Jason Torres

The Architecture of a Year: Why I Built FullCircle

Time is our only non-renewable resource. I realized that.....

Freshman Year: My 2025 Debut in Tech

People say a long career in film prepares you for a lot...

Building Holiday Magic with AI: The 2025 Santa Tracker

Resurrecting a family tradition with an 8-bit Santa Tracker powered by real-time AI voice orchestration.

The Tech Conference That Wasn't Selling Anything

Reflections on community over commerce and why the best events feel less like sales pitches.

How I built this portfolio

A look under the hood of this site using Laravel, Tailwind, and a minimal design philosophy.

Robot Overlord Approved Resumes in 2025!

Taylor and I have spent so much time on this, and I've got to share what we've learned. After looking at hundreds of resumes, collaborating on countless reviews, watching hours of video content from greats like Anthony Mays and Symone B, and getting ...

Oct 01, 2025

I like Cookies and I like Christmas, and hey Datastax is pretty cool too. so lets build something.

Overview HEY HEY and happy holidays yall. When I heard Datastax was doing a 12 days of Codemas challenge, well you KNOW your boy had to take a crack at it. What better way to do that than a Christmas Cookie Recipe Finder! It’s a web application that ...

Dec 23, 2024

The Double-Edged Sword of AI in Software Development

Where do we go from here? Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a pivotal tool in software development, reshaping how developers work and approach projects. With AI tools automating mundane tasks and generating complex code snippets, efficiency and...

Oct 15, 2024

The one where I was a speaker: THAT Conference 2024.

My Experience at That Conference 2024 Hey everybody, I'm super excited to share with you the incredible journey of attending my first ever THAT conference in late July 2024 in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. Not only was it my first time attending, but I...

Aug 09, 2024

Reflecting on the #TechCommute: Season 3 Journey's

Hey everybody, Jason here. As we wrap up the third season of the Tech Commute, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our incredible community. It's been a wild ride with its fair share of highs and lows, but your unwavering support for Jacob and ...

Jul 05, 2024

You have a message (from Appwrite)

NOW AVAILABLE on Cloud!!! Be sure to checkout this and many new features in 1.5 here Hey hey! Ever wonder how those handy messages pop up on your phone, whether it's a notification about a great deal or a reminder for an event? Well, it's all thanks...

Apr 06, 2024

Win the blog game with Headless Hashnode!

HELLO THERE! The blogging game is constantly changing, and creators are seeking more control and flexibility over their online presence. Headless Hashnode emerges as a powerful solution, allowing you to build a custom blog while leveraging the conten...

Feb 11, 2024

Setting Up Clerk in 5 Minutes

Hate recording audio? Same here! But sometimes, it's the best way to capture raw, unscripted thoughts. That's why I'm diving into this blog post to share my experience setting up Clerk in Next.js in just 5 minutes. Buckle up, it's going to be a piece...

Jan 12, 2024

Networking and Soft Skills for developers

In the film industry, where creativity intersects with technical skills, I spent 15 years crafting visual stories and honing my craft. After deciding to retire from film, I found myself drawn to a new narrative — one written in code. (I feel like I h...

Dec 15, 2023

filmmaking === codeMaking

Hey all! Some of you are already aware of my background, but for those of you who aren’t here ya go: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3360023/ Yes, that’s me and after spending 15 years fully immersed in the multifaceted landscape of the film industry, I ...

Nov 07, 2023

Nobody Learns Anything From a Hot Take

There's a content format that's taken over Developer Relations LinkedIn and I can't stop watching it burn. You know the one. "Things people say in DevRel vs. what they actually mean.🔥" "Here's why your conference budget is completely wasted.💰" "Unpopular opinion: most DevRel teams shouldn't exist.🥑" The comments go crazy. Practitioners either nod furiously or get defensive. Someone writes "this is exactly my situation." Someone else writes "this is reductive and you clearly don't understand enterprise Developer Relations." The poster responds to both with "love the discussion, this is why I post." Nobody fixes anything. Nobody learns anything. The cycle repeats next week with a slightly different hook. 1. The irony is almost too good The whole premise of this content is that Developer Relations has a measurement problem. Companies chase vanity metrics — t-shirt pickups at a conference booth, Discord MAUs, blog views — instead of asking whether any of it actually moved the product forward. But the posts criticizing this behavior are themselves vanity metrics plays. Engineered for maximum reaction, minimum accountability. The "engagement" they generate is the same thing they're criticizing: people feeling something, then going back to doing exactly what they were doing before they opened the app. "Our docs are comprehensive." Translation: our docs are 400 pages and nobody can find the quick start. The comment section lights up. 800 reactions. "This is literally my company lol." The poster writes a follow-up next week about something else that's broken. Nobody updated the docs. 2. A hot take is not a diagnosis "Your conference strategy is a $40K mailing list" might be true. But the response to that isn't a witty post — it's sitting down with whoever approved the spend and asking what success was supposed to look like before the booth got bought. Hot takes describe symptoms. They don't do the hard work of finding the root cause, and they definitely don't stick around for the fix. 3. The discourse has the same problem as the thing it's criticizing Here's what I keep coming back to: the Developer Relations industry has a strategy problem. Companies hire Developer Relations reactively. They measure it wrong, or don't measure it at all. They wonder why it's not moving a number nobody named in the first place. The LinkedIn content about this problem has the exact same structure. Posted reactively. Optimized for engagement over outcomes. No agreement on what "useful" looks like before it goes out. I've shipped enough content to know this pattern from the inside. It feels like work. It has metrics. It is not the same as being useful. 4. What actually useful looks like A useful post about conference strategy would include: how one team defined success criteria before buying the booth, what they tracked during the event, and what they changed the next time. That post gets 40 likes. The hot take version gets 400. That gap is the whole problem. If you want to fix Developer Relations , pick one thing, go one level deeper than "here's what's broken," and tell me what you actually changed. I will read that every time. This week's question: Have you ever actually changed something at work because of a LinkedIn post? I'm genuinely asking. Hit reply.

Oops, That Was Just Marketing in a Hoodie.

I just got done reading Dewan A. 's Why Are We Paying These Folks — A Tale of DevRel, and I HAVE some thoughts. Spicy ones. Because I happen to know of companies — right now, in 2026 — that are letting go of entire DevRel teams. Not one person. The whole team. And everyone is shaking their heads going "wow, DevRel keeps taking hits." But I want to offer a different read on what's actually happening. 1. Those Weren't DevRel Teams I'll say what people are thinking but won't put in writing: most of those companies didn't have real DevRel in the first place. They had marketers with "advocate" in their title. People with big followings and zero production code to their name. Dewan puts it bluntly — a developer advocate is an experienced engineer who acts as a trusted voice between the company and the community. Not a content creator. Not an influencer. A builder. And as Angie Jones writes: "Developer advocates have to build and maintain credibility with their engineering peers, understand their pain points, and foresee how given solutions would address their needs. Without engineering experience, this is hard to do." So when those teams get cut — it's not a tragedy for DevRel. It's an audit. The community already knew. Leadership just finally caught up. 2. DevRel Looked Glamorous So Everyone Wanted In Here's the uncomfortable part. There's been a wave of people treating DevRel as a side door into tech. No technical background? No problem. Big LinkedIn following? Great, you're hired. Developers have a sixth sense for people who are faking it. They will ask you a deep technical question in the Q&A and if you don't actually know the answer — not "looked it up once" know, but built something with it know — the trust is gone. Instantly. Forever. No amount of great content saves you from that moment. Jono Bacon said it best in the foreword of Mary Thengvall 's DevRel book: "Developer Relations is a remarkably nuanced, complex, and context-specific discipline." You can't shortcut nuance. You earn it or you don't. 3. Okay But Where Do I Stand (The Idiot Weighs In) I'm a Community Manager. Not a Developer Advocate. Dewan's article is clear those are different things — and he's right. I'm not out here fielding Kubernetes questions. But the credibility principle is the same regardless of title: you have to have done the thing. My credibility doesn't come from a compiler. It comes from showing up, from the mentor program that crashed and burned, from the messy behind-the-scenes reality of building something that actually matters. You earn trust by showing your work — including the parts that didn't work. 4. The Reckoning Is a Feature, Not a Bug Real DevRel — built on technical credibility and genuine community trust — is hard to cut. Because when you cut it, developers notice immediately and they get loud about it. As Dewan puts it: "DevRel is the only team at your company that can speak the engineer's language, provide regular feedback to the product team, function as a marketing team, and grow the community as the face of your company." If your entire DevRel team got eliminated and nobody in the developer community said a word? That tells you everything about what was actually being built. The Bottom Line: The DevRel layoffs aren't proof that DevRel doesn't work. They're proof that a lot of companies were doing it wrong from the start — and the bill just came due. Have you watched a DevRel or Community program fail from the inside? What was the real reason? drop a comment!

The Human Advantage: Why 2026 is the Year of the Person (Not the Bot)

In a time where "AI-powered" is the prefix to LITERALLY every product, email, and toaster, it’s easy to feel like we’re being coded out of the equation. We’ve spent the last few years marveling at what LLM's and MCP and such can do. But as we move deeper into 2026, the trend lines are showing something surprising. I recently read a report from Higher Logic titled: THE FUTURE OF COMMUNITY: 2025 TRENDS EVERY COMPANY NEEDS TO WATCH The more I read, and got through their points, which I fully agree with and have been doubling down on all of 2025, the more I realized that, the more automated the world becomes, the more humanity becomes a premium luxury. Being a human in tech right now is actually pretty cool. Why? Because the "Robot Revolution" has finally hit the one wall it can’t climb: Trust. The "Nuance" Gap An AI can summarize 1,000 forum posts in three seconds. It can tell you the average sentiment or the top three features users want. But it cannot tell you why a specific user felt frustrated, or understand the "unspoken" context of a niche industry workflow. As the latest trends show, customers are starting to experience AI Fatigue. They don’t just want an answer; they want a peer-validated answer. They want to know that the person giving the advice has actually sat in the chair, faced the deadline, and felt the stress of a system crash. Robots have data; humans have scars and stories. Community: The One Thing Robots Can’t Build We often talk about "building" a community like we’re building software. But communities aren’t built—they are grown. Things a robot can't do: Empathize with a struggle: It can simulate empathy, but it can’t be an ally. Identify a "Super User": It can track stats, but it can’t spot the passion, the humor, or the leadership qualities that turn a community member into a "Torcer" or a brand advocate. Create "The Vibe": Culture is the result of thousands of messy, funny, and sometimes heated human interactions. You can’t prompt an algorithm to "make people feel like they belong." Make an excellent pizza: Truthfully I can't either so the jury is out on that one. Our New Role: The Curators of Truth "We see the community as a place where users discuss more complex and unique use cases, things that might not be covered in a traditional support site. That’s how we’re thinking about AI, not just AI for the community, but AI powered by the community." Aily Roper -Senior Manager of Customer Education at Bluebeam The future of tech isn't humans vs. robots; it’s humans using robots to clear the "busy work" so we can do the high-value work: Connecting. The data is pretty clear, companies with active, human-led communities see higher retention and better products. Why? Because a community is a living, breathing "knowledge moat." A competitor can scrape your website, and they can even copy your AI chatbot, but they cannot copy the 12,000 humans who trust each other inside your ecosystem. "People will start to crave human connection. And communities will be a great place to make that happen." Nicole Saunders - Senior Director of Customer Experience Marketing The Bottom Line If you’re feeling a bit "automated out" lately, remember this: AI is the tool, but WE are the advantage. The secret sauce to all of this—the trust, the nuance, and the real growth—is and has always been you, the people. In a world of infinite, cheap, generated content, the most valuable thing you can offer is your unique, authentic, human perspective. It’s a great time to be a person. Now get out there and go person it up!

Stop shouting into the void (and other "Community" lies)

I just got done reading David D. 's An Incomplete History of Online Communities, and honestly? I HAVE some thoughts. Mainly because we’ve spent the last decade collectively pretending that "Social Media" and "Community" are the same thing. They aren't. It’s the difference between a megaphone and a campfire. If you’re just standing in an empty field screaming through a megaphone wondering why nobody has brought any s’mores, you’re doing it ALL DAMN WRONG. Here is the reality check for anyone still confusing their follower count with an actual relationship: 1. The Great Delusion Social media is about the scroll. Community is about the soul. (EWWWWW. Grossly poetic, I know, but stay with me). If your strategy is JUST broadcasting promotional graphics and hoping for a "like," you aren't a community manager—you’re a digital billboard. you aren't a community manager—you’re a digital billboard. A real community is peer-to-peer. If your members aren't talking to each other without you (cough cough Randstad Digital | Torc community) poking them with a stick, you don't have a community; you have an audience. And audiences are fickle; they leave the second the show gets boring. 2. Peeling Back the Onion (Our "Meta" Moment) My squad ( taylor desseyn , Briana Holmes ) and I have been obsessed with this lately. We’re using our socials—the megaphone—to actually show you what’s happening at the campfire. We’re leaning into authentic vlogs and raw written content specifically to peel back the onion on how "socials" usually work. We don't want to just give you a polished brand image; we want to give you a view of the community through the social lens. It’s about being transparent enough that you actually want to step inside the room, not just watch from the sidewalk. 3. The "Strategic Powerhouse" (Stop Treating CMs Like Interns) DeWald points out that Community is moving from a "nice to have" to a core business asset. If you’re still treating your Community Manager like the person who just "hides the mean comments," you’re leaving money on the table. A great CM is basically a COO of humans. 4. The AI of it All AI will soon handle the "busy work" AI can do alot, but it can’t fake empathy, and it certainly can't be "authentic." As we use smarter tech to clean the house, it leaves us more room for the high-value stuff: conflict resolution, strategy, and actual human connection. The Bottom Line: Stop building stages and start building bridges. It’s slower, it’s messier, and you can't just "schedule" it for 9:00 AM on a Tuesday. But in a world that’s increasingly lonely, a "digital garden" is worth a hell of a lot more than a viral tweet. What do you think? Are you actually tending a garden, or are you just shouting at the weeds?

You Can’t Manufacture Thirst

One year of community management has taught me a humbling, brutal truth: You can build a perfect engine, but you can’t provide the spark. If people don’t want to show up, they won’t. Period. The Torc Reality Check Last year, we launched our mentor program. We started with 50-some-odd mentees and 10 mentors. It was high energy, high hope, and high effort. By the finish line? We had two groups left. Two. Yes, seriously. At first, I looked for someone to blame. Was the process broken? Was the onboarding too long? But eventually, I realized that sometimes, a 90% drop-off isn’t a failure of logistics—it’s a reality of human nature. You can put 100% effort into an initiative, and it may still yield a result that looks like a ghost town. The Pivot: From Autopilot to Overdrive Reflecting on that experience, we’re changing the playbook at Torc this year. The plan? A lot more hand-holding. To be honest, it feels counterintuitive. I’ve always believed that mentorship should be "pull," not "push." Your Why—the reason you signed up in the first place—should be the only engine you need to reach the finish line and claim that growth. But I’ve realized that even the most motivated people get lost in the weeds of "busy." This year, we’re not just building the path; we’re walking it with them. The Lesson This was the hardest pill to swallow: Intrinsic motivation is the only currency that matters. We can build the best programs, create the most supportive environments, and pour our hearts into community initiatives. But at the end of the day, we can’t give someone a reason to care. That has to come from within. And that’s not a failure on anyone's part. It's just the reality of working with humans—beautiful, complicated, busy humans with their own priorities and challenges. Sometimes the horse just isn't thirsty yet. Our job isn't to force them to drink; it’s to make sure the water is clear, cold, and ready for the moment they finally are. What do you think? Have you ever built something "perfect" only for no one to show up? I’d love to hear your "lead a horse to water" stories—hit reply and let me know.