Benjamin Bryant

Editorials

GopherCon UK 2023: The Ultimate Review - We're So Back!

Happy Today Y’all. Last Thursday was the beginning of GopherCon UK. I had another swing at hosting this time around and had a little on-stage action, but we’ll get to that. Reports and rumours are flooding the interneto-sphere, saying that this conference had some of the best content

Editorials

GopherCon Europe 2023: A Totally Nonprehensive Recap

Last Tuesday, I visited GopherCon Europe. ‘Visit’ being the less optimal word, as this time round I was actually an active participant! No no, I did nothing as illustrious as give a talk , host or organise the event, but I helped make the window dressing that much brighter. It was

Editorials

April 2023 - Jam Session

Man, it feels weird to be typing again. I feel I’ve locked myself behind the video editing screen the past few weeks. Though, with what I want to do in May I don’t see that changing soon. Anyway, as I’ve severely lost time for any in-depth writing,

Editorials

Thoughts on March - Mini Retrospective

Mini being the operative word. 500 words or less! Let’s start with the main highlights. What He Just Said Meeting The GoLand Team in Munich, Germany Originally I wanted to write an entire article about the trip, but have negotiated my way down to this paragraph. It was the

Go: Around The World

Go: Around The World - Kathmandu, Nepal - Milap Neupane - Ain't Go Mountain High Enough

नमस्ते! Welcome to the 4th article in the Go: Around The World series, where I look at the many gophers, places and projects that make up this wondrous world. Today we’re going to be visiting Nepal! Our special guest today is: Milap Neupane, former Lead Organiser of Golang

Editorials

GopherCon Israel 2023: A Totally Comprehensive Review

Last Tuesday I checked out GopherCon Israel, live and in person! It was pretty exciting, as it was my first time representing JetBrains at a Go conference. If you’re curious about the comings and goings of the event, look no further than here. I promise by the end of

Interviews

Conversations - Catarina Bombaça - Go First Impressions and Learning on The Job

Hello! A few weeks ago I had an unplanned interview with Catarina Bombaça (LinkedIn). A Professional Go Developer, GopherCon UK 2022 speaker and someone who helped to host November Gophers @ SaltPay. What’s an unplanned interview? One where we sort of just chat and see if we can unearth any

Go: Around The World

Go: Around the World - France, Nice - Inspirations, TinyGo and Hens

Bonjour! Welcome to the 3rd article in the Go: Around The World series, where I look at the many gophers, places and projects that make up this wondrous world. Today we’re going to be visiting France! C’est parti!! Our special guest today is: Donia Chaiehloudj (Mastodon, Twitter, LinkedIn)

Interviews

Building Communities - Women in Cloud Native

Recently, I had the opportunity to have an interview with Nancy Chauhan (Twitter, LinkedIn). A Developer Relations Engineer at Gitpod and the co-founder of Women in Cloud Native (Twitter, Discord, Hashnode) a brand new global community dedicated to the idea of - Learning and Growing in Cloud Native Space Together.

Editorials

In Go, How Do You Train Your Fun-damentals?

Over the holiday break, I tried out learning how to draw and stumbled across this course: DrawABox - A free, exercise-based approach to learning the fundamentals of drawing. What does this have to do with Go? Well, it’s the second paragraph so hear me out. I’ve been thinking

Editorials

That Bit Between Christmas and New Years - Black Reign: Prologue

Now you’re not going to believe me, but I had plans to publish a high-effort article today. Yessir. Yessir. However, I remembered we’re currently in that weird Dec 25th - Jan 1st time where, at least in the places that celebrate this time of year, there still aren’

Editorials

It's The Most Somethingst Time Of The Year

It sure is. Here are some pictures from 2022 that I’m going to delete from my phone. Maybe. Enjoy the holidays! Warning: this page could take awhile to load There were more, but I'm sure this page is already hell-ish to load. Next week's the retrospective. Maybe. Have a

Go: Around The World

Go: Around The World - Oslo, Norway - Climate Action and Consultancies

Hei! Welcome to the 2nd article in the Go: Around The World series, where I look at the many gophers, places and projects that make up this wondrous world. Today we’re going to be visiting Norway! Oslo, Norway, if you somehow reached here without looking at the title. Our

Life Updates

My DevRelCon Prague 2022 - A Quick Recap

Yo yo! For the past few days I’ve been attending DevRelCon Prague 2022, it was my first time speaking at an international conference. Welcome to this mini-recap! Quick caveat, I’ve not left the country in over a decade and the last time I did I was at an

Life Updates

November Gophers: The Rundown

Last week, we hosted London Gophers at SaltPay! It was their first time hosting a meetup and they smashed it out of the park! We additionally had a first-time speaker who did an absolutely fantastic presentation, I genuinely didn’t realize it was their first-time until after the event. This

Go: Around The World

Go: Around The World - London, UK - An Introduction

Hello! Today I’d like to introduce an idea for a series of articles I’m going to be working on for the next few months. Go: Around The World. Starting in London, because well, I live there. Last week, I went to Imperial Lates: Tiny Science. It was a

Life Updates

The Road To Advocacy - Jet Set Go!

Back in July 2022, I created a personal website and wrote this article The Road To Advocacy - Or How To Effectively Manage Your Quarter Life Crisis. On Tuesday, I started my first role as a Developer Advocate @Jetbrains. Woo! However, this is step one of a mountainous stepladder. There

Editorials

The Short Story Behind This Photograph

Back in 2016, according to the picture’s metadata, I took this photo of a friend somewhere in Wales. As with many things we carry through life, it has a particular sentimental value to me. Which I will now exploit for a writing prompt. During university, I joined a climbing

Editorials

This is me, Getting on the Mat

Short story. Over the early pandemic I joined a writing group to produce one of the many, many, many lockdown novels that were created during that time frame. I started it as a part of the NaNoWriMo challenge (writing 50,000 words in November) and eventually self-published the final version

Life Updates

October Gophers: The Rundown

Last week we hosted October Gophers at Checkout.com. And it went great! The talks were all fantastic; the venue looked amazing, and I even made this pretty collage. "We Are Greater Together!" What a smashing night! How many Gophers can you spot? Thanks Ryan, Amy-Elizabeth and @LukeStoward for the

Editorials

What is a Proposal Document and Why is it Awesome for Meetups?

A Proposal Document is a baseline set of requirements for a meetup that lists both its values and benefits. You can send this document to anybody interested in hosting your meetup and to any higher-ups in the organization that may need to approve costs. It allows you to define what

Editorials

What Are Your Tips For First-Time Speakers?

Short one this week, but in my defence, I was in the middle of penning two different articles and by ‘penning’ I mean I’ve written the titles and stopped experimenting with the font. Anyhow, one speaker due to talk at our next tech event emailed me to ask, “Any

Editorials

What Do You Do To Ensure You're Conducting a Great Interview?

The consensus is that interviews usually suck. Whether you are an interviewer or an interviewee; interviews never seem to be regarded in the same light as Christmas. In this article I’ll be focussing on the ‘interviewer’ side of things, as there are many tips and tricks to being a

Editorials

Can A Tech Meetup Have Code Smell?

Code smell is any characteristic in the source code of a program that possibly indicates a deeper problem - According to Wikipedia. Context Last week, we hosted the second London Gophers event since the post-pandemic restart. Monzo Bank were our venue hosts and their event space is outstanding! Looking cool

Editorials

What's The Name of This Password Management Technique and is it a Good Idea?

Edit: We're gonna go with 'peppering'-ish. Thanks @anes! I don't remember who told me this, but the idea was, when creating login using a password manager such as BitWarden, KeePass or LastPass. Generate a password, as usual, but add a word to the end of it that you do not