[MUSIC PLAYING]
LUKE DAVIS: Welcome to "Assistant on Air,"
where we have conversations with the people that
build for Google Assistant.
I'm Luke Davis, and I'll be your host today.
And we get to talk to Amanda Cavallaro.
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Hello.
LUKE DAVIS: Thank you so much for joining me today, Amanda.
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Thank you for inviting me.
LUKE DAVIS: Why don't you introduce yourself?
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Sure.
My name is Amanda Cavallaro.
I'm a Google developer expert for the Google Assistant.
I'm also a Women Techmakers ambassador.
And I'm a GDG Cloud London organizer.
And I work as a software developer.
LUKE DAVIS: That's amazing.
Sounds like you have 20 jobs.
It's so much.
AMANDA CAVALLARO: A lot of titles, sorry.
LUKE DAVIS: How do you juggle all this stuff?
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Yeah, so this is my passion.
So I just wake up every day, and I look forward
to what I'm going to do.
I wouldn't be able to do it if it wasn't really
my passion, so yeah.
LUKE DAVIS: It's amazing what you've
been able to accomplish just in the last three years
since you've gotten to London.
But before London, you came from Brazil, right?
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Correct.
So yeah, my father used to be a software developer, so I grew
up building things with my dad.
We used to have the 24 floppy disks
and spend all night doing that, building LEGOs together.
So it was quite natural to me that I would choose
computer science to study.
And then while I was based in Brazil,
I used to help a lot in social projects.
And I just love to learn something
and then just pass it forward to people.
Because people tend to think, can I really help someone else?
I don't know that much.
But if you know even a little bit,
that little bit can really be key for someone else to learn.
LUKE DAVIS: You've really become just an incredible expert--
just looking through the stuff that you've put online--
in this specific, amazing thing of taking something that's
really actually quite complicated and hard
to understand and making it completely accessible to lots
and lots and lots of people.
Can you talk about that code lab that you made a little bit?
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Sure, so I'm in love with karaoke.
That's one of the things I love to do the most.
And then I wanted to create an event that
would be cool for people to go, not only
to learn the technical side but to also have fun.
And what's more fun than karaoke, right?
LUKE DAVIS: [LAUGHS]
AMANDA CAVALLARO: So in the beginning, they got there,
and they interacted with the action that I created.
So they saw how it worked.
And then secondly, they went step by step
through the workshop with copy this, do that,
and explaining why they were doing that.
But then in the end, we all sang to the karaoke and the actions
that they had created.
So it's nice to see how you can both have fun and code.
Having fun, it's fun.
LUKE DAVIS: It's super fun.
And that code lab is super, super fun.
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Thank you.
LUKE DAVIS: I've worked on a lot of code labs at Google,
and they are just so much work.
They take so long to put together and get all polished
and everything.
How long did it take you to put that code lab together?
AMANDA CAVALLARO: I think about a month.
But the cool thing about code labs
is we think that only people at Google can create it.
But actually, anyone can go ahead and do it.
There are tools that-- even you, you can go and create one.
LUKE DAVIS: That's amazing that you
were able to put that whole thing together in a month,
because it's going to affect the lives of tens of thousands
of people, at least.
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Exactly.
And there were some key things that I learned along the way
that you'd have to have years and years or months
or days of experience.
And I just try to make it as easy and straightforward
for people to go ahead and learn.
LUKE DAVIS: Your skill at being able to do
that, it's just really, really, really impressive.
I get the feeling that this is not your first time doing
this trick.
You said something about working in a bunch of social programs
while you were in Brazil.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Sure.
So I'm in love with the Japanese culture,
and I used to practice martial arts, aikido.
So every weekend, I used to take four buses
to get there and help the kids to learn
about the Japanese culture.
And it was just amazing to see how
they would, in the beginning, not know that much.
But then building together and playing games, analytic way,
they could learn it.
And then how about using an action
to get them to learn even more?
So I got them on board.
They sent me the questions.
At this point, I'm already living in London.
So they sent me the questions there,
and they helped me build the action.
There was a designer there, and then he
created all the assets for us.
So it was a teamwork together.
So I felt, even though I'm not in Brazil anymore,
I can still help my community.
LUKE DAVIS: That sounds so cool.
When you taught the aikido classes or the Japanese culture
integration with aikido stuff in Brazil,
are their skills that you as a person
learned there that you feel like you bring forward
to community building now?
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Oh, definitely, yeah.
Aikido to me is more like almost a spiritual thing.
It's all about becoming a better person
than what you were yesterday.
So you don't have to learn 10 things a day.
But if you learn even one or even half,
or even if you didn't forget one thing
that you learned yesterday, you're on the right track.
So that's what I try to bring to my life.
I try to each day be a bit better.
And by helping the people who are around me,
we're even creating a better atmosphere and a better
ecosystem for everyone.
So by helping people next to you,
you're also helping yourself.
LUKE DAVIS: I can totally see that philosophy.
It just shines through the work that you do.
Amanda, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us
today.
I really appreciate it.
AMANDA CAVALLARO: Thank you.
LUKE DAVIS: We hope you enjoyed today's show.
If you have suggestions for future episodes,
please leave a comment below.
Follow us on Twitter for updates and new episodes.
I've been Luke.
Chat with you next time.
[MUSIC PLAYING]