In this episode of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BragTalks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, host Heather VanCura interviews Mary Grygleski about participating in user group communities. Mary shares her vast experiences engaging in communities and some tips for getting involved in user group communities. Listen to hear about how she approached participation and the impact it made in her career. Season 7 is about sharing the experiences of technical professionals and building on the interviews from the recently published book '⁠Developer Career Masterplan'⁠. This episode is a story that links to Chapter 8 of the book..hope you enjoy our new look and Season 7 of BragTalks!

Biography: Mary is a Java Champion, and an experienced, passionate Developer Advocate.  She has serviced companies as an advocate, such as IBM and DataStax in topic areas that include, most recently, GenAI, Streaming systems, Open source, Java, Cloud, and Distributed Messaging systems..  She started as an engineer in Unix/C, then transitioned to Java around 2000 and has never looked back since then.   She is an active tech community builder outside of her day job, and currently the President of the Chicago Java Users Group (CJUG), as well as the Chicago Chapter Co-Lead for AICamp.