Welcome back to the Laravel community spotlight with me today is Jack McDade. Welcome to the show, Jack. And why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Thanks, Eric. Yeah. Uh, my name is Jack McDade and I think that explains it all. Uh, no, uh, so I'm the creator of Stadimik. That's what I do for, you know, kind of my, my full main time, uh, gig. Uh, it's a CMS built on Laravel. Been around for 12 years and our team is like up to five or six people now.
Um, so yeah, we're just kind of trying to build like the best possible CMS ever. And, um, when I'm not doing that, cause I always have to scratch an itch, uh, um, you know, I'm a designer and a developer, so I've, um, released a design course called radical design and most kind of tinkering with some like silly ideas on the side or whatever, but, uh, yeah, between Stadimik and my side projects, that's pretty much, uh, at least the internet version of me.
Nice. Um, so my, my first question, um, is all about Stadimik like I want to, I don't think I've ever heard this. So I would love to hear sort of the origin story. Like how did you decide, Hey, I'm going to create Stadimik. Yeah. So it was like 2000 end of 2011. And I had been working on, uh, I kind of had like a one, one or a one man design studio sort of thing.
And then sometimes I had a second person, we could tag team projects and I was building, designing and building client websites, uh, using at the time expression engine, but always trying to like find a CMS that, you know, was more efficient or faster to, you know, just to get stood up the way I wanted. And I was just so frustrated by the, how hard it was to maintain multiple client sites when they all had databases with the content in it.
So you'd have, so you have five clients and one client would be like, oh yeah, I need you to like add a blog to my site. And you're like, well, I told you you wanted one and you're like, yeah, whatever. Uh, I want it now. And so like you'd work on the blog on, on dev, but then they'd be updating the content on the site. And so the databases aren't in sync anymore. So what do you do?
You like, please stop editing the site or you have to like recreate some of the stuff in production or like copy it, like custom SQL exports, whatever. It was just always so painful. And like, this is just 95% of this is just the text. It's literally HTML that's like stuck in a database. Why can't we put that stuff in a file and then version control it that way I can just do a get merge and just like keep going. So that was the idea.
Like, is it possible to build a CMS that relied mostly on flat files instead of a database for the content? And, uh, yeah, I started hacking on the idea and realized like, this is a little bit, this is gonna take forever by myself. I found a buddy who wanted to hack on it with me for a little while. And we got a 1.0 out in early, like June, 2012. And, uh, yeah, it was, man, dude, the internet was a different place. 12 years ago.
And just, I'm just laughing at how it was built, how we sold it and everything. But that's, that is the origin story in a nutshell. I love that. I love that. Yeah. Cause so that was going to be actually, you kind of let into it. My next question is like, why did you decide on the flat files versus, you know, more of the sort of traditional approach where it's just like, um, you know, some sort of database. Um, so, so you sort of answered that already. So that's pretty cool.
So you, you basically, you know, in those early days, you wanted a better way to like work with your clients and just pull stuff down and not have to like sync databases and do all that headache. Even a two, when I had two people, me and another guy, like the two of us trying to sync on, uh, you know, a CMS build with the database was like, you had to have a remote database server and you're both connected to it. And like, it just, it just felt so janky.
Like, how is this so awkward in what felt like the super modern 2012 is like the internet, like we're not, we don't have to use gifts to round our corners anymore. That we should be able to solve this. And, uh, yeah, that, I mean, that is, that is the reason why. And, um, the problem with it though, is like it hadn't been done before.
Like right around the same time, there was like one or two others that came out, uh, with, you know, totally different approaches are built on different frameworks or whatever, but kind of like doing the flat file thing. And it was a long road of like educating people. Like, uh, is this only for tiny sites and the scale? Like, where, what, how does it work? And, you know, the early versions of statemic didn't scale. There was no caching.
There was no, like, it was just raw, like PHP scanning, like globbing file directories and stuff. Um, but over the years, 12 years, there's a lot of intelligence built in. And I'm probably answering future questions, but like it no longer is a flat file only CMS. Now we have drivers. So you can do a database, you can use Firebase, you could push it all into, I don't know, Oracle, if you wanted to or something, but like you can, you can do whatever you want to now.
Um, but it still starts out of the box as flat file, because in my opinion, it is the easiest way to stand up the one.o of a site. And then we have a one, one command, you run it and it like creates all your migrations and like imports all your data in the database and you could just run on my suit, got to that. So it's really, really flexible. That's awesome. So, so that is sort of, uh, that's sort of your recommendation.
You know, when you first start with statimic, just go with the flat files, learn the system and kind of go from there. And if you, if you do feel like flat files aren't the answer, then you can always, you know, push it out to a database if you needed to. Yeah. I mean, we've got it all scripted out and automated. It's like a really quick process.
So in my opinion, like when you are building out a site and there are no pages, when you're making your first ones, but being able to find all and find and replace in your content, being able to just like version control, all the changes is great. And like, once you go to production, depending on like why you might need a database or why you not, like it's not necessarily like speed, but it's.
If you have millions of entries, well, now we're talking, that's like a bottleneck for flat files, or if you have, um, you know, really, really huge entries with like, I don't know, like hundreds of like chapters of books or like something that's like really, really, really long, you know, or, uh, highly relational and you want to actually use like eloquent models and stuff.
Yeah. There's like a number of reasons why you wouldn't want to go flat file, but, um, yeah, especially just the dev workflow is the best workflow. And it's, it's probably what 95% of people using Stadimac can get away with just using flat files that, you know, I feel like you're talking about more edge Casey stuff, um, where most people aren't going to need that. 85 to 90, I'd say, but the ones that need it, like need it, need it. And it doesn't make sense for us.
Uh, you know, as a customer focused product, you'd be like, well, sorry, you gotta like, technically it does everything you need it to accept run fast, you know, like, yeah, but we love the control panel. We love the template and we love like how it all is organized. You're like, yeah, but sorry, it's going to be slow. Like, no, we had to solve it.
And that was Stadimac three was like, when we rewrote it with, you know, drivers for a data storage and yeah, I think we still probably struggled to like tell people that story, like Stadimac can, like, it's not like it can scale, like it can scale. Don't worry about it. You know, that's sad. Yeah. Well, and to, um, you sort of mentioned that, but I think wasn't it Stadimac four where y'all just, y'all did a whole lot of improvements on performance across the board on Stadimac, right?
That was five. Yeah. What you came up with. Five. Yeah. This April. Yeah. Like massive, massive performance improvements. Um, yeah, we have a, we have a secret wizard who like works part time who would just like, just built out all these crazy pro like, you know, black fire profiling charts and like, got stuff optimized down to, you know, like it was 80, 90% faster for some people. And it was already pretty quick for the, like, it is awesome. I love that kind of stuff. Uh, that is sweet.
Um, so of course Stadimac is built on Laravel. It uses Laravel. Um, you know, how, how has, you know, adapting Laravel or, you know, basically starting with Laravel. How has that helped you grow Stadimac? Oh, I mean, it's been, it's been huge. Like Stadimac one was built on slim PHP. I don't know if you or anybody remembers slim. Oh, I remember it. I don't remember using it, but I remember it. Yeah. I knew like 90% of the app was all enclosures, like in a single file.
Like it was like the routes file was the whole app. Uh, it's just hysterical. Um, then in version two, we rebuilt it as a Laravel app, like as if you would build your own app and then you'd have it. Um, but that meant like you're running a Laravel app, so you can't drop a Laravel app into a Laravel app if you have a Laravel application and you want to add content management, like, well, you can put it on a subdomain and like put your blog there or something, right?
So like, okay, that was a little bit of a swing and a miss. Um, and so for version three, we rewrote it as a composer package and, you know, work through all the being able to defer logic and make sure we're binding it late and all this kind of stuff so that you can drop it into apps and use it for the marketing pages or for whatever you want. Just use the API and pull stuff, you know, into your app and like people use it for iOS apps and like, uh, so people are using like Apple TV apps.
Like it can do all sorts of stuff. Cause it's, it can run headless and just provide you an API and at a good place to edit your content. Um, I now don't remember what the question started as. I think you answered it. I was just asking, you know, like what, what, you know, what Laravel brought to the table by you picking that. Yeah. So like, once we finally like made it to Laravel as a composer package, now we kind of like slot into the ecosystem of tools available to you for any Laravel app.
And then that also led us, you know, building compatibility with other Laravel packages and take advantage of, um, being, being able to let people extend it. And really comfortable Laravel like ways, uh, being able to bound stuff in the, you know, that the app service provider and, you know, do all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it just, it gave us convention.
It gave us, uh, a wider audience with which, you know, to, to reach people with just, oh, like I'm looking for a Laravel, see, most I can drop in that, you know, there's a few options. Um, but stat to make is a really good one. So, um, yeah, it's been, it's been great. And to have like a stat to make be this micro, uh, you know, many subset of the greater Laravel community, it's just, it's fantastic. Like it's like the same Laravel vibe, but like kind of even better.
Cause it's a smaller, like more familiar crew, which is really cool. Yeah, it is awesome. And, you know, it's, it's great to sort of see stat to make grow, you know, from, from those really, really early days, I sort of remember when it was first announced, um, and, you know, now you've actually, you know, you've, I think this is your third year running a stat to make conference, but it's not really a conference it's, uh, you just go hang out with your buddies, right?
I mean, yes, yes, pretty much depends on who you're talking. If it's a boss who's ready to write the check, you know, pull the credit card out. There is for sure training and education. Um, but it is like in the context of like hanging out on vacation with like 50 buddies. Um, so yeah, it's, uh, we've done two so far. So I'm currently working on and researching and finding the right venue for 2025 and, uh, that'll be our third one. It's called stat to make flat camp. Why camp?
Yes. And, uh, so I believe the first one was in like Boone, North Carolina, just out in the middle of the mountains. Um, the second one was in what Rome or somewhere like that. Yep. Which was amazing. I mean, like the, yeah, being in the mountains was beautiful. We had five or six cabins, like big, big cabins on top of a mountain. We just, it was just us up there. Uh, we had to bring like caterers in. They like had to drive up the mountain and bring us our food. I'm like, I hope they show up.
I don't have a plan B. It was kind of nerve wracking because of how, how like rustic the setting was. Uh, then in Rome or outside of Rome, uh, it was like this, it used to be an Olympic training facility that's now like a private resort for like private corporate events and like retreats. And so we showed up and it's like, Hey, you're home now. Like welcome. Everything is yours. If you see it, you can eat it. You can wander around in the kitchen. We have like a games room full of equipment.
They had like sneakers and socks and tennis gear and like anything you could need to like play any of the sports they had on the grounds, like soccer balls and cleats and whatever, like help yourself to the wine cellar. And you like go down this like spiral staircase into the basement and it's hundreds of bottles of wine and it's like beautiful, like it was grand piano, take whatever you want. Just don't waste anything. Grab a bottle of wine, go to the bar, make some cocktails.
It was like all set up. And then they had like, uh, like private chefs. They like came in or like on site and they just had three meals a day. Just insane. Like, yeah, it was great. Like octopus and, uh, you know, steak and lasagnas and like pastas. And also, I mean, it was like, it was insane. It was like, it exceeded, like, yeah, here, I'm just gushing about it. It was like exceeded every expectation and everyone I think had a good time. Um, but we learned a lot too.
There was a really, really good amount of knowledge transfer and it was, it was fantastic.
Yeah. I mean, I was going to say, you know, I made that comment half jokingly, but you having it that small and so intimate, you probably actually learn more than you would at a traditional conference because all you're doing is listening to somebody speak for an hour where here you're actually making those connections and you, you know, you're, you're not only getting the friendships out of it, but you're able to then ping those people that, you know, that were there and they're
super smart with statimic. So when you run into a problem later, you're like, oh yeah, hey, remember when we were in Rome? Uh, let me ask you this question that I'm running into. And I feel like that's just something you can't mimic from a traditional conference. That, uh, that was really sweet with the way you're doing that flat camp. Yeah. A hundred percent. Like we had a daily like round table session.
We'd have, you know, we all get in a room and have, you know, a couple of things we want to talk and share and then would chat with each other, like would have a Q and a session. And then from that Q and a session, like the number one or two topics that came up, like people want to talk about more like, all right, three o'clock by the pool, we're going to talk about enterprise statimic.
And so it was like 15, 20 guys, like in our bathing suits talking about enterprise, like, and then, you know, the next day we were talking about, you know, Vue JS upgrade and people like stayed up, like pulled it all night. You're trying to like upgrade statimic to like the new version of view. Like it was, it was, it was super fun. Like it was a great time. That's awesome. Yes. Super cool.
Cause you know, it is funny cause like if you, you know, as a normal, you know, person, when you go on vacations, even if you go with friends, you don't have that connection of, or at least I don't have that connection with anybody that knows anything that I do. So it's, it's gotta be pretty wild having a, you know, a house full of people that all do the same thing and have that shared, shared bonding and shared connection. So that's, yeah, that's, I think, I think you're on to something here.
Oh, I know I am. Yeah. It's for sure. It's it's amazing. And to have the whole place to ourselves is like anybody, even if you don't know them, you can walk up, Hey, I'm, I'm Jack, I'm Eric. And, uh, you know, like what kind of projects do you work on? We have this, we already have commonality between like we do statemic and probably Laravel too.
And you can just like strike up a conversation and then you're talking about your kids and your family and like, then you're just friends and you're grabbing a beer and whatever. Yeah. That's sweet. So to change gears a little bit. So version five just came out the, did you say February? April. Yeah. April. So are you, are is statimic running on sort of a yearly release cycle like Laravel itself or do y'all just more sort of when stuff gets done, it comes out.
Yeah. So we, we synced up with the Laravel release set schedule along with static force. So we trail about four to six weeks behind just to make sure we have, you know, like, all right, things are locked in. We want to, we have to, we're currently supporting the last two versions of Laravel so that everybody doesn't have to do a Laravel upgrade every year. If they want to upgrade statimic, because like for people who are running Laravel apps and they want to do that, it's great.
But if you're just using statimic as a CMS and you're, you quote, don't care about Laravel, it's kind of a bummer to have to do a Laravel upgrade alongside like every year. Right. So we're trying to solve that story. Like we've been talking with Jason McCreary. Maybe we can do like a shift specific to statimic. But so we, we bridge two versions, which means we need a little extra time when there's like a hard dependency change between one version to the next.
We have to bridge support for, you know, taking advantage of new stuff, but still making the old way work. So it's a little bit of a, you know, complex problem, but that's what we're kind of on the framework side of a problem. Like we solve the problem so other people don't have to. And yeah, and so we just, we just trail a little bit behind and, but that way we have, we have a major release every year and that, that lags behind Laravel. Yeah. Sweet.
Well, so it's, it's might be a little too early. Any, any big V six things you you're willing to talk about yet? Yeah. So interestingly, like we don't, we don't like build features for the major release. Right.
So like six point out, like we might, but like we don't, if we're working on a feature, whenever it's done, we ship it, whether it's we're two weeks from V six or like if it's ready and it can work on the last version in the current version or whatever, we'll ship it because our audience can take advantage of it today. Why hold it back? I don't, I don't love marketing features for big version numbers. We did that for a long time. We did that for like seven or eight years.
And it was, it ended up with like long running feature branches because you had all these different things that were codependent on the marketing date. And then you're like, oh, we got to redesign the brand and blah, blah, blah. And like, you've got all this stuff just sitting there. Yes, we went somewhere. And, and, but so, but I, but I can't answer like the spirit of the question, which is what cool stuff are we working on? Right. And so we're working on the forms module.
So we want, you know, this, this year we want our forms to be more powerful, more end user friendly. So like a non-technical person could like whip up a form and do landing pages and click funnels and all that kind of stuff. We're working on two way relationships right now. All the static relationships are kind of one way. So they're not, they don't like reverse. You can't reverse the relationship out. So we want to solve that problem.
There's some add-ons that do it, but we want it to be like really tightly core coupled. We're working on some pretty big SEO specific features using open AI and LLMs and vector embeddings and stuff to like essentially create like automatic linking, like cross-linking opportunities and track, you know, all the linking, like internal and external links between all the content in your site, being able to automate all of that. And it's come along pretty nice. What else? What else?
Let me pull up my board. See if there's anything interesting I can say. Working on, so the statimic control panel currently is still running view two because I think it's the best version of view, but it's pretty deprecated at this point. So we're also pursuing view three for statimic six, which I honestly, I'm still reluctant of. I just prefer view two. Actually, I prefer view one. But yeah, it's time. So we're doing that as well. Sweet.
And just to sort of, you know, expand on the view side with statimic, the back end, the admin panel is written in view. But if you're using statimic, you don't have to use view on your front end. You can use whatever you want. I just don't make sure nobody's, you know, thinking, oh, well, I have to, I'm stuck with view now if I'm choosing statimic, but that's not the case at all. You can use whatever you want. Thank you, Eric. Yeah. In fact, we have the case.
If you want to build a custom field type for statimic, currently it would be a view two. You know, you have a view two component that would do that. But yeah, so that's, that's where the difference, it really doesn't matter for like 99% of the users. But yeah, it's for those out on developers who want to take advantage of view through packages, like, oh, we love to drop in this. I don't know, whatever. Like custom field and use this new cool thing. Like, yeah, you can't do that right now.
So let's solve that. Gotcha. All right. This one's I got a, I got a hard one for you. So, you know, you know, every founder makes mistakes along the way. So, you know, in the last 12 years of running statimic, you know, is there a particular failure or anything, you know, that shaped your approach to the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, or anything, you know, that shaped your approach to now, you know, made you improve, made you do anything differently? Oh, gosh, where to start.
So, so many mistakes. So you want to talk about today or since the beginning, I would say, Does any stand out, I guess, is the better, better wording. Yeah, I would say like the, probably the biggest mistake we made is not making it, at least not making the repo open source from the very beginning. So, static one and two were both private repo. And it was one was like, we hadn't, as a community, as a PHP community, hadn't really adopted composer yet. So like, that was reasonable.
You would buy static and you would download a zip file. That's how it worked. Static to composer was kind of standard. It was built on composer, but we would get archive or composer archive, like a bundle. And you would still download a zip file, which is just hilarious now to think that even did that through a phrase, someone would steal the code base and like not give us money.
Because like trying to get it going and being able to find time to work on it when you're like a one, two or at some time, like three person company and you have this your only money. Like I can't work on it if you're not buying it. But by having that repo closed, we just missed out on so much opportunity for people who were willing to collaborate, who would solve the problem because they're just in there hacking around because they need to launch a project.
And just didn't build trust in a way that just having an open repo does. So now like, static core is free. It's open source. It's not MIT like you can't resell it, but like you don't have to pay for it. You can install it. You can use it for free. You get one user and one contact form, but otherwise you have all the other feature, most of the other features and you can just use it. And so like we have a huge open source community now around it.
People like we have PRs come in almost faster than we can review them at this point. So I think that's a good problem to have. I don't see that as a problem. Some people like PRs. Like I was talking to, I think it was, it was Caleb Porsy. I was like, do you hate when people send PRs? I'm like, no, PRs are amazing. It's literally someone doing my job for me. And all we need to do is like read the code instead of solve the problem. Right. And say like, oh, it works. Tested.
Like we just tinker with it. Anyway. So that was a mistake that I would say really slowed our growth. Like not having a free to try or free to use simpler version and having it closed source, like until we opened it, we didn't really grow. Like it was five years of like not getting anywhere. And then I'm like, I don't know. Like, let's just try opening the repo.
And like, if you look at our, like our revenue, like that's where it ticks and starts heading in a direction that most people generally prefer, which is up and to the right. So yeah.
Yeah. Well, and it shows, you know, more, um, I don't want to say before it was very isolated, but it just shows how big, you know, it just, it has more of a community feel maybe, maybe is the right wording, you know, as you come in and look at it and you're like, oh, well, all these people are, you know, contributing and helping. And then, you know, from there, then it builds up your, um, you know, your, uh, support through, I think y'all are using discord. Yeah. We have this community side.
Yeah, exactly. But like GitHub issues are where people submit bug reports and we have discussions and, you know, all that stuff. So yeah, having the standard set of tools like, oh, you work in Laravel, like it's, you know, we kind of have the same set of tools for the community and code. And it definitely makes a big difference. Like, oh, you guys have, I don't know, whatever it is, like 287 issues closed in the last 30 days. Like you clearly, this is an actively maintained project, right?
If you come to a site and you download in a zip file, like is, are you guys working on stuff? Like you can look at all our branches. Like it's, we try to be as transparent as possible. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I do. It just reminds me, you know, you're bringing back old ancient history.
You know, I remember when I first started, it was like, you would go to hot scripts and you would find something and you would either pay like $2 and you download a file or, or you would just go to PHP classes and like download this random code that somebody put out there. Code River right on Invana, right? Download some whatever, like, yeah. Well, the problem is you never knew what you were going to get either. It would could be like the most horrible code ever.
And it's like, but I've already paid for it. I guess I'll just stick it in there all with the security issues. Every day. All right.
So one final thing on the statemic topic and, um, um, you know, this was, this one's more for, I guess the community side and from you personally, but what, um, what advice would you give developers that are wanting to create their own little products, you know, within the Liverpool ecosystem, you know, as far as like, um, you know, getting started marketing, things like that.
I mean, um, cause it seems like we have a very, um, you know, I guess you would call it bootstrapper or entrepreneurial spirit within the community itself. But those that are wanting to sort of get started on that route, how would you, you got any tips or advice for them? Yeah. I would say start like by planning community upfront in the beginning, have a place where people can access you and be accessible in a way that is non scalable as for as long as you can. Right.
So if you, if you're building, I don't know, like a photo gallery thing for Laravel, I don't write like some, some dashboard thing, like answer questions, be available, hop on calls with people, go do things that like, if you added two zeros to your revenue, like you wouldn't do it anymore. But like until then, uh, do those things. Like I'll still hop on calls with people. Well, we try to be as personal as, as, uh, as you can.
And that makes a huge difference in trust and people like, because especially when you, we have something new, it won't do everything. The 1.0 is going to solve like the reason why you built it. And then like your, maybe three other features that you think someone might need and two of them, actually nobody uses ever.
And so getting that feedback from the community as early as you can, whether it's a discord server or even just get hub discussions, having some place where you can chat, especially in real time with people, makes a huge difference and be as helpful as you can. Don't resent questions. Don't resent bug reports. That's when someone opens an issue on your project, it's because they took, they didn't have to do that.
They ran into a problem and like be concerned when you don't get them, because that means they're just giving up. Like the fact that they take the time to fill out a bug report, give you an information, maybe a dump or whatever, uh, try to be thankful and, um, you know, thank them for the PRS, thank them for the issues and go, go that extra mile. Yeah. It shows, it shows they care, you know, which is huge when you're running a business. If you have people care about the thing you're creating.
Yeah. Absolutely. All right. I've made custom t-shirts for people. They send like enough PRS of like in a certain category. Like there's a Jack slight as a developer who did a bunch of PRS for our Bard editor. Uh, and so like I, I had a Bard shirt like ordered for him. It's like a dude playing a lute or whatever. And I was like, dude, Bard master. Thank you. Like, just like little things like that, I think can go a long way.
That's awesome. Yes. That actually kind of transitions perfectly, but then, um, that, I don't know, now I'm thinking about marketing and how great that is from a company standpoint, you know, to make that personal effort and, uh, you know, show the people that you, you know, that you really appreciate them and nothing goes above and beyond more than making something custom for, for a customer like that. And that's just, that's just the basic good work on that.
Yeah. Like you could spend 10 times, a hundred times that on Twitter ads or Google ads and get like nothing out of it. Right. Other, other people are your best marketers. Someone who's not your company is instantly more trustworthy because they're not like incentivized to do it mostly. I mean, paid influencers and that's the thing, but like, yeah, people who are, who are talking about your product, like notice them, thank them for that and like, take care of them.
Yeah. Yeah. You can't, yeah, absolutely can't beat word of mouth. That's a hundred percent for sure. But so you, you talked about a custom t-shirt. So this, this transitions perfectly into what I want to talk about next. Um, and we'll just start with, I had to print this out to make sure I got it right, but your Twitter bio image says you are the Willy Wonka of the web world.
So, you know, to all that follow you or know you, um, not only do you love coding, Laravel, Stadimik, but you love design and you have a very unique outlook on design. Um, um, it's really sweet cause like you have, you know, everything now is just so standardized, I guess, uh, where every thing Jack design stands out and it's like, that's a Jack, that's a Jack joint that he made. Um, so, so how, how did you, have you always just been into design
as well as coding or? Yeah, really always had been, uh, like I was actually deciding before I learned to code, like I would be like as a teenager in my bedroom on my 486 or I don't know, whatever, whatever it was at the time, whenever like the first version of Photoshop, I managed to get, uh, my hands on by downloading 57 dot rawr files and like,
he's sharing them together, right? Uh, you know, been doing Photoshop tutorials and like, I never really thought like back in the day that I'd make money at, I just loved it. I wanted to see if I could make something and then, yeah, over the years, like didn't have a designer work on something or didn't have a coat. Like I just keep sharpening both sides of the tool set until I was pretty decent at, at both. And I don't know if it's because I was homeschooled
or whatever. I just, like, I don't feel comfortable like sitting in like the mainstream, you know, like aesthetic or trends or like with any, like not just with everything, uh, sometimes to my own detriment, but, um, yeah, when it comes to design stuff though, I just fell in love with making funky, weird, wacky, especially like 80s and 90s, uh, based designs. And not everything I do is,
is wacky. I mean, to be clear, it doesn't always fit, uh, the need, but whenever I can, like I will amp up the personality on everything I touch as much as, as is reasonable and a little more. Yeah. Um, you know, if, if for everybody that's new to sort of new to layer of L and liberal community, there was man, three or four, it might've been a little longer than that, but Jack designed the layer con us website in this synth 90s, 80s vibe. It was just
Miami vice. Like it had all those vibes to me and it was, it was wonderful. We'll have to link that one. And it looked like Ninja turtles, like 93. And then there was vapor wave and like, yeah, that was at the PlayStation theater and, um, and times square. And like, I got to design all these like crazy size screens, like it down the hallways and out front and like times square and like did all this like neon and like,
it was super fun. Um, I would, I would love to time travel back and just like walk through it again. Cause it was so cool. Yeah. That was a super fun event. And then Jack, Jack had the Stata McBoo set up with, uh, you know, an old Nintendo with mortal combat on it. Street fighter. Street fighter. Are they not the same? Or was that very offensive? What I just said, very, very clearly clearly,
clearly, clearly. Uh, but, uh, one of the other cool things that came out of that was you introduced, there was, um, there was a, there was an album or a band and that had the same sort of vibe feel to it. And now I cannot remember the name of that, but it was like, do what the midnight. Yes. Cause I listen to that all the time. Now it's like a red blind and kick drums or something. And it's like, I don't see this all the time. So it's been on my playlist ever since that, that event.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm seeing them in like two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. The midnight's awesome. You can, you can look at Stata McBoo, you can, whatever we'll talk about my design course in a minute, but go check out the midnight. They're the best. This is, this is that word of mouth we were talking about. Oh man. That's awesome. Well, so, um, I guess I'm trying to think of, of a right thing because the, it seems like if you're a designer, you're not a developer. And if you're a developer,
you're not a designer. So are you like this sort of like unicorn special person that was, um, um, you know, brought up eating like raw eggs and now you can do all the stuff or is it like, you just, you're just made that way or just hard work. Yeah. It was, you know, I would have to stand on an ice block for it. No. Um, I really, I really think
anybody can do it. I think the key, the key is you just have to want to, I think like, if you are someone who can teach yourself how to code, like coding is like, like parts of it are easy, but then like to get really good at it is really hard. Like there's a, there's a lot of time you have to put into that. If you're willing to put in a fraction of that time into getting better at design, I promise like you could be as
good as me. I get, I feel like, I feel like I forget how to do everything every morning when I wake up and I have to teach myself it again, like real quick and that maybe that's my superpowers. Just I'm fast at learning and like a bad at remembering. Um, but I, I really think, and I've, you know, I put this course together because over the years I've like helped people along like, hey, I want to try and like get better design and I would just kind of work with someone one-on-one.
It doesn't take very long to like, it's, you have, there's like shackles that, that are on people. There's like, you're, you're getting in your own way thinking of like what the design process actually is. And so, uh, with my course, I wanted to walk through all those steps, like what it actually takes to design and like strip back a lot of myths and things and show like, yeah, as a designer, you don't have to design every item in your design. You just have to make a
unique composition. And so you can use asset libraries and like download everything and copy stuff and change it and tweak it and like just remix. Like if you think of it as being like a DJ, if designers are DJs, they're just like remixing other people's music. All of a sudden it gets a lot easier than like, oh, I need to be Taylor Swift or whatever and like create something totally original from scratch in my basement without looking at the outside world. Like that's,
yeah, that's really hard. Um, like sketching Figma or Photoshop, these are like, there's a lot of things you can do, but the basics, you only need a couple of the basic features, layers, shapes, text, shadows. Like it's all about, um, just putting the time in and knowing like what to focus on. And, uh, yeah, I, I don't think I'm special. I think I, I just maybe have a special perspective that I'm just trying to share with people. And, uh, you know, if that means eventually I, I won't
have to do design anymore. So be it, you know, that's okay. Yes. Uh, yeah. So his course is radical, does radical design.com, right? Radical design course.com radical design course.com. Um, but, you know, you know, the way you just described that it's almost, it's almost the same as programming, you know, like we have all these patterns and things that have been passed through the ages and now we just kind of figure out where they should go. Um, so it's sort of the same with
design. Like you're like, you're just saying there, you know, you, you see something that you kind of like just kind of remix a little bit, make it into your own style. And there you go. It's very, it's amazing how much like the same thought pattern actually translates and like you can learn how to code and make stuff work. And then like writing clean code is this skill
onto itself, right? Like refactoring and like breaking it out into smaller methods and things that like picking good variable names, like there's, there's functional and then there's pretty, and it's kind of the same thing. Like you can make a functional design and then as you get better, you can pretty it up and tighten up the layer, you know, the spacing and the type of, you know, the type flow and picking better fonts. And it just builds on itself over time.
Uh, you just have to like put the time in. Exactly. Just like everything. Put the effort in. All right. So moving on. So we're going to, I will have links to all the stuff that we're talking about in the show notes. Um, but I want to do one more question. Um, and then I'll let you, uh, then we'll go from there. But, uh, so when you're not working on Stadimac or design or Laravel and you're wanting to get away from this screen, what do you go do? What's your hobbies?
It's fishing. Usually it's fishing. Yeah. So I live in Florida and yeah, I mean, I love saltwater fishing and the rivers going off shore with my buddies catching, you know, Mahi and tuna. And, uh, just got like last weekend, we just came back from upstate New York and the Adirondack Mountains on a fishing trip, uh, where we, a couple of guys, we like buy like a trophy and whoever catches the most like inches and weight or whatever of like bass and pike, like
gets to take the trophy. So like, yeah, fishing is probably my number one. Um, I like video games. I love reading. I love, love, like fantasy. I'm a big fantasy nerd. So always in the middle of like the next fantasy trilogy or something. Um, um, yeah. That's awesome. So I have two fishing questions. Um, have you ever called a sailfish and have you ever been, what's the one where you go into the stream and you, and you, fly fishing, have you ever done fly fishing? So I've got a fishing
crew that I go out with. It's like four or five buddies. We all go out. Uh, we're called torch to, and we actually have a YouTube channel that I like never talk about because like most people don't care about fishing. Like the intersection is pretty small, the Venn diagram between Laravel and fishing. But if you actually like fishing, go just look at the torch tuna on, uh, on YouTube.
Anyway. Um, so I, I almost always go out on every single outing and we've gone out probably 50 or 60 times in the last two years, like offshore. I've missed a couple. I've missed two or three and one of those three, they caught a sailfish and I wasn't there. So it's like, Oh man, I was so close. I saw one, like I was on the boat when one hit, but it didn't hook up. Uh, and it was like jumping out of the water, which is pretty cool. Um, but yeah, have not
caught a sailfish yet. Um, I think they're pretty like, I just, to me, cause I always heard there's sort of like this mythical creature in the ocean that it's really hard to catch. And then when you catch them, it takes you like four hours to pull it in or something crazy. Yeah, I can. Yeah. They can get, um, they can get big. Like Marlin can take a really long time. Uh, we haven't targeted Marlin cause they're super deep. They're down like
thousands of feet. Um, but yeah, sailfish like to be on the surface and they're super fast. They got got a sword and whatnot. Um, and fly fishing. Yes. I have fly fished, um, up in the upstate New York. And I used to do that quite a bit. I would love to pick it up again. I've been thinking about getting to saltwater fly fishing as well, which is a little bit different, but it's still pretty
cool. Yeah, that is neat. Yeah. I've not, I've not, I grew up, uh, like more like just traditional like bass fishing and we'd go catfishing at night, but I've always thought fly fishing would be cool, but then it's like, well, then I gotta learn how to like throw a fly rod or whatever that's called. It's not that hard. You can get pretty good at it in like a day. It's not bad. Um, tend to maybe, um,
I love fast fishing though. Like there's something really fun about being on a boat and just like in a small mountain lake and just working the shoreline. It's fun. Yeah. Yes. Well, that's the way I was thinking of fly fishing. You know, you're like in the stream in the mountains and there's nobody around for hundreds of miles probably. And you're just like out here fishing in this peacefulness of the stream. It is therapy for
sure. You're just busy enough that you're not thinking about work, but it's peaceful enough that you're like, yeah, it's great. That's awesome. All right. So I don't really have anything else on my list. Um, is there anything that I didn't mention that you want to bring up or, um, you know, things that I need to, um, tell the world about? That's a really good question. I'm, I did not come prepared for that. No. Um, I mean, yeah, I don't know. I went to nineties con. Yes. Like
this weekend. That was cool. The world doesn't need to know about a thing that I did on the weekend. So no, I think that's good. Thanks. Thanks for having me here. Well, thank you so much, Jack. This was, it's always a pleasure talking to you and I look forward to seeing you at the next layer con. Yeah, man. Yeah. Let's, uh, let's chat again before. Let's not like have to wait for another podcast episode. Yeah. That sounds great. All right. Thanks, Jack. You got it.