Joel Clermont (00:00):
Welcome to No Compromises, a peek into the mind of two old web devs who have seen some things. This is Joel.

Aaron Saray (00:08):
And this is Aaron.

Joel Clermont (00:16):
Aaron, I'm in that post-conference buzz right now. Just got back a few days ago and I just thought it'd be kind of cool to rewrite a bunch of our apps with this new technology I just heard about. What do you think?

Aaron Saray (00:31):
As much as this is a joke this is something that does happen, when you get back from a conference, you're all excited. Joel tends to fall for it more often than I because he's much more excitable than I am.

Joel Clermont (00:42):
Yep, it's true.

Aaron Saray (00:43):
Normally I say, "Settle down," and I just kind of move on and expect him to listen. But I've really been thinking about it. There's some reasons why I feel that way, but there's also some actual effective reasons how we can use conferences to better our career and our work. I want to talk about both of those things starting out because there is a reason people go to conferences, and they are good to go to.

Joel Clermont (01:06):
Right. Agreed, yeah.

Aaron Saray (01:08):
First of all, I wanted to say is you got to remember what a conference is, right? A conference is a combination of theater and education. When I say that some people start thinking, "Oh, that's bad. He's saying it's theater, it's useless," or whatever. You know, like people do. But if you think about it, we work and we learn the best when there's some sort of entertainment involved with it too. You know, there's some sort of spectacle that makes you remember something. I mean, if you just look at all the Laravel documentation and projects, they're kind of put together in a very theatrical way a lot of times too.

Joel Clermont (01:48):
Sure.

Aaron Saray (01:48):
Like, "This is so amazing, it's beautiful, it's extreme." There's a reason that does that is because that kind of draws you in and opens you up and makes you available then to learn about the next thing.

Joel Clermont (01:59):
Yeah, I think even kind of framing something within telling a story is a useful way of coming at things. Just as a side point. Not the conference I just got back from, this is going back... I don't know, five, six years. But I remember attending this conference where it was all lightning talks, like 10, 15-minute talks. And one of them was completely done in the style of a musical, which was extremely weird but also very entertaining.

Aaron Saray (02:22):
Oh, wow.

Joel Clermont (02:23):
I should see if I can find a link for that. But, yeah, it was pretty amazing.

Aaron Saray (02:28):
Yeah. Well, I'm going to make you find a link for and put it in the show notes.

Joel Clermont (02:31):
I will, yeah.

Aaron Saray (02:32):
All right. Then the other thing is, if you've never presented at a conference or never had both the the joy and the challenge of that, almost said choy or jallenge, you may not know kind of what goes on behind the scenes as a presenter. I've done a bunch of them, you've done a bunch of them. There's more often than not, presenters know deeply what they're talking about-

Joel Clermont (02:58):
You hope, yeah.

Aaron Saray (02:59):
... Yeah, that's why I said more often than not.

Joel Clermont (03:00):
Right.

Aaron Saray (03:00):
But since they know what they're talking about, they're usually doing that thing for their life. So, when they're coming to a conference, they're putting together their stuff at the last minute. Not everyone, there's lots of people that practice too, but I've done it many times, I've seen, maybe, you do it once before.

Joel Clermont (03:18):
I don't know what you are talking about but okay.

Aaron Saray (03:20):
But you put together this talk at the last minute. That doesn't mean it's bad, it doesn't mean it's wrong. But it just means that it's of... You have to have just a tiny bit more of a critical eye against it, right?

Joel Clermont (03:31):
Yeah.

Aaron Saray (03:31):
Because it's something that was created in a hurry, there might be little mistakes there, reasonings that weren't fully thought out. Doesn't mean the information's bad, again just means that it's a certain level of stuff and the whole package, the theater, the education, the presentation, that's the whole consumable. So some of these things might not be perfect, but overall, it's definitely still worth it. The thing about that too is when you look at those slides, what people are saying at a conference is, "Did you know you can do this?" Not, "This is the absolute specific tailored solution for your problem."

Joel Clermont (04:03):
Oh, yeah. Big difference there.

Aaron Saray (04:05):
So I think a lot of people see these things and they say, "Oh, new technology." Kind of like you said, "I can't wait to rewrite all my stuff with it." It's like, is that actually what you need?

Joel Clermont (04:13):
Yeah, and contextualizing. When somebody presents some technique or some package or something, what problem was it solving for them, I think is useful context too. Because then when I'm considering it I might say, "Oh, that looks really cool or useful," or, "I see where I might use that." It gets you to maybe step back a little bit and be like, "Well, but is my situation actually the same as this solution where it worked out?" Not that if they are different solutions you couldn't use it, but it just to not jump right in with both feet, so to speak.

Aaron Saray (04:44):
Yeah, and to know that you can use a little bit of that technology maybe-

Joel Clermont (04:48):
Sure.

Aaron Saray (04:50):
... and intermingle it for the types of problems that it solves. Just because it can solve all your problems doesn't mean that's the most efficient thing for it to do. When you return from one, there's a couple different steps I wanted to talk about though. Because we keep saying, "Be careful with conferences. They're worthwhile, but be careful." So the question now is, "Okay. I'm careful, I got my information, what do I do?" I think the first thing to do is if you were taking notes during the presentations to review them and rewrite them sort of, or if you haven't taken notes, when you get back take notes from the things you remember.

Joel Clermont (05:26):
Okay. Like the highlights, things that stood out to you as interesting or were worthy of further consideration.

Aaron Saray (05:32):
Yeah. What you'll notice, especially when you're taking notes the next day is, important things will still be in your brain. Less important things, less exciting things that your mind has kind of filtered out, they're not going to be something you remember to take notes on. And if it's really an awesome solution, most of us are not the forefront of everything. We're in the middle, right?

Joel Clermont (05:54):
Yeah.

Aaron Saray (05:54):
Those things will come back up again from a different source or different news and you'll be more familiar of it when it's delivered to you again and be able to accept it at a better, higher quality understanding of it.

Joel Clermont (06:04):
Sure, yeah.

Aaron Saray (06:04):
I think the next thing is, there's specific challenges I guess, compared to if you work how we work, as independent contractors and kind of just making projects. Versus if you work at a large company, things like that. Working as individually... I mean, we've talked about that before I think in other podcasts. Where it's like, here's how we start applying new technologies and here's how we do stuff. But the challenge is what if you are a cog in the wheel, right? What if you are part of a larger group that the boss sent you off to presentation because it is good, but then they bring you back and it's the same old fires and the same old stuff and you're like, "I got all these great new solutions." And they're like, "That doesn't solve our problem right now."

Joel Clermont (06:45):
Yeah. Well, I wonder too if there's a dynamic here where some companies will send a whole team to the same conference together. But if you're the only one from the team that went, that could even kind of be like a different layer of challenge. Like, they didn't hear what you heard and now you're trying to relay it to them and why it's useful.

Aaron Saray (07:02):
Right, absolutely. What I think the biggest thing to do here is to just insert your idea into the process. When I say that, I mean, you don't forget it, you don't lose track of it, you don't give up. But if you have a complicated Jira or GitHub ticket or something like that, start learning how your team understands and processes new ideas and put this new idea in there. For example, if you have tickets or what are they called? Stakes or whatever, that are for learning things, put your idea in there and say, "This is something I learned about. I think it's going to be good, we need to spend some more time on it." But don't stop there. Here's the evil genius of this.

Joel Clermont (07:40):
I was totally going to stop there by the way.

Aaron Saray (07:42):
Oh, don't.

Joel Clermont (07:43):
Okay.

Aaron Saray (07:44):
Next is find a champion inside of the company that will benefit from the technology's benefits. We've talked about this many times before, but the reason why we do programming is... I mean, we may like it but it's really just to solve business problems and to generate revenue so we can get paid and do other stuff with our lives, like play games, or whatever.

Joel Clermont (08:05):
Or program more.

Aaron Saray (08:06):
Yeah, or program more or kayak, whatever. We want to align these new technology things strongly on many connections to more revenue. We might understand that it can make the technical stuff faster, it'll make it easier for us to program, but that doesn't clearly connect to revenue as much as when you... I mean, that has to really filter up a bunch. Versus if you connect it to the senior salesperson or something like that, the senior marketing person where they understand that there's a good chance if you apply this that it'll be beneficial to the company and to them as well. And then you start to help them ask questions of your team or ask for things that use that technology.

Joel Clermont (08:55):
Now, just to be total non-corporate inexperienced Joel here. A champion implies it's somebody with more authority in the company than you?

Aaron Saray (09:03):
Yes.

Joel Clermont (09:03):
It's not a teammate, it's the team lead or, like you were saying, a senior somebody or other that has more power to make decisions or influence decisions.

Aaron Saray (09:12):
Yeah. And this is part of that game, so just with every good idea there's always caveats and stuff. Just understand, especially from my background as a manager too, you may not make your manager as happy doing something like this. But sometimes people just need jolts and a good manager's going to understand what just happened. A bad manager's going to be a little burnt, maybe they won't even like you. Well then, that's a bad manager, it doesn't mean what you did was wrong.

Joel Clermont (09:39):
They won't like it because they perceive you went around them or something like that, you're saying?

Aaron Saray (09:43):
Yeah.

Joel Clermont (09:43):
I can see that.

Aaron Saray (09:46):
So you got to keep an eye on that. I think the last thing is, I wanted to say that you might even try this idea on your own a little bit. And here's where I get really evil and this is where all the corporate men turn off and say, "Don't listen to this guy." But I think it's even worth taking a little bit of your time that you should be doing something else and trying out the idea. Not days, maybe a couple of hours. Instead of working on this ticket, it's going to take you three days. Well, guess what? The ticket might take three and a half because you have one of these ideas and you just kind of need to work it out.

Joel Clermont (10:18):
Sure.

Aaron Saray (10:18):
So you spend that half an hour or the half a day working it out, but you put yourself a stop time, right? Because really, what you're trying to do really is make something better for the company. You're trying to use this new knowledge and apply it.

Joel Clermont (10:32):
The goal is in line with the company's goals. It's not like you're, "I'm going to spend half a day working on a book that I want to sell on my own," or something. This is in line with what the team or the company are trying to do.

Aaron Saray (10:44):
But it's important that you have a stop point and you be real honest with yourself and after you've done it, say, "Is this still a good idea?" Not the fact that you spent four hours on it, but is it still a good idea?

Joel Clermont (10:56):
Yeah, with a little experience under your belt in that kind of one-off thing. I like that. All right, Aaron, we're not going to rewrite everything just one app.

Aaron Saray (11:04):
No.

Joel Clermont (11:05):
But I kind of like these points because you're not saying, "Don't be excited and don't share that excitement, don't pursue that excitement." But it's like temperate a little bit with facts, with process, with the recognition of what the team is trying to do, what your company is trying to do. But I think these were some useful strategies to kind of get the best of both worlds. That post-conference buzz but also still fit yourself as a cog in the wheel.

Aaron Saray (11:32):
This was all just my idea for a podcast to settle Joel down after he just got back from a recent conference.

Joel Clermont (11:43):
In a lot of things in life context is super important. The other day I was sitting in our living room and my wife was looking out the window and she's like, "Oh, check this out." And I didn't get up, I don't know what I was doing. She told me a second time, "You got to see this." She said, "It's like a scene from Bambi." And I'm like, "Well, which scene?" Like, it kind of matters which scene you're talking about in Bambi because it could go one of two very different directions. I just wanted to share that. And by the way, it was a pleasant, peaceful scene. There was baby deer and turkeys swarming together out in our front yard. But if it was a later scene in Bambi that would not have been the same vibe at all.

Aaron Saray (12:25):
I thought Thumper was a rabbit.

Joel Clermont (12:28):
Thumper?

Aaron Saray (12:29):
Not a turkey.

Joel Clermont (12:30):
Oh, yeah. I did see Bambi because I think I might have actually cried as a little kid but I don't know, I'm going to have to go re-watch it now.

Aaron Saray (12:44):
We like to keep our podcasts under 15 minutes and our emails under two minutes.

Joel Clermont (12:48):
If that sounds good to you, head over to masteringlaravel.io and sign up for the newsletter right on the homepage.