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In this episode, Michael is joined by Jess Archer - a member of Laravel's core team - to discuss her ripples journey from attending her first-ever conference back in 2018, right through to today where she is now an engineering team lead.
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.
Hello, and welcome to the Ripples podcast. I am your host today, Jess Archer. And with me oh, we're episode 11. I forgot to say episode 11, so that's so that's important. And, yeah, with me today I'm joined by Michael Dyrynda, and, we are not joined by Greg Skermen, who is apparently unwell, So
Michael:Unwell. Yeah.
Jess:How are you today, Michael?
Michael:I'm going well.
Michael:We talked before. I look like I've just rolled out of bed because it's been cold in Adelaide. And so I've been wearing a beanie for, like, the last 2 days. So my hair is all over the place.
Jess:It looks like I just I I thought it looked intentional. So
Michael:That's the thing now. So many people have the just rolled out of bed look that you never know. Yes. No. It is because I just rolled out of bed.
Michael:Not not literally.
Jess:Like, I got out of bed
Michael:hours ago because I have small children, so there's no sleep ins on a school day. But, thank you. Thank you very much for joining us. I think you you being here sort of 11 episodes into this episode now is nice, but you are kind of the genesis of this this podcast if if you think about it, because this podcast started on the back of Laracon AU last year. And off the back of like, my welcome and introduction to the conference.
Michael:And a lot of that was focused on my personal story. But a lot of that when we transitioned into talking about why you'd come to a laricon specifically, but to any conference really was, you know, using you as the centerpiece of like, you came in to in into Laracon, are you in 2018? And then you spoke at 2019. And then you ended up working at Laravel on on the back of all of that, you know, putting yourself out there. Not certainly not anything to do with me.
Michael:I don't wanna take credit for that. So don't don't, take it the wrong way. But because of those opportunities that you took to put yourself out there, you kind of ended up where you are now. And so it's nice to have you on the show to kind of tell it from your perspective rather than me just making jokes about your apparent inability to wear different kinds of glasses.
Jess:So I mean Yeah. Yeah. I I do feel you deserve some credit because you definitely were very supportive and encouraging, in terms of me speaking and all that sort of stuff. And then it was kinda like, yeah, like the ripples effect or this dominoes thing that, you know, like that in itself wasn't the thing that got me to where I am, but it was one of the many pieces that helped contribute to it. I think with any of this sort of stuff, no one action is probably gonna be the thing that makes something happen, it's a a series of things.
Jess:And in my case I think it was just, you know, having done quite a few things and then when Taylor had a job he already knew who I was, but not just because of Laracon, but that was probably a big thing, was Laracon, but then also just framework, contributions, podcasts I did with J Mac, all these little bits and pieces meant that I was on his radar, and so then I guess that just made him look at my resume maybe a little bit harder than he might look at someone he'd never heard of. So Yeah. Yeah.
Michael:Yeah. I think, you know, it's the little push, you know, out the plane. You know, you've already got the parachute on. Yeah. You know you you know what you need to do.
Michael:It's just sometimes you need someone to to to give you that nudge. We, we do that with my kids with Band You know, I say I'll count to 3. And, you know, we'll count to 3 and we'll take the Band Aid off. So it's like 1, 2, Band Aid 3. And then, like, ah, but you said 3.
Michael:I said, well, I I said we'd count to 3, and we get the band aid off. I didn't say it would necessarily be be in that order. So, yeah, it's, and we've got that a little bit again this year with I mean, we have that with each of the Laracon is that there's there's first timers. And I spoke last episode, I think I've mentioned that a few times now that Laracon AU in the scheme of things is probably a really approachable one to put yourself out there if you're not sure about speaking.
Jess:I agree.
Michael:Because it's like, in the scale of Laracon, you know, us is 900 people, India's, you know, 1,000 people or whatever it is, Europe's 800 people. We're a, you know, a little dinky 400 person conference, it's easy to stand up in front of 400 people than it is to, you know, travel 30 hours on the other side of the world in a room full of people that you don't know. And so we really try and provide those opportunities, you know, people are
Jess:not going to force anyone
Michael:to do anything that they don't want to do. But if they're like, on the precipice of, I want to do it, But I'm not sure, you know, if, if it's right for me, I certainly want to be the one to kind of encourage as much as possible and like, push you out the door and and do it.
Jess:And I think all Laracon audiences are very, very supportive, but I do feel like the Aussie audience is maybe just got that little little edge with our I don't know.
Michael:I think I think
Jess:it's cool. I'm biased, but I think Aussies are super nice. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Really laid back, so it's like, that's cool.
Michael:We're, we're we're very laid back. I think, you know, Laracon US is is the set piece. It's the the the premium of all of the conferences. Like, we know that we're gonna get a big big set of, like, you know, huge huge number of eyeballs across it. Everyone's really putting in a 100%, and nobody wants to let anyone else down.
Michael:And, you know, not that anyone goes out to to speak at any conference with the intention to let anyone down, but there's, you know, that level of you're bringing yourself up to a certain level of expectation. So we we try and get all of the speakers, you know, to become chummy ahead of time to
Jess:Mhmm.
Michael:To become friends, to to support each other because, you know, it's it's the experience of those other speakers that have done it before that really get you into the frame of mind that, yeah, you can actually do it no matter what you think.
Jess:Definitely, you know, having the mixture of of both is really good. I mean, I'm still nervous before every single one, but now that I've done it a few times, I can try and be supportive to the other people. It was the first time it was like, I needed all the support. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael:So, you know, we we spoke about kind of that well, I spoke about that journey, as I said, at the top of the show, from my perspective of what it was like for you. But tell us about your perspective, where that was of like being an audience member, being a participant to then being a speaker, to then taking off to the world stage, doing it. You because you've done all of it. Have you done Europe?
Jess:Yeah. Yeah. So
Michael:you've done all Every Lara Croon, and
Jess:I've done some multiple times.
Michael:Yeah. So so tell us, you know, what was your mindset from coming into first experiencing the the Laravel community back in 2018?
Jess:So I've been developing coding in PHP for very long time. I don't, you know, necessarily want to review my age, but I'm I'm maybe older than most people might think. But was always kind of like a lurker, I've always kind of considered that, you know, I was never really active online, I didn't even really know there was a community, so I was a big fan of Laravel, big fan of like Jeffrey Way, like I followed a lot of his stuff but I wasn't, I didn't even have a Twitter account or anything like that. I knew who people like Taylor and Adam were but I didn't really know like the rest of the community. But I heard about Laracon AU, the first one which was 2018 right, and went along to that one, with, my colleagues at the job I was at at the time.
Jess:And to me that was actually this was probably the biggest catalyst in terms of my career more so than the speaking part, was actually this was like the main catalyst, was going to Laracon and seeing the community, and finding all these people that I really really connected with, we had this kind of shared passion for this, you know, this PHP framework, and just finding all these people that were like me. Like, I knew other people that I'd worked with and stuff that used Laravel, but I don't know. There was, like, this this whole new bunch of people that were, like, super, super passionate, as passionate as I was about Laravel. So I've mentioned it before, but I joined Twitter at the airport on the way home from Laracon, the first Laracon was when I actually joined Twitter. And I can't remember what my first tweets or anything were, but I was like, you know, I wanna give back to the community, I wanna be part of this community.
Jess:The very first thing I did was create a Z Shell plugin for Artisan. So Z Shell had like a Artisan or Laravel kind of thing, but it didn't really do the things I wanted it to do. So I was like, I wanna get like full completion, I wanted it to work no matter where you were in the project directory. So if you'd like CD'd into your migrations directory, I wanted to be able to still run Artisan from in there. So I built a plugin that would do that, it would kind of find where Artisan was, it would like travel up the tree and find where it was and then run the command, and it would inject all the completions, so you would kinda know the arguments and all that sort of stuff.
Jess:So that was kinda my first contribution. I put that out into the world. I think I got followed by that Learning Laravel Twitter account, and I thought, holy crap, this is really exciting, but then I realized they end up I don't even know what that account is, but they seem to follow everybody that just mentions
Michael:Laravel.
Jess:Not to put not show any shade on them or anything, but, I found that really special at the time. And yeah, I mean, you know, it feels a little bit bad to say, but that was probably also the catalyst that made me look at getting a new job. The job I was at was mostly like a legacy PHP application, and we had a greenfield application that we built, and then I pushed for it all to be in Laravel. It was super, super fun. But then then when that went into its maintenance phase, I kinda went back over to the legacy one, and I really just wanted to, like, rewrite the whole thing in Laravel.
Jess:But this was like a 10 year old application that was, like, doing, you know, interacting with governments, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. It's super, super hard to change. But I was just so eager. I wanted to do the tailwind things because I'd learned about, utility CSS from Simon at Laracon Mhmm.
Jess:At the first Laracon. So, yeah, I was just in like, so inspired to do stuff. And so, yeah, I ended up quitting that job, when I discovered that I couldn't make the change that I wanted to make within the company. Yep. Not that it was their fault or anything, they had good reasons, but, yeah.
Jess:So I was infected by the Laravel community, I then went to Laracon New York, paid my own way for that. This thing was this was after I'd left the company, and I was I think I was trying to start my own business at this point, like this Gifty Duck thing that was like my own little sass. I just wanted to, like, do my own thing. So went to New York, met Taylor. It was really exciting.
Jess:I forgot to mention, at the very first Laracon, I I was too nervous to talk to anybody so I didn't talk to Taylor, Adam or anyone. I was just way too nervous. I think I spoke to you and was even nervous about that because I started listening to your podcast. It's like, it's Michael Dorinda. Oh my goodness.
Jess:So yeah, went to New York, that was amazing. You were in New York, and we were kinda talking about, you know, you were kind of encouraging me to submit a talk for Laracon AU.
Michael:Mhmm.
Jess:And that was I don't know, I like the idea of it, but I didn't know what to talk about. I always have this thing, and it's kind of weird to talk about but like, I always worry that being a bit of a minority in the community, that people want me to do stuff so that there's like visibility and whatnot. But I worry people want me to do things for the wrong reasons. And just to have me there so that, you know, I can tick off some sort of quota or something. One thing I really appreciated that you did was, I think the first talk I suggested was, like, a Vim talk.
Jess:Mhmm. Because I was just, like, that's the thing that I'm super passionate about, and it's I didn't feel qualified to talk about Laravel.
Michael:Mhmm.
Jess:But I thought if I could do something that was like Laravel adjacent in some way, that I could actually teach people something, because I didn't think I had anything to teach the Laravel audience. Yeah. But the thing that I really appreciated was you actually kinda talked me out during the Vim talk. And that, in my own brain way of thinking, was like, no, you actually want me to do, like, you actually care about what the talk is and stuff. You don't want me there just to tick off a box.
Jess:I'm like, yeah, Jess can talk about whatever ticks the box.
Michael:And I
Jess:was like, no, no. You actually want me to yeah. Like, you actually care about the content, not just me. So Yeah. That was really helpful.
Jess:Ended up doing a talk about Vue, which was really fun, and that kind of filled that whole thing in my head of, like, Laravel adjacent, so that I can hopefully actually have something to teach people that, they wouldn't already know. So that was really fun. Did that. It was terrifying, doing that talk, but then it kinda just went from there. I started submitting to other conferences.
Jess:I did I submitted for Laracon US, and I got accepted to speak in Atlanta. There was gonna be this massive, like, aquarium behind the stage with fish and stuff in it, and that sounded really exciting. And then, COVID COVID hilled out everything. Which was very, very sad. So we were gonna go back to you.
Jess:Online. Yeah, I I would be cool to it would be cool to go back there.
Michael:It's like to you gotta, like, you've gotta fulfill that dream. It has to happen.
Jess:I know. At some point. Exactly. But yeah so I spoke at, like it turned into a Laracon online and I spoke there. Laracon online I found quite hard because, well one I had to get up at, I don't know, 3 in the morning or something to do the talk.
Jess:But there was something really weird about, like, I was still really nervous. Yep. But then when I did the talk, and it was just, like, quiet Yeah. And it kind of felt empty and weirdly alone. I've done other, like, stuff since then that's actually that I've enjoyed, but that first one, I don't know.
Jess:It I had all these feelings about my first Lyricon talk that I did in person that I thought would happen again for the other one and it didn't.
Michael:It's the audience. The audience really made it as much as the audience terrifies you, you know, as a first time speaker, but even as an experienced speaker who kind of gets nervous about getting on stage, there's something about the energy of those people, you know, that that feedback, if you don't get it, you know, not even if you're telling jokes, but just the reception, the nods, the people, you know, understanding what you're talking about without any of that feedback. It's not, it's not quite the same. And so I think online is actually harder to give a talk than
Jess:I agree.
Michael:In front of an audience.
Jess:And it doesn't it didn't kind of like, I'd put so much effort into the talk, but when it was over, I didn't feel the same sort of satisfaction of, like, that was all worth it kind of thing. Mhmm. But yeah, I've since done I did like the Laravel Worldwide Meetup recently, and I gave a talk that I'd already given in Europe and India, and I had a lot of fun with that one. I think the thing that really helped with that was after the talk, there was a big Q and A from the, like, people who'd submit stuff, but the hosts were asking questions, and that was probably my favourite part of the whole thing was actually the q and a afterwards. So as much as I feel like I'm an introvert, I actually do think that the human interaction side of conferences is very important.
Michael:It's funny, isn't it? Because we all we all I think the majority of us developers see ourselves as introverts. But until you put us in a situation where we're surrounded by like all of us together, because we realise that whilst we are introverted in general social situations, when it comes to talking to people that have the exact same interests as us, that are there for the same reasons that us in a lot of situations, it's much easier to have the conversations. And like, we still get nervous about, you know, speaking with other people, especially ones that we don't know. But we have to remember that we've all got like we all have a common point of reference for being at Alaricon.
Michael:And, you know, we're all there to learn about Laravel. We're all there to be excited by, you know, sharing what we're doing, but also sharing with other people what they're doing. And it does actually turn you into an extrovert for those 2 days, 2 and a bit days.
Jess:Definitely. You still crash hard at the end of it when you when you need your alone time and whatnot.
Michael:A situation where it's like extrovertedness.
Jess:Yes. Yes. Definitely. So, yeah, I think that kind of yeah. I spoke then at, I guess, like, I got on the Laravel team some point in there.
Jess:There was kind of this weird hiatus. COVID changes Yeah. My perception of time. But yeah, I joined the Laravel team, and then since then I've spoken at India twice, EU once, and then I spoke again at Laracon AU.
Michael:You didn't just speak. You launched a product that you built. I've launched
Jess:yes. I did launch a product. I've launched 2 products I've built now, which is quite amazing. I mean, Taylor has traditionally always launched everything, so for me to get to launch, proms would have been the first thing I launched. Mhmm.
Jess:And that was yeah, he let me launch it. I didn't even have to, like, convince him. I don't even remember how it happened. It was just Yeah.
Michael:You built it. It was just how to launch
Jess:it. Yeah. And not that he wouldn't have been able to do an amazing job. Like, he he understands how it all works and all that and could have done an amazing job of it, but I really appreciated being able to do it. And for that one in particular, I feel like just because terminals are like my obsession, yeah, I was able to give it a lot of enthusiasm.
Jess:But that talk in in Nashville was probably the funnest talk I'd ever done, and, you know, partly there were some, you know, spots where I had to stop because of like clapping and whatnot which was just a weird kind of fire I can't even explain. I think I just had this like stupid grin on my face the whole time. But that was just like a super fun talk, and it was probably the one I've enjoyed the most. I think I actually enjoyed it while I was giving it as well. Mhmm.
Jess:I think every other talk prior to that, I was purely nervous the entire time and I wasn't able to actually enjoy the experience. I was glad I did it and I did have fun for the whole process, But the actual talk giving thing was just like, my anxiety was just so strong that I couldn't even enjoy it. But in Nashville, I felt that I've done it enough times now that although I was still terrified, I still remember standing backstage when, like, Aaron was gonna call me up, and I'm just, like, kinda wishing that It I don't know, it just wouldn't happen? It's like and and
Michael:this is but I have this
Jess:thing that I I do that's I always wanna try and push myself out of my comfort zone. Mhmm. And the way I tend to do that is imagine how I would feel if I didn't do something. And by imagining by kind of just pretending, like, oh, yeah, you didn't submit the talk, you went to the conference as just an attendee, and you looked at the people up on stage. Imagine that feeling when you go, I could have been up there, like, I could have submitted and I could have tried.
Jess:That's the feeling that motivates me to do things that terrify me. That's, you know, applying at Laravel. All the different things have all been stuff that has been very, very scary, but the fear of not doing it is greater than the fear of doing it. FOMO.
Michael:The FOMO is always stronger than than the
Jess:Exactly. Yeah. I you can use FOMO to your advantage. Yeah.
Michael:Yeah. Fear of missing out is not not just, you know, I'm sad that it didn't happen. But like, you know, how much worse would I feel because it didn't happen? And and like you said, the excitement of getting up on stage to give that talk for that thing that I think we all know that you are extremely passionate about the, the terminal. And because you're passionate about it, and because you built that, you know, you built prompts and because you knew it inside and out, and you had practice that talk over and over again, you know, that when you get up on stage that you know what you're doing and how to present it.
Michael:And yeah, Taylor knows how it works and he could have done it, but I don't think he would have presented it with the same energy as the person that created it, You know, and and Taylor does that with the things that he has built. There's just that little bit more, passion and energy for the things that you have built versus the things that you're showing that someone else has built, it's easier to just breeze by them compared to the stuff that, you know, you have personally invested time into. So and I think that's that's an important thing for anyone that is wanting to, but it, like, not sure that they're the person. Of course, you're the person. You're the person that's been working on this thing for 6 months, or that you've been working with this technology for, you know, 5 years or 10 years or whatever, like you have the passion and the energy for it and you're not like the back of your hand.
Michael:It's just that because you've been doing it for 5 or 10 years, you forget that you have that passion. You wouldn't be doing it for so long if you didn't enjoy it. So, yeah, it's it's, I have this
Jess:thing where I I assume that once I've learned something, that I'm lost to learn it, and that everyone else already knew it. Yeah. I'm only just figuring it out, and so there's no point me trying to tell anyone else about it because they already knew. Yeah. Which is not true.
Jess:There's definitely people that do already know it, but there's a lot of people that don't, and so it is worthwhile Yeah. Doing that. But I think one of the biggest hacks for, like, conference talks is talking about the thing you're most excited about, like, right now, And not just trying to come up with something that's, like, gonna fit. Yeah. It's like That's my job.
Jess:That's actually really important to
Michael:find the thing fit. You find the thing that you're excited about.
Jess:Exactly. So if the thing that I'm currently excited about is not something that fits, then it's not the right time for me to give that talk. Right? Yep. So, yeah, that's kind of my policy now is that I'll all my talks are gonna be things that I'm currently excited about and really in-depth on.
Jess:They don't have to be things that I'm a complete expert on and have been using for, like, a 1000000 years, because that's kind of the things I reach for is, like, what's stuff that I know really, really well? But some of those aren't things that I'm currently excited about, so they can be a bit harder to do. There are things that I'm just perpetually excited about, like VIM and terminals and whatnot. But
Michael:Yeah. Yeah. I I wanted to, to circle back. You said that, you know, you originally wanted to give the talk on VIM when you submitted in 2019. Yeah.
Michael:Because that was the thing that that you were passionate about. And me also being a passionate Vim user told you, no. Don't don't talk about that.
Jess:Yeah. No one else. No one else uses this VIM user. No one no one
Michael:I mean, now I think there's there's a bit more, a few more people in the community that are using it and trying it out. And it does a lot more things, especially, you know, since many of them has kind of blown up in the last few years. But I think that's an important thing that we when we look at our speakers, we don't look to tick boxes. And nothing. Nothing frustrates me more than when it's an underrepresented group, you know, a person from an underrepresented group putting up, like, you know, a softball, in terms of a talk, you know, how I overcame circumstance or whatever, like those kinds of it's like, those are not the things that resonate with an audience.
Michael:Those are things that that like resonate with you in the specific. But you're when you submit to a talk, like you're part of this community, and you know how to do what
Jess:you do, like, you have a job as a programmer, because you're good at what
Michael:you do as a programmer. So that's what we want to hear. That's what we want to see on the stage. And it and it and it's frustrating, you know, as a straight white male, it frustrates me to see those kind of low low effort. Like, I know it's hard to put yourself out there for a talk.
Michael:Don't get me wrong. But it's it's low effort in the terms of, like, you could be talking about a technical subject because you are qualified talk about a technical subject. But you you know, you choose the quote, unquote, easy path out. And it's frustrating because I'm like, I I'd love to have you on the stage, but not not for that talk. I wanna say Yeah.
Michael:You know, don't come up here because you think you're gonna be a a checkbox on a list. Come up here because you have something valuable to say that, you know, we don't we don't look for, you know, those things, we look for interesting topics. And it doesn't matter who's presenting them. And so I think if you are from an underrepresented group, Laracon is a is a very good audience to present, because we feed off ideas and energy, we don't feed off who you are, or where you come from, or any of that kind of stuff. So if you've ever been worried about being in that position and submitting, then, you know, Laracon is the conference that you want to go to and speak, whether it's here, whether it's any of the other ones.
Michael:We want ideas, we want energy, we want your passion. That's that's that's where it is. So yeah. It is yeah. As I say, it's it's frustrating to to see those kind of talks coming from those kinds of people.
Jess:Mhmm. Yeah.
Michael:Because you you you can I've You can do more and you are capable of so much more than you think.
Jess:Yes. And I've always felt very supported in the Laravel community, even though especially like I think like first Laracon was probably like maybe 3 women total, but I didn't feel like an outsider because of it. Yeah. And that was just, you know, the I guess the attitude in there. We were all there for the code and for Laravel, all that sort of stuff, right, like it didn't really matter who you were, what you look like, or anything like that, it was it's just about our shared passion for something.
Jess:And so in that respect, none of us are a minority in that. Like, we'll be minorities in different areas, but we're all in the majority in terms of our love for
Michael:In the Laravel community, you're a member of the Laravel community. And that's that's where, you know, you might be new to Laravel or new to programming or, you know, experienced, but you are still a member of the Laravel community, irrespective of how long you've been there or where you came from or your background or, you know, whether it's social or economic or gender or or race or any like, you're just a member of the Laravel community. And, like, online, we're all just members of the Laravel community.
Jess:Mhmm.
Michael:Yeah. Don't frustrate me with your softballs.
Jess:I mean, I'm I prefer to do technical talks because I find them easier. Like, you've seen like Aaron's Aaron's talk where he pours his heart out on stage Yeah. And it's Yeah. It's a non technical talk. You'll cry without crying.
Jess:That kind of talk terrifies me way more than like a live coding talk. I'll live code all day before I do.
Michael:Bearing your soul is much harder than, you know, making a typo on stage.
Jess:Yes. And yeah, like, livecoding is wasn't as scary as I thought that was gonna be. I've done a few livecoding talks now on that. As long as you put the right guardrails in place and Yeah.
Michael:Well, that runs in the middle of the night. That's all fine. Zooming through the file with all your key bindings. Anyway, no one's like, well you made a typo. No.
Michael:I wasn't making a typo. I was typing yank yank pace 3 p
Jess:like, don't worry about it. When I did my my LaraCasts course, about Vim, I agonised over like, getting everything exactly perfect, and there was a thread on Twitter recently about this, I think it was to do with Aaron and that, about like, including some mistakes is actually good. It shows one, it shows that, you know, it lets people know who are watching it, that that's not, like, what they're aspiring to be is this person that is, like, completely perfect because no one is completely perfect. So one, it kind of lets them know that when they make mistakes, that's actually okay. Even the person that's teaching me makes mistakes.
Jess:And then it also, probably more importantly, shows how the person deals with it. Typos obviously are fine, like everyone knows how to fix a typo, but when something else goes wrong, as long as it doesn't like derail the entire thing, Those little things are sometimes where some of the best like nuggets come from.
Michael:And I think what you need to get good at is not not making mistakes. It's recovering them. Recovering from them. Right? You know?
Michael:Oh, you all saw that. You you know? I it's happened to Taylor as well. You know, missing missing missing semicolons and things like that. The audience is there.
Michael:They'll point that out. There's 900 people there. There's 400 people there. They'll tell you if you missed a semi cold.
Jess:Exactly. And at the Laracon AU where I first spoke, which would have been 2019, Frake was there as well. And he was on before me and he had something go wrong with his talk. Some sort of a technical thing in PHPStorm, I don't remember the details of it, but for me that's a real standout memory because he handled it so well, he kept talking, which I think is probably the most important thing to do when something goes wrong is to keep talking. Just, even if you're just saying out loud what you're doing, just not having the silence
Michael:Yeah.
Jess:Immediately makes the whole thing not awkward. The only time it gets awkward is when, like, the person kind of goes silent. Mhmm. He tried a little bit, he made some jokes. Yep.
Jess:And I don't even remember if he fixed it or not, it kinda didn't matter because he gave it a bit of a thing and then I think he just moved on. Yeah, go on
Michael:to the next thing. Give it,
Jess:you know, give it 30 seconds, keep talking, if it doesn't work, move on, and it's fine. And the whole talk was amazing. Yep. And then like Daniel's talk in, in Australia, that went off the rails for a little bit there. And that was my favorite part of the talk was once it went off the rails because we got that whole phrase of like, you know, if the tests don't pass, just delete them.
Jess:Just delete the tests. It's probably the best joke that's ever been made at the at the Laravel Conference. Yeah. So, yeah, let's don't be, I guess, afraid of making mistakes. Kind of expect that something will go wrong, and just figure out how you'll deal with it.
Jess:And just don't stop talking is probably the only is like the most important thing I would say.
Michael:Yeah. Hosting and emceeing a conference for 2 days, every time I stand on stage and start talking, there is an expectation that something is about to go wrong. So the the the best preparation is in, you know, getting ready for for that, and not not to practice. Like, you you move your fingers one one key to the the left or one key to the right or whatever on the keyboard, and you've suddenly typed an entirely incoherent piece of code. So, yeah, recovery is is the thing that you should focus on.
Michael:And I we spoke about this a couple of episodes ago. Like, the hack around covering for the fact that you lost your place is to use silence to your advantage to pause to like, let a message sit with the audience so that they can absorb it, to, like, take a sip of water. No one's gonna no one's gonna think twice that you've stopped to take a sip of water because you're on stage. The lights are on you. You know, it's it's hard.
Michael:So, you know, if you start that from the beginning, then people are not gonna think twice when you go, I I don't know where I'm at or my slides are not moving forward or I've lost my spot in the speaker notes because you've just gone to pick up a bottle of water and have a sip while you figure out where I'm
Jess:at.
Michael:So there's there's lots of creative ways to kind of work through and around mistakes and hiccup some whatever else?
Jess:I've like there's been a few times where I've, like, I've gotten to the next slide and then realized I forgot to say something on the previous one. And I don't this wasn't intentional, but I feel like what I have done in those situations was I almost feel excited. I'm like, oh, I forgot to tell you about something. Let's go back. Yeah.
Jess:And just, like, instead of it being Yeah. Ocean. I'm glad you say it. Yeah. Yeah.
Jess:It was just like
Michael:I don't know.
Jess:It was like, oh, yeah. Let's go back and talk about this other thing. Yeah. I remember it happened in India because I had gotten very, very sick. I missed the whole first day
Michael:of the conference. I heard everyone got sick. It was
Jess:Everyone got sick. And so that was a really, like yeah. I was not well even doing the talk, but I'd gotten well enough to do it. I think the talk took like 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes. I haven't watched it back to see how incoherent it was, but I feel like it went well.
Jess:Even though I know I had the few little areas where I I got a little bit jumbled. I felt that I still I don't know. I didn't ignore it. I kind of was like, yeah, let's just go back and Yeah. Yeah.
Jess:Excellent. As long as it looked like I was having fun, I figured then the audience will have fun. If it looks like you're just up there just like panicking Mhmm. And silent and all that, then the audience gets feels awkward for you. Yeah.
Jess:Yep. Not because they're feeling like judgement or angry at you or anything like that. They're wanting you to succeed, and so then they get a bit tense when they feel like you're not having a good time, because they want you to have a good time. So if you fail, have a good time about it, and then it won't be okay. Yeah.
Jess:That's right.
Michael:Which is, like, easiest said than done. But Oh, definitely. Absolutely. Plan plan for the worst. And, everything everything will be fine.
Michael:Now the the last thing that I wanted to touch on before we depart is Mhmm. You are you are now, like, full time, full time at Laravel. You most people probably don't know this, that you're only 3 3 days a week before, 4 days a week?
Jess:I was 3 days a week for basically the first two years, that I worked at Laravel. But recently, like, I don't know, the last 2 months or 3 months or so, have gone full time. I also haven't shared this, like, publicly, not for any particular reason, but I also got a promotion. Hey.
Michael:Congrats.
Jess:Thank you. I am what am I? Engineering team lead APAC region? For for the yeah, for the Australia Pacific region. Awesome.
Jess:Which is just me and Tim at the moment, which is kinda awkward because Tim and I are like really good friends, he's basically my best friend. Yeah. And like we've we worked together at a previous company and we both quit that company to work at Laravel. But at the previous company, he was technically my boss.
Michael:Yeah.
Jess:And now I'm technically his boss, but the way we work together is just very collaborative. It's not even like it's really even a thing. But yes, I I got a promotion which was very exciting, so, it's great. I do need to figure out some how to do some things that are not coding which is interesting, I kind of resisted anytime someone kinda pushed me towards that sort of stuff, I'd resisted it because I just wanted to work with the code all day. But at Laravel, because I'm just, like, this is like the dream job, it's the thing I really enjoy doing, I figure this is actually the right place to do.
Jess:Maybe take some next steps in terms of my career, and 95% of my time is still coding, so
Michael:Structural structural formality as as Laravel grows off as a as an organization. So, I'm I'm excited to see what's on the horizon for for you, and and for Tim. You know, I say this as though, you know, you're not older than I am, that I'm excited for what you've got on the horizon.
Jess:But
Michael:I've I've always been excited about, what, you know, what you've brought to the community ever since, you know, that that first Laracon. I'm excited for for the future of, you know, what Laravel and the APAC region brings us. You know, we've we've seen Mhmm. Prompts, which was your your baby. We've seen Pulse that that you and Tim worked on.
Michael:You know, Taylor mentioned on the the last Laravel podcast that that you're kind of the little Laravel r and d department now because, you know, you and Tim working in in a similar time zone makes it easier than, you know, working with either the guys in the UK or in the US. So, I'm excited to see what comes out
Jess:of that because you you both are extremely talented engineers, and and have shown time
Michael:and again that that you bring incredible tooling and and stuff to the Laravel community that we're always very appreciative of. So good luck to to the future. I hope to see what I look forward to seeing you at Laracon in November.
Jess:And
Michael:good luck with speaking you are speaking in August, aren't you? Maybe? I don't
Jess:know.
Michael:Who knows?
Jess:Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe not. There's there's maybe.
Jess:Yeah. Cool.
Michael:Well, thank you, thank you for your time. Thank Thank you for, as I said, everything everything that
Jess:you do and and will do in the future Thank you for having me. For us.
Michael:And Thank you for
Jess:everything you've done for me as well. Like I said, that was multiple catalysts that were attendee catalyst and then speaking catalyst, but just all these little jumping off points that yeah.
Michael:That can be my official community moniker is the the band aid puller,
Jess:the domino pusher.
Michael:Excellent. Well, this has been episode 11 of The Ripples Podcast. You can find us on, YouTube on x, formerly Twitter, at ripplesfm. You can find Jess at jessarchercodes on x. Correct.
Michael:Greg is at Greg Skraman. He's unwell. He's eating steak or something. So, we will be back here in 2 weeks. We have another interview lined up for next episode.
Michael:So look forward to bringing that to everyone. And, if you would like to be part of the podcast and tell your story, then hit us up on socials. And until next time,
Jess:see you later. Bye.