hey everyone i'm Aliena and welcome to my channel when i was 18 years old i joined a five days event
that took me to 20 companies in the silicon valley to learn about tech digital transformation
and how the silicon valley innovates and the best part is i was just a freshman back then
i didn't have any experience and i didn't pay a single cent how did i do it here's the story
so in 2017 i started my university life in san francisco at minerva university now
our university is not like an ordinary university in the sense that we didn't really have a campus
and also all our courses were online so in order to engage with the city and also for
networking purposes many of my classmates go to tech events that's happening in the city and back
then in san francisco all tech events have some AI presentation blockchain presentation following by
a networking session and some free pizza i also wanted to go but there were two major drawbacks
to me the first one is that among all my smart friends who can code really well and probably
win any hackathon that they participate in i was the only dumbass that cannot code a single line
another thing is that i was and still am very not confident about my english language speaking skill
so what i was thinking is that if somebody actually come to me and talk about
tech my english would just switch off and then i will have nothing to talk about
and i would just be done with my life so i thought to myself
can i come up with a strategy or a plan that can help me to get through all sorts of awkwardness
when it comes to tech conversation with people already in tech and i came up with something
this is the strategy that i came up with it's not really related to tech i mean it is tech but it's
not like AO or blockchain or anything right so this is my plan i thought that if somebody
actually come to me and ask me hey what projects are you working on these days and what do you do
what's your take when it comes to blockchain or AI i would just slowly take my camera from my
back and say that hi i'm just here to learn and i'm the photography volunteer i did that so the
first event that i participated in was a python gathering for software engineers in the bay area
and it was held in lyft headquarter i have to say that lyft headquarter was good it's nice for me
to check it out but it was so awkward for me to actually seeing everybody else already working in
like strong tech companies well i'm just a freshman student with no coding skill
so i was there opening my laptop awkwardly sitting in a desk and open code academy
somebody eventually came up to me and be like hey what projects you're working on and i'm just like
i am just photography volunteer if you want your photo i can send it to you
and that worked actually so well for every event that i participated in now the bad things
that i lied a little bit i wasn't a photography volunteer actually i was just having my camera
so in order to not feel that bad i actually sent all my pictures to the organization and they loved
my photos they think the photos are really clean good and the capture of the emotion are really
great and um and yeah they just invited me to participate in more and more events so
back then i was still going to events that don't really like cost anything to participate i just
need to fill in my email my name now you probably will ask where do i find those cool events right
everything is either eventbrite or meetup i strongly recommend you to check them out you don't
have to know anything to participate in those silicon valley events you just need to listen
so i thought to myself hey can i actually use this thing to get me into some more expensive events
and believe it or not this is what i did i went to evenbrite
and then i filter out all the events that cost money in the bay area and then i sort them in a
way so that the most expensive one come first and then what i did is that i emailed every
single organizer of the events and asked them hey would you like a photography volunteer for free
here's my photography volunteer portfolio i've worked at events holding lyft Yelp google facebook
etc and two people get back to me the first event was the UX design summit it was great because i
wanted to become a ux designer but i didn't know too much about you expect them and the second
one is the most expensive event on eventbrite at that point and that is the five-day silicon
valley digital transformation summit something like that this is what got me to silicon valley
so i was there in the event in the beginning i was in the corner of each conference room in all
different headquarters i don't want to cause any unnecessary attention and i had no idea about how
to talk with those cool participants who were ceos around the world and one day everyone had lunch
together again i didn't know what to say and i was awkwardly sitting between three ceos um i just
felt so small i felt i can say nothing and i'm just like trying to put my hand at the right place
i want to show that i have manner well actually i really don't know where do i start do i start
with the fork do i start with the knife do i start with that food or i have i had absolutely no idea
until somebody come up to me and say hey where are you from i mean of course i said i'm from
beijing china and that magical sentence was all it takes to get me out of the awkwardness and start
a real life conversation with the ceos after i set them from beijing china they started to say
oh i have so many Chinese clients i'm working with this company in china that company in china
i've been to china at that time at that time that city that city and you guys use wechat right i'm
like yeah we use wechat i can show you how to use wechat this is this is my wechat and then we start
to talk about things like hey does this food taste good does that taste good where have you
been before have you traveled to there have you traveled to that you're from berlin oh i've lived
in berlin and i've heard that people started to like me they love my photos and they love talking
to me and then we just interact like ordinary people instead of ceos versus freshman student
well i definitely learned a lot about tech digital transformation and silicon valley
but here are the three major insights that has changed my life
the first insight is that you know i used to think that silicon valley probably maybe looked like new
york or something so many skyscrapers smart people cool people not the case another case
silicon valley is more of like a like a humble village that has a few headquarters here and there
and the second thing that i learned is that i realized that what really brings people together
no matter how smart you are no matter where the CEO or the CTO is the human aspects of things
it's what food do you like where you're from um where have you been and i feel like in our current
education and work system this daily and more human aspect of knowledge and experience are so
underrated instead of teaching people to live and connect it seems like we've been teaching
people how to seem smart and compete and i just don't think that is the only way to go
and the final insight is that when i was little i was taught to study hard work hard and maybe
one day you'll get into a great company and then you don't have to worry about your income anymore
but what i was not taught is that this is not the kind of mindset that brings silicon
valley together instead of just like people coming over the world together to do tech
and be smart i feel like what really brings silicon valley together
is the willingness to try even when you think you are not ready
well thank you so much for listening to my story i just want to say that no matter what
you want to do at least give it a try and don't forget to subscribe see you next time
you