10 years ago I was a lonely developer sitting in a small room quietly turning out code between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. Fast-forward to now and you'll see me standing in front of audiences all around the world talking to developers about numerous topics."Why are you bragging like that at me?" I hear you ask. Because it could happen to you too.

The question I always ask myself is "How the hell did that happen?!?!".

The truth is that the only reason I've managed to advance my career so far in a decade is because of the people that make up the communities of open source projects. Not only do open source projects save you time and money, but the friendships and support groups that can be made within these communities is, frankly, staggering.

Join me as I chart my journey from wage slave to conference speaker, and look at how you can leverage the power of open source to make real friends, real money, and real happiness.

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As always an excellent talk! Thoroughly entertaining, really important messages throughout, can't fault it in any way!

Ben Barden at 21:32 on 16 Feb 2017

Wonderful talk. Entertaining and heart-warming, plus also very reassuring. A perfect end of day talk!

David Yell at 10:19 on 17 Feb 2017

Classic Hockin. Some great points in the talk and a super success story

Chris Sherry at 10:21 on 17 Feb 2017

Gary's talk resonated a great deal with me - hearing people talk about their journeys is always good because it challenges my assumptions that I need to be have been born a genius, work every hour of the week or have a computer science degree to be successful.

Gary is a very honest speaker and extremely approachable. I would happily watch this talk again.

Gary Fuller at 10:35 on 17 Feb 2017

As someone completing the first part of my career journey in PHP, this talk gave me a really positive view of my direction of travel as a developer. Though I'm not sure I want to get quite as much gaming in as Gary has... no, I'm lying, who doesn't want to spend time gaming... knowing about the pitfalls and the positives of a career in coding, as well as the power of contributing to open source, will be really helpful for the future.

A really uplifting end of day 1, very motivating and fun

Magnus Backhurst at 11:15 on 17 Feb 2017

Great end of day one, a very uplifting talk to introduce more people to the benefits of contributing to open source.

Katy Ereira at 14:40 on 17 Feb 2017

Gary is always fun and engaging and this talk delivers a really uplifting and positive message, good end to the day. :)

Davo Smith at 20:11 on 17 Feb 2017

A journey I can relate to, as someone who also transformed from being an Open Source contributor (in my case Moodle), to being employed in the back of those contributions.

Very funny and really encouraging.

Mattias Wirf at 22:57 on 18 Feb 2017

Both interesting and gave me inspiration, I recognized myself in some parts. With this talk behind me, I might try to contribute to some open source projects :)

Gareth Ellis at 10:30 on 22 Feb 2017

An engaging and funny story, delivered superbly as usual by Mr Hockin. A great day/conference-ending keynote.