Top London Nanny meets the Tech World

by Kasia Kleszczewska

What is FileMaker?

If someone had asked me this question 3 weeks ago, I would not know where to start in preparing my answer. Yet, this time last week I was a participant at the first ever UK FileMaker Developer Conference.

I have been living in London with my fiancé (Phillip) for many years, but recently we made the decision to relocate to Poland. He was lucky. Being a Tech Lead at Solis Digital means he can perform his work remotely. For me, after being a nanny for 8 years, this was much more complicated.

I found myself considering alternative career paths. Phillip suggested I look into FileMaker — we could work together, remotely. He told me about his colleague Jessica Lancashire who also made a similar career change. I read her article and saw hope for myself in this industry.

Three weeks in…

and Jordan Watson from Solis Digital invited me to join the team at the UK FileMaker DevCon. A little nervous, in an industry where everything was very new to me, I thought why not?

Upon registration, we received our passes and a goody bag. We were welcome by Brad Freitag who gave a strategy review of the FileMaker platform and an insight into the 42U Internship Programme. Over the course of the conference I saw some fantastic presentations, my favourite being from Ken O’ronzio. He showed us how you can connect your solution to physical devices — like a camera, thermometer or lights. Given that Christmas decorations are slowly beginning to emerge around the world, maybe I should challenge myself to using this technology for our Christmas tree lights.

Caught on Camera

Towards the end of the event, Katrin from FileMaker Editorial Team asked if we could sum up our DevCon experience for the cameras. It was a very fun moment, I tried to be spontaneous and come up with some good answers — even though it was all relatively new to me. But one thing I took away from the conference, is the openness of the community. Everyone I met was great, the passion in the room was overwhelming and I was truly welcomed in.

I am looking forward to learning more about the platform and believe I have an exciting career ahead of me!

One small step every day will bring me close to my goal.