Friendly Show

Cirdes Henrique, Tropical on Rails 2025 organizer. Live from Rails World 2024

• Adrian Marin & Yaroslav Shmarov • Season 3 • Episode 4

Cirdes Henrique (@cirdesh) is the organiser of Tropical RB in Brazil 🇧🇷🌴

This year Adrian visited the first edition of the conference where met Cirdes and gave a talk. From the moment they met, Adrien knew Cirdes has that FRIENDLY DNA!

Anyway

What happens when a beachside tech gathering moves to the bustling urban landscape of São Paulo? Join us as we sit down with the dynamic Cirdes, co-host of Tropical on Rails, live from Rails World 2024 in Toronto. We share the electric atmosphere of the event and discuss how Tropical on Rails has not only survived but thrived in its new urban setting. Cirdes sheds light on the transformative journey that has invigorated the Brazilian Rails community, from local meetups to shining a spotlight on emerging junior developers and dedicated community organizers. Inspired by our Friendly Show, Cirdes hints at a future brimming with inclusive and captivating conference experiences.

Moving to a new city can be overwhelming and emotionally taxing. On this episode, we dive deep into the host's personal journey from New York to an unfamiliar city, sharing the poignant struggles of homesickness and the mental fatigue of adjusting to a new environment. We explore the emotional toll of engaging with large groups and express heartfelt gratitude to community stalwarts like Cirdes, whose work on initiatives like TropicalRB and RBUI keeps the tech community vibrant and forward-looking. Join us for an intimate and inspiring discussion on the power of community and the resilience needed to thrive in new surroundings.

Visit Tropical 2025: https://www.tropicalonrails.com/

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Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, this is Adrian from the Friendly Show, and with me here at Rails World 2024 in Toronto is Sirdes. Sirdes is a man of many talents, but you might know him as the co-host of Tropical RB, which is now Tropical on Rails. Hey, sirdes, how are you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, man, I'm fine. I'm so happy to be here talking with you. You know you have been supporting Tropical on Rails and, you know, helping me out every time. So, oh, it's a pleasure to be here talking with you, man.

Speaker 1:

It's awesome. It's awesome to have you. So let's talk a little bit about Railsworld. What do you think about the vibe and the energy here?

Speaker 2:

you know, uh, I have to be honest, uh, at the beginning I was afraid, you know, oh, they will increase the conference size so maybe I will not have, you know, space to to find to talk with the people that I want. But you know I didn't that. You know, the space is huge, the talk has been amazing and I was able to, you know, to spread the word about Tropico, to give away T-shirts and to talk with everyone else, so I'm really enjoying to be here.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. Yeah, it's like it's huge, it's 1,000 people, but it doesn't feel like a thousand people, right? Because for the people listening, there are multiple buildings and you can go from one building to another and each space is a little bit different, right? The different vibe, so different people, so it feels like multiple smaller events, right, so we love it. Tell us a little bit about Tropical on Rails.

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay, so this year we did the first edition, the coming back right. We used to have that conference 10 years before and it used to be on the beach that's why we call it Tropical but the last edition we decided to move to Sao Paulo because I was living there and it was, you know, awesome. People all around the world came to the conference Adrian, aaron, elaine, amanda from Rails Foundation. So that was really, really cool and, at least for the Brazilian community, we started to see small events popping up everywhere in Brazil. Rafael França told me that there is more Brazilians sending pull requests to the Rails. So that made me feel so happy, you know, to see the community that are, you know, even more vibrant, you know, even more engaged with rails.

Speaker 2:

That was my goal when I I decided to, you know, start over the conference and, you know, right now, coming here to to the rails world and, you know, talking with the people and the people oh, I already heard about tropical rb. There's no tropical on rails. I want to go. Oh man, that is priceless, you know.

Speaker 1:

yeah yeah, so yeah, I want to share a little bit because I was there. I thought that the brazilian people are so freaking, friendly and they're so warm and welcoming. I felt kind of like at home. I'm not going to say it was my favorite conference because I don't want to say that, but it's definitely top three for me this year. I really enjoyed my time there and you made me feel like home. So I really enjoyed the way that you kind of pushed the conference, pushed the communities and put them on the stage, stage and up front and center for people to see, and you basically celebrated their kind of work that they put in to make this whole community even better.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, man, that was my objective. You know, I was seeing the community in Brazil a little bit fading away. We couldn't find more meetups, you know. So I, oh, what should I do to try to engage them again? So because of that, you know, I decide to, you know, bring junior developers to work on a project, and they were able to showcase the project during the Tropical. I invited all the local meetup organizers to be on stage and I gave them, you know, profiles to, you know, celebrate the work that they are having been doing.

Speaker 2:

So it was the object of the conference, you know, bringing everyone together. It's not about me, it was not about, you know, anyone else, it was about the community to bring everyone to there. And probably I didn't tell you, but when I was, you know, thinking about the conference, I looked for a lot of conferences around the world and I found Friendly, and one thing that I really, uh, that I really got was you are trying to to make conference single thread, shield, a friendly conference, and that, you know, uh, open a space on my head and, oh, I want to do the same thing. I don't want, uh, multiple threads, uh, conference, I just want, you know, people to have the same experience, at least for for the conference, you already have a huge concept like rails world, you know so. Uh, thank you so much. You was a inspiration for tropical awesome, awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you. I'm I'm flattered. Thank you so much. Yeah, we're trying to do cool things as well, but I gotta tell you it was a much bigger conference, like Tropical, but I felt like at a small conference. Everything was very intimate and very cool, so congrats about that. Do you have any surprises? Anything you're thinking about for next year, anything that you want to?

Speaker 2:

share man. It's a tough question.

Speaker 1:

It's all good if you don't. No pressure, no pressure.

Speaker 2:

To be honest, I didn't have time to think about it. I'm here trying to first thing, first trying to find keynotes, so hopefully everyone that I invited will be accepting the invitation. So after that I will think about what is coming for the conference.

Speaker 1:

So I spoke with a few people and I think you're going to have some people that would like to come. They will accept your invitation. Some high-caliber people I'm not going to say names or anything, but I have spoken to some people. Oh my God, yeah'm not going to say names or anything, but I have spoken to some people oh my God, yeah, that's going to be good. So, everybody, when you see tickets for Tropical on Rails opening up, like probably soon- Soon, maybe in November.

Speaker 1:

Maybe in November? Perfect, go grab yours, because you sold out. I remember I spoke to you and I think I spoke to you or something, and you said something like don't ask for tickets because I have no more space, so don't do that. So if you want to grab a ticket, do it when it opens. I want to steer the conversation to something else, because I know you're working on a new project, a new open source project, and maybe you want to tell the people a little bit about it.

Speaker 2:

Sure, you know, I have a company as well in Brazil, a startup, and I have been working with React for at least four or five years and I love React. But I started to see you know Hotwire people using and I thought, oh, I will take a ride, I will try to use it and see. And when I started playing around with Hotwire I saw the opportunity to make my development even more productive. So right now I'm trying to remove all the React from my applications and change everything to Hotwire, what you did in the past right.

Speaker 2:

But, like I said, I love React and I love components. So I was oh man, I don't want to open, not using that anymore, I don't want to sorry guys, but I don't want to go back to ERB or to partials. I want to have the similar experience that I used to have on React. So I started looking for alternatives and then I end up looking to Flex first, and I, you know, at the beginning I had that strange, you know. Oh, that's odd, you know, but I have felt the same way when I tried Tailwind and when I tried React a few years before. It wasn't familiar.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it wasn't familiar, but after trying I started to like it. Wasn't familiar, but after trying, um, I started to like it. And and then I found the flex ui project that, uh, george, he started. You know, george, I I never had the chance to to talk with him yet awesome. But uh, they are being inspired by a project on react called chat cN, and I was already using ChatCN with React. So I thought, oh, maybe that's it so, but the project, you know, was being in under development and I decided to join. So I asked hey, man, do you know anyone who could help me with that? So Adrian introduced me to Sat and Sat was working on the project and I started working with him.

Speaker 2:

So we were able to add components like ComboBox that are really really hard to do, especially if you want to make them accessible. And last week we decided to rename the project and then it will be called RBUI RBUI Because we get it that not anyone, not everyone, likes to work with flags and that's okay. But we'd like to make it possible for people that you know prefer to use helpers or view components. So we are introducing, you know, helpers and view components for that component library, and for me it's the missing part of the Rails ecosystem right now. You know component libraries that are ready and well-refined and beautiful to be used. You know we have hotwire that is the wire, that is the path, the road, but we don't have the building blocks to make things really really fast and beautiful like we have in the React, in the JavaScript ecosystem.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. We do need kind of I don't know how to call it maybe the default way, like in some building blocks, like you said, some primitives that we can all use in our project. Maybe, you know, we can style them a little bit more, we can, you know, tweak them and stuff, but we do need a cool. There are a couple of people, a couple of projects around that are in different stages of development, but I think you're of their development. But I think FlexUI was very, very polished, I think. George. Hey, george, if you're listening, thanks a lot for that. I think you have a good eye for design and it really makes the whole difference. So now FlexUI is going to be RBUI yeah, you moved from Flex to Vue components. We are going to be RBUI. Yeah, you move from Flex to Vue components.

Speaker 2:

We are going to be creating wrappers, you know, to encapsulate the Flex part of it and if you want to use, you are not going to need to go down to Flex. You can use with Vue components or with helpers, you know Okay okay, Do you have a number of how many components? Oh yeah, we have more than 20 components right now yeah, Awesome. Right now we are not looking to increase the number of components.

Speaker 1:

We are trying to refine those ones that we already have, you know. Okay, so do you have a good model component?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we do have good model component there, Awesome so that's good news.

Speaker 1:

So good model, good combo box I think you have me at the end.

Speaker 2:

Calendar select commander card, you name it. It's a lot of components, you know.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that sounds awesome. I'm looking forward to trying it. When is it coming out?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, actually, you know it's ready to be using. I've already been using it in production for a while, you know. But we are trying to, you know, make the interface stable a little bit more before we commit to release a V1, you know, because we don't want to release a V1 and oh, okay, now we're gonna change everything.

Speaker 2:

But I think in a few months we'll be able to release the V1, but it's ready. You are already using it in production and we are trying to bring a new mindset that comes from the React ecosystem. That are components that should be that can be used instead of directly from the gem, but you'll be able to eject them and you can eject and you can see the code. You can see how simple is the code, how the stimulus controller has been made, so it will be even more easy to customize or to use. Or, you know, just put that specific component that you want to work with or you can use with the gem. You know that's the vision that we are trying to bring to Ruby's part on the JS ecosystem.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, awesome. That sounds great. Looking forward to trying that. What are your plans for the next few days?

Speaker 2:

Oh man, I'm planning to enjoy a little bit here at Toronto. My wife was able to come with me, so we need to enjoy a little bit here at Toronto Because the weather is so good, right right now.

Speaker 1:

Lucky we were so lucky, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So I want to enjoy here a little bit more.

Speaker 1:

You feel it a little bit the the tiresome, maybe from the first few days.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean I, you know I first went to New York, so I spent a few days there, then move here. You know I'm I'm starting to become a little bit homesick right now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah yeah, I know how that is. It's a lot like I've been speaking to a few people. Uh, you know it's a thousand people here. Definitely you can't speak to everyone, but it's a lot of mental load to talk to everyone. You know you want to figure out where they're from. Why are they here? What did they learn? What are they excited about? And it takes a lot. It's different from. You know physical tires. So, yeah, awesome, sirtas, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for, you know, your work on TropicalRB and definitely for your work on RBUI. I think everybody is very keen on testing it and you know, when you have a beta or anything, let us know and we definitely want to try it out.

Speaker 2:

Okay, thank you so much, man.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for coming See ya.

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