I didn’t mean to become a web developer, it just happened

Today I’m sharing a video of a talk I presented twice recently, once at Girl Geek Sydney and another time for one of Campaign Monitor’s lunch time #BreadTalks (which is when the video was recorded – there was a hiccup, which is why it cuts at the beginning).

This talk is about pursuing what you want to do, as I tell my story of how I lived out all of my childhood dreams despite everyone telling me not to, and how I came to be a web developer today.

Video

I would love to hear what you think. I don’t really like my recorded voice, it makes me sound really brash, and my voice isn’t really like that. :P

🎥 Watch the video! [Dropbox link]

The talk is only about 10 minutes, but I promise it’s worth watching and listening to. I’ve linked to a transcript below, if you would like to follow along.

Slides

You can download the slides as a PDF on Dropbox. The slides aren’t necessary to download though (it’s mostly pictures).

The password to open the file is cmrocksgemstones.

Transcript

I didn’t want to put the full text for the transcript in my post, but you can view the .txt file.

Why I did this talk

Everyone needs to know that they should do what they believe in, and do what they love, even if their parents, society, and ‘everyone else’ doesn’t agree. Everyone should give things a chance and not do things because someone else said it would be good money, or would guarantee some kind of success.

People have often asked me how I got a job in web development, and what inspired me. I often say, in short, that I played games and wanted to know how websites were built, and among all the other things I wanted to do, web development was ‘the only one that was left’, and so nature took its course. But beyond that, I had aspired to be so many other things.

Old-time readers of my blog will notice that this talk was inspired by my old post What I could have been from 2013. I was also inspired in part by my own mother, who, for over a decade, put aside her career to care for myself and my brother, yet found the strength to enter the workforce and pursue a career she knew she would love, despite having doubts along the way.