The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - XO Ruby is hitting the road (Interview)

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Jim Remsik has lived on the bleeding edge (but also the heart's center) of the Ruby world for decades. This fall, he's organizing six (yes, SIX) XO Ruby confs all around the United States. On this episode, Jim joins us to reminisce about the early days of Ruby and Rails, share what he's learned from so many years of organizing events, and invite all of us to join him on his upcoming 7500 mile road trip.

Welcome, everyone. I'm Jared, and you are listening to The ChangeLog, where each week we interview the hackers, the leaders, and the innovators of the software world. We pick their brains, we learn from their failures, we get inspired by their accomplishments, and we have a whole lot of fun along the way. Jim Rem Sick has lived on the bleeding edge, but also the heart's center of the Ruby World for decades. This fall, he's organizing six, yes, six XO Ruby comps all around the United States. On this episode, Jim joins us to reminisce about the early days of Ruby and Rails, to share what he's learned from so many years of organizing events, and to invite all of us to join him on his upcoming 7,500-mile road trip. But first, a big thank you to our partner,

at fly.io, the public cloud built for developers who ship. We love fly, you might too, learn all about it at fly.io. Okay, Jim Remstick on the change log. Let's do it. What's up, friends? I'm here with Kyle Galbraith, co-founder and CEO of Depot. Depot is the only build platform looking to make your builds as fast as possible. But Kyle, this is an issue because GitHub,

Actions is the number one CI provider out there, but not everyone's a fan. Explain that. I think when you're thinking about GitHub Actions, it's really quite jarring how you can have such a wildly popular CI provider, and yet it's lacking some of the basic functionality or tools that you need to actually be able to debug your builds or deployments. And so back in June, we essentially took a stab at that problem in particular with Depot's GitHub Action Runners. What we've observed over time is effectively get up actions when it comes to like actually debugging a build is pretty much useless. The job logs in get up actions UI is pretty much where your dreams go to die. Like they're collapsed by default.

They have no resource metrics. When jobs fail, you're essentially left playing detective like clicking each little drop down on each step in your job to figure out like, okay, where did this actually go wrong? And so what we set out to do with our own get up actions of deservability is essentially, we built a real observability solution around GitHub Actions. Okay, so how does it work? All of the logs by default for a job that runs on a Depot GitHub Action Runner, they're uncollapsed. You can search them.

You can detect if there's been out-of-memory errors. You can see all of the resource contention that was happening on the runner. So you can see your CPU metrics, your memory metrics, not just at the top-level runner level, but all the way down to the individual processes running on the machine. And so for us, this is our take on the first step forward of actually building a real observability solution around GitHub actions so that developers have real debugging tools to figure out what's going on in their builds. Okay, friend, you can learn more at depot.dev. Get a free trial, test it out. Instantly make your builds faster. So cool. Again, depot.dev. Well, we're here with a good friend of ours, a good friend of mine, Elise, from back, back in the day, back in the hash rocket days.

This is OG, early days Ruby, Obi Fernandez, leading the charge, building apps and weekends, and that's where I met you, Jim, but you've been in the Ruby world for so long. long and now you got this road show you're doing you've done conferences before Madison Ruby welcome to the show thanks much for having me it's a pleasure to be here what do you think about the past what do you think about Ruby where it's going where it's been we're let's catch up a bit where do you what are you thinking about Ruby like we're we're still building our business on Ruby and definitely there is a bit of a renaissance we in fact so we'll get to the the conferences and whatnot but one of the bits of feedback that we've been getting from people who haven't been focused on the community

is, oh, yeah, that was really cool in 2010. And it was cool because, you know, the promise of being able to deliver a web app and a mobile app and all in one code base. And with Hotwire Native, that's coming back. But speaking with, can you give like maybe a deeper detail? Like, it was 321. It was revolutionary. This was groundbreaking. And I think a claim to fame for HashRocket did to be, one, you had extreme talent. You had a great team to execute, but you had... What's HashRocket? Okay, there you go.

Let's go back to HashRocket. There you go. Tell the whole story, Jim. Yeah, so Hachrocket was the first boutique Rails consultancy. And so we started in... I actually got hired in 2007 before HashRocket was a thing. There was a client involved, and then they decided to build a consultancy. out of the team that they had built to develop that software.

So we became Hashrocket and, you know, sort of early startup days, lots of late nights and lots of alcohol and things like that. Okay. I've grown up, but yeah, it was an incredible time. We had people from, you know, various backgrounds all over the U.S. that sort of assembled in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, and we're just very excited about the technology. You know, it was also right around the time

that GitHub started and Twitter. And so it was early, early and pretty fantastic days. Yeah. Heroku. Adam, what was your, how did you know Hashrocket? How did you know Jim? Well, I was an up-and-coming rubist. I wanted to work there so desperately.

I was like, y'all are so cool. Like the Hash Rocket logo was the coolest, still is the coolest. It literally was the Ruby Hash Rocket. Just all the right vibes were there. I actually met Obia Fernandez, who is, I think a DJ and now a dad and growing up like with the rest of us and stuff. And we've actually wanted to get him on the pod a couple times because I think he's kind of bullish on like Ruby and AI.

And I've been meaning to catch up with him personally in podcast professionally. But I knew of Hash Rocket mainly through Friends. friends. I met Alan Branch and Stephen Bristol and others. And I really don't know how I connected the hashtag rocket. I just know that when I went to future web apps, which was Ryan Carson's conference for web apps, which was a big, big deal then. This is, I think, in 2008, 2009. It was in Florida. And as a podcast, you get invited places. And so Ryan invited us out there. I think we actually had to pay our own flight in hotel, Jared. So we've grown up a little bit since then. But I was happy to go anywhere.

I was invited at that time because I had nobody. I had no network. I was at the ground floor. And even that era was like, I think, a lot of the networks and connections I've built on, Jim, you're including that since then, really. And it was kind of funny because when we're trying to get to the conference, we had a, I think we had a rental car or Alan had a rental car. And we were kids.

Like we were, when I was here, we were kids, we were just young. We were stupid. We did all. We did whatever we wanted. It was just a whole different world then. And Obie was in the car. And of course, I'm like fanboying because Obie's cool. And we're podcasting in the car.

And it's just like it was nothing like it is now. But it was so raw and so different. It was like, what is a podcast? You know, it was so weird. We were walking around with like shore microphones wired to this thing. And just like it was epic. But that's why I met Obie. We walked the beach in Miami Beach at night and just talked.

We got drunk. We did things you probably shouldn't do, like when you're young. And I really wanted to work at Hashrock because I was like, you guys are the coolest. You're doing this coolest stuff. And if I come there for a month or do like an engagement, they call them engagements. I can get 25 grand for an engagement, which would seem like a million dollars to me. And I get to work with some of the most highest caliber talent out there. I'm like, even if I'm not as good as they are, I will learn something through this engagement.

I never got I never got hired So close They did want Obie did want me on a project But it just didn't work out And I think I got another gig And you know just moved on or whatever But that's how I knew Obie

I think Obie is kind of famous to some degree In the early Ruby days For sure He's written books, he's given talks He's led the way in a lot of cases And I think at some point Obi personally kind of like Step back from the light

I don't know really I'm not sure of his story You may know Jim Because you work with him more closely but that's how I was connected and how I knew Obey and how I knew Hash Rocket and it was just such a

like these guys are rock stars Jared you know this like they were rock stars man back in those days yeah certainly Stephen Bristol if you were tied to him he and I were good friends yeah and he was local to Jacksonville

and so he was on the other side of the city so probably 45 minutes away but and a Rubiast everything was built on Ruby famous in his own right Rubiist and uh yes Um, he and Alan, um, were, you know, just delightful people. I, I still go down. Every time I'm in Florida, I try and get over to Panama City and visit Alan, who is now a mayor of Panama City Beach.

I heard that. Yeah. So cool. So cool. Yeah. But we, uh, so the, the way that I got to hashtag it was, um, I worked at the state of Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions. I was in dotnet stack and, uh, I saw this blog about, or I saw this video about building

a blog in 15 minutes and then me and my co-worker started diving head deep into rails on the side he was a little bit more fluid than I and so he saw a post from Obi saying that they were looking to hire people and he literally just flew down and showed up on his

doorstep. That was John Markowski. That thing brings a bill was that like Obie's right hand person and like just in every detail of Hashrocket? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Okay. And so he came down there they were pairing all the time

and they had four people and then one of them wound up stepping away and so they needed a fourth and John was like I know a guy and so I went down and interviewed I spent a week in Florida interviewing again made some mistakes but

came back home told my wife that we're moving cross country and went back short of Shortly thereafter, we packed up the house, and six months later, we were living in Florida. Wow. How long were you there? Are you still there? I'm not still there.

We lived there for four years or so, and then the call of coming back home was a little bit too loud. So now we're back in Wisconsin, and when I came back, took what I had learned down there and took part of ownership of a consultancy in Madison and have been basically or worked with them for two and a half years and then started my own consultantly suit in thereafter. Ruby's been through some really interesting eras, I think, where like this, you know this year, like you're a rubius. It's your core. I mean, I'm not speaking to the choir.

I am speaking to the choir here, but I feel like there was this, this, the video you alluded to was DHH explaining how you could build a blog with his, whoops, in 15 inch, which was just groundbreaking. But I feel like that broke the mold for what was expected to get an application. built. Now, deploying Ruby in those earliest days was super challenging, and that's what open source is about, right? These things all came out of how to actually deploy in and run an application of production, and it got easier over time with Heroku and things like that and Engine Yard. But this was such an interesting era for, I think, software. It's either

interesting because it's interesting or it's interesting because my personal history is tied to it. The nostalgia I have as a 40-something, uh, looks. looking back on my life is just litter with, you know, good days of Ruby and this new framework called Rails, Ruby on Rails, to take us into this new thing, which was build naps quickly with crud and scaffolding and these unheard of ways to do things easily, more quickly and with more joy. What does that bring up to you, Jim, when you think about these olden days? Would you call the good old days? Is that how you'd frame them? The good old days? I feel like when you say that the good old days, uh, that suggests that these days are not good. Um, yeah. And, or like,

it elevates those, those old days and, uh, not to say that those weren't good days. These are good days too. Um, for sure. Technology wise. Like, there, we've got our challenges in front of us, but whatever. Um, I think, yeah, they, that was, uh, that period of time was a lot of fun. But, you know, I think we also kind of, uh, put on those rose color glasses a little bit. Like, there was a you know there were things like MIRB and like there was a whole we're going to fork the code base and people are going to go in a different direction for a while and and then things got resolved and things got better for everybody so yeah there certainly are a lot of moments in there both at the community at large you know through through my experiences and whatnot and most of them are really good Mm-hmm. And you've never left. Like, you're still doing Ruby, still running Ruby-related meetups and events. Has it been consistent for you, like from 2010 to 2025? Yes, it has. I think the, like, the thing that changed was events. The pandemic got rid of

events for a period of time there. And so we did Madison Plus Ruby from 2011 to 2000. 18. We actually stopped just before the pandemic. But we had done a Madison Plus Ruby event in Chicago. We had done a Madison Plus Ruby event in Los Angeles. So it was traveling with those back then as well. And then, you know, the pandemic just sort of shut everything down. We moved, I think, like a number of people, we moved out of a city center and we're sort of out in the middle of nowhere right now. And so I don't have local community. And, uh, So I've had to sort of seek it out. And that's a little bit the genesis of the events that we're looking forward to over the next two months, which is X over me.

The feedback that I constantly get from meetup organizers is that it's hard to get people to show up every month. So like if they get a good speaker or if they get, you know, there's some coincidences with something that's happening in town. like they'll get spikes but then uh attendance is is up and down and um it's easier in a in a place like new york or chicago or wherever but for the smaller towns it's a little bit more difficult um and it's just it's so easy to not put on your shoes it's so easy to not leave the house i can go on youtube and find a thousand uh talks to watch or right have you um and I think the big thing, and Adam you alluded to this earlier, the big thing for me is it's that in-person connecting with people. It is the ability to sit down.

One of my favorite stories from a conference was talking to an attendee from Madison Ruby, and they were so excited to get to sit down with Tenderlove. And they talked about America's next top model for like an hour. And it's like, you would never think, looking at Aaron's public persona that that's what the thing that you're going to wind up in a conversation about. So I think there's so many surprises that happen when you talk to people face to face or, you know, I really want to talk to Adam, but he's talking to somebody else over there. So I'll talk to Jared in the meantime. Turns out, Jared and I have things in common that we didn't know. And so there's this serendipity that's possible in in-person events that just you cannot replicate in online events. Right.

If you can, you have to be extremely intentional about it. You can't replicate it and you also can't guarantee it either. And so there's a risk involved. And like you said, it's so easy just to keep your shoes off. I think that it's hard for folks to see that value when it's variable. And when there's so many barriers to getting there, to putting your, sticking your neck out, right, to shaking a hand that you don't know to all the things, right, when it's just easier to stay home and watch videos on YouTube or watch America's top model, what does a small group look like and what does a big group look like? Like, what's the difference? We're talking like 10 to 50 people or like 2 to 20, like what numbers are you guys talking about?

for for meetups today you mean yeah like you're talking about people struggling made with manison or yeah i think i think on the the smaller end you're talking uh five to 10 people um on the larger end you know san francisco's outlier in a lot of ways but i think they regularly get 100 people or so i could be wrong about that number um chicago's routinely you know 40 to 60 people depending on the speaker um and it there's you know as i've been doing research for Exo Ruby, Columbus Ruby Brigade, which was always very strong, you know, appears to have made it out of the pandemic, and they're doing pretty well to this day. But I would say that that's not super common.

Are speakers always involved? It seems like you could do meetups just for meetups sake, like let's just hang, and that might be less, maybe it's more intimidating, maybe it's less intimidating, but does that work or no? I'm a consultant, and so the answer that I give most often, is it depends but you're right it does sound easier you know the real answer is

what do you do instead like there are lots of groups that just do social nights and that's less intimidating not everybody's you know especially men of a certain age whatever might not want to go out drinking

so you can do social nights you're going to get some people in you're going to get some people out you can do like an activity night where you know everybody's downloading software and running it or what have you. There's perhaps more work for their organizer in those rounds.

And in general, it seems like while speakers can sometimes be hard to find, there is usually somebody that wants to promote something that they're doing. And so lots of meetups will engage remote speakers at times, because that way they don't have to pay somebody to travel. if they're from out of the area. But the good ones are mixing it up and having a local person speak and then have a remote speaker as well. And so now you're deciding to do this regional, is it conferences? They're actually conferences or these are meetups?

What are these things that you're going to do this fall? They're single-day, single-track conferences, right? I mean, for about 60 people. And that's the size where you can actually meet everybody in the room. And we're also able to, we're not going to be in beige boxes, right? We're not going to be in hotel ballrooms. We're going to be in, in Chicago, we've got a loft, like, warehouse space with soaring ceilings. In Atlanta, it's a small black box theater.

And in New Orleans, we're in a, I should really look up how old this place is, but it's called the Marini Opera House. It used to be the Holy Trinity Church. and it is just every bit New Orleans church which is it's a white brick building but it looks really gritty and dirty on the outside

you get inside and it's just it's fantastic and I'm super excited about that venue in particular in Portland we've got an industrial chic warehouse space and we're bringing projector PA stage backdrop

pretty much the entire conference is going to go into the back of the vehicle and drive from city to city. And so I've got 7,500 miles of driving ahead of me in the next two months. And with the goal of, you know, we could go into any space. If you got power, seats, and bathrooms, we'll be able to put on an event. That was the thought. What's the venue for Austin? That's your last leg is Austin. That's my stomping ground.

You know that, right? I'm in Austin now. I do know that. And, uh, yeah. My, my theater, uh, there was a, uh, somebody came in and sniped my, my venue out from underneath me. And so I've got a couple. Homeless.

Uh, I mean, I am, I am, well, you know what I mean. I'm venueless in Austin at the moment. Venueless, yeah. The word. I'm experiencing, I'm experiencing, I'm experiencing venuelessness. And, uh, I, so, I'm going to work with. with the folks at Alamo Draft House. There's a possibility there.

I don't want to shade anybody, but there's a well-known, like, incubator space there that I haven't had any response from reached out there. So, yeah, I'm, I'm unfazed. Our demands on space is not that large that there won't. Guess who else is going to be there, Jared? Landon Gray. is that name bring about to you?

Think back to an aberrant generation of programmers. Oh, Landon. Yeah, Landon. He was the young, but I don't know, what was the... Argenzzi, yeah. Yes, with us. Landon is speaking there, according to the site. That's cool.

Sure is. And you know where I'm... I didn't know Landon. Did you ask how I know? I assume he was in Austin, but yeah, how do you know him? I know him from a conference. I went to Blue Ridge Ruby two years ago in Nashville and Metland. He was working at Test Double at the time.

Then I forget if it was, it must have been last year, I traveled and we did a traveling meetup in New York City, and he lives in upstate New York, and so he came down and spoke at our event in New York City. Yeah, he and I have been bouncing off of one another ever since. Is he an Austinite? No, he's a upstate New York. Okay, so he's just, he's coming down then for that. He's cool.

And the point of doing these conferences is to put them in people's backyard so that there's not the expensive. We've been working with Ruby Central to put on, to do the designs like both digital and in physical space for RELSConf and RubyConf. And the feedback that we constantly get is, like, like, this is great, but I've got to take an entire week off work. I have, I've got to spend a week in a hotel in a major metro, and all those things are expensive. And what is also true is that you can't really get that experience without doing that, where you bring all the people to, like you bring a bunch of the community together, get 800 people together in the same space. That's hard to do in any other alignment. But there was a gap.

that we saw, which was, what if you didn't have to travel, you didn't have to take a plane? What if you didn't have to drive eight hours or whatever? What if there was no hotel involved? And what if the ticket, instead of being like $300 per day, was $100. And that was what we were trying to solve for. And so we spoke of the folks at Cisco, and they saw what we were trying to do. And so we teamed up with them. there are a foundational sponsor.

They're sponsoring the entire series of events we're doing this year. And honestly, couldn't have done that without them. Yeah, for sure. I feel like this is a, you know, when I first heard about this, I'm being honest, I was like, gosh, man, events are so hard.

Smaller events have to be even harder. How do the economics work and how do you get motivated by it? So like what, you don't have to share the numbers behind the scenes necessarily But what is it that makes you want to do this? Like what makes this hard? It seems like a hard journey to me. What makes this hard journey worth it to you? Events have always been a, I have always had events going back all the way to 2008.

I submitted a talk to Scotland on Rails. And I pitched to talk on geospatial searching in Rails, which was using thinking stinks at the time and got accepted. I'd never done a talk before. And it bombed. It bombed so hard. Like, of a 30-minute talk, the first 15 minutes was mostly me on-stage sweating because we were trying to figure out how to get my computer to work with a Wi-Fi signal. And, you know, classic, classic thing that would only happen in an event. And you live and learn. And I've never gotten caught by that again. But what also happened was I was waiting in the registration line and I'm watching Ellen Francis, Grant, Paul, just completely swamped by this rush of people

who are trying to get through the registration process. And so I jump behind the table and I'm like, I can handle T-shirts, you know, tell me your size, I'll get you to the shirt size that you need after you get registered and whatnot. And so that was, I've shared the story a number of times and also with them, but I was like, man, if these guys can do it, I could do this as well. And so, you know, we've done Madison Ruby for about 10 instances, including last year. And it was the last one where I was just like, this is really risky. Like our expenses are significant and what would make them easier to pull off would be if we can lower the risk profile.

And so through the sponsorship that we got from Cisco, we're able to cover all of our venues and cover some of our expenses. And then working with our local sponsors, if we are able to reach our sponsorship goals, you know, we have everything covered. and then any of the ticket sales is on top of that. We haven't hit all of our sponsorship goals yet, but I'm positive. That will get pretty close. And people can, if they don't have to plan a trip, they can buy a ticket the night before and still make the show. And so we're going to cities where there are significant Ruby user groups.

There are just a significant population, and we've tried to lower the risk at every stage so that we're not left holding the bag. When we ran our first Madison Ruby, I personally lost $9,000. I'm going to adjust that to say my wife and I, who's sitting in the other room right now, lost $9,000. She appreciate that. Yeah. We eventually figured that out and got it back. that was also the only time ever wound up on the front page of Hacker News because we cut the ticket price from 495 down to 250 and said, we're refunding everybody who bought at that 495 price.

We're refunding you down to 250 and got a bunch of press out of it. And we still lost money, but I think it would have been even worse having that to that. Was it, you reduced the price because you wanted to get more or because it was selling less to make it more attractive? And then you felt bad charging some people higher and some people lower kind of thing? That's right. It felt like the right thing to do. Yeah. Yeah, because usually it's early bird you buy early.

You get the better price, not you get the worst price. Right. You don't want to take the people who supported you early and say, sorry, this shaft is for you. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's not what the Buds or Budweiser's tagline is. It's close, but it's not.

This shaft is for you. Yeah, the shaft is not for you, okay? Don't take it. Well, maybe in an attempt to shed some light on your sponsorship opportunities for Exo Ruby, where in the world can people go and find out of how to sponsor this thing and learn about it? Like what's, I know exoruby.com, but is there a sponsor page? I couldn't find one. That is an excellent point, Adam.

By the time. I'm so sorry. No, no, no. By the time this airs, there will be. If you go to the, if you go to the footer, there's a promo kit. If you go to that, that link, there are some sponsorship. stuff in there. And also if you go to, if anybody's just interested, you can go to slash sponsor and it will take you there. You know what? I'm feeling better about myself. If you,

in the top nav, there is a link to the fire starter, which is a campaign to support this. It includes sponsorship at like, you know, the event and city level. But also if you wanted to. Okay. Oh, I see this now. Yes. If you want to buy a ticket or buy us a ticket gas or tacos. or however you want to support, like if we're not going to be coming where you are and you still want to support, just go to the fire starter page on Xerooby.com

and all the details are there. That actually is a proper page to send people to. If you scroll a couple times, listeners, if you're going there, scroll a little bit, past some of the things that are important, but if you want to go right to the sponsor details, this is actually really cool. You got like one leg sponsor where somebody can sponsor a leg

or if you want, like you said, you know, tacos or whatever. or one of each, I think was kind of cool. You spend, you know, $600 and you get one ticket for each event. Maybe you go on the road with you or whatever. I don't know. This is kind of cool. I like this.

I mean, I think the truth of our work days and the events that we put on is that we can kind of make them look however we want. Like, there's going to be lines, but you don't always have to stay within the lines. Yeah. And so this is, you know, this is quite literally me putting, somebody suggested I was playing Johnny Appleseed, like going around, planting a bunch of trees. And if we go to Atlanta and we're working with the local organizers in Atlanta, and if they say, hey, this turned out really well, would you mind if we do this next year? They're like, no, here's a playbook. You can do this next year. And so if somebody takes that playbook and runs with their own conference in Atlanta next year, we'll go somewhere else.

We've already spoken with folks in Boston, Denver, and Kansas City that are asking, you know, would you bring an ex-a-re conference here? And the answer is, let's get the first three out of the way first, and then let's talk. But there's nothing stopping us from doing that. And we have a pretty good understanding of how to put these on. Yeah. Does that mean that I'm on the Madison Ruby website now? Sorry if I'm pulling out some more things here, but I'm noticing that it doesn't say 2025 on this webpage I'm on now,

Madison Ruby.com. Adam, I'm already putting on six conferences this year. You want me to put one on in Madison? I'm not suggesting that you are. What I'm asking is, does that mean this is paused so that you can do this? Absolutely. This is a heavy lift And the first year of a conference

Is always the hardest Anybody who's been to a Madison Ruby Will recognize bits and pieces of what we've done in Madison In each of these Including some of the speakers Including, you know Some of the activities and whatnot

So I want to do Something in Madison again But honestly it will probably be an Exo Ruby Rather than Madison Plus Does the website get a lot of traffic To Madison Ruby? Does it just kind of like fickle whenever there's no event really happening it seems like it's fairly fickle and on monday

for some reason we got 400 hits and i have no idea yeah well those 400 people do not know about ex or ruby that was going to be my next thing was like okay let's tell i mean because you're famous for doing this for 10 seasons as you had said like 10 was it 9 or 10 uh 10 10 i mean 10's a lot right That's a decade of producing a conference. So there's got to be some sort of brain equity there where people are coming back to it or there's content that people are coming to. Leverage that.

Promote X-O-Rubi on Madison Ruby. It's all your company flagrant. So, you know, I would happily like say, we're paused, but that doesn't mean we're not here. We're elsewhere in the world kind of thing. We'll be back. Well, yeah, we'll be back. Thumbs up.

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What are some of the challenges that have come up with organizing six in a row, I guess, or you have to organize them in parallel, but they operate in a row. I assume call for papers is probably harder. Lots of stuff is probably harder when you got six things going on. So, yes, that is true. Which is why we didn't do. a traditional CFP for this. I largely curated the talks for the first couple of events.

If you go to the schedule, if there's a slot where there's not a speaker, there is a link there to sign up and say that you'd like to join. Because again, the hope is that we or somebody else will do this again next year. And so we really want to find out where people are. So

that's part of it. And then the failures cascade, right? And so, thankfully, in the first round, we actually lost our venue in Chicago once and had to go to a backup. And while I'm extremely happy with the backup, in fact, that's what happened with Madison plus Ruby the first year, and we wound up with this amazing venue that we really loved. But that meant that we had to go back through and reschedule all of our events in,

or both of our events in Atlanta and New Orleans after that venue fell through. So that is a risk in doing these serving series. Typically, you get into a workflow of, you know, there's a build to a conference, and then you're done and you get to rest. And it's just been building, you know,

for the last couple months. And in two weeks, we'll get some relief. So you picked this every Saturday cadence for a group of three, and then there seems like there's some short break, and then another group of three. thoughts behind that like what versus you could have done like every other week and maybe just spread them out and relax a little bit in between but here you have Saturday Saturday Saturday and then a little break should have done Sundays Sunday Sunday Sunday Sunday

Sunday you can sell more tickets that way sounds like a deal you buy the entire seat but you'll only use the edge sorry that was a good one I grew up I grew up I grew up going to race tracks. My dad drove stock cars. But there is a gap. You're absolutely right. And in fact, I drive from Chicago to Atlanta to New Orleans. And then Austin's right here. But instead of going to Austin, I drive back to Wisconsin. My wife's birthday is in that gap. And so wanted to come home, spend some time at home. And then something that's not even on the XRubi map, I'm actually going to Rocky Mountain Ruby before I start the Western Lake. It's going to drive out to Denver,

flagrant to sponsoring Rocky Mountain Ruby. And then we'll start the rest of the second leg after that. Gotcha. You're going to make a documentary or something, like road trip, you know, like road rules. But RubyConf style, Ruby conferences, Exmo Ruby Road Rules. I do have a little mobile camera rig, like a cage to put her on my mobile camera. And I've been talking with some filmmakers about getting, like, even just behind-the-scenes stuff.

Like, if I'm driving past the largest ball of twine in the country, we'll stop and take a picture. We're also, DeAnd Simple is sponsoring, and one of their mascots is a, like, Like in the write-up that they have about their mascot, it says that he's always up for a road trip. And so I'm going to try and get them to send me a plushy to ride shotgun with me. But yeah, we're going to try and do something. We're also working with Con Freaks, trying to get them to record all these events. And if nothing else, maybe we'll do something a little bit DIY to get them recorded if we need to. Man, I haven't heard that we named Con Freaks in a long time.

It has been a long time. So long, I was going to ask you to remind me the person's name. And as soon as you say, it's going to be on my, it's going to be, who runs that? You are probably thinking of Kobe. Yes. He's at Heroku. He's got bigger fish to fry. He worked with Cindy Backman, who has been running Con Freaks for the last six, seven years.

And always brings a really, like, she sees so much, right? She goes to so many conferences and so many Ruby events and whatnot. She's got an interesting perspective on the history of the Ruby community and actually has found herself on stage at RubyConf. Yeah, just. And then she, not only does she record the talks, but she goes through and edits all the talks as well.

And so just. It's a lot of work. Yeah. So much work. Wow. actually the last time I think we saw is it Kobe is that right not Kobe

Kobe last time we saw Kobe was was at Keep Ruby Weird first edition here in Austin Jared remember that 2014 I remember the event I don't remember that being the last

Kobe was in the Rafters with us recording I remember that part but didn't we see Kobe at like Oskine as well later maybe maybe maybe it's fuzzy back there in the history books It's fuzzy. But I do remember Keeper be weird at Austin,

because that was the first time that we met, wasn't it, Adam? I think so, man. Yeah. And that was at the Alamo Draft House, Jim. So that was a good venue, good venue. Yeah, I'm talking with, I wanted Caleb to come speak at the Austin event. He's up in Denver. He's not going to make it down.

He has a conflict. But I've also got a call into Terrence as well. Oh, yeah, Terrancy, you could help out for sure. Yeah. If you mean Terrance Lee. I assume you mean Terrance Lee. Blue Hat, of course. Yes, the Blue Hat, famous for the Blue Hat.

Was it Tar Hills, North Carolina Tar Hills? No what it is? Or was it just a blue hat? I think it's just a blue hat. Okay. I wasn't sure. I thought it was the Tar Hills, but it could be. I actually spoke to him earlier this year.

We had a sponsorship with Heroku, and I got a chance to catch up with him again. And then he gave me this number, and I've been too busy to reach out to him since then. So, Terrence, you're on my list, man. I'm going to reach out. I was he's like, hey, you're in Austin. We need to hang out. You do? And perhaps you could do that October 25th.

You know, I'm going to come. You're going to make it? I don't see any reason why I can't make it. If it's, let's see what day of the week is Saturday. We already. Saturday, right? Yep. Yeah, man.

We established a joke already. Yes, it's not someday. It's well established. There's Saturday. Saturday, Saturday. Nothing on, yeah. There's nothing on my calendar for that day. That's not true.

You have zero excuses. Let me enable my wife's calendar now. Oh, he's trying to find one. He's trying to find any excuse not coming to spend time. He is. He's trying to back out. Live on the air here. We do have a YMCA parent's night out on the calendar that day. You could still go to that later.

Yeah, this is 9 to 5. Like, that's later. Yeah, that's your evening. And I think that means that we would have no kids, which is great because the kids go to YMCA and have fun and then we can go somewhere else. So maybe she's trying to take me out of date. Go to the after party. Is there an after party or anything? The thing about after parties is that they call.

cost money and okay nine to five I see what kind of confidence at a hundred dollar ticket um like what has happened in the past is you know once you get people together uh plans for them and and people wind up in places together but um we're we're not planning a uh an after party but we do suspect that people are going to gather afterwards yeah i got some ideas for you we should talk i'll uh at least here in austin that's that's about it Some venues and some thoughts. Just whatever.

If it will be helpful, I'll be helpful. And if I can make it, I will for sure make it for sure. This is the thing, you know, and to your point about putting the sponsors, the opportunity to, you know, show interest in sponsoring. When you give people an explicit direction as to how they could help, they can see that. And so I've got, you know, if you want to speak, you know, reach out. Let's talk. If you want to attend, there is not yet.

But by the time this airs, there will be a volunteer link as well. We're going to overstaff with volunteers. And so if you wanted to come to the event and you want to give up an hour or two at the beginning or end of the conference to volunteer, we'll let you in for free. We've always done that with Madison Ruby. And there are people that came into the community that way that had that opportunity that now work at Square and Coinbase. That's cool. Yeah. And so what people most often need is an in.

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That is Miro.com. M-I-R-O dot com. You know, you made me think about something since you've been running these events so long. You have that thing, that thing that you do, so to speak, the way you run it. Is there anything in particular that you do that you feel like makes an event, whether it's Madison plus Ruby or if it's XO Ruby or whatever you're doing? What are some things that you try to always do as like a DNA thing for your events? So that's an excellent question. We always try and get people into conversations with other people at the conference.

And like that sort of naturally happens at a hallway track. If you're going to your first time conference, this happens. to me back in, you know, I got sent to a dot-net conference out in Vegas. And I went to, like, methodically went to talks that I thought could help my, my company, my career, whatever. And what I understand now is that it's the people. Like, that's the benefit, that's the value. You can get connected to people that are going to help you at work. You can get connected to people who you could potentially hire for your job. can get connected to people that are, you know, going to wind up driving in a car down to

future web apps and fanboying, uh, over, you know, somebody else in the car. Like, I'm telling you. I mean, so you mentioned, it was Obi. I couldn't help it. He's the coolest. You mentioned still is the coolest. You mentioned Stephen Bristol, uh, oh my gosh, or in that conversation earlier. And that was a lesson that I learned from him is we would walk around at a conference and he, uh, he would always. find like a wallflower or somebody who wasn't doing anything and he would just bring him into the fold yes he was and he wouldn't let you go he grabbed you not physically sometimes physically

but he from his who he had tractor beam like he's like a tractor beam get over here you know you get into this conversation don't you be isolated over there and he would he would force you out of your show he really would in i know he did to me the best way i was going to say then you realize that oh that's why i'm here Right? Like, he did that to me. Yeah. Yeah. And so that is another thing that I, you know, just try to always make sure that if there are people who seem like they're lost or seem like they don't know what to do, like make an introduction.

I can't, especially as a host, I can't, like, sit there and talk with everybody all day long. But I can connect them with somebody who's going to make sure that they're seen after and introduce to people and have a proper conference. experience. Another thing that I think is inherent in the way that we've done things is I will always look for people who have never spoken before. I remember Nell Shamrell gave her first talk at Addison Ruby, I think, in 2012. And there was something about Nell that caused me to want to do that. but she had never spoken before so I didn't have anything necessarily to base that on

other than she was a great person and turns out she had a drama background and she just absolutely delivered her talk and probably the best talk of that conference and so even at RailsConf this year the last RailsConf we I had somebody come up to our booth and I was like do you want to speak and she's like you know you're not the first person to ask me that and so that was Tia she's going to wind up speaking in Austin as well so always just trying to try to find people that think that there is an explicit rule set that they have to play by and you have to either wait their turn or wait for permission or what have you and say hey can I take you to the front of the line you don't actually have to wait for anybody you can

just do it. One of those things with getting everybody together is we are not catering the conference. We are strategically getting venues that are surrounded by good restaurants, and we're giving everybody $25 to go out and grab lunch. And so it's a little bit of adventure. So you spend $100 and get $25 back to go eat lunch? That is a heck of a deal, if you ask me. That's an awesome deal.

I love that deal. And that is something that we did for Madison. We had the luxury of, you know, being downtown and having really fantastic restaurants around. But the other thing is, it doesn't matter how good you are, how good your catering staff is. It's hard to serve 100 great lunches to people all at the same tunnel. It is. And so add on top of that. food sensitivities and concerns of that nature, whether you're preferences,

vegetarian, vegan, whatever, halal, it's hard for me to serve all those people in that way. One thing that Alan and Stephen did, we keep seeing their names, I miss this guy so much. Obviously, I miss Stephen, but when they did less comp, when they did, and this is probably why Alan is mayor, because he went out, and if you recall this, Jim, you can share your side of the story, but they went out to particular local venues and said, hey, we're going to have people here for this reason. And they made a list of where you can go. I don't recall if it was free or what it was. I think it might have been free as part of the conference. But it was like they had already set it up. You go out into that small town, into that little city, into Panama City. And you go where you want

to closest to the venue. You go walk there. You can go with the friend groups. You've made. You can make new friends. You can invite yourself somewhere, be invited somewhere. But they had already identified various places you can go. And it was just really easy. And those folks were ready for it. They weren't barbed. But you had selection.

You got to see the city. And you got to come back to the venue and continue your conference experience. Like nothing happened. And it was such a, it seems smooth to me. Maybe as an event plan or not very smooth. But as an attendee, I thought it was super cool, very smooth. And I got the choice of where I was. wanted to go. And I thought that was the best experience ever. Yeah. We, uh, in downtown

Madison, there is a local business community called downtown Madison Inc. And they have gift certificates. And so we did gift certificates one year. Just give them a gift certificate. And, uh, and, uh, and you're covered. But there were so many people that went someplace where it wasn't accepted or, um, like that, that value wound up getting lost for like, they would give it back. They would just give us a gift to get back and say, that's good for me, but, you know, you didn't get the thing that you paid for as part of your deal. Yeah. But that experience of, like, going out, seeing the city, finding some local hole in the wall and, you know, I can, I could feed you high quality salads all day long or, or, you know, maybe you'd rather have a steak or whatever. Some people, you know, I'll just kill a hot dog.

Like, I'm not fancy. And so it's gotten to the point where people, people expect variety and, you know, they have preferences that they want to hold up. And so we'd rather leave people to their preferences. Kind of like that awesome burrito place that we found in, what was that Vancouver, Adam? Oh, my God. Yeah, led to a burrito place that Adam just, to this day, loved. I remember it like it was literally yesterday and it was not yesterday, obviously. hilarious.

Oh, it was bad. Some random person that we just was hanging out with. He's being very kind. Yeah, let's go to lunch and he lives there. And he's like, all right, I'll take you guys to this burrito place. It's amazing or something, I don't know. And it wasn't that bad, but Adam, it didn't jive with Adam at all. And so we're trying to be gracious, you know, but Adam's not as good at acting like this tastes good.

I left hungry, let's just say. I left hungry. Yeah. And a smirk or not a smirk. What's the opposite of a smirk on his face? Total frown. You know, not that I'm basically.

You frowning. I don't want to change in us too much further. But you knocked a hot dog and I had some friends over a few months back. Well, you said, you said I can kill a hot dog. Yeah, kill one. Okay. No, like knock it down.

Knock it down. Gotcha. Yeah, kill it. Gotcha. Like you didn't like it. Shut it down your throat. I had hot dogs for lunch yesterday, man. Well, I discovered these Wagyu hot dogs and these Wagyu hot dogs.

I'd never had Wagyu hot dogs like this ever in my life. We had some friends over for the 4th of July this year. And they brought them as like a tradition for them. Like, sure, sweet. I'll cook them. And so they brought their Wagyu hot dogs and we got the long buns and all that stuff. And I got a Weber kettle. And I got them over a real fire.

So they got all the flavor in it. And I promise you. I'll make it for both of you one day. Some of the best hot dogs I've ever had in my whole life. In fact, those, when I think about hot dogs that I want to have in my life, if I could eat a hot dog like that every day in my life or not, every time I eat a hot dog, if it was like that, that's my example of a hot dog. It was so good.

So good. Yeah, no. Are you at, Jim? I mean, thankfully, you all are, you are, this is afternoon for you too. Yeah. Yeah, I just bought probably three months ago. Weber smoking mountain and so I've been smoking up a storm in the backyard well we can we can talk about that in the after show for sure I will talk about barbecue with you all day long

because is is one of my passions so exoruby dot com this is like pretty much tomorrow you kick off are you are you bags packed have you got piles of laundry that you're washing like what is what is your stress level in this moment stress level is pretty low like It's going to unfold and it will be the thing that it is. That's one way to look at it. You could always sell more tickets. You could always have more sponsors, but it's not like we're not still working on it. But I've got backdrops and projector.

I did a test run at my mom's 55 plus community on Sunday night just to bring everything out, put it all together, make sure that I've got all the connections that need um what was your talk about did you tell them about no no i i didn't actually do a talk i just got everything put together um but they have a community space that is large enough to to put it all together because it turns out you know it's like uh 30 30 feet of back drops that's a big one it don't drive run that uh day one right like test run that at a 55 plus community where this was not my first test run either because I did, I think, two weeks before I did one, and it did not go well. I'm like, I'm so glad that I don't have 100 people sitting behind me saying, where's the show?

You know, the one thing that does have me sweating a little bit is that I ordered the projection screen online, and it was supposed to be here on Saturday the 23rd, and then they said, oh, it's delayed, it'll be there on August the 26th. Well, it's now August the 27th, and I don't have a screen to predict. done yet so less than a week or you have more than a week you got more than one week yeah you got a week and a half i yeah chicago september 6th well i mean if it doesn't arrive it drop ship it to wherever you're going to be at you know don't be like it's only at home i can take deliveries take delivery wherever you can't change that that late in the game it's gonna show no you can't you know the next venue though the next event gets the it's the screen you should order a backup

and ship it straight to atlanta right i have found uh there is a a not nearly as good version, but there is a version that I can get that should be able to get here in time. But I want the good version. I want the best experience for people. Well, if you are in and or around Chicago, Atlanta, Nalens, as they call it down there, Portland, San Diego, and especially Austin, because I hear one, Adam Sikovic, will be in attendance. I will be in attendance. It's not too late to get it on it, right? You're selling tickets right up to the day, I suppose.

The other thing, too, is if you're in between those cities, I'd love to stop and have coffee or whatever. Oh, cool. That part of making the movie or making the documentary is we want to find people along the way. I've got one stopper already in Nashville, and then talking to Travis Doctor, who's planning blast off rails for next year in Santa Fe, New Mexico, about stopping there as well. Put your route up on the website. Put your route so that people can see where you'll be generally speaking, you know, that'd be cool. I think, again, in that promo kit,

which is in the footer of the Xerooby.com, I think there is a link, but we'll make it more prominent and do a specific call on the blog. Yeah, yeah, that would be cool. Here's what would be when. I would almost encourage, I'm trying to feverishly to see if you'll correct me,

but if there's already an Instagram, doesn't they just sort of brand new Instagram just for this or something like that, anything to kind of like document as you go because that thing will catch steam you know I mean or even LinkedIn I suppose our version of Instagram is right LinkedIn right yeah I think um I was trying to I was trying to I was that I guess the name as I said it I was like oh that it's kind of sad our version of Instagram is well our like our like I think less of our community is they're probably on Instagram but not for that kind of content maybe I don't know I was just thinking like

it might be better suited for link problem with our community with software developers is that we're scattered to the four winds that's the problem you are there is no home anymore there is no home for anybody anymore like there is not one place um right where you can go and find everybody and that is absolutely a lesson uh that i'm i i knew going in but i'm just feeling so hard um i don't necessarily know how to solve it we are we are not creating our own like uh communication asynchronous communication space. We're partnered with Ruby Central and we're using their Slack. So if you buy ticket to the conference, you get added in Slack. You could always join the Ruby Central Slack from their site. But we didn't want to create further. They didn't want to create

our own Discord and have yet another walled garden that people can't get access to you. Or even temporary. Like I've been to so many conferences over the years where you have a temporary place. and all the connection you're trying to make is stuck in that past. That's a great choice to choose. It's a great choice to use Ruby Central's Slack and just double up because, like, put them where the community's at and not where it's temporary. You know, that makes a lot of sense. We did that with Madison Ruby,

and we will be moving everybody over to that Ruby Central Community Slack instead, giving people the opportunity to move over there. We're going to force people if they don't want to. How in the world do they afford that slack? I think it's free. I think it's the free version. Man, I got to know who they know. Well, not anymore because we use it's so much better, by the way.

They probably just lose their history like we used to. Yeah, that's probably the case, man. Anyways, Zulip, hey, Zulip is cool. We love Zulip. It's cool. Another place you can go. That's one more. That's the challenge.

That's true. I did not join after we started talking. That's the problem. It's like I'd rather, here's the thing. It's like early, early Twitter days. everybody was in one spot and there weren't alternatives there weren't other people doing the same thing um now there are too many you got blue sky mastodon instagram threads linkedin x um i wow how do you find people and that's on top of like you know individual discords and zulips and slacks yeah well i did was

discord what you do is duelop anytime somebody says join my discord i'm like nope nope nope i'm just not going to do this discord i just decided to nope out of all discords i'm not going to do it i have an account and i'm a part like two but it's such i don't even understand how to use it like i'm i feel like i'm old or something i'm like how does this work discord just feels like uh it's more about them than me discord i i definitely struggle with i think i have about 72 discord accounts that don't seem connected to any other thing that i i know or do and it's like every time I join it's like oh you're a new person I was like no

I'm the same person yeah their joint process it's horrible it's like the old day's KCD about the protocols because right now I'm about to say what we need is one new place we're all going to go and then we'll be happy and that will be the place that only goes

that's LinkedIn yeah that's what Adam just said LinkedIn maybe maybe I mean I like Instagram for olds is that what you're saying Adam you know no I think Instagram is for everybody. I just thought that maybe more people would gravitate towards LinkedIn. Like, I know I'm, I'd probably check LinkedIn several times a week, whereas Instagram I'm on there,

like maybe, maybe once. And it's just really just to look at my wife sharing our life to our friends on Instagram, because I like the way she shares it. I just want to see what she says and look at the picture she takes. And I saw them in the moment. I saw them in the camera because she's like, hey, look at this picture, but somehow seeing the story version of it later on from the publisher, wife is very cool to me. So I'd pretty much go to Instagram to read DMs from her because she sends me things that she finds on there. Same. And watch what she shares on there about our life. That's the only reason I go to Instagram. To look at her pictures. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's it. That's Instagram for me. So, I mean, there you go. But I've definitely taken the tact of

trying to not add another protocol, but just drop them. So I never even wound up on threads. Yeah, same. I was like, no, I don't think so, man. is this a version of Facebook I want to be involved in? Threads just never made sense to me. Given Zucker enough in my life, you know. It was an also ran. It was an also ran that just didn't run. I don't know.

There's a lot of people there. There's people there, but they're not real people, I don't think. A bunch of bots. No offense to those people, but they're just like, you know. Kara Swisher's going to be upset with you, Jared. Yes, she might. But, you know, she's cross-posts everywhere. Come on.

True. That's what people with big follower accounts do is they just, every new thing, they're on it because they want to get that follower count up and they just cross-posts the same crap across all of it. I feel seen. I've been cross-posting stuff for X-O-R-R-Vee lately. Yeah, you're not lying. No, I mean, what else are you want to go where the people are?

Now the people are in seven different places. And so you're just like, well, I guess we'll post to seven different places, but we're not going to be happy about it. So no allegiances anymore. You know, I know I asked you what was your motivation, but I think maybe a different version of that is what a success of this for you? Like, when you're

done with the road show, it's December, maybe you're sitting on your couch and you're getting ready for Christmas and you're reflecting on your year and you're like, man, this is what happened with Exo Ruby and you're recounting your brain what happened. What is success? What would that be for you?

You know, there's a dirty secret in all of this, right? Which is, I have run out at we haven't heard from my wife in the other room this entire thing but this might be the one thing I have run out of clients under this roof that I need to go out and meet people and so part of this is a sales trip right like this is me going out on the road meeting a bunch of people in a new locations and and looking for you know design and development work for flagrant

but like that's a that is a so that is one goal But the bigger goal would be for people to, there have been people who've had whole careers over the last five years that haven't had access to local conferences that don't understand that you can talk to somebody and get access to opportunities that they didn't know existed because they weren't in the same physical space with one another. So if I'm sitting there and I find out, hey, I just got a new job from somebody that I met. at XR Ruby, like that's a huge win. I've been looking for, you know, I just talked to somebody right before this call and they said, I've been on the market for nine months and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. What do you recommend? And I sent them a ticket to Atlanta.

So they're going to show up in Atlanta and hopefully they'll walk away with a connection that leads to to work or, you know, some opportunity that is beneficial to them. But that's really the goal. is to get people on stage that I've never spoken before. It is get people to understand that, you know, there is a unique serendipity that is only available if you show up. I've got a friend and mentor, Martin Atkins, he's a musician. He always says, awesome stuff happens when you do stuff.

Nothing happens when you don't. and if you never leave the house you're never going to meet new people you're never going to find opportunity it doesn't just show up at your door and say hey do you want a job like that doesn't happen there was a time where that happened

in the 2010s but that is no longer the case and so you've got to go out you've got to meet people meet a lot of people because not all of them are going to you're not going to connect with all of them. But if you meet enough people, you're going to find enough of your people

that something works out. Whatever that is for you, maybe it's a job, maybe it's an opportunity to learn woodworking from somebody that does woodworking. But that ability to connect with other humans is so important. Can we unpack that,

run out of roof or run out of clients under this roof comment and can we can we unpack that a bit more can you can you go there absolutely i mean i've been doing consulting for you know since 2011 i've been either an owner or a part owner uh going back to 2007 um my wife is one of my clients and she's in the other room um i've reached the limit of what i can sell her on and so now i've got to go out in the real world and get other clients for us to consult, right? She runs the software as a service. It's successful, and she only has a certain amount of needs. And so I've got to go out and, you know, find people that are looking for the skills that

me and my team have. And, you know, at this point, we're largely doing Rails and Hotwire. We've got some React and TypeScript folks, but we're about half and half design. and development. And so that is product design, UXY, all the way up to branding and the illustration. Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a tough market for everybody. And there's not a single consultancy owner that I have talked to that isn't struggling or laying people off or what have you.

Has this been a, is this a chat GPT thing of three years ago thing, like a decline since then? Is it been, I mean, I know we all went through the pandemic and there's lots of, crazy change up and then it was a whole different world and then it was back down to the new old world again kind of thing where it was back the way it was like has this been a trend for a decade or three years or what's the trend yeah i think the um i mean i i don't think that we have a unique story i think that um we we grew during the pandemic you know we were up to uh almost 20 people. We're down to 10 right now. And we are keeping our nose above water. But part of it is, unless you're going out and meeting new people, it's hard to get people to find you. And it's

even harder to get them to trust you. So it's really all of the new work that we've had this year, the bulk of it were people that we met 10 years ago that already trust us. The other brand new work that we've gotten has been referrals from people who trust us. And so it is really, you know, if you spend any amount of time around me, you will likely hear this comment. But it was something that was shared in 2011 when we started my first consultancy. Somebody shared this with me and they said, it's not what you know. It's not who you know. It's who knows you. And I've come to learn that that means who knows that you are. the person that's going to show up. Who knows that you are capable of solving their problem?

Who knows what your values are? And who knows that they can trust you? And so it's, that's the part of meeting a lot of people that, you know, it's not that I'm out there doing a little jigs so that everybody knows that I can do the jig. It's, you just, you've got to show up. And after a while, you know there's people just know that that's Jim that he's going to show up if you got a problem with with Rails or if you if you're doing Ruby and Madison you just talk to Jim if you want some really great design work done you should talk to Kelly but uh talk to Jim he'll get you connected that makes sense and so your world your world shrinking because of the I would say probably you run the event but is the lack of getting out there and meeting people out

outside of the Madison bubble is kind of what I hear you saying. It's like you want to go beyond Madison. I think that's fair. Like, yeah, because I mean, you've got pretty good touch points in Madison, right?

Like Madison Ruby's got to be giving you something. Sure. It is also only once a year. And so we wanted to do something that, you know, the original plan was to do 12 of these every year. And it would have been a cycle that just kept going. So it was constantly meeting new people.

And we decided. decided to settle for six and then just focus on the on the fall but if these turn out well we do have plans to do more of them and ideally if folks get involved and they're successful and they just want to keep running with it we would be happy to do that too because I would love to just go to events rather than throw them yeah put on an event is is tough business I've resisted my my entire life

and Jared you want to share recently we did a live show I mean Jared did all that pretty much I didn't do anything besides show up and smile and upset a few people really what do you want me to share about it you just uh

there's just the fact that we did it yeah we did that we haven't done anything like that but we did something you know it was the yes the smallest version of what we could do yeah totally it's not like we did six of them in a row we just did one so right you know we're my hikers jim how many people oh 50 that's good i mean that's a great audience what's what sort of any did you do it in we did it at the oriental theater

in denver so we picked the city first and then we asked around about locations and then found the location that was affordable and seemed like it was pretty cool and it was both those things so kind of got lucky i guess in that way yeah they were great to work with which can always be a variable as well. And we kept it as simple as we could possibly keep it. Like, even our meetup the night before was completely just like, here's where we're going to be. Come there if you want to. That kind of a thing. So it was just low stress for that reason. And then obviously putting the show on is something that we normally do twice a week anyways, just not on stage. So a little bit extra, but not too much. Right on. Well received. Everything went well? I think so. There's

obviously places where, as the self-critical people that we are, there's plenty to improve. But overall, I think everybody was pretty happy about it. And the show turned out pretty well. What do you think, Adam? I think when we did our consensus, recently we said the only thing we would have changed was have on-stage monitors. And I think that's a win, because if all you need is on-stage monitor, so you can hear yourself better than the mic as you interview somebody.

because we interviewed Nora Jones. She found a jelly. It was acquired by PagerDuty. We have a podcast about it via this live show. You can go listen to that. But, you know, we were talking into microphones, but we didn't have in-ear monitors and we didn't have on-stage monitors.

So she had to hear us for real. Like, the audience can hear us loud because they heard us through the, you know, the loudspeaker system, but she couldn't hear us very well. And we couldn't hear her as well as you would probably want to. I could still hear her, but it was a struggle in a couple cases where maybe the venue was louder.

Somebody laugh. Just something may have happened where it was like you couldn't hear us as well. And she'd say, huh, or what did you say? And that wouldn't have happened if we had on stage monitors or even in ear monitors. And so I feel like that's a major win if all we walk away with is, oh, on stage monitors. Everything else went pretty smooth. You know, there was no real, real hiccups that you couldn't solve in the moment. Yeah, that's it. That's a huge victory. So you're going to do 12 next year?

We did talk about doing several. Yeah, we did talk about more. Definitely more. Maybe not more than one a year. Maybe more than that. But I think we do want to do it again. I decided that much. We haven't we haven't circled back on it. Like I kind of walked away bullish, honestly. I don't think we should do more than four. More than four. Maybe two or three. Maybe two or three in the year. Would be cool? Definitely not one. One's not enough.

I feel like a couple. I don't know. One is special because it's the only one of the year, you know, so you better get to it. Whereas, you know, six and eight weeks or whatever it is. Here's the thing is the plan from the beginning was for me to drive far enough that somebody from Chicago is not going to drive to Atlanta, let alone the rest of the cities. And so it's local to Chicago, and there's enough people there to support that they get one a year. right right yeah and Atlanta gets one a year and you know maybe we decide to you know

rather than do San Diego we do Denver next year who knows I like that idea see so now you're talking about going on tour I'm already on tour well yeah but you're talking about us going on to or you're thinking about yourself or we're thinking about ourselves yeah that's true yeah we're talking about us now Jim I just thought maybe we'd go to like somewhere else and just do another one but you never know you know I can get more I'm down for more no matter what in terms of like doing it again does it have to be six or 10 a year absolutely not i don't think i would want to do six but i kind of like i kind of want to do more than one not because i want to do more but because i think it's nice to get out a couple like i don't

know about you but in my life i kind of have like times when it makes sense to rejuvenate by traveling somewhere with people I want to be around and all that kind of stuff. And so I feel like that reconnection is good for everyone. And, you know, best case, it's a regroup of our team. You know, even better case, you know, everyone else gets to enjoy it too. I feel like that's, that's what I liked about it, was that like my favorite moments, and this is totally going TMI gym, and I'm sorry, but my favorite moments was really the thing itself, but bringing us together in the same place.

like even fogo to chow and like getting to sit down and eat together like to me that was that was that was that was cool two times a year would be perfect one not perfect three maybe too much so you talked me in the day maybe maybe too much now we're negotiating here jerry does do you find that travel rejuvenates you um i guess it depends on the type of travel i think that the company yes i think that you know I like traveling, so I'm not against the travel part. I don't mind road trips. For me, it's like a lot more complication than is necessary. So it's like, is it worth it? I think once a year it's really worth it. I think twice, maybe it is. But six in eight weeks, Jim, you're crazy, man.

It's just two trips. I'm sure you have all kinds of ways you tell yourself. I appreciate the gumption, the ambition, and the drive. I think that there's people that do that. they're usually younger than all of us you know they go out on tour and they're gone for six weeks are you saying that I'm old

no I said that they're usually younger than all of us so we have reached a certain you know age I mean I grew up my my family came from a large family didn't have a lot of money

but we had a family that lived in Florida and so probably six times and you know age five to 12 we would drive from Wisconsin down to Florida straight through that was always the only one that ever drove and it just built that nostalgia perhaps for the road trip but again like these are shorter since for the most part we've got stops you know

every 10 hours or so and so try and and trying to get through that in a week. Sorry, you're just listening to my thought process as to why this makes sense. Like I said, you can tell yourselves what kind of things. I think it's going to be cool. I think it's going to be a memory. I think that you should absolutely record as much as you can and try to make some sort of a memory video or something so that you have a takeaway at the end, whether or not anybody else wants to watch it,

but you and your wife or your team, who cares, you'll like it. And I hope lots of people come and there's great talks and there's great food and there's great venues. It sounds like you still have some variables up in the air, which for me would be stressed. You seem like you're very chill about it. So I'm social about it as well. It's going to work out. It's going to work. It's going to be what it's going to be, right?

That's kind of how I approach this event. And I think Adam probably would have stressed about it more than I did. And this was why I kind of kept him out of the details. and I'm just like, you just get a place and then you go to plan together and you invite people and then you show up and do a thing and it'll work out and, you know, pretty much. But again, like the support from the community has been great. We've got Coraline A. Emkey, Scott Werner in Chicago, Seth Giddens is probably going to join New Orleans. Tender Love is going to come down to Portland. I'll leave out a few more names because I haven't gotten sign off, sign off.

But again, you know, you're going to, you know, your. Yuri is speaking in Chicago. He's never spoken at a conference before, but reached out and he's like, I would really like to. Here's my talk idea. And we're talking through, you know, how to best pull it off. And Tia is speaking in Austin, Landon, you all know in Austin, sexy Korea in Austin. So, yeah.

Well, if you put Omaha or Kansas City on your map next time around, I will be there. I'm not going to drive to Chicago. It's eight hours. It seems like a lot. But I would definitely hop over to KC. It's like a two and a half hour drive from here. So for a RubyConf. Tulsa?

Tulsa's going to be far. That's fine. I'm not saying I would, but I'm interested in Tulsa. That gives me pause. Is that already on your list? It has been sort of a canonical example of, I want people to say, hey, we've got 30 people in Tulsa that want a conference. The original idea for this was to go to underserved technology cities that still have a population. You know, one of the, back in Hachrockett days, we went to Huntsville, Alabama for a conference that Jeremy McNally ran.

I went to that as well. We wound up playing. At the old Granul Opry. I think we went. Or that was Tennessee. Yeah, that was Tennessee. Okay. Well, it's definitely Ruby Ho-down, but maybe it was.

Did he do it different? He might have. Because he also did a conference in Disney. He did Magic Ruby. That's right. So he. Magic Ruby. Okay.

So I went to the Tennessee one, not the Alabama one. Talk about Jim? Jeremy McAnally. Jeremy. I was thinking a Jim who did Lone Star Ruby. I can't read his last name in this moment. Jim Freeze. Yeah, Jim, yeah, Jim Freeze.

That's what I was thinking because he did that in, yeah, in Florida. Yeah. One of those. those fun memories, we actually drove an RV from, I drove the RV from Jacksonville, Florida. We rented an RV and piled eight of us into it and drove to Ruby Ho Down in Huntsville. And we had, you know, a group of young people that were all sort of eclectically dressed. We drive up to like a barbecue place and we're just looking for a bathroom. pile out of the video

and somebody asks Teepo are you guys in a band he's like no it's like Tipo if anybody asks you if you're in a bad you say yes

yes you get free food the answer is always then might say can you come on stage oh dang well you don't overplay that one that's right

that's right not we're late we got a gig it's too late we're on our way Well, that's cool, man. I want to call one out because a friend of mine, a friend of ours, is going to New Orleans. And this is, if it was in Austin, I would be much more happier because that's where I'm going to go.

I'm not going to go to New Orleans. But it's our friend Robert Ross from Fire Hydrant, who's been a friend of mine, founded Firehydrant, and then became a closer friend by being a sponsor and being a friend. And I just love their journey. And he's talking about if I did it again. think he's talking about the journey of ruby with fire hydrant and the mistakes they made and the and the things he would do again obviously versus the things he wouldn't do again so i i i kind of i like the way robert shares his stories especially how it relates back to building a successful company and so that's one i'm i'm personally looking forward to will these be recorded i mean

because i won't be able to see it if con freaks will answer your call right no no confricks has answered the call it's just if if we can find a way to uh get them the paltry some that they're looking for to to record. Yeah. That makes sense too. Well, I got some ideas for you. We'll talk in post. I got some ideas for you if that doesn't work out.

And then for sure. They have been great. I've worked with Cindy for most of trying to think. I have known Cindy for most of the decade, most of the past decade. Yeah. She, again, she is one of those people who shows up and she always delivers

and she'll always try and make something happen if possible. And we're going to try and make something happen. It's a good deal. Well, everyone, go to X-O-Ruby.com, fall love, hugs and kisses, Ruby all around, and then go to the same domain slash Firestarter. And if you're not going to be there and you love everything Jim has said

and you resonate with how he cares about the community, and you care about supporting flagrant and their future and what they're doing and all the ways Jim shows up. Be a super fan, buy a six ticket, buy a latte, buy some tacos, a tank of gas, whatever you can do. I think I would love to see some folks from our community buy a tank of gas. That'd be kind of cool. 50 bucks.

Buy a tank of gas. Show some love. Help Jim out on this trip here. And maybe he'll do it again and again and again and again. Maybe in your city. Who knows? Jim, thanks so much, man. Thanks for having a great heart and pouring in and planting seeds, being the Johnny Applese we need in our world.

And thanks for coming on the podcast. It's been great. Thank you. My pleasure. And thank you so much for helping me get the word out. Can you make it to any of the Exo Ruby events this fall? What does your conference calendar look like? Are there any must attend events coming up? Let us know in Zulip. Jim didn't join, but you totally should. It costs $0 and you can sign up. at changelog.com slash community.

We'll see you in there. Thanks again to our partners at fly.io and our sponsors of this episode. Shoutouts to depot.dev, codrabbit.aI.i. And mero.com. That's mireo.com.

Thanks also to Breakmaster Cylinder, to our editor, Jason, to our producer, me. I guess I just thank myself. You're welcome. And thanks to you for listening. The change log wouldn't be the same. without you. All right, that's it. This episode is done. But we'll talk to you again on

changelogging friends on Friday. Game-on-a-lawed-hawned