Scaling and The Growth Curve with Francesco Cesarini

Joining us for this episode of Elixir Wizards is the vastly experienced and well-traveled Francesco Cesarini! Francesco is the founder of Erlang Solutions and we are so lucky to have him here on the show to talk about his personal and professional journey, and take this great season of shows on the magic of the BEAM even further. Francesco takes us through his early interactions with computers and coding and the events that led to his decision to study computer science, before diving into his move to Sweden, and subsequently the UK, and how this all resulted in the founding of his company. Our guest touches on some helpful lessons he learned around marketing and branding, particularly related to the name of the company and we also discuss how the company grew in stages over the years. From there, the conversation turns to Francesco's work on conferences, and his commitment to this important feature of the community. We talk about the benefits of virtual conferences, what to look forward to, and the team that Francesco works with when organizing. To finish off this segment, our guest gives a few recommended resources and comments on Erlang syntax too! For today's mini-feature we welcome Jeffery Utter who works as a Senior Software Developer at Bleacher Report, so make sure to tune in to catch it all!

Key Points From This Episode:

• Francesco's route into coding from an early age and first forays into studying computer science.
• The first job that Francesco had out of college: an exciting internship at Ericsson.
• How Francesco founded Erlang Solutions after leaving Sweden and moving to London.
• The big growth steps that happened over the years as Erlang Solutions developed.
• Francesco's evolving mindset during this growth period and his attitude towards scaling the company.
• The current size of the company and the offices that are spread all over the world!
• Virtual conferences, more connectivity, and the benefits of getting involved in the community.
• The planning process for conferences and the size of the team that put them together.
• The growth curve for Erlang Solutions over the years and the main drivers in the process.
• Examples from the explanatory videos that Francesco produced to help people understand Erlang.
  
• Francesco's feelings about Erlang syntax and the misconceptions about its difficulty.
• Recommendations of helpful resources to aid the learning curve.
• Getting involved with Erlang Solutions and connecting with Francesco and his team!
• Jeffery Utter from Bleacher Report joins us to briefly talk about his journey with Elixir.
• The time that Jeffery spent working at Communication Service for the Deaf prior to Bleacher Report.
• Some updates on the growth and evolution of Bleacher Report and what they offer users.
• How Elixir is used at Bleacher Report and its succession of Ruby at the company.
• Jeffery's alternate career paths and qualifications in music and education!

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/
Elixir Conference — http://smr.tl/conf-podcast
Francesco Cesarini on Twitter — https://twitter.com/FrancescoC
Joe Armstrong — https://codersatwork.com/joe-armstrong.html
Erlang Solutions — https://www.erlang-solutions.com/
Erlang Programming Language - Computerphile — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOqQVoVai6s
Chalmers University of Technology — https://www.chalmers.se/en/Pages/default.aspx
Erlang & Elixir Developers | Careers at Erlang Solutions — https://www.erlang-solutions.com/careers/
Code BEAM V SF 2021 — https://codesync.global/conferences/code-beam-sf-2021/.
RabbitMQ Summit— https://rabbitmqsummit.com/
Languages, and about languages, on the BEAM — https://github.com/llaisdy/beam_languages
Lambda Days 2021 — https://www.lambdadays.org/lambdadays2021
Code Mesh — https://codesync.global/conferences/code-mesh-ldn
Erlang Master Classes University of Kent — https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/ErlangMasterClasses/
Professor Simon Thompson — https://www.kent.ac.uk/computing/people/3164/thompson-simon
Designing for Scalability with Erlang/OTP — https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/designing-for-scalability/9781449361556/
Erlang Programming — https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/erlang-programming/9780596803940/
Jeffery Utter — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffutter
Bleacher Report — https://bleacherreport.com/
Communication Service for the Deaf — https://www.csd.org/
Gallaudet University — https://www.gallaudet.edu/