Building a personal brand

Patrick McFadin: Yes, not compromising on your personal brand is really critical. You don't have to be exactly following the party line, although that can lead to some conflict. Be true to yourself; if you don't want to talk about something, pick something different. There are plenty of choices.

Geertjan Wielenga: What's your personal brand?

Patrick McFadin: At this moment in time, my personal brand is just being a large-scale application person. Most of what I do is around data modeling. I'm known for data models and deploying Cassandra, but my brand is around building applications in general.

That has worked out really well because when developers walk up to me, they already know who I am. I don't know them, but they can immediately say, "Hey, I really want to deploy this application and here are some of the parameters. Can you help me to look at this?"

Geertjan Wielenga: What are the personal brands of...