Code with Jason
Code with Jason
267 - Upcoming Ruby Events with Jim Remsik, Founder of Flagrant
In this episode I talk with Jim Remzick about how AI has affected the job market, the value of in-person networking, and XO Ruby, Jim's series of regional Ruby conferences happening across the US.
Hey, it's Jason, host of the Code with Jason podcast. You're a developer. You like to listen to podcasts. You're listening to one right now. Maybe you like to read blogs and subscribe to email newsletters and stuff like that. Keep in touch.
Speaker 1:Email newsletters are a really nice way to keep on top of what's going on in the programming world, except they're actually not. I don't know about you, but the last thing that I want to do after a long day of staring at the screen is sit there and stare at the screen some more. That's why I started a different kind of newsletter. It's a snail mail programming newsletter. That's right. I send an actual envelope in the mail containing a paper newsletter that you can hold in your hands. You can read it on your living room couch, at your kitchen table, in your bed or in someone else's bed, and when they say what are you doing in my bed, you can say I'm reading Jason's newsletter. What does it look like? You might wonder what you might find in this snail mail programming newsletter. You can read about all kinds of programming topics, like object-oriented programming, testing, devops, ai. Most of it's pretty technology agnostic. You can also read about other non-programming topics like philosophy, evolutionary theory, business, marketing, economics, psychology, music, cooking, history, geology, language, culture, robotics and farming.
Speaker 1:The name of the newsletter is Nonsense Monthly. Here's what some of my readers are saying about it. Helmut Kobler, from Los Angeles, says thanks much for sending the newsletter. I got it about a week ago and read it on my sofa. It was a totally different experience than reading it on my computer or iPad. It felt more relaxed, more meaningful, something special and out of the ordinary. I'm sure that's what you were going for, so just wanted to let you know that you succeeded, looking forward to more. Drew Bragg, from Philadelphia, says Nonsense Monthly is the only newsletter I deliberately set aside time to read. I read a lot of great newsletters, but there's just something about receiving a piece of mail, physically opening it and sitting down to read it on paper.
Speaker 1:That is just so awesome, feels like a lost luxury. Chris Sonnier from Dickinson, texas, says just finished reading my first nonsense monthly snail mail newsletter and truly enjoyed it. Something about holding a physical piece of paper that just feels good. Thank you for this. Can't wait for the next one. Dear listener, if you would like to get letters in the mail from yours truly every month, you can go sign up at NonsenseMonthlycom. That's NonsenseMonthlycom. I'll say it one more time NonsenseMonthlycom. And now, without further ado, here is today's episode. Hey, today I'm here with Jim Remzick. Jim, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for being here. You are the owner of Flagrant. I was going to say Fragrant. Maybe I'm not the first person to make that mistake. Definitely not, although I like to think you smell nice but flagrant. And then also this new thing called XO Ruby.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us about both those things? Yeah, so I mean, flagrant is a consulting company. I just celebrated six years of running flagrant. We're a design and development agency that focuses mostly on Ruby, hotwire, tailwind etc. But we're about half and half design and development and so we've got some really talented UI, ux, people that understand product and web applications etc. So that's the day job. So that's the day job. And then started at Ruby Cup in Chicago, started floating this idea with some folks of doing a series of events, sort of all around the country, and Alan Rattlehoover from Cisco jumped in to that conversation pretty quickly and said, hey, can we sponsor this? And so it's. Initially I had bigger, bigger eyes and we're going to do 12 events this year. Took a little while to get everything set up and so we're doing six. We're doing them in two legs of three, so we'll travel around the US doing small regional conferences and working with meetups and locals to show them how we did that in case they want to do it on their own the following year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. I'm a big fan of this kind of renaissance we've been having, of more events and stuff like that. I'm curious how come you want to do this.
Speaker 2:I'm curious how come you want to do this? Yeah, I mean, I think the fact of the matter is you could have worked your entire career, an entire five-year career in software, and not really had access to regional events. Obviously, sin City Ruby and Rocky Mountain Ruby exist. If those aren't in your backyard, or if you didn't understand what conferences afford you, you might not seek them out, you might not figure out to go and spend some time with people in physical space and just how valuable that is, and so we're putting these together.
Speaker 2:They've got a hundred dollar ticket. They're happening on Saturday, so you don't have to take time off work. We're putting them in people's backyards so they don't need a hotel, they don't need airfare and they can just show up experience community and say man, how do we get more of that? I want to do more of this Because throughout my career, it has been personal connection that has led to most of the opportunities that I've seen, be those clients or job opportunities, what have you? And it's just so powerful, especially in the age of AI, to stand face-to-face with somebody or stand in the same room as somebody and get to communicate with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. It's interesting that you say, especially in the age of AI. Some things come to mind when I think that. But like, why exactly do you say that?
Speaker 2:think that. But, like, why exactly do you say that? Um, it is when you're speaking to somebody in person. They don't have a, a filter, they don't have, you know, additional data being fed to them. Um, it is you. You get there. Uh, I was gonna say raw unfiltered, but most of us have a filter, and so you get to really understand who they are, you know all the way down to a few drinks, and then we get a more unfiltered version.
Speaker 2:Sure, these events are happening between nine and five. So maybe, if you hang out with people afterwards but yes, for sure, and so it, it really is. But yes, for sure, and so it really is it is hard to understand sometimes when you get those job as an employer. It's hard to understand when you get those job applications coming in. Is this really this person? Is this what they know? Is this their voice, or has it been produced, polished, et cetera.
Speaker 2:And not that there's anything wrong with that. I do that myself and what is also true is that AI tends to. Ai tends to clip off the peaks and valleys and bring you more to the middle, and I think, for me, I really care about people who are passionate, who care about the things that they care about, which is not to say you have to be passionate in order to work at Flagrant. What I'm saying is that I want to know that that exists in you for something, and if you've got it for that, you could have it for other things as well. And everything seems like most things that get parsed through AI just get reverted back to the mean and it's fine. But it's not really you. It's a less authentic version of people yeah, yeah, it's so interesting to me.
Speaker 1:I was talking to this guy on the phone the other day. He emailed me out of the blue. This kind of thing happens sometimes. He emailed me and he was like hey, I'm a retired master plumber and I need help with my business's website. Uh, can you give me a call?
Speaker 1:I'm like okay, like I, I don't really do that kind of thing, uh, right now, but I'm always happy to talk with people and maybe I can at least steer them in the right direction and stuff like that. And he spoke to me from an employer's perspective about evaluating candidates and he said, like it's impossible because of AI. It just you get spammed with all these applications that are basically not real and they all look the same and it's like, well, what can I do with this? Like what can you do with that? It's kind of useless.
Speaker 1:And then I'd thought about it before from the other side. When he said that to me, that was kind of, for some reason, that struck me, even though that wasn't the first time I'd heard it from an employer's perspective. But from the other side, you're experiencing this phenomenon of being a drop in a bucket. You know, the competition has increased so much because these applications are getting like DDoSed and so your application can't really stand out anymore, and so this method of people getting jobs that kind of started maybe 20 years ago. Uh, with with online jobs and applications and stuff like that, it's kind of been ruined. I don't know that that might be too strong of a way to put it, but it kind of seems like it's been ruined and now we just have to go back and, and, and and get jobs the old fashioned way way, by just like in-person connections, or at least personal connections.
Speaker 2:I think you're correct. Ruined is maybe strong. They've become a lot less effective, like we went that route to make things more effective and now that's no longer true. I guess you could say that's ruined. But I think there's a similar aspect of when everything is sort of reverted back to the mean. If I come to you with sort of this abstract notion of hey, jason, would you ever hire a junior person?
Speaker 1:Would you yeah?
Speaker 2:But it probably depends, right. But it probably depends right. Like, um, if, for us, uh, we only take on junior people when we know that we can support them. Um, and so if people email us right now and ask us if we're hiring juniors, I have to say no, just cause I know that we don't have the room to support them. Um, but if I go to, I go to larger companies and say, hey, would you consider hiring a junior person? You know, there's some hemming, there's some hawing.
Speaker 2:That abstract notion of a junior is harder to respond to than if I say hey, jason, here is Cody. Cody's a junior developer. He has worked in customer service. He has a background in Cody's, actually a member of my team, so he has a background in R and Python, mostly noodling about, and then also a big fan of chess. And given those attributes, I could say that is something that I can work with. You know, he has problem-solving skills, he has strategic skills, he's good with people. That's a person I can take a shot on. That is, you know, somewhat more concrete, even if I've only got a limited number of details. Um, and so, as a junior, I would say, or a mid-level, whatever, uh, the more that you can um find some edges that people can uh understand how they fit into their puzzle, the better equipped you are to find a role.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, wait, can you say that again? You said something, the better equipped you are to find a role, but I didn't quite catch the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the more excuse me yeah. So the more details that you can give somebody who's trying to make a decision as to whether or not to hire you, the better they're able to understand. Does this piece fit into the puzzle that I'm trying to assemble? And if I just say generically, can you, are you hiring a junior person you might have in the hall you might say, you know, no, we, we can't, we can't support that right now. But if I say hey, if I've got somebody who has some experience, who you know is good with people and you know takes on the abstractness out of it, and say, could you hire Cody or Paula or whomever, that's a different question. When you're able to put some actual edges on the people and define who they are put some actual edges on the people and define who they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, yeah, I get what you're saying Totally Like. Sometimes I've interviewed people or I've known people who I could potentially refer to a job and stuff like that, but they may be either like not to be mean, but like they don't have any like personality to them, like they don't have any distinguishing interests or anything like that. And, and the worst is when I can just like tell so obviously that they just like went to a boot camp to hop on the programming gold rush and they're like not really into it, it's like man, like I don't know, like maybe, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:Um, but if you can showcase yourself as an interesting person, um, then that can help, and I've tried to do the same thing myself, um, yeah, I will say the it's not bad for people to get into this industry to make a living, like we need those people too, and I think that whatever, whatever authentic facets of your life help define who you are. They can help you align to various roles. So if you are somebody that donates lots of time to good causes, that might be really appealing to a nonprofit, to a charity organization, that your values aligned with them, and it might not align you well with a financial, uh startup that you know just wants to be your life, you know, for the next few years, and so for me, it's those. Finding those edges ultimately helped define, like, what are the things that motivate you and and what are your values and how can those align to an opportunity that either today or in the future presents itself?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I read in this in this consulting book. Maybe you're familiar with Alan Weiss, but I've. I've read several of his, his books on consulting, and he has a piece of advice to make yourself an object of interest. An object of interest, and I really took that to heart. Um, like, read widely and, and, um, I don't know, just try to become an interesting person. Um, and that can help you. Um, and I've found, you know, by by taking that advice, uh, that that specific advice to read broadly and stuff like that and develop a broad range of interests, I found myself able to more easily form personal connections with a lot of different people and that helps.
Speaker 1:There's also some almost opposite advice. There's this blurb that really stuck with me from this book I read. It said don't try to impress people, be impressed by them and let them love you for it, which I think is really smart, because when I was younger, I would often try to impress people. Um, but, like, people are rarely impressed by people trying to impress them. Um, what is a lot more appealing is if you show a genuine interest in other people. Um, you'll in that book how to win friends and influence people. Um, he says something like you'll make more friends in two weeks by being interested in other people than in two years trying to get other people interested in you. But, in any case, one of the big takeaways, I think, of everything that's happened over the last few years with COVID and AI and stuff like that, is the importance of personal connections. It's not just about the buzzwords on the resume and stuff like that. You have to form relationships with people.
Speaker 2:I think that's so important because you can have all the buzzwords on your resume or not, and that's going to be a limiting gate for you, like somebody is going to stack up all the resumes, they're going to feed through the system and they're going to say haves and have nots and who knows whether the people that submitted those resumes are going to be successful at your company, are going to be successful at your company. That process is a manual separation just to thin the herd, to get down to what is a smaller set of data that we could work with, and the advice that I got from somebody who was a consultant when I was about to start my first company. They said it's not what you know, it's not who you know, it's who knows you, and I think that that is something that I've taken to heart that throughout the years, like who knows not only your name, but who knows that you'll show up, who knows that you have the skills to be able to help them solve their problems and that you are. You know somebody that they're going to enjoy being around, whether because you, you seem impressed by them, or or or whichever like it it comes down to. Somebody else needs to make a decision and what have you put out in the world that allows them to say, yes, this is definitely a person that can help me, either because they've been doing it for 20 years or they're just getting started. But I look at all of their experience that they have in high school and college and the groups that they belong to and the things that they've published online. Those are all the things that get looked at anyway. Those are all the things that get looked at anyway, um, and so how can we, um, how can we package that all up and into a, an appealing package and or or a package that can be found, and part of that is by being in person, um, and going through similar experiences, watching talks, etc. And then coming out into the hallway and talking about them and understanding your perspective of what did we just watch and did you take away the lessons, or is this something new for you? No-transcript.
Speaker 2:Ultimately that's that's why we wanted to put the events on is to um, give people a low risk, low cost way to get together in person and help light a fire under local organizers, who are already doing a lot of the work anyway. That's why we're working with local meetup groups like Chicago Ruby and Austin RV and Atlanta Rug. It's not a. You know, you've experienced conference life right, it is. I think my Madison Ruby was not as successful as pre-COVID Madison Rubies and I attribute that to, in part, just it's easier to stay at home. There's so much content. It's just easier not to put your shoes on and go out and support With meetups. They happen frequently enough that we don't put our shoes on.
Speaker 2:We'll say we'll go next month, what have you? The Expo Ruby events. They're going to happen at a point in time. Either you make the trip or you don't, um, you go across town, you go, you know, to a neighboring city, or you don't um, but you have this one opportunity. There's not going to be another one until next year at the earliest.
Speaker 2:And so we really wanted to be a uh, we really wanted to use that as a way to draw people out of the woodwork. Lots of people moved during COVID. I don't know everybody that's in Chicago anymore, but I know that there's a whole city full of Rubius there and lots of them don't know that they're there together. And so how can we be a force to unite these regional groups to come together and discover oh, you moved here during the pandemic, didn't know that. Um, and then highlight the things that are happening more regularly as well uh, like the user group meetups and what have you yeah, I think what a lot of places need is just a catalyst, like the people are there and the interest is there.
Speaker 1:there just needs to be somebody to pick up the torch and be like, hey, there's a thing happening on this date at this place uh, come to it which doesn't. It hasn't been happening, for whatever reasons. Hasn't been happening as much since the pandemic, at least with Ruby. I can't speak for anything else, but there's kind of some headwinds, like it's harder to find space these days because fewer places have physical offices and then people kind of scattered during the pandemic. There's no reason to live in the expensive city, so people receded into the suburbs and so you did that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. We live an hour outside of I mean, madison's not a huge metro anyway, but we live an hour outside of town on a one acre plot on a lake. Most of our neighbors are farmers. I don't have local Ruby community here. I have to go to Madison at the at the nearest or, you know, go in and explore Milwaukee or Minneapolis. What have you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm in a bit of a similar boat. I'm about 30, 40 minutes outside of Grand Rapids, michigan, and there's not a lot of Ruby community in Grand Rapids. There's certainly not like a meetup that meets regularly. I have to go to like Chicago, I would say Detroit, but like, not even really Like there's hardly a ruby community there. Michigan is not really like a big ruby state, um, which is probably the case just kind of outside the coasts in in general, um yeah so. So that's good though to have some of these regional events, because it's not like there's nobody, there's just um, there's just um, I don't know you maybe have to do it in a in a bigger city in order to have a a draw um so I think there's, there, are.
Speaker 2:There certainly are some outliers, um and you know, depends on your definition of big city, but um columbus, ohio, there's uh still regular meetups going on in columbus columbus river brigade and there's a fair amount of activity there.
Speaker 2:Um kansas city, I've had a surprising number of people reach out saying, hey, um, can we do something here? And quite literally, though the, the goal has been to put the community on the map, and so, as I'm driving from city to city, we're looking for is there any place between Chicago and Atlanta where community is happening and could we just do like a social event or like grab coffee, do you? I know one of the original plans was to drive from miami to atlanta and I know that there is a guy named dan that works at a small company in live oak, florida. That uh was like I can drive along, obviously, stop in orlando and whatnot, but I can meet up with dan in live oak, florida and um hashrock still has an office in in jacksonville and like where are all these people, and then, you know, put a spotlight on on that.
Speaker 2:whenever we meet with those, uh, whenever we go to those places and and say here's, here is where the ruby community is, and then then ideally we'll get people shouting, shouting to say, hey, I'm on the way, you know, can we, can we stop and have coffee, or can you visit the office? What have you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. I had the idea to do something similar Some years ago I called it the code with Jason world Tour, but I never really was able to carve out the time to do a contiguous road trip or something like that. I just had some disconnected visits to certain cities. But even that was still fun. Um, because you know, I have I have the podcast and so like, uh, almost everywhere I visit, I find at least one person who like is already familiar with me, and so it's kind of cool to like meet people who have listened to the podcast and stuff like that um for sure.
Speaker 2:Um yeah, cory haynes also his journeyman tour back in the day. I don't know if you know him.
Speaker 1:I know him yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so he was just sort of traveling from city to city, and I'll refrain from making a quantum leap joke, but you know, we sat down, he interviewed people wherever he went about. You know how did you get into programming and what are those stories? Yeah, it's not necessarily a new idea and I also can't point at anybody else that's doing it right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, by the way, I'm starting to think more seriously about my next event. Starting to think more seriously about my next event. So, dear listener, if you don't know, I, me and my wife have been hosting a conference called sin city ruby in las vegas. We did it three times 2022, 2024 and 2025. Um, we're not going to do it anymore for various reasons. One is las vegas is 2 000 miles away and it's kind of inconvenient to organize a conference that far away. Another is is the expense of Vegas and stuff like that, and doing it at a hotel. Um, so we're going to do the next one. If we do one, it's probably going to be in Michigan, um, somewhere in Northern Michigan. Um, have you been to Northern Michigan, jim? Somewhere in northern michigan um.
Speaker 2:Have you been to northern michigan, jim?
Speaker 1:uh, you mean wisconsin's hat, wisconsin's hat yeah, I, I mean sure I'd include the up, but also just like the northern lower peninsula too I, I have not.
Speaker 2:Uh, the furthest north I think I've been in michigan is detroit okay got it. Yeah were you, which is pretty, pretty south for right listeners yeah, were you at that detroit? Uh rails comp for whatever it was yeah, we, we sponsored that one, and then we also went back and did an event in detroit, um with um. We did a detroit meetup, uh, where we brought Noel Rappin out, and I think we had about 15 people there. So I actually did not know that you were in Grand Rapids, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Probably should have reached out to you. But yeah, I mean, there are people around. There are companies around that are using Ruby in Detroit and right across the river in that Canadian city Is it Windsor? Yeah, like there are folks around, I think that if they had a catalyst to bring them together, it's possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, totally agree. Okay, it's possible. Yeah, yeah, totally agree. Um, okay, so what is the very next upcoming uh, xo Ruby events at the very first.
Speaker 2:The first and next is Chicago. That's September 6th. Um, we're at the Fulton street art collective. Uh, one of the things that you just noted is that, um, when people think conferences, often they think hotels, and that's because, at a large scale, those are the only places that can fit outside of maybe a convention center or some other purpose-built structure, those venues is that they, they are your only option and they, you know they might not price their rental to be super expensive, but then, oh, you want AV and you want food. Food you have to use our catering, like everything just becomes a line item on a very large invoice.
Speaker 2:Eventually, we had that same experience with Madison Ruby, but we were able to pull it off. But I knew that, going to cities that I didn't know or haven't spent a whole lot of time that I wanted to avoid hotels. So our venues are intentionally smaller For Chicago. We have the Fulton Street Art Collective and it is a loft space Seats about 80 and we are. We are bringing projector stage backdrops, pa system, microphones, we are working with Comfreaks to record them, and so we'll have all the video equipment with us as well, the goal being that, basically, we could go into any space that has seating and bathrooms and be able to put on an event. We've got a few more attributes that we look for in our venues accessibility, self-catering, so we want to be able to bring in like prepackaged snacks and coffee and water and whatnot, and then but all those things are we're doing to lower the risk and be able to put these things on more efficiently and so far it's working and we're getting some really interesting venues.
Speaker 2:We've got a black box theater in Atlanta called the Limelight Theater, and then in New Orleans we have the Maroney Opera House, which is a converted church and just it's really hard to describe other than it's very New Orleans, like it's all. It's a white church but it has sort of a grit. On the outside it looks haunted. And then you know, in Portland we've got a, an, uh, an industrial, chic warehouse, um, that is just it's very Portland. And we're working with San Diego on a uh, a little arts playhouse that you might expect, you know, near the beach in San Diego. So really trying to um, highlight the uh, the scene, the vibe, whatever you want to call it of the cities that we go to, but also stay smaller. That's why we're looking at 60 people at these events. Those are always the events where you really get to know everybody in the room.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I love that about the smaller events. I always tell people that, ironically, the it's at the smaller events that you meet more people, um, and you come away with like deeper relationships too.
Speaker 2:because that's the more important thing to me is is the depth of the relationships that you form, as opposed to the quantity well, and so one of my favorite uh stories that I got from madison ruby was, um, one of our attendees uh, I forget his name and I'll probably get a message after this airs but um, he talked about like about, the best part of Madison Ruby for him was to be able to sit down at lunch with Tenderlove and the conversation was whatever the conversation was, but the thing that broke the attendees' brain a little bit was they spent so much time talking about America's Next Top Model attendees brain a little bit was they spent so much time talking about America's next top model.
Speaker 2:I think so often we forget that these keynote speakers and celebrities in our spaces are just people, and so to be able to break that down a little bit is it's an it like it is a luxury and an opportunity that we have if we make it. Um, I had a similar experience in uh, finland. Um, I went over to frozen rails probably 2014, something like that and my my conference. Uh, trick is to go to a place where english is not the the native language, because there's usually some other English-speaking speakers there, and so then they all cluster together and talk English with each other, and so I got to spend a bunch of time with Patrick McKenzie Patio 11, over a couple of days in Finland, just because we were comfortable talking to one another.
Speaker 2:You know, done the same thing in Scotland and other places as well. But you know, at these smaller events you have access that you don't get. If there's 800 people and you know Shopify setting their whole team, they're probably going to get together and go hang out together. It's their onsite for their team. But at a smaller event where you might have one or two other people from a team, you're still probably going to gather other people when you go out to meals and whatnot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was one of the things that was part of my pitch, for Sin City Ruby is. At some of the bigger conferences I noticed that it's kind of socially stratified. There's like the, the, the high status speakers and stuff like that, and then everybody else um, which is like that's, that's natural and and whatever um. But at a really small conference like sin city Ruby, everybody's mixed in together the whole time and like we had Dave Thomas there and quite a lot of people at the conference had a chance to just hang out and talk with Dave Thomas. When you get a chance like that, you know and and I personally I had some privileges as the organizer, so I got to like go have lunch with Dave Thomas and some of the other people at the conference and it was just, it was like a secret code or something to get access to the special experience that you never would have otherwise.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. What am I? You know, absolutely One of my. You know just, it's hard to. One of the experiences that I had was we went to Huntsville, alabama, for a conference Jeremy McNally was putting on and Chris Wanstroth from GitHub was keynoting, and wound up spending, you know, the evening playing, uh, werewolf and other games. Like, we're all in the middle of Huntsville Alabama, what else are we going to do? Right, um, it's actually a cool city, but, um, but yeah, we, we didn't didn't necessarily know where and what to do other than hang out with each other, and so, uh, that was a good time for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love those experiences. Yeah and again. Okay. So I had a question for you. Actually this is just out of my own selfish interest, but how are you finding these venues in these towns? Because to me that seems not easy, Like you don't live there. How do you finding these venues in these towns? Because to me that seems not easy, Like you don't live there.
Speaker 2:How do you find these places? A couple of different ways that this has happened. There are sites online where you can go and search for event space Peerspace, evective, gigster, those are all places that are trying to sell their space and so it's been a fair amount of. We talked to some folks and it didn't work out. And we talked to other folks and we found really great opportunities. But we're also working with local organizers as much as we can, and so we're getting folks that do live in those cities to recommend spaces, and that has been particularly helpful. Nathan Hessler from Austin RV has been really helpful there.
Speaker 2:Nate Vick, who is in Portland, is helping to organize ExoRuby Portland.
Speaker 2:Portland is helping to organize ExoRuby Portland has done a lot of boots on the ground, research and went to the space and recorded videos and whatnot, because I can see things online. But if I've never been in the space before, maybe it stinks to high heaven, who knows. And so it's a mixture of referrals and just finding stuff online. But the goal is to log all the places that we consider and give those to the organizers, say here are the opportunities that we found, this is the one that we chose, here's why we chose it. So, again, if they want to put in an event next year without us, they can do that. Not everybody is built for running conferences and so if they say, no, you could do that again. Uh, here next year, yeah, we'll, we will consider that as well. The the hope is that these go well and that, um, this becomes something that we do regularly, but with some cities being taken over by, uh, local organizers, and then that will free us up to do other cities yeah, okay, okay, um, yeah, and I wanna okay.
Speaker 1:So, with these events, like you can never promote them too much, obviously, um, and so I'm starting to talk more now about my event for I'm thinking summer 2026 is when it will be, and Sin City Ruby 2025 was really like a. It made an indelible mark on me. I guess the word is scar because it was just so painful. Me and my wife lost a lot of money, sorry to hear that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's fine. It's probably a net positive in the long run, you know. But I'm thinking, kind of like you mentioned, how can I do this in a low-risk way? I talked with Andy Kroll, who I imagine you know about Brighton Ruby, and he said that he designed it from the beginning so that, like, if 50 people came, then it would work out fine, or if, like, 500 people came, it would be fine. I don't remember the numbers, but you know the idea that it could, that it would be unproblematic, no matter how many people came or didn't. And so that's the way I want to do this one.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking like it'll be a thing where it's like and I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this it's kind of like be in this city on these days and that's, you know, stay here's a recommended hotel, but like just be in this town on this day and that's the start of it, and then I can figure out a venue later.
Speaker 1:Um, and and I'm not expecting it to be a very big thing, because there's always this chicken egg problem with events, you know, it's like you don't know how many people are going to show up and you have to like commit to these expenses before you know if you're gonna, if, if, if that thing you're committing to actually makes sense for you for your event or not, then obviously that's going to limit who's going to be willing to, to make the leap right. Because, like, if if you just say, hey, we're putting on this vague event on these days in this town, like maybe you, jim, would come to that and a few other people I know well, but like not everybody's going to do that, um, I don Any thoughts as a fellow organizer on how to approach that thing.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, yeah. So first of all, a friend of mine who's spoken a number of times at Madison, ruby Martin Atkins, has always said get the smaller venue and sell it out. If you get a smaller venue and sell it out, then you can look at solving that problem by getting a larger venue and there are opportunities to lock down value venues without like signing away your life for them or working with places that have multiple size venues, and just let them know what you're trying to do and say I'm pretty certain that we can get 50 people here. So if you've got a 75 seat theater and then next door you've got 150 and then across town you've got a 300 seat theater, Like, as we sell these things, as we sell tickets, as we know how things are going, we'd like the opportunity to grow into the other spaces, if that's possible.
Speaker 2:Um, alamo draft house in austin has a ton of spaces and so, um, that is, that is a the sort of place where I would consider that uh, approach, um, but yeah, like, what's what's the problem if you have, if you only have, 50 people, and it's amazing, right. If you can't resolve that, if you can't move on from the 50-seat venue to something smaller, then people just have FOMO and you know what? You'll sell more tickets the following year. But again I go back to the advice that I had earlier it's not what you know, it's not who you know. It's not who you know, it's who knows you. And so the mere fact that Jason is putting on the conference and people have had experience with Sin City and know you and want to show up for you is going to make those things more successful. So he's not giving me a whole lot of details, but I know it's Jason.
Speaker 1:I trust Jason, I'll sign up to go to this event yeah, yeah, and if only 20 people show up, then I think that's great. I think it would be a lot of fun if, like we I don't know people, people maybe get their own hotels and stuff, but then additionally get an airbnb and we like all have together Like we don't go to a restaurant, like we make food and all have dinner together, like as a family. Um, it would just be like a much more intimate, closer connection type thing than than almost any other event you're going to go to.
Speaker 2:I agree, and, uh, that is a an easier lift, probably a higher price point, cause you got fewer people splitting the cost Potentially. Who knows how you run it? I've actually gone to an event like that called Web Whiskey Weekend, where they rented a place that sleeps 20 people, and so I wound up sharing a bunk room with three other people, and I was comfortable with that. That's what I bought into, but the price was per bed. So if you wanted the, the king bed and the master all to yourself, that was a higher price. Um, and then everybody, um, brought a bottle of whiskey, but that's not necessarily required. And then, um, you know, we, we communally cooked and did dishes and whatnot. It was a really great experience. So those things absolutely can happen. I think, to push back just a little bit, you can also get a room block without committing to a number of rooms at a hotel.
Speaker 1:Why did I know that?
Speaker 2:They will give you. I mean, not everybody does it, but it is possible to do. That's what we did for Madison Ruby. Everybody who stayed at the conference hotel got a special rate which wound up being $30 or $40 cheaper than retail. And then it wasn't huge, and so I think we had like 20 rooms and sold that out. We renewed it. We got another 10 rooms because we sold out the smaller block, but we still had people staying, you know, all over the city at other hotels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, like some small town in Michigan, like a little outside peak season, might be a little easier to negotiate than Las Vegas.
Speaker 2:For sure, like again when you go into those big beige rooms that are designed to extract money from people that are putting on events. They are often the only game in town, and so, while you might not have a ton of choice for hotels in Grand Rapids, you're going to have a choice, and so, yeah, there are definitely options. We can also take this offline. I'm happy to talk more about this. Or, if anybody's curious about starting their own conference, I'm happy to talk about this stuff whenever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, conference, I'm happy to talk about this stuff whenever yeah, yeah, have you talked with um travis doctor who's?
Speaker 2:putting on uh last off yeah, yeah, yeah, I think, um, he just joined uh. Ruby central has a uh, a meetup organizer group, um, and so he just joined that. He's thinking about putting together a meetup group locally as well. And so if you're in the I think it's Albuquerque, new Mexico and you're interested in meeting up with other Rubius, there is a meetup coming. It might work out that I'm able to stop in Albuquerque between San Diego and Austin and and and join them for a night as well. So, um, but I haven't uh, I talked to him at RailsConf and we've bounced off of each other a couple of times, but looking forward to blast off uh Rails next year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. It's great to see another person taking the leap and and trying their hand at putting on a conference. Um, all right, it's probably time to start wrapping up soon. Is there anything that we haven't touched on yet that we should?
Speaker 2:We've got some really great speakers in all the cities Scott Werner, aji Slater, coraline Ademke in Chicago. We've got Jeremy Smith and Igor Alexandrov in Atlanta. That I'm really excited about. We just got Tender Love confirmed for Portland, and so the details get a little bit fuzzier the further out we go, even though we're only a few three, four, six weeks away from some of these events. But I'm really excited about the stuff that's coming in the background. We've gotten really great support from Cisco just from the start, as well as a number of folks sponsoring the cities. The Unsimple just joined on and they've sponsored every city, which we're hugely appreciative of. There are conferences happening all over. I just spoke with Roland Lopez from RubyConf Thailand. That event is happening in January. If you want to scooch over to Thailand, which I really want to do, we'll see how these turn out first. But yeah, there are people getting together everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, man, that would be so fun to go to Thailand. On my personal list is Taiwan. There's a Ruby event in Taiwan. Really want to go to that. What a pity that there's a limited amount of time and money and you can't go to every single event that ever happens. Yeah, okay, well, I wish you the best of luck with all these events. I'm sure they're going to be great. And where should people go to find out more?
Speaker 2:XORubycom, just the letter X, the letter O, rubycom that came together as these are sort of a love letter to the community. So XO oh.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:Okay, and you can subscribe to the newsletter there. The event information that's available is all there and tickets are for sale for all six conferences.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, Jim, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks so much for having me, thank you.