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Episode 21

Farrah Campbell: Serverless & Containers Community Building, Bringing People Together, and Jumping Out of Planes

Farrah joins Adam to discuss her role at AWS where she oversees the Serverless & Container Hero Programs, among other responsibilities. She also shares more about her inclination towards bringing people together and that time she jumped out of a plane to impress her kids. She nailed the landing!

About Farrah

After 10 years of working in healthcare management, a serendipitous 20-minute car ride with Kara Swisher inspired Farrah to make the jump into technology. She has worked at multiple startups in many different capacities, eventually working her way to being the Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Containers & Serverless.

Farrah previously worked as Ecosystems Director at Stackery where she managed the relationship with AWS including Stackery as an Advanced Technology Partner, achieving the AWS DevOps Competency, a launch partner for Lambda Layers and is an AWS Serverless Hero. Farrah has cultivated the serverless community as an organizer of Portland Serverless Days, the Portland Serverless Meetup, along with numerous serverless workshops and the Portland tech community events from Techfest to bringing multiple luminaries to Portland.

You can find her online on Twitter and her website.

Transcript

Adam Elmore: Hey, everyone. Welcome to AWS FM, a podcast with guests from around the AWS community. I'm your host, Adam Elmore. And today I'm joined by Farrah Campbell. Hi Farrah.

Farrah Campbell: Hey Adam. Thanks so much for having me.

Adam Elmore: Thank you so much for joining. So you are a senior product marketing manager of containers and serverless at AWS. Could you tell me what that means? What is your job?

Farrah Campbell: Yes. Sometimes I wonder what my job is actually, but what that really means is, so within my role, I'm really focused on, I'd say engagement and advocacy. So I'm really lucky to get to work with our hero programs for both serverless and containers, and then also the AWS community builders for containers and serverless. So really, I kind of see my job as I kind of help to bridge the work that best service teams are doing to tie that into work with the community. And then, hopefully, get people excited about the work that they're doing and get involved. But that's essentially the work that I do.

Adam Elmore: And you were a serverless hero. That's right?

Farrah Campbell: I was a serverless hero.

Adam Elmore: And I saw this on your website, non-technical serverless hero. Are there other non-technical heroes? Are you still the only one? I think you were the first.

Farrah Campbell: I think I was the first. I still wonder how that happened, but I made the mark. I mean, I still have the phone tool icon to prove it. Now that I'm at a AWS because I lost the hero status, but I have been told I get that back, I get it back if I ever decide to leave, but that's not happening.

Adam Elmore: I mean the stock price, that's a whole nother thing. Now, I don't know if I should ask.

Farrah Campbell: Funny you should mention that. I literally just got a text right before and just said something about it not doing so well today. I hadn't looked. So maybe that's a good sign for not today.

Adam Elmore: Well, the compensation is so famously talked about with Amazon employees. I'm not going to go deep on that one. That was not my intended direction, but I do want to get into the serverless and containers thing. So you're heavily involved. You've only been at AWS for a year, is that right?

Farrah Campbell: Yes. I just passed my year mark.

Adam Elmore: So, that was actually really surprising to me. I don't know if it's because you're so plugged in to ... you interact with so many of the people that I look up to at the hero program, people within the community, it feels like you're in every photo at Reinvent. It just like seems you've been there much longer than that, but before AWS, you were at Stackery, could you speak a little bit about kind of your career leading up to this point, kind of your career arc, I guess, getting into technology and everything else?

Farrah Campbell: Yeah, it's actually kind of random, because I feel like I've had a different role with every job, every company I've went to, I've had a different role including at AWS. So I got started in tech, what, five startups before Stackery as an office manager. And then, from there went to director of operations and then customer and people operations, and then ended up at Stackery as the ecosystem's director.

Farrah Campbell: And really what that meant is, I was helping to build out the relationships specifically with AWS, which is why I feel like still, my landing here at AWS was like, I knew all the service teams. I was told very early on that if you wanted to engage more, we needed to be connected with the service teams, trying to be launch partners for anything that was happening in the serverless world.

Farrah Campbell: And so, I made it my point at every single event I went to, to meet as many AWS folks as possible. And then to, just to try to follow up and engage and to figure out if there might be ways to partner in the future. But I also did that a lot with ... also, there was a lot of people involved, I feel like when Stackery was there, there was only a handful of serverless focused companies and being part of that type of journey, I think early on really allowed me to make a lot of friends in this space.

Adam Elmore: And looking at your career and kind of what you're so good at, at AWS, is it more people for you than the actual technology? Are you invested in sort of AWS as a technology company where they're headed and do you get excited about that? Or is it more about the community and the people and the relationships or is it both? I mean, it could be both.

Farrah Campbell: It's all of it. I mean, it's all of it. One of my favorite things I used to absolutely love going to Reinvent, not even as a partner, but you'd also get to talk to all these folks. And then it was also, on the AWS side, it was service teams that had put in all this work and, maybe it was two years worth of work and it's being released out into the wild and they're all excited about it.

Farrah Campbell: And I'm excited too. I'm like, wow, that was cool. So, I would always follow different companies based on information I would learn or sitting in the hallways, talking to folks, and they might talk about some new service and why they were excited about implementing it. And I'm like, oh, where do you work? And what does your company do? And so I feel like a lot of it's definitely the people, but it's also the technology.

Farrah Campbell: And with serverless, I feel like it's been ... it's so fast paced and there's just been this evolution right, of how it kind of gets started. And it's been a very long, I think, learning journey, right? And so, I mean, I guess for me, I guess it's all of it. I wouldn't know how to say it was one part because Reinvent for me is, even the summits, it's about the excitement of something new that might enable something for somebody else. And then getting to hear about that. It's about hearing what other partners are able to do, other customers and just your friends and the heroes, and the excitement that everybody has.

Adam Elmore: It feels like AWS is sort of right now the peak of what humans are capable of doing together. I mean, think about the scale of what the teams at AWS are accomplishing and then as a company, just how AWS moves the bar forward. I think it's a very exciting space to be in and the community's so incredible. So I guess that getting to the AWS community, you've been there a year now, you've seen kind of from the AWS perspective from being an Amazon employee, what makes the AWS community so great?

Adam Elmore: Because I do feel like I've been involved in other technology communities, other just communities, and there's something unique about sort of the, I hate the word vibe, but the type of people that make up the AWS community, it's just a very welcoming, very friendly, inclusive environment. Is that sort of driven by Amazon culture? Is it specific people at AWS that have sort of paved that way over the last decade? Do you have any thoughts on sort of how we got here? Are we just super lucky?

Farrah Campbell: I mean, I don't know how we got here. I mean, I would say when I hit the serverless community, this is back in 2018, I guess 2017, I'm trying to remember when I started at Stackery, but I remember and this is my first time kind of getting into cloud and, remember the first conference I went to was Serverless Conference in San Francisco. And I remember, I was going to join this hackathon because I was trying to understand what are you talking about? What is serverless enable? But I was also nervous because I didn't have any tech experience. And so walking in that day, I actually sat outside and was tearing up, I'm trying to get the nerve to walk in.

Farrah Campbell: And I was so glad I did, because immediately they're like, oh, well, let me find you a team. And on that team, they were doing the technical work and I was putting together the business plan and helping to get slides and keep people on track and trying to move the project forward. And we ultimately won. And that was definitely a team effort, right?

Farrah Campbell: And I also feel like even in with the serverless community, it was so new and there's all these different ways of doing things, and so you didn't really have people saying, well, that's not the way to do it. It's like, oh, tell me more. I hadn't thought about it that way, right? And so you had all these new people kind of coming in and then there's even more newcomers, which just generates more and more conversations and new ways of thinking about things.

Farrah Campbell: And you really need that diverse perspective, and people from all around the world kind of sharing. And I think that has been something, and I don't know for sure if it's unique to AWS, I'd like to think so, but it definitely has felt different as a community for, a newcomer coming in, the way that I see our teams engaging with folks, it's so awesome just to see, how many times you see a product manager or somebody from AWS responding to questions and comments that are coming through.

Farrah Campbell: Or I know a few of the heroes, if they're tweeting about something, I'll be reached out to by the product manager saying, can you set up a meeting so we can talk through this more and that's not me going to them, that's them coming to me. And so really kind of caring about what people are thinking and trying to solve problems, maybe that's what makes it different is, at the end of the day, we're trying to fix problems. We know we have to communicate and have discussions to get there.

Adam Elmore: I do think part of the Amazon culture, sort of the values that you have at Amazon has to be part of it because I guess I have a very limited perspective. I'm one person who's been involved in some small number of communities, but it does feel different. It feels like the level of, not just Amazon employees, but the people that kind of make up the hero program, the people that are very sort of public facing in the community just seems like a really excellent group of a very kind people. I don't know. I come from a startup background, maybe more web development communities that haven't always felt the same, I guess. I think of Hacker News. I don't know. I feel like the AWS community is the opposite of Hacker News in a good way.

Farrah Campbell: Yeah. No, definitely. And I feel like too, there's a lot of people that really care, right? And even all the way up to our VPs then, or even to Warner, who's thanking these programs and now, we had Adam that's doing the same thing, but I remember when I was a hero and we would have the DRR, who was a VP of serverless, was doing a session, a leadership session. And he started it off by thanking the heroes in the broader community for the work that they were doing to enable folks to do serverless better and to understand what that meant. And I really, I was like that was awesome. You actually stay seen and acknowledge that the work that's being done out there.

Farrah Campbell: The same thing happens too, with our VP of compute, Deepak. I mean, I've reached out to him and just had been able to get an hour of his time, just really to kind of talk through the work that I'm doing in the community. And that to me stands out because I'm assuming, the work that he does is incredibly important, but giving that time and actually really caring to listen and understand, it's really, I mean, it makes me feel good about the work that I'm doing.

Adam Elmore: So I've gushed a lot here about the AWS community. Do you think from your perspective, are there things that is maybe not great? Are there things within the community that could improve or areas that you're focused on trying to improve kind of from where you sit? There doesn't have to be.

Farrah Campbell: That's a loaded question. I mean, there's definitely a lot of things that I think that we can do better. And I would say that trying to focus on the things that actually have the most impact is definitely where I'm at right now and exactly what that is, I'd say doing as much listening as possible and then trying to figure out how to wrap that up in themes to the right people that can actually help to make things better.

Farrah Campbell: And just trying to make sure that I'm doing a lot of listening with the community members, but also listening with service teams and trying to figure out how do I find ways that we can better work together. Coming to AWS from a small startup, is very different, right? The scale and just thinking globally, right? And when I was at small startups, we were typically working just with people, mostly in the States and sometimes we'd have a few other customers outside, but I have a lot, I mean, my group is global.

Farrah Campbell: And so even doing a meeting, right? When do you have just a monthly check-in, that's not that easy to figure out because I'm in Portland, I have folks in New York, we have folks in Japan and China. I mean, everywhere, so when's a good time? There's not really a good time for everybody. And so, how do I make sure that the stuff that I'm doing is for everyone and how do I take that all in and understand even cultural differences in holidays, you know what I mean? Everybody has different times off or things that they celebrate and trying to make sure I'm acknowledging that remembering that. Right now, there's a lot of listening and just trying to understand, because the scale is just so much different.

Adam Elmore: It's a very global community. I think about that a lot like on Twitter, I think Twitter has changed the way I view the world quite a lot, coming from the Midwestern United States, not growing up with sort of a lot of outside culture or influence. Being on Twitter is just a constant reminder that we're this little place in the world and it's a big world. And it's just great to be connected with folks that see things from a totally different vantage point, have had very different lived experiences. And you have that in the AWS community.

Farrah Campbell: You do. And that's the thing is when I first started being part of the AWS community and I remember being at Reinvent, I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't think I'd ever been at a table that had folks from a different country. Everybody here's from a different country. And I think there was just really two Americans. And I'm like, this is awesome. And I never had felt like I had friends from all over the world and now I do.

Farrah Campbell: If I'm going somewhere, I can reach out to someone like, what are the places, where should I go? Or even have a friend to go get coffee with and having that, that is so impactful if you even think about partnering on projects and getting visibility into how things might be different and what may be a new way of thinking about it. That to me is a huge, huge, huge advantage. And it definitely is, it's meant something to me.

Adam Elmore: And you mentioned Reinvent, you enjoy the in person stuff, I would think?

Farrah Campbell: Yes.

Adam Elmore: The big events. Besides Reinvent, what other events are on the calendar for you? Is there-

Farrah Campbell: So I just came back from the AWS Summit. I'll be at serverless in the park next week. From there, I'm going to, actually, I'm going over to Europe, so I will be at Cube Con EU, and then I'm going over to go to Amsterdam with the serverless DA team and then the Milan summit and actually, I think we're doing an AWS community day after the Amsterdam, go to the Amsterdam. So there'll be a number of different things for sure.

Adam Elmore: Are you putting DDR stands at every event or is that just Reinvent?

Farrah Campbell: That was to make it fun. You've got to keep people energized, right? You want me to learn and they need some exercise during that. I thought it was fun.

Adam Elmore: I love it. So you travel a ton.

Farrah Campbell: I'm going to be, but it'll be really great to get to go see folks and support some of the work that everybody's doing in Europe and hopefully other places as the year goes on. I'd love to make a trip over to Latin America and overall. So work through the heroes that are over in South Africa and just to get out to meet people, kind of hear what's important to them. That's really my favorite part about being there.

Adam Elmore: You mentioned going to event with the serverless DA team, that team is awesome and getting more awesome all the time. I saw David Boiny just joined. I mean, when you see a photo of them all together, it's like, wow, I want to hang out with that crowd. That's pretty cool. I mean, enjoy that one.

Farrah Campbell: I'm so excited for that trip. This is going to be the first time that I've gotten to hang out with all of them in a very long time. I've seen a few folks, but this will be the first time that there'll be a handful of us over there together. So I'm very excited about it. I always love working with them when I was a partner and also in hero. So it's even more fun now to try to help amplify and get to partner with them on different things.

Farrah Campbell: Eric always makes me lively and fun. I think it always takes us about five minutes before we can get serious if it's a smaller meeting. And now that Chase and things from Stackery is there, if he's on the call too, it's probably 10 minutes because we just kind of joke about things that have happened.

Adam Elmore: So I want to shift a little into, so over serverless and containers, is there any sort of I imagine infighting that those groups are put together, I'm imagining it, it's not that it's real, but is there a rivalry between the serverless and the container heroes because they all report back or they're all overseen by Farrah? Is that a thing? Not a thing?

Farrah Campbell: No, they all do things together. I don't really know where the containers versus serverless. I've not met anybody that doesn't utilize both. You know what I mean? That doesn't make any sense. Maybe it's more of a way, who wants to specialize in these? We definitely have people whose go to is ECS and other people whose go to is going to be Lambda and then ... And containers you have some people like ... that was also, you have people that are heavy ECS and then heavy ETS and literally want nothing, that's what they specialize in. That's their go to. So, I mean, I don't know where the versus thing, but no, there's no ... We all work together happily. I think we all work together happily and we're all on the same cause.

Adam Elmore: And I just saw a tweet, Luke, who was a dev tools hero, you sort of yanked him into the serverless heroes. How did that go down? Could you explain a little of that?

Farrah Campbell: How did that go down? Well I actually-

Adam Elmore: Did you just say, I want Luke on my team?

Farrah Campbell: I mean, it didn't quite happen like that. Although, I'm not going to say I didn't. I mean, Luke put out a lot of great Lambda content and actually I think it happened at Reinvent and he was kind of just asking me like, what I would think about it? And I'm like, I'm glad you brought it up. I can't actively go pursue, but if you wanted to do something like that, I mean typically, the focus of his work is all been Lambda. I mean, I think he does some things with CDK as well. So I'm really grateful that the dev tools team and David found him and promoted him. But I think a lot of people thought he already was a serverless hero.

Adam Elmore: I did.

Farrah Campbell: And so, he would also get questions in some of our groups. So where's Luke, why isn't ... And I'm like, ah, well ... So I feel like he just found is rightful home, maybe.

Adam Elmore: So I want to talk to you a little bit. You've got kids that are older now, right? Because you went skydiving and you went skydiving with one of your sons, is that right?

Farrah Campbell: Yes. I promised my son when he was 13, he has to go skydiving. And I told him, well, you can't till you're 18. So I promised him when he turned 18, we would go and then when he turned 18, he was like, hey, remember that promise? And I'm like, oh, you remembered that. And then I was lucky that, well now [inaudible 00:20:34], but I would say I was not lucky that COVID happened, but COVID pushed that out a little bit because there was not any sky ... You weren't going to get strapped onto somebody very close during all that.

Farrah Campbell: And so once things started to open up, I ... We jumped out of a plane, it was actually really cute because I was tearing up on the flight up and they both tried to hold my hand and get me all psyched up. And I don't know that I would've went, actually, I know I wouldn't have, because they're the only reason why I do anything scary is because I mean, they're boys and they always were jumping off things.

Farrah Campbell: They want to be in the very front of all the scariest rollercoaster possible. And so I always wanted to impress them, I guess, not get left behind, so here I am. But that was actually so exciting and what a great experience and I landed, which is the most important thing, because I also knew if I ... I don't think they would've made fun of me, but I wouldn't have the same street cred like, hey [inaudible 00:21:34].

Adam Elmore: And I think I ask every person I know who's a parent, who's made it through early childhood years, it gets better. I've got young children, I've got a two year old, a seven year old. It gets easier I hear.

Farrah Campbell: It gets easier. And then it gets harder. But in different ways.

Adam Elmore: Then it gets harder.

Farrah Campbell: It gets harder. The teen years are like, I don't know. Something happens. I don't know if ... I'm like, did something happen to me? I remember going to high school, I remember my son, he went to high school and he didn't come home from school one day and I'm like texting him, where are you? And he was like, stayed after for a game or something. He's like, why do you care? I'm in high school now.

Farrah Campbell: And I'm like, whoa, excuse me. I didn't realize. Don't you need a ride home now? Do I have to come get you? You're in high school. Are you taking care of everything now? I don't know if you got showered with school or now you don't need any supervision, but anyways, it gets harder. But then it gets better. Because I mean, I had my boys very early and so now I feel like I have ... they're good friends of mine. They help me to figure out what I'm going to wear. What kind of shoes to wear with certain outfits. They help me, they're like my handymen.

Adam Elmore: Oh, that'd be nice. I could use a couple of those. I need my boys to grow up.

Farrah Campbell: Once you get a car and I mean you're like, oh, you don't have to grocery shop that much anymore. Or go run errands, take things back. All that.

Adam Elmore: Oh, that sounds fantastic.

Farrah Campbell: It's pretty good.

Adam Elmore: We just had some fruit trees planted and I thought I was going to plant them and went out in the yard with the shovel, the whole thing, found out the Ozarks where I live, it's mostly clay and rock. So I spent two hours digging a six inch hole and then decided this is not for me. It's very hard to find somebody to plant a bunch of fruit trees. I wish my boys were big hulking men that I could just send out in the yard.

Farrah Campbell: Get their friends to come over, get some pizza, try to make it fun. I mean, I pay them for doing errands and things like that.

Adam Elmore: That was such a community focused answer, that you're thinking about how you can make it fun for them, you're going to have food. Everyone's going to accomplish more. You just can't turn it off. It's the day job.

Farrah Campbell: I think it's just part of who I am. I really do. I mean, I feel like sometimes just kind of how I think, right? Even like the stuff I was doing at Stackery, partnering with other companies, right? Let's get everybody together. I feel like we're all talking to the same people. Maybe we can just do this together and save us some money and make it a little bit more fun.

Adam Elmore: I feel like that's not the natural inclination of a lot of tech folks like myself. I'm more of a work on my own kind of in a corner. So we need people that think like you in these communities and helping us accomplish anything. Because I think we'd all just be on our own if it weren't for people prodding us to work together.

Farrah Campbell: We're sitting at the tables, at the coffee tables separate and I'm like, don't you guys know each other? Should we all sit together? Wouldn't that be more fun? And like, we could but I wasn't going to ask.

Adam Elmore: That sounds like tech folk. So you went skydiving, that was a one time thing. Do you have hobbies? I ask a lot of adults this question too, because I just don't know anymore. I think COVID just ruined everything. I'm trying to figure out can I have hobbies? What would they be? I'm canvasing people for ideas.

Farrah Campbell: I always feel like trying to I don't know, learn something new. So, I'll start to get into certain projects or I have reading or maybe it's, I want to be out hiking more. So, feel like it just kind of changes what my hobbies are, right? I was really super into, I want to be crafty, but then I'm like, oh my gosh. I realize I'm sometimes a perfectionist with this and I have to keep starting over. I was trying to learn how to paint and I'm like, not very good at this. And then it makes a big mess. I'm like, actually, wow.

Adam Elmore: I don't like messes and I'm kind of a perfectionist. So I think all of those would be out for me as well.

Farrah Campbell: I mean, I've been trying to pick up something new. Right now I think my hobby is traveling. I mean, I'm figuring out, try to find new places and kind of go explore, but I don't know if that can really be a hobby.

Adam Elmore: Oh, I think so. That sounds like an awesome hobby. I'd to make way more time for things like travel. I think I traveled a lot for a stretch of my career. And then after COVID I went two years without getting on a plane and I haven't since, and it's kind of nice. I don't know. I don't miss air travel. I wish that were something that could be better quickly.

Farrah Campbell: I would try to do workshops and I was trying to try to keep myself up to date with some of these things or seeing if I could figure out how to get things set up, which is also, I think that's kind of fun. I mean, I try to do that at least once a month. I was trying to do it once a week, but that became too much.

Adam Elmore: Like building something serverless. Do you use Amplify or if you played with any of that stuff

Farrah Campbell: Yeah, I [inaudible 00:26:43] the other day, I was actually, I found a tutorial online. I'm like, oh, let me see if I can get this set up. Which is always kind of fun because I'm like, oh I can. I think a lot of it is just, kind of working through it and learning how to Google is one of the things I ... with that technically with development I-

Adam Elmore: That's mostly it.

Farrah Campbell: It's like Googling errors one by one, that's really what I felt like I was doing all day.

Adam Elmore: I think every year of engineering experience, you're just getting better at Googling. That's really what it comes down to.

Farrah Campbell: Well, I thought you guys just knew what those all meant. And so, literally when I was first starting, I would send back to some of the developers that I'd worked with at previous startups, they're like my best friends, I'm like, what does this error mean? What does this mean? And they're like, I need to see the whole thing. I don't know what that means. What are you talking about? I'm like, I thought you could just by, you know exactly what that was, go fix this.

Adam Elmore: Well, that's super helpful for people that are building things for people with a totally fresh perspective to play with it and then give feedback because I know it's easy to take stuff for granted when you've been doing that thing for years, you don't get that fresh perspective anymore. That new eyes on the thing.

Farrah Campbell: Well, yeah. Or doing things like do MPMN install. I'm like, where though? Where did you want me to do that now? I remember that was one of the ... I'm like, where are the instructions on where do you do MPMN? Now I know. Just little things like that, which just seems like it's [inaudible 00:28:07] easy, you're like, was that Google or what? But anyhow, it's very ...

Adam Elmore: I'm very interested in this topic. I want to do more kind of creating educational stuff. And I've started branching into creating some tutorials and things that you just realize, it's very hard to sort of pick your lines and say this is what I'm going to assume people know, they're going to have to be this much knowledge and then I'm going to take them from there to here. But there's so many different places you could start or end, and how much context is just baked into so many of the assumptions you make. It's not easy. People who are really good-

Farrah Campbell: The tools you use or the tools that you use.

Adam Elmore: Yep. Stuff you have, like what kind of machine you use and what you already have installed on it that you don't even realize just comes on the thing. Really good technical trainers. It's a very underappreciated skill. I think there's a lot of them at AWS. A lot of them on the Amplify team. I had Michael Leando on, that was who came on before you and just people who know how to sort of take people where they're at and move them towards a goal. It's very admirable, not easy.

Farrah Campbell: Not easy at all.

Adam Elmore: I often ask people on this show, I used to, when I had this show and I'm bringing it back, if they have any hot takes. I don't know if that's the thing you get into, Farrah, if you're a hot take kind of person. It could be on anything. It doesn't have to be technology. You don't have to have them either. Not everyone does.

Farrah Campbell: What is my hot take? You know what, my out take is, what I say is, I've seen a lot of people ... I'm trying to think about ... See, I have to try to say everything nicely. So I think maybe gone are the days of the people, I'm tired of the days, the people that just seem like they to want to undercut everything somebody does.

Farrah Campbell: So I think there's a lot of that happening. And some people that probably enjoy doing that. And so my hot take is we could do a lot less of that in the world. I've seen a lot of it recently and it just bothers me. I'm like, what do I say on Twitter today that's nice? Or who can I go find to say something nice about and amplify just to change the direction on the commentary that seems to continue to happen on a daily basis?

Adam Elmore: It's tough. The internet is sort of, it's like a bad medium for a lot of ... I don't know. It does feel like it's very easy to run into negative discourse on the internet that's sort of-

Farrah Campbell: I think people like it. I think some people like that part of it, I'll be honest. I mean, I do. I think I've actually watched my engage ... I'll watch engagements where people say things nice. And people are like, ah, that's whatever. And I'm like, the negative thing. They're like, oh, what happened? Let's hear some more. And I'm like, oh, no, come on. How about the good stuff? Don't you want to hear more about the good stuff somebody did? But just the negative stuff really takes and people want to ...

Adam Elmore: I don't know if that has to do with algorithms, social media. I don't know. But it does seem like the negative does resonate more on the internet. I mean, that's why there's Hacker News, I guess that's why there's Reddit.

Farrah Campbell: I don't know about the algorithms. I mean, I-

Adam Elmore: We'll find out, I guess Twitter's algorithm, Elon Musk bought it, it's going to be public or something is what I hear. I don't know if that's true.

Farrah Campbell: It would be very interesting for sure.

Adam Elmore: Another question I ask that's more positive than hot takes because hot takes generally do lead toward negative comments, do you have any role models? Anybody in this space that you sort of, or that mentored you through your career? People that you've looked up to?

Farrah Campbell: Oh my gosh, there's so many.

Adam Elmore: You want to shine a light on something?

Farrah Campbell: I literally had so much help along the way. I mean, from all the way back to my ... This lady, Barb Stark, who I said, "I want to be you, how do I do what you do?" And she helped me get my first role to startup with Dave Hirsch and Eric and leading all the way on to all the engineers. I mean, I'd say I've had so many, all the developers that I worked with that were always so kind and patient with me and would let me be asking thousands of questions about what does that do? Why is that in brackets or what's the colors about, what does that mean?

Farrah Campbell: And then trying to explain to me about the stuff that I was learning and how that would apply to our tech stack, then there's Lauren Cooney, who's been a very good friend, but also an executive coach. Andrew Clay Shafer is how I met a ton of people at AWS when I was at Stackery. And I was looking to meet solution architects and asked him if I could hang out with him because it seemed like people kept coming to him that were, and I had him and I was like, can I just hang out with you a little bit more?

Farrah Campbell: And he's been a great mentor to, gosh, everybody. There's so many people here. I mean, I could literally talk about Kelsey Hightower, who's obviously this standup person and speaks very ... he's very kind, generous with his time and people. God, there's a bunch, all the serverless heroes and the container heroes, I admire every single one of them. I get to see all the different work that they do, and our service teams. I mean, I feel like I have so many people that have been a part of my story. It'd be hard to ... I'd have to list out a lot of names. Simon Wardley has been a huge [inaudible 00:33:40].

Adam Elmore: Oh, Simon Wardley.

Farrah Campbell: Kat Swittle.

Adam Elmore: If I could follow one person on Twitter, it's Simon Wardley, it's the only person I have notifications turned on for. I just want to see everything he says.

Farrah Campbell: So amazing to talk to. And he'd love, you can get him, if you're talking at a meet up and he'll start mapping you asking him about things. And I'm like, it's just amazing to watch his mind work.

Adam Elmore: His brain. Yes. Well, that was awesome. I asked that question quite a lot. I think people generally have more hot takes than they do mentors or people to look up to. So, that was fantastic to have the other way around. Well Farrah, thank you so much for coming on the show. I've looked forward to this for a long time. I took a little break we're back at it and finally able to get on here and talk just community and more about you and your career.

Farrah Campbell: Thanks. I'm glad that we were able to make this happen.