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