How To Explain Really Complicated Things with Viktor Farcic EP37: Tech World Humans Skills

hi there I'm Ben Pearson welcome to the tech World human skills podcast every episode we talk through how to thrive in the tech world not just survive now if you want me to work with your team just give me a shout I'd love to help teams to be more influential memorable and successful with their stakeholders head over to www. techworld humans skills.com to book a chat [Music] hey everyone and welcome to the tech World human skills podcast what a treat we have in store for you today now we've done a couple of talks on episodes on on storytelling and and how you talk to non-technical people but today we're going to think about how you talk to techies you know the the reality of tech is it's flipping complicated and it's changing at a lightning pace so how do you explain really complicated things in a compelling way now our guest today spends his life doing that he's got a background as an architect consultant and product manager and now hosts the devops toolkit Channel on YouTube with over 75,000 subscribers and a millions of views so please welcome to the show Victor faric Victor it is lovely to have you with us yeah thank you for heing me it's uh I really really looking forward to this well for all of our lovely listeners I Wonder Could you um tell us a bit about yourself and introduce yourself oh first I will need to find out I don't know really what I do most of the time I so officially I'm a developer Advocate at upbound uh I I'm involved in a lot a lot in open source uh lot most of what I do is in pu Publix one way or another whether that's writing some code whether that's speak at conferences whether that's uh trying to steer the projects in certain direction uh so what I do really depends on how I wake up in the morning I'm not sure as as long as people in my company don't know what I'm doing I'm fine well so so you've got I guess your your day job and and your hobby as I've heard you referred to it and and your hobby being your YouTube channel and your podcast and that kind of stuff yes exactly kind of that's I try to keep the separation between my hobbies and Company simply because you know hobbies are tend to be longer lasting than than my uh work days or work years in a company right so uh that spans companies are working but yeah they they're a separ it's like a church estate separation right kind of we coexist together but still are separated somehow right yeah yeah yeah yeah well so so the reason we thought it would be great to to talk to you today is is from your hobbies perspective really which is about um how you talk about really complicated stuff because you've got this great YouTube channel and um you know if if you go and have a look at it and have a look at the videos that are there you what you do really well is every week you create a new video um talking about some really deep and complicated topics and you do it in a really good way so that it brings it to life um and I guess your audience are techies really that that's kind of who you're explaining all of this kind of stuff to um and so I thought what would be lovely to do um would be to just walk through how do you do this because you are learning new complicated technology all the time and then turning that into a way to explain it and filming it and producing it and getting thousands and thousands of techies to watch all of those videos and so I wondered if we could sort of walk through how do you do this and what have you learned and most importantly what can we all learn about how we explain complicated things more uh successfully yeah so you know I'm I'm an old fart that started with software before we had education and all this stuff right it's kind of in early 90s when the only way you could actually progress is by just figuring it out yourself right and uh I kind of I I was almost forced to figure out things right without uh having somebody to explain me what to do and how to do it and so on and so forth right and then I spent I don't know 20 years or something like that doing the typical jobs that people do you know developer uh involved in testing as well some tech lead management this or that the only difference really me in the past and majority of people is that I could not hold the single position for long uh I would kind of get bored and uh hey I I don't I don't I don't want to develop anymore kind of is there something else I can do right uh and then eventually I I mean not eventually I realized that what I really like the most is that is U to switch what I do and change what I do fairly often right and that I'm I'm getting back to your question I promise right um so what I'm doing right now and I feel very privileged for that is that I have I am able to invest tremendous amount of time in exploring almost random things right yeah I'm I'm not really looking even for specific solution for a specific problem I just hey if if you right now tell me about a new project it goes right away on my to-do list I'm going to check it out I'm going to try to figure out how it fits into the system I'm most likely going to discard it like three out of four things that I ever touch they never see the sunlight because you know it's not good enough so most of my time I spend trying to figure out things right and how those things fit into other things uh like imagine me being um I don't know like 8y old and you give me a new toy and I don't know if you have children right but if you give there you go how assuming that they're young how long does the toy last yeah not not very long exactly it's the same thing with me kind of like hey you give me a new toy new project new product to check out and I'm extremely excited I like it a lot and then I would come back to you and say okay what now yeah yeah I'm I'm bored with this already right after a couple of days a week sometimes sometimes month depends right so Mo most of my time I spend in that trying to figure out things it in spend with invisible things I mean invisible in terms that nobody really sees the result of that yeah and and then uh some of those fit things fit somewhere and then I uh convert that into into stories right it could be YouTube it could be maybe a talk at a conference um try to figure out how how what is useful first you know I I feel that as if my job is almost first applying the filter so that you don't have to yeah and then uh uh figuring out now I was about to say figuring out how something works but that's not really my goal I'm not trying to figure out some how something works because anybody can figure out easily how something works right you go you go to the documentation of that something you follow the quick start you know how it works what I'm really trying to figure out is how does that fit into the system right how it's easy to figure out what is this thing in isolation what is a challenge is how that you know it's a Lego piece how does that fit into whatever Lego I whatever leg Lego I already have assembled right and eventually that that becomes a video or some other form and people watch it or read it or so listen to it so so you spend a lot of time learning so it sounds like you've got a great love of learning which I know a lot of people in Tech have really you need to otherwise you you you can't Thrive I don't think in the tech world if you don't like learning stuff so so you're you're constantly learning and then constantly finding those things that are great um and then how they fit in the system and then for your hobby I guess what you're then doing is saying right this is worth sharing with the world this is now a topic that I need to share with other people is that right yeah yeah I almost feel it exactly that's that's the process right and I feel almost like my responsibility to do that in terms that you know when when I was young uh and Junior then whatso not developer a lot of people help me and then now you know 30 years later it's my turn to to return the favor in a way right yeah and Pay It Forward um exactly exactly and then uh you know somebody younger than me is going to benefit from it and then that and then I will retire and then that somebody is going to help others right it's uh it's great so it's how the world works or how the world should work how the world should work so so let's start to dig into that a little bit so you've found something that you think this is brilliant it fits in the ecosystem this is something that people may get value from um what what what do you do then how do you go from there to uh I've now got something that I'm ready to communicate to people in an effective way and then maybe at the end we'll then talk about how you get that on video and think about maybe the video production but how do you go from I've got this thing I want to talk about that I can now articulate in a really compelling way what what's your process for that my process is code really uh I write code and code in any form you can imagine whether that's uh commands whether that's manifest whether that's go code or whatever my my brain is really I'm not trying to write down the story I'm write trying to write down the code that explains the story and then once I figure that out once I have all the commands and all the scripts and all whatever else I need then words kind of come easy right kind of once you're confident about something from the code perspective explaining that something is easy right you're just putting words around around code right so I I know that many people like to start with diagrams they they like to start with uh some bullet points and stuff like that I I skip all that I just to me the code is the only thing that matters okay and my job is to explain that code to people right okay and so is that so typically the things that you explaining are always going to be code based because you tend to be working in the devops world so it's going to be code based things that are very linear very structured that you're going to be explaining to people yes exactly I mean not necessarily always but let's say 98% of the cases I might have a a video or some other material twice a year that does not contain code but those are exceptions rather than the rules yeah because now carry I uh I'm I so what I do is I try to create material that can be consumed in a way how I like to consume material rather than trying to figure out what people really want let's start with that kind of like I'm not chasing views or anything like that kind of this is how I like to consume things right and that that's the same way how I produce things and I personally don't like like I don't like PowerPoint I don't like I don't like people trying to sell me something and even when they're not trying to sell me something if they're if somebody's and I'm now talking about tech world right if somebody's talking talking talking for how an hour without showing me something yeah to me that sounds like a cell pitch even though it's it's not necessarily the case right yeah yeah yeah so it's kind of I need to demonstrate uh the value of my words through code in a way to make it real yeah yeah and no it's it's fascinating and a couple of things come to my to my mind there so years and years ago in my past I used to teach uh scripting to to people when I was work at Microsoft years ago Powershell was the technology that I used to to do a lot with people and so um lots of what I was doing was explaining things like that where it's very linear and very structured um and it's quite interesting because then if you start talking about stuff that perhaps isn't code based that perhaps isn't quite as structured as that um actually the coding bit it forces you to turn it into a linear you could call it a story you could call it flow you could call it a structure but it starts here and it goes through steps to get to there and that's actually the first part you know if you're not talking about code that you need to get in your head is what's the process what's the structure what's the story what's the flow you could call it whatever you want really that's going to take you from the beginning to the end yeah so um depends how you look at it right get Co the end result is very linear linear I give you that getting to that end result is very unline linear right because you go back and forth kind of like you try this and then that works and then you try something else and that forces you to go back and fix something so on and so forth so it's the process is not linear but the end result is right yeah and uh because the goal is really to make complex things easy kind of I I want feel people to feel as if I spent 15 minutes of my life on it uh even though I spent days or weeks or months sometimes right know can I can I pause you there Victor that because that is so important that so important and I think that people don't think about it because it feels like it's so natural you know if you go and watch your videos or whatever be it because like you said it feels like oh I I just spent 15 minutes on this but in reality you've thought about it you've got it wrong you've messed around you've broken it you've pulled it apart you've done all this you've spent ages on it and that is what then gives you the ability to sound like you've spent 15 minutes on it because you haven't you've spent ages on it exactly it's you know it's like uh let me find an analogy I don't know T the France just finished right poacher won uh and it looks so easy when he drives that bike kind of like he's not even sweating much all he did was really sit on that bike and then drive it for an hour or two kind of like come on you know it's easy right in reality he had to I nobody knows how much trains every day for for for for how many years and things like that right to to make that ride yeah relatively easy right yeah it's it's the same thing right yeah yeah lots of hard work oh yeah exactly exactly and and it's okay kind of it's not supposed to be uh you know it would almost be disrespectful if I now waste your time by you trying watching me or listening to me figuring it out right uh that would be almost disrespectful to to you right so you you come at the end of the process okay which which is great now the important note here is that and this is going to sound strange probably is that I'm not trying to teach anything to anybody okay there is teaching is not the goal at all because there there are better ways to to learn something than um like watch my videos or whichever other the type of material I produce uh you go to the documentation you get all the details everything over there my goal is rather to to spark the interest in you to learn something okay right kind of to to spend half an hour listening to me and say oh no this is not for me excellent I I just saved you a week getting to that conclusion or hey this is this is this is awesome right kind of like like I saw the end result I want that end result and I and I'm going to spend now week month whatever amount of time is required to to learn that something because you're not going to learn all the details about something from me in half an hour that's not going to happen yeah but if I can reach the point that somebody says this is amazing I want this yeah I'm going to this is worth my trouble this is worth my time then I'm a happy person right yeah that's usually why very often in videos and other material you know you were mentioning earlier how linear it is and it is but there is one exception is that it goes from the beginning uh you know setup and then uh something light and then we're complicating things until we get to the end result but then in my material when I get to that end result I put that end result at the very beginning first couple of minutes okay okay so that you can I I'm very obsessed not wasting anybody's time right so if you're going to watch I'm going to give you 3 minutes to decide whether half an hour is worth your time right I'm kind of incentivizing people not to watch my videos yeah in a way right kind of hey this is what will happen this is the end result look at this blah blah blah blah blah and uh very and I see that through statistics very often people drop after after half a minute minute 2 minutes 3 minutes right and that's okay I'm fine with that because hey actually if you drop out after 3 minutes that means that actually I'm even more successful yeah yeah right kind of like I I I even managed to convince you in smaller amount of time that that might not be for you yeah yeah yeah yeah and and that's really good because that's a great human way to do it isn't it that's what you want to do to humans right is this useful for you um no it's not go somewhere else yes it is I'll do my best to help you but that's not the way that all the big tech companies reward reward creators and and reward you know they you know so if you go and look at you know how to create tension in a video and how to view you know maximize minutes watched it's the big reveals at separate points as you go you know they're thinking about how you keep eyes on your video for as long as possible whereas what you're saying is I'm here to to kind of help people really and make them help them decide whether they want to use this and if they don't and if they don't let's get them off quickly and that those that are there are then committed uh and we'll get value from it exactly the major difference is that uh the things I do as my hobby like including YouTube right they're not my source of income so I'm not I'm not forced in a way to chase all those things so that I maximize the retention and maximize you know the number of viewers and all those things that would Inc increase my income right it's it's literally a hobby I'm not actually I am earning I'm earning just enough money from YouTube to pay the costs of editing somebody else is editing my videos and things like that so if if I end up on zero that's that's the success for me right yeah and then I I don't have that incentive to uh to to make you force you to keep watching to discover after half an hour that I'm just this is not for you right kind of yeah and and I remember so we had a little chat couple of weeks ago just sort of whil we were well we were meeting each other and and planning what we might talk about today and and I love what you one of the things that you said it was it was that you're like writing a crime novel um so when you're thinking about one of the do you want to explain to everybody what what you mean by you're writing it like a crime novel yeah so the a bad crime novel would be and I'm now simplifying it let's say and inventing as I go right let's say that you're presented with inspector and inspector is called and uh he's walking the streets and stuff no the good time no novel starts with a murder car of in the first chapter in the first couple of pages there is a murder somebody was murdered uh in a house where there was 10 people we don't know who is the everybody's a suspect we don't know who the murderer is yeah do you want to read more yeah right and of course you won't and then it goes either back in time or somewhere else and things like that and it slowly reveals but you find out immediately uh the the sus suspense part right you have a hook and maybe you can you know some books are also like that you actually I'm not interested into the murder mystery type of Novel so I'm going to read some something else excellent right but if you are interested you it always starts with the murder because that's the that's the interesting part that's what you want to discover right yeah and that's the approach you're going through here is you know right at the beginning you're you're hooking people in saying this might be for you this might not be for you here's the murder and then for the rest of the video we're going to be talking about the details of how it all plugs together when you'd use it when you wouldn't use it all of that kind of stuff yeah the rest of the video is discovering how that person was murdered yeah yeah now now one of the other things that you mentioned um you hate um uh Powerpoints and and all that kind of stuff you you like to look at the code you like to look at the actual product when you're explaining it is do you want to talk to us a bit more about that yeah so uh actually it's it is and it isn't like that right um I like to see what the product does how it fits into the system what is the what is the what is the culture that behind the theme of that product because if my culture does not fit their culture then that product will not be for me as on and so forth I like I think that there are many many many things uh that are important around the project uh that is not code but I think that all those things are best explained through code right uh or and also figured out through code and so on and so forth so I don't think that it's all about code but I think that code explains all of it right okay it's like because code is like language right now we're speaking English to each other right and code is just another language it's just switching your brain to that language and reading it as as if you're reading a novel right yeah yeah yeah yeah I I must admit I like I'm I'm quite a i quite like to understand the big the big picture first so I'm quite I'm quite a visual learner so I quite like to think about okay what are the components that we're going to be plugging together and roughly how are they all going to fit together and what what's the big picture of what's happening and then I love to get into the detail so now I've got every all of those components in my head now let's go through and understand it in that next level of depth so I I think I'm perhaps a little different I like to to be able to visualize it in my mind first I mean I guess it depends on I I was operating like that before uh but now after a certain experience and so on and so forth so I already have a picture just to be clear right yeah uh what I'm trying to figure out is how does that new piece fit into it okay okay right so the picture is there uh okay it's Cloud it's kubernetes it's serverless it's this or that kind of I have a picture in my head it's just that I'm constantly trying to expand that picture bing let's it's a puzzle right uh by adding more pieces to it so uh I'm more concerned of okay so what what what can I do to make that picture prettier in a way or more useful or what's so not right so I'm definitely concerned my my you know when you speak about people and how they operate usually they're described that there are people who go into details of something and they're t-shaped people you know that uh try to understand the system I'm that one I try to understand the system right it's just that I I'm not I I feel that for certain types of systems not all I already understand the system so my my steps now are okay but how does this fit into it right I don't know what it is yeah it's uh I don't know it's it's this I don't know what is it where do I put it how do I fit it somewhere right so um so I guess you as I sort reflect a little bit we're sort of thinking you spend a lot of time learning and making sure that you understand everything and then you like to think about right well how do what how do I linearly tell that you know how do I tell that using the code and code being you know just another language that you can use to explain things that's quite logical um any other tips or any other tricks that you use to to try and make the complex more simple and easy to understand so to begin with I'm not sure how successful I am in doing that or no I hope I am but uh well you lots of people that really like what you're doing so I'm going to say yes you are successful so it'd be great to he depends kind of uh you know it's not really that Lots uh that many to be honest you have uh without naming you you hear people on YouTube for example in Tech world that are that are having much more views and things like that in big part because I'm not really concerned with Junior I just finished University I'm more talking to more experienced people yeah okay uh but uh anyways one of the main rules is that I never assume or I'm doing my best never to assume preor knowledge of something right so a good example would be something I'm working on right now about SI term signals signals doesn't matter and um I I I have to have different pains in my terminal because some things needs to happen in parallel and uh I fire up zage doesn't matter it's a t-x multiplexer whatever it is right and then a minute later I realize okay what if somebody doesn't know what it is right did they ever explain it can I reference and say go there stop stop watching this go there to figure this out first and then come back I didn't do that so I postponed that material went back uh and started working on t-x or multiplexer terminals sessions and so on and so forth uh only so that I can I can tell people something like you might know this cool continue you might not know this but it's not the subject of this material go there right so I never uh rarely if ever assume somebody knows something right uh they might or they might not and if they don't I need to be capable of redirecting them uh telling them you know the same thing what I said before telling them okay stop this video I know that YouTube is going to punish me uh and not not recommend it but stop it stop watching right now go there yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah now um I'm looking at the clock and time is zipping through what what I also would love to just understand um so you you've created this content you've got a great narrative and you're talking you know you've got this great way to explain stuff just about the production of the videos so you're producing because I think more and more video on demand is a great way for us to talk to people um whether that be customers whether that be internal colleagues whoever it is because it's accessible anytime um and and you know it's a really good way to explain stuff um how do what have you got any tips on how to create good these good videos that you've got on YouTube that we could learn from so I can I'll ask I I'll give you two answers right uh how somebody should start with videos and uh what I'm doing right now which is very very different from um when I was starting right starting is easy just put away that fear that and forget about the idea of not having equipment and all that stuff that's all silly because whatever you do you're going to look at it here later and you say you're going to say this is crap and that's okay because if you get to the point to say and this is not for videos for anything to say this is crap what I did last year that means that you improved yeah it's great right and the only way to improve it is by just by uh doing it over and over and over and over again right and I I get that question often kind of what should I what should I start with which equipment should I buy no buy a cheap mic uh you have iPhone yes cool that's it kind of uh put some lights around get some lights from around your house put it on and then just do it right it's going to be horrible absolutely horrible but that horrible is better than not doing it right yeah yeah and and it's going to have some substance to it right because you're talking about something that is of value so you've got all that stuff that's in your brain that would be great to share with other people exactly and it's same like anything else you know if I look at the code I've wrote in '90s I'm ashamed of it it's horrible right of course course I'm ashamed of it because I feel that I write better code now yeah that's that's the only reason not because it was really bad uh but today I have um slightly complicated more complicated setup uh so I until not long ago I was actually not having a manuscript um I was just speaking from top of my head after I have the code now code is important just kind of putting words uh afterwards I started using a editor because this many people don't understand that but it takes probably a full day of work to edit a 30 minutes video at least the way how how I publish it right So eventually I got an editor and uh that person freaked out kind of like hey you're showing me code and then you're speaking about that code and I'm supposed to match it somehow and edit it I don't know how I I can do it car this is completely you could have written it in in in Chinese right so I I I was was forced in a way to to write a manuscript now I have a manuscript kind of like the text I'm saying more or less stuff like that so that I can simplify the life of the editing process right that is done by somebody else yeah and then I record audio uh talking head and Screen they are recorded separately yeah uh with screen being recorded in a different time frame than than talking here than audio and then all that comes together in um in a post production kind of because uh you know if I I'm also very conscious not to lose anybody's time so if I talk while I type there will be times that uh I'm waiting for something to happen there will be times that I'm uh focused on what I'm doing instead of explaining it to you and so on and so forth so it's I feel it's better much more complicated for me or for the editor but hey record what you're doing screen uh record your talk and then match it all together so you can speed it up slow it down and things like that yeah I I must admit so I do um so in my technical storytelling program which is all about helping people you know how how they they communicate these sorts of things um for all the videos that I do video on demand I I mov to a teleprompter so like you're saying you know and then H having a script um uh and writing that script so it's it's how I sound um so that it's a natural sound script and not that I'm reading an email you know that sounds differently and that vastly sped up and improved the quality of the stuff that I was doing I thought that was a great skill to learn and a great investment that's what you just said is critical uh if you write it in a way that people can read it you will not be able to uh read it I mean to to convert it into into talking head right because it's a very different uh it's a very different the way how we speak and the way how we read is very very different yeah so either you're forced to make readable script that is going to sound as rubbish as when you read it because it will it will sound like you're reading newspaper or you as you mentioned you're going to write it the way how you speak yeah yeah and if you publish that as a text it's going to be horrible right yeah yeah yeah uh but but it's going to be much better when when you read it in a video or podcast or whatever it is yeah now the challenge is and that takes a lot of time uh I feel to master is how to read things once you master how to write things in a way how you speak how to read things without looking like you're reading right yeah uh a good example is conferences I'm now switching subject just a little bit right yeah um whenever somebody asks me I always recommend never write speaker notes Never Ever Ever Write speaker notes I mean you will do that later it's fine but if you write speaker notes and you go on a stage it's so clear that you're reading speaker notes and I know that you know it I know that you know the story I know that you can tell a story yeah but basically your storytelling degrades with speaker notes unless and this is critical with sufficient practice you learn how to do it right you you can I I can now I feel that I can now read text from teleprompter you never figuring out that I'm reading right yeah but that takes time I I suggest people starting to just not read from the telepromter right away or even better put bullet points so that you have a reminder oh oh I need to talk about that and then you talk right and then you can riff around just that little bullet point but um you've still got that structure you know you need to talk about these three things and you've got a minute or two on each of those bullet points and you can riff around it as opposed to just a Wandering monotonous noodling that it can be if you've got no bullets no script no teleprompter and a and a console in front of you it can be pretty low quality and take a long time to get to Value yeah but that's also okay kind of FL quality is inevitable when you start yeah yeah well Victor I've just looked at the time and time has sadly escaped us it's been a brilliant conversation and uh I could have carried on this conversation for for hours so thank you so much um for everything that you've been through um just as we start to wrap up any key takeaways that you would like people to remember from the things that you've been telling us I I feel that it's very beneficial to do some public work and I'm now not referencing only you uh what open source documentation contributions to the project and so on and so forth whenever I get a question of hey what can I do to improve my career that's my only answer always right because um especially if it's open source right and I put it all in the same bucket as public do the public work you will get recognized for it you will have much easier time moving wherever you want to move yeah no that is a great takeaway great takeaway for me when I think about the things that you've been going through you know I love your your approach just try some of this stuff you know don't be scared get over the fear and have a go and of course it's not going to be as good as it might be in 10 years time when you've done it but don't take that first step you know I I love that I also love the idea that you're sort of giving of when you're talking about this stuff treat it like a crime novel you know so hit us between the eyes with the murder you know hook us in with the murder do we want to commit to this now unraveling of the murder or do you not you know I really love that that idea so so those two things have um yeah really gone into my brain so um than thank you so much um now um if people have loved listening to you and want to get more of you on YouTube or your podcast can you tell us where do we find your your YouTube and where do we find your podcast H I'm everywhere so if if if you Google my name you'll you'll find made in bunch of places so there is a YouTube channel devop toolkit uh then there is podcast which is on many platforms that was Paradox uh if you if if you if you're in I'm I'm likely going to be in the conference in your city wherever that is whenever that is I I'm I'm going to a lot of those as well um yeah and just Google it Google it and I'll pop a couple of links in the show notes if you want so I'll put a link to the podcast a link to YouTube and I'll pop your LinkedIn uh in there so that everybody can find you and and get in touch if they want to so I guess the final thing for me to say is Victor thank you so much for coming on the show it's been lovely to have you with us thank you for having me this was brilliant well there we go thanks for listening remember if the podcast is not enough for you and you want weekly tips delivered straight to your inbox sign up for the elev ated you newsletter head over to www. techworld humans skills.com to sign up oh can you do me a favor could you subscribe to the podcast and rate the show it really helps spread the word [Music]

2024-08-27 16:59

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