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In this episode of Laravel News Creator Spotlight, Eric Barnes interviews Michael Dyrynda, the creator of Laracon AU. They discuss the importance of networking at conferences, Michael's journey in creating Laracon AU, and the enhancements made for social events this year. Michael shares insights on the role of community in development, his podcasting journey, and offers advice for new developers.
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What is Laravel Creator Spotlight?
Interviews with creators making cool things in Laravel
Welcome back to the Laravel News Creator
Spotlight with me
today is none other than
Michael Dyrynda, the creator of Laracon
AU, the man that is on
more podcasts than I have
kids and just all around great dude.
So welcome to the show Michael.
Hey, thanks for having me.
So let's just start off basic.
What is a good reason
somebody should come to Laracon AU?
A good reason.
This is this is something that I as as
the organizer think a
lot about because people
often ask and I have conversations with
business owners and and
technology leaders and
people leaders and things like that.
And it is different for different people.
But for you attending Laracon US, like I
know going to Laracon US
for the most part is about
catching up with old friends, making new
friends, meeting
people that you have maybe
interacted with
online for the first time.
And so the community and
networking aspect of it.
And I think that really shone through in
a lot of the talks this year.
Kapei Haise talk, Aaron's talk last year
as well, like just the connectedness.
And I think that is the biggest aspect of
conferences is the
people and the connections,
the people you meet and
the connections you make.
And whether that is friendships or that's
picking up a new job
or meeting someone that
you end up working with in the future,
collaborating on open
source, things like that, like all
of these things, you don't really have
any preconceived
notions of when you go to a
conference for the first time.
So it really does vary.
And then if you look at the people
attending the conferences
like last year at Laracon
US, at least 65, 70 percent of the
audience were first time.
It's like people that had
never been to a Laracon.
And the feel that I got from this year's
Laracon US was it was very much the same.
There was a lot of people
were there for the first time.
So and whether that's lots of experience
programming, but attending
a conference for the first
time, or that's new to programming and
attending your first
conference with very little experience,
is making sure that you can welcome those
people, that you can make
the conference approachable
for those people that they
don't feel isolated or alone.
So what is the main reason to go to a
conference is going to, as
with anything in programming,
it's going to depend.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I go to talk to people because it
feels like you can't do
that in my little world
where I live in that
nobody even knows what I do.
It's always fun to actually be around
people that actually at
least we can have a conversation
about something that we
both have interest in.
So moving from there.
So this is the first year it's actually
moved locations, right?
So this year you're
going to be in Brisbane.
Brisbane.
Did I say that right?
Brisbane?
Brisbane.
Yeah, just pretend it's not there.
And so how far away is that from Sydney?
It's about a two hour flight.
It's about an eight, nine hour drive,
depending on how
adventurous you're feeling.
So it's a bit further up the coast on the
same side of Australia.
So it's still, it's the only 24 seven
airport in Australia.
It's the biggest one we've got.
So it's a very well connected city.
That's awesome.
In relation to sort of Australia, like
what's the probably the
biggest like Laravel city?
Like which city has the most Laravel
developers, I guess is a
better way of wording that.
Well, I mean, I thought Sydney was
probably the bigger one,
just because I mean, that's
where we've had the last three Laracons.
And that's where we've seen
the majority of attendees from.
I think this year moving to Brisbane,
there was a bit of a, is
it going to be problematic?
Like are we going to the people that went
last year that were
living in Sydney without
only there because it was in Sydney or
are they going to travel?
Are we going to make out numbers of
people who don't come
from Sydney with people from
Brisbane?
I think it's kind of balanced out.
So I think they're, it looks as though
they're fairly on par.
I know that Perth has like a really big
community over there and
they're starting to grow it.
They're Hatchet, who's one of our, or is
our platinum sponsor this year.
They're starting the ball rolling on
getting a Laravel
meetup going there regularly.
So Brisbane always had
a really big PHP scene.
I think it's niche down a little bit into
Laravel and they're
trying to keep that ball
rolling as well.
So yeah, it's, it's going to be either
Brisbane or Sydney, but I
think that's also consistent
with like there being the majority of the
tech jobs in those two cities as well.
Certainly in, you know,
PHP and Laravel at least.
All right.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So moving from there.
So this is going to be your fourth
Laracon AU because I
think COVID knocked one or two
out, right?
So I'm curious more about like your
origin story, like when and
like, what was your epiphany
being like, Hey, I want to create a
conference in Australia
for, for a little bit.
So how does all that come about?
I actually went into this as part of my
welcome address at last year's Laracon.
So I'll hit like the high notes, but it
like came down to, I had
been using PHP for seven
or eight years, I reckon, before I
discovered that there was
this whole other world out
there of all these other PHP programmers
around the world, that
there was these things called
frameworks.
Like I didn't know frameworks existed
because everything that I
did at that first job for
the better part of a
decade was all hand rolled PHP.
We had no notion of frameworks.
We had like, we didn't have the concept
of we'll build our own
framework at that point.
It was all just hand rolled PHP three
that became PHP four and PHP five.
So when I kind of started to realize that
there was a bigger
community out there, when
I discovered Laravel at the talent of
version three into the
start of version four, I think
that was around the time that the first
Laracon US happened sort
of around 2014, I think back
then.
And so, you know, it was always like
aspirational to go
and attend a conference.
And we had one conference, one PHP
conference in Australia at the time.
And I went to that in 2016.
And you know, I
thought it was pretty good.
But I wanted to kind of explore more of
what the Laravel community looked like.
And then 2017, I want to say I went to
Louisville, and saw
Laracon US and met, you know, my
people.
And that really was what it was, right?
It was it was the
community was the connection.
It was meeting, you know, Jake and David
Hemphill and TJ Miller and
yourself, like all of these
people that I've been talking to online,
Matt Stauffer was a big
part of my origin story
in, you know, getting into the public
side of Laravel and
sort of putting myself out
there.
And so, yeah, it was on the back of that
that I went, you know,
being married at the time,
but not with any kids.
I was like, you know, it's it's an
expense, right, for
someone from Australia to fly
16 hours to the US or 13 hours, depending
on where it is, the
cost of flights, the cost
of accommodation, the exchange
rate, like all of this stuff.
So I'm like, well, wouldn't it be great
if we had something closer?
Because even Europe, even further away,
really, and nothing sort
of this side of the world.
So I emailed Tyler and I was like, hey,
is this the thing that we can do?
Because traveling to the other side of
the world is is kind of rubbish.
And he was, you know, he was all for it.
He came back and was
like, yep, no worries.
And it took me like two years before we
actually had the first larraconn AU.
But that that really
was the genesis of it.
Just I want something for the people that
like want to have a
taste of what larraconn
is, but they're not in a position to
commit to traveling all that
way, all that time spending
all of that money to go and do that.
So that's where we are.
I love it.
That makes perfect sense.
I mean, it's you know, Australia has
always been on my bucket list.
I keep telling you I'm
going to come one year.
As soon as the kids are old enough to
take care of themselves
and drive themselves around,
it's definitely on my list.
It's like, got to do this.
The other thing that I thought was new
this year on the
website, it says you're going
to have more social and
networking events than normal.
Because so you're adding like more like
just I guess more time
in for everything or how
are you planning that?
So we've got to like official events.
So we have always had an after dark event
on the first night of
the conference because
everyone is staying for
most of the second day.
What we find is that lots of people
because we do a Thursday
or Friday and I don't know
if we'll change that in the future.
Maybe we'll do a Tuesday, Wednesday, like
larraconn US or
Wednesday, Thursday, something
like that in the middle of the week.
Lots of people are heading off at, you
know, three, four, five
o'clock on the second day
and heading back home for the weekend.
So we're trying to enable more people and
we're trying to
encourage them, I guess, to
stay the second night to
come for another event.
And it seems as though it's played out
pretty well because last
year in Sydney, you know,
the venue we had was really good.
The theatre staff were really good.
All of that.
But the foyer was very small.
And so there wasn't really the ability
for people to kind of
socialize in the breaks
during lunch.
You know, we were in Darling Quarter,
which was restaurants
and like loads of outdoor
areas and things like that.
So people could go out.
But what we found and what we heard from,
you know, people that
gave us feedback was,
you know, there's not the opportunity to
interact with each other.
And so that was a big focus for me this
year was to figure out how do we
encourage, facilitate,
make that available to people.
And you know, that was in part a bigger
venue that had a foyer
that we could keep people
in to, you know, to cater the lunch to
put the sponsors in
there so that people can hang
out and talk to each other in the breaks.
The people that speak on the second day
because, you know, people
are looking to leave the
conference kind of ends and everyone just
goes home by putting on
that second day networking
event after the conference.
It means that those speakers get the
opportunity to speak with
people about their talk.
So they're not disadvantaged
by speaking on the second day.
And then we kind of wrap that all up in
this notion of watering
holes where we've gone
to a couple of venues in Brisbane near to
where the conference is going to be.
And we've said, hey, we're going to have
some number of people.
Can you give us a space?
Can you give us, you know, some drink
specials, some food
specials and whatever?
And then that way, you know, throughout
our telegram chat, the
people beforehand can say,
hey, I want to go to this.
I'm going to this thing.
Who am I going to see there?
You know, and there's like, this is a
place that you can go
knowing that there will be
other Larracon people there and you can
catch up and hang out
with them without sort of
having to do it.
Like I know that Larracon US and Larracon
you have had like
unofficial telegram chats
and people have tried
to like organize things.
But when it's like not sanctioned, it's
like, who am I going to hang out with?
And you end up with
these fragmented groups.
So we're just trying to facilitate people
having as many
opportunities as possible to
network in and around the conference to
really make those friendships.
Because there are loads of people sending
your companies, sending their people, but
there's also heaps of solo developers,
entrepreneurs, freelancers, like that
kind of thing that don't
have the connections.
And so giving them people that they can
meet and maybe they can
strike off a friendship
and then that goes
between the conference.
Like that's what we're really trying to
achieve here is to
connect the community more than
just putting them in a room for two days.
Exactly.
I love that.
Yeah.
Because, you know, it's I owe pretty much
my whole career to
like going to a conference
when I was, you know, I don't know, a
decade ago, but man, might have been 15.
It was probably more than a decade,
probably 20 years ago, I
went to a conference and met
a bunch of people and, you
know, we still stay in touch.
It's amazing.
The connections you can
make at these conferences.
That part's lovely.
I know you're talking about the discounts
and you also have a
discount on the hotel,
like if you are flying into Brisbane and
the picture you have on
the website looks amazing.
Like the view coming out is really sweet.
Yeah.
The Brisbane Sky Tower is one of, I
think, eight different
properties owned by that group.
And it's like, you
know, 50, 60 stories tall.
It's at like the bend
in the Brisbane River.
So you can see all
around the CBD behind you.
But the river, you've got the hills.
So yeah, spectacular views there.
And I saw someone tweet just yesterday,
actually, they're like,
did you know you can call a
hotel and ask for a discount?
And I like you a discount.
That was all it was
like lots of these places.
It's just like, oh, I'm hosting an event
and I want somewhere to send out people.
And they're like, yeah, he's he's the
offer, like 10% off, 15%
off the best rate, best
available for those specific dates.
And I don't have to do anything.
It's just here.
Here it is.
We've just enabled it.
So yeah.
Yeah, that's lovely.
You know, here, like I live in a little
small town and we have a
whole like tourism committee
or branch of the
government or something like that.
So like you can actually contact them and
they'll like give you
money to run an event
in their town just because they're gonna
get the tax money and
and, you know, have people
downtown.
So it's amazing the resources out there.
Yeah.
Brisbane is the same thing.
I didn't know about this, but Greg Greg's
coming who spoke at
Larricon last year put
me in touch.
He knew someone in the local council and
they put me in touch
with the Brisbane Economic
Development Agency.
And their entire reason for being is to
get people to host
their events in Brisbane to
facilitate all of this stuff.
So they they put out the red carpet.
When I said I'd like an event, they
hooked me up with all
different venues that I went
and looked at.
They put me in contact
with people at those venues.
They gave me suggestions around, you
know, I mean, the
watering hole really is is their
idea.
We had the notion of like we wanted to do
something, but they're
like, no, this is this
is what it's called, I guess.
And they put me in contact with venues
and and and a lot of that stuff.
So when people say, oh, you
know, must be a lot of what?
Yes, it is a lot of work
to organize a conference.
But there's also if you know where to
look, a lot of support
for event organizers.
And like I wouldn't recommend that
everyone go out and organize an event.
It is a tremendous amount of work and
organization and it's like things that
you don't even think
of that you you know, all these unknown
unknowns along the way.
But if you have the right people around
you, a lot of it is made a lot simpler.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, you're right that lots of
cities have those
development agencies because they
want to bring tourism.
They want to bring
people into their cities.
Brisbane loves to steal
events away from Sydney.
There's like the intercity rivalry there.
So they were happy to throw out all these
ideas and things like that.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I want to my goal is to to
coordinate a golf tournament
like a tech golf tournament.
But it's like the logistics behind this
scares me more than
like, you know, I think
going would be cool.
But like, man, it's
gonna be so much work.
It's like, that's gonna be crazy.
All right, well, let's move on.
So layer con a dot au is the website for
everything will air con au.
And it is coming up whether dates again,
it's in November, November 7 and eight.
So get your tickets now before it sells
out and you can't get
them and the lodging and
everything you know, got to get
everything booked and set up.
So to transition a little in the intro, I
said you had more
podcasts than I have kids
and I think that's accurate.
I was thinking so you run you do the
level news podcast here
for all the level news.
We appreciate that with Jacob Bennett.
Then you have North meets
South with Jacob Bennett.
And then now you
started another one, right?
It's I can't even
think of the name of it.
Ripples.
Yep.
Yeah, I've got ripples, which and ripples
was born off the back
of Barak on I you last
year, this this this idea that I didn't
know how to illustrate
or how to verbalize this
idea of like, you do things in life to
kind of it was it was
taking Aaron's concept of
like, do things and good
things will come your way.
Right.
And it was like, well, you don't know
what things are gonna land.
And then I was talking to a friend of
mine and he said, well,
yeah, it's like a ripple
when you drop a ripple.
You know, you don't know where those
things fan out when they
overlap and things like
that.
So ripples was born out of that.
And so we interview not like not famous
people, pillars of the
Laravel community, but you
know, just people that have better
outcomes in life now
because of the ripples through
their life, you know, whatever they threw
out there, whenever it
happened, we had Aaron
on we've spoken to and Rissa Jackson,
we've spoken to Tim
McDonald, Jess Archer, you know,
people that that you know, maybe
something you don't.
You know, 12 months ago, Rissa Jackson
had never spoken at a conference.
And now she's just wrapped up a grand
slam at LaraCon US like
done all four of them in
her first year, Daniel Coburn, same
thing, all four of
them in his first year.
Joe Tannenbaum is gonna do all four of
them, four of them in
his first year when he when
he speaks at LaraCon,
are you in November?
So it's like all of these things like
Joe, Joe was an actor.
We've got someone speaking at LaraCon.
I you this year that that was a chemistry
major that is now an
engineering team lead.
We've got Aaron Francis himself started
life as an accountant.
And now he's Aaron Francis.
So all of these things when when you
think about it, they're
all kind of the same notion
of just doing things and
putting yourself out there.
And who knows what good unexpected things
come your way to to
borrow and again paraphrase
our Lara Lara, our
old dad in our Francis.
Yeah, it's so true, though, like, you
know, you, you know, you
show up, you just put stuff
out there and then eventually something
sticks and something like
moves your career forward
or moves your life forward.
And it's just sort of amazing, like, you
know, that's like me
doing this podcast, you know,
I know you hosted everybody's podcast, we
were just talking
before we started, like,
I've really never been on it.
And I didn't really want to be on it.
And now I'm like,
getting more comfortable.
And it's like, well, if you don't throw
yourself out there, then,
you know, nothing good is
going to happen.
So you're just gonna be
behind the computer all day.
So yeah, it's it's, it's pretty sweet.
So what actually like, like, what got you
into podcasting
originally, because you've
been doing it what for 10 years now?
Since 2016, I think is when Jake and I
started North, North, South.
So yeah, it's been a part of 10 years.
It just seemed like the thing to do at
the time, everyone was
starting a podcast back
then.
And it was a way to
communicate with the Laravel community.
I don't and it's like it feels a lot of
the time like a one way
communication that Jake
and I get together every other week.
On Northmead South, we get together every
other week, we do Laravel news.
And and we talk talk about stuff.
And it's, it feels like an echo chamber.
But every now and then you'll come across
someone, you know, Jake said he met heaps
of people at LaraCon US this year that
came up and said, you
know, thanks for the podcast.
Thanks for everything you do.
And it's like, you don't really realize
when you're doing the
podcasting, because people
don't always run to the comments unless
you're doing something diabolical.
You're farming for engagement, or you've
got controversial takes, like people were
just like, oh, yeah,
there was a podcast episode.
And like people listen, like we see that
people continue to listen
to it all these years later.
So it's not all that bad.
But yeah, it was just it was just a way
of putting my ideas and
my thoughts out there.
It sometimes serves as a bit of a like
status update for my boss
who I know listens to the
podcast because a day or two later, he's
like, Oh, so that's what
you worked on last week.
So it's done.
Yeah, it's just and it's like it's good
to stay in touch with
Jake, because you know,
the time difference and like physical
distance keeping in touch
with like we've seen each
other's kids grow up and we've been in
touch for a long period of time.
So I was gonna go.
I was gonna say I was
gonna ask you about that.
How how do y'all how
can you schedule that?
Because like right now I'm East Coast
time and I think we're me
and you are like 12 hours
no, is it 24 12 hours difference?
Yeah, 12.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's seven.
It's eight o'clock p on my time, which I
think is eight o'clock a on your time.
And you know, it wasn't
the easiest one to schedule.
So how do you do that each week with kids
and every in life, I
guess is the right way.
Yeah, I mean, I do all my lunch breaks
usually, which is right
after Jake's kids get to bed.
And that's just what we
have found his work for us.
And it's always one of us message
messaging the other on
recording day to like make sure
hey, we we still on
because sometimes things come up.
Sometimes I've got to go
and pick the kids up early.
Sometimes Jake's held up somewhere.
So, you know, and we do
reschedule from time to time.
We try really hard to make sure that we
always get our episodes out on Thursday.
But, you know, sometimes life gets in the
way and we just have to bump it a day or
skip a week sometimes
because someone's had to travel.
So, yeah, it's just a
matter of keeping on top of it.
I would love to do something more local,
which is why I started doing ripples
because Greg and I
are only an hour apart.
So that that makes life definitely a lot
easier to schedule because we don't have
to reason about times and things
happening and whatever else.
But yeah, three to two to two of the and
it helps that two of those
podcasts, it's Jake and I.
Right. So we know that
the schedule is the same.
It's just we alternate between what we're
talking about, which is which is good.
Ripples has been a bit more difficult to
manage because it's as soon as you
introduce a third person,
you're now trying to schedule three time
zones, which which gets a
bit because we're close.
It's OK. But like when it's me, Jake and
a third person that can get a bit,
especially when they're in like Europe,
it gets a bit bit
funny. So. But yeah, is that.
And then that's only three of the
podcasts you mentioned.
I've got more podcasts than kids.
I've got another one which I kind of
picked up for a bit and then and then
didn't really do a lot
beyond like eight episodes,
which was pushpot, which was just like a
look back, look forward kind of thing
that is out after I
did LaraCon last year.
And another one that I'm going to pick up
again in the next few weeks, which is
like seasonal is the road to LaraCon,
which we which we'll use
to interview and LaraCon.
You speakers so that that will be coming
out again in the next
little while as well.
That's awesome. I was that brought me to
another question is the so the LaraCon a
you like Twitter
account, LinkedIn account.
You have all these
little videos of the speakers.
Is that all coming from the recordings
from that road to LaraCon or is that
these are just separate things that
you're just doing now?
Yeah, this was just like an idea that I
had very last minute last year.
And like the speakers are very good to me
and they all kind of really took on the
challenge of doing it.
And so this year it was like part of the
submission process was we are going to
ask you to do this and it will be like a
planned out thing that we're doing.
So we've got I think
four or five left of them.
There'll be another one coming out later
today, later tonight for you, I suppose.
And then I think we've probably got three
or four left and then we've got some
other social media stuff coming as well.
Just just to keep everything front of
mind for people in the lead up to
November as we try and sell the last last
few tickets to the conference.
I love that. So speaking of time zones
like, you know, like, where is most of
the level world, I guess, like, when you
jump on the Internet,
is pretty much everybody's day done and
you just kind of catch up that way.
I mean, it seems like with me and you, we
have such a big overlap,
even though we talk a lot.
I miss a lot of stuff you do and you
probably miss a lot of stuff I do just
because of how, like, the different
social media feeds like
come up and show stuff.
Is that ever a struggle for you or is
that more like it's just fine
and that's just the way it is?
Yeah, this I mean, yeah, the social
especially in the last 18 months or
whatever it's been since all the APIs got
shut down and Tweetbot was not because I
used to use Tweetbot all the time.
And Tweetbot gave you a
chronological no algorithm, nothing.
It was just like this is everything.
And sometimes there would be, you know,
I'd wake up in the morning and there'd be
hundreds and I was a
Twitter completionist.
I would like scroll and read everything.
So now it's a bit bit more hit and miss
like even in the in the following feed,
it's not everything, you know, and things
are out of order and it tries to sort
things based on like popularity and how
many replies are on the
threads and all this like weed.
Like it's kind of
chronological, but kind of not.
And so, you know, obviously, they're like
the dramatic stuff always
bubbles up and you see that.
But there's there's bits and pieces that
get missed like and you
just pick up or you don't.
And someone will tell you about it if
it's really important.
But I like to try and keep tabs on it.
There's a bit of overlap in my afternoons
with the European crew.
But most of what happens in the US, which
is which is where the majority of like
the active Laravel people
are, happens while I sleep.
That's interesting. Yeah. The you know,
this this year I actually went to that
Laravel lab in London and it was wild
just waking up and be like
nothing going on on the Internet.
And then all of a sudden, like we would
go to the conference and it was like
after it was over, everything, you know,
the whole day was over.
So it was like then
everything's flooding in.
It was like it was it was it was kind of
hard to retrain my brain
how the how all that works.
But but, you know, now that you come
back, it's like, well, I can't keep up
anyway because it's
like going too fast now.
But anyway, it's it's
tons ons are interesting.
It's the man's greatest invention.
Yeah, that's right.
You like to do it. Yes, I
don't I don't have a choice.
You just have to go with the flow. Yeah.
So moving on, this one's
this is a way back question.
When did you first find Laravel? What
version or what year?
Yeah, I think I think I did
touch on it a little bit earlier.
I think it was probably around
2011, like around around then.
Maybe. Yeah, I feel like it was 2011 and
it was like in the version three, like
there was no composer yet.
It was all of the like
built in plugging things.
The first time I really
got the bundles, the bundles.
Yeah. The first time I really got to look
at it was probably version four, four one
when I and I'd like
transition to working at an agency.
And we were building like
we were building our own.
We had our own in house
framework at the time.
And so in house CMS. So this was like
looking at Laravel as a way to to kind of
improve on that, to
modernize it a little bit.
So, yeah, it's been
what are we, 2014 now?
So it's been 13 years.
Wow. Yeah, that's crazy.
The sort of I was talking to somebody
else about it's like that version.
It was like late version
three, early version four.
It seems like Laravel
sort of just wanted.
I don't want to say took over a PHP, but
that's when it really started to build a
lot of traction because you meet a lot of
people that came in
right around that same time.
Which I mean, you were there right at the
Genesis working with Taylor at Euziscape.
Yeah, but I still think like one, you
know, one was only like what a week came
out like a week and
then version two came out.
I want to say I was because I actually
helped build the bundle site when I
worked at Euziscape and when that was
when me and Taylor worked together.
And then, of course, then Composer sort
of took over everything and it was way
better with Composer than, you know,
trying to install some bundles and stuff.
But, but yeah, it's it's
yeah, I think I found it, man.
I don't know how many years ago that was,
but just never left.
I was like, this is this is
my people. I like Laravel.
Yeah, it's like it's managed to to its
credit and to Taylor's credit managed to
keep a lot of that community, a lot of
that feel from those early days.
It'll be interesting to see how things go
now with the funding and all of that.
But I don't like the the
episode hasn't come out yet.
But the episode, I talk
a little bit about it.
I'm like, I'm optimistic for what this
actually means, not just for Laravel, not
just for Taylor and and his business,
but for the Laravel community at large
and even like the the trickle down this
will have on PHP as a
language and as a wider ecosystem.
And so it'll be interesting
to see how that goes for sure.
I'm very bullish. It's
going to be good for everybody.
You know, not only like like you said for
Taylor and that team, but like, you know,
now we're getting PHP in front of CEOs
minds because, you know, it's on the
front page of Fortune
magazine and probably Bloomberg
and whoever else at this point. So it's
definitely going to get into more
eyeballs than just developers.
And in theory, that should
help everybody in the community.
You know, the other thing I love is how,
like, Laravel seems like
it has not gotten stale.
And since it was created, you know, I
think that's sort of the demise of a lot
of the other frameworks that was in the
PHP space at that early those early days,
they kind of, you
know, they have a big bang.
And then they just kind of fizzled and
just didn't get
updates, didn't get anything.
And then we're, you know, Taylor and
Laravel, they just keep pushing the bar
and trying to make everything better.
So I think that's awesome.
And it's always, you know, I think those
other other frameworks, maybe they look,
they always try to do their own thing.
They always try to innovate where Laravel
has never been afraid or shy to look at
what other communities are doing and to
borrow ideas and to improve ideas.
And like it goes the other way as well.
There are things in Laravel now that
Symphony has done for a while.
And there are things that Symphony does
now that Laravel did.
And there are things in Rails, you know,
I mean, active record,
eloquent comes from Rails.
But there are things in the Rails
ecosystem that have come from Laravel.
So, you know, that the ideas are good
enough to cross between language and
framework boundaries means that, you
know, everything keeps going.
Not everyone's going to come up with all
of the original ideas in Laravel or in
Rails or in Symphony or wherever, but
that they can be transitioned in a way
that they are like the same thing but
done in like the Laravel way or the Rails
way or the Symphony way means that, you
know, all of this keeps moving forward.
And, you know, I think Taylor was
probably the first one really that found
a way to commercialize open source in
such a way that maintaining the free
stuff was viable as
like a full-time thing.
Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, speaking
about the commercial side, you know, I
think back to sort of the code igniter
slash expression engine days, you know,
they had expression engine as the
commercial entity and they had code
igniter sort of the
framework that sort of.
Came out of expression engine, but they
were never I don't know if you used
either one of them way back in the day,
but they were not like one to one
pairing. Basically, you if expression
engine was so different code wise than
coding utter itself.
It's like you couldn't just mayor them
together, like, even though you knew code
it not or you might not know all the, you
know, the expression engine.
And I think that was one of the cool
things with sort of Laravel and
everything he creates out of Laravel.
It's like it's it's married right to the
framework. You know, if you're used to
Laravel, you can just pick up any of
these tools that we use simply.
Of course, you know, in the Forge is just
all the other tools are just like awesome
to use. And it's like, well, yeah, of
course, of course, this should have been
a product, you know, 20
years ago. This is amazing.
Yeah, and like this, this third party
things out there, there's alternatives
and things like that that are that are
maybe cheaper. But you know that in I
mean, number one, using the first party
tools, you are funding the development of
the open source stuff and the framework
and things like that.
But you know, as you say, you're gonna
have that familiar familiarity of
experience when you use any of those
things. And like this friction points for
different people at different times, but
by and large, those tools, and that's
going to be the same for everything.
You know, the thing that is built for the
98% use case is going to raise the IR of
2%. I'll take I'll take 98% any day.
All right, so when you're not working
podcasting, doing anything else, what are
your hobbies? What do you like to do
outside off the computer?
Well, I mean, I don't like doing it, but
I have got back into it. I've started
running again. And I used to love playing
basketball, but my knees have finally
said it's, it's time to stop that. So
stop playing basketball. I still love
watching it still love watching
Australian rules for the
kids. And a lot of my time outside of
that really is just spent with the kids,
especially now they're at a fun age, four
and six. And it's just always talking
always discovering things like it's fun
watching my oldest, like learning to read
now. It's just, and he's getting more
confident with it. And so he's like, he
was just sitting in the car and he'll be
reading the song names that come up on
the entertainment. It's
this, it is this. It's very good.
I love that.
Yeah, that's, that's where a lot of my
time goes now. And then like, at the end
of the day, I know that for a lot of
people like you love your job, you
program and like I like the idea of going
and sitting on the computer after
everyone's gone to bed and like
programming, but I just, I can't, I just,
it's, it's TV, like one or two episodes
of something and then bed and then get up
and do it all again.
Yeah, I'm the same way. I've been trying
to do a much better work life balance.
It's like, I want to work from whatever
eight to five and I want to be done and
just shut off the computer, even though
it's at home and like, I can do it. And
there's some things that might need to be
done. It's like, you gotta have that. Or
otherwise, like everybody suffers and my
wife's like, you're not paying me
attention. And my kids are like, you're
ignoring me. So it's, it's, it's the fun
part of working from
home. Like we do is, is the,
that conversion there. So sort of to
transition that one. What advice would
you give to developers looking, you know,
that might want to, I think I've ordered
this question wrong on here. Let me, let
me rephrase this. What's the number one
piece of advice you have received in
relation to web
development from maybe somebody else?
I'm the worst person to ask that because
my memory, like I couldn't tell you any
specific piece of advice and I couldn't
tell you any specific person that gave it
to you. I remember one person in my
formative years who was the absolute
worst teacher, but he was also the best
teacher in that he would take me through
a problem and he would show me like, we
could do it like this, we could do it
like, show me different ways to do it.
And then at the end of that, if you're
like, did you get that? Yeah.
And then we would have a social chat
like, and he knew this every time, like
he would then distract me from what he
just told me. And then he'd like close
his editor and be like, all right, we'll
go and like do that. So it like, he
showed me lots of different ways to do
things. And he was a big part of my
formative programming, but he was like,
just a really bad teacher. And one piece
of advice that I would impart just
through learned experience is to not get
bogged down in the
minutia of programming.
Don't, don't, there's no perfect way in
the, in the, you know, in the quote
unquote real world, there's no perfect or
right or correct way. Yes, there's
correct and like academic ways to do
things. And yes, there are patterns and
processes and things like that that we
follow because they are tried and true
and repeated and all of that. I get that.
But when you are learning to program, I
think the most important and impactful
way that you can do that is to just get
something on the page to write some code
that does something in the browser.
You're not, you're not building a fortune
500 company, you are learning
to program for the first time.
And so whatever you can do that like
makes you enjoy what you're doing without
getting bogged down in the details of
like how specific things work or should
work or whether they'd like, you know,
the conversation we've had this week is
around Lara Stan and whether or not that
should be part of the
default Laravel installation.
None of that stuff matters when you are
learning to program. And I think Laravel
goes a long way to teaching you how to
ship something, which is the framework
mantra was a big part of the keynote this
year is to just ship.
And like when you are learning the best
way to keep the motivation and the energy
going is to just ship and that is to do
whatever it takes to make yourself happy
with like you put something out into the
world and you can revisit the later like
people need to remember that you can
change what you've written.
You own the code. You can change it.
It's not a painting. You can actually
yeah, adjust it later. Yes. That's
actually how I got started though. It's
the same way. It was like I had this
product idea in my mind. I was like just
do whatever I can do to get
it something that would work.
And back then it was like this was before
framework. So you had PHP and I think was
ASP. And then I just use like I think no,
I started off with front page and then I
was using Dreamweaver because they had
all these little bindings and stuff that
you could like sync it up.
And I was like sync it to your database
and stuff. And oh, it was terrible. Like
you could I bet if I looked at that now
it would be you would say that was just
trash but it worked and it
was like hey, this is amazing.
I love this. I love this career. And
that's what sort of inspired me and made
me drive to you know when I continued
down this path all these
years later. It's exciting.
And the specifics and the correctness
like let that ruin your life later. Just
enjoy it when you're trying
to learn it for the first time.
Exactly. So one final question. What have
you been excited about lately?
I mean, I reckon Australia. I'm very
excited just about the direction we're
taking off. This never happened to me
with any of the previous ones.
But I've been waking up in the middle of
the night just from like the weirdest
dreams about rocking up on day one. And
I'm like, I'm there on the wrong day. And
there's no one there or you know, setting
up the theater and and you know, one of
the theater staff was on some scaffolding
and they fell down and broke.
I like just these weird things that like
have never happened in previous. So I'm
really excited about, you know, doing a
bigger event like a bigger larrick on
previous. There was like
some talks and an after party.
This year, we're really trying to connect
people. And I'm really excited about that
that prospect and I hope that it
resonates with the people. And I hope
like I know I said before, it's a long
way to travel for us to go to the US.
But we would do it because the US is
like, you know, the big main event. And I
would I would love to put on an event
that makes people really seriously
consider, you know, maybe
coming to do a you in the future.
I know that there's a few people I'm not
going to out them. That's that's up to
them. But I know that there's a few
people that are making the journey
because they love coming to Australia
because they love the
experience that I've had here.
And I hope that, you know, we can be a
destination conference in the future. So
yeah, I'm really, really excited about
it. And we're, you know, six weeks out
now. So yes, it's gonna be
it's gonna be a great event.
I have you have my full confidence
because this is this is your couple years
into this. You got this. And you always
you always done a professional job. But
if you don't have anything else to add, I
think we're just going
to end the episode here.
I want to thank you know, I want to thank
Michael Durenda for joining us talking
about life and where kind of you and
everything else in between. So thanks
again for watching and
thanks for being here.