Hallway Track

Marty and Rus sit down with Mitchell to discuss cats, cuddles, community, and ChatGPT.

Marty Friedel is the development director at Mity Digital.
Ruslan Steiger is a freelance developer in Switzerland, and also runs the Laravel Switzerland meetup.
Mitchell Davis runs Atlas Software and RecruitKit.

The new Atlas Software website

  • (00:00) - E002 - Marty Friedel and Ruslan Steiger
  • (01:55) - Intro
  • (04:18) - Marty's Cats
  • (10:58) - Breaking down complex Laravel problems
  • (19:01) - ChatGPT
  • (20:46) - The Goddess
  • (29:13) - The new billing model for Atlas Software
  • (35:24) - The problem with the Apple Watch
  • (38:11) - I feel no shame about my 6 desktop folders
  • (42:05) - Group fitness and landscape photography
  • (48:22) - Living in the moment
  • (52:48) - Laravel Switzerland
  • (01:00:39) - Prepping a talk for Laracon AU
  • (01:12:57) - Outro
  • (01:14:26) - Patreon


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Marty's links:
martyfriedel.com/links

Ruslan's links:
twitter.com/ruslansteiger
meetup.com/laravel-switzerland-meetup/
youtube.com/@laravel-switzerland-meetup

Mitchell's links:
twitter.com/mitchdav
linkedin.com/in/mitchdav
atlas.dev
recruitkit.com.au
hallwaytrack.fm

Creators & Guests

Host
Mitchell Davis
Founder of Atlas Software and RecruitKit
Guest
Marty Friedel
Statamic/Laravel web developer, video gamer, landscape photographer, group fitness instructor and Lego lover in Melbourne 🇦🇺. Head Code Monkey at @mitydigital
Guest
Ruslan Steiger
🤸‍♂️ growing human 🇨🇭 Laravel Switzerland Meetup organizer

What is Hallway Track?

The hallway track is the best place to discover new people in the Laravel scene. You'll hear conversations between people you already know, and get a fresh perspective and stories from people you don't.

Speaker 1:

Hey there. Hi, Mitchell Davis, and welcome back to the hallway track.

Speaker 2:

I've got

Speaker 1:

a great episode for you today. I sat down with Marty Friedel, development director at Mighty Ditchfield in Melbourne, Australia, and Russ Steiger, a freelance developer in Switzerland who also runs the Laravel Switzerland leader. We spoke about cats, cuddles, community, and chat gpt. I'll talk about this a bit later in the episode, but I've got some exciting news. We've just rolled out the new website for my business, Atlas Software.

Speaker 1:

You can check it out at atlas.dev.

Speaker 3:

We've spent a bunch

Speaker 1:

of time cleaning up the messaging to describe exactly what we do, and I'd love if you would take

Speaker 3:

a look. Chris and I are

Speaker 1:

a small 2 person team based here in Australia,

Speaker 3:

and we've got decades of development experience between us. I'm trying to

Speaker 1:

grow the business and pick up

Speaker 3:

some more clients, both for development and also for mentoring. So if you're in need of some senior Laravel developers, please

Speaker 1:

check us out. We've made

Speaker 3:

a public commitment of paying it forward. So for all of 2024, we're going to sponsor open source projects that benefit our customers for per engagement that we take. On the new website, we're also trying

Speaker 1:

a fixed price offering where you

Speaker 3:

can book our time for a set number of days per per week on a monthly basis. The website goes into all

Speaker 1:

the pricing, but you'll know exactly what you're paying for

Speaker 3:

up front. If your team could use some extra help to get a project out quicker or if you have a referral

Speaker 1:

for us, please head to atlas.dev to get in touch.

Speaker 3:

I've got some more news about Patreon at the end of the show. So if you're interested in supporting the show and having me read your name out at the end of each episode, stick around until the end. Thanks for

Speaker 1:

your time. And now, onto the show. Can you introduce yourselves for me?

Speaker 2:

I'm my name's Sadi Friedel, and, I'm the development director or head code monkey, depending on how formal you want to be of mighty digital, based in Melbourne, in Victoria, in Australia.

Speaker 4:

Hey, there out there. You beautiful people. Thank you, Mitch, for this nice podcast. I can come here and Hey, Marty. My name is Ruslan Steiger, but I think it's pretty hard for the English people to pronounce Ruslan.

Speaker 4:

So let's go over just with the first three letters, Rus. And I'm a freelance developer from Switzerland, in Europe. And, yeah, I love to get things done with Laravel. I'm a developer. I'm passionate about it.

Speaker 4:

I'm organizing meetups and yeah. And I'm really proud and honored to be here on a podcast to talk about my passion.

Speaker 1:

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, guys, for being on. I've chosen both of you guys to get on a call. You applied to be on the show, which was excellent. And, I got a sense of community from both of you.

Speaker 1:

So Marty and I, both being based in Australia, we met at Laracon Australia. Marty spoke, did a great job, and spoke about STATAMIC. And I really got the sense from Marty of a desire to get himself out there more, and I echo that as well, because it can feel quite isolating in in the community if you're not actively engaging with people. So Laracon in particular is a great opportunity I found to get out there, meet more people, and and that's, obviously, that's what spurred on creating this show. But then we have Russ on the other hand, who's created his own meetups, in Switzerland and and runs the Laravel Switzerland meetup.

Speaker 1:

And I thought, what a great contrast between, some people that maybe would like to get out there a bit more and then, someone who's, looking at running, you know, meet up. So, again, thank you so much for for being on. If I can just start today, I really like knowing more about what's, what's your day look like? You know? So, maybe, Marty, on a on a typical day, what are you doing each day with running mighty digital and your development work?

Speaker 1:

What's a typical day look like for you?

Speaker 2:

So days tend to start fairly early, and and I think it's it's lucky at the moment, to be able to work from home, which is fantastic. I've got 2 cats, and, they very much like that I get to work from home. And the reason that's relevant is that my day starts with the cats. So, they will typically be at the bedroom door crying and wanting breakfast at, whenever they hear any noise. And, so they get fit.

Speaker 2:

I detour it by the kitchen to my office, and, I'll sit down, start looking at emails or getting started with what I had planned to do for that day. And Zach will join me for a cuddle, and, he he will not leave until he's had his cuddle. If I put him on the floor, he'll just jump back up and have his cuddle. But after about 10 minutes, he'll have enough and he'll wander off. And, he will go and sleep on a bed that is about 2 meters away from me at the moment.

Speaker 2:

And he'll just spend his days sleeping in there, but he dictates the morning. And so then when he's finally off my arm, I can type properly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That makes it a bit difficult. Doesn't it?

Speaker 2:

If you're, if I've ever tried to chat with someone and it gets very slow, it's most likely because I've got a cat on one arm and I'm very limited with what I can do.

Speaker 4:

I'm a bit jealous of you. You have always something to cuddle with.

Speaker 2:

Well, so I'm, I'm actually, so I've had to shut my office door because, and I'm surprised he's not at the other side of it. As soon as my office door is shut and I'm in my office, he's very often sitting at the door, crying, wanting to be let in. He's, he's a little clingy. We got Toby. Who's just an old man cat.

Speaker 2:

He's 10. This is a complete segue, but anyway, he's, he's 10 going on. I don't know, 40. He's just a big cuddle bed. He just sleeps all day, plops himself on the floor and he's happy.

Speaker 2:

And Zach is he's like my shadow. He follows me around the house. So, yeah, he likes that I work from home. If you're ever on a typical meeting call with me during a workday, you'll probably get Zach making an appearance because he'll hear my voice and wanna get involved. But yeah, I, I, I try to plan my days, in advance based on the project work that's going on at any given time.

Speaker 2:

We've just been changing the way that we manage tasks internally for different projects. So that I think part, partly to improve multitasking capabilities across multiple clients, you know, if you were working on one project, it's a little bit easier, but I think when, when you're juggling multiple clients and that could be onboarding new clients, it could be doing, you know, more BA, scoping kind of work. And I I think especially because of the size that mighty is, we are a very small company. You know, I do have to do that scoping work and that BA kind of work. And all of this just needs to be planned in advance so that I know what I've gotta get done on my days.

Speaker 2:

And so that nothing gets gets forgotten. And, I do like ticking things off because it's that lovely sense of achievement. And so you using this task manager that we use now has been fantastic to try to improve the way that we work as a team across projects. And, again, another little segue. This has been so quick little history here.

Speaker 2:

My business partner, Michael, so he'd been a sole trader for about 11 years. I've been a sole trader for 14 years, And he'd spent a lot of time working with Joomla. And it was always troublesome to work on the project at the same time because you needed to copy all the files over. You needed to have the database over. And if I installed a an add on in my version, then that would be different in his database version.

Speaker 2:

And it it just started to get really complicated. But working with Laravel and working with Statomik makes it really easy to be able to work on a project at the exact same time, and especially with Git to be able to have different branches running and and and pull and push when needed. So that's really helped the way that we work. So I think we we've spent quite a bit of time over the last 12 months trying to improve our internal workflows so that we can be more productive during the day, so that we know what we've gotta get done and things don't get forgotten, and that we can try to minimize a little bit of stress and a little bit of panic. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know, just to really try to keep on top of things and, and not overwhelm a particular day and be realistic with what gets scheduled in a day too. You know, I'm not sure how how, you know, especially with Russ, I'm not sure how you you go about scoping a project, especially, and this would be an interesting one, Mitch, for you to chip in, too, about putting hours against the tasks that you need to do. So especially when they're billable hours, how that fits together, because you need to be able to put those in the day so that you can get things done too. And, and, and you know that, cause you don't want to put too many tasks in one day that suddenly it's actually unrealistic to achieve your goals. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So, you know, the way that I work is I would during the scoping process, everything gets split into tasks, and they get a an hourly value associated with it. And then that helps me figure out what I can and cannot fit on one day.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Do you both work in a similar way or am I over complicating things?

Speaker 4:

Or, Marty, you're starting with a hard question right now, But I I don't have a magic bullet for that. But somehow, at the end of the project, it always works out. But, I can feel you for this day for day, it can be really hard if you say, hey, this task needs 2 hours, this task needs 4 hours, and the next one that and that. I try to I change this. I still have my hours, but, I changed the thing to, hey, these are my task for this week.

Speaker 4:

And I try to get my task done for that week, and that's, working really great for me. Because when I need a bit longer for one task, maybe I estimated something like 3 hours for a task, but it took me a half day to do it. Maybe 2 hours longer. Then I'm not stressed out for it because I know, I still got the whole week. Don't worry.

Speaker 4:

It's okay. I'm fine with it. So and another task, I said, hey. It needs 6 hours, and I was done in, like, 2 hours. And somehow, magically, everything

Speaker 1:

Is

Speaker 4:

it the best? Finds out. Yeah. It ballads. It's it's always out, and I get all the things done in, in the week.

Speaker 4:

And sometimes I get even more done than I was prepared, like, I was calculating. And, that's, like, my that's how I do the thing. I try to calculate everything for a week base so that it's working out for me. Yeah. That's, like, my my magic sauce to that thing.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I I like that going down the the weekly path, you know, a little bit less micromanaging involved. You know, you mentioned about some things taking longer than than expected. Have have you both found that the tasks that you expect to be simple end up being the big ones. And then the tasks that you think are going to be really complicated, just magically fall into place and get done effortlessly. Are you experiencing that, or is that just me?

Speaker 1:

Sometimes.

Speaker 2:

Depends on the task.

Speaker 1:

I've had my fair share of complex tasks that, you know, they took just as long, if not longer, than I thought. So, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4:

I for me, sometimes this happens as well. But at a complex task, I think the problem is just my mind just imagining it. Because I've never done it maybe before, I have no reference, and so my mind goes into panic mode and says, oh, I have to think about that, and then that, and then that, But at the end, when I'm starting it, and I think, oh, that's easy. Oh, that was easy as well. That's not a problem.

Speaker 4:

Why am I thinking it so so much heavily beforehand?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 4:

And I think the thing is when you go too deep in a task, your mind will make problems and this and this. And most times when you just go with the flow, you know, when when you I never experienced something that I could not program it, I could not solve it. It never happened. Never happened. Somehow, I got everything solved.

Speaker 4:

Even at the end when I called someone and needed maybe some help, But at the end, I got it working. And, yeah, I think we have to learn maybe sometimes to calm down more and not to see everything perfect. Like Yeah. I I need to know beforehand how you I can solve it. I think the journey is the is the goal.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

The journey is the destination. Yeah. Totally. I I really like breaking things down into, like, it's specifically with really complex tasks. Like, if I'm working on something that's maybe, you know, dealing with something that I've never covered before, I really like to just slow down.

Speaker 1:

And, like, when if I'm pairing in particular, so often I'm like, okay. And, like, I I use that as, like, a a reset. Just I keep saying that. Okay. And then, so we'll okay.

Speaker 1:

We're gonna do this part, and then we do that. And then now we'll go on to the next tiny thing. So end up building, like, up a bunch of these micro tasks is typically how I go about solving a complex problem. And, like, I'll write out, you know, a to do block above whatever I'm trying to do, and I'm staring there at an empty function, you know, controller or whatever. And, yeah, I've written out my to do's, and I try and make them as small as possible.

Speaker 1:

So I'll end up with, like, 4 or 10 or 15, like, to dos of okay. This is what needs to happen. And then, yeah, I use that as, like, a reset. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1:

Right. Let's onto the next thing. Let's do this. And I think it drives Chris, who works with me. I think it drives him crazy sometimes, but we sure enough, we end up getting through, like, really hard problems together, and that's often how I approach it.

Speaker 1:

So

Speaker 4:

But

Speaker 2:

I think you you need to be able to walk before you control as well, especially if you're learning something new for a specific, problem that you're trying to solve. You need to understand the basics before you're able to go too far down that path, and sometimes that just needs those stepping stone moments to get there. But, yeah, being able to pause and slow down is the okay. Right. One thing at a time, rather than because otherwise, it can just become overwhelming.

Speaker 2:

And and I think that especially with so many people working, remotely now and not necessarily having that tight community that they can or an individual or even a couple of people they can fall back to. Without having those contacts, you can feel very isolated when trying to solve a problem. And sometimes you might think, hang on. I feel like I should know this, and I feel like I'm going to be looked at like an idiot for asking something that should be obvious, but everyone needs to start somewhere.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Completely agree. I'm a big proponent of, like, there's no stupid questions. You know? And I I've always been someone who's asked questions right from being a kid.

Speaker 1:

Like, never been afraid to just reach out and ask someone. So, yeah, I I'm all for that, especially helping juniors as they grow, you know, in in their journey. I don't work with enough juniors, I think. We're only a small team as well. We're a team of 2, and Chris is very much a senior.

Speaker 1:

But, yeah, it's really important, you know, to try and teach people as they as they get in that, nope. It's cool. If you're not sure how something works, let's work on it together, you know, or here you go. You can go learn about it.

Speaker 2:

Well, that that it's funny you mentioned that because that's where a lot of my blog post topics come from, from when I've been learning something myself and thought, oh, okay. Someone else might find this interesting. I couldn't find what I was looking for. I had to dig through some code to be able to understand how this was going on. Can I write this in a way that could help someone else who's having a similar problem be able to resolve and and learn that and understand that as well?

Speaker 2:

So some of my blog posts can be really light and really easy and really obvious, I I guess, seemingly obvious. But if I found them useful, if I've learned something, there's no doubt someone else, whether that is a junior, whether that is a senior, who might have the exact same question and being able to to put something out there that could help make someone else's day easier is good. And and I think that, you know, especially within the the Laravel community has been fantastic. I I've really enjoyed being a part of it, even for such a short period of time. And as a subset of that, the statomic community has been phenomenal to be connected with.

Speaker 2:

The majority of the users, I think, in in the scheme of things are in the US and in Europe, but it's been fantastic to connect with people. And that typically for an Australian Workday, there are people online on on discord who, who are awake at the same time. There are a couple who will, you know, are always happy to help out. And, I think that level of community has been really good, especially given how isolating things can be. You know, and and for statamic quick side note there, the statamic community is very heavy on Discord, but that's where they are.

Speaker 2:

And if you, you know, create a thread and ask a question and you'll get you'll get help and responses and, you know, having helpful people out there has been really good and to give back as well for when others ask those questions to, get them back on track as well, because, you know, sometimes it could be that small little stumbling block that's stopping them from really flourishing with what they're trying to do.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Thanks for sharing blog articles and stuff like that, Marty. It's always useful stuff like that. And the thing is, what's obvious? You when you're in the moment, you think, oh, that's obvious.

Speaker 4:

Everyone knows that. But do you know it a half year later yourself? It's like I saw a tweet from Frank from Spati in Belgium, and she she posted like she was googling something for Laravel. And the first, hit was an article from himself, and it's like, I answered this question like a year ago, and it's like, I had that perfect. I already forgot that.

Speaker 4:

And I think that's the thing. Our brain is tricking us in these obvious things. We have to know everything, remember everything. But let's be honest. It's like we are always googling.

Speaker 4:

We are always asking questions. And now with ChatcPete, it even got easier. It's like before I hit up a friend now, I just try maybe ChatCPT knows it. And I just follow yeah. Before I'm writing WhatsApp someone else, I'm just writing it in ChatCPT and see if this plausible, what he gives me, because I have a sense now.

Speaker 4:

Does this make sense or not? And I think that's a really good starting point as well. Like, yeah, if you got nobody to talk to, maybe if you are a junior or something like that or starting out and you have not the network of people right now. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. I I found myself, it was late last year using chat gpt to help me with code for the very first time. I had to well, okay. Maybe that's not true. I had tried, Copilot, and I just couldn't get into it.

Speaker 1:

I wasn't a fan, so I I got rid of it. But this was the first time that I needed some help with a bash script. And, I'm not, like, a huge Linux nerd or anything like that. So I know some things, but, like, I wasn't sure how to make it was something like an optional argument to to a script, bash script. And I've I

Speaker 4:

just don't know. That's so obvious. What's up with you?

Speaker 1:

Bring it back. I'm a fraud. You've exposed me.

Speaker 4:

No. I'm talking to you.

Speaker 1:

And and yeah. And, like, I, because I know, like, specifically, it's something in bash. It's like dash zed or something like that. It's like you use that to test if it's an empty string or something like that. I probably got it wrong, but I knew that that would be really hard to Google.

Speaker 2:

I was, like, hang on.

Speaker 1:

I got this thing because, you know, like, the negative z and whatever, it'll it'll take it out of the search result. It's, like, I've got this thing, chat gpt. It probably can help me, and I told it, like, exactly what I was trying to do. And sure enough, it got it exactly right. And this was a script, and I knew I could I could read it after it had written it.

Speaker 1:

And I was like, okay. That feels right. It doesn't feel like it's got anything wrong there. Sure enough, I ran it and it worked perfectly. And so, yeah, it's it's a it's a big game changer.

Speaker 1:

But, yeah, especially if it's like, you know, some text stack that you're not super familiar with or, translating from 1 programming language to another, things like that. It's amazing. Total game changer. So, anyway, Russ, I wanna ask you, what's a typical day look like for you?

Speaker 4:

Oh, now it's my turn. Well, my day, I'm a bit jealous of Marty's day because every time he needs a break, he can cuddle with his cat. So, yeah, my day starts a bit different. Let's say I start with a cuddle as well with my goddess. So we start the day together.

Speaker 4:

We have, it always depends. My days are starting always a bit different. But, after the initial phase, like, we had breakfast or stuff like that, talking, getting ready for the day, I would say she's leaving the home, and then I'm alone at home, so I can get my stuff done. And, like, the first first 30 minutes like that, I try to take the time off for me before I start working. So it's always different.

Speaker 4:

Maybe one day I'm just doing a tea and just staring outside doing nothing because I need to clear my thoughts. Another day I'm maybe meditating or doing stuff like that. Another day it can be like I'm writing stuff up because I have so much things in my mind in the morning already. It's always depending, but I try to get, like, the first 30 minutes just for me without emails, without nothing, just, hey, I'm alone, and I try to get, like, time for me so I can take care of me. What's what are my problems?

Speaker 4:

And yeah. And afterwards, I start my day, like, getting my task manager open, getting my mails open, stuff like that. And as soon as my goddess comes home, I stop working.

Speaker 1:

Okay. That's right.

Speaker 4:

That that's, like, my finish line. That's, like, perfect for me. She's leaving home. I start working. She's coming home.

Speaker 4:

I stop working. Yeah. It's not like every day. Some days, I have to do more. You know how it works.

Speaker 2:

Yep. Yep.

Speaker 4:

It's not that simple. It's not every day the same, but that's like a typical day, and then we start cooking together, having great time, and, yeah, I I love so I can get my mind off, get back to the, I don't want to say reality because working is my reality as well, but, yes, It's like shifting my mind because now I before I was like 8 hours, like, in solving problems and getting things done and programming. And then I have to shift everything to, yeah, now it's time for my family. Like, well, it's just my goddess. We are just 2 people, but it's my family.

Speaker 4:

And now I have to shift everything. Yeah. We hang out. We have great time. Once a week, we go dancing together, so we bond.

Speaker 4:

Oh, nice. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

What type of dancing?

Speaker 4:

We just started. It's like a introduction to dance. It's like a tongue, tango, stuff like that. But

Speaker 1:

Ah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't sure if you meant just, like, nightclub. You know?

Speaker 1:

But no. That's cool.

Speaker 4:

Here you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a dancing class, like, one hour a week, and, yeah, we try to get, like, our relationship relationship more deep together, and, yeah, it's helping a lot.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Because I think the working part consumes so much of my life. It's so good that I have, like, now with my Goddess, like, something outside that brings me even more joy. I love to work, I love to get things done, but there was a time in my life where I only did work. It's like there was nothing else.

Speaker 4:

I did, like, 12 hours straight today, maybe a bit sport afterwards and that was it. And I can do that if it's like a big project, deadline, yeah, I can hustle for 1 or 2 weeks. It's okay. It's fine with me. I have no problem with that.

Speaker 4:

But if it's the normal thing, I will get burned out. Like, when I do it, like, for a month or 6 weeks or long time or period of time, I can't do that anymore. It's or I never could do that. It's like it stresses me out. It it's still my passion to quote, to get things done, to bring value to the customer, but, hey, I need to take care of me as well.

Speaker 4:

It's like a big time as well. And

Speaker 1:

There's a life outside of, development. Right? Absolutely.

Speaker 4:

Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's as or maybe even more important, I think, as the development part. Because if you close your laptop and you shut down, what's what's in your life?

Speaker 4:

What why are you doing that? And, yeah, you have to ask this question. Is your purpose programming? Hey. It could be.

Speaker 4:

Maybe your purpose in life is just programming, but I I make the experience like that. It's something different. When I close the laptop, hey. Now hey. Here's my goddess.

Speaker 4:

Here are my parents. Here are my friends, my relatives, my family, stuff like that. And when I always reflect back, I don't say, hey, damn, I wish I had done more work. No. When I reflect back, I always say, oh, man.

Speaker 4:

I just met my best friend last year only 6 or 7 times. What the fuck? What what's happening? And yeah. And then I know, the more important things is not working, it's more like, hey.

Speaker 4:

Take your time to just meet people that you love and spend valuable time with them. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, for me, like, a typical day for me, I find myself getting into work pre not too long after getting up, to be honest with you. So I have an office. It's, like, 10, 15 minute drive away from home.

Speaker 1:

I'll typically get up at maybe 7. My girlfriend leaves work before I do. So, there's no cuddling in the morning, and and I call her my girlfriend. You're making me feel bad. You you would you you got us.

Speaker 1:

But anyway

Speaker 4:

It's only a decision to change the words from girlfriend to goddess.

Speaker 1:

Maybe. Maybe.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. We'll

Speaker 1:

we'll see.

Speaker 4:

Am I soon?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That's right. But yeah. So I'm I'm a huge proponent of a morning shower. That's, like, my thing.

Speaker 1:

So get up out of bed straight into the shower. Not like a too long or anything like that, but, you know, 5, 10 minutes. And then I'm, like, I've been I'm focused. I'm ready to go. I'm almost every morning, I'm waking

Speaker 3:

up, and I'm like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1:

I'm excited about this. You know? So, the job does have its downsides, of course, like all jobs do. But in general, I'm really excited about, okay, what am I gonna get done today? I'm not as big of a planner as you, Marty, by the sounds of it.

Speaker 1:

I much more prefer I agree with what you said, Russ, about, like, more the weekly scope. That's typically how I'm thinking about work. But, yeah, I I like getting in, and I'd I'd never have it mapped out of, like, okay. This is what I've gotta do today. Instead, I'm more thinking about that as I get here.

Speaker 1:

Like, okay, this is a gamut of like, this is an array of things that I could do today. And and as I mentioned before, I'm fortunate enough to have Chris on the team, and and he's often working on projects on more of a daily oriented, process. But my time, fortunately, is is a bit more free. So, yeah, I'm generally able

Speaker 3:

to think about, okay, what

Speaker 1:

do I wanna do? Probably in work by 8 o'clock. I used to go immediately and get a coffee straight away, but I found that I like waiting a bit and just, like, depriving myself of that. And my girlfriend is a barista actually here in the in the center where, the office is. So it's great.

Speaker 1:

I get to go see her, and that's, you know, typically 9, 10 sometimes, grab a coffee, and then, yeah, come back up. Chris is Chris' time zone is half an hour behind mine. So he starts his day at 9:30 my time. You know? So that gives me, like, a good hour, hour and a half in the mornings to figure out what am I doing and get started before, you know, we're generally catching up in the morning.

Speaker 1:

And it's great. I'm really happy with the way work is going at the moment because every day's I mean, it's not amazing, but it's pretty good. So I've got no real complaints there. But we are starting to transition now. I'm I'm trying to grow Atlas, the development agency that I run, and, I'm getting very close, hopefully, by the end of the week of launching the new website for Atlas.

Speaker 1:

And we're taking an approach

Speaker 3:

of thanks for

Speaker 4:

us.

Speaker 1:

We're taking an approach of offering basically development on a per day basis. So allocating, we're gonna do half a day, one day, 2 days, and 3 days per week as just standard offerings. Those will be billed on a monthly basis, so you'll basically be buying a package of a set number of days per month. And so that will necessitate changing to more of a daily focus as opposed to what we do right now. Generally, we're billing like a slab of hours.

Speaker 1:

So one of our biggest clients, they've booked ongoing a 100 hours a month, which is about two and a half weeks of work. Mhmm. But within that, there's generally some flexibility for us to, sign, okay, today we're gonna be working on this, you know, on this for the next few days, and then maybe there's a bit of wiggle room while we go and work on another client's projects, things like that, just as long as we're meeting that 100 hour quota. But this method of billing will sort of necessitate that, okay, each week there's going to be some progress that's pushed towards that client. So that's gonna be interesting.

Speaker 1:

That's brand new. But I've I've only just I've been thinking about that over the holiday period, and this is what we're gonna try now for, you know, the next few months at least and see if it resonates. But, yeah, I, outside of that

Speaker 4:

That sounds awesome. Yeah. Can I ask so maybe if you still want to have this weekly, maybe you can do a 4 day, sprint or something like that, whatever you call it? And but for the 4th day, you give an extra discount. So maybe more people are, in slimes to Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. To to buy this, so it will still fit with your weekly work.

Speaker 1:

But if we do that, then we're fully we're basically fully booked, which I want to avoid. So that I thought about doing offering 4 days, but

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It it leaves no real room to get anything done for any other large clients. So, yeah, it is an experiment. I'm sure through the life of this podcast, I'll have more to talk about, you know, in a few months, whether this worked or not. But, it's certainly interesting anyway. I'm really excited to see how it goes.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Maybe the banks are tiring more people then if they got,

Speaker 1:

like That would be great. Yeah. I've I've never really wanted to have a very large team, but, certainly, you know, if Chris goes away on holiday or if I do immediately, we're back to half capacity. You know? And and, yeah, I I would love to have a few more people on the team.

Speaker 1:

But, yeah, like I said, you know, we're trying to scale. So who knows? Fingers crossed for, you know, the next year.

Speaker 4:

Wish you the best, man.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. Outside of that, generally, after work, I it's not a year's resolution, but it wasn't too much earlier before New Year's. I started to commit, to going to the gym. Well, going back to the gym. I I used to go a fair bit, but then I stopped, and, I am ready to go back.

Speaker 1:

So I'm committing though to going 2 thirds of the time. So, generally, I'm gonna do 2 days on and then one day off, and that's sort of a a cadence that I can make work. And that's after work. And then because, like, I used to go to the gym before work, and I found that that was good. But it as I said earlier, I just really wanna get in and get started on work, and the gym doesn't give me that, like, sense of, okay, I'm gonna get stuff done.

Speaker 1:

You know? So, yeah, I find if I can do it after work, then that works for me. And then after that, typically go home. I used to play games on the computer a fair bit. I've kinda stopped doing that over the last year.

Speaker 1:

I don't really do it much anymore. And, my girlfriend and I will typically be watching shows on Netflix and things like that while we're having dinner. And that's a full day. Walk the dogs somewhere in there, whether that's before work or or after. And that's when I normally I I listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1:

That keeps me up to date with what everyone else is doing, which is awesome. And, yeah, then I get on normally, I'll get on Twitter, at the end of the day because that's when all the Americans are becoming active. So that's when you'll see, like, I'm tweeting and stuff. Because I find I can't do it throughout the day. Like, I don't know how some of these people out there, like, here in Australia, I see them in, like, the, PHP Australia Slack group, and people are chatting, like, all through the day, you know, or or on Twitter all through the day.

Speaker 1:

And I I just can't do it. Like, it takes all my focus away, you know, from what I'm trying to do. So I'm not as good on Twitter as I would like to be, but, you know, it's something that I'm working on.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think I think sometimes you need to there there are times when you can multitask and times when you need to focus. And, and I think that whether it's social media, so, even messenger, Facebook Messenger, or on Twitter, or whether you're on Discord, or if it's Slack, or or wherever, can just really become noise. When you're trying to focus on something, it's hard to have your focus taken away somewhere else. And I, and I think to loop back, this is kind of why I think we go down the, you know, hourly kind of, what are we, what task, how long tasks need to take so that I can say to someone, give me half an hour and I'll be with you because I feel I become very unproductive when I have my, my attention taken up by so many different things. It's kinda like, an apple watch.

Speaker 2:

I love my apple watch. I really do. But when you get a new apple watch and you start for the first time and and it says, hey, do you want all your notifications from your phone? You're like, I don't know. Like, sure.

Speaker 2:

Why not? And your your watch just is constantly dinging and buzzing and vibrating with every single notification. And over time, you figure out what you do wanna be interrupted with and what you don't. And personally, for me, it's about, calendar alerts or reminders. I'll come back to reminders, in a minute, but, phone calls or text messages, the really urgent things my watch will bother

Speaker 1:

me for. But everything else,

Speaker 2:

I've turned notifications on because I've found everything was just taking my distraction too much, or taking my attention away from what I was

Speaker 1:

and it basically like, I'm wearing it now, but it's turned off.

Speaker 2:

They they they typically work better when they're turned on just putting it out there.

Speaker 1:

It's too annoying. You're right. It does too much stuff. So I found, like, within getting it within a month, I had it sitting on the, like, airplane mode, basically. So that yep.

Speaker 1:

It just tells the time. And I got it because I like the look of it. I sure. I thought, oh, yeah. That'd be really cool.

Speaker 1:

I'll like it to, you know, do all the stuff that they can do. But yeah. I, I found that now I just want a cool to my eyes, a cool looking watch that doesn't do a whole lot. So yeah. And then, like, when I'm driving in particular and you've got mats on, and then it'll start, like, vibrating at you that you've gotta turn left here or whatever.

Speaker 1:

I just want all that to stop. So I turn it off when I when I drive.

Speaker 2:

But you know that that that can actually be really useful, if you are walking in a city that you do not know rather than wandering along with your phone out in your head. The vibration patterns are different based on whether it's turning left or turning right. So if you program in your route where you're trying to walk, especially if it's in a city that you don't know, or if it's at night and you don't wanna be having your phone out, pay attention to how the haptics are on your wrist. And one of them is like a low high, low high, and the other is a high low, high low. And that will be left or right so that you don't actually need to have your device in your hand.

Speaker 2:

You can be aware of what's going on around you, which is actually really good, but there is a bit of a onboarding curve with the Apple watch to make sure it's doing what you want it to do and not ruling your life, because it can be especially on your wrist, you're typing away and, you know, buzzing away. It can be very, very intrusive, but it is good when you do get it done. Again, I I guarantee it. I've been using one since the very first version. Version, and you yeah.

Speaker 2:

You just gotta spend a little bit of time with it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Right. Tune it up. Hey. Mhmm.

Speaker 4:

But I feel you with the distractions. It's like I even removed the, toolbar, the top toolbar at the Mac where the time is showing because when I like, in the focus, like, in the flow of programming, I even don't want to know which time is it. So I can't get distracted. It's like even I try to get my setup clean as well, so I'm not, like, I'm looking there. Oh, shit.

Speaker 4:

I oh, there's something here. I I need to remove it. No. No. I try to get, like, for the focus work, I try to get as clean, as minimal as possible, and as less and less distractions, let's say, like that.

Speaker 4:

Even on my screen that I try to remove everything that can distract. Let's say

Speaker 1:

I'm I'm the same. I I use, bartender, up the top, and that gets rid of, like, you can tell it what to do, but I get rid of all the icons, basically. I like having the time there. I use that a lot, but that and, like, Tupelo, and VPN. Like, the only things that I have sitting up there normally, I get rid of the dock.

Speaker 1:

I hate seeing the dock and, like, the flash of your wallpaper underneath and on the sides and stuff. So I've long got rid of that. And then, yeah, I'm really boring with my background. It's just, like, solid color. And you can hide all of your desktop files as well.

Speaker 1:

There's something that you can run that gets rid of them all. So I've got, like, the most boring looking, setup here.

Speaker 2:

So is that just select all and delete? Is that isn't that what you do with the cluttered desktop? You just get them all and put them in the bin?

Speaker 1:

No. No. Not quite. Is that there is something to hide files. But on that note, though, I have, like, I'm a really bad archivist, I guess.

Speaker 1:

So I've got inside of my documents folder every now and then, like, every 3 months or whatever. I'll take all the files from that and then put them inside of a folder in my documents folder called desktop. So I've got, like, 6 desktops for the last 18 months or something like that. And all the files just go in there, and I'm that's it. Works for me.

Speaker 1:

I'm happy enough with it. And, yeah, I I don't have to think about it. But

Speaker 2:

There's somewhere. You just gotta remember which one, but it's it's in a desktop somewhere.

Speaker 1:

Some type of desktop. Yeah. In theory.

Speaker 4:

Oh, man. I I could not I could not work like that.

Speaker 1:

It's like No?

Speaker 4:

Every time I would be reminded of that. Yeah. It's like

Speaker 2:

The the the flip side to that is that so I think I'm still sitting somewhere in the middle here because, there's someone else that relies on, you know, where I put files and whatnot. We need to have some sort of logic and and structure to what we're doing. But I find that if I start getting too granular about where things get filed, you just look at the folders and you go, I don't know. It could be under this or it could be under that or it could be under that. So maybe not quite 6 desktop holders, but maybe not quite yeah.

Speaker 2:

Trying to be a little bit more general with things. And and I think that if I'm working on a project that is an ongoing project that will have, you know, regular updates and scoping and whatnot, using the date for a folder prefix is great because then I can see, oh, I knew it was in 2022 or 2023. So you can easily jump to at least the time area where it is, but there's a balance to to it. But day to day, like like you 2, my desktop is very minimalist, trying to hide as much as I can. And I mean, if the doc's shown, you lose so much screen real estate.

Speaker 2:

I like having my coding ID there. That's everything that's there.

Speaker 4:

I can relate to 100%. And even I don't use the desktop at all. It's like, I have nothing on my desktop. It's just my background, and that's it.

Speaker 2:

I got a pretty picture. That's it. The pretty picture is the only thing on the desktop. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. It's I don't even have that. It's just a solid color. Like, nah. I'm not here to see my desktop.

Speaker 1:

That's it. It's just like yeah. I don't know. I'm a bit funny, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's alright. Marty, I wanted to talk with you, are a group fitness instructor and a landscape photographer. Can you walk me through how does that work?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Okay. So I've been teaching, group fitness classes for a little over 16 years now. I teach Les Mills' crew fitness classes. I'm am trained in let me rattle them all off.

Speaker 2:

Body attack was my first program. I'm all yeah. Not currently teaching that, but I'm also teaching body balance, body pump, Les Mills core, Les Mills tone. I've shadowed the trainer team at the recent Body Balance 100 workshops, which was just celebrating a 100 releases of of Body Balance, which is a a yoga and type, yoga and Pilates based program, which is absolutely beautiful. And I love that this provides such a big contrast to what I do every day sitting down at a desk.

Speaker 2:

And I I kind of, well, I get paid to go to the gym, but there's a lot of prep that goes into that as well, because, so if you're unfamiliar with Les Mills, they are pre choreographed group fitness classes, which means that if you go and do a body pump class anywhere around the world, it will be following the same structure. If you do body balance anywhere, it'll be the same structure. And we need to learn what we've been given. We're given a video, we're given music, we're given, music. We're given, education sessions as well as all the choreography notes and the education that goes along with each specific sequence.

Speaker 2:

And, we then need to be able to deliver that to our class. So I teach, at the moment, 6 classes regularly a week, which is a very, very nice contrast. And what's really funny about it, and I know it's weird given you're, you know, you're listening to my voice now and I've spoken Lara Gon. I'm the quietest and shyest person that you probably will ever bump into.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That doesn't come across.

Speaker 2:

I I know. I'm good at hiding that. And and it's really funny when you see me, in in a group fitness class, I I'm kinda out there and, you know, I'm I'm pretty good at what I do at at helping lead these classes, especially if you've got a high energy class. It's not just about do this, do that, but it's also about motivating and encouraging and supporting every member that's there to help them achieve their best as well. And as soon as I get into that room, I not saying it's a different person, but it's like a different aspect of me that I socially wouldn't bring out, but I'm in command of that room.

Speaker 2:

And, I'm, I'm the scary one. There's air quotes there. I'm the scary one at the gym. But yeah, so that, that, that's, that's one thing that keeps me out of trouble after work and, you know, being, self employed and being able to work from home. I do also teach one class in the middle of the day, just because the gym's 5 minutes down the road, so why not?

Speaker 4:

Perfect.

Speaker 2:

So that's fantastic. And yeah, then photography is another way to get out. And again, a huge contrast to sitting at a computer all day and especially sitting indoors all day. So I live in Point Cook in Victoria, which is about an hour from the start of the great ocean road. There is so much that you can photograph out there, whether it's rainforests and waterfalls or epic coastlines or seascapes or, rural country style photography.

Speaker 2:

You know, we're in Melbourne. We're a couple of hours away from the Mallee area. So there's so much to, to be taking photos of. And I think that I like sunrise more than sunset because, you know, me being the quiet person, I don't like people. So there's no typically no one out at sunrise.

Speaker 2:

So it's nice quiet time. And, and I think that, you know, just like Russ said that he sometimes will just be staring out the window for half an hour with a cup of tea. It's that decompression time where, it's just that time and space to yourself. And, and even over Christmas, was interstate with family and we were all staying in a house, together. And I got up every morning for sunrise, even Christmas day.

Speaker 2:

And even though the weather was not great, I was still out there because it's a mental thing. It's not just, I could go out and spend a couple of hours outside taking photos or not taking photos. I can come back with nothing and I still have no regrets of going out and spending that time there because it's the process of being outside of getting fresh air of having some alone time, some quiet time and, and focus on something that is completely different from, you know, anything else that you're doing. And I think that the group fitness side of things is the same, even though the group fitness thing is still work. I'm I'm employed to do that.

Speaker 2:

I can't think about coding while I'm teaching a class. If I'm out shooting, I can't think about, coding while I'm trying to figure out how I wanna compose a shot, or if I'm playing around with long exposures and filters and and figuring out the logic for what I need to do, it it's giving my mind something very focused to to be, well, focused on. And, I think it's a really good contrast to everything else that goes on and and a little bit of relief, maybe, is the right word. Yeah. So that they they've been hanging around for a while, and and I think the COVID, the lockdowns in Victoria for COVID restrictions were severe.

Speaker 2:

I think they were probably the most severe throughout the world. And since COVID, I haven't really been out shooting as much as I would like. And that's something that's on my to do list this year is to change that, to, to get out there more. And again, it's not about, you know, getting that shot. It's the process of it that I think is the therapeutic aspect for me.

Speaker 2:

So I need to be working more on that this year and getting myself out there, you know, outdoors as well as, you know, putting myself out there in that social situation so that people can really realize just how shy and quiet I am.

Speaker 1:

Well, if there's no one out there with you, though, then no one will see that you're shy and quiet. Right? So

Speaker 2:

Oh, no. But not just in the photography thing, but even, you know, speaking to members, 1 on 1 is always a little bit yeah. I get a little shy and quiet there too. I don't put put me give me a microphone and put me on stage, and I'm I'm fine. I've got no dramas with public speaking.

Speaker 2:

But, yeah, 1 on 1 and small groups, that's where, yeah, that's where I start to struggle and go back into my shell. So, yep, work in progress.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting. Hey.

Speaker 4:

Yes. Yeah. Thanks for sharing, man. That's, really exciting because I think it comes down with something, I have in my mind as well. It's because, like photography or everything you do, it's like to be conscious about the moment and how great, actually, life is.

Speaker 4:

Because you go out and you want to photograph something, and then you have to be mindful about it. You have to respect the moment, you have to respect every second that's actually now, and see the beauty of it. And so you can only then take a good picture. Because if you can't see the beauty in the moment, it's nothing. And that's I think that's a chief task in life to master is to respect every single moment you have and not to waste it, like, to get bored or something.

Speaker 4:

Because I think when you are bored, then you are not conscious about the current moment. Where am I currently? It's like last time I was driving with the car, I had a 4 hour drive, and after 2 hours, I was so fucked about hearing a podcast or whatever, and listening to music, then I turned everything off. And then a few minutes later, I was so bored. It's like, man, it's so shit shitty to drive, and I still have 2 hours to go.

Speaker 4:

And then I told myself, hey, Russ, just be conscious. What's actually happening here? You're driving in a car with 120 miles, kilometers per hour. And here in front of you are the Swiss Alps. It's a beautiful location.

Speaker 4:

Hey, just look around, it's amazing. Just witness the beauty of life, and I'm sure you can do it every moment and every second. And when I changed just my mind, everything changed. It's like, it was not no longer boring drive. Now it was like, oh, yeah.

Speaker 4:

I ride. Yeah. I can look outside. It's nice here. I can look at the mountains.

Speaker 4:

I and, yeah, it's just a beautiful yeah. It's just the life is beautiful, like, every moment. And I think that's, like, when we can get this experience back to us.

Speaker 2:

I I I completely agree with with what you've said there, and and I think that so Body Balance is the the yoga and Pilates class. It's a mind body class. So there's obviously the physical aspect, but we also finish with a relaxation and mindfulness. And I think that being mindful of everything that you're doing, whether that is in a gym, in a group fitness studio, whether that's driving a car, whether that's going out take a photo, whether that's sitting at a keyboard, but be mindful of what you're doing and be, be present in that moment because that moment is your moment. And, you know, if you're going and catching up with someone and spending face to face time with them, be present in that moment.

Speaker 2:

Don't sit there on your phone. Don't, you know, social media is not connection. It may help to be able to connect it with family who may be overseas or interstate. And that's fantastic. But if you've got actually got, you know, friends who are in your area that you could be going and speaking to going, speak to them, be with them and be present in that moment.

Speaker 2:

Because there is so much out there beyond work. Whatever your hobby happens to be, even if it is video games, there's still a lot out there, but be present with what you do and be conscious of every moment. Completely agree with you, Russ.

Speaker 4:

Yes. And that's really something I want to work this year for myself, is being present. It's like, I know we were like in Italy, in Milan, and I witnessed it myself. We were walking the streets. It's, like, really beautiful city there.

Speaker 4:

It's the old town, everything. And I was I was looking at my phone, like, checking messages, like, completely irrelevant. It's like it's my holidays. I want to relax, and I'm again on my phone. And then my my goddess told me as well, hey.

Speaker 4:

It's not the time right now. You can do it later. And then I'm like, shit. It's like a she caught me. It's like yeah.

Speaker 4:

And then I put my phone away, and I was, like, again present in the moment and mindful. Hey, it's now all the time. We have our holidays. Let's let's have a great time together and be present, and I think that's the thing. And not thinking about, oh, next week, I start work again or whatever.

Speaker 4:

No. Get this bullshit out of your head. It's now time. It's your time. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Absolutely. I wanna change gears a little, Russ. I I mentioned, yeah, I mentioned at the start of the show, about how you run the Laravel Switzerland meetup.

Speaker 4:

Can you

Speaker 1:

tell us a bit about that? What's that like? How long you've been doing it? What's involved?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. I think, like, Marty is sharing, like, his obvious findings with a blog article or something. I try to do things that I my strength fulfill, And I learned that networking is like my strength, big strength, like bringing people together. And that's something I actually enjoy. It's like when I'm hosting a meet up and people are joining, people are coming, or even finding speakers or whatever.

Speaker 4:

It brings you actually joy that I bring the community together and have, like, a group of people that we can share our passion together and go forward. Because at the end, we're all doing the same thing just for different clients. It's like, that's like my mantra. I'm like in my head saying it always. And, yeah, I fell actually in love, like, organizing the event because people told me, like, why you're doing it once a month, it's so much work, but yeah, somehow it brings me joy, it brings me strength, and so I I like to organize it because it solves, like, 3 problems or three things I have.

Speaker 4:

Like, the first wing is, like, it gives me joy and strength because I love meeting peoples. I love to talk as you can maybe imagine from this conversation. And I'm yeah. I like I like to meet new people as well and get change my mind and to experience new things. 2nd, it's like, when I started programming when I was a junior, like, I started the start up with, 2 of my good friends, and it was so hard for me to get things done, to get anything done, and I had no network of people that I can go to reach out and they could help me.

Speaker 4:

And that's like one thing I want to start a place for juniors to come and ask questions and not be afraid of anything. That's because when I was a junior, I had nowhere to go. And the meet ups I were going, they were not specific enough because they were doing maybe Vue. Js or maybe Java or things like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

The people

Speaker 4:

could theoretically help me, but when I showed them code, it was, yeah, it was not very helpful for me. And as a junior, it's I don't need the theoretical part as a junior. Help me with the code. I get Yeah. Help me to get the things done.

Speaker 4:

And the second part is, like, to build a community, like, for the senior devs or for all the other devs, like, to stay connected and to learn new things and to get them to stay up to date because, yeah, it can be pretty yeah. It's I think it's hard it's hard to stay up to date with all the technology, with every package that Swati is bringing out, and

Speaker 1:

Every Package every 650. Yep.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And, every release of Laravel, stuff like that. Like, let's now, Laravel pulls came out. I still got no time to look into it, something like that. And it's always great.

Speaker 4:

Maybe someone from the community got time, looked into it, is is doing a talk about it, and so I'm up to date with everything. And, yeah, so we can give back to each other. And so that's the whole purpose of this meetup. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I I can echo that, the the the reasons why you're doing what you're doing. So I've, I've been trying to get a, Australian, New Zealand, statemic community group up and running for that same reason so that it can build that sense of community and to be able to help everyone out. So it's not just about me helping, but it's about having that connection with people who are in the same time zone, who are like minded to see what's happening in the static world. And, you know, every every time we catch up, we've got particular topic that we talk about, that is open for discussion because everyone does things their own way. There is no right and wrong.

Speaker 2:

There are so many ways that you can do things, but being able to share that, and create that community is really, really rewarding. I yeah. I I know where you're coming from.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And I love doing it. It's so great. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm I'm trying to this year, make much more of an effort to get out there. Big part of doing this show. And, I'm hoping to start by going to, some meetups here in Sydney. So I spoke with I believe his name is Max at, Laracon, and Max runs the meetups here in Sydney. So I'm gonna try, and this is, I guess, this is a bit of a pledge, here on the show, to try and get myself out there to some of the Sydney meetups, not just wait for, you know, some of the big events like Laracon, but, yeah, to try and get out there, to try and build that sense of community.

Speaker 1:

You know, obviously, trying to do that more globally, this and with Twitter and things like that, but also to just get a bit more of a network here in Sydney. So I'm really looking forward to that. I'll I'll have to check into wherever the meetups are happening here, but, yeah, that that should be should be exciting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Melbourne's got a PHP Melbourne group that meet. I think they're trying to do it bimonthly now, in 2024. And I went along to my first one in August last year. August?

Speaker 2:

July, August, sometime last year. And, you know, I met Pat and Tim, who also at Laracon as well, and a couple of the other guys were also at Laracon too. That was also for me to blow the dust off public speaking, Spectrum, and Yep. First time about the meetup, and, hey. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I'm gonna come and talk. But it was really good to see that there are other people who are in your same region that you're not quite as alone as you necessarily think you are. Can do that. You can can get yourself out there, eventually. You'll be right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. I I look forward to it. I'll, it should be fun.

Speaker 4:

Do it, man. Do it. Because I think Twitter and everything is great, like sharing online, but the real energy is in person. It's like where the real energy you can feel from like minded people, like, just looking in the eye from someone else, it's like changing everything, and I think it's a really good thing to have something, in your local environment. So you can go maybe every 2 months or what monthly, whatever, and just meet other like minded people, passionate people, and, yeah, you can, like, elevate your energy together to a new hire.

Speaker 2:

And And that energy can be completely infectious as well. You know, the the it's very different from watching, watching someone on the screen talk excitedly about something, but being able to feel the vibe and the buzz in a room. And and I don't know. Maybe if it's a good meetup, there might be pizza or something too. So happy it could be a win win.

Speaker 4:

Yes. That's

Speaker 1:

it. That's a big

Speaker 4:

At the at the last meetup, we even got a raclette, if you know that.

Speaker 1:

Cutlette?

Speaker 4:

Raclette. Yeah. You know that? It's like, you you melt cheese and put it on,

Speaker 1:

what's it

Speaker 4:

called, potatoes on the melted cheese on potatoes.

Speaker 3:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

And it

Speaker 4:

was awesome. Not meat. It was like it was the best meetup ever.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if we'll have that.

Speaker 4:

Possible, man.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Let's I'll make a suggestion to Max. So, hey. Look into this. Go speak with Russ.

Speaker 1:

No worries. Marty, I did wanna ask you about your prep for Laracon. So what's involved? What was rather, what was involved in getting your talk ready? You mentioned you spoke at a at a local meetup, but how long did it take you to prep?

Speaker 1:

How long were you thinking about it?

Speaker 2:

A long time, actually. So we we were lucky last year. And so okay. Let me go back a step. YD Digital are a certified partner agency with static.

Speaker 2:

So we have, regular catch up calls with the statamic core team and the other partners. And, so we've built a bit of a connection with, with a lot of the, the, the key, including Jack McDade. Who's the, one of the co founders of, of statime. And I had a chat with him, at flat camp. So we went to flat camp, which was their first I'm gonna call it a conference, but it wasn't a conference.

Speaker 2:

It was a summer camp for adults, is the best way to talk about it. It was in North Carolina. They rented out all of these big American style log cabins. If you hear of log cabin in America, that's exactly what it was. So up up in the the mountains, the Blue Ridge mountains in North Carolina, and that was fantastic.

Speaker 1:

So cool.

Speaker 2:

And had a chat to, to Jack there about it, thinking basically saying, look, I was thinking of talking about stat. I mean, what are your thoughts of me doing something like that? And and he was really supportive of that idea. And, you know, I had a chat with him and had a chat with, with Jason and Jesse as well about ideas of how to how to structure and what you could try to share in half an hour. And, Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So that started with the scale that started figuring out the skeleton of the talk and that prepared then an that I put forward to, Michael Rinder for Laricon AU and got picked for that. So I kept referring back to what I had said I would do, while I was going through and fleshing things out. And it it did take quite a long time to get everything prepared because half an hour sounds like a long time, but it is not a long time at all. And the big challenge that I had with, with the the Laracon talk was I couldn't talk about what I wanted to talk about without letting people know what statamics actually is. So a large chunk of my talk needed to be introduction stuff.

Speaker 2:

And, one of the other speakers said to me afterwards, I thought you started you were talking a little bit fast, and then you got to the end, and I realized why you were talking so fast. And, there was just so much stuff to get through. And what I, what I thought was really relevant for, for the Laravel community was seeing how it can plug into an app. And, and that was such a small part of the talk, but that was really what I wanted to be the core. But I needed to share so much other information first.

Speaker 2:

So I started off with fleshing out notes of what I wanted to actually have that then translated into basically coming into very ugly slides to try and create that structure and and step everything through. And then, of course, I needed to figure out what app I was going to, demo. And so created an app and I use actually used that as a learning opportunity myself, to get my head stuck into LiveWire and, or LiveWire 3. So that was a double edged thing for me. I had to prepare something for the presentation, but also I learned a lot doing that too.

Speaker 2:

So that was really useful. But they just come up with the branding, and it needed to be good. And it gave me major donut cravings because it was all about donuts. Yep. So that that was a very dangerous app to to play with.

Speaker 2:

But, yeah, I then went through and gave a practice run of the talk, to a, a static contact that I've got. And, and his feedback was fantastic. It was blunt, but not rude is probably the best way to, to put it. And a lot of the I'm my own worst critic. I'm really I can be really hard on myself.

Speaker 2:

And I do have this perfectionism stretch to me, and I always wanna be perfect. And I I've got high standards. And I I I own that. And I echoed a lot of the feedback that he had. I found it was missing things.

Speaker 2:

So he saw an early version of it that was running about 20 minutes, but it was missing large chunks of information. And it was, it really needed that input from someone else. Cause I'd been looking at it for so long at that stage to give that information of we're missing this. That's leading into that and, and figuring out how that needed to go. And, and so that value, that feedback, however, you know, you always wanna hear good feedback and and his feedback was really good.

Speaker 2:

But it was just you're missing some things you need to flesh out a little bit more. And that's that's really what led to that finished product. And look, even on the after party. So the after party for those that weren't at Laracon AU, the after party was after day 1. We still had another day to go.

Speaker 2:

I get back to the hotel room and, I'm finding a photo of the cats to put in because I'm sorry, we can't just have the puppers be, represented. We also need to have the cat people out there too.

Speaker 4:

So I

Speaker 2:

was still tweaking it on the, that, that night I got up the morning to do another run through and I was, I was still tweaking it then. So I needed to really rein that in, but the big thing I think, and this relates also to the group fitness side of things. So because of my experience in the industry, I mentor, new instructors when they come on board too. And one of the things that, that, going through the training process for, for as a new instructor is they try to encourage scripting of what you are going to say. And I agree with that to a certain point.

Speaker 2:

And the issue that I've got with scripting, at least for me personally, if I script too much, I rely I feel like I would rely on reading it word for word rather than speaking organically. So I have notes and ideas and what's actually up on the screen is more like a prompt for me rather than a, rather than something for me to be reading from. And that goes for group fitness people as well. When, you know, they're trying to figure out what to say, it's like, well, you need to know so many different things that you can say, and you need to figure out the right way to say them, but not rely on saying a word for word every time, because it means the members would get bored. And it would mean that if I'm looking at my computer screen during a presentation, you'll get bored of me just reading what's on screen.

Speaker 2:

That's that's just not the way that I wanna try to communicate. So, some people do want more scripting and more notes, and and that works well for them, and that's completely fine. So I'm not saying that's, you know, bad and needs to be avoided. But for me, I find that if I've got too many words, I rely on reading the words rather than speaking and, trying to make sure that you know your content back to front. I mean, I I I could talk right now for half an hour about statimek and and run through that without any prep, But you need to know the structure of your talk enough so that you can you know what's gonna come up before the slide even appears on the screen, especially with, the the way that I was running it for for Laracon.

Speaker 2:

I, could not use the second screen because I needed to flick in and out of keynote to do code demos during the presentation. So I had no presenter notes. I needed to know the next slide before I got to it. I needed to know where my cue points were for different animations and transitions. So you just need to be so familiar with it.

Speaker 2:

And, changing it the night before is not the best way to do that. Just as a heads up. Yes.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Well done, Marty. It was a fantastic talk. I could feel the preparation, the energy you put in it. I could feel that.

Speaker 4:

So it's a really good talk.

Speaker 2:

My high standards are coming out there, aren't they? And I've got to say right, I've got to be right about this, so, yeah. But thank you.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so it's really good. Because I did a lightning talk, a 7 minute lightning talk at, Fullstack Europe last year, and I know how much work, even just for a 7 minute lightning talk, it was it was crazy how many hours I put in it, like, what? Refining it, refining, then in the train to the conference, still on it. I need to change the slide this time. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

I know the feeling. But the nice

Speaker 2:

thing is never you feel the finish.

Speaker 4:

Right? Yeah. It's never finished. Never. Never.

Speaker 4:

You can put endless hours in it. And but the nice thing is when I was finally on the stage, the energy on the stage is, like, really great because, like, on the conference, there were, like, 120 people or maybe 150, something like that. And was that not that huge conference, like, Laracon. I think it was much bigger. But the energy is really great.

Speaker 4:

Like, when you go on stage, you you say something, the crowd is interacting, and yeah. I yeah. It's so much different than just watching the talk online. If you are doing it yourself. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

It's the energy is crazy. Maybe you can, tell your experience with how it was like being on stage.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Like and so we were asked to, also pick our own hype music for the time that we were walking up on stage. So everyone had their had their own song, for their entry music. And I'm pretty sure that's actually at the start of, the the video on YouTube too.

Speaker 4:

Mhmm.

Speaker 2:

And hearing that song that was hyping me up because that's just an absolute cracker track that I picked.

Speaker 1:

What song was it?

Speaker 2:

Sky full of diamonds by a a British group called hybrid.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

They're they're known for a quick little detour here. They're they're known for, mixing electronic beats with a full orchestra, not synthesized orchestra, but an actual orchestra. So if you go back to their album wide angle, you probably have heard Finnish Symphony, before. That's probably what most people will know, but their their new stuff is really cool. And, they've also been doing some work with, the bassist from New Order.

Speaker 2:

So one of their albums has a very new order feel to it as well. Yeah. So, anyway, I I like hybrid and that that's just a lot of crack a crack a track to to walk on stage to. But, I think, you know, with all the spotlights, I I could not see anyone. And I'm looking out into this black space.

Speaker 2:

It was really, really hard. I knew vaguely where a couple of friendly faces would be sitting, but I I couldn't focus on any of them. It was just so dark and so blinding. But then when I mentioned the cats, cause that was the very first thing that came up was the cats and you hear the little claps and the little cheers and, and it kind of disarms you a little bit to relax into what you're doing. And it's that, again, that energy that, you know, you can practice as much as you want, but you don't know what's going to actually happen when you get up there to do something and hearing those reactions, I think ignites, ignites what you're doing and hearing those moments of appreciating whatever it is that you've, you've spoken about or whatever point you've made is when it's that, I guess, re re reaffirmation in a way of, that what you're saying does actually have interest and value besides what you think that others have actually found that useful.

Speaker 2:

And there's been something said that's made people go, oh, okay. I get that now. Well, yeah, no, I wanna learn more about that. And hearing those reactions, you can't plan or predict where they're going to be, within your talk. And that, that I think was, was really, really good to, to help fuel things along along a little bit more too.

Speaker 4:

And then we are back at the obvious part. So things you're telling, oh, that's obvious, then the crowd is going wild. It's like, oh, okay. Yeah. It's crazy.

Speaker 2:

Well, that that and that's the thing like half the things that I think are interesting, I feel that no one cares about. And, you know, again, that's where a lot of the blog posts come from. And I find it interesting. A lot of the things I babble on about on on Twitter, whether someone else finds it interesting, well, someone else might. And even, wrote a blog post recently about speakers.

Speaker 2:

I had a big speaker, journey to end up with the speakers I've got on my desk. And that post actually got quite a bit of interesting chatter happening between people and a few private messages and whatnot. I thought it's speakers really who cares, but, apparently a lot of people care about finding good speakers for their computer. So there you go. Know, you need you never know until you put it out there.

Speaker 1:

Yep. Absolutely. That's right. Guys, I think that might be a good spot to end it. So I wanna thank you so much for your time today.

Speaker 1:

Are there any links or anything that you wanna draw people's attention to? I'll put everything in the show notes, but, where can people find you and and, yeah, anything that you wanna share?

Speaker 4:

You can find me on Twitter. It's it's, Joselann Steiger or Ruslan Steiger. It's more easy.

Speaker 1:

I'll put it in the Scheinert.

Speaker 4:

Yeah. That's, like, the obvious way how you can find me, but the best way is in person. So when you ever come to Switzerland, hit me up, write me on Twitter. Hey. I'm visiting Switzerland, and I try to organize an event through your time when you are coming.

Speaker 4:

And I'm in Amsterdam for Laracom Europe as well. So if you see me if you see me around, just hit me up. Let's have a chat. I love meeting people. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

That's everything I got, how you can reach me. And like Marty said, be present. The present moment, it's always the best thing to do. Beautiful.

Speaker 2:

And yeah. So you can find me on on Twitter, or my website. It's just martyfreedle.com. That will have links to Twitter, Marty Friedle. Feel free to drop me a line.

Speaker 2:

You can find me on the static discord. I'll be floating around there as well. If anyone ever has any questions, wants to have a chat about anything, feel free to reach out and, you know, like Russ, I'm gonna be popping my head into PHP Melbourne. I think it's 15th February. So I'll be there if anyone wants to come and say hi as well.

Speaker 1:

Well, there you have it, folks. Thanks again to Marty and Russ for being on the show today.

Speaker 3:

If you'd like to be on the show, hit to hallwaytrack dotfm/apply. You don't need to

Speaker 1:

be a personality. You just need to have one.

Speaker 3:

I've recently set up a Patreon

Speaker 1:

for people that wanna support the show, and you can find it at hallwaytrack.fm. If you follow build your SaaS or the software social podcast, you'll know the drill.

Speaker 3:

For $10 a month, I'll read your name out at the end of each episode. The funds from the Patreon will go directly towards paying an editor so

Speaker 1:

I can get more episodes out quicker. I know it's early days in the life of the show, but I'd love to keep this up for a long time. And editing is the killer for my time I can dedicate

Speaker 3:

to the show, so this will really help. Thanks for listening. Please rate the show up

Speaker 1:

in your podcast app, and please give me feedback on Twitter. I'm Mitch Daff, and I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you in the next one.

Speaker 2:

One.