Laravel Creator Spotlight

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.