As we begin now. Hi, everyone. I'm very excited to be, um, speaking at this conference. This is my second speech this year and I can't believe how phenomenal this conference has been all through these days. Right. Did you all have a good time so far?Yeah, I hope so. Um, it's just wonderful to be here with all the, uh, uh, tech beasts, my fellow tech beasts. And that is the topic of discussion today that I'm going to talk to you about is how to awaken your inner tech beast. Uh, and we have a technologist in all of us. How do you find your gift and awaken it and just, you know, write their bank, uh, give your best in the tech field. Uh, before I start talking about that, um, I want to give you an introduction about myself. I'm Sirisha, I'm originally from India. I've been in the United States for about 13 years. I'm currently a CTO for an advertising company called ADM Media and we have team locally in the US and overseas and, um, I love my job and, uh, I'm here right now. Um, and I'm looking forward to grow and grow more. And um I believe that all of us have uh some inherent trends and sometimes uh we prevent ourselves from discovering them.

And this is um this session that I'm going to talk about is to help you and give you tips of how to find what your true gifts are and awaken that inner beast a little bit of a flashback um about uh certain experiences I had when I first started my career. Uh several years ago, I was just like you attending a conference that was in person and I was a young professional uh new in town with my first job. Um I went to this big conference and I felt totally lost. I was like, what if, you know, I would ask questions and people feel uh that I'm dumb. I come off dumb. I didn't, I really like this keynote speaker. I wanted to go give them a ha a handshake and a high five. But I've, I stopped myself from going in and saying hi to them. I had all this myth of um self doubt that stopped me from doing uh and acting on the impulses I had during the um conference session. Is anyone undergoing any of those kind of impulses that you want to go network or uh act on your impulse? But something comes in your mind and stops you from, you know, uh Maybe, you know, what would others think of me? What if I raise my hand, you know, that my co wouldn't compile or the workshop is not working out. I come off as term and silly and maybe I shouldn't ask about it and just be quiet.

And that turns into more and more inner conflicting thoughts and takes us into the rabbit hole. Right. So I think it's pretty common, it happens to all of us. Uh but it all comes down to what we do and how we respond and react to it. So this, this kind of confusion is pretty common. Um Like I said to anyone may, even if they're a young professional, if they are mid-level in their career or s or seasoned profession, uh professional, um in the highest level, trust me, it happens to all of us every day. It's all about the actions and responses we make and reactions. We have to those thoughts. Um During the same time, I have an interesting, uh I had an interesting episode is I was, um I didn't know how to ride a bike as a kid, so I wanted to do something about it. Um I was new in town, like I said, and I was with this big hiking group um, that hike during weekdays and I floated an idea about them having to teach adults how to ride a bike.

I posted it on their meet up group and forgot all about it then. Um, after 10 days or so, I got a message from that organizer that they would indeed uh want to organize an event to teach others how to balance on their bikes and how to ride it. And they were like eight other adults in the group who didn't know how to ride a bike just like me. So, uh it, it really uh boost had some uh push and confidence in me that I shouldn't hide about asking for help and uh just go for it, ask for help at best people would say no, right. But then it finally happened, they organized that event on a Saturday. I remember it like it just happened yesterday. I went there. Uh They all taught us how to balance on it. I ended up after three hours, I learned how to balance. I came back home, I went to Walmart and I got a $50 bike. So it's usually that price point is for kids size, but I'm short. So I always get away with kids stuff. That's the best part.

Uh Anyway, I got the bike, I started practicing uh learned how to brake and finally I got it done. Now, uh that episode um of learning the bike uh is something I was able to translate throughout uh many, many situations I was put in, in my professional life. Uh Any time I had uh a hesitation to try something new, I reminded myself of that episode that uh it is just never too late. Um It is never too wrong uh to ask for questions or share ideas or propose new design patterns or take, just take, take the plunge and uh see what happens, right? I we not, we may not be the best coder of technologists, but at least you are not stopping yourself from taking the next step. So um uh that is where uh I want to talk about um resilience. It's very, very important for us to be resilient. And as technologists, you know, we are problem solvers, right? How many of you agree with that definition? Technologies are problem solvers at heart? Or maybe you can share your own definition of technologies in the chat here. Uh What I meant to say about uh being a problem solver is technologies solve a critical problem, may maybe it's a system or a solution architecture or uh trying to launch rockets, anything creating a mobile app.

Um If we are problem solvers, why do we, why do we let self doubts and uh inner feelings take over and not help ourselves when we have our own problems? Right? So this is where the conflict happens and resilient people expect problems to come in there. There was another episode in my life that uh uh helped me uh understand how to be resilient and take control of my career in a way we want as technologists to have career fit us and not have us to fit into the career. Let me repeat it again, we want career to fit us, not us to fit into a career. Ok. So, uh, there was this, uh, uh, case where I just had my baby and, um, I was still in this maternity leave and, you know, I don't know if everyone knows in United States the maternity leave is just horrible. We only get like 8 to 12 weeks at ma and then you have to just head back to work after as I was uh finishing up my maternity leave. Um We had uh bad news that, you know, the department is going to be sold where I was working in and we had to go and find other employment options and it was just horrible situation.

I had to aggressively start applying for jobs again and do all that white boarding. You know, all the jazz that comes with all this technical job interviewing, it was just terrible. But um something uh amazing happened afterwards is uh over the years, I had somehow learned some skills that were not directly applicable to my job at that time, but just being open to learning new things had made me sort of resilient. So I was just not defining myself to be a single specialist over time unknowingly, I developed skill sets to learn uh end to end system developments and architectures or development. Understanding how revenue is generated. That kind of that kind of approach to problem solving gives you a whole new perspective. So that created a sense of resilience. And I was able to somehow bounce back on my feet again and manage, manage, manage uh to manage, to proceed uh keeping the team self sufficient and grow the team. Um Why am I telling you all these things is because you should realize and you probably know is um the jobs that existed 10 years ago do not exist now and some jobs that exist today may not exist. Tomo, um say five or 10 years down the line.

So you should be ready when you would be inevitably disrupted. OK? We, we all would be disrupted one day, but we should have those fundamental skill sets and, and open up those inner gifts we have within us to be resilient and be ready when push comes to show. Ok? Um The only thing, the only thing that matters in your life is the actions that you're taking. It all starts with an action. How do you do? It is sometimes you get an idea, an impulse to do something about uh about uh your goals and vision. And from the second, you get that idea, you have about say five seconds of window to do something about it. If you don't take an action towards that impulse, within those few seconds, it is gone. Your brain swoops in so fast that it draws you away from taking any further steps forward. Has it ever happened to you? So today in this talk, we are going to practice a simple technique and a simple trick that you can take an action within five seconds. OK? Oh, so you are going to have some kind of an impulse today. You're starting your day or perhaps ending your day, your mind is always thinking and we are going to take simple steps to make it real. Are you ready for that? So um when you take an action, you are more likely to actually proceeding to doing it and then hopefully succeeding at it. Ok? So I want you to join me uh doing this small exercise. I want you to unclench your jaw. OK?

Your jaw just loosen it up and unclench it, relax your shoulders. OK? Take a deep breath with me and close your eyes. I want you to put your hand on your heart and say I'm OK, I'm safe. I'm loved, I'm OK. I'm safe. I'm loved. Now. I want you to think about that one thing that you're not saying yes to it can be anything. Maybe you didn't say yes to going to the gym or that workout or meal prep or getting quality sleep or you didn't say yes to taking up the tech challenge or that new side hustle or new venture. And think about what is one thing you can do today to move towards accomplishing that goal. And you're going to tell yourself now you have a few seconds to do something about it. You're gonna tell yourself you're going to do it anyway. You're going to give your best shot and do something about it today and visual and really, really visualize it. Once you visualize it, you got it 54321, you can do it this very moment is preparing you for something amazing. You are more than capable, you are capable and you are more than capable of doing it.

And I know we are all on mute here in the audience, but in your loudest, in your loudest of your tone that all your neighbors and coworkers can hear if you're in the office is I want you to say I am capable. Can you do that or maybe type here at this point? Um I want to open it up for questions if you have any and have a dialogue and discussion. That's amazing. Hia Wendy, Arpita, Sara Karla. Do you have any questions? Hi, Daisy. I like it. I like I liked uh seeing you all type it. There's something uh nice about saying that we are capable, right? Anyone have any questions, any comments, anything they want to share? Is there anything you have done um with respect to high swap? Now, have you done uh has any of you done anything with respect to uh taking a step ahead during this conference? What is your goal? What do you need help with? How can we make sure you can do something about it in this conference. I can help you right now. We, we, it's your chance to practice your five second rule. Tell me what, what, what do you want and we can make it happen in this conference. That's great. You want to focus better on things that I have to do that. You have to do good. I would suggest pick one thing, imposter syndrome. Yes. Let's talk about that.

Arpita imposter syndrome is very real and you feel like an imposter and that you have to fake it or until you make it, I would say you have to face it until you make it. And there's one other trick I would like to share is start your day by high finding yourself in the mirror. When you Hi Fi yourself in the mirror, you're saying you're acknowledging many things and many tough situations you're in current, you know, at that very moment, but you're telling yourself that you got your own back. So I recommend definitely starting your day by hi, finding yourself.

I'll give you a Hi Fi right now, prioritize my training, finding my passion in life. Wonderful. So finding your passion in life, Sami, hi, nice to meet you is you have to start doing those little things that make you feel authentic and your own self. Um So if you all those little things you may have forgotten to do every day. Once you start doing those, you would find your inner authentic uh self and naturally that leads to finding your passion in life. And when did you said you want to prioritize your training? So what kind of training is that? Appreciating my achievements at work? Oh, so Magdalena, you said you want apprec appreciating your achievements at work. You know, uh it's the same principle of high finding yourself. You are going to give credit to yourself first for all the work you're doing at work. And appreciation starts from there, it starts from our own ins from inside you. Hi Fi yourself. You're gonna use that five second trick. Uh I mentioned in the talk um and that's going to make you feel better and radiate radiate more. And uh I think um you should speak up and ask your uh whoever your manager is or your s your um report the staff, you report to, to ask them to start appreciating you if they're not doing that already, ask them to give you a shout out and give recognition.

You have to ask for it if you need it. And Wendy Azure, that, that's awesome. I need to train myself in Azure too. I hope, I hope um your training uh you know, you would ace the training Wendy. You should all connect with me on linkedin. I think uh my session is uh coming to an end. Uh I intentionally kept it short because I like to have more people interact, interaction. Um I'm loving all these uh efforts. You're all taking my, my own personal passion and goal. This year has been one of them has been to uh do more public speaking and interact more with people. So I'm still, I'm still working on it. Uh This has been one of my steps towards uh growing more into speaking um opportunities and talking and sharing all my ideas. But I believe um we all have um we all have the tech beast in us and we just have to unleash it. We have all those special gifts in us. We sometimes we are aware of them. Sometimes we forgot that we have them. And I personally think we have all this gunk and block uh uh blocks in our mind, you know, si similar to how we, you call it. Um There is lint in the dryer, right? When you dry your clothes, there is lint in the dryer that you have to peel it off. Similar to that.

We have all these negative thoughts and bad things we keep saying to ourselves that we need to peel it off and unleash it. We have all this potential and power in us that we need to unleash.