Talk
Why You Should Learn Out Loud In 2025
In this talk, I’ll share how learning out loud can help you build an authentic personal brand while achieving your goals—even if you’re short on time. I’ll show you how to share your journey in a way that feels natural, adds value to others, and accelerates your learning. By the end, you’ll have actionable steps to grow your skills, gain opportunities, and build a community of your people—all by simply documenting your learning process.
Bio
software developer, creator of CodeBookClub
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Interview
Hey, everybody. It's Kent C. Dodds again, and I'm joined by a good friend of mine, Madison Kenna. How are you, Madison? Hey, I'm doing good. How are you? Super, super. I love your jacket, by the way. For anybody just listening, Madison's wearing last year's Epic Web Conf jacket, which is super awesome.
Yeah, this thing is, I wear this all the time because it is so comfortable. Usually, these aren't that comfortable, but this and the t-shirt that we were given as well, the fabric is incredible. It just feels like you're in a cloud or something. Oh, I love it. Yeah. Really glad to hear that. I just approved the t-shirt for Epic Web Conf
this year. It's also going to be really good fabric. If we can get sponsors to come in for us again this year, then we can do jackets, I think. I have a couple other ideas. One idea that I had was a desk toy sort of thing that's
like an action figure of Cody the Koala doing one of the sports that he does or something. I don't know. We'll see. We're going to do some fun stuff depending on sponsors coming in. I love that. Yeah. Madison, you were the emcee last year along with Mark. Now, actually, both of you
are coming back this year, which is just such an honor that you want to come back in the first place. You're both going to be taking the stage in a different form as a speaker. I'm really excited to have you on stage in that capacity this year. Yeah, it'll be really fun. Last year, Mark and I had such a blast being the emcees, getting
to meet everyone, getting ready. We just had such an incredible time. I'm just super grateful to be back this year as a speaker now. I'm so excited. Last year was just so much fun, especially getting to work with Mark and meeting everyone was such a blast. Yeah.
Awesome. I'm hoping that we can do it again and even better this year. Before we get too far into it, there could be some people who haven't met you before and they want to get to know you a little bit. Can you give us an intro to yourself?
Yeah, absolutely. I've been working as a full-stack developer for the last six or seven years. I've also done various blog posts. I run a couple of coding communities that's just all about leveling up your skills and things like that.
Awesome. I appreciate the community work that you do. It's a lot of effort to organize people and make it so that it's something that people are motivated to continue and work on and all of that. I definitely can appreciate the work that goes into that.
Yeah, absolutely. I think all of the work around it all year long, just connecting with people online, there's something about coming together in person that really solidifies it because it feels like, I kind of knew you before and felt like we were friends or had some sort of relationship, but then meeting in person just solidifies everything and makes
it so much better. Yeah, I'm really excited to be back in person again. Absolutely. Yeah, there's that parasocial relationship that we develop with people. I kind of feel like Mr. Beast is a friend of mine because I watch his videos, but he
totally doesn't know who I am. That kind of feeling. In fact, I remember the first time I met somebody that I had listened to their podcast for a long time. I knew a lot about them because of their podcast and I met them and I just remember thinking, oh
my gosh, they do not know me at all and I just know all of this stuff about them. It's just such a different thing. Yeah. Meeting people in person and actually having it so that they connect your online persona
with your physical presence actually changes the relationship a bit. Yeah, that is so true. I've had that happen numerous times where I think someone is kind of my friend because I've been following their content. I feel like we know each other and then you meet up in person and you realize that you don't, but then you actually do get
to know them in person. It is kind of like I've been wanting that friendship and then it actually begins, which is really amazing. Then the next time you're online, you actually feel like this is a solidified friendship that you now have. Yeah, absolutely. I just really appreciate the perspectives that I get. Even if I disagree
with some of the things they say, at least now I have a much better understanding of where they're coming from and it broadens my perspective and even can potentially change my attitudes and different things. It's just a positive thing.
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I've noticed that a lot of people are more burnt out on just online things too. Right now, especially this year, it seems like so many of us, I'm just so excited to be back in person even more. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of being in person, when we're in person, Madison, you're going
to be taking the stage. I want to give a little bit of backstory to this. Madison, you did such a great job last year as an MC and I've been following you and I really value our friendship and so following you online. You share just such the most down-to-earth, thoughtful
pieces on X. It's not these big wall of text like, let me just share the world with you, but just like, yeah, that is such a good opinion and such a good perspective on that.
I really value your perspective on life and just the realism and everything. I reached out to you before the CFP was over and everything and just said, hey, Madison, I want you on
stage at the conference. A big part of my decisions on which talks I select, of course, they're going to include the topics and I try to have a good, diverse set of topics
and people and everything on there, but I also am really cognizant of the message that I send by having different people on the stage. That's why I reached out to you and I said, I actually don't really care too much about what you talk about. Of course, I do. We want
to talk through some of that stuff, but it's mostly, I just want you and your perspectives to be amplified and so that's why I invited you to come on stage. At the time, we didn't actually know what you're going to talk about. Now, we actually just talked about it. We have a kind of an idea of what you're going to
be talking about, so I'd like to hear from you a little bit what you're thinking of talking about at the conference. Yeah, well, first of all, thank you so much. I think when I got that message from you, I screenshotted it and sent it to a bunch of my close friends. I'm so grateful this completely made my month, made my year to get that message.
I just felt so excited and everyone that I met at the conference last year, I feel like I made so many friends and I'm just so excited to come back. So yeah, that message really made my month. In terms of what I'm going to be talking about, I'm going to be talking about something that I think every single person in the audience
should be doing, which is the title is called Why You Should Learn Out Loud in 2025. The idea is, we've heard this before, right? We've heard things like learning in public or show your work, but I think now in the age of AI, especially, it's more important than ever.
So I've been running a private community for a few months where we're all about staying accountable and learning out loud, showing our work, sharing our work. There's this whole debate right now with what skills are going to get automated by AI and what's safe. I think regardless
of what's the future there, and I personally believe software developers will always be around, right? But regardless of this whole hairy debate, I think that there is this huge importance of more than ever differentiating yourself. So the one thing that AI will never be able to automate is
being authentically you and your personal brand. And I think most people, when they hear personal brands, they think, oh my gosh, that sounds awful. Do I have to start a TikTok? What do I do? But then I look at people like you, authentically sharing your work and building a community around
your values and teaching others and learning out loud. And that's something that I've tried to do as well. And I've seen that the people who do this build this powerful, authentic personal brand where I personally have gotten so many opportunities. For example, when I was laid off
and then I reached out to my community that I have built online and I got hundreds of people saying, you know, come interview here if you want. Not that I necessarily got the job offer, but I got the opportunity. So long story short, my talk is all about this community that I've been building called Learn Out Loud. And it's just all about how to do this if you want to get into it
and the power of it, which I think that you and so many people I know already exemplify it. But yeah, that's a little bit about it. I just love that so much. So many of the things that you said, I could just like double click on and we can go deeper, deeper on that. I think it's really, really valuable stuff for people to
hear. And it's exactly the kind of thing that I would expect you to talk about and to value. So I'm really looking forward to hearing the full talk at Epic WebConf. And then after you're done, you're going to be out and about with people and talking with people. And some people are going to
want to come up and meet you and talk with you. What are the sorts of topics and things that you're excited to talk with people about? Yeah, absolutely. Pretty much all things web, learning out loud, learning new skills, but pretty much anything. I think last year was so amazing because so many people came up to talk to me and
just the wide variety of topics was so incredible. It kind of felt like a family. But yeah, just so many different things. Very cool. And you mentioned that you're a full stack developer. What's the stack that you typically operate in so people who work in a similar stack can come up and meet you?
Oh, yeah, it's been so many different ones. Right now, it's TypeScript, which I feel like is what so many people are using, obviously. And then recently, it's been Python at the back end. So that's been really fun to learn some Python. Yeah, very cool. That's fun. Well, good. Hey, Madison, I do have one more question for you. And
you like you sort of answered it when you were talking about your talk. But I want to get your perspective on why it is that you go to conferences. This is the second time you're coming to Epic Web. You've gone to React Miami, and I'm sure you've been to others that I'm not
thinking of right now. But what is it about conferences and being in person that motivates you to put all the work and effort into making it out to these? Yeah, well, first, just meeting new friends, meeting all of your friends, really. And then
also, I think if you have been following someone online, like we said, solidifying that and it kind of becomes real, and then motivates me for the rest of the year, really, once I've met all these people that I look up to, made new friends. And then I think also, yeah, we kind of
touched on this, but I do think that you can't just be throwing out code anymore. Like just being a coder is not enough. I think that you need to have an authentic personal brand, I think you need to be making those connections. And I think the absolute best way to do that, or one of the
top one or two ways is going to conferences like this. And that's really been true for my own personal experience. 100% Hey, thanks so much, Madison. Really looking forward to seeing you in Salt Lake in March, just not too far away from now. So thanks again for giving us some of your time. And we'll see you then. See you then. Bye, everyone. Bye.
