Meighan Brodkey is a Director of Technical Architecture at Vorys. With a background in language and religious studies, she had a fairly smooth transition over to coding. She saw it as the technical version of translating numbers and letters. 

Today, she not only works in technical architecture but is also heavily involved in the Salesforce community. She works a lot with other women in tech and within the Ohana Slack workspace. She is joining us on the show today to talk about all of these things, Slack integrations, and what she does in her current role.

Show Highlights:

  • Meighan’s college journey and first coding experiences.
  • How she got involved with Salesforce and became an architect.
  • Her passion for connecting people.
  • The various communities she is involved with.
  • What got her into Slack and the work she’s done with Slack integrations.
  • The basic structure of Slack apps.
  • What the block kit builder is.
  • A quick overview of GDPR.

Links:

Episode Transcript

Meighan Brodkey:
By the time I left, Salesforce had become a source of truth. We had marketing automation. We no longer relied on Lotus Notes.

Josh Birk:
That is Megan Brodkey, a director of technical architecture. I’m Josh Birk, your host of the Salesforce Developer Podcast. And here on the podcast, you’ll hear stories and insights from developers, for developers. Today, we sit down and talk to Meghan about becoming a technical architect, her involvement in the community, especially with women in tech and in Slack. Speaking of slack, all sorts of stuff about Slack integration as well. Well we’ll start, as we often do, with her early years where she got into the University of Chicago at age 15.

Meighan Brodkey:
I started in their grammar school program, and I was there for their summer program. I went back and I moved back to Wisconsin. Then I went and I enrolled in Marquette University.

Josh Birk:
Okay.

Meighan Brodkey:
I went to Marquette for about a year and a half. Then I went to UWM, the University of Wisconsin and Milwaukee. That’s where I ended up going to school and finishing up.

Josh Birk:
Wow.

Josh Birk:
And you started all of this stuff with a focus in psychology. What was your goal there?

Meighan Brodkey:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
I was actually going to school for neuropsychology. I wanted to because I suffer from migraines and my goal is to figure out what actually is the pattern there in relation to psychology. I graduated with Hebrew and Middle East studies. I have a Hebrew school background and I bring it up into the psychology role.

Josh Birk:
Did anything precipitate that twist or is it just sort of the normal “I’m in college. I’m figuring stuff out” stuff?

Meighan Brodkey:
Actually, I have an amazing professor Tim Crane, and I took a class through Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It was ‘Three religions, one God’ and he won me over. I had been going to a Catholic school and I was somebody that was Jewish all the way through, right up until high school.

Meighan Brodkey:
His class was just amazing and answered so many questions for me. I just wanted to keep going and learn more. Plus, learning about Hebrew was good. I’d been talking Hebrew all through my life by going to the synagogue. It was just great and focusing on the actual technical side of the language was fantastic. A lot of the stuff that I learned at school was more about linguistics and the route of Hebrew.

Meighan Brodkey:
There were things like “here’s three root letters of every word. This is what it actually means. This is what the actual translation means. This is how you actually get to the actual meaning of what this actual passage means.”

Meighan Brodkey:
It was so much fun. I applied it to coding a lot and I was breaking it down into what it is actually doing with that breakdown of the actual the letters.

Josh Birk:
Right. So seeing the bigger picture, but breaking it down into its smaller parts that actually tell the story?

Meighan Brodkey:
More so breaking the actual technical side into the area. The technical side, much less than the religious side. More so the technical side of translations.

Josh Birk:
Okay.

Meighan Brodkey:
I really like the translation side.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Josh Birk:
We share a similar background because I went to school for psychology and I was due to graduate early, and that freaked me out. So I got another degree in English and then I couldn’t really… I still had to go out into the real world and apparently there was this Internet thing and somebody told me, “you can make a lot of money just by making web pages” and stuff. AI started going into that. I still remember having a debate with my English professor about HTML versus Hyper Card.

Meighan Brodkey:
Nice.

Josh Birk:
Just saying that out loud makes me feel so old right now. But what was it like for you? When did you start first looking into coding and a more technical career?

Meighan Brodkey:
I first started coding when I was in middle school and I made a website. That was my first introduction into coding. I actually wanted to go into coding when I was in college. That was stupid. I would not like a degree in computer science, which is why I went into the humanities side.

Josh Birk:
Gotcha.

Meighan Brodkey:
I ended up changing it around. I ended up in it though. It was pretty funny.

Meighan Brodkey:
Going back into the idea of college. I wanted to stay in college forever. I ended up with 275 credits for UWM.

Josh Birk:
Wow.

Meighan Brodkey:
I actually just looked that up the other day.

Josh Birk:
Nice. What was your first interaction with Salesforce?

Meighan Brodkey:
My first interaction with Salesforce was when I needed a job after college. My first idea was that after college was going to be a lot like college. Except, without having to go to class. I had been working full time, so I figured I was just going to have a lot more time to ride my bike. I was a mountain biker in college, so I just figured I’d have a lot more time for that. I moved out to the mountains and lo and behold, my parents were right and I was wrong. Don’t let them know that. Don’t let them listen to this.

Meighan Brodkey:
I had been looking for a job and there was this company that I found online, on Craigslist nonetheless, called Salesforce.com and they warned me “this dot com thing had already happened. It was over. I should not take the job.”

Meighan Brodkey:
They had already been right. It was my turn to be right. I was 21. I was stubborn. I was going to take this job and it was my turn. I took this position as a customer success manager for this Salesforce.com company that had a red logo with a Q and lo and behold, I loved it. It was love at first log in, man. It was great.

Meighan Brodkey:
I was helping Salesforce customers figure out how to use Salesforce better. There were pilot projects and it was amazing. Oh my gosh! We wrote all these reports about using Salesforce, figuring out “what is it that you want to do? Where are you going next? What are you doing now?” Oh my gosh, I had a blast.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
When that pilot project wrapped up, you can either continue on as a customer success manager or go another way.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
The company that introduced me to Salesforce helped me get the position. They needed an in-house admin and I could keep helping people or I can actually touch Salesforce. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to touch all this cool stuff that I help people with.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
I joined a company with 154 users and 154 sysadmins on my first day. On my second day there were two sysadmins. I was the most hated person in the world.

Meighan Brodkey:
It was amazing.

Josh Birk:
Wow.

Josh Birk:
The thing is, I can’t imagine that there’s not going to be somebody who’s going to be listening to this being like, “yeah, I know that. I’ve walked into that door too.”

Meighan Brodkey:
By the time I left, Salesforce had become a source of truth. We had more automation. We no longer relied on Lotus Notes. We started using leads. We had DocuSign and had entirely changed the way things worked for the entire company. It was remarkable what we did in just a few short years.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
I was in love. From then on I was hooked, there was no going back.

Josh Birk:
You’ve gone from admin to technical architect to several certifications under your belt. Was that journey just challenge by challenge?

Meighan Brodkey:
It was actually, yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
I didn’t actually know where I was going. So from being an admin, I thought my main goal was to become a developer. That’s really where I thought I was going.

Meighan Brodkey:
This was 15 years ago and 15 years ago an architect wasn’t really something that was in the spotlight the way it is now, and it wasn’t so much talked about.

Meighan Brodkey:
I loved the platform. I loved everything about it. Back then, as an admin, we didn’t have such a vast community. We didn’t have things talked about the way they are now.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
I thought I wanted to be a developer. Well, I tried my hand at developer and let me tell you, sitting around in a dark cave coding and all day was not what I wanted to do. Don’t get me wrong, I want to sit around in a dark cave, but I didn’t want to code all day.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Josh Birk:
You wanted to use your dark cave for your people skills?

Meighan Brodkey:
I wanted to do everything! I wanted to touch it all.

Meighan Brodkey:
There was no end to what I wanted to do. I wanted to try and touch everything. When I figured out what the architect was, that’s when I realized “that’s what I actually want.”

Josh Birk:
Wow.

Josh Birk:
I almost want to ask, but I feel like it’s almost an unfair question. “What’s your favorite part about being an architect? ”

Josh Birk:
I’ve got to give you a license to say “all of it” because you get to work with all the moving parts and also work with all the people.

Meighan Brodkey:
Yes, it really it’s the people. It’s the platform, it’s the design. It’s the challenge. It is the ever growing platform itself.

Josh Birk:
I remember the time you’re talking about because at some point the person who was the architect on the project, was the person who was known to have the most history with the platform.

Meighan Brodkey:
Exactly.

Josh Birk:
That person might be a developer. It might be an admin. It might be the business guy, although probably not the business guy.

Meighan Brodkey:
Right.

Josh Birk:
I think it was when I was talking to Steve and he was talking about some of the early mechanisms of architecture, I’m like, “yeah, I didn’t know how much of a proto-architect I really was, but I was the one telling other people what they were going to build and why, so I guess there was a little bit of that slice into it.”

Meighan Brodkey:
That’s so funny. When I finally ended up with my first architecture job, it was Lauren Jordan who actually asked me to be on her blog. Years ago she did an interview with me about women that were in Salesforce. And she had asked, “what is it that you want to be when you grow up?”

Meighan Brodkey:
She asked me in a much more professional way, of course, but I was like, “I want to be a technical architect. After this was posted, I got a phone call saying “we read the blog post about you, how you want to be a technical architect and we would love to have you come at work for us. We loved your passion. We loved your excitement. Will you interview with us? I thought it was a total joke. My friends were like “you were so corny in this interview. Like, why were you being such a dork?”

Meighan Brodkey:
It was Seven Summits asking me to work for them and I had an interview with them as I couldn’t ask for a better experience to happen in my life.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
This whole experience with Seven Summits led me to my specialty, which is communities and experience cloud. It introduced me to the concept of the external side of Salesforce. Now, I had done a portal for DocuSign.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
You’ve got to admit, back in late 2010, 2012, portals were “enter your caller, enter who it’s for, enter what you want to show.”

Josh Birk:
Right.

Meighan Brodkey:
It’s so different than Salesforce Communities.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
Lightning templates had just come out. Oh my gosh, it was amazing. I spent about two years there building our communities, working in lightning and that whole external experience, external security and lightning templates… I was in love. It was the idea of Salesforce and falling in love all over again.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
I was like when I was little and I wanted to be a ninja turtle. It was like that all over again.

Josh Birk:
Because you have gotten deeply involved in the community itself, do those two things coincide with each other?

Meighan Brodkey:
Absolutely. My main goal in life is to one day build out a community for a company so I can build something at least half as successful is what Salesforce has done with their community for themselves. To build something not just online but in real life, for their people to be able to connect. There’s a lot of Slack that I’ve done in the Slack workspace to try to build Salesforce.

Meighan Brodkey:
Now, bringing people together, to try to connect them in another way to try to just… connecting people is so important in such a digital world that we live in and we’re all online all the time.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
Speaker 1 [00:14:18] Building those bonds is so important and it’s going to happen online. That’s just the way it is.

Josh Birk:
I feel like it’s come up on the podcast a lot. It’s so much a part of the special sauce that makes the Salesforce community tick. It’s such a “pull yourself up and then look behind you and see if you can you can help” type of community.

Meighan Brodkey:
Yeah.

Josh Birk:
I’ve had people say things like “what do you mean you’re going to come help me with my project? You don’t know me.”

Meighan Brodkey:
Right.

Meighan Brodkey:
It’s so unique.

Josh Birk:
What are the groups that you’re currently involved in?

Meighan Brodkey:
So currently there is Ohana Slack, of course, that’s my baby. It’s almost 9000 members right now.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
There’s also Women in Tech Seattle, that I run. I’m also a coach and a mentor.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
I also work with the Dallas User Group.

Josh Birk:
Okay.

Meighan Brodkey:
It’s run by Paul McCollum. There is the System Debug podcast that I’m on, which has formed its own little community.

Josh Birk:
Right.

Meighan Brodkey:
Women in Tech in general, which is growing.

Josh Birk:
Right.

Meighan Brodkey:
In the architect community, I have their ‘Road to CTA Salesforce Saturday’ community.

Josh Birk:
Gotcha.

Meighan Brodkey:
Yeah.

Josh Birk:
Now, you mentioned Paul McCollum and I think, if Paul is listening, this means it’s the third time somebody else has mentioned his name on the podcast. I have to go have to try to get them on the podcast now. There is a say their name three times rule and then I have to go and get them.

Meighan Brodkey:
If he’s on three times, you’ve got to call him.

Josh Birk:
Yeah, exactly.

Josh Birk:
You said the “Dallas User Group”, right?

Meighan Brodkey:
Yeah.

Josh Birk:
You’re in Seattle?

Meighan Brodkey:
Yeah.

Josh Birk:
How is that connected?

Meighan Brodkey:
Paul is awesome, and it’s so cool the way that they run their user group. They have their regular user group meetings for Dallas, but they also have people that are in charge of giving announcements for different areas. They have people for Women in Tech and for other areas of the community. I give the updates on what’s going on in Women in Tech.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
One of the great things is just the fact that they bring in all these other people to help share with their community, to make sure that they’re getting not just what’s going on in Dallas, but what’s going on across the board so that they have this well-rounded group.

Meighan Brodkey:
I have got to say, Paul is a remarkable architect and he’s doing so much out there and he’s got his hands so far in the cookie jar so it’s remarkable how is he able to keep things straight.

Josh Birk:
Yeah. Got it. Nice.

Josh Birk:
The second time I think Paul came up on the show was the the books for Little Trailblazers, a library for Little Trailblazers.

Meighan Brodkey:
Yes!

Josh Birk:
Where he was reading books to kids just because it was the pandemic. That’s a brilliant idea to leverage the fact that we’re in the middle of a pandemic to get news across the board, not just in your region, because we’re all stuck on the Internet right now anyway.

Meighan Brodkey:
He also does an event, either once or twice a year, where he gets together and does ‘Trailhead for kids’, which helps train kids on Salesforce with their parents. We’ll do a project badge so they can get hands on to figure out “what is it my parents do?”

Josh Birk:
That’s so cool.

Josh Birk:
Okay. Let’s go back to your baby, Ohana Slack. What’s the origin story there?

Meighan Brodkey:
Oh, wow. Okay, so Ohana Slack started back in 2017, and I was with Kevin.

Meighan Brodkey:
Have I mentioned Kevin? Kevin’s last name is unpronounceable. I’m sorry.

Josh Birk:
Speaker 2 [00:18:11] We’re both good Midwesterners. They’ll understand.

Meighan Brodkey:
All Midwesterners know that we all have unpronounceable last names in the Midwest.

Meighan Brodkey:
Now, Kevin was working with me at Seven Summits and he was an intern. Then he became an employee. We were sitting there and we realized we’re running out of characters on Twitter to answer fast and answer questions. People are getting questions in DM’s.

Meighan Brodkey:
We’re not figuring out what is it that actually happened for these responses and then on the Trailblazer community, it’s just taking so long to get an answer. So many people are asking questions like, “how do I make a field” that is clogging up the amount of space for real questions.

Meighan Brodkey:
We decided to start our own Slack workspace and have our own place where we can have as many characters as we want.

Josh Birk:
Emojis and all sorts of stuff!

Meighan Brodkey:
Emojis and whatever we want to to! We can have unlimited characters, and then you can get whatever we need out there and everybody can see it and see the response. Honestly, we were thinking maybe we’ll get 50, maybe a 100 people in here and our friends will join, and coworkers.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
Well, it just kept growing and kept growing. We had 100 people and I was like, “This is bad man. This is insane.” All of a sudden, we had 1000 people. Kevin thought “this can’t be real.”

Meighan Brodkey:
When we hit 6000 people, the CEO sent me this bottle of champagne to celebrate. I was blown away. I couldn’t believe it. Then it was the week of TDX and the week before we had 8000 members.

Josh Birk:
Wow.

Meighan Brodkey:
Dreamforce 2021. Bret Taylor himself upgraded us. It was like a free pro version of slack and gave us a shout out at Dreamforce.

Josh Birk:
I did not know this story.

Meighan Brodkey:
Yeah.

Josh Birk:
That is so cool.

Meighan Brodkey:
He gave us a free upgrade, gave us props and mentioned us at a presentation. I had butterflies. I had ladybugs. I had unicorns and rainbows. They were all dancing around me. I felt so good, I couldn’t contain myself. It was amazing.

Josh Birk:
Wow. That is so cool. And Bret, if you’re listening, I generally always listen to your presentations, I promise.

Meighan Brodkey:
I have got to say, I know I sent you a LinkedIn message. I know I posted it on Twitter and my blog but thank you.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
It was remarkable and I just can’t believe the rate we’re growing. I have got to say, it was one of the greatest growths of Ohana Slack was during Carmageddon.

Josh Birk:
Oh, god.

Meighan Brodkey:
It was such a hard time and everybody was trying to skate. We all kind of banded together as a team and we rotated who was on calls and we posted the updates.

Josh Birk:
Oh, wow.

Meighan Brodkey:
So we all had somebody there that took a phone call, and then we would post what the notes were for their call. So we had 1500 people join over Carmageddon.

Josh Birk:
Wow.

Meighan Brodkey:
We’ve just been growing like crazy since then.

Josh Birk:
Wow. I would like to say that I was overly shocked. But that was a dark and chaotic time for both the community and the company.

Meighan Brodkey:
It really was.

Josh Birk:
But since you had already built that momentum to that point where you didn’t have to build the groundswell to help 1500 people.

Meighan Brodkey:
One of the amazing things is that Ask Salesforce actually said “Ohana Slack was one of the places you could go for information.” All of these things at Salesforce has helped encourage the growth of our workspace. It has been remarkable and I am so grateful.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
Unity themselves have done so many posts. They started a little help site for all the different things like to your change password and email.

Josh Birk:
Gotcha.

Meighan Brodkey:
I was like, “This is how you do it. This is where all of our links are. This is how you search for the different channels. These are the channels we have and the definitions.” I’ve also been putting links for the blog posts that we want to give thanks to for giving us shout outs.

Josh Birk:
Gotcha. Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
I’ve started linking to all those separate blog posts, everyone from Salesforce Ben to Salesforce Mentor to everyone that is starting to write about us. Slow and steady wins the race and trying to do it in between everything else. But yes, slowly I will get everyone out there.

Josh Birk:
Everything else is in a small list. You’ve got you’ve got a very active blog, you’ve got a fairly active podcast, shall we say?

Meighan Brodkey:
We are about to get restarted. We just got two new co-hosts.

Josh Birk:
Got it.

Meighan Brodkey:
So we must get a revamp there. We were trying to juggle between a single dad of two kids and myself.

Josh Birk:
Respect. It’s a lot. I keep going back to the joke. I want the word, and I’m sure it’s in German somewhere for the amount of time it takes to produce an X minute long piece of content, right?

Meighan Brodkey:
It does.

Josh Birk:
How many hours has to go into something that’s going to be 20 to 30 minutes long? The correlation, if you haven’t tried this kind of work, it will surprise you.

Meighan Brodkey:
I have got to admit, I’ve got this problem with my blog where I try to write something short, and all of a sudden, every blog post I write is a novel. I’m doing one on licensing right now for community licenses, and I’m so close to being done. But when you try to write up the differences between customer community plus and customer community and partner and channel and external identity lightning app, lightning starter. So far it’s a six page document.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
Those blog posts are really thorough.

Josh Birk:
There is a hypergraphia, that’s the word. There’s a neurological condition to being addicted to writing.

Meighan Brodkey:
Yeah. I’ve got a problem.

Josh Birk:
You might have a situation there. Going back to Slack real quick.

Meighan Brodkey:
Yeah.

Josh Birk:
Are you doing any kind of… Because I think a lot of people think of Slack as kind of a purely comms tool and they don’t get into the integration side of it. Are you tinkering with that at all.

Meighan Brodkey:
Absolutely. So I spent COVID working on Slack apps. I am not the greatest developer. I would say that about myself, obviously, since I left development and realized I wanted to be an author. I have been remote for 11 years. For me, Slack let me realize I have been on an island that I didn’t know I was on. It changed my life.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
It helped me connect with my team in ways that I didn’t know were possible. Being work from home.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
When COVID started and I was sitting here in my apartment, my nice little one bedroom with no one to talk to, except for Squishmallows.

Josh Birk:
Right.

Meighan Brodkey:
I was like, “What am I going to do?” Then I was like, “should I play around with Slack?” So I started working on Slack integrations and I first started with Integrating Slack and Google Docs. Then I started figuring out, “Well, what I want to do is…”

Meighan Brodkey:
My very first Slack integration was actually two back when we had the free version. I built a Slack integration to keep our history and I built up a Slack history to integrate it into my blog so that we have the history searchable on my blog.

Josh Birk:
Oh, that’s cool.

Meighan Brodkey:
So everybody can find it nice and easy.

Josh Birk:
Right.

Meighan Brodkey:
Also, so they can have it all in one spot where they can scroll through it.

Josh Birk:
Got it.

Meighan Brodkey:
Well, that was fun. But now that I have some more time I was like “What else can I do with this? I’m going to write some code, I want to do something fun. Should I start integrating it with Google Docs?” Then I wanted to expand Slack and Salesforce. I started talking about Salesforce because Salesforce was considering buying Slack.

Josh Birk:
Right.

Meighan Brodkey:
Before the purchase, I was like, “Oh, what can I do here?” Well, that’s when I started to a little crazy with the Slack Salesforce options as well. That’s when I did my first Slack approvals in Salesforce, which I’m so excited about, it just came on summer. Then I also started doing the way I want to view. That’s just zero view in except in cases.

Josh Birk:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
You were able to pull in a queue and then you could decide what you wanted to accept from a queue. And so the idea is you can hit a little accept button.

Josh Birk:
Got it.

Meighan Brodkey:
I also did some where I integrated with Google Analytics in Slack so that I could see what was going on in Slack. It’s like Google Analytics-

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
I’ve got a problem with Google Analytics. I am hooked on that thing. I have got a Google Analytics problem, I’m not going to lie. I’m just I’m going on Google Analytics now that we switched over to this whole GA4, I’m just digging into this whole new world. That was really good. Instead of regular Google Analytics and I got a GA4.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
And Data Studio is something else that I’ve worked on, I was feeding everything over to Data Studio.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
So, yeah, I have been playing all of the integrations like crazy.

Josh Birk:
Walk me through the anatomy of a Slack app. If I heard some of the things that you just said, I’d want to know how I would put some of that stuff together? What’s the basic structure of it?

Meighan Brodkey:
One of the greatest things is your choice of language. For my very first Slack app, I followed one of the templates for my first one, which was great. And the thing was, I wrote it in each of the languages that they had. I wanted to see how it worked in each one.

Josh Birk:
Right.

Meighan Brodkey:
I highly recommend it. If you’re starting in Slack apps, you do it that way. That’s because it’s constructed differently, but still similar in each different language. They have their API pre-constructed for you. The big thing you want to do is figure out “what is it that you’re trying to do? What is it that you want to call?”

Meighan Brodkey:
One of the hardest things though is your home page. I have got to say, that’s one thing I still struggle with.

Josh Birk:
Okay.

Meighan Brodkey:
Getting the home page to show, I don’t know why I struggle with it so much, but that seems to be difficult.

Josh Birk:
I have got to say, that sounds oddly similar to some of my early attempts of getting a Chrome extension to do exactly what I wanted it to do.

Meighan Brodkey:
Yeah.

Meighan Brodkey:
Figure out what you want for the API. Figure out what you want to do. Take out what those API calls are. You’ve got a lovely page with them all laid out for you beautifully. It has which API you have to call for each one of them. It’s so nice and neat. What I’m going to do is go through [inaudible 00:30:06].

Meighan Brodkey:
It’s super easy once you get the pattern down.

Josh Birk:
Gotcha.

Meighan Brodkey:
It looks like a pattern with Slack.

Josh Birk:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Meighan Brodkey:
That’s probably the easiest thing. Then as for what you’re connecting to, it’s going to vary there and that’s where the coding comes in. The other thing is that block kit builder. Oh, my gosh, that’s going to be your best friend for how it shows up in Slack.

Josh Birk:
Got it.

Meighan Brodkey:
Don’t try to do that freehand. Don’t try to do anything crazy. Use the block kit builder, it’s your BFF.

Josh Birk:
To go one level further, what’s the block kit builder?

Meighan Brodkey:
The block kit builder was the greatest invention in the world. It is an actual URL that you go to. Inside that URL, you’re going to go to this little sidebar on the left hand side of the page. It says, “this is what you pick for a text field. This is what you pick for a button. This is what you paid for”, blah, blah, blah.

Meighan Brodkey:
You just select it and it decides what you’re going to have for your whole UI. So for those of us that write back end and don’t you pretties, you cook it and it puts all your pretties together for you.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Josh Birk:
As somebody who has done the pretties in the past, I can actually still appreciate that because the produce can get difficult sometimes.

Meighan Brodkey:
They’re so difficult!

Josh Birk:
They just fight you.

Meighan Brodkey:
They do!

Meighan Brodkey:
It gives you pretty much everything in it and all you have got to do is swap out what you need for the details on the payload.

Josh Birk:
Got it.

Meighan Brodkey:
Easy-peasy, man. Slack has done great work to make it so when they’re building apps, it’s a plug and play practically.

Josh Birk:
Got it.

Josh Birk:
Okay. I want to ask you this and it’s all your fault because you briefly mentioned it before we got onto the actual thing. It’s one of those things that I think…

Josh Birk:
GDPR is one of those things that is becoming a legal necessity for a lot of people.

Meighan Brodkey:
Absolutely.

Josh Birk:
Yet it’s still a bit of a black box unless you’ve actually had to poke at it and you’ve actually had to poke at it. So, what’s the elevator pitch? If I was this newbie developer and you’re my technical architect and you’re going to give me the “here’s what you need to know about GDPR, here’s the surface layer”, what would that be?

Meighan Brodkey:
First of all, I am not a lawyer. I’ll start with that. I start with that with every single client. I will not make your legal decisions for you.

Josh Birk:
Yes.

Meighan Brodkey:
You need to start using the individual object. You need to start tracking that way. If you’re not, you are doing something wrong.

Josh Birk:
Got it.

Meighan Brodkey:
You need to track who is opting in and when, and who is opting out and when.

Josh Birk:
Okay.

Josh Birk:
The individual object is our updated version of personhood that lets them control their own security and privacy?

Meighan Brodkey:
Absolutely. It’s going to connect your user to opt-in, opt-out and subscriptions, all of that information.

Josh Birk:
Got it. Nice. I love that. That’s straightforward, easy to understand and also, neither of us are lawyers.

Josh Birk:
Okay, so now you have a lot of material on your blog. You’ve got the podcast that you’re re-starting. You have done many presentations. Is there a favorite presentation that jumps out at you?

Meighan Brodkey:
Favorite presentation… wow.

Meighan Brodkey:
I don’t know if I have a favorite presentation, but I would say you should definitely catch me at Tahoe for my presentation on Slack and Salesforce and at North Africa for my presentation on Slack.

Josh Birk:
Nice.

Meighan Brodkey:
Both are coming up this year.

Josh Birk:
I like it. I like it and we will try to get you out the door before those conferences happen!

Josh Birk:
The power of podcasting… time travel is so difficult. That’s our show. Check out the show notes for various links of things that we have talked about. But before we go, I did ask after Meighan favorite non-technical hobby and well you might be able to feel the jealousy and envy in my voice as I am listening to her.

Meighan Brodkey:
My very first year that I moved to Washington, I actually lived in Olympic National Park on a glacial run off lake and I had to tie up every single day,

Meighan Brodkey:
I moved to Washington on a road trip. I was on a road trip and I headed off with the owner of a resort and she needed someone to watch the place in the off-season to make sure they didn’t have trespassers and they were going to have wifi so I could work remote. I said “I’d love to do it.”

Meighan Brodkey:
Not a month later, I was living out in Olympic National Park. I switched my hours to work for India and the US in the morning and then I kayaked all afternoon.

Josh Birk:
Well, that does sound indeed very lovely. I want to thank Meighan for the great conversation and information.

Josh Birk:
As always, thank you for listening. Now, if you want to learn more about the show, head on over to developer.salesforce.com/podcast, where you can hear old episodes, see the show notes and find links to your favorite podcasts.

Josh Birk:
Thanks again, everybody. I’ll talk to you next week.

 Get notified of new episodes with the new Salesforce Developers Slack app.