Never too late to learn presented at the IM Tech Meetup - Feb 2022. It covers the journey from being a developer to then not and then going back into development. GatsbyJS was a great starting point. Using this with Kontent by Kentico and Netlify to host my website.

1. Never too late to learn – Feb 2022

2. WHO AM I?
ILESH MISTRY
(CMS SPECIALIST & KONTENT
MVP)
Never too late to learn
CONTACT ILESH
@ileshmistry
@IM_TechMeetup
2 @ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup

3. WHAT I’LL BE COVERING?
3
• Back in the ole days
• Getting back on the horse
• Personal objectives & challenges
• See the shiny new purple light
• My next steps
• Always look forward
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

4. BACK IN THE OLE DAYS
4
• Computer Science background
• Had support roles before my first technical role at MMT Digital
• My only developing skills were what I did at university
• Basically learnt to become a front end developer
• This was a fantastic opportunity for me
• At the time I was given two massive thick books to pick up and learn about two technologies the
company were at the time
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

5. BACK IN THE OLE DAYS
5 @ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

6. BACK IN THE OLE DAYS
6
• Role evolved over the years within the business
• Slowly became more and more hands off. And more consulting type of roles
• Left me years and years with hands off developer knowledge
• I'm talking possibly up to 10 years 😳 without seriously writing code 🤯
• Not being able to speak to developers too technically was tough 😔
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

7. GETTING BACK ON THE HORSE
7
• It’s tough to change this path you see ahead of you
• Time was not on my side, new family members, not much personal time
• Trying to focus and learn was hard
• Pressure from being an Kontent MVP with lacking development
knowledge was tough
• Pressure from team members who would be asking technical
challenging questions and meant you're struggling for answers
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

8. PERSONAL OBJECTIVE & CHALLENGES
8
• The longer I went down this route, the tougher it was going to be
• Set myself some goals to get me back on the road towards doing some development
• Create a personal website where I could write blogs
• Be able to be free to experiment and learn from challenges and goals I would be setting myself
• Front end technologies was the craze, needed to get onto this!
• Looked into the current trend and focus on that stack, people talked about React, but what
actually was it and why was it popular?
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

9. PERSONAL OBJECTIVE & CHALLENGES
9
• Who the heck was Wes Bos? 😂
• One of his courses helped me pretty much
starting from scratch! 💪
• Had to use a Headless CMS for the data (MVP)
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

10. SEE THE SHINY NEW PURPLE LIGHT
10 @ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

11. SEE THE SHINY NEW PURPLE LIGHT
11
• GatsbyJS was my savour
• Started to follow them and look out for what they
were doing
• First one that caught my eye (the colour might
have something to do with it)
• At the time it was the up and coming excited tool
to use
• My journey started off by following tutorials and
learning my way around it
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

12. SEE THE SHINY NEW PURPLE LIGHT
12
• This gave me more and more confidence in using
Gatsby
• I could see how I could use it with markdown
(Yep I've never used that before until then)
• They had a Source Plugin, so I could get the
data from the Headless CMS Kontent by Kentico
• I will hold my hands up. I’ve never coded with
React before. Very popular but never looked
into it. This was my first taster for it and I
could see why people enjoyed working with it
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

13. MY NEXT NEXT STEPS
13
• This allowed me to slowly push out a website
• I had something working locally
(which still needs a redesign (if there are any takers 😉)
• Started to learn about DevOps/Systems side of things.
Need to host website somewhere.
• I thought I've got to learn this myself, I chose the awesome Netlify!
• Allowed me to quickly pick up where to host my repository, the security elements behind hosting,
the environment variables that I needed to use and lots more. I started to ramp up my skills as
and where I could do
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

14. ALWAYS LOOK FORWARD - TAKEWAYS
14
• If you put everything into it, you can deliver the whole website without being a specialist in the
different areas!
• Since starting the website I'm glad I made the shift away from just advising people
• Making that initial push is hard, but my advice is not to give up!
• Time will never be on your side
• There are going to be lots of hints and tips from the speakers after me, so if you need any help
on this, there are plenty of people out there on social media and potentially within your
companies.
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

15. ALWAYS LOOK FORWARD - TAKEWAYS
15
• Create your own repositories, areas to have a play and get used to coding
• Then you can start create open source projects, which others can see what you're doing
• See what others are doing and how this can help you
• Do you need to have studied in this field? Absolutely no! Anybody can make the switch, you just
need some time to invest and also just need the opportunity to do it
• Don’t wait for anyone, take the step. Everyday is a learning experience
• It’s never to late to learn!
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup
Never too late to learn

16. NEVER TO LATE TO LEARN - THANK YOU
16
Register with
Kontent by Kentico -
90 days free trial
CONTACT ILESH
@ileshmistry
@IM_TechMeetup
ILESH MISTRY
(CMS SPECIALIST & KONTENT
MVP)
Never too late to learn
@ileshmistry | @IM_TechMeetup
IM Tech Meetup