Ep#67 What it’s like being an AWS Developer Advocate with Darko Mesarso

May 23, 2022
EP67 Darko 1280

About the Guest

Ten years experience doing System Admin work + various other IT related tasks. I consider myself a very proficient Windows and Linux System Administrator/Engineer. I excel in DevOps and automation, and have the ability to be very flexible with the technologies I use.

I hold the following certifications:
MCTS
MCITP: Server Administrator
MCITP: Enterprise Administrator
Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate

Specialties: AWS, Cloud, Windows, Virtualization, Windows Server Services, Linux , Active Directory, VMWare, Hyper-V, File Services, Backup Solutons, SCCM, PowerShell, Bash, Citrix XenApp, Xen Server, Solaris, Veritas Storage, Chef, Ansible, Jenkins, CI/CD, DevOps

EU Citizen

Episode Summary

The art of being an AWS Developer Advocate is all about the personal side of Darko. How he got into tech and why he collects artifacts from back in the day.

Episode Show Notes & Transcript

Host: Jon

You know what, I'm not sure our next guest needs much of an introduction. His obsession for rescuing old technology books or ancient artifacts has gone viral all over the internet.

Host: Jon

If you hear an old modem dial tone in your sleep, you've got mail. It's probably because of him. He's a senior developer advocate at AWS and a huge fan of technology, internet, and how things got started. He's even gone as far as tattooing the command prompts on his forearms, not to mention, have you seen his Jeff Bezos shirt before I bring on our next guest? Don't forget to hit that light subscribe and notify. Please join me in welcoming Darko Mesaros. Wait, did, did I just butcher your last name? Wait, where does your, what does your last name stand for? Dar

Guest: Darko

You did kind of butcher my last name, but it's okay. My, my last name actually means the butcher or actually more precise. It means the slaughterer. So you slaughtered my last name in both ways. <laugh>

Host: Jon

Okay. I don't wanna say that was sort of like planned because you, I was trying to pronounce it beforehand and you're like, John it's all right. If you call me Darco and I'm like, please, thank you because I feel so bad trying to pronounce it and I'm I just suck at it. I'm sorry, man.

Guest: Darko

<laugh> it's perfect. It's perfectly fine. It's perfectly fine. You're not the first one. And again, I, my, my last name comes from a very complicated language, so it's okay.

Host: Jon

Ah, so darker. Thank you so much for joining the show. This is a very loose topic show. I wanna talk about you. And in fact, as a developer advocate for agent, yes, you, how many times do you get to come on the show and actually just talk normally you're hosting these things.

Guest: Darko

Yep. Yep. I, it it's it's this is one of the few, few situations where I can actually get to talk about myself or talk about anything related to me. Usually it's me, who does this to other people. So I, I appreciate, I appreciate the opportunity.

Host: Jon

You appreciate the time to do less preparation and I have to do all the work for you. So I'm glad I can give it

Guest: Darko

To you. Thank you so much. Thank, uh, the only thing I prepared for today was this cup of coffee. So <laugh>, and that's that's about it. So <laugh>,

Host: Jon

By a way, I think you need a bigger mug.

Guest: Darko

I do. I do. I, I, I, this is a small one. This is, this is pathetic, but yeah, once we're done, I'll get more

Host: Jon

<laugh> all right. So DCA, we plan to actually do this recording. I think it was almost a year ago. And then you're like, John, can we push it off? I'm moving. I'm like, well, where are you moving to? And in fact, you were moving to Seattle, how'd the move go?

Guest: Darko

Yeah. So I, um, six months, well, actually six months ago I moved from Berlin to Seattle. So it's been a, it's been a long time coming, uh, thanks to COVID and all the situations around that, the, the, the migrations, the immigration, all the visa stuff, the, the actual shipping and flying was a bit more complicated than it should be. But finally, this year, no last year in November, I landed in Seattle and have been here since then. It's, uh, it's an amazing place to be. I must say,

Host: Jon

How do you like all the wet weather?

Guest: Darko

I'm fine with that. I, I lived in Dublin for two years and I'm, I kind of, I, I accept the rain as, as a thing. So I, I don't have a problem with that. And actually I like the cooler weather, so I, I do enjoy, uh, me being able to wear hoodies most of the time.

Host: Jon

<laugh> nice. We are gonna talk about your book collection in the background in a couple of minutes. Don't worry. That is not a virtual background because we were pulling out some, hang tight. Yeah. <laugh>

Guest: Darko

No green screens here. Nope.

Host: Jon

<laugh> not yet or anything. Okay. So the reason that we actually got a chance to do this is recently, we were at the AWS San Francisco summit. The first in-person us summit happened, uh, a little less than a month ago. And I was over, over in the corner doing a quick recording. And you walked up to me, by the way, you walked up to me with an awesome shirt. We're gonna talk about in a second. You're like, Hey, John. I'm like, oh my God, in person live like this. It was so surreal. I'm a big fan of yours, by the way.

Guest: Darko

Thank you so much. Yeah, it's been, it is been like I have the last time I've been to an in person, AWS event was in 2019. So it's been a long time coming. And I was very happy to actually go to an in person summit in San Francisco. I wish there was more people, but I understand well why there wasn't people because you know, some people are still a bit concerned with COVID for a right reason, but, uh, at least I got to see you, which is, which was fantastic because I, I kind of saw you lurking in the back. I'm like, ah, Hey John, I, I better say hello. Maybe I can remind him about this thing. So <laugh>,

Host: Jon

I was, I was overdoing a quick recording and promo, and then you walked up to me and I was like, oh man, we gotta do a picture. And the shirt you were wearing, I gotta tell everybody, do you, do you have it? I

Guest: Darko

Don't, I don't have it with me. It's in.

Host: Jon

Oh, that's alright.

Guest: Darko

That's alright. It's in the wash.

Host: Jon

Uh that's okay. It was a Jeff Bezos and it had punk and oh, no pineapples on it, right?

Guest: Darko

Pineapples. Yeah.

Host: Jon

Oh, Jeff Bezos and P I'm like, dude, where did you get that shirt? How did you get

Guest: Darko

That? So it's it's, it was my ultimate to Goodwill find. So picture the shirt, the worst plastic material, you can imagine the, the polyester, the, the, the, the, the horrible things shirts are made out of it has a bunch of Hawaii lore, Hawaii, low re Hawaii patterns with pineapples, very colorful, and all of a sudden all over my shirt, the head of Jeff Bezos. So I, I found it in a Goodwill for, I think it was like $4 here in Seattle. It was my first Goodwill ever visit, and it was on the door. So I literally had to buy it. So <laugh>, it's, it's a great conversation. Start just like this

Host: Jon

<laugh>. That was definitely, we actually talked about a lot of stuff. I wanna share with you a purchase of mine based off your recommendation. Ooh,

Guest: Darko

Love that. Yeah. That's an excellent hall of camera.

Host: Jon

Yes, it is. I am bringing it. I'm actually going to an Ingram MicroCloud summit next week. By the time this recording comes out, I've used this a lot. I will be at the Washington DC summit, but based off of your recommendation, yeah. I just picked it up and I'm looking to use it.

Guest: Darko

It is wonderful. Uh, so one of the things, I guess you can share in this description of this video, I've recorded a little vlog with that camera on my way back from San Francisco. So, uh, I guess I'll put a link here in the description somewhere, so you can, yeah.

Host: Jon

The, the link will be in the description below up, right. Left corner somewhere around there that will flash it across his face.

Guest: Darko

<laugh> yeah, let's just flash it in front of me. <laugh>

Host: Jon

Okay. So another thing that we talked about is I can confirm live on here as a reporter that the tattoos are real.

Guest: Darko

Oh, oh yeah. Okay. So I have tech tattoos, I guess I have the, the windows prompt here, and I have a UX prompt on the other hand, so <laugh>

Host: Jon

Okay. I know it's which one, which one came first.

Guest: Darko

They both came at the same time. So I, I basically went to my TA tattoo artist and I like, listen, do this. He wasn't sure what he was doing. <laugh> but I gave him the print, just trust me, do this. And you know, the reasons I do that, it's like, I know I I'm a fan of tattoos. I don't have a lot of tattoos, but it's, I, I do find them very good. Um, the reason I did this is that because technology has been such a big part of my life, literally everything I've done in my life, I owe in certain part to technology now be that windows or Linux or whatever else you wanna think about. It's still tech. So I I'm endlessly grateful for it. So, Hey, it's a big part of me. And now it's physically a part of me.

Host: Jon

<laugh> okay. Windows are Linux

Guest: Darko

Both.

Host: Jon

<laugh>

Guest: Darko

I actually, I actually started a long time ago with exclusively windows because, um, Linux was very difficult for me back then. I, I really couldn't figure out all the command line stuff. And then as, as time went on, I kind of slowly started using more and more command lines, started liking it more and more. And now I can just do both. I, I am a certified as they call a windows enterprise administrator, but I can also do all of the fun things in Linux and any other command line, uh, uh, well, anything that likes a command line, I do enjoy so both. Definitely.

Host: Jon

All right. I'll let you in on a little secret, uh, I'm a 2008 MSC. What is it? Uh, windows certified

Guest: Darko

MC MCT, MC C

Host: Jon

S

Guest: Darko

C I T P MC C I T P S a

Host: Jon

Yes. Yeah. Yes, man. I don't remember the acronym. That's how old it is.

Guest: Darko

I am also 2008. M C I T PS E. So it's the Microsoft certified it professional systems engineer. Yeah, I, I, yeah, that was my only formal education, uh, formal, higher education I had in my life. So I, I never finished college. Well, I never even went to college, so I ha I just had my high school diploma and that, so it, it got me into there.

Host: Jon

Yeah. You know what, I, I did that certification. I've done, uh, post grad, all that I find actually the certification's a lot harder, but, uh, Microsoft, you know, sh they were my first certifications then after I did comp Tia as well. Okay. <laugh> those are some cool ones to do. And then a lot of the AWS certifications, cuz you know, everybody knows I'm a huge fan of that. I do have some Azure ones, but we won't tell anybody

Guest: Darko

<laugh>

Host: Jon

I don't pose those

Guest: Darko

<laugh> that's okay. That's good. Like again, I start with Microsoft because it was kind of the big thing back then, at least where I come from and, and a lot of the companies were looking for people who are good with Microsoft networks. So your active directories, your group policies and all that fun stuff. And um, that was basically the first half of my it career was just Microsoft networks. And uh, to be honest, I like it. Um, I would like it even more now because Microsoft has got a long way to make things more better, like looking at modern Microsoft operating systems, looking at powersll just for that, um, makes things so much easier for, um, for what they used to call system administrators. So I, I, I, I wish I was a windows system admin in this day and age rather than 15 years ago. <laugh> but it's okay.

Host: Jon

Speaking of power shell, I can recognize the binding on one of your books in the background. Mm-hmm <affirmative> I know you got a PowerShell one back there. Come on, pull it out.

Guest: Darko

So PowerShell 2.0, this is an old book, by the way, just a story about these books. These are all Goodwill rescues. So one of the things my wife and I like to do, we like to do a Goodwill run just to buy quirky things. And one of the things that I love to do is rescue old technology books. They're $2 a piece and I'm super sad to see them go in the trash. So this entire shelf and a bit of that shelf has only old stack books. So partial 2.0, but let's keep on the topic of windows. Um, if you were ever a windows administrator, you know what cient channels are the wonderful set of tools by the Markovich. Um, excellent toolkits. Uh, this is the admin reference book for that. Um, what else do you see here, John?

Host: Jon

I remember flipping through those, uh, a lot. Okay. So the big windows, what is that? 95 90 right there. The red one. Yeah, no, its uh, middle. Yeah. Yeah.

Guest: Darko

So this is programming Microsoft windows with C sharp. So I think

Host: Jon

This is,

Guest: Darko

This should be something a bit later. This is the, this is the huge reference book, but I think this is 2008 ish. I,

Host: Jon

I would kind of relatively newer.

Guest: Darko

<laugh> relatively newer. I do have something like I do have the, the Unix system system by Steven born. Um, I do have, uh, what else is, uh, there is a, the first book of NCC. Uh, I have the windows 95, Peter Norton's window, a complete guide to windows 95.

Host: Jon

You got a Nobel book.

Guest: Darko

I have an, oh,

Host: Jon

I on, come on. I'm doing to challenge you. I actually installed that one time.

Guest: Darko

I think I don't.

Host: Jon

Oh,

Guest: Darko

I do not. I do not have a Nobel book. I do have Solaris eight. I do have

Host: Jon

Anybody watching, if you find a Noel book, DACA could use it for his collection. <laugh> exactly.

Guest: Darko

So, so I, I think it's fascinating to kind of collect all of these books. Now. Now the shelf you don't see here is I have a shelf full of four dumies books. So let me, if I can maybe scoot my camera over a bit. Ah, I can, oh,

Host: Jon

I can see right in the corner. Yeah.

Guest: Darko

So if you, if you look there, I have two, I have a lot of for dummies books, uh, I think 28th in total and they're all tech for dumies books, literally just all objective C SQL windows 95 for dumies and all those things. Um, I I'm a fan of collecting these because technology was way different 20 years, 30, 40 years ago. And it's, it is great to get like, um, a, a, a, a snapshot in time of how it looked back then. So huge fan

Host: Jon

At AWS, you're a developer advocate and I feel that you really take this to heart and passion, not only personally at work, but in your home life. I see a whole bunch of posts. I'm a hu, like I said, a huge fan and a follower of yours. Uh, I haven't seen anything on Twitter lately, by the way of any of your projects. Uh, okay.

Guest: Darko

I, I did something yesterday two days ago, so you may see some, some, some, some fun stuff, but nothing, nothing huge. So

Host: Jon

<laugh> okay. Okay. Just, just letting you know, it's been a little quiet lately and I'm, I'm missing some things, but, uh, I, you and I were talking at the San Francisco summit about the Commodor 64 and some coding that you did and a buddy of yours did. Yeah, there you, there, there you go. You wanna tell us a story? I, I find it really interesting on how you kind of, like, he only had like an hour of fun time and he had like code all of this, come on. Ah, you know what? I don't wanna spoil go

Guest: Darko

Ahead. Okay. So, so I come from Serbia, right? It's, it's a, it's a small little country in Southeast Europe and, uh, in the nineties, uh, my only computer was a converter 64. When I say the only computer, I mean from 1991 to 2001 was the only computer in my house. And I grew up with the converter 64. I grew up writing basic. And the reason I wrote basic is number one, because of this book, this is the actual book I used as a kid to kind of learn basic. And one of the things, if you, if you ever use a Commodor 64 or come from that time, you know, there were these things called, like, um, basically the, you would get video games and the programs on paper, literally as, as just some, I, I can't even show it here. Like some, just some, uh, basic code, which you type in they're called type in programs.

Guest: Darko

And that's what you do. So that's how I did it. I, I wrote games from a magazine, from a book to play. Now I had a friend and, um, won't disclose his name, but he, he also had a Commodor 64, but his parents were a bit strict and they did not allow for a lot Ofer 64 time, like maybe get an hour a day or something. So what, what happened is his, his father would just basically pull out the, the cable that connects the commod 64 to television, and he couldn't use it. He was smart enough to figure that the commod 64 works without a TV. So what he would do in the time where he couldn't use the commode, he would turn on the commode 64 and blindly type in a thousand lines of codes from a book. Now he was a kid. It was a long time ago. You can imagine how many mistakes happened then. So what he would do is type in this for like 20 minutes, an hour, two hours. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how long it took. And then once he has the time to actually do something with the commod, oh, 64, he would plug it in, try to fix all of his errors and then play the game as for as much as he can. So, um, that's

Host: Jon

Education,

Guest: Darko

Man. <laugh> yeah. Somebody told me scarcity scarcity is the matter of invention. So, uh, you know, sometimes, sometimes you just get, get creative and do stuff. Um, and, and, and you can't do that no longer with modern computers, which is, which is a good thing. I would say. <laugh>

Host: Jon

Uh, on Twitter, you had a post, you, you were talking about, uh, and showed a modem that you actually hooked up and it was a dial up and, and going through, oh, there he is. Pulling it out. I gotta tell you, it was very nostalgic about it. Yeah. My question for you is, did you have a pots line at your house or did you actually have to call the telephone company and go, yes, I would like a pots line and you're like, what? Huh?

Guest: Darko

What do you want? I was, I was fortunate enough to have a pot sign in my home. And, uh, but the only problem with my home back in this is 2003, by the way. So it's not so long ago, but that's when I used dialup. I had a pot sign at home. The problem was that the, the phone lines in my house and in my neighborhood were, were made out of aluminum and they were very prone to interference. So the, at most I could get like maybe 33 kilobits, a second of speed on dialup. So even though I had a 56 K modem and it was the year, 2003 and 2004, I could maybe get three, three, uh, 33 kilobits a second. Um, so that was my thing. However, my friend, he had something called, I don't think you have that thing in, in the, in the states, but he would basically a telephone line with his neighbor.

Guest: Darko

And, uh, basically you would have two phone numbers on the same phone line. And then when the neighbor's phone rang, your internet connection would drop because that's how it works. So, um, I, I didn't have those problems, but I know a lot of people who had so <laugh> and, and, and modems are fascinating. Again, it's, since my, since I moved to the us, I've found a lot of modems in Goodwills and in like computer recycling centers, people just throw them away. And of course, modems don't serve a big purpose anymore. There are still some uses for dialup, but it's fascinating for me that this thing, this piece of technology does something very amazing. And we take that for granted it for all the kids out there. What this does, it takes, sound actual sound from a telephone line and converts it to data. So if you ever heard that Moden dialup sound the, the, the horrible screeches, or if you are old enough and that you pick up a telephone while your computer was connected, the sounds you hear is actually data that's data. That's literally analog data being converted to digital in this modem. So huge fan of those devices. And I think, um, they've contributed to a lot of what we do right now. <laugh> if there were no modems, there would be potentially no internet, and we wouldn't be doing this podcast or recording.

Host: Jon

I remember when they would pick it up and we'd be like, oh, hang it up quick. You're interrupting my signal. And because the signal would get interrupted. So did you have AOL?

Guest: Darko

No. Uh, coming from Europe, we didn't have AOL. So we had like your normal dialup internet providers, but I did use AOL messenger for like a year or two. I think a few of my friends used it. And again, this is 2004, 2005. Um, and that's, it, it wasn't big in Europe. We, we used things like I CQ mm-hmm <affirmative> or even MSN Yahoo messenger for a while. Uh, and IRC, that was a big thing, but, but we did not use any of the AOLs, but I know AOL was a big thing and it's a, and it was its own separate internet, um, to an extent, at least.

Host: Jon

Yeah. That's some nostalgia out there. I mean, let me tell you, I think I still actually use my AOL username for some stuff. <laugh> uh, just because it's like, oh, I need to have username in pastoral. Nobody will ever guess this crap and I'll never admit to it. It was cool then it's not cool. Now that

Guest: Darko

That's what happens.

Host: Jon

<laugh> yeah. <laugh> Dar you going to any summits

Guest: Darko

So next week. Well, well, I dunno what next week is, but, um, may the 17th is the stats. Is that the 17th? I

Host: Jon

Don't know. Are you going to Atlanta?

Guest: Darko

I'm going to Atlanta. I'm gonna be in Atlanta and I'm gonna be in DC as well. So, uh, I may see you in DC, so

Host: Jon

You will definitely see me in DC.

Guest: Darko

Yeah. I, I will, I will go and visit some of the summits. I wanna, I wanna try to visit as much as I can, um, by the way, if you're at a summit, not you John, but everybody else, if you are at the summit, um, and you see me, and if you are a part of databases, community, let me know. I do some recordings. I do some interviews with you, folks. Nothing too serious, nothing too technical. So I would love to get some of you on camera as well.

Host: Jon

You mean like this type of interview? Nothing too serious. Exactly. <laugh>

Guest: Darko

Exactly. <laugh>

Host: Jon

You kidding me? We don't get serious on this show. It's well, okay. I do get serious a little bit, but when we do these types of casual conversation, people like to know more about you. My guest, my job is just to be the median to get the conversation out there. And for those who keep doing it. So as a developer advocate, you're on the other side and you're telling everybody else's story and sharing the, the message. And you don't get to tell yours. Well, now I get to do that for you.

Guest: Darko

Thank you so much. <laugh> it's, it's, it's, it's better to be in this seat, so <laugh>

Host: Jon

Are you going to, yeah, I trust me when you don't have to prep as much. And by the way, I, I like opened up my sheet for prep and I'm like, wow, why is this blank? I'm like, man, all of a sudden I had it filled in five minutes. All I just remembered our conversation. I remembered everything. And then knowing you, I was like, I don't need to prep as much. This is just gonna happen. <laugh>

Guest: Darko

Good. Good, good, happy, happy.

Host: Jon

Uh, what about re Mars gonna re Mars reinforce?

Guest: Darko

Maybe. So it's, it's a big, maybe for me, I'm not really sure if I'm gonna make it there. I would love to be there to see and just kind of speak with people. Uh, I, I'm not gonna be presenting at any of those events. This year was kind of focused a lot of on videos and interviews and live streaming for me. So like you would not, you will potentially will not see a lot of me on stage. Um, which is maybe good. I dunno, but, uh, but I'm gonna try to and speak to people to kind of just get, get, get a bit more interaction with the community. So maybe if I do, I'm gonna be sharing it on Twitter. So if you follow me on the Twitters, check it out.

Host: Jon

Don't forget to hit that. Like subscribe. Oh, I'm sorry, Twitter. Don't forget to hit that follow and like

Guest: Darko

<laugh>

Host: Jon

All right. I know you're gonna be at reinvent. Right? Right,

Guest: Darko

Right. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So, um, reinvent, I, I missed last year's reinvent due to my move here. I literally moved two days before reinvent to Seattle. So I couldn't do all of that fun things, but, uh, this year I am gonna, um, I'm definitely going. And actually my wife and I are planning to drive from Seattle to, to Vegas. So which, which is gonna be a very fun trip. I am, I'm fascinated by the beauty of this country. There's so many things to see here. And, uh, I definitely want to take a drive down there.

Host: Jon

That would be kind of nice. It'd be nice sight seeing and trip. Now yours is a little bit shorter than mine. I'm on the east coast. <laugh> coming from like the New York area. That would be a four to five day trip. But yeah, I would love to do that sometimes. I enjoy it. Please post a lot of pictures.

Guest: Darko

I will, I will. Well, actually, for the summit in San Francisco, we've driven down from Seattle to, uh, to San Francisco. It took us two days. Oh, uh, beautiful. The Washington coast, the Oregon coast, the redwoods of California. It's just like insane. <laugh> so I, I hope to do more of those road trips, um, here in the states, because in, in Europe I didn't have a car. Um, now that was both good and bad. I, I didn't need a car because Berlin had decent public transport, um, and, and bad because I couldn't do any road tripping. But now since I have to have a hard car here <laugh> and I do have a car, I, I get to do a bit more of that. So, which is beautiful.

Host: Jon

So do you live in the Seattle like downtown Seattle area? No. Okay.

Guest: Darko

No, no, no. I live, I live in a little town called maple valley, uh, which is something like, I think 30 miles ish from downtown Seattle. So, um, I, I live in like the more hilly forested parts, which I do enjoy and, and I'm, I'm fortunate enough to be able to work from home. So I don't have to live in, in downtown and I am, I am stoked about it. So

Host: Jon

<laugh> how did you pick that area? Did AWS help you pick that area? Or how did you come up with that area? You just went like this. Hold on a second. Uh,

Guest: Darko

Literally when we, when we were looking, when we were looking, looking for things to rent, we were just like, this looks like a decent area. Like we, there was a bunch of other small towns around, we kind of picked and we went, I think we've seen like 20 houses, uh, 20 pieces of property or whatnot. And we found one here. It was nice. It was decently priced. Uh, it's in an amazing neighborhood. It's I have a forest back in, literally behind my backyard. There's a lake here. I mean, I'm living the American dream as they say. So I am, uh, and, and like, I, I always tell this to people. I come from a country, which with this, wasn't the thing, at least in the nineties. And I grew up watching TV shows and movies where they would show the suburbs of America. And this is basically for me, like I've seen it in the movies. So it's, it's, it's fascinating.

Host: Jon

Nice. Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it before we wrap things up. Uh, it's a little personal question. What does your garage look like of all your stuff? <laugh>

Guest: Darko

So, so if any of you follow me on the social medias, I have a lot of old computers. I have a lot of old books, but I collect old computers. And, um, you saw me bring up a kilo 64 in an old modem, but I have a full garage, well, not full garage, but it's filling up, uh, old, old computers. I think I have like 10 sun Microsystems workstations. I have a, um, a bunch of old windows, 95 windows, 98. I have a SGI workstation, a lot of boxes with cables and hardware. So I'm a huge fan of collecting those things, making them work and making them do things they should not do. Like I used windows 95 to interact with AWS, um, in a weird way. Um, so I launched, I created an S3 bucket through windows 95. You should never be able to do that. So that's kinda like my, my little thing where I like to take an old system and try to do something on AWS with it. Um, so <laugh>,

Host: Jon

This is not a use case out there that you're trying to, it's not, this is like, nobody should have windows 95 running anymore, but let's just see if it works.

Guest: Darko

Exactly. I actually, I actually wrote some CDK code through, um, the commod 64. So, uh, that's a thing I did. Uh, it's it's again, it's, it's completely useless. It's it's wor but it's, it's, it's a fun thing for me. So if you enjoy any of those little quirks and stupid retro CR deck, yeah. Just check out what I do. And I think it's, it's, it's always fun. Uh, but again, I, I, I, I do, I skipped all of that technology in my life. Uh, and I really love looking at it. I love towing with it. So if you have old computers, you wanna throw away, don't throw them away. Uh, let me know. <laugh>, I'll be happy to give them a home.

Host: Jon

<laugh> I'm not posting your address.

Guest: Darko

Yeah, exactly. <laugh>

Host: Jon

Uh, I was just about to say, I don't think your wife would like that, but what does your wife think about

Guest: Darko

This? Oh, she loves it. So, um, she and I are both very passionate about the things she, we do. She's a very big she's, she's an artist, so she's into art and she's into fashion. So, so, so she collects old fashion items. She collects all of those things. I collect all computers. So we are very much in line when it comes to these things. Uh, so <laugh>, and again, both of us don't have, we don't have kids. So we, we have the, the Liberty and the, and the, and the fortune to be able to do these things when ki kids come, it's a different story potentially. So, but yeah, we, we fully agree on this.

Host: Jon

I know we didn't talk on the subject as a developer advocate for AWS, but can you give everybody a little bit of story on what it's like to be a D a da for AWS and how you came about it?

Guest: Darko

Okay. So I started off my journey at the AWS six years ago, a bit more, uh, as, as, as a premium support engineer, right? The person who would answer the phone calls and your chat messages, if AWS doesn't work. And I love that job because I actually could work with first line issues with customers. I couldn't actually fix anything for you. I could just help you fix it, which was a very interesting thing through, uh, so I enjoyed working with customers and helping them at a bigger scale. So I decided the following thing, let me become a solution architect because a solution architect can look at a bigger picture, can talk to multiple customers at once, can help multiple people learn, implement, do things. Then I thought, you know what, why don't I take this a step further? Why don't I talk to more people?

Guest: Darko

And the way to talk to more people was to present on conferences at stage at meetups. So that kind of became a passion of mine. I, I enjoyed delivering talks. I enjoyed presenting. I enjoyed showing demo showing off technology. And then somehow for some reason, the developed advocacy team, which were at that time, I think they were called technical evangelists. Um, they basically, Hey, our code. Would you like to be part of the developer relations team? I wasn't sure. To be honest, I was like, will I stop doing tech? Um, I did not stop doing tech. And it was, it was basically now I think it's four years now, ish, almost, uh, that I've been a da, not four years, two and a half years. I've been a da and it's been the best job ever. Right. It's it's not all just flashy presentation, conference, reinvent things.

Guest: Darko

There's a lot of things you do in the backend. But, um, I just love being a da because I am extremely passionate about technology. I want people to enjoy technology. I want people to have technology work for them. So one of the things I do as your advocate is to make your voice heard within AWS to make stuff better. Right. So feel free to complain to me. I, I know how to reach the right people if something doesn't work and, um, yeah, it's, it's just a wonderful job. I, I, I, I love it. You know, as, as they said, the best job I ever had

Host: Jon

Comment down below, if you'd like to complain, actually, no comment down below. If you'd like to do any of the above, give him a compliment, complain, whatever, make a comment, whatever it is. I think Darco deserves it for everything that he's done and put out there. Yeah. People don't realize how hard it is to put all this content, you know, out to the public and to take the community's voice and bring it back internal. Uh, do you edit your own videos?

Guest: Darko

I used to do that and I do it now from time to time when I wanna do like a quick edit, I suck at the video. I'm horrible at video, I editing, I, I know how to use the venture resolve and that's about it. But like, if you want me to do some something more creative or something more artistic, no, I have a wonderful colleague of mine. Toby. He's just, he's a star. He does all the video, not just video editing. He does all the creative stuff around the video. So I could not do anything without his help. So, um, yeah, I, I, I can do like first aid, video editing, but, uh, I would not charge people money for my video. <laugh> that's let me put it that way. But yeah. Um,

Host: Jon

It's a lot of work to put in not only the recording, but the editing and everything behind the scenes. I think sometimes I've recorded and edited like some file, you know, maybe six, seven times before I felt it's right. I did the AWS pie day, the 15 year anniversary announcement when it came out, it was one minute 47 seconds video of the content. It was 40 plus hours of recording and editing into that video.

Guest: Darko

Wow. <laugh> that? That's a lot, that's, that's a lot.

Host: Jon

And with green screen effects and all, like I had a mask out, I had a co there were some things that I couldn't rerecord. So I was like, how my gonna, how do this?

Guest: Darko

Well, I that's the sole reason I preferred to do things live much more. Like if you see me do video content, it's mostly live or it's a one shot thing. <laugh> I hate, I hate doing cuts between videos. So if you hear me rambling, incoherently, that's just the way I talk. That's just the way I operate. And, uh, if you see a video, which is like perfectly worded, it it's most likely somebody edited that video.

Host: Jon

Uh, I'm telling you right now, I'm not editing any of this. The intro will be editing into the beginning of it, but that's about it. <laugh> I will not, you will not see a cut at all. I will say, please join me in welcoming Darco before I slaughter his name.

Guest: Darko

And then, you

Host: Jon

Know, then we'll get into it. But that's about it, man.

Guest: Darko

Yeah. Awesome. I mean, I, again, uh, it's, it's a skill to do video. I think it's a skill to do video properly. I, I'm not really good at doing video when it comes to the technical parts. I, I, I can present. I, I hope pretty good. I can talk about technology pretty good. And, uh, hopefully I can just inspire you. The developers, the builders, the engineers, the security people out there, the data scientists to do more with technology. That's my whole only goal.

Host: Jon

Well, I appreciate it. And I'm sure everybody does darker. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you joining the show. It's it's been a pleasure to actually interview you, have you on share your experience and your passion for all your technology and a developer advocate.

Guest: Darko

Thank you, John. It's been a pleasure being here. Um, like always pleasure talking to you and, uh, everybody else. Thank you for, for bearing with me. I hope you enjoyed this, not presentation, this discussion. Uh, I hope to enjoy this presentation, this discussion, and yeah. Let, let, let us know. Let me know what you think about all of this. And if you have any questions for me, they're just below, underneath the like button. There's the comment section there.

Host: Jon

All right. So speaking of that, please join me in welcoming. Nope. Sorry. That's not the beginning. <laugh> did you like that? I had a plan. Okay. Everybody Darco. And before I slaughter his last name, joining me as a developer advocate for AWS. I've been your host, John Meyer. Don't forget to hit that, like subscribe and notify, because guess what? We're outta here.

Guest: Darko

Bye.