Hey everyone. This week, Michelle is on vacation. So we're doing something a little bit different. We're republishing an episode of the hammer stone.dev podcast, which is the podcast about the business hammer stone that I talk about quite a lot on this podcast. It's a podcast with me and my co-founder Erin. It's a little more casual. We're usually just, um, hanging out and chatting. Hope you enjoy it.
Hello, Colleen. Hello, Erin. We have very much to discuss cuz I think it's been like three weeks. Oh it, yeah, I think so. Because you were on vacation for a week, then I was on vacation the very next week. So maybe I think it has been three weeks, total. Yeah, quite a while. So a lot has happened. Uh, we've got a whole list here at the top. I wanna start with some tub stuff. Um, I know that you were on vacation, but we launched our first big marketing experiment that I was.
Kind of in charge of which was the open source, uh, send an open source developer on vacation. I saw that. Yeah, it went great. Oh, that's awesome. It was amazing. Yeah, I was. So I was so just relieved that it went so well. Um, cuz I spent a ton of time working on like the social share images. Okay. So that on Twitter, everyone would get their own card based on who they voted for. Can you explain that to me because I was on vacation and I didn't really follow all of that. What happened?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the whole, the whole deal is like you come to our site and you either nominate or vote for an open source developer to go on vacation. Right. So you'd come to the site and say like, I'm gonna vote for, um, Taylor Atwell, Adam wain, and somebody else. And then when you click like, Tweet. So then, you know, we do this confirmation that says, great, your votes have been counted. Do you wanna share it, click this button to tweet it.
When you click that button, the social share image on Twitter includes the people that you voted for. Ah, yeah. So like on the card itself, it'll say I just voted for Taylor and Adam to go on vacation. Like you should go vote for somebody. And so if you scroll through, like, if. Open Twitter and search tool.app, and then just go to the live tab. So you see 'em all and you just scroll through.
You'll see, just hundreds and hundreds of tweets with every card is like, uh, distinct based on who they voted for. Wow. Yeah, that is cool. Pretty, pretty cool. How'd you do that? So it's like a, it's like a native Twitter campaign almost right? Um, yeah, I did it with Netlify actually. So the images are generated on a Netlify like serverless function. Mm-hmm and then through some magic, like edge functions, we inject a little bit of code into the HTML.
um, that changes the OG image based on like a, like a unique identifier. So very cool. All the links. Yeah. All the links point to the same page. Um, but every image is, is different based on who you voted. So pretty great. I was pretty thrilled. I was pretty thrilled with how it went. It kind of took over Twitter for like two or three days and yeah, it was great. Ben was thrilled. Everyone on the team was thrilled. We still have a lot. Still have a lot of like, work to do there.
Cause we still have to, you know, actually send the people on vacation mm-hmm um, which is gonna be a lot of logistics work, but the, the super fun part went really well. So I'm pumped about that. Nicely done. Very cool. Yeah. Thanks. Feels good. Feels good to have my first like big public thing go really well. Yeah. Especially after like, I don't know, um, two months of like working behind the scenes on stuff and to finally be like, no, no, no, really look, this works.
Um, that felt really good. So that was great. Uh, in other triple news, This is also good news. It's gonna sound like it's not, but it's also very good news. I'm now halftime at two. Yay. So, yeah, so, um, I've been feeling for a while, like, you know, work working at two. Um, I was responsible for like all of the marketing and. You know, the original job application or job posting was like, come do like developer stuff that also happens to be marketing. And I was like, yeah, that sounds great.
And then it kind of just like happened that everything marketing related got shifted over to me. And so I was doing all of this like standard marketing work that I'm just not. Good at. Um, and I like more importantly, I don't want to take my career towards standard marketing and there, there are people who are really, really good at that stuff. Um, and so I, you know, I've been talking to Ben all along and he's just incredibly like.
Um, gracious and helpful in this whole process, he was always asking like, how are you feeling? Like, what are you working on? Do you enjoy it? And it finally got to the point where it's like, you know, I'm doing a ton of pure marketing work that I don't feel like I'm that good at. And I don't want to spend my career doing. And I think people would be better served. If you had like a pure marketer, like a head of marketing that was doing all of this stuff.
Um, and so we, you know, we talked about it over the course of many weeks and decided like, yeah, I think I, I think I, Erin should be doing more of the develop, the pure developer stuff, and someone else should be doing the pure marketing stuff. And so we decided great. Let's like, let's keep the band together, but I don't think that's a full time job. And. So I'm gonna just like, just do the developer marketing stuff for them and just like halftime. So kind of worked out great for everybody.
Cause I think tubal really does need, um, somebody that's more marketing than I am. Um, but I really like working with them and I love this kind of stuff that I'm doing. So I think it's gonna work out great, Erin. This is the dream. Right. Yeah. It's time. Job's great. Yeah, it really is. I mean, this is perfect. Yeah, it is perfect. And you know, Ben and I talked about hammer stone and I I've told him from the very beginning it's, you know, at some point I would like to be on my own.
And so he's known that all along and. Like, I just think there's a really great opportunity here for me to do a bunch of stuff publicly, um, and build cool stuff, Fortu. And then in the other half of that time build cool stuff, uh, for hammer stone and like, yeah, it's not. In a weird way. If I, I wanna talk about LA after, but like, if I speak at LA that's like good for two, two, you know, if I, you know, I'm going to this conference in Amsterdam for a PHP thing, and if I go there and speak.
About PHP. Like that's good for 2.2. And so I feel like this is the best of, best of both, both worlds things. So I'm, I'm super pumped. Yeah. This seems like the perfect setup. Totally agree. Best of both worlds, you have a part-time job to provide you a stable income. and then you have the rest of your time to really dive in and do a lot of the hammer stone stuff you've been wanting to do.
Totally. And I think one of the things that I've like as I was doing a lot of this tube work and like talking through everything along the way with Ben, um, one of the things that I realized was like, I want to be doing more of. Like the hardcore technical stuff. Um, and that's, that's like one of the things that I found interesting was, you know, Ben was offering me the ability to grow into the head of marketing. Like he was like, you can do this.
And if, if you want, if you want to do it, I will help you get there. And you will end up with a team of marketers underneath you, and you will be the boss, which. Incredibly flattering. Um, very kind, but I realized that's not like that's not where I want end up. Like, I don't want to end up as the head of marketing. I want to get more and more. Um, so yeah, I, I think that's been a good realization for me. Um, so yeah, that's, that's the big breaking news. Oh, that's amazing news.
I'm so happy for you. Yeah, thanks. It's gonna be great. Yeah, I think so. So, um, I guess this is the big announcement. I mean, I haven't said anything on Twitter. Um, surprise but yeah, so I think, you know, obviously. Um, I'll need to make up the money, you know, cuz now I'm half time at two. Um right. Hopefully that will all come from hammer stone eventually.
But in the meantime, I'm also taking on a few, like I really wanna focus on Lael performance, um, in including database and application side, both. And so I'm taking on a few Lael performance consulting engagements, so awesome. Anybody out there needs help with their. Performance in their Laville app. Let me nice. So enough about me. What's going on over there. How was your vacation? Oh, it was so good. So I'm a lifelong east coaster.
So I have never been to lake Tahoe, but if you live in California, like everyone out here has been there before it is stunning. I mean, it was just, yeah, it was amazing. It's like a lake perfectly clear. Like 50 feet down with like snow capped mountains in the background. It was really nice. We had great sounds pretty great. Good. Yeah. Now I know why people like go to the mountains to like, feel creative, right?
Like you just get out of your environment and you're like, I really wanted to work. Like I'm not gonna lie. I was like, wow, I'm feeling so inspired and creative out here in the mountains. Yeah. So did you come back full of ideas? I did come back full of ideas, so it was great. It was, it was really relaxing. I'm glad we did it. Um, we had a wonderful time. Oh, I have a story. Tell me, so we are in an Airbnb.
And we, we went with some of our friends, so there was actually, um, two other families that we met up there. So they 4, 8, 11 kids total. Whew. yeah, we did not all stay together, which I think is the key to vacationing with friends is, um, stay in your own house, but. We're in this suburban neighborhood, we have an Airbnb. And in your like check-in documents, there's a whole page about bears, but you're like, nah, I gotta really have to worry about bears. Right. It's not gonna happen to me.
Yeah. It's not gonna happen to me. I am not kidding. We come home from the grocery store. We're in a neighborhood. It is the middle of the day, pull into the driveway and my friend's car, which is parked right next to us in the driveway. Look over. And there is a bear that has broken the window of their truck in their car. What? I know it broke the window. Oh geez. It was crazy. That's aggressive. It was. Yeah. And then we're in the car and it's like the bear's right there.
And the first thought is like, If the bear can break that window, the bear could probably break this window. Anyway. It was a lot of excitement. Geez. That's terrifying. I've never heard a story of a bear breaking into a car. I gotta send you a picture. Like it, it was, yeah, please do wild. And they claim so that the.
The people who, the friends that own the car, they have like little kids, so they didn't leave any food in the car, but you know, you got like pretzels and goldfish in the car seat and all that stuff. So we assumed that bear smelled that stuff, but broke the window butt hanging outta the car. It was, it was wild. It was terrifying. It was wild. Like, and I had the baby, not the babies, but I had like the little kids with me, three little kids, like five and under.
We were gonna go for a walk with popsicles. And I was like, I don't know if I can protect three kids from a bear at once. Nope. Maybe we should. I don't know if you can protect one kid from a bear. Colleen . So that was wild bears are pretty strong. that was pretty wild. I, I don't know that I've ever been that close to a bear in my life. Yeah. So definitely not a lot. That was, that was a, that was a crazy day. How was the beach? What beach did you go to? Like beach was great.
We. to some beach in Florida. Um, oh, you flew with my wife's family. We flew with the twins, with the babies. Yeah. With the babies. Um, it is hard work vacationing with kids. Oh yeah. It is. It is hard, man. We had a ton of fun. Yeah. Um, but you know, we've done this trip before with no kids and boy howdy. It is a lot. Lot harder with kids. Yeah. I mean the naps, the eating all the time, kids just eat like six times a day and then the sunscreen and the sand and the sun on a baby.
Yeah. It's like, what is this worth it? Um, so it was fun, but yeah, it was, uh, It's hard work. Yeah. I remember those days, especially when they're little like, oh, it's a lot a hustle. It's a lot of hustle. We, we like to distinguish between vacations and family trips. Yes. This was a family trip, right? For sure. Family trip. So. While I was there. Um, this is quick while I was there. I launched version one of single store for Lago. Ooh, congratulations. Um, thank you. So I, I tagged it.
I mean, I had launched, we'd released it a while back, but I finally tagged version one. So that went super well. Um, so I'm thrilled with that wrote a quick start blog post for them, put it on their site. Um, so that's one of the long running things I've been working on. And 1.0 is out the door. Congrat. Yeah. Thanks. Feeling, feeling good about that. And then, um, one other thing I wanna talk about is my new YouTube studio. Oh yes. Tell me, tell me about this. So I think we had talked.
Maybe last time making more videos, um, like live streaming and making videos for refine and basically just being more public. And now, now that I have the time. I've set up like a full on YouTube studio in here. And so the plan is I'm gonna like start doing live streaming stuff that I already needed to do, like building the demo site for hammer stone, that kind of stuff. Um, but just do it live and then I will also do. I will also start doing some Lael YouTube videos.
Um, because I think there's just, there's just a lot of opportunity there. I mean, it, I, I watched a whole bunch of videos on Lael on YouTube and there are some, like, there are some really good ones, but I, I just think there's so many topics that aren't covered. Um, and aren't covered well, It would be something that I could, I could tackle. So got a couple of like soft boxes. I got a real DSLR camera. Um, yeah, I'm all set up. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to start recording.
Wait, I wanna hear more about your setup. So is this a new camera? This is a new camera. So this is a can M 50 camera. Okay. Um, so it's a DSLR that's hooked into, um, the El Gato 4k cam link. So it's. HDM I straight outta the camera into the computer. Then on either side, I've got these big light boxes. Um, oh. And then in front of me, I have a ring light. So if I turn off, if I turn off these light boxes, you can see it gets a lot. Oh, wow. The difference is quite extreme.
Yeah. That's kind of what you would expect on a, on a call. And then if I turn them back on, it looks like I'm a YouTuber. It does. Um, it's weird, right? Yeah. It's super. And then I have a light behind me. Okay. Um, pointed down at my head that kind of fills, like fills the background a little bit. And then a ring light right in front of me that like fills me. So you have four lights, a little more. Yeah. Where do you put the ring light on top of your monitor?
Um, it's hooked, it's mounted on the desk and it has a pole that stands up and it's behind the monitor. So you really put some effort into this? Oh yeah, I did. Yeah, I really did. I thought this is something, I mean, one it's fun, but two, like, I feel like, how do I say this nicely? I feel like a lot of the videos on YouTube developer videos are just kind of thrown together. Right. And if you go watch like.
I don't know, personal finance or, you know, marketing videos or any of these other niches on YouTube. Um, they're like really well done so much better and really sharp. And I thought why I could do some of that. Like, I'm not gonna become a expert video maker, but I could step it up a little bit. I like it. So does the new camera do the blurred background? Yeah. So the new camera, um, I have a. A, I got a new lens for it. Um, okay. That makes the background blurry.
So it's a really low F stop, I think is how you say it. And so it's focused, like whatever it focuses on. Woo. Everything else is just super out of focus. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. Yeah. So it's like, This is all straight outta the camera. So there's no like AI processing or whatever. So it doesn't ever get wonky or anything. How much did, how much did the whole setup cost? Ish. A lot of money calling a lot of money. It costs, it costs a lot of money.
yeah, I think the camera was like five or $600. Wow. Oh yeah. It's a, oh, I idea idea. It's like a, it's a can camera. I mean, it's a DSLR camera. Wow. Um, and the lens was a couple hundred as well. And then all the lights and everything. Yeah. It's expensive. Yeah. No, you look very crisp. Like, thanks. It's it's good. You feel very crisp. Yeah. It's good. Wow. That's exciting. Oh man. Yeah, that'll be fun. So look forward to many, many YouTube videos.
Um, hopefully as I, as I, uh, recoup that cost over over the tens of cents I will make off of YouTube. All right, let's talk. Uh, what do you wanna talk about rails? Talk about your call that you had? Well, let's talk about the Lael sale first, because that also happened while I was on vacation. That happened while I was on vacation too. Oh, fun. Um, yeah.
So there's a guy in Laville that I'm friends with boss, man, Chris, and he's been waiting for react to be ready and, you know, it's all open sourced. And so he is, I guess, been watching it or heard, heard us talk about it on the podcast or something and was like, Hey, what if I just buy it? And he bought it. He just, he just bought the back end because he heard react was. And then sent me an email and was like, Hey, I can't figure out how to get it set up.
And I was like, wait, did you already buy it? um, and he had, and so I sent him an email back that was like, here's usually, I would try to get on a call with you to help you with this, but since you already bought it, which is amazing. Thank you. Um, here's you know how I would do it? And then I said, let's get on a call and I can walk you through even more of it. Um, and I haven't heard back from yet, so either he got it set up and is thrilled or he's moved on to something else.
So I'll reach out to him again. But yeah, he just like heard the react one was ready and bought the PHP one and did it all himself, which is pretty great. That's amazing. Love it. I know. So we made another sale, which is good. Um, and I need to, I need to finish, I need to Polish up some of the react stuff. Dave has gotten some more stuff done there, including browser tests, which is gonna be really nice. Um, so yeah, react is ready. It's all. It's all we made a sale. Yay. That's wonderful.
So I had a call yesterday with, um, an analytics company that is very interested. Mm-hmm analytics companies are tough because they have such complicated requirements when they look at segmenting their user base. Right. And it was in Dutch, by the way. Did I share that part? so you did not, I mean, they spoke English perfectly, but like okay, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, the interface was all good. We were able to communicate no problem, but.
It was kind of funny cuz they were trying to show me what they had, not in English. So yeah, that was, that was an added fun layer. And so I think it went really well. They, um, they seemed really excited about it. Something they're very interested in.
They, uh, their CTO wanted to kind of put together a few more specific questions about the tech, because what they're doing now is they're doing the same thing our client is doing, where they're pulling a list of IDs from one query and putting it into another query. So we do that for our client because it's actually two different databases. Mm-hmm , but they do that. they said it's faster quizzical look on my face. Right.
So that was an interesting, uh, I thought that was an interesting assertion, but I think he has mm-hmm my understanding from our call was he has like a database person. So the next step with them is they're gonna send me some questions and, um, maybe sit down, maybe we'll sit down with their database person to kind of more fully understand their needs. They're very interested in this concept.
The nested inline filters, which is something we have talked about for a while, uh, but is a big lift for us. So they're very interested in that. They think that would be great. I mean, you. I think it's important to remember. So this nested inline filter concept is this concept of you're on the contacts page. And you want all contacts who have purchased products that meet a specific
product filter mm-hmm . And you wanna build that out all on the same page, but I think in many of our use cases like. I can make custom conditions or they can make custom conditions that meet a lot of their needs. I think so. Like I don't, I think that's true. And I think that's easier for them and easier for the end user. Yeah. Cuz the UI for this is gonna be tricky. Like I was talking about it with our contractor and. I think the more we think about it, cuz I already made our current client.
So they have the event table that links all the IDs. So you come in, you view a product like you get all those IDs on your event table. And I was able to build them a custom condition, which is all users that have viewed product with name, whatever, with whatever. But I think when they first thought of that, because you have that, those two IDs, like in the. Clause, if you will, you think of it as a nested filter, right. But it's really a custom condition.
So, so that's kind of what I'm thinking is like, there are a lot of use cases. People are like, oh, nested filters. I'm like, I don't know that you really need that. That that's as high priority as you think it is. So it's still something I wanna do, but I don't think it's gonna be a deal breaker. Yeah, no, I think, and you told him great. We'll have that bye by right now. Right? Perfect. Yeah. That I think that's the move. Cause I mean, if they need it or not is an open question.
Could they get started without it? Absolutely. Absolutely. Here. So I mean, my take on all of this Erin, and this is what I told these guys. And, um, we are small and scrappy and this is for both of us, our number one priority. So we are going to do everything we can to make this work for you. And if it doesn't, we'll sort it. We aren't gonna sell you something you don't need, but we, I mean, we want every single customer to be incredibly happy. Yes. So we're all in.
Good to make sure that happens. And if, for any reason you aren't like, we'll, we'll sort it out. But I really think that the huge benefit to working with us. Is, we are super committed. It's not a huge company, right? We, we are right. You and I are two people who are super committed to making this work. So it's gonna work. Did you learn that from your sales, YouTube videos that was compelling? No, I didn't. that? Wasn't. That was good. Thank you. I'm re I'm ready to buy.
I think that was great, but it's also true, right? Like, I mean, of course. Yeah. That's the best part. No, I didn't. The sales YouTube videos were a little, little slimier than that. Well, that was good. I, I applaud you. I like that line. So, um, I hope to hear back from them. I'll reach out with them. I mean, the last episode we did, what did you say? You said follow up or die, follow up or die.
So I'll definitely add them to our list and, you know, follow up with them and see if, if it's a good fit. But. Yeah, I'm excited. So I scheduled, um, I, I scheduled an onboarding date with Ben, so that's like next week. Whoa. I know you told me to, so I did teammate. That's great. I love that. I love having power like that. that's great. That's so soon I know it's maybe the week after next, but it's like the next week or two.
Um, I think the only thing we have to have before we put it on anyone's side is client side validations. Like we. We've gotta have it. That is for me. Uh, I'm trying to, I'm trying to. Pick like one thing a week, because what always happens to me is I think I can do all of these things. And software always takes longer than you think it's gonna take. Yeah, this is just life. We all know this is true. And we all continue to lie to ourselves about how long it's gonna take.
And so this week, like validations are my number one priority. Gotta get that solved. Um, I was telling you, before we, before we recorded that our contractor has done some great refactoring to use form objects. So hopefully that'll. This whole situation, a little easier.
The real struggle we're having with these client side validations is if we could just put the errors on the blueprint, it would like not be a problem, but I know we're trying really hard not to do that because you really sold me with your, the blueprint is the user's intent. So. That's like the big push for me this week is we gotta get these validations cuz I'm onboarding Ben in like a week or two. And um, and that's really exciting.
And yeah, so, so for on the rail side, I think a lot of the work right now, obviously validations and I have a list of like other tasks, but the. A lot of it is gonna be this implementation. And I think like, as we've talked about, like, as we start implementing it, what are the sticky points? Should we provide more rappers around it? I think we're, I think we're gonna end up providing an optional wrapper with an applied discard button, which is totally fine. I think that's great.
And one more thing we need, what we, really, another thing we really need is we need what they have requested, which I think is a great idea is like pills that essentially. Show you what filter you currently have applied. So we need you, and I need to think about how we wanna do that. Cause for example, when I demo this, I dump the sequel. So people can re mm-hmm can know what we're looking at. So what's happening with our client engineers and our client is big. They have 50 engineers.
I think we've mentioned that. Is they'll apply a filter. The user will come in and apply a filter or someone will be testing and they'll apply a filter. And then they won't remember. They won't like, know what they're looking at. We need to give them something. And, and I almost think it's like, I don't know. We need to think about it. Um, they want something, well, why I don't understand why can't they not see the filter? That they've applied, cuz it's hidden in the popover. Right?
Cuz you click filter. You say contacts, name, Colleen apply. That window closes mm-hmm and then all you see are contacts filtered by name equals Colleen, but you don't know that? Yeah. Okay. Like what they want is they want pills that would say name equals Colleen and then you could X one out and then it would clear. So. Interesting. We can talk about that offline, but, um, yeah, that's a big, that's a big thing they've been requesting and I think it's a great idea.
I don't know that it's something like we'd provide the UI for that. I feel like right. I, I feel like we would just provide, we just need to provide some kind of data structure. To let, I don't know. We'll think about it. We need to think of, talk about that all more. I mean, that's the blueprint, you're, you're basically rendering the blueprint again, right.
In a different form in a different form, which, I mean, I know that they're using Hotwire, but in our react and or view versions, you could do that. You could have the same blueprint in two different places. Rendered completely differently. One. Super in line and one with more Chrome around it. Um, so I mean, that's doable. I just don't know how you would do it on, in hot wire. Yeah. We'll talk about it. I'm I'm sure we can sort it out.
I mean, that's so that's kind of like a ne the next thing that's right though. We can just. We'll sort that out. Yeah. Um, so let's see. So validations this week really wanna get that cleaned up and then we have a couple little things. Um, I've started thinking about how we wanna do like a demo site you had mentioned, are you gonna live stream a demo site for the layer site? I think so. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. I'll be honest. That makes me, that makes me nervous.
Like just, just the concept of live streaming stuff makes me nervous, but I think it's good. I think it'll be, oh, it'll be. I think it'll be good. And I think it'll be, uh, it's kinda like a forcing function too. Like I'm not going to, I'm not gonna dork around if I'm live streaming, I gotta get, like, I gotta get the stuff done. Right. So I think it'll be, are you gonna like, is that YouTube or Twitch or both? I'm gonna start on YouTube.
I feel like Twitch is its own subculture that I don't really have time to learn right now. Um, So I'm just gonna start on YouTube. All right. So you have also on this list LA summer, what does that mean? Yeah, Laracon online is coming back again. Yay. Yeah. So they're doing summer edition and I want, I wanna submit a talk and I don't know what to submit. So what should I do? I wanna do something like database slash performance related. Um, but what should I do? I don't know.
Can you take something from, I mean, do you wanna do something like. can you take something from one of your consulting engagements? Probably. Yeah. I mean, I really like the, the talks where it's like solving this problem where the database is locking up. Mm-hmm walking through the queries or walking through the, the app to figure out like in rails.
We have a lot of things that like, I guess I don't obviously know that much about Elle, but in LA in rails, we have a lot of like common mistakes people make mm-hmm when. Because we don't think about performance until we have to. So designing for performance. That's interesting. That's what it should be design for performance upfront. That that is a pretty good title. I like that. I think that, okay. Well that was easy. That was easy.
I just gotta build a whole talk around it, but I think I can do that. I think you can do that. Totally. Do. Um, well, that's fine. Okay, cool. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, might as well submit something. We'll see if, uh, it gets chosen. Yeah. And your talk in where Europe somewhere this fall. Uh, yeah, be, and TWRP. Okay. What's that one on that's on sidecar. Okay, cool. Very nice.
Yeah. I need to, I need to prepare, I need to update that, but it's not, you know, I'm not creating it from scratch, so that'll be okay. So when are we ready to like really start. Pushing on some of this Larabe marketing. Like we have a whole list of things that, what does that mean? That means, hold on. I got a list emailing the Laracon list. Um, reaching out to the Larabe news. People doing a product hunt launch. I think we should do all these things.
I don't know that we need to do them right now, but where is your comfort level with supporting like a big push. For the Lael product? Um, pretty high. Okay. Um, let me think. So big push, what do we need? So I think it may be useful to divide that between. What do we need on the marketing side? And what do we need on the technical? Um, I think on the technical side, we don't need anything. Okay. Like on the technical side, we're we're totally ready.
Save for front end documentation, which spans both technical and okay. We do need. Some front end documentation, like how to use the view and how to use react. Um, so in that regard, I feel great. Totally ready. I think on the marketing side, we do need the demo site. I was just thinking that. Yep because I, I, and maybe this is like me being afraid or something, but I really don't wanna push super hard before we have the demo site there.
Cuz I feel like that's been a pretty common refrain from people that we've tried to pitch it to is like, can I play with it? It's like, no, we can get on a call and I can show you. And like, I just wanna see the thing. Um, so would we need anything else beyond that? I don't, I, I don't think so. What do you think? Am I missing something? I think the demo site's really important. And can I have a quick segue here? Okay, please.
So this is a little embarrassing, but I think I told you I've started following Gary V on the internet. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. Wow. And I know it's a look. I'm excited. I have no idea where this is going, but I know it's gonna be great. So please continue. So he had this post the other day. And it was this concept of time. And his argument was as humans. Our number one failing is we Don. Properly think of time. Like we don't think of time in the proper context and okay.
His point was he's 45, I think so older than both of us, obviously. Um, obviously, uh, but his point was so people in their twenties or people who are trying to do something like they just kill themselves and they think they have no time to do something. Okay. When really you could start a second career at 45 and have 20. Years in that career. And so I feel like, so basically like the post, the concept was like, you have more time.
Then you think you do so use it wisely, use it intelligently, still push as appropriate, but be smart about it. So that made me think of us because okay, we are in a sprint, right. And I am happy to be in this sprint. That is where I want to be. But I feel like we are on the cusp of like something great. And everyone keeps telling us to move faster. They do so everyone keeps telling us to move faster. But I think if we're not careful we could bundle it. Okay. Tell me more.
So for example, this is a perfect example. Like we could launch on product hunt Friday, right? Like, or whatever, we could go really, really hard right now. But like, I think these little things, like, yes, it's worth to wait two. To have a demo site, same thing with rails. Like, yes, it's worth to wait a month to have like, we've come so far and the product is so good. We gotta nail the landing. Like we don't wanna bundle it now by pushing something out or doing a huge marketing push when.
We're like 98% done. That's what I mean. I fully agree with that. Okay, cool. Yeah, I think there's a balance of course, to be struck between waiting forever and. Right launching soon, but I do think, um, I do think the, the point that we're aiming for is not, uh, asymptotic like, it's not forever moving away from us there, like demo site. We just need to have, it's a thing, the demo site. Right. And then we can. We can start expending some of this marketing, um, energy.
Um, yeah, that's really interesting. I it's funny you say that. Cause I do feel like everyone's always saying like, go faster, just do it. Like just release it right now. What's the worst that could happen. It's like, I mean probably nothing bad, but it would be better and I would feel better about it. If we were like ready to launch when it was time to launch. Yeah. And I, I think absolutely there's a balance. And of course that is excellent advice because we do need to launch something.
I mean, we have, it's launched, like you can buy it now. Yeah. But I, I, I do think it's worth it. Like here we are so close to being ready to do all these things. If it takes a couple more weeks to have a demo site, like I think that kind of stuff is worth it because yeah. Like I said, you don't wanna botch the landing. You've come this. Right. And I really feel like hammer stone is just such a different product because it's so good.
And I could say that cuz I have another product that I launched early. Yeah, I think it's yeah, I think, um, I, I agree with that. and I think if there's any criticism, it's that the product is too good and the marketing is too anemic. Yeah. So I think that, and, and that's what we're trying to, you know, correct. Right now. It's like, let's, let's get the marketing assets ready because you'll, as you heard, I don't think there's anything technical that needs to be done.
Yeah. Like on my side, I, I, I don't think any of the product needs to be touched. Frankly, it hasn't been touched in a month or two because I don't think there's anything there. Um, and so now it's like the thing that needs to be done is just these very basic marketing things. And then we can push for real, which is not to say that we haven't been. Trying to do the one on one sales stuff. I think that's been going pretty well by the way.
Like I think so feel I have, so with the rails founding customers two, three, um, and I feel like that's been going pretty well, and I'm pretty happy with that because I still feel like, like I've said, we have some iterations with this stimulus, like how much we wanna ship, what kind of rappers we wanna ship with it. Um, so I'm feeling pretty good about. I agree. Okay. So I think we're in a good spot. I'm glad you don't feel the need to get it out today.
Um, I think we both, we both have a sense of, I think we both have the sense of urgency and so we don't need to be pushing towards urgency cuz that's where we are. Yeah. Already agree. So demo site, what's your, what's your timeline on that? Um, I don't. I mean, I think I could probably get that done and I need to find a source for data. Like I need to find a compelling source for data. I could. Like the, my SQL sample database.
Um, I could probably grab like a, I think there's some open data sets for like, like movies, books, authors, that sort of stuff. Um, so I need to find data. I need to make a new Elle app pull refine in. I, I really don't think it'll take that long. Okay. Um, and I guess we could host it on vapor, which is Elle's thing, cuz. The main site is already hosted on vapor. Um, that may be, that may be my, like my thing for next week.
Okay. Um, cuz there's a little bit of like bonus work around it in that I'm going to try to like learn how to stream along the way. Right. Um, and so that adds, you know, 15%. Um, but yeah, I'll do, I'll do that for next week. That'll be my thing for next week. Okay. Do you have strong opinions on anything about the demo site? I mean, it's gonna be pretty, it's gonna be pretty basic. Um, I think it should look good. Yeah. It'll look, you know, tail windy.
Yeah. But it's not gonna be, it's not gonna be much beyond like filtering . Yeah, that's fine. I think people are people. Okay. You're gonna, are you gonna set it up in such a way that people can like edit the filters and see. What happens when they edit the filters? I think you're muted. Oh, you mean edit the, like the PHP? Yeah. Like the filter itself. Ooh. Oh, okay. No is fine. I wasn't should I um, not if it adds, you know, another week to your not to start.
That was kind of what I've been thinking though, is it would be pretty cool if people could see like how to edit filters and like actually build out new filters and things like that. Yeah. I mean, that would be extremely cool. Um Hmm. But, but, but I think any demo site is good right now. I think that's a quagmire. Okay. I think live, live editing PHP files in a sandbox. And let me think about that. There may be some work arounds.
I know that there's a, I know that there are a few Lael playgrounds online that could do that sort of thing, but that, that may be a quagmire. That's not worth it right now. Okay. Yeah. I, I do not think it's worth it. If it's gonna delay you. Okay, then we'll say no, cuz it would definitely delight me. Okay. Let's say no then. Yeah. Cuz I'd like to get that. I think we would need to get that up and then we can start doing some of this marketing stuff and that'll, that'll be good.
Um, cool idea though. That'd be pretty awesome. Speaking of demo sites, are you, are you planning on doing one? Yes. So I've been thinking about the demo site. I actually thought it's interesting. I'm glad we're talking about this. I can get bullet train set up. You can open it with GI PODD. And I had thought, it'd be cool to let people edit the filter so they could see how that works.
And since bullet train is now open source, we could put our package in there and kind of what I had built for the workshop. I mean, that was the reason I spent so much time building that workshop, right. Is because I want to. Essentially what I built for the workshop and turn it into like a demo playground. Mm-hmm . So with GI PODD bullet train, um, a few things I need, I think, to make that better data, that's a good call.
Mm-hmm and the UI is kind of, eh, you saw it, like, I'm not really happy with the UI right now, and it's not our UI. It's the bullet train UI that sits on top. The filter, but like the filter buttons in a weird place. And I only put it on one page. So my thought had actually been to do that first. That's that being the get pod pod, the get PODD bullet train integration first. Yeah, I think that sounds great. I mean, you're already so close, so that's right. Even better.
It's so close to being done. So all I need to do is get it set up on a standalone repo, host it, um, get some real data in there and clean up the UI. And once we have validations, I think that's a playground. At least I think we also need a demo site. Probably let's see how this plays out, but what you can do, what I can do is I can, okay. So I can have the demo site and then, oh, this is it. This is just the, tell me you have the demo site and then you have a link.
To the repo that you can open with GI PODD that you can edit and play with. That sounds pretty good. That's the move. So I like that. Yeah. Just something like, I feel like with demo sites, like some kind of interesting data, you were just talking about this, but yeah, it'd be fun to have like something funny or something like. Just more entertaining than right. Like we should, but it also has to have relationships and right.
Yeah. So yeah, there's, there are plenty of open data sources we could use. Yeah. I think we should give that a sec. Let me, well, you're gonna do yours first because you're gonna start working on it this week. So let me know what you decide on. Okay. But I think we can have a little fun there and, um, and that can be cool. Yeah. I think that's gonna be great. Anything else? Okay. We'll call it there. Huge. Thanks to all of our listeners. Who've become software socialites and support our show.
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