Developer advocacy

Talks

Nium

Venue	Topic	Audience	Crowd size	Remarks
Monthly Nium events	- Fintech Meetup - Money20/20 - Money Street Fest	- Developers - PMs - payment leaders - treasury teams	20+	Panel discussions about trust, compliance, payments stack, other financial topics, and how Nium can help

Couchbase

Venue	Topic	Audience	Crowd size	Remarks
San Jose Convention Center	Couchbase Connect Hands-on query walkthrough	- Developers - techy PMs	300+	Projected a PowerPoint presentation while speaking and leading the crowd to build queries on their laptops while I did on mine
Monthly MeetUp groups	Couchbase NoSQL vs SQL	- Developers - DBAs	20+	Discussed index and query types and Big Data use cases

Published articles

LinkedIn (21,000+ followers)

Title	Target audience
Gmail agent for job auto-replies	Job hunters
15 passive ways for employers to find you	Everyone
13 active ways for employers to find you	Job hunters
The healthier doughnut	Everyone

Fintech blog posts

FIS/Atelio

• Pay by Bank payment method allows payments without credit/debit card info
• Consumer Secured Charge Card is an embeddable solution for many use cases
• Identity solves for use cases across key customer channels

Nium

• Client Prefund Account APIs let you track those funds across all currencies
• Wallet-to-Wallet Transfers APIs move funds across different clients
• Customer Virtual Accounts APIs manage virtual account numbers for a customer's wallet

API

Nium -- for fintech developers

Category	APIs
Clients	Client Prefund Account • Client Settings • Client Transactions
Customers	User Management • Customer Account - Individual • Customer Account - Corporate • Customer Management • Accounts - Files
Wallets	Customer Wallet Balance • Wallet to Wallet Transfers
Payins	Customer Funding • Customer Virtual Accounts
Payouts	Beneficiary • Payout
Cards	Simulators • Lifecycle • Security • Controls
RFIs	Request for Information
Reports	Reports
Testing	Payouts • Payins • Customer

SDK

ROAM -- for fintech developers

Title	Code samples	Contents
[SDK for Android payments](./roam-android-sdk-online-payments.md	Java	Using Android Pay, collecting credit card info and payments, setting up an app, creating & using tokens, testing & deploying
[SDK for iOS Apple Pay payments](./roam-ios-sdk-apple-pay-payments.md	- Swift - Objective-C	Using Apple Pay, collecting credit card info, creating tokens, sending tokens to your server

Atelio -- for fintech developers

Title	Code samples	Contents
SDK for web documentation		Requirements, importing, displaying, setting card PIN

KB

VMware -- for UEM developers

Title	Product
AppStack exclusions are not excluded from Writables Volumes	AppStack
After AppStack rescan, AppStacks is disabled or unprovisioned	AppStack
Writables are not created upon login in a multi-vCenter environment	AppVolumes
How to install and use Log Collection with AppVolumes	AppVolumes
Printers with ThinPrint default conflicts	ThinPrint
How to allowlist blocked application	UEM
Run Once configurations that run multiple times	UEM
How to replace an expired UEM license file	UEM

Dev problems I've solved

Developer problem	How I solved it	Company
Developers had a hodgepodge of skill.md and instruction.md and various .yaml files and needed structure for their internal agent-driven workflows, server architecture, and usability.	I Created a framework of governance and guardrails with templates in Markdown and YAML files to make it easier for developers to build Copilot Agents	Microsoft
Metaverse developers had trouble making 3-D objects behave the way they wanted.	I improved the Metaverse documentation with explanations and examples for faster building.	Meta
Developers created an AI/ML/LLM system to populate the Netflix home screen of titles and needed to share this technology with other Netflix departments but weren't able to install or configure it outside their group.	I tested and created internal documentation for the complex installation and configuration of their tool that populates the Netflix Home screen of titles so other departments can use it as well	Netflix
Customers' developers weren't able to onboard Nium's products due to the complexity of different steps for different company types in different countries.	I made a step-by-step unified onboarding process that immediately saw 70% more onboarded while 70% fewer helpdesk tickets.	Nium
Developers were building internal AI/ML/LLM tools but had difficulty since Apache's documentation didn't cover all of their use cases or needs.	I filled in their documentation gaps and greatly enhanced their internal documentation with more explanations and examples for engineers to use the Apache ecosystem tools for their Big Data and IoT projects. An engineer said my docs are "more thorough than Apache's documentation site."	Yahoo
AdWordsAPI developers had trouble finding what they needed since the AdWords department hadn't updated their Confluence pages in many years and some were simply obsolete.	I improved the completeness and accuracy of the AdWords API department's documentation to be the highest rated department in all of Google.	Google
Customer developers had trouble writing queries since the documentation was sparse and had no example queries of usage.	I vastly improved their documentation by elaborating on the explanations and adding many example queries, which Reduced helpdesk tickets by 30%	Couchbase
Developers couldn't keep up with the ever-growing queue of helpdesk tickets since their process didn't call customers at the best time to reach them.	I redesigned their Helpdesk system to call them during the time range the customer specified and at the number (home or work) specified; and I answered many calls myself instead of creating a ticket. These Reduced helpdesk tickets by 92%	Microsoft

Dev tools I've built

Developer problem	How I solved it	Company
Since Couchbase is schemaless and query performance is index-dependent in a way that isn't always obvious from the query syntax alone, developers routinely write a SQL++ query that works fine against a small local dataset, then silently full-scans a multi-million-document bucket in production; and it's often not discovered until someone notices latency or cost spike. My Couchbase documentation work detailed this exactly in the Adaptive Index and GSI Indexing / Index Pushdown pages.	Query preflight checker. I built a small CLI tool that takes a SQL++ query and a target bucket, and warns before the query runs in production whether it will trigger a full primary index scan instead of using a covering secondary index.	Couchbase
Since Couchbase documents in the same collection have no enforced schema, teams coming from a relational background often created a kind of silent drift that's easy to introduce and hard to notice in a schemaless system.	Schema drift detector. I built a tool that samples a collection and reports fields that are inconsistently typed or present across documents, catching that kind of silent drift.	Couchbase

Community contributions

Websites

• Atelio ............ Dev Portal (product discontinued)
• Nium ............. Dev Portal
• Couchbase ... Forums

Roles I performed at those websites

Moderator

• Helped facilitate community discussions by enforcing forum guidelines
• Removed spam, ads, and self-promotion posts
• Ensured posts remain respectful and on-topic
• Moved, edited, or merged threads so questions are properly categorized and easier to find

Developer advocate

• Assisted developers
• Escalated technical questions to the right engineering teams
• Replied to posts with technical answers
• Replied to dozens of forum posts via email due to privacy issues
• After replying to sensitive matters in email, I learned to post a 2nd reply without sensitive info in the forum so everyone can benefit

Driver of growth

• Gathered customer and potential customer feedback which influenced the product
• Identified friction points of customers and potential customers and addressed them
• Generated dozens of "leads" and "pipeline influence"
• Noticed stalled or immature forum categories and designed plans to grow them

Marketing contributions

At Couchbase, Nium, and FIS/Atelio, I've helped the marketing department in the following ways:

Category	Description
Technically credible content	- Blog posts - Tutorials - Training videos
Developer feedback loop	- Forums - Discord - Conference hallway conversations - Support threads (objections, confuses them, etc.)
Organic reach	- Conference talks - Meetups - Community presence
Customer stories	- Deep relationships have surfaced genuine use cases and testimonials orgnically - Helped Marketing turn those into case studies and proof points
Launch support and technical narrative	- When shipping a new feature, I turned "what we built" into "why it matters and how to use it" - Deep-dive blog posts - Demos and workshops
Event strategy by informed community knowledge	I informed Marketing which developer-specific meetups and communities would have a good chance of reaching the target audience

Feedback loops

On the Couchbase SQL++ for Query Reference and Atelio documentation pages, I added a feedback mechanism that:

• asks Is this page helpful? Yes/No
• has a Leave Additional Feedback? box to send entered text to the technical writer for triage and ticket making

Code samples I wrote

SDK quickstarts

Post	Audience	Code samples	Remarks
Android SDK for online payments	Fintech developers	Java	Using Android Pay, collecting credit card info and payments, setting up an app, creating & using tokens, testing & deploying
iOS SDK for Apple Pay payments	Fintech developers	- Swift - Objective-C	Using Apple Pay, collecting credit card info, creating tokens, sending tokens to your server
Atelio SDK for cards	Fintech developers	- cURL - Ruby - Python - JavaScript - C# - Java	Requirements, importing, displaying, setting card PIN

API sandbox demos

Sandbox demo	Company
Sandbox vs Production	Atelio of FIS
Testing services	Nium

Postman collections

Postman collection	Company
Atelio APIs	Atelio of FIS
Nium APIs	Nium

Nium API reference

Nium has added more API endpoints and supported languages after I left. The following are the API endpoints I documented with code samples in:

• C
• cURL
• HTTP
• Java
• JavaScript
• Python

CUSTOMERS Customer onboarding List customers Create customers Get customer Update customer Submit KYC for entity Fetch public corp details Fetch exhaustive corp details Customer account - individual Unified add customer Customer update Fetch indv cust RFI details Respond to RFI Upload document Add customer - MyInfo Add customer - eDoc verify Customer account - corporate Fetch corp details by Biz ID Onboard corporate customer Fetch corp cust RFI details Respond to RFI for corp cust Upload doc for corp customer Regenerate KYC URL Fetch corp constants Update corp customer Fetch public corp cust details Customer management Customer list Customer details Block/Unblock customer Acct statement Acct statement of a wallet Manage customer tags	LINKED BANK ACCOUNTS Fetch all accounts Fetch an account Create an account Confirm acct authentication Delete account Update account PAYINS Customer funding Confirm funding instrument Get funding instr. details Get funding instr. list Delete funding instr. Add funding instr. Fund wallet Approve or reject funds Customer virtual accounts Assign payment ID Manage virtual acct tags Virtual account details Acct ownership certificate Verification of consent PAYOUTS Account verification Beneficiary list Add beneficiary Beneficiary details Update beneficiary Bene validation schema Delete beneficiary	CARDS Simulators Simulate authorize card Simulate settlement Lifecycle Add card Activate card Card details Update card details Card list Get card details widget Block and replace card Convert to physical card Lock/Unlock card Renew card Assign card Security Fetch card data encrypted Fetch PIN status Unblock PIN Fetch ATM PIN Set/Reset PIN Show sec details encryp CLIENTS Prefund account Client prefund request Fetch prefund request Client prefund balances Client settings Client details Fee details Get max and avail limits Client transactions	WALLETS Wallet balance Get wallet balance Update wallet Fetch wallet Add wallet Wallet transfers Wallet-to-wallet xfer Transactions Update biz trans flag Trans geo-tagging Download trans receipt Upload trans receipt Manage trans tags REPORTS Initiate report Download report TESTING Sim payout trans Sim payin recv Sim payin funding CUSTOMERS User management List users Create user Get user Submit user KYC

SQL indexes and queries

• While at Couchbase, there was a potential customer who wanted to buy if he could see examples of a new ANSI Index that was shipping in the latest version.
  • The problem was that the default database that comes with Couchbase Server didn't contain enough specialized indexed fields to demonstrate the power of the new ANSI Index, and Couchbase executives didn't want to change any part of their example database.
  • So, I created the indexes needed to make a query that could use the new ANSI Index and then made sample queries that used the new ANSI Indexes with my newly made indexed fields; and then I made a script so anyone could replicate those creation steps.
  • I did this ad hoc "patch" again a few weeks later for a different customer who had a different use case.
  • A few months later, Couchbase modified their example database to include these and other index types for all customers.
• I wrote or vastly improved nearly all pages under SQL++ for Query Reference by adding:
  • Examples
  • Diagrams
  • Indexes and queries

Operators	Functions	Statements (A-D)	Statements (E-U)	SELECT
Arithmetic Collection Comparison Conditional Construction Logical Nested Sequence String	Aggregate Array Bitwise Comparison Conditional for X Conditional for Int Date JSON Miscellaneous Utility Number Object Pattern-Matching Search String Token Type User-Defined Vector Window	ADVISE ALTER BUCKET ALTER GROUP ALTER INDEX ALTER SEQUENCE ALTER USER ALTER VECTOR INDEX BEGIN TRANSACTION BUILD INDEX COMMIT TRANSACTION CREATE BUCKET CREATE COLLECTION CREATE FUNCTION CREATE GROUP CREATE INDEX CREATE PRIMARY INDEX CREATE SEQUENCE CREATE SCOPE CREATE USER CREATE VECTOR INDEX DELETE DROP BUCKET DROP COLLECTION DROP FUNCTION DROP GROUP DROP INDEX DROP PRIMARY INDEX DROP SEQUENCE DROP VECTOR INDEX DROP SCOPE DROP USER	EXECUTE EXECUTE FUNCTION EXPLAIN EXPLAIN FUNCTION GRANT INFER INSERT MERGE PREPARE REVOKE ROLLBACK TRANSACTION SAVEPOINT SET TRANSACTION UPDATE UPDATE STATISTICS UPSERT USING AI	Syntax Clause WITH WITH RECURSIVE FROM USE JOIN JOIN Comma-Separated NEST UNNEST LET WHERE GROUP BY WINDOW UNION, INTERSECT, EXCEPT ORDER BY LIMIT OFFSET

Meetup events I attend

Event	City	Frequency	Remarks
Agents & APIs Developer Meetup	SF	Monthly	by Postman
AI Tinkerers - SF	SF	Monthly
Global AI Makers	SF	Monthly
SF AI Code & Coffee	SF	Monthly
Toastmasters	Alameda	Weekly
Write the Docs	SF	Monthly

Reddit communities I'm in

r/	Description
LocalLLaMA	Locally hostable AI
MachineLearning	AI & ML
ChatGPTCoding	For building and learning with AI-assisted coding
ClaudeCode	For building and learning with AI-assisted coding
StableDiffusion	Open-source, local AI photorealistic art from text