’ve used in the past, like partition the fat. That’s my solution for any problem, partition the fat. I don’t know what that means really. I kind of do, but it’s never the solution. So, I totally, totally can relate on that.
CHRISTINA: Oh, I feel so bad for engineers sometimes because I’m like, hey guys so I don’t know if you’re busy or not -- and you know they’re swamped. We’ve got a relief coming up and I’m like, hey do you think you guys can read this tweet for me? And they’re just like, okay. And they’re always so sweet and so helpful about it. I’m just coming at them with these questions and I feel like a total bonehead.
ANGELA: Right.
CHRISTINA: But, like I said, they never make me feel that way. They’re just like, yeah actually that is good, or you know what that’s great but switch this word. And then it’s like, okay. And eventually it does sort of become second nature. And now, I don’t have to ask them for their input --
ANGELA: As much.
CHRISTINA: -- as much for stuff like tweets. I’m hoping to keep expanding on that and hopefully do blog post eventually, and with this opportunity with podcast. You sort of build that confidence and it’s about having that supportive group of people around you, you know? And they know that I’m able to help them with things too. They know that my role with the company is kind of helping to bring what they’re building and all of these amazing things that they’re building out to -- I mean, I’m doing finger quotes but the real world.
ANGELA: Right. Right, awareness.
CHRISTINA: Getting it out there. Yeah, putting that awareness out there for them. So we can complement each other. It’s never harsh critiques.
ANGELA: Sure.
CHRISTINA: It’s always just complimenting and helping. Yeah, it’s great.
ANGELA: Yeah, I had a conversation. I relayed something to our editor and I was about three questions in. Like, he asked me three questions and I answered all three of them, but I’m like, so that makes sense? And he’s like, yeah. I’m like, okay good because I have no idea what I’m talking about right now.
CHRISTINA: (Unintelligible).
ANGELA: It was great, but it felt good because he knew exactly what I was saying and I answered his questions right on the fly, and it was awesome.
CHRISTINA: I think I just did that right now.
ANGELA: Wow.
CHRISTINA: I hope all of this stuff -- I hope they understand where I’m coming from with this.
ANGELA: Totally.
PAIGE: Yeah, it totally sounds like you guys are doing some really neat initiatives. You’ve got your meet up in a box. You’re kind of building a platform on Meetup that you can send out to other groups to use. Have you considered open sourcing any of that for other community managers?
CHRISTINA: You know, we’ve been talking a lot about it lately, especially because you reach this point where all of the sudden you’re not asking other people to speak for you, they’re coming to you. Like, hey would we would like speak. And it’s really exciting, but it started to happen very quickly for us, and so we do actually need to think about that pretty heavily and get that going. It is something that’s on the agenda for us. We are going to be production ready in January or February -- early next year. I don’t want to say any dates because I don’t want to get in trouble, but we’ll be commercial ready early next year and at that point we want to make sure that people are able to contribute to these events the same way. And the Shirts for Stories project is something that they’ve been doing since the beginning, for longer than I’ve been at RethinkDB. That’s a pretty cool project because I love getting tweets from our users when they get their packages. It’s like a little Christmas for them. And they send the most hilarious tweets and they are so sweet. And then they send pictures and it’s great. And then it gets other people excited to share their projects too. These are really cool little things. Like I said, we’re trying to do stuff that’s kind of unique, but also helps to recreate this amazing family that we’ve built in Rethink HQ and put it out in England and put it out in Ireland. Or put it out in China or something. So, it’s kind of cool.
PAIGE: Very awesome. All right, one last question. I want to know what you’re most excited about with technology. Like, where its’ going, the future. What gets you really jazzed up?
CHRISTINA: I actually -- like I had mentioned, my background in fashion design and now being in the tech world, I’m actually really excited participating in this kind of crazy fashion tech world that’s sort of growing. Before I went into the tech world I would go to fashion meet ups because I was curious about the growing technology with everything from the tech styles to ecommerce. I actually also work for a startup called Stitch Fix too, and it’s really incredible seeing this cool software that they’ve built to kind of help create this personal styling system for -- everybody is accessible to having a personal stylist now with this incredible software that they’ve built. So, for me personally, I just like seeing the direction that my previous world of fashion and how it’s starting to incorporate into the tech world, because knowing all of my friends from the fashion industry they are very anti-tech, and so this gives me the opportunity to say look I know you’re scare of technology but look at this incredible software that’s going to help make your life easier. Or look at this incredible tech style that’s going to create this amazing thing so that you can do something awesome with some company, you know, like some sporting company or something. You know, all these really cool things that are happening with the fashion and tech world that I’m very exciting to watch.
ANGELA: Right, the integration.
CHRISTINA: Oh, yeah.
ANGELA: It should be real interesting.
CHRISTINA: It’s wild, just because art and tech are coming together and it’s kind of a beautiful thing to watch.
PAIGE: Well, thank you so much for this interview and we’ll be talking to you soon.
ANGELA: If you’d like to be on Women’s Tech Radio, you can email us, [email protected] or subscribe to us in the iTunes store.
PAIGE: You can also catch us on Twitter at heywtr.
Transcribed by Carrier Cotter - [email protected]