Back in August, I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with a few amazing individuals as I highlighted here. It was an absolutely amazing time sharing the stage with Lauren and Phillip Monk (who in the last few months I have gotten to know and has been great for me). Many of us with ADHD struggle to make friends for a myriad of reasons, but I’m grateful for that. Next week, I will be coming to VMware Barcelona with a special event: Neurodiversity in the Workplace: Stories of Struggles and Superpowers [VMTN2343BCN] where I get to tell my story a second time in a small intimate settings.

I implore people to watch our session below, which has been highly regarded and arguably one of the best at VMware Explore (80 people for a non-tech session is pretty good:

My Background in Neurodiversity

Just to re-hash a little bit, My ADHD is something I have embraced and spoken at great length about in recent years. Additionally, I had the pleasure of joining the Nerd Journey podcast with John White and Nick Korte to discuss my ADHD.

On top of that, I am someone who has two neurodiverse children (one with ADHD and one with Autism (we believe), which is filled with its own challenges). I continue to learn more about my neurodiversity as symptoms constantly evolve along with always wondering if I’m also autistic, but that is something I will discuss next month at Explore.

The sentiment that I realize matters most is that people with ADHD are like snowflakes, no two people are alike. This adds to the bias/lack of understanding for people like me is that normies think if they know one they know them all. My symptoms as you can read about in your article are vast:

• People-pleaser
• Extremely productive
• Multi-threaded brain
• Hypersensitivity
• No filter
• Constant internal dialogue
• Struggles with boredom, etc (read my blog here to learn more)

What To Expect at VMware Explore 2023 in Barcelona

As I did in August, I will be giving away some of these great shirts that we designed showing how we embrace the chaos of ADHD and unleash superpowers that let ADHD-powered engineers and architects to be amazing at what they do.

You will find with my session, I will discuss things in a very honest and truthful way. I’ll talk about the struggles and some of the amazing successes that I have seen/have had over the last 10-15 years as an engineer. My session, is going to be a great opportunity for a back-and-forth exchange where people aren’t telling you to hold questions or worry about what people are going to think.

My session is about being vulnerable and talking about a new way to think about working with your neurodiverse peers, owning your identity, and building a community of likeminded people to support each other.

I truly hope that many people can join me, and if not I will happily come find you and visit at anytime.