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Greg and Michael discuss a busy February, lean March, and some thoughts around using content to provide value, while also testing and shaping new material.
Show links
- https://nathan.ck.page/products/money - the evergreen newsletter Michael mentioned
- https://share.transistor.fm/s/e6a94949 and the story behind it
Show links
- https://nathan.ck.page/products/money - the evergreen newsletter Michael mentioned
- https://share.transistor.fm/s/e6a94949 and the story behind it
Creators & Guests
What is Ripples?
Greg and Michael discuss the thrill, the uncertainty, and all the other emotions that come with putting yourself out there and never really knowing where or when the ripples you send out into the world will overlap again.
Michael (00:01)
Hello, I am Michael Dyrynda and I am joined once again by.
Greg (00:05)
Greg Skerman, and this is episode... Five? Five! Got to five.
Michael (00:07)
And this is episode five of the Ripples podcast. We got to five. I think 10, 10 is the thing where you figure out if you're going to pursue it long-term or not, and given that I have two podcasts that have far exceeded that, I think, you know, let's, let's add a third into the mix.
Greg (00:27)
Yeah, for sure. Sure. So what's up, mate? It's been a big week for you.
Michael (00:31)
All right. What do you got going on over there? Huge week for me. It was, um, yeah, usually weak for me. So that will probably take up some time, but what have you got going on over there?
Greg (00:32)
What about you going over here?
Yeah. So I had a really big, unexpectedly big February, actually. So, um, I think a few episodes ago, I was sort of lamenting a little bit about the, about like the grind to try and find, um, clients. Um, and then I had a bunch just all come out of the woodwork all at once. Um, so I think February I landed, I want to say five, um, and just working through
Michael (00:56)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Greg (01:11)
the sort of engagements with them at the moment. I've, um, I've had a couple of conversations already with some of them. Um, two of them, uh, developers who off their own sort of back, um, needed some advice, which I think is kind of where I wanted to, but that was kind of the ideal positioning, right? I kind of trying to help individual people out. I mean, not, not that I don't mind helping companies out as well, but
Michael (01:34)
Yeah, help the individuals.
Greg (01:41)
I mean, they're very different engagements, right? Anytime dealing with an individual about their career or the challenges that they're actively facing versus like a business that's trying to undergo some kind of transformation. Yeah, so I kind of filled up, I filled my bucket in February in terms of what capacity I have given, full-time employment at Isaac Plant and family obligations and all of those things. And...
Michael (01:44)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Greg (02:09)
I'm March now I'm trying to fill out my April pipeline a little bit. It's been a bit slow. My network is not huge by the standards of most people in the community. I think I have less than 200 followers on Twitter. So if anyone wants to fix that for me, that'd be great. I'm not paying for blue. I'm sorry, Aaron. I know blue, blue checks are the rule now, but I'm not doing that. Um, and I think my LinkedIn sort of network.
Michael (02:20)
Mm-hmm.
Greg (02:35)
sort of, you know, high five hundreds. And I guess it'd be interesting to see whether or not other people in the space who aren't trying to sort of actively promote themselves to the community have a similar sort of experience, but the overwhelming majority of my LinkedIn following HR managers and recruiters because I'm a hiring manager, they're trying to, they're either trying to approach me out, or they're trying to land my business.
Michael (03:01)
place paper for you. Yeah.
Greg (03:03)
Yeah. So, um, went on a bit of a tear last week, um, a little bit of automation, um, to try and identify the kinds of people that I want to talk to, um, in the sort of two and three connections removed space on LinkedIn ended up putting myself in LinkedIn connection jail because I tried to add like 200 people, uh, to my, sorry if everyone's out there. Um,
Michael (03:27)
Yeah.
Greg (03:29)
But I think it's, it's helped. I mean, these are regardless of whether or not they turn into any like, you know, professional engagement or not. Um, having a network that's kind of more aligned to the people who want to hear my message is I think, uh, way better than sort of screaming into the wind to a bunch of recruiters who are going to go, that sounds really interesting, but I have no idea what he's talking about. So yeah, just trying to rebalance, rebalance my, um, rebalance my network a little bit so that it's, it's kind of more aligned. Um,
Michael (03:48)
Yeah, for sure.
Mm-hmm.
Greg (03:57)
to being a subject matter expert in this space. And yeah, and then had a company reach out to me around potentially sponsoring the next Brisbane Laravel meetup. Started some early conversations regarding a space for that. We're really gonna try and use the space we used last time, which is the Brisbane Amazon office. They have a really awesome training room that has two synchronized.
projectors and it's all for sound and light and all that kind of stuff and It's a classroom. So they use it for their internal training. I use it for So it's Amazon the business and then AWS the business also use the space to deliver their Like workshops and stuff. So I found this space years ago. So I was a AWS workshop and Yeah, it's really good space because there's tables. They let us kind of eat pizza in the room
there's tables and people, there's less risk that people have dropped on the carpet. And it's got a magnetism views over the Brisbane River. Like you couldn't ask for a better spot to be honest. So yeah, hopefully, hopefully they weren't too put off by us using the space last time and they will let us use it again. I've got a couple of other potential options, somewhat co-working spaces that have auditoriums and things that we.
Michael (04:56)
Nice.
you do it again.
Greg (05:10)
we may potentially use if they don't come to the party. But yeah, we're trying to get that together, trying to do that in April, I think. I'm hustling a little bit to try and get a couple of speakers. I'm trying to get, so Jess Archer helps us out a little bit with the sort of organization. She's also like our perennial MC, but she's also like crazy man busy at the moment with like Laravel 11 release and stuff. So like it's all got to kind of line up a little bit with her time.
Michael (05:30)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. For sure.
Greg (05:39)
on that front. But yeah, I'm really hopeful that we can start getting some more Brisbane representation in the sort of speaker mix. And I think I mentioned it before, I think that local meetups, particularly Laravel meetups, are a great way of identifying and pipelining potential speakers for the main event in November, which you just announced with your flash new marketing.
Michael (05:56)
Yeah. Yep.
Did indeed flash new marketing. It's, uh, the secret with the flash new marketing is that it is only temporary marketing as well, so there's, there's more to come on that front, but yeah, we, we announced on Tuesday, I was kind of in two minds about it because Laravel 11 was releasing on Tuesday and I was like, Oh, do I, do I kind of delay it? So as to not get swallowed up by the Laravel 11 wave.
But we'd already kind of pushed it a week because we were trying to finalize some bits and pieces around sponsorship materials and reaching out to sponsors. So they had a bit of a heads up from, you know, the general public that, Hey, we're doing this again, this is when we're doing it and, and putting some details in their hands just to give them some extra time to kind of digest what we were doing. And, um, I think like it's been okay. We sent out a mail out on Tuesday and then, um, we had a pretty good
click-through rate on that was 65-ish percent, which I think partly was owed to the fact that I hadn't fully set up DNS records, which Gmail and Microsoft and Yahoo and that, they're all kind of a bit more aggressive about now if you don't have the relevant things. So we were sending as a larikon.au email address, but didn't have that stuff in place.
Greg (07:14)
Mm.
Michael (07:23)
There's two separate places. We moved to ConvertKit this year as well, just to get a little bit more automation around sequencing of emails and segmentation and things like that. And also being able to, you know, to send previous emails automatically to new subscribers as well, which, you know, just helps keep everyone in the loop and not miss out on any of that information as we go through and gives us some better opportunities in the future. So a good, good content marketing kind of thought process. There's something you might, might look into.
And while I still remember you mentioned that you'd been doing the LinkedIn stuff to try and build the audience, I think for you, because you've got a, a modest Twitter following and, and like a different kind of following on LinkedIn. I wonder if taking some of the, the stuff that you talked about at Larikon AU last year and start putting out some written content and doing a bit of content marketing that way. So people kind of have a taste of what, what you have to say without, I guess.
Greg (07:51)
Mm.
Michael (08:21)
sending them the link to the video to just say like, go and spend 30 minutes of your time to do this. We'll know here's, here's a five minute read that you can go through and quickly get a taste of what we're doing. And then, and then you put, you know, you ask in there, join my mailing list for more information or email here if you want to, if you want to contact me, like just to make it a bit clear and, and to kind of give something in order to get something back in return. Um.
Greg (08:24)
Hmm.
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely the content marketing side of things. Definitely something I need to look at. Like February was very organic. So I think there was more, there was more inbound than outbound in terms of, like, there wasn't a lot of prospecting going on, beyond sort of just letting people know that I'm doing it. And, but most of it, probably more than, definitely more than half of it was, was inbound inquiry. And I think it's really.
Michael (08:53)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Greg (09:11)
it's, it's a bit deceptive if you get a lot of inbound inquiry early on, because you're just like, Oh, I can just like easy mode this and people will come to me. But you know, you're very, very quickly torture network in terms of, you know, the people in your network who are going to be interested in are going to reach out to you. And then that's, that's it. That that's the end of that, that cup is empty at that point, which is part of the motivation in growing the network. A bit to be a content marketing has definitely been on my mind or
Michael (09:18)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Mm-hmm.
Greg (09:39)
you know, slicing up some of the hot takes out of the talk a little bit. The talk is like the primary marketing piece if there is even a marketing piece is like, Hey, I talked about this. By the way, the nature of it being a 30 minute talk is that it's pretty reductive, like it just has to be, you know,
Michael (09:53)
Yeah. Yep. I mean, you've got seven dot points there and you know, minimum seven pieces of content that you can write and then, and put out into the world so that, you know, you can keep referring back to that. But on the back of that, it also gives the opportunity for the new ideas that you want to explore or new ideas to kind of start pushing that out. And that I think will help you as you flesh out future talk ideas as well and future content to kind of see what does and doesn't resonate and then what you can bring into.
Greg (10:00)
Mmm. Yeah.
Mm.
Yeah.
Michael (10:21)
your mentoring, but also, you know, I know that you tweeted the other day that you've submitted for speaking at Laricon AU again this year. So, you know, to, to really help flesh out some of those ideas. I should hope not. Um, yeah. So I think, you know, that, that serves two purposes. One is to, to keep putting your content out there so that people can see.
Greg (10:30)
Mm-hmm. No mentions. No mentions. No mentions of mint slice, but there might be some avocados
Michael (10:47)
that it's, that it's solid advice that you're willing to give, give you the little bit rather than just say, look, I'll tell you. And like, I know that, that you're willing to talk to people in short bursts and things like that, but, but giving away some of that content for free. Um, which, which you've already done, right? It's not, it's not like you're giving away anything that isn't already available from you in public in the, in the form of that talk, but I think there's, there's certainly an avenue to take like each of those seven points and turn it into seven blog posts or.
Greg (10:58)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Michael (11:17)
You know, 14 blog posts, if you do, you know, this is what I covered in the talk. Here's a bit of a follow-up to some aspect of it based on the conversations that you had. Like, I think that's, again, that, that would be a really powerful way for you to kind of put your content out there and for it to be visible, um, and, you know, something to kind of feed that because we were talking about it just, just before we hit record is that.
Greg (11:23)
Mm.
Yeah.
Michael (11:41)
Yeah, you had a lot of that organic stuff come through and it was a lot of inbound in February, but because you then spent most of, or in January, I suppose, and then because you spent a lot of February doing the actual coaching and figuring out, you know, how you're going to do that and then doing it. You didn't have that time that you spent in January, in February to then market for new leads. And so now you kind of gone, oh, you know, there's, there's nothing. So it's, there's the, the more that you can kind of automate.
Greg (12:00)
Yeah.
Michael (12:09)
the content, you know, that, that top of funnel thing, um, then the easy it's going to be to, to kind of have that trickle through into something that's a bit more sustainable than, than going, Oh, I'm halfway through March. And, and like, it's been a bit dry and I've got to kind of scramble to fill April. Otherwise you will get quite demotivated by I think, and it'll fall off. Like I know that you're, you've made good inroads into the goals that you set yourself for, for what you want to do in 2024.
Greg (12:18)
Yeah.
Okay.
Michael (12:38)
But I think you could also fall into the trap of resting on those laurels that like I've hit a chunk of it already. And it's going to be easy to make up the rest of it and it might just fall off completely and then, and then you don't do it and then, you know, the, the demotivation will come faster than the motivation for sure.
Greg (12:42)
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. The other thing too, is that like the, the standard offering is like five, one hour conversations over a period of five months. So, um, or five fortnights, depending on the, you know, the speed that the, the people being coached want to go through. So like, there's still plenty of like actual work to do like all the way through to May. Um, but it's, it's kind of about at least pipelining
Michael (13:00)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Greg (13:19)
leads so that come May I can, you know, cause I don't expect everyone's going to renew. I hope that people are getting value and do end up renewing, but, you know, I, I am at capacity sort of for what I can do. Well, not completely at capacity. That's a bit of a, you know, I've left some sort of slack in there. But, you know, I don't necessarily want to be like pulling in five new starts every month because by month five, that's 25 people.
Michael (13:25)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Greg (13:47)
25 conversations and there just isn't enough time, but it's kind of the, the interesting challenge is trying to figure out how to make it sustainable. And then also how to protect the time that I've got available so that I can sort of bring my best self to those conversations that I'm, you know, um, able to like, cause you have to over a period of five conversations, you have to kind of hold the context about what the overall con conversation is. Um, and you sort of worry a little bit that if you end up with a really big book that you, um,
Michael (14:08)
Yeah.
There's too many air. Good to take notes and, and yeah, you've got to keep the continuity about, you know, this is, this is the program, but like this is, you know, everything's slightly different for every person. That's the whole point of the, the tailored coaching. So yeah, keeping extensive notes on what those conversations are, or even recording them so you can refer back to them, you know, using AI is the craze to, to transcribe it and summarize the, the conversations and things like, like all of these kinds of things that you could do later and like, I understand the perspective of like, I don't want to have too many, but you know, someone might.
Greg (14:16)
Yeah, you just can't and you can't give.
Yeah.
Mm.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Mm.
Michael (14:44)
get sick or fall off or for whatever reason they can't do something. And rather than going, well, now that I've got a free slot and then going, you know, can I, you know, sending the tweets out, LinkedIn posts out, whatever I was saying, you know, can I. Feel this slot. It's like, no, I've got someone in the funnel already. I'll just tap them and say, Hey, I've had a slot free up. Do you want to, do you want to start, you know, a week early or whatever, and see if you can make it work that way. So yeah, I get the.
Greg (14:48)
Mm.
Yeah.
Michael (15:12)
The perspective, it's just, you know, I want, I want you to succeed in what you're doing, because I think what you've got to say is valuable for the audience that you are looking to, to communicate with. And it like the early indication is that you have something that, that people do actually find valuable. It's just keeping the motivation there because the motivation will get you going. And it's like the repetition and actually doing it that will keep it sustainable.
Greg (15:28)
Mm.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. The other thing too, is that like early on when you sort of starting something new, like, you know, I wasn't sure that it was going to like land. Right. I thought, you know, I got, I think I have one person who was interested to start with, um, who I, you know, they may have even seeded the idea in my head a long time ago, to be honest. Um, uh, and it's like, you know, you can make the mistake, I think of going and registering a domain and standing up a blog and setting up, you know, um, convert kit and all of these things. And then it's only one person.
Michael (15:46)
Mm-hmm.
Greg (16:08)
So you kind of made this massive investment. And then when you get a bit of a hot start, you then don't have the time to go back and do that. So finding the right moment to actually go and invest your time in that is yeah, it's tricky. And it's definitely it's definitely something. And like, you know, in months where it's quiet, where I am sort of pipelining, that's kind of what I'm doing it when I'm like up to my gills in work and in coaching engagements. But yeah, it's.
Michael (16:19)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yep.
Greg (16:34)
Yeah, it's, it's been a bit of a slow month on that front. Um, the good news is that if anyone does. Well, has seen what I've been doing and is interested. My April is wide open. So, uh, all hundred and.
Michael (16:46)
Yeah. And this is the thing, like if it's a bit of a slow month, you might write seven blog posts now, but you can put one out this week and one out in two weeks and one, two after that, like you've got that pipeline of content and if, and if you find that something's dying off or that there's something has come up, you know, out, out of that schedule, then you can, you know, either bring something forward or, or insert some new content, you know, out of turn or whatever. I think it's just, it's just going to be important to kind of do that. And there's.
Greg (16:50)
Mm. Yeah.
Hmm.
Michael (17:14)
I'm not going to find who it is now. And I'll see if I can remember to put it in the show notes, but there is a creator on, I think it's convert basically they have this evergreen newsletter, right? And everyone that signs up gets like the first one and then the second one a day later, and like, it just keeps going. And every time they come up with a new piece of content, they just stick it on the end and then everyone will get it. And everyone that has signed up, you know, halfway through or whatever else will eventually get that content. Um,
Greg (17:24)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Michael (17:40)
And it kind of means that, you know, I'm not saying put the money into that now. I think ConvertKit though has a free tier up to some number of subscribers. So it's something that you can look at whether or not you use that to deliver the content is up to you or if it's just like a blog is going to be the easiest way for you to just spin something up quickly that you can put content out there and you can always take those blog posts and put them into an email sequence later and we're like, you know, just like they live on this, on this thing where it's like you pay. Some.
Greg (17:48)
Mm.
Yeah.
Michael (18:10)
sum of money, you know, a hundred dollars, $200, whatever. And you get like everything that has ever been written and that ever will be written. And, you know, and then you get the word of mouth machine feeding that. So, you know, it depends on, on the approach you want to take, but yeah, I think. While it's, while it's still there in your head and it's fresh, relatively fresh from, from last year, I'd say. Turn that stuff into, into blog posts and write them and then have them ready to release basically.
Greg (18:18)
Mm.
Michael (18:39)
so that you can do that if nothing else.
Greg (18:40)
Yeah. I mean, the good thing is that there's, the good thing is that there's already a truckload of speaker notes on the back of that presentation. Right. So like, um, I mean, most of it's bullet points and not terribly well-crafted into a narrative, but you know, they'll just kind of like prompts and reminders about things actually had to talk about. So between that and, you know, running, uh, running AI over the, um, presentation itself, it's probably the bones of blog posts there without, without a huge amount of effort.
terms of sitting down and typing. Like writing is not something that I'm.
like super good at, I mean, I know it's just practice, right? It's you're not good at it until you are. But yeah, there's definitely like, yeah, you're right. Most of the work's already been done. And it's, I think it's important too. And this is probably something that anyone who is thinking of submitting for Lyrcon.au you could probably learn from is that you, like you put a lot of effort into those talks and then finding ways that you can rehash and reuse that content that you've put so much effort into is.
Michael (19:15)
Mm-hmm.
Greg (19:36)
is crucial and for me it's kind of a hook it's like hey I do this thing go and watch this half hour talk and if you think that you know if you think that it would be useful or you just think I'm a little bit crazy and you'd like to spend a bit of money to figure out just how crazy. I also offer this, but yeah I think.
Michael (19:50)
Yeah.
I mean, also the other side of that is if someone is going to sit and watch that 30 minute thing and they, and they still want to proceed with it, then, you know, you know, that they're more invested in it. Blog posts is easier to kind of skim. Whereas if, you know, I've sat and watched 30 minutes and I have questions about X, Y, and Z of points three and, and five, then, you know, but I think putting it into written form is, is the way to go. Um, at least in these early stages, just so that it's available. So you can point someone and say, here you go. And then
Greg (19:59)
Hmm.
Mm.
Yeah, for sure.
Michael (20:21)
Um, I had, I had a friend of mine who's a UX engineer that I worked with a number of years ago and, and he, um, got made redundant a couple of weeks ago. And he, I saw him post on LinkedIn the other day saying that, um, he wants, he wants to, you know, put himself out there on, on LinkedIn and like grow his audience, but he feels like the eek about it.
It's like, cause it's a self-serving thing. And I said, you have to look at it at a different way. This is not about monetization. Cause people have been on the internet long enough, especially like your audience that you, that you want to attract. They've been on the, on the internet long enough that if they know that your end goal is monetization or your primary goal is monetization, they're less likely to want to be interested in what you have to say than if you're wanting to genuinely help people. And you know, we've seen that in our community time and time again.
Like Adam Wathen is where he is now, right? Tailwind Mogul, because of the time that he invested and all of the content he created and the conversations that he had on his podcast and all of the stuff that he gave away for the longest time. Like it's the goodwill that you build up with the free stuff that you do that makes people more inclined to want to be interested in your paid offerings. And at the end of the day, we all need to make money to survive, right? So we're not kidding ourselves that.
Greg (21:13)
Hmm.
Michael (21:41)
Money is not a motivator, but if money is your primary motivator, especially when you're giving away content, um, then, then I think it's, you know, people, it's a little bit more opaque and people see straight through that. So I said to him, like, you have to genuinely want to help people and, you know, giving some stuff away for free. That is a taste of like these, this is where we're heading is, is kind of the way to go about it. Um,
And, and like, as I said, we've seen it time and time again, Aaron, who spoke about it on mostly tentacle, you know, the, the layoff episode that just came out this week or last week at the time that this podcast comes out. Yeah. But like, you know, he got let go, but it's all of the goodwill that he's built up over the last two years, all of the, you know, not being cynical, being, you know, being a cheerleader for the community that came back to him in droves, not just from the Laravel community, but from all across the web.
Greg (22:10)
Mm.
What a rollercoaster.
Michael (22:39)
job offers, support, kind words. It was all, you know, sincerity that, you know, unless you're, you're willing to, to put in that, the work yourself in being the sense this is, you know, not to get biblical, but like treat others how you want to be treated is what that all comes down to, you know? So yeah, there's, I think there's certainly.
Greg (22:43)
Hmm.
Mm. Oh, 100%. Yeah.
Michael (23:05)
an approach there for you to take and whether or not you want to, it's like, obviously it's entirely up to you. But I think, I think it's, it's a good foundation to use what you have and to test future content as well, because you're probably not going to speak of Brisbane Laravel about whatever you might submit to, to Laricon AU. I think that the audience it's Laravel, Laravel or, um, but a meetup audiences is more looking for meat and potatoes kind of stuff around, you know, this new feature in the framework.
Greg (23:30)
Yeah.
Michael (23:33)
or talking about, you know, the changes in Laravel 11 or whatever else. Whereas Laricon, we have, you know, that kind of audience that is, that is broad reaching, um, and, and some feedback that we got last year was that they took it back to, to their work where they're an agency and it was like, you know, it's a Laravel conference, it's called Laricon, but there was stuff there across the spectrum for UX people, for, you know, accessibility, for design, for, you know, whatever else, and, and like, you can bring your whole team, not just your programmers.
Greg (23:44)
Oh yeah.
Michael (24:02)
to the conference. So, um, you know, and we try and foster that as much as we can because, because there is such a broad spectrum of, of people in the Laravel community that they come to those things. So it's, you know, you've got to cater to not all of them, but like 80% of them. You know, you want to have a good cross-section of stuff and, and the early submissions, sorry, you're gone.
Greg (24:04)
Mm.
You also can't have a two. You can't have a two day com. You can't have a two day conference where it's just meat and potatoes. Right. Cause yeah, sometimes you want a salad.
Michael (24:31)
No, despite what people have told me in the past. Yeah. And, and despite what people have told me in the past and what they think, um, you can, you cannot sit there for two days in a single track conference of just wall to wall technical talks, you cannot absorb that the brain is not made to absorb that for the majority of people in a multi-track conference, multi-track multi-day conference, you're not going to see every talk, you know,
Greg (24:47)
Hmm.
Yeah, for sure.
Michael (24:57)
And I guarantee you, you're not going to see in two days of technical only talks at a multi-track conference. You're going to go and see something interesting. And the, and the thing is that we always find that we have found, you know, in our three events that we've had in the U S events that I've been to is that sometimes you sit in a sort of like your quote unquote, forced to sit through a talk that is not technical that you don't want to, and then you come away going, Oh, I've learned something. Um, it's not.
Like I've learned something technical. It's I've learned something about myself. I've learned something about something I didn't know about, you know, the accessibility talks that we put on Nina's talk that we had was, you know, just talking about a whole other perspective that, that we don't see if you, if you just, um, mainline technical talks for two days and like people fall asleep, you know, you cannot, especially on the second day after, after dark and you know, late nights and whatever else you just, you
properly focus on the talks. Um, and if you can, you are, and even if you, even if you actually genuinely can, I'm not saying there aren't people out there, I'm saying even if you actually genuinely can do that, you are still going to be a minority of the audience. We looked last year, we had 65% something first timers, not to say that they're, you know, junior developers, but 65% of the people attended for the first time. And, and that was like,
Greg (25:59)
Mmm. The other thing too is with purely tech-
Mm.
And that may have been their first conference ever, right? Like, and yeah.
Michael (26:26)
Yep. There's, there's not a lot of choice for PHP conferences in Australia. Um, and like Larik on EU was 80% first timers as well. Now, you know, I, I don't, don't know, you know, is it because there's been such a gap between the conferences and like people that were doing PHP that were like big in the community that were coming back year on year they've left? Is it, you know, other people, I don't know what the reason is, but
Greg (26:35)
Wow.
Michael (26:52)
You know, we had 65% of people at Larikon AU last year that were there for the first time. I hope to see 65% new people again this year, but I also hope to see that we have second timers, third timers, fourth timers that, you know, that we are putting on something of value to people that like, yes, they do want to come back and they, and they want to, you know, see their friends. They want to learn some things. They want to network and have a bit of fun. You know, we, we try and do a lot and we're going to do like a whole lot more.
Greg (27:09)
Mm.
Michael (27:22)
this year. So yeah, there's some very good things. We will, we will be talking about them in the coming weeks. If you missed, like, I know that we buried the lead 20 minutes, 28 minutes. Um, but, uh, if, if you miss the announcement this week, Larikon AU is in Brisbane this year, Queensland. So Greg's hometown. I'll come and visit you personally. And, um, on the seventh and eighth of November.
Greg (27:24)
Yeah, there's some exciting stuff coming.
Michael (27:49)
So it's a Thursday, Friday again. We, we have said on the, if you go to Larikonda.au now we've said, basically if you're planning to book your travel now without any other information about tickets or the conference schedule, anything else like that, you want to get your flights early, we do recommend that you get in on Wednesday the 6th by about 5pm, because there's going to be a pre-conference networking event.
And then leave after 8 PM on Friday, the eighth, really leave on Saturday. Don't, don't rush out on Friday night. Um, cause we'll have a post-conference networking event, a little bit more chilled, a little bit more quiet than, um, well, after dark will be on Thursday night, which is the main, the spectacular. Um, we're going to have, you don't have to book accommodation if you, I like, if you want to, then by all means do it, but we will have, um,
Greg (28:20)
Yeah.
Michael (28:41)
I think eight properties from two different operators, all within like a 30 minute walk of the conference venue this year, um, and all the pricing will like this discounted pricing. So everything will be sub $200 a night, except for I think two of the properties, which were a two 40 ish or something like that. So I think reasonable, certainly cheaper than, than a combination was in Sydney last year. So there will be more to come in the coming weeks as we start to put out more information and kind of dance around Larikon India.
at the end of this month or next, next week, 23rd, 24th. Um, and then, you know, we'll roll some more stuff out between Larikon India and Larikon US in August. Um, but yeah, speaker submissions open now. I know that you've got one in we've, we've received some, um, I think maybe like we didn't really communicate that was the case that the speaker submissions were open, but we'll do some more marketing around that. Um, certainly in the coming weeks as well.
Greg (29:40)
How are they looking? Got some, um, got some interesting ones already or you keeping the inbox closed?
Michael (29:44)
I've got some interesting ones. Yeah. No, I look, I've, I've looked at like how many we've received more so than what we received. I've had a couple of people reach out to me directly and they're like, what, what kind of talk do you want? Don't ask me that question. I don't know. I will not know what kind of talk I want until I see all of the submissions and I can piece it together. Um, it's, I don't know how to explain it. It really is a gut feel kind of thing. I kind of look at what LaraCon US does and, and LaraCon EU does and kind of piece together similar.
Um, types of talks. So, you know, if they have like 16 technical talks and two non-technical or, you know, 14 and four or whatever, then like, I try and maintain the ratios just to kind of keep the experience the same, but in terms of like, should I talk about API APIs or should I talk about front-end or should I talk about, I don't know if I knew what, what was going to be good as a topic, I would be a speaker and not a conference organizer. So.
Um, yeah, I, I know it when I see it, but I've got, uh, three, three speakers locked already. I have, um, one very, very good sounding talk that I spoke to someone yesterday and that I think that'll be a good fit. Um, so, um, that's potentially for that. We've got locked away. We will see if he is open until the 17th of May.
Greg (31:06)
Mmm.
Michael (31:10)
We will have picked all of our speakers by the 31st of May. That doesn't mean that we will be waiting until the 17th of May. Um, we kind of just as we go, as we see things, especially for international speakers, we try and lock them in earlier because one, we have limited spots and two, the earlier you book an international flight, the cheaper it's going to be for you. So
Greg (31:31)
There's also visa considerations and yeah.
Michael (31:33)
visa, yeah, all of that kind of stuff. And like people that are traveling internationally may bring family. They may want to stay longer. You know, there's all those kinds of things that they need to consider that someone that's flying up from Sydney or Perth or whatever, like they don't really, cause you know, it's a much shorter trip. It's a much easier thing. Um, I do encourage people to stay in Brisbane, you know, for a few days, have a bit of, bit of fun. I think November will be, you know, it's a bit more mild in terms of the climate. Um.
Greg (32:01)
Mm.
Michael (32:02)
And like there's, there's tons to see and do. We will have a whole bunch of information around like the things that you can do outside of the conference so that you don't have to necessarily do your own holiday planning. And we've got lots of, lots of information.
Greg (32:17)
Yeah, there's a quick trip down the highway to the Gold Coast or the theme parks. If you want something a bit more chill, head north up to Sunshine. Yeah.
Michael (32:24)
Yeah. You know, if you, if you come with, come with, come with your family or whatever. Yeah. If you, if you come with your family and, you know, that you, that do stuff in, in Brisbane there, and then you head down on the weekend for, you know, a trip to dream world or movie world on Saturday and then head home Sunday. Sounds great to me.
Greg (32:39)
Yeah. I'm really excited to see it come to, I think I, I started, I know other people have pitched you the idea of Brisbane probably since the start of Virocon AU, I guess. Um, but I, you know, when I got wind of the fact that you were potentially losing, um, uh, Monkey Bar ice, um, yeah, I kind of heavily got behind it. So, um, and Brisbane's kind of rolling out the red carpet a little bit too, just to maybe.
Michael (32:50)
Mm.
Yeah, I think it made sense like.
Yeah. I think also the fact that we had, I think six, six or seven speakers were from Brisbane, um, last year. So it was you, Josh, um, Samuel, Jess, um, there was one other Lauren. Yeah. Um, who's the other one? Well, maybe yeah, five or six. So we had like a good representation from Brisbane. Um, and.
Greg (33:07)
Um, say too much.
Mmm, there's at least four of us if we count Josh, so...
Cheers.
Lorraine.
Hmm.
Michael (33:35)
Yeah. As you say, Brisbane did roll out the red carpet in terms of the people that I spoke with there, not only at the venue, but like Brisbane city that you put me on contact with, um, they, they made me feel pretty good about moving, not just moving from Sydney, but moving to Brisbane specifically. So yeah, it's, um, it's good that it's all, all out there and I have to keep the secret anymore. There's still, you know, we haven't announced where the venue is, so you haven't missed that information. It just hasn't been communicated yet. So we'll get that out in.
Greg (33:44)
Mm.
Michael (34:06)
coming weeks.
Greg (34:08)
It's insanely central though, like very easy to get to. Yeah. Um, and Brisbane is like really well connected with public transport, particularly around where the venue is. Like, so you'll have options for, for getting around and.
Michael (34:10)
It's very central. Yeah, it's like.
Yeah. Yep. You can take a kitty cat. You can, you can cruise the Brisbane river. You can bus, you can walk. Like, as I said, all of the conference, all of the hotels that we're partnered with this year, uh, like the nearest one is a five minute walk. The furthest one is a 30 minute walk. So lots and lots and lots of good, um, reasonably priced, I think options. So
Greg (34:37)
Hmm.
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to just catching up with everyone again. Like, um, what's the...
Michael (34:47)
Yep. It'd be good. And we'll make it possible for you to actually catch up with people, not like see them at the conference and then go back to your hotel and then see them again at the conference, like, as I said, pre-conference Wednesday, there's going to be, it's not, it's not out. Like we will have facilitated something. It'll be user pays to play, but we will, there'll be drink specials. There'll be, um, food options and things like that for people to do that. We'll do that Wednesday. Uh, Thursday will be after dark Friday. We've got a on site.
at the venue, we're going to have a five to eight thing. And then there'll be another like after dark, you know, tangential event as well that you'll be able to go to and, um, you know, just hang out with people and then go home on Saturday, please.
Greg (35:33)
Yeah, cool. No, it's really, really cool. And I've been privileged enough to kind of see a little bit about how the sausage gets made. And I'm, yeah, very, very excited for, I mean, Sydney was great. Like last year was awesome. Last year was like, I've been to a handful of conferences and various different sort of verticals over the years. And like, Larracan's definitely like way up there, especially given the fact that like it's
Michael (35:54)
Mm-hmm.
Greg (36:00)
not done on like an AWS reinvent kind of budget. It's yeah. Um, but like in terms of community and in terms of like the quality of the speakers and so on, I think, I think from the stuff that I know about what's going on in November in Brisbane, it's definitely like a step change. Like it's, it's going to be big.
Michael (36:04)
Right, yeah.
I have definitely busted the spice whiz we're out of the cupboard for this one. We are stepping it up a notch.
Greg (36:28)
Yeah, awesome. All right, man, I think that's 40 minutes. Do we want to wrap up? So we haven't had anyone on today. That's not to say that we don't have a couple of really cool people who do want to come and talk to us. It's just time zones and people doing conferencing all around the world. Michael's actually managed to get two people who debuted at Larikon last year to do the Grand Slam in their first year, which I think is like.
Michael (36:29)
Perfect.
We will wrap it up here.
Greg (36:55)
So I think Risa and Daniel both Grand Slammed this year, which is like, that's awesome. The year starts with Laravel. It's alphabetical. At least. Yeah. It's like a season. The summer of Laravel. So yeah, that's really, really cool. So we've got a couple of people, just sort of everything's like, it's crazy season for Laravel at the moment. Like with.
Michael (36:57)
Yep. Grand Siam. Yep.
Yeah, we're not the last event of the year, we're the first event of the year.
Let's see it.
Greg (37:21)
Laravel 11 being released, Laravel India coming out, the hubbub about LaraCon US, which is also looking like it's gonna be pretty wild. Is that a sellout yet? It's gonna be close to a sellout, surely.
Michael (37:22)
Mm-hmm.
close to, I think they're at 800 at the moment.
Greg (37:35)
Imagine doing a conference with 800 people, Michael. Ha ha ha.
Michael (37:36)
No, I can imagine. I can imagine not doing one very intentionally.
Greg (37:41)
Yeah, so we'll have some cool people on I think I think we've actually three people might have reached out to us Which is really cool. If anyone else wants to come on and talk about their story You reach out to either of us and we're Happy to speak to you because then you're listening to me rabbit on about my hustle constantly Yeah links in the show notes reach out to me if you want to like coach me on how to write
Michael (37:47)
Mm-hmm.
Right, English good.
Greg (38:06)
But yeah, until next time I've been Greg and that's been Michael.
Michael (38:10)
I have been Michael.
And we will see you next time. Bye.
Greg (38:17)
See ya.