Mark Techson is speaking at Epic Web Conf 2025

Hey, everyone. I'm Kent C. Dodds, as usual, and I'm joined by my good friend, Mark Techson. How are you doing, Mark? I'm doing so good. How are you doing? I'm excellent. Always happy to chat with you, and I'm very excited to introduce you to the people who are going to be at Epic Web Conf in just over two months.

We're very close. Yeah, time is moving quick. It's going to be a really great time. Yeah, I'm so stoked. I was really happy to have you last year as the emcee. Very excited about you wanting to speak this year. Here's the thing. I've said this on a couple of these interviews, so if people listen to others, they'll recognize this,

but one of the best compliments that I can get paid as a speaker is for a conference to invite me back, and now on the flip side, I'm realizing one of the best compliments I can get as an organizer is for people to come back, and I'm just really grateful that not only are you coming back,

but I'll peel behind the curtain a little bit. Mark submitted his proposal in a very unique way. Mark, can you tell us what did you do to submit your proposal and why did you do it that way? I just want to hear that story. Sure.

What I did, friends at home who are watching, I actually recorded a video of myself pitching my proposal, and it was a little bit of a risk because you just never know how that type of stuff is received, if it was received as too forward, but the reason why is because I really wanted to share my excitement about the topic,

and sometimes when you're reading words, it can be like, okay, it can all blend together, but I felt like if I could send a 30-second, I think it's only 30 to 45-second video, very quick, like, hey, this is what I want to talk about, and if this is interesting to you, just let me know, and we can go from there, right? And doing it that way just felt like, you know what, let's do something different.

Let's get some different outcomes by doing different actions. Yeah, dude, I'm way into it. I thought it was awesome. When I saw that, I was actually toward the end of my selection process, and I thought, okay, I got to get him in.

This is the sort of thing that you cannot copy-paste and just blast it everywhere. You really wanted to speak at Epic Web Conf, and you demonstrated that so well by just doing that a little bit more, and I think that's a really good takeaway for people in applying for jobs or in presenting your work to your company

or just anything. Just, like, put the tiniest bit of extra effort in, and you'll really differentiate yourself amongst everybody else. Yeah, I totally agree with that, and I think that in a time where things are changing for people who want to do things, they're, like, leaning on other techniques, right, to, like, get themselves seen.

Like you said, copying and pasting and things and stuff like that, and I feel like we're going to have so many options of people, and I just want to say, well, look, if he's going to go through this list, I want my stuff to stick out. Yeah, 100%, and it totally did. Very much did. Yeah, that's right. And then, of course, it doesn't hurt that you are Mark Techson,

and I know you well, and you really put the effort in to making things as amazing as they can possibly be. So for those watching who don't know Mark Techson yet, can you give us a quick intro to yourself? Yeah, so I'm a developer and a developer relations person,

so I've been a developer for 20 years at this point, just writing code and shipping products, and then over the last few years I've been hanging out as a developer relations engineer so I can connect with the community in a different way, and I've been working at Google working on a product called Angular. Well, most people listening probably have heard of Angular.

That definitely was probably the ‑‑ it wasn't exactly where I got my start in the JavaScript world. I was backbone, but went pretty quick into Angular from there. And, of course, it was AngularJS at the time. Now Angular has evolved quite a lot since then. So thank you so much for all the good work that you do for the Angular community,

and I'm just very excited for you to bring some of your 20 years of knowledge and experience to Epic Web Conf, and the talk that you're going to be giving is Beyond Code Assist, Driving Impact as a Next Gen Developer. What is that, Mark? What are you talking about there? Oh, I'm so excited about this idea,

because I think that developers are landing in a couple of places right now. One slot, they're kind of just dismissing AI as an entire option, just like it's not worth it, you know, I don't care about this. There's AI slop. But then there's also this other space where people are excited,

and I just want to make sure that I can help developers who are maybe landing in the skeptical side who don't think there's any value into it, into giving it a fair shot to see what else is possible. And I think that the story that I want to tell in this talk is bigger than just using, you know, code assistant tools to write the code for you.

But what is the future of work look like when you will inevitably in a lot of spaces have to use AI tools to be able to do things? Like what more could you do if you were using an AI tool? So that feels like that's one of the key insights that I'll give a sneak preview to. Think about it from the point of view of what more could you accomplish?

Think about those side projects that you couldn't do in a weekend because they're just something small you're going to get stuck on. That's not even the best use of your time. What if you could do more? So and I'm thinking not only about your side projects, but I'm thinking about your careers in general, because the world is changing around us, whether we like it or not.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I love that as a tagline for your talk. What if you could do more? And I'm very much looking forward to hearing what if I could do more and how could I do more at the conference here coming up in a couple months. So, Mark, well, while we're there, you're not going to be on stage the whole time.

You're going to be around talking with people and things. What are the the types of things that you're hoping people come and talk with you about? Like you're standing in the hall. Somebody sees you and they're like, oh, I want to go meet Mark. What's a topic they could bring up that would get you excited to chat? Oh, that's fantastic. So you could talk to me about video games. I love gaming.

I've been a gamer for most of my life at this point. So probably like almost 40 years I've been playing video games. You could talk to me about parenting. I love sharing just honest experiences with other parents, especially once you still have littles. I think that's really interesting. We could talk about what is development look like?

Even if you're not talking about AI, what does development look like these days? What is it like working at Google? What is it like building a framework like Angular? So you could talk to me about those things. You talk to me about music. I mean, I play guitar. So I love, love, love guitar. So there are lots of things that you talk to me about from the technical side and the human side.

I love it. Yeah, that's fabulous. Now, Mark, why is it that you go to these conferences? Because you've been to a lot. What is it that brings you to people in person? Like you've got a really cool setup right there. We're all looking at it right now. You have the plant and you've got the laptop and the notebook and and you got a face for video.

So what is it that brings you out of the house when you can do so much from your studio? You've got because I want to be there with the people like that's one of the things.

So I do go to a lot of conferences. But in twenty twenty five, I decided to actually reduce the number of places I go this year just for the sake of not being on a plane every week. And I was thinking about it like, where do I want to go where I feel like the connection with the people is the most authentic?

And one of the conferences that I decided on was at the webcom because of the time that I had last year. I remember last year. Can I can't lie to you? I met people that I still talk to today that I met there.

I even got closer to my own colleagues and co-workers that I was able to hang out with at Epic Webcom that I don't even talk to as often when we are like at work. We work for the same company because the environment that was created and I'm saying this from my own like you did not pay me to say this.

I'm loving hearing this. It was just the connections and how much fun I had meeting people and the energy behind the conference. There are very few conferences that create that space. And I want to be a place where I felt like I could do that. And so for me, choosing the very few that I'll go to this year at the web conference on the top of the list.

I love wow. That makes me feel so good inside. Thank you, Mark. I just want to like chop that and share it on the social medias and places like people. You got to come. It's it really is special. It's awesome. Well, and Mark, you're one of the people that makes it special.

So thank you for being there and being such a great support and a support for for me personally and the other people that you meet. I I'm not sure who you're talking about specifically that you're still connecting with.

But I I would say that I envy those people. But you're a wonderful friend to me as well. So I just I feel camaraderie with those people because being a friend with you is just a really special thing.

So thank you. I appreciate that. I love it. Well, Mark, I'm just couldn't tell you how how excited I am to have you at Epic Web Conf. I think plenty of people can relate to you on video games.

I was going to ask you, what systems do you like to play? But I'm going to let people come to the conference and ask you there. That's a great way to do it. Come and talk to me. Come and be there. And I think it's going to be great. Yeah. I don't know if you're planning on bringing your guitar, but I think that would be.

I know that's a lot of pain to to bring a musical instrument on a trip. But definitely there would be an opportunity for you to play if you do end up bringing it. And there are plenty of other developers who are going to be there who are musically inclined.

So I think maybe we can put together a band or something. That'd be a lot of fun for the sounds. Great. Sounds like a lot of fun. All right. Hey, thanks so much, Mark. I really appreciate it. I'll look forward to seeing you in Salt Lake City, March 25th. Twenty six. It's going to be a great time. All right. Thanks for having me.

And friends at home. Can't wait to meet you there. See everybody.

Mark Techson

Engineering Leader and Thoughtful Motivational Speaker

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