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Andy's Tech Tales: The Brighton Ruby Conference, RailsConf Proposals, and Nurturing Junior Talent
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Join the conversation with the serial conference organizer Andy Croll, where we talk about how he started Brighton Ruby, why he's still doing it, how he's helping organize RailsConf this year, and about First Ruby Friend and why you should hire junior developers.
https://brightonruby.com/
https://firstrubyfriend.org/
https://railsconf.org/
Unique Format of Brighton Ruby Conference
Speaker 1Hey everyone , how's it going ? This is Adrian , and I have here with me Andy . Hello , andy is I don't know , I don't know how to call it Is he just a conference organizer ? No , he's not . Is he just a CTO ? No , he's not . Is he just a conference benefactor because he's sponsored friendly last year ? No , he's not . He does so many good things and we will find out more about them today . So , hey Andy , how's it going ? Welcome ?
Speaker 2It's going well . The sun has finally come out in the UK after weeks of freezing weather , so yeah , I'm feeling pretty good about myself .
Speaker 1Yeah , that's cool . So you're . You know you're approaching that one day of spring two days of spring .
Speaker 2One day of spring , three days of summer , back to the autumn , that's pretty much where we're at .
Speaker 1That's perfect . That's perfect . Yeah , we're going to talk about , you know , brighton and the beautiful city of Brighton a little bit later , but first I would like to know , I would like for our guests to know , more about you , like who are you , where do you work and how did you end up hosting such a beautiful conference in Brighton ?
Speaker 2So I picked up Rails about some number of years ago 2006 maybe , okay . So I worked in a couple of startups . I was living in Singapore at the time and so when I moved back to the UK I was looking for work as a startup I was running was folding in on itself and I didn't know anyone in the UK . So I'd started my Rails career in Southeast Asia . So I didn't know anyone . I'd run a conference there as well , by accident , and I decided the best way to do it with 18 month old twins was to have a conference in my hometown because there wasn't one in the UK at the time . So I volunteered myself and did that . So that's how it broadly came about .
Speaker 2What I do now is I've been at my company Coverage Book for five years employed , and a couple of years on and off before that as a contractor . We're a SaaS business for the PR industry . We've got like 3,000 niche customers , 12 people in the team , 12 , 13 people in the team , and of those , six or seven would probably call themselves developers . So it's a relatively small team . We like to think we sort of bat above our weight . We're very much in that small company Rails wheelhouse and I have a problem with over commitment , so that's why I'm up to . This will be my 10th edition of Brian Ruby coming up this summer , so yeah , yeah that's cool .
Speaker 2Yeah , it's been like a I just get back on the horse every year , Like there was an obvious stopping moment after COVID , Like COVID was . I was fortunate in that I had the support of a couple of my sponsors to say , you know , take the money that we've given you for the in-person event and just turn it into something else . And so I did that year and that's when I printed out , printed all those wise point of guides , the physical copies .
Speaker 2And yeah , I just got back on the horse in 2022 and we have three events post pandemic . Yeah , I just so . It's a weird work adjacent side hobby Like I enjoy , you know . I enjoy the people side of this job Like you know . I know we're all meant to be , we're all meant to be introverts and you know I am as well . But , like my particular introversion energy involves , a few times a year , getting together in a big crowd and seeing folks who truly understand what we do and what I do and just catching up with people . So , yeah , that it's a big part of my year . Is the sort of the conference going , speaking and running so nice nice , beautiful .
Speaker 1Yeah , so much to unpack . Yeah , I've been . So I've been to . My first Brighton was last year and I just loved it . Coincidentally , last year was the year where I started hosting Friendly RB and because I did that , I wanted to go and do some research . I went to many , many , I think it , over like six Ruby conferences in Europe . So , but I truly enjoyed Brighton and I definitely learned a few things from . I'm interested what did you learn , dude ?
Speaker 1I mean , one of the things that I love the most about Brighton is that it didn't felt like a conference . It felt like a , like a show . You would go to a show , you get invited into that beautiful venue , into the room , and then you're gonna , you're gonna have like three or four people come and then speak about things . Sometimes it's really related , sometimes it's not , and I think that's just beautiful . And I took that and I use that the same thing , because I personally I don't like when I'm just gonna , I'm going to a conference , it's like Ruby , ruby , ruby or tech , tech , tech , tech , tech , whatever your mind is going to be , you know , all over the place . So I love that . It was kind of a show . It was curated , it was beautifully curated . There were plenty of you know things that I enjoyed , like the documentation talk and other you know other talks , and I just like the whole agenda of the thing .
Speaker 2Yeah , and part of that is I've been doing this long enough that I also spend a lot of time with my speakers beforehand , like I put a lot of effort into their talks .
Speaker 2So you know , for example , the documentation took I seen that about seven times . Yeah , so , like I work with Caitlin really hard on like polishing it so that she you know , she you wouldn't know it from the stage and from her persona she was super nervous about that talk , okay , but it was one of the best reviewed talks of the day . Like in the question I put out afterwards , people love that talk because it really , you know , it's also it's one of those guilty secrets we all have . It's like we're all rubbish at documentation and we all wish we were better . So , yeah , like it's being able to put in the effort to help speakers Create something . I mean it's like you say like it can't all be hard tech and it can't all be Heavy and it can't all be advanced , so there has to be a balance and particularly in a single track event , yeah , you have to mix it up , yeah , and so I do think a lot about that sort of stuff .
Speaker 1Yeah , so yeah , regarding like the single track aspect , this is something that I spoke with a few people . Like most Conferences , I think , this year , the ones that I went to it , they were like two days . They were single track , but two days , and Brighton is just one day , and I told everybody like I felt this pressure to go to speak with as many people as possible because tomorrow they might not be around . Right , that didn't happen . We had plenty of , we had we , you know , put up a good crowd that we stayed in the next day and we had fun . But you know , I felt that pressure . I want to meet that man . I know who's gonna be here tomorrow . Well , when you have two days , you're gonna have the social . Between the days , you know , going to a pub or whatever , you're gonna become friends . And the next day it's oh , hey , man , hey , how are you ? We like it's like you knew each other from forever .
Speaker 2So yeah , yeah , I only . Can't quite swing two days on an event that I mostly organized by myself . So , um , yeah , I was , I quite like the one and done like it's , yeah . If it forces me , yeah , to really think about the day , yep , yeah .
Speaker 1I agree .
Speaker 2Yeah , I , financially it's less scary too .
Speaker 1Yeah , I can imagine . Yeah , with friendly like after I did friendly like I can relate to that . Yes , one and done . That would be just perfect . You know , it's like you know you build something and you give no support , but if you have the next day You're gonna have to do everything .
Speaker 2You know , selling something once is the big thing in the rouse community . Now right , so , yes , so , so let's do that .
Speaker 1Brighton is your . It could be like the original once conference .
Speaker 2Yeah , if I hadn't done it ten times . I totally agree .
Speaker 1That's cool . That's cool . Yeah , so it was . It was lovely . Brighton is lovely as well . Whenever I spoke with somebody , like before going to the conference and telling them like hey , I'm gonna go to Brighton , like whatever for this conference , said oh , bright and oh , that's beautiful there , you're gonna love it . And I really did and I hope everybody you know Tries it for this year .
Speaker 2So you know it really is . It's I've benefited from being a really interesting city and I also benefit on like an hour from London , so like all the London folks can come down . So yeah , I've got . I've got my thumb on the scales just based on where I live . And you know , we're only half an hour from Gatwick as well , so like if you're coming in from Europe , it's actually quite a bit forward as well .
Speaker 1So yeah , I spoke with many people that came by train , so that's An opportunity , that's , that's perfect , yeah , and Alessandro Roddy from Renault said he . So he came to Brighton , he spent two days at the conference and then he spent , I think , another two days in London with the family . But he told us , like I told my wife , like you're not gonna see me for the first two days , I'm gonna be with everybody , so you're not gonna see me , or good , you can do whatever you want , right ? Yeah , that's , that's another thing that you could do . And Now , recently you , what's the thing with Ruby Central ? Tell us , I don't want to , you know , hushposh it and whatever , I don't want to misrepresent it . What's , what's your thing ? Cuz I know you organized a Ruby Conf Mini so this is yeah .
Speaker 2So Well , 18 months ago Gemma and Emily asked for my help to organize Ruby Conf Mini . Yeah , when Ruby Conf was in Texas and you know a bunch of folks didn't feel like supporting Texas with their money Felt for them individually like a good thing for them to do , given some political movements over there which you know some people may have an argument with . But I could see and you know I heard from enough folks that they were looking for a way to celebrate that Ruby Conf kind of thing , but somewhere else . So we put on a relatively small three-day event In Providence here at Rhode Island . So it had a little bit of Brighton and it had a little bit of the Ruby Conf . So it felt like a Ruby Conf but it just felt smaller like . So it was only a hundred and eighty odd people or something like that . So it was . It was like a third the size of regular Ruby Conf . But that was a good , that was a good experience . The Ruby Central sort of gave us financial cover to do that so that was sort of an officially sanctions Ruby Ruby Conf of Ruby Conf event satellite , I suppose .
Speaker 2Okay , and this year I've been asked to co-chair RailsConf Now , normally that's a member of the Ruby Central Board and I'm not on the Ruby Central Board . I have a . I have a Ruby Central email address as of that seven days ago , but I have no official capacity on the board of Ruby Central . I'm just some guy who likes to put people in rooms . But so I got a message from Ufuk , who is the leader of the Shopify Ruby infrastructure team , who is on the board of Ruby Central , has recently joined there , and he was like so I was meant to be doing with another member of the board , but they're really really busy , can you do it ? And I then went and had a difficult conversation with my other half and said so you know how I was going to take it easy this year . I'm not . So , yeah , on Monday I'm off to off to see the venue in Detroit . Okay and yeah , so he and I are putting together We've put together a program committee , that's People are just agreeing to join us . The CFP is open , we're looking for talks and yeah , we're just gonna take RailsConf and Hopefully make it , give it a little bit of Our take on what RailsConf should be .
Speaker 2Okay , and you know things that we've done . Okay , and you know things that we've enjoyed about previous events and things that we think could be better , things that we've heard from the community about . You know , it's a it's a long-running event , like it's been going Like nearly two decades , nearly as long as Rails has there's been . There's been an international yeah , yeah , us based Rails conference , whether it's been run by the current Ruby Central organization or not , is , you know , changed over time ? I think in the early days when it was Matt , when rails hit the scene in like 2005 , six , it was like a big , like three thousand person O'Reilly monster and it's not that anymore , thank God , but it is , you know it's it's a thousand people , it's multiple tracks , it's multiple days . It's a significant undertaking . It's like a conference center Hotel . You know US hotel block kind of vibe , yeah , yeah . So it's a much bigger kind of thing than I have done before , even , you know , bigger than RubyConf many .
Large Ruby Conference Planning in US
Speaker 1Quick question Are you scared oh ?
Speaker 2yeah , terrified Because I want to do a good job , right , like , yeah , I know , I know very much what Brighton Ruby is and the people who've come year after year Know what Brian Ruby is . And last year was unusually big For Brian Ruby . Yeah , the point where it started to get a little bit , little bit squashy in terms of just getting people in and out of the room , like it was 500 people and normally it's like 300 . So , yeah , I don't think it'll be that big again .
Speaker 2I think that was a post-COVID thing , okay . But yeah , this is a thousand people . This is gonna be like 800 , a thousand 1200 people . Like I haven't looked at the keynote room and see how many it could hold , but we could probably sell . We could happily fit the people in .
Speaker 1Okay , well , the thing that I would be afraid of , like all of the unknowns , like , okay , like you said , like you know what Brighton Ruby is , you know what the 300 , 500 people you know operation is about doing it in the States . And and this leads to my next question , is this so I know how to put this is this like a US versus Europe thing ? Is this like because , like RailsConf , when you talk about that , like even RubyConf , like it's , it's a US thing ? It's to me , in my mind , it always was like that , it was always a US conference that you do it US style ? Well , I know big hotels , big venues and everything . Is this like you bringing a little bit of Europe and how people do it ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I think so . Like I think there's , I think there's ways to take . I think at that scale it's quite difficult to do anything but the conference center or big hotel version of a conference , like , once you're beyond . You know I would if I didn't have the venue I have a Brighton , I would struggle to get to the numbers I have Like , and also the fact it moves around every year for in the US .
Speaker 2Yeah , so I think they , you know there's a certain amount of relearning every year , ok , and the person , the personnel of the board of Ruby Central , has changed a lot as well over the over the last five or six years . So you know , even in the last couple of years , you know there's been another cycle through of people who've , you know , they've , they've , they've put in their effort into the community and then they've moved on because you know it's a lot of work to do that stuff . So I think it's less a US thing , more sort of circumstantial thing . And like I think people presume that RailsConf was much more deliberate than it was . Like I think , in the early days , from what I understand , I wasn't in the community at this point . I was in , I was in Singapore , but like those big Roryli events were like a big thing OK , and then it sort of got a bit more community based .
Speaker 1OK .
Speaker 2And then you know there were folks who ran it for for quite a few years and it was just it's . It's more straightforward , even though the costs are greater . When you go into those hotels and those conference environments , you know the food bill is huge and the hotel rooms are . You know the US hotel rooms , you know the big chain hotels . They sort of have to be . So it gets a bit it does . You know ?
Speaker 2I'd like to think that I can inject a little bit of something else into it , a little bit of a little bit of you know . You know Ufogluz in Turkey as well . Like it's , the pair of us are doing this like at quite arms length . So it's a good job . The Ruby Central staff are there and they're great and you know they're familiar with running this sort of event . And there's no , they have that they put together for last year . There's an actual events team now and sort of a contractor that we can use to do stuff for us . So in the same way that I use the staff at the dome in Brighton to kind of I say , can I have ? You know ? I said to them one year , can I have 300 ice creams ? And they were like , yeah , so that's a . That's a . That is a good thing as a conference . I've got this good idea and I have money that can make it happen . Can you make it happen ? And they just and they say yes .
Speaker 2So I presume that's . There's no way that I could undertake this . If it was , yeah , if it was the same as Brighton .
Speaker 1Yeah , definitely , definitely yeah . Like this moving around the conference . Is this a bug or a feature ? I would say it's a fog , it's a fog .
Speaker 2This is the first time that I'm hearing about this , but I'm going to remember it .
Speaker 1I'm going to use it .
Speaker 2I think it makes sense to move it around so it doesn't become a one city deal . Right yeah , it's because America's called a big country . Of course , East Coast , West Coast , quite a big deal . Like you know , when there's a big Ruby Central Conference on the West Coast , it's quite a flight from Europe . But like the East Coast stuff like this year , like Detroit , is not . Although there's only one flight from the UK direct , it's not a terrible flight .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2And you know it's good to explore different American towns , like I went to New Orleans for RubyConf . That was amazing , such a good city . Yes , I mean LA has got a bad name , sort of you know , for big roads and traffic .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2But I went to that and I enjoyed LA as well .
Speaker 1So like there's loads of like good things about it , of course , of course I feel that this is a little bit you're going into like a little bit of Yuruko territory . You know where Yuruko is in Europe and it's organized in a different city by a different organizer . I mean , that's bananas . And still I see how , like I haven't like my first Yuruko was last year in Vilnius and I've been in touch with the guys there , with Ali and everybody . I know their struggles but at the end it was such a great event , such a beautiful , and they have never put on that kind of event before . And now Muhammad is doing it in Bosnia , in Sarajevo , and he lined up like this big venue . It's amazing , whatever , I don't want to spoil it , but again , like you said , it's bananas . How come somebody that never put on like a conference this big , like 500 people , four , five , 600 people go on the stage , pitch their city and you know people just vote on it and okay , you got it . You have to organize a 600 people event .
Speaker 2Naivety is how , and I think there's a certain element of like I can do Brighton every year because there are parameters that don't change and I can just improve things . So , like you know , it's like software I'm refactoring the conference every year and now I can kind of and you know you'll do the same for friendly right , Like there's things that other people didn't notice but you were just like , God damn it , that was terrible . I wish , oh , I should have thought of that . And then it just goes into your endless lists of things to think about on the week before , Right , so next year next year .
Speaker 1This , of course , of course , I agree , I totally agree . You understand me . Yeah , yeah , I think . Yeah , I'd be very scared if I were you , but I think it's in good hands . I think it's in good hands and it'll be a good refresher .
Speaker 2Yeah , and the things we want to do differently . You know , rubyconf this year had a sort of a coding day , the hack day , at the beginning of a community day , and we're doing that for RailsConf . So this year it's going to be a day of talks , so keynote , talks , keynote probably . And then the second day is going to be we will have a keynote to make sure everyone gets out of bed and then we will . Then it's going to be I mean , the theme of this year is building with Rails . That's where we're coming from . It's building with Rails and the people who build , okay , with rails . So it's like it's learning from each other . There's opportunities to take existing things in the framework and work on them .
Speaker 2On that second day there's things that are adjacent to the rails framework . Like you know , rails you know , as is in the manifesto , rails is a big tent . So , like maybe the aspect folks will be there and want to work on something in aspect for rails . Maybe there'll be stuff in some of the job frameworks that people will work with . There may be actual rails apps we want to build . Like you know , there are plenty of open source rails apps that are out there that are doing good stuff . So why not ? Why don't we work on some of those ?
Speaker 2So yeah , what that exactly looks like , we're not totally sure , but we definitely want that second day to be deliberately code focused , and that's when we'll put the workshops on as well . Like , the workshops are always very popular at RailsConf the more training-y they're like two hours rather than , you know , half an hour , 40 minute talk and it's more exercise-based . So we're going to stick those on the second day so that you can go to a workshop , maybe learn something in the morning and then spend the afternoon trying to put it in your app . Or you're inspired by something on day one in one of those talks and you want to go and code on that or explore it in your app . So it's like that kind of creating a space for people to get hands on keyboards amongst their people . That's kind of the vibe of that second day that we really want to do . And then the third day will be talks again and there'll be keynotes and Beautiful .
Speaker 2So yeah , and we're trying to narrow it down a bit because , like last year , railsconf got really big , like it was lots of speakers , so like we're trying to like focus it down so it's slightly less broad but much more practical . Hopefully the folks who go will come away with really useful stuff .
Speaker 1I think . So I've heard only good things about , like the RubyConf Coding Day , workshoppy Day . Marco did quite a few things , fixed a few things with other people on different projects . So I think it's a good thing to do at such a large conference and it's like you said , you're coding with your people . It's totally different than doing you know better programming online .
Speaker 2Yeah , and we're going to set up an environment that lets you do that . I would imagine we're going to order an enormous number of like flip charts and post it notes and fun stuff to make you know the sort of stuff you know if you were . I don't like the term hackathon because it's a bit like it sounds exhausting , but we don't like that word . So like a hack day is fine .
Speaker 1You should do a one hour hackathon or something you know , because you can build a lot of many things with Rails in one hour you could build four blogs .
Speaker 2Yeah because it only takes 15 minutes , right . So we're all good Of course .
Speaker 1That's
Seeking Gritty and Practical Conference Talks
Speaker 1amazing . Tell me more . Tell us more about CFP . What kind of talks are you waiting ? Would you like to see any type of talk ? What workshops ? What's on that table ?
Speaker 2Yeah . So I mean , both my CFPs are open right now . So the RailsConf CFP is open , as is the Brighton one . So like I'm getting all the talks this month and it's you know , and it's primarily , I sort of want to see the same things . Like Brighton I can be a bit . You know , brighton is a Ruby conference , so I can be a bit less Rails-y . Okay , and you know , we had Tim from Hanami come and do that amazing singing talk that he did .
Speaker 1Which is great .
Speaker 2If you haven't seen on YouTube , you should definitely get it . It's probably linked from here . Check this out in my channel . So yeah , I don't know .
Speaker 2So I've got like a list of talks that I would like to be able to give , but I really think the thing that is often missing like we hear a lot from the Shopify team that do so much great open source work for us , and you hear a lot from people with you know open source projects and stuff like that . And you hear a lot from the core members of the Rails core team and people who are building stuff into Rails , but I really think there's a gap for people who are building things in that sort of middle ground . So it's like things like you know , how have you done caching at your work ? Right , like , in my experience , every team is terrible at caching . We have these really good caching facilities in Rails and we're all really bad at using them , and we have , you know , we all know that N plus ones are bad .
Speaker 2And yet what's the next thing after that ? Like , what are the things when you get to a certain scale ? Like , what do you then have to scale ? And it's like , as you progress from like a team of two , just like frantically getting featured and trying to make a business happen . When you get a team of five , when you get a team of 10 , like , what are the inflection points and how would you ? What are the growing pains and the things to avoid or the things to bear in mind when you're using an alternative framework ? Can you compare the places that you're hosting your app ? Well , that's a bunch of money , bye not moving to your own hardware , but from moving from AWS to something else , or yeah or a server .
Speaker 2What do we know ? How does ? How does Heroku work versus Render , versus Fly ? Like , how does ? Have you actually have you ever done the thing where you we were on MySQL and we moved to Postgres or we moved to SQL Lite ? Or you know how do you run a small team of Rails developers ? What's really worked for you ?
Speaker 2So there's all sorts of like , really interesting , like gritty , useful talks that people don't even know they have the knowledge about , and then you don't even need to be an expert , you don't need to have done it four times . You know this has worked for us , is a great talk because this has worked for us . And then in researching that talk and building that talk , you can then go and find people and say , hey , you're a similar size team to me . What works for you ? We do this , and then you build that into a talk , right , and then then the audience can really take something gritty and useful away from that like practical takeaways . You know you're never going to . It's not training , right , it's a talk . It's inspiring , it's meant to make you go off and do other stuff and research yourself . But you know , the documentation talk from Brian Ruby is a great kick . Caitlin's documentation talks are really good example of this . Like it made us all go oh yeah . Yeah , you know it brought on the guilt sufficient that some of us may have gone and started a wiki at work , pointing no fingers at anybody . So you know , it's those sorts of talks , it's those gritty , practical , mid-sized talks , because we're going to get talks from the Shopify team and I'm not going to say they're aren't going to be them and you know they absolutely should be part of the schedule because they're doing really interesting stuff . Like I really want to hear about the Rails LSP , right , like I want to hear about that stuff because that's useful for me . But you know , switching from device to like home rolled off , can you do that ? Is that feasible ? Why would you do that ? What things should you bear in mind ? Yeah , there's all sorts of like interesting stuff . That it's the stuff that you probably don't even think is interesting . But I really really want to hear , because the more talks we've got , the more opportunities , the more voices , the more levels of talks we've got . I'm also interested in the intermediate and expert level stuff , and I mean from an app perspective , from a using Rails perspective , like because there's so many introduction to X job framework .
Speaker 2This is how you would use . You know , and there's even some of that . You get that automatically from the . Here's a new part of Rails . It's like here's how you wire up an action cable , which is great , but like you want to go the next level down , right . You know , and there were , you know I think , of talks I saw at Rails world , um , by Vladimir's talk about action cable , and I was just like , oh , this it's . I really enjoyed it . But I was just like , oh , I want to go a bit deeper into that bit or a bit deeper into that bit , and I just I felt like I had . It did give me another layer of understanding , but like , again , it was too much of an introduction talk . I want to get to .
Speaker 2It's like those , those deeper talks where you which will really help people get value out of what is . Frankly , it's not a cheap ticket . Yeah , so I want people to get value out of it . I want people to go home to their teams and go . I learned this , I learned these . I mean to these three talks , and they were amazing , and we should do this right now , because this will save us . This will save us 10 grand a month , or this will save us 20 grand a month , or this will this will make our lives better . So that's what I want right .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , I can relate to that . It sounds a little bit like okay , bring us your horror stories and how you fix them , or like you know the best , you know the times that you made , you know improvements and whatever . And it reminds me a little bit about like we had Stephen Markheim , the SQLite guy , maybe . Maybe you know , we had him on a show and we asked him like how did you get to be the SQLite guy ? How did you , you know ? And he said like okay , we , I was doing some R&D on my company and I was trying out these apps . I was spinning apps very , very quick and I was trying to get out SQLite and I've hit some rough edges . And then I started the investigating and one thing led to another and I started PR in Grails for you know fixes and fixing those rough edges . And I'm here and again , I'm sure that everybody has this kind of story they went into this R&D mode or they went into you know deeper rabbit holes and you know they can extract some information out of that .
Speaker 2So yeah , how did you become the conference guy ? Yeah , it's just like well , I wanted this to happen , so I made it happen , and then I kept doing it , and that's literally the story Like it's no more interesting than I am a bloody minded fool who doesn't value his spare time , which is true of open source software as well as event organization . Yeah yeah , I agree .
Speaking Career and First Ruby Friend
Speaker 1Well , let's , let's go a little bit like tell us about your speaking career , because this is how , like I knew about Brighton , but I think , actually I think I remember seeing you as a speaker at some conferences . Like what kind of like speaker ? Like I had this idea , what kind of . To ask you this question , like what kind of speaker are you and what kind of conferences would you like to speak at ? It's like the reverse CFP .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , I mean my talks have been quite varied . Like I've done a couple of technical , technical talks quite early on it's just like getting the hang of standing up in front of a room full of people , yeah . And then , more recently , the last two or three talks that I've done have been a mixture of rail stuff and or Ruby stuff and people things , and some of them have lent quite sort of . Here's what I think , and you should think , the same kind of talks from a stage the one I did , the one I did last year or the year before , about last year , yeah , last year , about , I think , even when you saw it Rails ass , yeah , the talk about Taylorism and how we rebuilt our Rails app and how that some of it was technical and some of it was human . So , yeah , that's the kind of that's where my talks kind of fit .
Speaker 2I do quite like a why consider there's a conference series called lead developer . Okay , have them in London and New York , and it's a conference idea I really wish I'd come up with , because it's just like everyone wants to be a lead developer , but they sell tickets that really easily and they're not limited to a particular , particular language either . So like it's nice , nice broad audience . They get some really good speakers . So , like some speakers from our , from our community , like Nick means or I think Siron has spoken at Siron , you've already spoken at some of their , some of their events and I'd love to speak there . For every reason , I keep bouncing off the CFP . I know what to do about that . But yeah , like my talks are a demonstration of my keynote excellence , like I'm much better in keynote than I am in VS code .
Speaker 2And notice that and I love to like , I like to bring a little bit of the fact that I don't take things too seriously , like I take things seriously but I'm not . I'm not weighed down by the seriousness of things , and so I like to bring that to my talk and like and just be , try and be as human as possible . Because , like , like you said , like , bring your horror stories . I'm like , yes , absolutely , because we're all human beings and we all make mistakes and we're developers and so we make lots of mistakes . I mean , you wouldn't let us build bridges Right , like with , with , with the engineers .
Speaker 2You can't trust the physical stuff , so so yeah , I kind of I like yeah , I like the feedback that you get . I like the . I enjoy these days . I enjoy the feeling of standing on a stage as well , like and you know I am see Brian Ruby and that has prepared me for everything possible that could go wrong in your own talk could go wrong . I've spoken several times .
Speaker 2I was fortunate to be pulled out of the CFP to keynote Ruby conf in 2017 in New Orleans , and that was a . I really enjoyed that talk . I made a bunch of Americans cry . It was good and that was that was . That was that was the year where there was like a weird theme like so me and Chadfowler and a couple of other some of the keynotes were about had some form of death in them . So it was like so , so , like I talk about them , I talk about death in my in that talk as well . So it's like you know , retro video gaming and death . It's a really . It's a really fun talk and I'd love to give that one again because I think I don't think that one is particularly aged badly so you should .
Speaker 1You should end that talk with like this is how we do it in Europe .
Speaker 2We need business . We're going to bring you down Exactly .
Speaker 1How about like happier things or tell me if they're happier ? Tell me about first , ruby friend , and tell people what it is . I know what it is . I think I'm sure that most people know , but give it Most people do know . So , again . This is what you give you the definition that you think it is now after all this time , because I'm sure kind of changed a little bit .
Speaker 2Well , it's kind of yeah , I mean it's basically . I got annoyed . So , as with so many good pieces of good pieces of software and things in the world , something annoyed me . So I built a website , which is how I process my trauma and it . I was annoyed with how bad we are at hiring junior developers , and I don't think this is specifically a Ruby thing or a Rails thing . I think this is a it's too easy to be lazy .
Speaker 2Yeah , it's an industry , I think it's everywhere . Like I was chatting to someone who runs a PR agency and they were like , you know , we were like , oh , we need to find some SEOs . And I was like , well , and they were like , oh , it's , they're really expensive and they're hard to find . I was like why don't you hire someone junior and train them ? And oh , that seems like hard work . Yeah , yeah , yeah , yeah it is . But then you end up with someone who's perfect for your business . Yep , and and maybe a bit grateful and exactly you've given opportunity and you've , you haven't pulled the ladder up behind you .
Speaker 2You've , you've put the ladder down and you've helped someone up . And so that's what first Ruby friend was . And knowing that Rubyists are generally a friendly bunch Yep , you know , and sort of some of the open source ethos of giving time to others without expectation I decided to see if I could weaponize the friendliness of the Ruby community into giving a load of people in the first year of their career , either pre or post first job , just someone to talk to , because I know that there's a lot of appetite In teams that maybe aren't growing or teams that were facing cutbacks or whatever . Like they wanted to mentor junior people but they didn't feel like work supported that . So it's an opportunity for the mentors as well to do that . Like you know , you don't really know know something until you teach it . So I think it was that and it is just a website with a couple of hosted forms and a spreadsheet and then once a month I go through and I match people and it's a lot smaller than it was at the beginning because I haven't pushed it that hard this year , but I'm still matching somewhere between 20 ish . So we're at 20 ish people , 20 pairs a month . Yeah , mentors with mentees , that's great and I am at some point going to systemize that .
Speaker 2I'm thinking maybe my hack day project at Rails can't full be . Can I finish off the first Ruby friend Rails app so that I don't have to manually do this once a month ? Because , yeah , when it you know it doesn't once a month doesn't sound right very much , but when it rolls around I'm like , oh man , I've got to find two hours in my weekend to do this , or three hours , or when it when the first flush of it like a lot more than that . So , yeah , it's , it's quite a manual process and I'd like to de manualize it . Nice , I just haven't . It's fine , I keep volunteering for stuff . Yeah , it's tricky to find time .
Speaker 1Yeah . So for first , ruby friend , what do you need ? What reach out , and you know this is a way to call to action , like I need people like I know I'm sure I can get like I mean , I get you know beginners or juniors , but I need these kind of people to match up with the juniors or something .
Speaker 2I mean I actually I still run a surf of mentors . So actually the having enough mentors is fine , particularly in sort of particularly in the US , uk , where obviously English speaking yeah , people have heard from me like and Europe as well , I've got wildly more mentors in places you know , eastern Europe and Germany and France and Spain and Italy , so there's wildly more . It's a bit more difficult to reach out into the wider world where there maybe isn't a , there isn't a large group of centralized Rubyists or there isn't a thing to hang people around like . So I , when RubyConf India was happening , I pinged them and was like hey , rubyconf India , I know that there's hundreds of you in a room .
Speaker 2Yeah some of you sign up because I get mentee applicants from India all the time . So Okay . It's a case of like reaching out , and you know I'd like to do internationalization . I'd like to yeah , I'd like to provide better matching for those folks , and I've teamed up with the women in non binary Rubyist group and they're going to try and push mentors and mentees into this system as well .
Speaker 1So Nice , Like and going back a little bit around , you know the geography . Where have you noticed any ? You know like we know , we all know . Like you know , in the US , rails is big , ruby is pretty big . You have UK . Have you found any other ? You know geographic , you know places , areas where you saw like , hey there's , there are a lot of people that have trained Ruby or they would like to be . You know rubies .
Speaker 2I think this is Brazil is quite big . Yeah , germany , lots of mentors from Germany . I mean .
Speaker 2You know , if you went to your root , you know that too right like it's like it's like 50% German , yeah , and you know , then it gets a bit of a smattering , like I really feel , like I feel like there's loads of rubious that I've seen at conferences and yet there must be at least 10 times as many who don't come to conferences , who won't see this video , who won't . Where are the ? Where is this like Ruby community dark matter . I want to find it . Where do you hang up ? Yeah , where are you hanging ? Are you just going home ? That's completely fine .
Speaker 2Like you know , programming is the day job is totally fine , but like is that thing of Can we reach them , can we help them , can we use them , and then can we find their companies and encourage them to bring on genius right , like because that's the thing , is Ruby such a great teaching language and we have all . We have these boot camps all over the place . I don't even know , like that's . The other thing that I will do , once it's a bit more automated , is that I will go and find the boot camps and I will hit the boot camps every every two months . When I do this in London , there's a wagon boot camp in London where I've hired three people from and I go and give a talk at the end of each of their cycles .
Speaker 2So just go and talk to them about what it is to be a program , you know , professional programmer , and I just go and talk to them , tell them what it's like and tell you know , explain to them . This first year is hard , like finding your first job after a boot camp is really hard , but they've done something really hard and there's only like they've done 80% of the work and they've just got the next 90% to go right . Like Once you've got that first job , then you're totally done because then you can sell yourself as a mid-level developer and everyone's going to hire you , but that first one , unless a company is willing to take a inverted commerce chance , and it's not a chance .
Speaker 2I've hired three people in the last 18 months and they're all amazing . Yeah , so I'm just like higher juniors they're way cheaper than seniors and they are so effective and happy and , yeah , just generally a really good time in your team .
Speaker 1And generally they want to get shit done , they want to get things right . They're like sponges they're so spongy .
Speaker 2Their brains are so it's like having , it's like having children around their brains are so spongy .
Speaker 1So I think this is something that you kind of figure out when , like you know , there's something that you don't want to be done on the team and you talk to a junior and say , yeah , we have to do this , but nobody wants to do it . And they come I want to do it , give it to me . And they're like , oh yeah , oh , my god , yeah , this person is not , you know , bored by everything , it's not like that .
Speaker 2They're not jaded like me .
Speaker 1Exactly , exactly . So , yeah , plenty of you know advantage . Yeah , well , tell me , andy , where can people find you and why should they write to you ? Why should they bother you and ask for things ? Because you cannot say no , so you will help .
Speaker 2Can you come and help me move ? I've got a wardrobe that needs moving . Can you bring ? Can you bring a car over ? I am Andy crawl pretty much everywhere and Andy , why ? Cro LL , ruby's Ruby social I'm still .
Speaker 2I cross post to Twitter X and I , andy crawl dot com . Like , if you , if you Google certain Ruby problems , my website will come up , because I've been every couple of weeks very simple piece of Ruby code every and sending out to any mail list . So , yeah , I'm on there and like what would really help me right now is if you worked out what you wanted to talk about and submitted your talks to the RailsConf CFP or the Brighton Ruby CFP and give me that headache of extra work to do . If going through all your talks , like I genuinely like I want to make RailsConf Super fun , super awesome and keep up with Brighton Ruby and keep that super fun to so , by ticket , submit to the CFP coming me other Rubyists and it's genuinely worth it . Like I need to write down why conferences are important to me and why I think they should be important to everyone . So , yeah , come and see other Rubyists and yeah , go to friendly , I'll be as well . Like I would recommend that conference . I hear the guy runs it . Super cool guy .
Speaker 1I hear that too . Cool , andy . Thank you so much . That was beautiful and hopefully inspiring for everyone . Yeah , thank you , and I'll see you on the channels and in this year's events .
Speaker 2Excellent , lovely to speak to you . I join cheers man . Bye , yeah , bye .
