Salesforce Developer Podcast

Katie Villanueva, Senior Salesforce Administrator, is joining us again today! We started our conversation on mental health in the workplace last week and, in this episode, we’ll finish it up.

Katie has a long history with mental health and illness. She has grown and learned a lot over the years and she now supports others through a mental health and illness forum. Tune in to learn how to handle mental health in the workplace, how you can help others with mental illnesses and improve your own mental health, and all about the forum Katie created.

Show Highlights:

• Katie’s “CRM” mindset.
• The stigma around mental health in our society, especially in the tech industry.
• Why respect for ourselves and others is so crucial.
• What mindfulness is.
• How Katie structures her routine to improve her mental health.
• The origin story of her community forum.

Links:

• Katie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Catptains_Log
• Katie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-villanueva-36138914a/
• Mental Health and Illness Group: https://sfdc.co/tb-mental-health-illness

Katie Villanueva is a Senior Salesforce Administrator. She is also the creator of the Mental Health and Illness forum on Trailblazer. Katie has been on a long journey with mental health and has learned so much along the way.

In this episode, Katie and I discuss her mental health history and her various experiences with it. She also shares some things we can do to optimize our mental health. You don’t want to miss this one.

Show Highlights:

• Katie’s history in radio and how she transitioned from that to Salesforce.
• When she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
• The long journey that led to her diagnosis.
• The three types of bipolar disorder.
• The difference between mental health and mental illness.
• How Katie manages her anxiety.
• The experience she had meeting Charlie Isaacs.

Links:

• Katie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Catptains_Log
• Katie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-villanueva-36138914a/
• Mental Health and Illness Group: https://sfdc.co/tb-mental-health-illness

Heather Black is the CEO of Supermums. She started out in social entrepreneurship and made the jump to being a CEO when she was 26. Eventually, this morphed into Supermums, the company she created and now runs.

In this episode, Heather and I talk about her long history with social entrepreneurship and what that term means. We also talk all about Supermums and how it runs today. Finally, Heather explains how she has created a healthy work-life balance.

Show Highlights:

• The first business Heather started.
• What social entrepreneurship is.
• How Heather got into social entrepreneurship and moved into the role of CEO.
• What her first year as a CEO was like.
• Her journey of leaving her first company and founding Supermums.
• What they do over at Supermums and who it’s directed at helping.
• Why Heather wanted to start a podcast.
• All about the book The Unseen Wounds of Women.
• Why it’s important to be an authentic leader.

Links:

• Supermums on Twitter: https://twitter.com/supermumsglobal
• Supermums on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supermumsglobal
• Supermums website: www.supermums.org

Ben Sklar is a Senior Product Manager here at Salesforce. Though he started college as a pre-med major, he quickly shifted his interests after taking a Coding 101 course. He went on to pursue Computer Science and even to do research at Vanderbilt University and Hamilton College.

Today, Ben and I are talking about GraphQL. GraphQL is a new standard which provides significant performance and organizational benefits to API calls as opposed to REST. Specifically, we’re discussing how Salesforce is implementing it and how you can use it. Join us!

Show Highlights:

• How Ben got into web technology and front-end engineering.
• How he got introduced to Salesforce and what he does in his current job here.
• An overview of GraphQL.
• The key limitation of REST that GraphQL is trying to solve.
• The two main ways to use GraphQL APIs.
• How lightning web components fit into all of this.
• More things on the roadmap for GraphQL.

Links:

• Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-sklar/

Tiago Ruivo is a Senior Regional Success Architect here at Salesforce. He started his career in computer science and was introduced to Salesforce through pure luck as a customer. Eventually, he made the jump over to working for Salesforce and, over time, progressed from being a junior developer to holding his current role.

Today, Tiago and I are talking about one of my favorite subjects: static code analysis. Throughout the episode, Diego walks us through how to run it, how to manage it, and how to operate it with your teams.

Show Highlights:

• More about Tiago’s background and career history.
• How he describes his current role.
• What static code analysis is and where it falls in the development cycle.
• What the term “shift left” means.
• What static code analysis is good at catching and what it’s not good at catching.
• The tools that make up static code analysis.
• The first steps to take when you run code analysis.
• Best practices for making your own set of rules with static code analysis.
• Where you can learn more about all of this.

Links:

• Tiago on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiagoruivo/
• PMD: https://pmd.github.io/
• ES-lint: https://eslint.org/
• SFDX Scanner: https://forcedotcom.github.io/sfdx-scanner/

If you tuned into last week’s podcast, you heard from Steph Herrera. She is the co-founder of PepUp Tech and helped launch Salesforce Saturdays. All in all, her efforts have made a major impact in the Salesforce community.

Steph is back today for part two of our conversation. Throughout the episode, we talk more about Salesforce Saturdays and how Steph keeps it running with its now 60 chapters. We also discuss a topic that both of us are very passionate about: stress and burnout.

Show Highlights:

• What Merivis is and Steph’s involvement with it.
• The keynote Steph did at Dreamforce 2017.
• Her tips for anyone preparing to give a keynote.
• How mental health came onto her radar.
• Why stress and burnout can become such a problem for people in the tech community.
• All about the mental health panel Steph is doing.

Links:

• Steph on Twitter: @steph_herrera_
• Steph on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steph360/

Steph Herrera is the co-founder of PepUp Tech and has a long history in the Salesforce community. After starting out at Dell, Steph developed a passion for computers and eventually coding. From there, she got involved with a variety of projects like Maris.

However, what Steph is most famous for is something that has made an indelible impact on our community, Salesforce Saturdays. Tune in to dive into the story behind Salesforce Saturdays, what it looks like today, and much more from Steph.

Show Highlights:

• How Steph ended up in tech.
• How she got introduced to Salesforce and decided to make it the backbone of her career.
• Steph’s story of co-founding PepUp Tech.
• What PepUp Tech is doing right now.
• Where the idea for Salesforce Saturdays came from.
• How they keep it structured with 60 chapters running.

Links:

• Steph on Twitter: @steph_herrera_
• Steph on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steph360/

In keeping with our discussion of open-source software, today we will be speaking with Jonathan Gillespie, a software engineer here at Salesforce who is responsible for building the Nebula Logger. Jonathan is a proponent of open-source software for its many benefits, from community sourcing to expert knowledge and transparency.

Frustrated with the limitations of proprietary software, Jonathan began experimenting with open-source as a more robust alternative. In my discussion with Jonathan, he fills us in on the reasons he has embraced open-source and why it can be helpful to other developers. He also discusses his current project, Nebula Logger, what led him to begin his work on it, and how it can be used to monitor and report logging data.

Show Highlights:

• What led Jonathan to embrace open-source software
• The benefits of open-source software
• The origin story of Jonathan’s work on Nebula Logger
• How the rise of automation has impacted developers

Links:

• Jonathan on Linkedin - https://linkedin.com/in/jongpie/
• Jonathan on Github - https://github.com/jongpie/

James Simone is a Lead Software Engineer here at Salesforce. One of his great passions in life is open-source software. That is exactly what we will be talking about today.

James was inspired to get into open-source software to help people share code in a more easily indexable, searchable format. This is even what led him to work here at Salesforce. In this episode, James teaches us how we can use open-source software, how to get into it, and some of the projects that he likes.

Show Highlights:

• How James came to work for Salesforce.
• What extreme programming is and where it came from.
• Why enterprises should support open-source software.
• How second-generation packaging affected Salesforce projects.
• How to navigate licensing and fair use when working with open-source software.
• All about Nebula Logger and the logging problem it solves.
• What Apex Rollup is.
• How to get involved in Nebula Logger and/or Apex Rollup.

Links:

• James on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrwordsmith
• James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrwordsmith/
• James on Github: https://github.com/jamessimone
• Joys Of Apex: https://jamessimone.net/blog/joys-of-apex/

Kevin Boyle is the CEO of Gearset. Today, I sit down to talk with him all about his journey of building out Gearset and developing it into what it is today. We also discuss DevOps in general throughout our conversation.

Kevin’s life trajectory was mostly set from the moment he was first introduced to gaming and coding and was instantly hooked. He went on to do an internship with Microsoft which set his career in stone. Tune in to learn more about his history and what he’s doing now with Gearset.

Show Highlights:

• What Kevin’s experience at Microsoft was like.
• How he went from that to working with DevOps.
• How Salesforce’s approach to metadata layers changed his thinking about DevOps.
• The pitfalls of an org-centric model.
• Qualities that make for a good DevOps practice.
• Common misconceptions around DevOps.
• When Kevin decided to start his own company and why.
• The importance of surrounding yourself with a great team of people as an entrepreneur.

Links:

• Kevin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevfromireland?lang=en
• Kevin on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinfromireland/
• Kevin on Github: https://github.com/kevfromireland