Over Engineered

00:00:00.16
Chris Morrell
All right, welcome back to over engineered the podcast where we ask the question, what's the absolute best way to do things we already have a perfectly acceptable solution for. Today i am here with Susanna Kankova and we're going to be talking about Laravels and other things but Susanna, I want to say quick hello, quick intro.

00:00:32.18
Zuzana Kunckova
Hi everyone, I'm glad to be here.

00:00:35.57
Chris Morrell
We just met for the first time at Laracon EU and it was so much fun.

00:00:38.84
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:00:40.64
Chris Morrell
I had a great time hanging out with you.

00:00:43.16
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:00:43.92
Chris Morrell
And we got scheming little bit about Larabelle's while well we were there.

00:00:49.73
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, you could put it that way, yeah.

00:00:52.61
Chris Morrell
and make it In a good way, I hope.

00:00:54.55
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:00:55.54
Chris Morrell
And I roped you into coming on so we could scheme a little bit further. But in between those those times, you kind of made a big decision, which was to quit your job and focus on Laravel's full time, right?

00:01:09.75
Zuzana Kunckova
Pretty much, yeah. You know how they say, like, don't leave you don't leave your job until you have something else lined up. Well, not me. I've just decided to just go for it. Yeah, I've been to Larabelle's, I founded Larabelle's almost five years ago now.

00:01:26.49
Zuzana Kunckova
And until now, I've always just, yeah, I've always only just done it like in the evenings and weekends and whenever i had a moment.

00:01:27.22
Chris Morrell
Wow, that's wild.

00:01:33.46
Zuzana Kunckova
And it was always just catching up on things. Like i didn't feel like I was being proactive. It was always being reactive, always reacting to something something I had to do. And I couldn't, I can't keep going like that.

00:01:47.86
Zuzana Kunckova
Like I feel like if I want to do Larabels properly, I need to give it some proper time. And I couldn't do that while having a job. So I decided to just leave my job and see what I can do with Larabels.

00:02:02.95
Chris Morrell
That's amazing.

00:02:02.91
Zuzana Kunckova
Just, know, yeah. Well, crazy or amazing or depends.

00:02:04.79
Chris Morrell
Well, before we

00:02:07.10
Zuzana Kunckova
i don't know how you look at it. Yes,

00:02:10.31
Chris Morrell
before we get any further, let me just say, if if anyone who's listening has not already done so and has the capacity to do so, Lara Bells does accept donations, and I want to see that that grow, right?

00:02:21.94
Zuzana Kunckova
please. Yes, please.

00:02:25.60
Chris Morrell
that's That's part of what we're going to be talking about here, hopefully, but

00:02:27.42
Zuzana Kunckova
but That would be great because, yeah, I need, I have bills to pay. I've got kids to feed. So no please support us.

00:02:38.57
Chris Morrell
And not only did you did you quit your job to to work on Laravels, but today was your last day of work.

00:02:44.56
Zuzana Kunckova
I know.

00:02:44.74
Chris Morrell
How's it feel?

00:02:46.48
Zuzana Kunckova
I don't know how I feel at the moment. I'm exhausted because the last few weeks were quite intense, wrapping everything up.

00:02:54.20
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:02:55.79
Zuzana Kunckova
I also didn't realize it was going to be Easter holiday this week and next week. So the kids are home from school. so I totally missed that. just, I don't know, can't keep up.

00:03:03.68
Chris Morrell
Yeah,

00:03:06.15
Zuzana Kunckova
So it's that and i I don't know, I'm excited, I'm scared. It's just, yeah, I don't know how I feel.

00:03:15.40
Chris Morrell
yeah it's a big change.

00:03:15.54
Zuzana Kunckova
All over the place, yeah.

00:03:17.08
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:03:18.07
Zuzana Kunckova
Emotional, that's how I feel.

00:03:18.39
Chris Morrell
Well, I'm excited for you.

00:03:22.01
Zuzana Kunckova
Thank you.

00:03:24.74
Chris Morrell
i It occurs to me that... Have you heard have you heard the surprise episode that showed up on your podcast this morning?

00:03:34.38
Chris Morrell
Did you did you know anything about this?

00:03:35.39
Zuzana Kunckova
I know of it. No, I've just been told, by the way, we're going to have an episode published. Are you okay? I was like, yeah. didn't know it was probably published by that point. don't know. No, I know it happened.

00:03:46.90
Zuzana Kunckova
Come

00:03:48.34
Chris Morrell
Well, it was a blast, although you were missed. you You need to come to come to the next PHP NYC.

00:03:51.66
Zuzana Kunckova
on.

00:03:54.36
Chris Morrell
That's easy for you, right?

00:03:55.22
Zuzana Kunckova
It was, well, yeah, just around the corner.

00:03:56.66
Chris Morrell
just

00:03:57.22
Zuzana Kunckova
But all these people there, I didn't realize that so many Laravel people live so close together. Often you see like you know there is like a cluster here and cluster there. But that meetup, there was a lot of famous faces.

00:04:11.74
Zuzana Kunckova
i mean, famous.

00:04:12.39
Chris Morrell
Yeah, there were a bunch of i mean there were a bunch of folks who have podcasts, that's for sure. i don't know about Famous, but...

00:04:16.54
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. Or famous in our world. So...

00:04:20.06
Chris Morrell
Sure. Yeah, it was a great time. It definitely... don't know. it's it's It's very cool to see the PHP community coming back in this region.

00:04:33.51
Chris Morrell
is there like you

00:04:33.61
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm.

00:04:34.84
Chris Morrell
You've got a couple of different local... events going on like does it feel like this year is different over there at all or or not so much

00:04:44.26
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm. So...

00:04:46.100
Zuzana Kunckova
I don't really go to the PHP meetups. I used to go before the pandemic. So they're like locally, we had the WordPress meetup and a PHP meetup and then pandemic happened. And I don't know if either of these have come back to being in person.

00:05:01.79
Chris Morrell
okay

00:05:01.99
Zuzana Kunckova
So I'm not really, I don't know much about a PHP activity around here. So I wouldn't know. I know there other things happening in the UK, but it's just, I know it's not like for you in the US, like you travel two hours and it's nothing for you in the UK.

00:05:12.24
Chris Morrell
Yep.

00:05:18.84
Zuzana Kunckova
Two hours is a long distance. So I could go to meetups and I thought about it. I know that it's a PHP stoke on trend, I think. PHP, yeah, quite a few of them.

00:05:28.59
Chris Morrell
yep

00:05:30.100
Zuzana Kunckova
i haven't just I haven't made a decision to go, but I would like to, because I think it will feel the same way like when I see you guys in the US and New York getting together. would be nice to see the UK folks as well.

00:05:43.58
Chris Morrell
Yeah. I mean, i would encourage it. it is it's It's really nice. And I mean, i don't know. i There are certain parts of the U.S. where you're right. Like a two-hour trip is just like, I guess that is what it is.

00:05:56.59
Chris Morrell
For me, traveling two hours is a bit much. Although traveling in a New York is about you know an hour and 20 minutes by train from me. Yeah.

00:06:05.09
Zuzana Kunckova
Oh, it's still quite a distance.

00:06:07.58
Chris Morrell
So yeah, that's like just just short enough that it doesn't feel that bad. think I think, yeah.

00:06:13.82
Zuzana Kunckova
See, and for me, it would feel bad already. Like for me, anything for, and driving or train? That's by train?

00:06:19.19
Chris Morrell
That's by train. Yeah.

00:06:20.46
Zuzana Kunckova
Or that's even, yeah. That's basically, if I go to London from where I live, that's just over an hour long journey. And going to London, it's it's, to me, it's a big thing.

00:06:27.79
Chris Morrell
Okay.

00:06:30.71
Zuzana Kunckova
I know people commute daily for work. I wouldn't do that. So an hour long train journey is quite a long one for me. So I need to just adjust my expectations.

00:06:39.63
Chris Morrell
Yeah, I don't know. I think for me, it's just like the fact that I don't have to drive makes it feel so much easier.

00:06:49.16
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:06:49.23
Chris Morrell
You know, like I am 10 10 minutes from the train station here, but you know, a 10 minute walk and the train drops you off four minutes away from where the meetup was in New York.

00:07:03.54
Zuzana Kunckova
a so it's really convenient, yeah.

00:07:05.28
Chris Morrell
So it's like, Yeah, I can leave, you know, we left here at three 30 and we got there a little while before the meetup was starting. Like we were already at the, at the door.

00:07:17.93
Chris Morrell
but definitely if it were for an hour and a half drive, i would probably not do it, you know?

00:07:24.48
Zuzana Kunckova
Because it's different. When you're on a train, you can read or do whatever. When you're driving, you just have to drive. I know you can listen to stuff, but for me, it gets old quite quickly.

00:07:30.78
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:07:34.43
Zuzana Kunckova
i don't i get bored if I just have to sit and drive.

00:07:37.95
Chris Morrell
Yeah, no, I agree. And the problem for me now is that I get car sick. that This is something that started...

00:07:44.90
Zuzana Kunckova
Oh, okay.

00:07:46.49
Chris Morrell
When I was when i was young, you put me in the passenger seat and I am just fast asleep in 14 seconds, you know? And I don't know when it happened, but at some point in my mid-30s or you know round around turning all of a sudden I can't go on, like amusement park rides anymore.

00:08:08.96
Zuzana Kunckova
Oh, yeah, no.

00:08:10.27
Chris Morrell
And I, if I'm not driving, I almost immediately get nauseous.

00:08:15.64
Zuzana Kunckova
Oh.

00:08:17.19
Chris Morrell
which is very frustrating to me because I would rather not be the one that has to drive all the time.

00:08:20.23
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:08:25.19
Chris Morrell
but even, even if it's like a 15 minute drive, I'm just like, no, I need, I need to be in, you know, behind the wheel.

00:08:31.35
Zuzana Kunckova
That's interesting.

00:08:31.51
Chris Morrell
I don't know, know why.

00:08:34.21
Zuzana Kunckova
I can't go on rides like, you know, the theme park rides. I can't do that. I haven't been able to do that for few years, but I'm okay with the car. But I can't even watch, like, people go up and down on those rides.

00:08:46.57
Zuzana Kunckova
know, when you go to videos, people videoing, I can't even do that. It's just...

00:08:51.02
Chris Morrell
well i i just tried dramamine you know the like motion sickness medication uh and it was i mean i know this is silly to say because that is what

00:08:57.65
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm.

00:09:04.71
Chris Morrell
it is made for. So the fact that I was so surprised that it worked is maybe silly, but I tried it.

00:09:08.15
Zuzana Kunckova
you

00:09:10.96
Chris Morrell
We took the kids to an amusement park last summer. And I had the, the so two summers prior to that, I had discovered the hard way that I was no longer able to ride rides.

00:09:25.65
Chris Morrell
Cause I took, took my youngest on on what had been my favorite ride as a kid. And then I just was like, Guys, I'm really sorry, but I'm going need to just sit on this bench for the next 45 minutes or else I'm going to well it was

00:09:41.79
Zuzana Kunckova
And it was a child one, like a right for kids. Was it? Or was it like an adult one?

00:09:48.41
Chris Morrell
Well, it did a lot of spinning. you know It was a fast spinning ride.

00:09:52.58
Zuzana Kunckova
Okay.

00:09:54.99
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm.

00:09:55.50
Chris Morrell
But it used to that was my favorite thing when was a kid. you know

00:09:58.17
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:09:58.95
Chris Morrell
and so the following year when we took the kids to, there's like an amusement park by the beach that we go to.

00:10:05.04
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm.

00:10:05.60
Chris Morrell
I, you know, I just sat out on every everything. So this last year, i very tentatively tried some stuff and, uh, you know, after taking the Dramamine and, and by the end of it, i don't know, are you familiar with the salt and pepper shaker?

00:10:20.82
Zuzana Kunckova
No, I don't think so.

00:10:23.40
Chris Morrell
it's It's essentially like a capsule kind of thing that you go in and then it's on a long pole and it just, the pole spins and the capsule spins.

00:10:27.86
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:10:35.77
Chris Morrell
It's like the most spinny thing that you possibly can be on.

00:10:37.11
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm.

00:10:40.06
Chris Morrell
And I did the salt and pepper shaker it was fine. you know was I was totally fine.

00:10:44.34
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:10:45.41
Chris Morrell
so I don't know if you want to go on those kinds of rides again.

00:10:48.67
Zuzana Kunckova
and embrace the drugs no I'm fine I'm good thank you yeah see I don't

00:10:53.49
Chris Morrell
but if you are interested in because i missed i love i used to love to go on roller coasters and stuff like that i i missed being able to do that and now that the kids are getting a little bit older they're still they're not quite roller coaster ready but my oldest is uh is pretty close and i want to i don't know i want to go on roller coasters with them you know

00:11:18.65
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, go for it.

00:11:19.87
Chris Morrell
Yeah. So that was fun. That was a a nice discovery. I, I can't for the life of me remember how we got onto this track, but ah're right.

00:11:26.57
Zuzana Kunckova
Driving for a long time. And that's how it started.

00:11:29.01
Chris Morrell
Right. Yep.

00:11:29.65
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:11:30.37
Chris Morrell
Yep. Yep. but yeah, it's been great. I mean, it's been great. The, uh, the, the New York Philly PHP meetups, like there's a lot of cross-pollinization and, and, uh,

00:11:44.34
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm.

00:11:45.47
Chris Morrell
you know it's It's just been really nice to get to know some people. I've made a lot of friends like you who I can see via Zoom, but you know we're not going to get together very often because you're pretty far away, right?

00:12:02.37
Chris Morrell
And so it's been really great to make like programmer friends who I can actually see in person from time to time, not just like once a year at most.

00:12:07.02
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. Yeah.

00:12:11.12
Chris Morrell
You know what I mean?

00:12:11.98
Zuzana Kunckova
No, definitely.

00:12:14.23
Chris Morrell
But yeah. So, okay, let's talk about Laravels. So I think I came in with a little bit of an agenda, but i I'm happy to kind of go wherever wherever is most interesting to you. But let me let me kind of like at least make the pitch for what I was thinking.

00:12:34.85
Zuzana Kunckova
Okay.

00:12:37.34
Chris Morrell
I think that at Laracon EU, the question came up, like, what sort of what is the ideal outcome of Larabelle's? Like, what if, if you,

00:12:54.63
Chris Morrell
you know, if you were to, like, kind of wave a magic wand and say, like, our now our goals are complete, know, right?

00:13:02.76
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:13:03.84
Chris Morrell
What would that be? And I know that's a very simplistic view of of things, and and it's obviously not nearly so straightforward.

00:13:13.30
Chris Morrell
But i think it's a I think it's kind of like an interesting question because it there's a bunch of different, there are a bunch of different potential ways to think about that.

00:13:23.77
Chris Morrell
And so, yeah, I kind of came into this conversation thinking like,

00:13:30.36
Chris Morrell
it would be a dream if we could walk away saying like, you know, now that you're kind of sitting down, to, to take Lara bells really seriously more of the time, like what, how do you measure success?

00:13:42.76
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:13:47.09
Chris Morrell
And, and, know, if you're looking to potentially find a way to make it really sustainable, like what does sustainable look like for the organization?

00:13:59.37
Chris Morrell
I don't Is that something that you're interested in in trying to figure out?

00:14:03.31
Zuzana Kunckova
unpack? We can, yeah, because I don't think it's as simple as having a business, for example. We are not a business, so I can't tell you a number.

00:14:10.89
Chris Morrell
Yep.

00:14:12.23
Zuzana Kunckova
or I can't tell you any measurable metric of like what it would mean or when will I feel like we've made it because I don't have such a thing.

00:14:23.62
Zuzana Kunckova
It's not like that in my head. LaraBells is a support network, so the initial, well, initially and the main

00:14:25.88
Chris Morrell
Sure.

00:14:31.85
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm.

00:14:32.67
Zuzana Kunckova
goal is to be there for our members. But from so to be there for our members. What I mean by that is I want us to be I want the community to be a place where people can come and meet friends and ask questions, not so much in the public eye where you would, you know, normally ask on Stack Overflow, I suppose, or maybe these days chat GPT, I don't know.

00:14:53.36
Zuzana Kunckova
But like even like more public Discord channels or those that are full of people, very busy, it's not always easy to ask questions. And this is not anything to do with gender. I think it's in general, asking questions on busy places. It takes courage.

00:15:10.33
Zuzana Kunckova
And not everyone wants to do that. So I want Larabos to be a place where people feel safe and comfortable. And they can be who they are. They can you know they don't have to pretend to know stuff. they don't have to feel like they can't ask questions because maybe they are too silly or the questions not the people like I want them to feel safe so that was initially what I wanted wanted the community to be safe place for people because when I started in Laravel I didn't it's not and I'm not saying that the general larva community is not a safe place, but it's just big.

00:15:42.88
Zuzana Kunckova
And unless you know the people, it's quite anonymous, like you know for especially for newcomers that maybe don't know much PHP at all, ort or they are not part of the online community, or they don't even go to meetups.

00:15:50.34
Chris Morrell
Absolutely. Sure.

00:15:57.44
Zuzana Kunckova
It's difficult you know to kind of get involved in the com community. It's not easy. and so i want it So in that respect, having a smaller community is actually beneficial, I think, because you don't feel as overwhelmed as you would if you join like, you know, a massive one.

00:16:11.12
Chris Morrell
sure

00:16:14.16
Zuzana Kunckova
So that was what I wanted Larabos to be in the first place. But now, like I said, almost five years later, I see that there is more that we can do. So it's nice to have a safe place for our members. But I want the general com community. So if I can talk about tech in general, but let's not, because we all know like tech is predominantly a male dominated industry.

00:16:38.17
Zuzana Kunckova
and But we you don't have to talk about tech. We can just focus on Laravel because it's the same. if in If anything, it's even worse because in tech, I think maybe, don't 20, think 25, 28% women in tech globally are women in tech globally

00:16:54.15
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:16:55.18
Zuzana Kunckova
And but however, when it comes to Laravel, I think only about 2% of Laravel developers are women. So this is even worse in Laravel.

00:17:03.66
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:17:03.80
Zuzana Kunckova
And so now that we've got Laravel as a community, so i feel we can now take it a little bit further and we can try to work on the diversity of the community in general. like bring more people in or maybe we don't even need to bring more people in.

00:17:18.09
Zuzana Kunckova
I think we have plenty of non-male developers, but it's maybe a little bit harder for them to be heard because, and again, that's not so much to do with gender.

00:17:25.04
Chris Morrell
Sure. Yeah.

00:17:28.25
Zuzana Kunckova
It's anyone who's not already known. Like to speak for the first time at a conference is difficult because people want to know that you can do it. So they expect you to have some sort of experience. It's like this chicken and egg problem, right? Like

00:17:42.36
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:17:42.52
Zuzana Kunckova
getting your first job. How can you get a first job if everyone asks for experience but nobody's willing to give you the experience? Speaking at conferences the same thing. Like you want to try to do it but it's difficult to get this first gig because it's just people, it's not easy.

00:17:57.93
Zuzana Kunckova
And I see it from the conference organizers perspective as as well. Like you don't know, is this person going to be okay? Are they going to be able to manage speaking in front of hundreds of people?

00:18:05.99
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:18:06.94
Zuzana Kunckova
So it goes both ways. But yeah, I would like to now that we've got a community somehow going, i want to now work on improving the numbers a bit to maybe level out the playing field a bit more. So that next time we're doing a Laravel survey, there will there will be more than 2% of developers.

00:18:27.06
Zuzana Kunckova
And could be that we need to the survey needs to reach more people because not everyone is on Twitter or Blue Sky or, you know, this is a very limited audience. A lot of people not there.

00:18:36.21
Chris Morrell
Sure.

00:18:39.63
Zuzana Kunckova
uh also i would like to make conferences a again safe place for everyone there and i'm not saying that they are not at the moment they are at least well i've never had a bad experience and i haven't heard other people having bad experience but maybe if we have more speakers diverse speakers then maybe more people will feel more comfortable because it's again it comes down to the same problem like when you are When I go to a conference and I look around me, like mo like majority of people are men and I'm okay.

00:19:11.55
Zuzana Kunckova
Like I don't mind. I think I've, by this point of I've accepted it and I don't mind being the only woman.

00:19:16.68
Chris Morrell
Yeah, I mean...

00:19:18.57
Zuzana Kunckova
It's okay to me, but it's not for other people. And I want more people to be but able to come. So how do I measure success?

00:19:25.43
Chris Morrell
yeah i mean

00:19:26.23
Zuzana Kunckova
Like I can't measure success because I don't think that it's like end point. This is all a journey. We can only just work towards improving our community.

00:19:36.18
Chris Morrell
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I hear you not wanting to be being very cautious about how you say things. i I would say that I don't think that people are i don't I think that most people are not intending to be unwelcoming.

00:19:56.02
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm.

00:19:56.13
Chris Morrell
But i I do think that the the structure of the tech communities that I'm a part of, at least, and and Laravel community certainly is one of them, is not as welcoming to women.

00:20:09.88
Chris Morrell
and that is something that we need to fix you know i think i and i don't think i mean I think that part of the reason that that's the case is explicitly because people aren't intentional about it.

00:20:24.88
Chris Morrell
right It's not that people are intentionally

00:20:25.26
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:20:28.83
Chris Morrell
excluding people because of their gender, right?

00:20:29.35
Zuzana Kunckova
Yes.

00:20:31.49
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm.

00:20:32.88
Chris Morrell
It's almost, it's the it's the fact that it's unintentional that makes it so difficult, right?

00:20:37.19
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm.

00:20:37.75
Chris Morrell
Because I'm, you know, I was just thinking, i was just looking at this photo. We had this incredible meetup in New York, right?

00:20:44.54
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm.

00:20:45.17
Chris Morrell
At a great time. But I'm looking at the group photo and it's like 25 middle-aged white men and one woman. And it's just like, I don't blame other female developers for looking at that and saying, well, I'm not welcome there.

00:21:02.76
Chris Morrell
you know Even though like you and i both know that that's not the case in terms of the people who are organizing this.

00:21:03.65
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:21:11.68
Chris Morrell
at like I know that Joe is incredibly welcoming of anyone who wants to go to that meetup. But you see the photos from that meetup. You see the photos from Laracon. You see the videos of presenters. like Even though none of it is intentionally exclusionary, the net result of it absolutely is.

00:21:30.71
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

00:21:33.96
Chris Morrell
you know I think it's it's something that really... really is a problem still and i you know and i think the fact that laravels has been so uh well supported by the community so far i think is a wonderful thing but it's like you said i'm i'm looking at these uh the the this recent laravel developers report it's yet 96 percent uh male responses right

00:21:39.28
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:22:01.100
Chris Morrell
And same, I mean, right, is this we see that in a bunch of the demographics, like age distribution and and other things.

00:22:11.79
Chris Morrell
like it's

00:22:11.99
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:22:14.89
Chris Morrell
these are These are tricky things. And I think it's i think it takes, like unfortunately, a lot of hard work to push against them. you know So I think it's really fantastic what you're doing.

00:22:22.13
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

00:22:25.20
Zuzana Kunckova
Well, you said it well. You said like, it's maybe we're not intentionally being unwelcoming, but that's not enough. It's like being silent in in face of injustice.

00:22:34.41
Chris Morrell
Yep. Yep.

00:22:36.98
Zuzana Kunckova
That doesn't make it right. Like we need to speak up to make things better. And I don't want people to think that by us speaking up, we are saying that the community is not good. It's not that. it's It's not binary. It's not one or the other.

00:22:51.96
Zuzana Kunckova
It can be better. And like if we are intentional about who we invite and who we approach and not just wait for them to approach us, like being intentional, like intentionally trying to reach out to more diverse speakers, for example, conferences and even companies like right now, when you think of the Laravel ecosystem, is there even a single female CEO or product lead or any woman in leadership position at all?

00:23:23.16
Zuzana Kunckova
I mean, I hope there is. I know Katerina from Adiva. She's a woman, but that she comes to mind and then we've got Jess. as one of the core Laravel developers, but as a product owner or, you know, is there? And I think that's, its it trickles down if women see more women in leadership position and not necessarily just leadership, but like in doing jobs, various jobs. But if you see more women doing those jobs, more women will want to come forward and try as well.

00:23:53.18
Zuzana Kunckova
And with the leadership positions, I think that's why tech has got the name as or like the people think of it as a male dominated industry, because all the tech players, the big guys are men.

00:24:04.75
Zuzana Kunckova
Like I don't even I don't mean like in Laravel in general, like it's a very difficult.

00:24:09.56
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:24:10.69
Zuzana Kunckova
so And I think that's something we need to work towards. Like it's not going to change in a day or in a year. But at least if if we can make it, like if if you can we can speak up that this is what we're trying to do and not just wait for it to happen because it might not.

00:24:29.65
Zuzana Kunckova
Like hiring policies, for example, if we can help companies to hire more diverse teams. And I don't want to like talk statistics, but So diverse teams are more not that more profitable, they are doing better.

00:24:42.96
Zuzana Kunckova
There's a research that says that more diverse teams are more profitable, they have better outcomes.

00:24:44.98
Chris Morrell
Yeah, for sure.

00:24:48.33
Zuzana Kunckova
So it's a business advantage. It's not so just a social or moral issue, diversity or the lack of diversity. It's a business advantage. And I think if companies and I know it's hiring is difficult as it is, you know, and then if you add it to this, another lever thinking, OK, I want to I'm hiring.

00:25:04.75
Zuzana Kunckova
I want to get the right person, but I also want to make sure that we reach the right kind of people, all the people we can. it It's work. It's a lot of work, more work. But I think that's the only way we can. And I'm hoping that by la having Laravels as the community sit there, so it's already hopefully giving but the message out, like sending the message out, the saying that Laravel community in general cares about this because we have Laravels.

00:25:32.11
Zuzana Kunckova
So hopefully this already works.

00:25:32.64
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:25:33.91
Zuzana Kunckova
And now I want to make sure that LaraBells are not just here as a token, it's just, oh, we've got the community, that means we're doing something. No, now we need to do more. So we've got a community, people are supportive overall, but now we need to be louder and we need to just reach out more and make sure that the companies are hiring diversely.

00:25:54.38
Zuzana Kunckova
And the conferences, they do have a code of conduct that makes sure that they will have some diverse speakers or that they are safe place for people to go to in many different ways. So just, and I think I'm not saying, again, I'm not saying that the conferences are not a safe place, but if they are explicit, if they say, look, we've got this code of conduct and this is what you're trying to do, even that being public about this will send the right message rather than,

00:26:21.74
Zuzana Kunckova
not sending any message and just expecting the people will know, oh, Laura, they are nice people. It'll be fine. And we know it's true because we are nice people.

00:26:29.20
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:26:31.44
Zuzana Kunckova
But if we make it official, you know, I know it's just papers and policies and, you know, code of conduct. And you might think, oh, this is rubbish. We don't want, I don't care about that, but it makes a difference.

00:26:44.80
Chris Morrell
Yeah. it's Well, that's the thing is it's all these little things, you know, it's, you you need all of them together to push in the right direction. Right. And yeah, none of them,

00:26:56.72
Chris Morrell
No single thing is going to, you know, fix systemic sexism, right? Like, it but we can be doing what we can to move the needle in the right direction.

00:27:03.84
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:27:13.61
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:27:14.70
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seems to me like so far from, you know, mostly from the outside, Lara Bell's has been mostly about, uh, establishing a community of people and then really focused in on the conference side of things around making sure that, uh, folks can attend and speak.

00:27:27.57
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:27:38.00
Chris Morrell
do you think that that is, Do you think that's where you want to continue to focus your efforts or do you imagine, do you feel like, well, we've done a pretty good job of like getting a baseline there and now that I have more time I'd like to focus on something else like do you have an idea there.

00:27:58.51
Zuzana Kunckova
i So, yeah, like you said, I want to continue with that, but I also want to do other things. So the conferences, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done because we still have majority of male white speakers.

00:28:10.62
Zuzana Kunckova
There's still, but we're doing bits and hopefully it will improve. But the other things is like, so one of the things I want to start is to do a Larabels podcast. So this is the first time officially said it. I have been told to do it for ages and I kept saying, no, I don't have the time. Well, now I'm going to have the time, so I'm going to do it.

00:28:30.25
Chris Morrell
Amazing.

00:28:31.13
Zuzana Kunckova
And that's partly because I want to feature the voices of the Larabels community more. Because it's one thing is to have the community and we all know about each other, but I want the world to know about us.

00:28:46.37
Zuzana Kunckova
And like some people, podcast is their, you know, medium, how they learn things and what this is what mainly what they do. And I think it's important to, and I don't want it to be just like interview interviewing people about what they do. And I would like, a it's still work in progress, how I'm going to take this podcast, like the direction we're going to go. and But i want't yeah I want to have a platform for people to be able to speak but about their like what you do, like about what they're working on work-wise or maybe their hobbies, but have a place that they feel they can be heard and they are you know respected. And podcast is one of the ways to do it, so I want to do that.

00:29:27.95
Zuzana Kunckova
And i think the more i look into the diversity in tech and in general, it keeps coming back to the lack of role models or lack of people in the public eye. that I've said it in my, i think it was my first conference talk that was called You Can't Be Who You Can't See.

00:29:42.26
Zuzana Kunckova
And I keep coming, that was like my lucky tip because I came up with that title and I came up with the idea out of nowhere.

00:29:46.84
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm.

00:29:50.62
Zuzana Kunckova
And the first time I gave it was the Laracon EU in Lisbon. So that was now three years ago. And I keep coming back to the same idea that the lack of role models is really... significant when it comes to diversity, and not just in tech, everywhere in general.

00:30:05.69
Zuzana Kunckova
If you don't see people like you in whatever way, whether it's age, gender, you the color of your skin, anything, your background, education, anything. If you can't see anyone you can relate to doing something you would like to do, it's much harder for you to go and try to do that thing.

00:30:22.23
Zuzana Kunckova
So again, the podcast would be one of the things to show people like, look, this is who we are. we we yeah We all come from different backgrounds. We do different things. But hopefully, yeah, we will just people will know about us more.

00:30:39.81
Chris Morrell
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think it might also be interesting. i mean, i you know I certainly know at least a couple of folks who run podcasts who would probably be happy to have more guests on. Also,

00:30:56.38
Chris Morrell
also Like, is that something that you'd think about is running your own podcast, but also maybe doing some outreach to try to connect folks within the Larabelle's community who are interested in speaking publicly with with folks who are interested in in having guests?

00:31:16.06
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, definitely. And I think when you say speaking publicly, being on a podcast, it's kind of step towards doing a talk at a conference when you think about it, because it's, I don't want to say it's less stressful, it's still stressful.

00:31:24.60
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm.

00:31:29.53
Zuzana Kunckova
But you don't have to do videos, you can just do audio, like there are a lot of things you can play around with.

00:31:35.13
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm.

00:31:35.30
Zuzana Kunckova
But yeah, introducing, I kind of see myself as this old fashioned matchmaker. Like I don't, I like to connect people. I, cause luckily because of the position I'm in, like I know quite a lot of people in the community and I enjoy matchmaking.

00:31:52.60
Zuzana Kunckova
I just like to see when I meet somebody, I say, oh, you would really benefit from knowing this person. And I like that. Like I, that's, this really, this is the pleasure I find in this whole process when I can connect people.

00:32:05.24
Zuzana Kunckova
And whether they find jobs or just friends or anything, it might change their career. Like we all know that conferences or like pu meetups that are so instrumental, can be instrumental instrumental in your career.

00:32:11.35
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:32:17.20
Zuzana Kunckova
It's it's incredible.

00:32:17.92
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:32:19.03
Zuzana Kunckova
And i also know a lot of people not wanting to go to these things because they don't like networking or they don't think they are good at it.

00:32:25.85
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:32:26.46
Zuzana Kunckova
But when you can take this one person and say, oh, you don't have to worry about hundreds people. This is just this one other person you can talk to and see where it takes you. To me, it's magical. I think that's amazing. So yeah the podcast would be yet another thing to connect people with each other and maybe then bring more people and talk about like, so from the Larval Community, PHP Community, maybe people in tech in general, because we all have so much to learn from each other.

00:32:52.74
Zuzana Kunckova
And I think it all comes down to communication, knowledge, education. And yeah, and now that I have a somewhat public platform, I want to use it for the best I can. And I think showcasing people and giving them them the the place to speak, the platform, it's what I can do. And that's what I want to do.

00:33:14.94
Chris Morrell
Yeah, that's amazing. i think that I think it'd be great. I would love to see Allaire Bell's podcast. so

00:33:20.64
Zuzana Kunckova
Oh, it's coming. Don't know when. Don't know in which format. Video, no video. I have no idea. But yeah, it's going to happen.

00:33:28.42
Chris Morrell
I know that you love love video podcasts.

00:33:31.57
Chris Morrell
We were talking about...

00:33:32.27
Zuzana Kunckova
So much.

00:33:36.59
Chris Morrell
Well, if there's anybody in the Larabelle's community that you think would be interested in talking about something overly technical for an hour and a half, send them my way.

00:33:47.82
Chris Morrell
I'd love to and love to do that.

00:33:48.08
Zuzana Kunckova
I will do. And if you know about somebody who would like to talk to me about, I don't know what just yet, but I want to say like, that's the thing. This whole thing is a work in progress. People think that when I say I'm winging it, people laugh at me, say, you're not, but I don't know what I'm, I've never know what I like. I don't know what I'm doing with the community. I started it by accident. I never planned to have a community.

00:34:11.18
Zuzana Kunckova
and I learn as I go along. And I'm very open to suggestions, to feedback. Actually, we've just created a survey kind of form, like a Google form that we've only just posted on Discord, but I want to share it with more people, where we're asking the community members A few simple questions. How has Larabels helped you? Is there something you would like us to do more? Is there something you would like us to do less?

00:34:36.53
Zuzana Kunckova
I want to hear from people because at the end of the day, the community will be nothing without the people. I am just this head.

00:34:41.69
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:34:45.11
Zuzana Kunckova
People think of me and they think of Larabels, but I don't want it to be about me. I want it to be about the people. like I am happy with what I'm doing, thanks to Larabels in many ways, because the work that I do with them, it's taught me so much that right now I'm doing things I didn't think I could do.

00:35:02.49
Zuzana Kunckova
But I want to be there for the people. So I i want to hear feedback. So that's why we're talking at Larabels.eu and you came with all those suggestions. I want to hear that because I don't know everything. I know very little when when it comes to this. I'm learning every single day.

00:35:17.51
Zuzana Kunckova
And I want to do it. I want to do right by the people. So if people come and they say, we want this to happen, I'll do my best if it aligns with the values of Lara Bells.

00:35:28.97
Zuzana Kunckova
But I don't want people to think that I'm this, what do you call these? There's this word when you're not dictator, the the good one, the good dictator. There's no such a thing. You know what I mean? yeah.

00:35:42.22
Zuzana Kunckova
oh

00:35:43.43
Chris Morrell
Like a benevolent dictator for life?

00:35:45.01
Zuzana Kunckova
Yes, that's the one. Yeah. The good dictator. I don't want people to think of me that I'm like nothing, you know, and but I decide everything. I don't want to decide everything. I want to hear from people.

00:35:57.52
Zuzana Kunckova
I'm happy to be the spokesperson on their behalf, because honestly, at this point, I don't even, it's fine. I'm just, I'm happy to stand up and talk. I don't mind at all. But I don't want this to be about me. So I want people to give me feedback and tell me what they what would help them and what doesn't help them.

00:36:16.28
Chris Morrell
Sure.

00:36:16.42
Zuzana Kunckova
So.

00:36:17.76
Chris Morrell
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's that was one of the things that really struck me talking with you earlier about all this is that

00:36:28.17
Chris Morrell
there's so many different things that you could do, right. That it's almost like a, it's an impossible problem in, in a different sense, right. It's just like, you know, there's, there's a million different ways that you, uh, you could sort of further the, the goals of Laravels. Right.

00:36:47.91
Chris Morrell
and figuring out which ones are most meaningful to the, to folks that are part of the community that makes a lot of sense.

00:36:56.29
Zuzana Kunckova
But I need to hear from them.

00:36:57.71
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:36:59.21
Chris Morrell
Yeah. How many, do you know off the top of your head, how many people are in, you know, officially?

00:37:04.59
Zuzana Kunckova
No.

00:37:05.44
Chris Morrell
I mean, I know that there are,

00:37:06.37
Zuzana Kunckova
This is the thing. We don't have official membership, but but this is something we're working on. So now that I'm going to have the time, the website will need a lot of work. We're also working on adding like a membership backend so people can, at the moment, I add all the info to the directory, but we are working on individual members being able to add, know, log in and add their own info.

00:37:28.56
Zuzana Kunckova
So that's going to happen. Once we do that, we'll have better idea. Right now I can tell you, we've got, I don't know, 60 larables on the, I think about 60, on the directory. We've got just over 500 people on our newsletter, Discord channel about the same.

00:37:46.16
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm.

00:37:46.49
Zuzana Kunckova
And I've never cared about the numbers, but I'm going to start caring because partly because I didn't have the time to care about numbers too much. I really was just reactive, reacting to things. Oh, there is a conference. We have to do giveaway. Oh, there is this. We have to do that.

00:38:00.62
Zuzana Kunckova
But now I actually want to sit down and do it properly. And so I want to start tracking numbers simply to see how much we've grown. Because I do have to do, obviously I have to do taxes yearly because we are a non-profit, but we still have to do taxes.

00:38:15.73
Zuzana Kunckova
And parts of us being non-profit, I have to file a report every year that will show the to local tax office in the UK. how we've benefited the community because we are a community interest company. So every year I need to create a report saying, okay, in the past year, this is what we did for the community. So this is part of the tax return.

00:38:36.73
Zuzana Kunckova
And so this is the only way so far I can kind of measure how much we've grown, but I want to do it using data because you can't argue with data.

00:38:47.83
Zuzana Kunckova
a lot of the time and I think a lot of companies if they want to sponsor us I know that will be a question okay we will give you money and then what how will you show us that you've made a good use of the money and I totally understand so I want to be ready for that and this is what I'm this is part of the things I'm gonna work on now intentionally

00:38:58.44
Chris Morrell
Right.

00:39:05.46
Chris Morrell
Yeah. This is a, this is a challenge in and the charitable nonprofit space, right? You, you see a lot of people there's,

00:39:18.75
Chris Morrell
there's a strong push against any nonprofit that spends money on staff.

00:39:26.06
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm. Hmm.

00:39:26.28
Chris Morrell
It's kind of wild when you think about it, right? It's like, there's this, this idea that somehow you can be running a nonprofit where 100% of the, the revenue of the organization goes directly to the cause, which, you know, is essentially saying that,

00:39:44.12
Chris Morrell
all of the labor and all of the other associated costs with running the organization have to be free. Which I don't think that any, you know, yeah, I mean, to some degree you can get away with volunteer hours.

00:39:54.11
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:40:00.04
Chris Morrell
You've been doing volunteer, you know, you've been running this on a volunteer basis for a long time. And, but it, it really does. hamper the the capacity or, you know, what the it it doesn't further the goals of the organization typically.

00:40:14.86
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

00:40:16.62
Chris Morrell
And there's all there's actually a lot of research that, that you know, backs that up that to a certain degree, obviously you don't want a nonprofit where they're not doing anything to further the cause.

00:40:28.59
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm.

00:40:31.28
Chris Morrell
But in a lot of ways, just like anything else, reinvesting, you know, investing in the organization, you know, just if you just look at the basic numbers, it's like, yeah, you could say you have $10, right? You could put all $10 into the cause and now you've you've done $10 worth of good, right? Just to use a round number.

00:40:55.24
Chris Morrell
But like, imagine you put five of that into fundraising another twenty dollars right yes you spent five of the ten but you have now done twenty five dollars worth of good right arguably i think a lot of the way people think about non-profit budgets

00:41:04.05
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. Yeah.

00:41:12.45
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

00:41:20.76
Chris Morrell
it's and they don't understand or they don't they're not really interested in thinking about it in that way but that's the reality it's like you need you know need good people invested in the in the cause and like it's it doesn't serve anyone for those people to essentially

00:41:34.92
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, yeah.

00:41:40.98
Chris Morrell
either have to have some other income or just be barely making it, you know, like that's not good for anyone either.

00:41:46.99
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah yeah

00:41:50.22
Zuzana Kunckova
It's difficult.

00:41:50.52
Chris Morrell
So I think,

00:41:50.62
Zuzana Kunckova
like I've been doing it, like I said, for five years here and there.

00:41:54.56
Chris Morrell
yeah.

00:41:54.68
Zuzana Kunckova
And I'm not the only one. I've got other people. Namely, I've got Diana from Beyond Co who helps a lot. And I've got Anna Lishboa. Those two help me so much when it comes to the website. And then we also have lots of support from the community. So a lot of our costs have been donated. So the design of the new website donated by Hassan.

00:42:13.06
Zuzana Kunckova
And like Beyond Code is sponsoring us when it comes to servers. So there is a lot of cost has been covered by the community and I'm so grateful for that. But then there things like social media, you know, and whether we like it or not, really, we need to have a social media presence.

00:42:29.33
Zuzana Kunckova
And that was one of the things that I just let slip because that was one of the things I just couldn't deal with on top of everything else.

00:42:32.49
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:42:36.01
Zuzana Kunckova
And we don't have enough money coming in monthly for me to hire somebody, even part-time, to do that. So only having a person that maybe I can see if I can hire somebody for like five hours a month.

00:42:49.64
Zuzana Kunckova
Sounds ridiculous. you know Maybe that I could potentially cover depending how much they would charge. But that's the thing, like the the cost of... Like the sponsorship money, that's why i would like, like I'm going, I want to ask people if if, you know, if you can, please support us because I will spend the time myself on it, but still I'm not being paid for Larabella's. Although I have left my job, I want to try to give it a go because if I don't, I will never know.

00:43:21.39
Zuzana Kunckova
And if i if I can't make it work even financially for myself, because at the end of the day, yes, I do have kids to feed.

00:43:22.08
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:43:27.11
Zuzana Kunckova
I can't do it like for free. Then I will have to go back and find a job again, you know, because that's the only way. So it's difficult.

00:43:35.34
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:43:36.93
Zuzana Kunckova
Asking for money is difficult. so And being non-profit is difficult because like with any charity or non-profit, people expect that all the money they donate will go straight into the community. and They don't see the admin cost behind it.

00:43:49.47
Zuzana Kunckova
or the salaries and I know like a lot of charities have issues and people complain yeah but your charity bosses and staff so much money goes towards them well yeah those people need to eat and we can't I think anyone who's doing open source project they will know what it's like like you don't you give your time to the community and a lot of the time you have very little thanks back And we have to be careful about that because the whole internet runs on voluntary contributions when you think about it.

00:44:11.45
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:44:17.66
Zuzana Kunckova
Like a lot of lot of packages, PHP or JavaScript, are done by, you know, just some people who want to and are willing to.

00:44:28.02
Zuzana Kunckova
And we have to be careful and treat these people well because if they decide they've had enough, I think we would be surprised how many things would stop working.

00:44:36.45
Chris Morrell
Absolutely.

00:44:37.50
Zuzana Kunckova
So we need to be, and that's why I feel it's not comfortable asking for money. Believe me, it isn't. I don't like it, but it's necessary because if if we don't get the support, if we don't get the sponsorships, Larabels will just bubble along, continue as it is.

00:44:50.23
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:44:54.66
Zuzana Kunckova
But is it going to really improve people's lives? I don't know. That's why I've like made the jump and I'll see what I can do.

00:45:00.01
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:45:03.97
Chris Morrell
I mean, undoubtedly, Laravels has been of positive force in the world over the last five years. like i I don't think it's and don't think it's necessarily the the one or the other that you're you're presenting right there.

00:45:18.91
Chris Morrell
like I think absolutely, Laravels has been an incredibly positive thing.

00:45:21.76
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm. Hmm.

00:45:25.21
Chris Morrell
but that doesn't mean that more couldn't be done if you were able to really give it your all. I certainly for one would love to see a world where there is enough to actually pay you, maybe someone else to, to, to spend their time full time on this thing, you know, like, and I don't think you should be expected to do it for free. You know, I think you should, you should be able to,

00:45:54.58
Chris Morrell
get paid to do something that you're passionate about and you've, you've kind of found yourself in, I don't think those have to be exclusive of each other, you know?

00:46:05.81
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah nothing is black and white is it everything else there is shades of grey

00:46:08.85
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah.

00:46:12.33
Chris Morrell
But yeah, I don't know. It's exciting. I think it's, I, I get it though. It's, it's, it's not easy to, to put yourself out there. And, and I think having, you know, I think having a, a clear plan obviously helps. It sounds like you're, you're kind of figuring out what the rest of,

00:46:32.68
Chris Morrell
this year and next year you want them to look like. I think, you know, it seems like there's some obvious stuff, right?

00:46:36.42
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:46:39.92
Chris Morrell
Continue with the continuing with the events. Do you have some sort of target?

00:46:44.16
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

00:46:45.50
Chris Morrell
Like we try to sponsor this number of event tickets a year or it's just kind of like whatever whatever comes up?

00:46:54.26
Zuzana Kunckova
So it's yeah ideally we would like what depending on the size of the conference, but like three to five tickets would be great. And it's not always the issue to find those tickets or even to, you know, well, maybe not three to five people, but we can definitely help financially at least one person, you know, by paying for the not just the ticket, but the travel and accommodation, maybe even two.

00:47:02.19
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:47:16.57
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:47:18.04
Zuzana Kunckova
But it's really hard to find the people, the eligible people. That has proven to be so difficult. You would think that, oh, you're giving away ticket and accommodation and travel. People will like come and they do, but a lot of them are not Larabels.

00:47:33.51
Zuzana Kunckova
And that's partly what I'm saying, like that it's difficult to reach the right kind of people because we are still...

00:47:33.78
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:47:40.38
Zuzana Kunckova
limited into where our audience is. Like our online corner that used to be Twitter and now it's various places, it's really still very small compared to the general community.

00:47:54.05
Zuzana Kunckova
So I think we need to, I think first of all, we need to find a way to reach more people

00:47:54.21
Chris Morrell
yeah

00:48:01.55
Zuzana Kunckova
And whether it's then the podcast and newsletter and I don't even know what else we can do. That's another thing I would welcome feedback from people. How do we reach out to more people, those that need our help, those that need the tickets so that we don't end up sending the same people to conferences because it's the same people that, you know, apply or the same people that enter the giveaways.

00:48:11.45
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:48:24.01
Zuzana Kunckova
So that's, that's important. But overall, I want to improve the numbers. like I'm not aiming for half and half. I'm not saying, i don't even know if it's... but like Why wouldn't it be possible when you think about it that like a man, if we just think of the two you know the binary genders, man, woman, like 50-50-ish in the world, why couldn't we have 50% of diverse developers?

00:48:50.37
Zuzana Kunckova
Theoretically it should be possible. I'm not even going to go for that. Like I just want the numbers to get better. I don't want the next report that comes out, Laravel report, that will say like 96% are male developers.

00:49:03.12
Zuzana Kunckova
I don't want that to happen.

00:49:03.73
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:49:05.21
Zuzana Kunckova
So I will do yeah what I can to improve these numbers. Yeah.

00:49:14.77
Chris Morrell
Yeah. I mean, I do think there's no reason why the you know, our industry should not represent just general gender, you know, stats, right?

00:49:25.46
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah,

00:49:27.58
Chris Morrell
Like that.

00:49:28.63
Zuzana Kunckova
distribution.

00:49:29.96
Chris Morrell
Yeah, it's, it's, obviously that's not going to happen overnight.

00:49:34.37
Zuzana Kunckova
no Yeah.

00:49:34.66
Chris Morrell
There's a, there are a lot of forces at play that are, are, you know, want to keep sort of the status quo and, and it's not easy to push against those, but, there's no reason to not have that as the goal, right? Like,

00:49:51.16
Chris Morrell
yeah and i i mean i do i i totally hear you that it's it's got to be hard to to reach people i do know i mean i do know that for some people who have uh been able to go to an event like Laircon because of Lairbells. And I know that it's, at least for the, the people that I know who have done that it's been incredibly, incredibly impactful for them.

00:50:18.52
Chris Morrell
And so,

00:50:21.58
Chris Morrell
that's, I mean, getting, getting that kind of access to more people obviously would be fantastic. you know, Mary Perry, the guest on the show has talked to me a bunch about how meaningful her, you know, her interaction with Clarabelle's has been.

00:50:33.88
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm.

00:50:40.85
Chris Morrell
And, well, I don't know. It's, it's just like, uh, let's get that. Let's, let's, let's get more people.

00:50:51.11
Zuzana Kunckova
Let's take this and multiply it by many.

00:50:51.39
Chris Morrell
Uh, yeah, exactly. Exactly. so, um, so i had I had this idea that we kicked around a little bit. I'm going to put it out into the into the world just to see if anything comes up. it I don't know and if there's anybody who listens to this podcast who is who who offers some sort of service in the Laravel space.

00:51:22.93
Chris Morrell
But an idea that I had that that I'd love to start pitching is It feels to me like when I am checking out for some product or service that's like very, very Laravel adjacent. You know, I think of like a Laravel shift or something like that.

00:51:44.11
Chris Morrell
If there was a you know, would you like to donate $10 to Laravel's option?

00:51:49.86
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm.

00:51:52.65
Chris Morrell
That would be... don't know, an obvious yes for me. And it feels like it would be a great place to do it. It wouldn't be asking those companies to, you know, have to put up a lot of money, but they can kind of put up the exposure that they have.

00:52:12.27
Chris Morrell
And feel like it could be a great sort of a great co-branded effort. Is that something that you've thought about anymore since we talked about it?

00:52:23.59
Zuzana Kunckova
I have, and I think it sounds good. I would need to think about how to, so which products we're talking about, approach these people. But I think... Yeah, having the option, you're not forcing, you wouldn't be forcing anyone to donate.

00:52:37.12
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:52:37.95
Zuzana Kunckova
It would be an option. And if you're already paying for something, clicking a button saying like, yeah, I want to add like, you know, depending how much you're paying for whatever it is that you're buying, would be probably less painful than having to maybe set up a sponsorship or something, you know, because you're already buying it.

00:52:55.89
Zuzana Kunckova
So just makes sense to me. Well, it makes sense to other people.

00:52:59.08
Chris Morrell
Yeah, so if there's anyone out here out there who's like, oh, I have something where we could do that, reach out.

00:53:00.69
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:53:06.08
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, yes, please.

00:53:08.15
Chris Morrell
Yeah, I mean, even if it's just $1 $2 coming through at the right frequency, that could really meaningful. Yeah. coming through at the right frequency that could that could be really meaningful

00:53:20.87
Zuzana Kunckova
You know, it's like little by little, but...

00:53:24.62
Zuzana Kunckova
something that's a continuously happening it's probably better than one off every now and then because at least I can count that when we've got a monthly income about the same I know what to expect rather than having big hits and then maybe nothing for a few months.

00:53:41.98
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah. And I know that Laravel, Laravel Inc. is looking at ways to to make like merch purchases help support Laravel.

00:53:54.62
Chris Morrell
So that's exciting. I'm excited to see what comes of that.

00:53:55.99
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. Yeah.

00:53:58.68
Chris Morrell
So there are other places where you know it doesn't just have to be a Sponsor Us link on the Laravel's website.

00:54:07.38
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

00:54:07.55
Chris Morrell
There are lots of places that can potentially support this cause.

00:54:11.52
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. And talking about the sponsoring.

00:54:12.83
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:54:13.89
Zuzana Kunckova
So that's one of the things I'm going to work on is to make it more consistent, because right now we've got some tiers on Patreon, we've got some tiers on GitHub sponsors. So that's one of the things I'm going to work on, because initially the the thinking was that companies will use Patreon.

00:54:23.55
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm.

00:54:30.27
Zuzana Kunckova
And individuals will use GitHub sponsors, but companies use GitHub sponsors too. So now we're going to, I want to make it more so it's like in line with each other.

00:54:41.01
Zuzana Kunckova
So that's one of the things I'm going to work on.

00:54:41.43
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm.

00:54:42.61
Zuzana Kunckova
Same with the website. Like I want to improve the content on the website so it's more clear about what we are about and who we are for.

00:54:51.55
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm.

00:54:51.61
Zuzana Kunckova
So this will happen as well other than the podcast. So there are things that, yeah, that I've been putting off and putting off because I just never had the time and now I'm going to focus on them.

00:55:03.30
Zuzana Kunckova
So watch this space.

00:55:05.05
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm.

00:55:05.94
Zuzana Kunckova
Don't expect miracles. No, please do expect miracles. don't know. We'll see. how I know I should probably sound more confident. and And this is something I need to work on. But at the same time, I don't want to pretend. like I think the people that don't know me by now, they know that i I come, this is who I am. I just say how things are. I can't pretend. That's not me.

00:55:29.70
Zuzana Kunckova
So, yeah, I am figuring things out.

00:55:33.02
Chris Morrell
Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, and don't think,

00:55:36.15
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, but then you look at it and see those confident people and you're like, oh, I wish I was more like them. But nope, not me.

00:55:43.79
Chris Morrell
I don't know. I mean, i think everyone's figuring things out. Right. And everyone's, uh, everyone who doesn't look like they're figuring things out is dealing with their own imposter syndrome or, or whatever else else it might be.

00:55:56.24
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:55:59.80
Chris Morrell
And I mean, I think in a lot of ways that there is undeniably a gender thing there, right? Like men, people who grow up as men are conditioned to act and think a certain way. I think that like, I see that for myself, certainly that like,

00:56:20.44
Chris Morrell
there are lots of ways that...

00:56:24.48
Chris Morrell
You know, whether I want to or not, I feel like I have to present like this sort of outwardly confident certainty.

00:56:33.21
Zuzana Kunckova
okay

00:56:35.45
Chris Morrell
No, never.

00:56:37.01
Zuzana Kunckova
would it be freeing to just yes for both do you always feel like you have to be confident even if you don't feel it

00:56:38.39
Chris Morrell
Oh, do I always feel like I have to or do I always feel confident?

00:56:47.56
Chris Morrell
I mean, I think... Now, after years of really sort of paying attention to it, I am able to not not feel that way always, and certainly with people who I am closer with or or you know more comfortable with.

00:57:11.40
Chris Morrell
I am able to let my guard down more.

00:57:13.71
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:57:14.33
Chris Morrell
but I think that the, yeah, like my kind of default state is kind of feeling like I have to have to look like I know what I'm doing. I rarely feel like I know what I'm doing.

00:57:27.79
Chris Morrell
but yeah, I mean, I think that that's, yeah, that's definitely something that I just kind of learned from sort of society and but and

00:57:39.37
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

00:57:41.44
Chris Morrell
not not so much my parents, but like family members in in you know who I spent a lot of time with.

00:57:49.78
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. I think it's beneficial to be vulnerable a little bit more, like not just you, but people in general, so that we don't look at others and think, oh, they have it all figured out and they are all confident and they know what they're doing, they know what they're saying.

00:57:58.07
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:58:06.34
Zuzana Kunckova
When really, like you said, hardly anyone knows. So there are always times when people don't know. But I think if we are really

00:58:15.12
Zuzana Kunckova
honest about how we feel a given moment, it would help other people also to realize that nobody really has it all figured out.

00:58:21.76
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

00:58:26.32
Chris Morrell
And the, the deepest connections that I have with people are, are, have been facilitated through their, you know, their capacity to, or,

00:58:40.92
Chris Morrell
I think has been facilitated through some level of like being vulnerable one way or in another, you know, like them, them showing some vulnerability to me or me, me opening up to them.

00:58:46.10
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:58:51.03
Chris Morrell
And like that always, think ends up, you know, letting you connect with, with people in in a more meaningful way.

00:58:53.11
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:58:59.36
Chris Morrell
It's like, it's, it's such an ironic, it's such an ironic problem that like, I mean, honestly, like that, uh, that I need to have a podcast so that I can talk with my friends.

00:59:12.86
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

00:59:16.28
Zuzana Kunckova
You know, I think it's real. And I've noticed this changing, like especially, this is such a generalization, but a men, men, they are more open about how you guys feel.

00:59:29.62
Zuzana Kunckova
Like it didn't used to be that way, at least not from what I saw around me. And now see many more people being open about it how they feel and you know the struggles and whether it's different podcasts about mental health or just people open up to each other or feeling like like now we are chatting like it kind of you kind of forget after that this is being recorded and I know when this is finished I'll be like oh my god what did I do say please delete it all but I think it's important for people to hear those conversations because then it just makes people relate to each other much more and be nicer to each other

00:59:49.76
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:00:02.91
Chris Morrell
yeah And I think that that is honestly, something that makes the Laravel communities in particular really special is that, a lot of folks who have a voice in our community are, are also people who are willing to be open and willing to, to expose their fallibility and,

01:00:12.58
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:00:27.11
Chris Morrell
are not afraid to sort of like, yeah, be vulnerable in front of other people.

01:00:32.90
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:00:33.95
Chris Morrell
and I do think you're right that that's, that's something that there is, it does feel like there's a shift societally, or at least in some parts of society for, uh, in a good way there.

01:00:43.83
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah.

01:00:48.16
Chris Morrell
but I think in particular, I, I do really appreciate that about the Laravel community specifically.

01:00:54.14
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:00:55.87
Zuzana Kunckova
And I think maybe that's what makes the community so good. And that's why when people come to to conferences, people that maybe are not from lot the community, like vendors and sponsors.

01:00:59.33
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:01:07.23
Zuzana Kunckova
And so far, anyone I spoke to, they all said they feel really good and welcoming, like the community was welcoming. And I think it's partly because... People are not afraid to be vulnerable, even when you are standing on stage and it's stressful and, you know, maybe you make a mistake.

01:01:26.80
Zuzana Kunckova
There's nobody who will, you know, shout at you from the audience or laugh at you or boo you out. Like everyone is there to help you and support you.

01:01:32.06
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:01:33.88
Zuzana Kunckova
And I think that's what makes the community so good. And I think in a way we need to show this behavior to other communities because this is the only way to make

01:01:42.48
Chris Morrell
yeah

01:01:45.38
Zuzana Kunckova
an industry in general a much nicer place when we are nicer to each other.

01:01:49.34
Chris Morrell
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, you know, like all the things that we're talking about, it's like, we need to it needs to get so much better, but we're also making strides.

01:02:05.93
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want anyone to, because I think that was one of the points that people at the beginning, like, why am I breaking up a perfectly good community by creating community for, you know, for women or for anyone that doesn't identify, identify as men?

01:02:08.22
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:02:22.04
Zuzana Kunckova
Why am I doing this? Like, but,

01:02:25.19
Zuzana Kunckova
i It doesn't mean that the laragment isn't good. It is good, but it doesn't mean it can't be even better.

01:02:31.38
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:02:31.50
Zuzana Kunckova
And like for people to have safe space, that's a good thing. That can only be a good thing. like It's not going to make the rest of the restor community bad.

01:02:37.21
Chris Morrell
Absolutely.

01:02:40.88
Zuzana Kunckova
No, it's just going to make people feel even better. And maybe they will then bring more people in. And there will be those dominoes. And you knock one domino and they will all follow. So...

01:02:51.76
Chris Morrell
Yeah, no, certainly I i think having having support for, for people who could use support and having, having a place for, for groups of folks to connect, in different ways, you know, that's, that's not, uh, taking away from anything else. Right. It's just adding more.

01:03:19.30
Chris Morrell
Right.

01:03:20.60
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:03:22.32
Chris Morrell
yeah, no, I, I agree.

01:03:25.14
Chris Morrell
So what does, what are the next couple of weeks look like to you? Do you have any, like, okay, now, well, okay, you've got, the yeah, said everyone ever.

01:03:35.36
Zuzana Kunckova
Catch up on the emails that I've neglected.

01:03:40.74
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah Yeah, so I want to just do the things that I haven't done. But no, one of the main things will be to look at the website because I think that's that's important because it is the the place that people land on when they hear about larabels.

01:03:57.30
Zuzana Kunckova
And I've had a lot of feedback saying that it's not clear enough and what we are about.

01:04:00.94
Chris Morrell
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

01:04:01.42
Zuzana Kunckova
It's not clear what we... do what happens when people join what does it mean joining so I want to work on that content want it to be clear to make it more clear about what we are about so the website it's a big so the email the website I want to start thinking about the podcast and in which direction I'm going to take it The sponsorship tiers, I want to fix that.

01:04:26.80
Zuzana Kunckova
The newsletter, so I'm going to write a newsletter in the next few days because we want to be we are currently running Laracon US giveaway. So I want that to be more public because so far I've only posted it on social media and social media is not the place anymore.

01:04:35.69
Chris Morrell
Mm-hmm.

01:04:44.17
Zuzana Kunckova
I don't feel like no it's not what it used to be.

01:04:48.24
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:04:49.08
Zuzana Kunckova
no It's not great.

01:04:49.34
Chris Morrell
Well, it's so fragmented now that it's, it's, it used to be that at least for our community, there was one place and that place was Twitter and, and pretty much, you know, not that everybody was there, but if you wanted to go one place that was going to have the most reach, that was where you went.

01:04:50.66
Zuzana Kunckova
Yes, yeah.

01:04:57.92
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:05:07.03
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. Yeah.

01:05:08.34
Chris Morrell
And that's just not true anymore, right? and

01:05:09.96
Zuzana Kunckova
No.

01:05:10.49
Chris Morrell
And I love our little our little community that's on Blue Sky, but it's it's not nearly as big as the Twitter community used to be.

01:05:18.40
Zuzana Kunckova
No.

01:05:20.32
Chris Morrell
And you've got Twitter folks, and you've got threads folks, and masks on folks.

01:05:22.42
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:05:23.88
Chris Morrell
and Yeah, it's all over the place now.

01:05:26.76
Zuzana Kunckova
I feel like you need to you need to work harder now to get the message out.

01:05:32.30
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:05:32.95
Zuzana Kunckova
So I'm going to be looking into that. How I can reach. So it keeps coming back to how can I reach more people. so I'm going to have try to figure it out.

01:05:39.74
Chris Morrell
yeah well when you figure it out let me know because i have the same problem with uh i i was just talking with i can't remember i guess i was just talking talking with folks at pgp nyc like it's just there's got to be you know philadelphia is a big city right uh

01:05:44.30
Zuzana Kunckova
was trying

01:05:59.54
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:06:01.95
Chris Morrell
And PHP and Laravel are incredibly popular technologies, right? PHP still, despite not necessarily being quite as sexy as it once was, like still powers most of the internet, right?

01:06:16.54
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:06:17.76
Chris Morrell
So I just feel like I should be able to walk outside and, you know, throw a stone and fought and it just hit a building that has a PHP developer in it.

01:06:25.96
Zuzana Kunckova
PHP developer.

01:06:28.62
Chris Morrell
You know what i mean?

01:06:30.11
Zuzana Kunckova
Don't go killing PHP developers, please. We need more of them. Don't go throwing stones at them.

01:06:35.78
Chris Morrell
uh, but yeah so it's just like, they've got to be out there.

01:06:40.36
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:06:40.50
Chris Morrell
Right. But, but how do we just say, Hey, we're all getting together on Thursday. Come join us, you know, or, Hey, there's this community that, that wants you to be a part of it.

01:06:51.98
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:06:53.68
Chris Morrell
You know, I know that for me, i you know, I lived still the majority of my career.

01:06:54.00
Zuzana Kunckova
It's interesting. Hang on. Yeah.

01:07:03.69
Chris Morrell
i spent just, just, you know, in mostly isolation, just, just writing code and doing whatever, you know, not really paying much attention to what was happening outside of my little,

01:07:21.21
Chris Morrell
my little code base. You know what i mean?

01:07:22.48
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm.

01:07:23.09
Chris Morrell
Like I, I think I found some, I found some local tech community, but it wasn't, it wasn't really folks who did exactly what I did.

01:07:39.76
Chris Morrell
It was just folks who were kind of interested in technology.

01:07:40.24
Zuzana Kunckova
Hmm. Hmm.

01:07:42.68
Chris Morrell
There's some, and there was a, there was a good PHP meetup here for a while, but, but yeah even even when i was going to the php meetup it didn't feel just felt like a bunch of folks who wrote php getting together for drinks once a month whereas now

01:08:05.41
Chris Morrell
I don't know. Now it just, the, the community efforts that I, I go to, or I'm a part of feel a little bit different than that. It feels, it feels more, don't know, more meaningful in some way. And it feels a little bit more like unified in some way.

01:08:23.05
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

01:08:23.88
Chris Morrell
yeah,

01:08:25.38
Chris Morrell
and And I don't know, all all of that's just to say, like, I think there's this amazing thing that a lot of people probably are missing out on.

01:08:34.48
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:08:35.13
Chris Morrell
and i

01:08:35.18
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:08:35.72
Chris Morrell
I really do. I want to see ways to to expand that. You know I mean?

01:08:43.44
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, definitely. I was going to say that I'm surprised that every time I go to a conference, there are still people who that haven't heard about Larabelle's. To me, it seems like i that's my thing. Like, you know, i I feel like I talk about, that's all I ever talk about.

01:08:57.08
Zuzana Kunckova
And I get annoyed but by myself. you know I just, I don't want to listen to myself anymore. But then every conference I go to, people like, no, never heard of you. say, how could you not have, like, we are everywhere, we're not.

01:09:08.80
Zuzana Kunckova
And that's the thing. So think, yeah, when you ask me at the beginning of this recording, of this podcast, like what it is that I would like to do, like the next steps, really, yeah, I think exposure, it all comes, like based on everything we've talked about, it's all about exposure.

01:09:23.98
Zuzana Kunckova
about reaching out more people, finding those people.

01:09:24.22
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:09:27.30
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:09:27.36
Zuzana Kunckova
Because by finding these people, we will no doubt in improve the diversity of the of the community because these people exist. like

01:09:35.98
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:09:36.19
Zuzana Kunckova
We are there. So that's what we need to focus on, like reaching out, finding people, different media, so newsletters, podcasts, social media. articles, they are there.

01:09:49.45
Zuzana Kunckova
People are there and you just need to find them and show them.

01:09:50.05
Chris Morrell
yeah

01:09:53.98
Zuzana Kunckova
Like I said, there's such this great thing you are missing out of potentially. And I know conferences are not for everyone probably, but so far most of the people that went to conference were surprised in a good way, positively surprised by the experience they had.

01:10:07.68
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:10:08.03
Zuzana Kunckova
Because it's not like a conference when I thought of tech conference before going to Laracon. I thought of men sitting in suits. You know, like, I don't know. There was this image in my head. This is what it looks like. You all sit like in and on chairs and didn't.

01:10:26.40
Zuzana Kunckova
Seemed like fun. And then I went to Laracon EU, my first one in Lisbon, and it was nothing like that. It was just so much fun. And I wish more people got to experience it. And maybe partly that's why we can, Larabas trying to send more people to conferences. So this financial aspect is then taken care of.

01:10:44.55
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:10:44.58
Zuzana Kunckova
But I still think that meeting people and networking is such a cold world. Like it's networking. What is it? It's not networking. It's making friends.

01:10:54.56
Chris Morrell
yeah

01:10:54.56
Zuzana Kunckova
like talking to people, making friends, and that can really benefit you in terms of like your career and your life in general by meeting people, you know, making friends all over the world.

01:11:05.84
Zuzana Kunckova
So you just need to, I think it all comes down to exposure and meet reaching more people and yeah, showing them this is this lovely place we've got here, lovely community, come and join us.

01:11:13.14
Chris Morrell
yeah

01:11:17.25
Zuzana Kunckova
We are nice people. We are nice people. Yeah.

01:11:21.67
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah. i mean mean, so many people as adults struggle with making new meaningful connection, right?

01:11:32.00
Chris Morrell
And I mean, and think that that, again, is something where

01:11:32.32
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:11:38.53
Chris Morrell
I don't know exactly how this how this plays out. I think that there is there's a there's a gendered thing there as well but I, but I think that's universal as well.

01:11:49.69
Chris Morrell
And it's like, this is an opportunity. This is a, this is a way to help, uh, you know, do that.

01:11:53.34
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. Yeah.

01:11:57.32
Chris Morrell
And I, I agree wholeheartedly. I mean, I think, the first Lyricon that I went to, i was, I was, you know I was very timid.

01:12:07.79
Chris Morrell
was very shy.

01:12:08.56
Zuzana Kunckova
You?

01:12:08.69
Chris Morrell
didn't put myself out there. Yeah. I feel like I'm fairly introverted until I'm not.

01:12:17.91
Chris Morrell
i am fairly it's like i'm fairly introverted until i'm not

01:12:25.07
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:12:26.16
Chris Morrell
you know that i don't know uh but yeah if i'm in if i'm in a group of new people i'm i'm usually quite reserved and so uh i enjoyed it i had it i had a good time i thought it was very interesting but i didn't i didn't connect with a ton of people

01:12:33.94
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:12:47.64
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:12:50.43
Chris Morrell
And mean, honestly, for me, it took it took the pandemic. it took It took being home and desperately who seeking some some form of like connection with with people who weren't the three other people who lived in my house.

01:13:04.79
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:13:08.30
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:13:10.91
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:13:12.65
Chris Morrell
And yeah, like, you know, that kind of forced me to, to reach out to people, who yeah maybe i had been sort of friendly with on the internet and, and, and take that somewhere else.

01:13:22.96
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:13:27.27
Chris Morrell
And then, you know, that so that then when in-person events started to happen again, was like, oh, now I'm going to see, now I'm going to see my friends.

01:13:37.44
Chris Morrell
You know what I mean?

01:13:38.82
Zuzana Kunckova
See, this is exactly what I want LaraBells to be.

01:13:41.27
Zuzana Kunckova
Like you meet people online, but then you know when you go to conferences there will be LaraBells there, you will not be alone and you will meet people.

01:13:44.02
Chris Morrell
right yeah yeah no i think that's incredible yeah

01:13:48.49
Zuzana Kunckova
so that's why the support networks comes in, that

01:13:53.46
Zuzana Kunckova
See, this has been like a therapy. you know When I came into this call, I didn't know what I was going to say. like I am figuring things out. But talking it out with you, now I have quite a good idea what I want to do next. Isn't it amazing?

01:14:07.46
Zuzana Kunckova
should You should go into therapy, into counseling.

01:14:07.96
Chris Morrell
yeah

01:14:10.52
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, my God.

01:14:11.61
Chris Morrell
i I recommend it. I do it every week.

01:14:14.35
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, it's like, you know, talking through things. It's amazing.

01:14:17.75
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:14:19.07
Zuzana Kunckova
And when people go to so when people go to conferences, we have to remember that we are all the same on the inside.

01:14:19.18
Chris Morrell
Yeah, for different people.

01:14:25.98
Zuzana Kunckova
We are all awkward. We don't know how to talk to each other. When you think about it, like again, I don't want to generalize, but we are a bunch of nerds who don't know how to do small talk, who don't find it difficult to keep eye contact.

01:14:38.10
Zuzana Kunckova
It's fine because I'm the same way. And that's the thing, like when you go to conferences, you're not going to stand out. you know You're going to be with your own people. We all understand.

01:14:47.03
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:14:48.45
Zuzana Kunckova
And that's the beauty of it.

01:14:48.75
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:14:49.45
Zuzana Kunckova
Like you don't have to go there or maybe you don't want to go to conference conference thinking, oh, I'm just going stand in the corner. The corners will be so busy, it will be full of people like you. So you're just going stand with other people in the corner.

01:15:01.72
Zuzana Kunckova
And I think that's why it's so nice because we are all the same at the end of the day. And we go there and then we meet people like us.

01:15:07.06
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:15:08.86
Zuzana Kunckova
And that's why it ends up being such a nice place because there are no expectations of you to be somebody who you are not.

01:15:14.19
Chris Morrell
yeah

01:15:17.28
Chris Morrell
And I mean, i don't know, I'll just, I'll just say this explicitly. Like if, if I'm going to be at Laracon U S this year, if you are there, you, the, the, the listening audience are there and don't know who to talk to come, come say hi, because I will probably also be, uh, feeling awkward about saying hi to other people. So,

01:15:43.64
Chris Morrell
you've got one you've got one person to talk to at least and we can we can uh turn that into more

01:15:43.58
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:15:46.41
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:15:50.84
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah. And if you are Lara Bell, there'll be Lara Bells there. You won't be alone.

01:15:55.59
Chris Morrell
yes yeah yeah i mean that's that's such a wonderful uh uh part of laracon now is the the larabelle's photo and just like

01:16:05.27
Zuzana Kunckova
Oh, yeah.

01:16:07.70
Chris Morrell
seeing how many people come up to stage, that must be really satisfying for you.

01:16:12.84
Zuzana Kunckova
Oh, I love it. Especially last year, last Laracon U.S. when it got done and because I wasn't there. So last year it was in Dallas, wasn't it?

01:16:23.24
Chris Morrell
Yep.

01:16:24.18
Zuzana Kunckova
And I wasn't there and I didn't know what was happening. And then I started getting messages. Did you see the picture? Did you see the photos? Like, what are you talking about? And people just organized it I didn't even have to tell somebody. People just organized the photo of Larabels on stage and then sent me picture of it. I was so, I felt like this proud mom.

01:16:41.62
Zuzana Kunckova
that my children have grown up like they don't need me to organize things it just gets done these they like it just it it's a part of the i hope so at least it's part of conference that now we're gonna do lara bel soto on stage and i felt so good that it it didn't need me anymore like it had the community had the life of its own it didn't need me to do its thing and that was the best

01:16:54.64
Chris Morrell
yeah

01:17:07.92
Chris Morrell
Yeah, no, it's it's it wonderful.

01:17:11.48
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:17:11.62
Chris Morrell
It doesn't mean that that it can't or that that it's done, right? Like, obviously, there there the the effort needs like to continue to have energy put behind it and and effort and and all that.

01:17:26.99
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:17:28.78
Chris Morrell
But... It certainly feels like it's it's an important integral part of like the Laravel public space.

01:17:37.66
Zuzana Kunckova
yeah

01:17:38.98
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:17:39.94
Zuzana Kunckova
I think it's amazing. I just think like in Laracon EU in Lisbon three years ago, there were 10 of us on stage, maybe 12. And like it just grew so much every year.

01:17:50.25
Zuzana Kunckova
And now like last year, I don't even know how many there were. It was a full stage, full stage full of people.

01:17:56.18
Chris Morrell
Yeah. Yeah.

01:17:58.48
Zuzana Kunckova
And that's the thing. I don't think that that many people have suddenly became developers. No, we've always been here. We just needed a reason to come out and like know that there is a community for us.

01:18:10.98
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:18:13.73
Chris Morrell
Yeah.

01:18:14.19
Zuzana Kunckova
So...

01:18:15.54
Chris Morrell
Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, it and that's not to say that also we shouldn't be working to to encourage more folks to enter the community.

01:18:26.83
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

01:18:27.32
Chris Morrell
But there there are also lots of lots of people out there that are already actively part of this industry that just need to be, you know, that we just need to get, get in touch with, right.

01:18:41.94
Zuzana Kunckova
Yes, yeah, reach out.

01:18:43.51
Chris Morrell
And show that, you know, that, that it's a place for them.

01:18:46.62
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:18:47.88
Chris Morrell
Yeah. All right. Well, is there anything else that you've got on your mind before we start to wrap it up? Anything that you wanted to particularly yeah plug or make sure that you, we touched on.

01:19:00.41
Zuzana Kunckova
I don't think so. So yeah, like like we discussed, now I'm trying to do my best with LaraBells. Please sponsor us if you can. And watch the space.

01:19:12.92
Zuzana Kunckova
There will be things happening.

01:19:15.63
Chris Morrell
It's exciting.

01:19:16.49
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:19:17.05
Chris Morrell
Well, i will I will second that. Go ahead and and do what you can to to support LaraBell's. it's It's easy to do through GitHub sponsors or through Patreon.

01:19:29.72
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah.

01:19:30.21
Chris Morrell
And there are sponsorship levels that are that are available for all.

01:19:36.68
Zuzana Kunckova
Mm-hmm.

01:19:36.99
Chris Morrell
or all sorts of different sponsorship levels are available. That's what I was trying to say. And yeah, I'm excited to I'm excited to see what happens in the coming months as you, you have some space to really give this a little bit more attention.

01:19:50.09
Zuzana Kunckova
Yeah, so am I.

01:19:52.32
Chris Morrell
All right, great. Well, Susanna, it's been a pleasure.

01:19:55.78
Zuzana Kunckova
Thank you for having me. And like I said, it was an amazing therapy session. We should do it again.

01:20:01.65
Chris Morrell
I'd be happy to. Cheers.

01:20:05.13
Zuzana Kunckova
Thank you.