International Women’s Day Spotlight: the life of a Technology Evangelist

Hello, everyone! My name is Adelina Simion and I'm really excited to share a little bit about myself on International Women's Day. There are so many inspirational women and leaders, so I am very grateful to be able to contribute to the voice of women in tech through this blogpost/piece.

I am a Gopher (which is what the Go community call themselves) and Tech Evangelist at Form3 in London, UK. This is my first role in the field of Developer Relations (DevRel) and I'm having a blast exploring it and learning.

I have a traditional technical background. I have a BEng. Information & Communication Technology and an MSc. Mathematical Modelling and Computing from the Technical University of Denmark. I graduated at the end of 2013 and moved to London shortly after in the spring of 2014. I consider London my home and don't think I'll be leaving any time soon.

I worked as a Java Backend Engineer for the first 4 years of my career, then converted to Go in 2018. I really enjoy being part of the Go community and helping others learn Go as well. As part of this journey, I started speaking at conferences and writing on my personal blog to share my knowledge, as well as challenge myself and build up my self esteem. I spoke about serverless at GopherCon Europe and NATS at GopherCon UK in 2021.

My conference speaking and blogging paved the way to looking into a career in Developer Relations and I was fortunate to get the opportunity to join Form3 as a Technology Evangelist in September 2021. I'm grateful to Form3 for giving me the opportunity to explore this new role that I had no previous experience in. I've learned a lot in the relatively short 6 months since I've joined.

Outside of work, I am a LinkedIn Learning instructor. My first course “Applied Concurrency in Go” was released in January 2022, and I am working on one more about my lessons learned converting from Java to Go as we speak!

I was the first DevRel hire at Form3. My role is all about telling our engineering stories to the tech community and making others aware of the Form3 brand and all the interesting technologies and challenges we work on.

My role requires a lot of interdepartmental collaboration:

• I work very closely with the engineering and marketing departments.
• I have weekly 1-1s with our CMO, CTO and our Head of Engineering. So, even though I'm a team of one, I receive support from the heads of departments on a regular basis. I use these 1-1s to run them through any of my ideas, issues that I run into and questions that I might have.
• There are quite a few engineers at Form3, who are keen to be speakers and get involved with our events and external initiatives. I work and discuss ideas with them as well, and plan to co-speak with them in the future.

The work of a Tech Evangelist is cyclical and varies quite a lot throughout the year. Conference season happens in May-June and in September-October, so these periods are particularly busy for me. This makes it an exciting, but at times stressful role.

Overall, I find that my role involves balancing multiple priorities at the same time:

• Producing written content for our engineering blog
• Responding to conference Calls for Papers (CFPs) to make sure that we have a stream of upcoming speaking opportunities
• Preparing talks and other tech content for events that we are speaking at
• Running our engineering Twitter account @Form3Tech and engaging with the tech community online. I really enjoy writing the weekly Golang quiz on this account every Monday and organizing working together with our engineers to share tech tips on this account every week
• Working together with Marketing and Talent departments to get ready for events we are sponsoring, as well as identifying events which are a good fit for us to sponsor and making those suggestions to the heads of departments

My first bit of advice for women in tech is to prioritise building a network, just as much as building up your technical skills. It is so important to have good mentors and be part of a supportive community. There are lots of great meetups organized by Women who Code where you can meet like-minded individuals.

Secondly, it's easy to overestimate what others know, while underestimating what you know. Don't be afraid to apply to roles and go for opportunities, where you don't have all the experience or skills beforehand. You can learn and conquer obstacles as they appear, so don't talk yourself out of a great opportunity by not even applying to it.

Lastly, it's normal to have hard days and feel tired, but be sure not to let them turn into burn out. Share your difficulties and concerns with your manager. A good organisation should support your growth in a sustainable way, making sure that you put your mental health and family first.

Thank you for reading my article! I hope my journey and advice have inspired you and empowered you.

Don't be afraid to experiment with your career and really find out what you enjoy doing. I'll keep you updated on all my talks and experiences in DevRel on our engineering Twitter account, @Form3Tech. Reach out to me on directly on Twitter, @classic_addetz, if there is anything tech or career related that I could help you with. My DMs are open.