How Larabelles Sends Developers to Laracon for Free

Uh, so Susanna, the OG Laravel's lady. Um, so you've been a part of the community, man, forever now. This is this is I've already This is OG launch because we've had OG after OG. So Susanna, you run Larabell's um you were Well, I was going to say you worked at Titan. I'm not sure where you're at now, but if you don't mind, just give a quick little intro to uh everybody out there. Thank you. So, I don't know if I've been around forever. I say about nine years. It's not forever. Uh, so I I work at Titan sometime. I don't even know. You know, the pandemic kind of messed up my timeline. I don't know. It was before the pandemic, I think. Yeah. Uh, I founded Larabus in 2020. So, we are five years and something old. And what do I do now? I do I wear a lot of hats. So I work on Larabels. I work with Spasi part-time where I do their technical support. I go to conferences and I do courses and I just do write content. I do whatever I can to, you know, keep busy. Oh, nice, nice, nice. So Larels, for those that don't know, why don't you tell us or tell them what is Larbells and why it's so important for our community? So Larabas is a community for PHP and Larl developers who are who do not identify as men and the reason for that is I think we all know that tech in general is a male-dominated industry not lava specifically but tech in general as are many other industries unfortunately and when I became a developer I realized that I there wasn't really many people like me and I was looking for somebody I could I don't know somebody that could validate that this journey I was Oh, was going to work out for me. Cuz if you don't see anyone like you in some way, shape or form, it can be gender, it can be age, it can be your background, something, it can be hard to believe that it's for you. So that's how I felt when I first started going out to meetups and I saw all the men were developers and all the women were like marketing and SEO and all that. I was like, well, I don't really want to do that. I want to be a developer. Is that okay? So, and that's how I founded Laros because I couldn't I always said I had no friends. So, I made a company to make friends. It worked. So, if you have no friends, just make a company. Um, because once I had the Larabos name behind me, people were more willing to talk to me. I wasn't just some random person from the internet wanting to talk to people, which could be weird. And I'm happy to say I've got lots of friends now. So, it's worked out. But Larels, we are a community for, like I said, people who don't identify as men. We are a support group, which means we don't have a product. We don't sell anything. We don't even have membership fees. So, anyone, I always say anyone who's not a man is a larel. I'm sorry if it's not politically correct, but this is what it is. Um, uh, what do we do? We are here for each other. So, when we come to conferences, you know, you're not alone. You're going to be you're going to have others there. And yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So, um, so I've been going to, this is my first Laran EU, but I've been going to a lot of the Laran USes. I guess I've been to all of them. And one of the cool things you do is every year at the conference, you get all the Larels together and y'all have a big picture made. Um, have you kept all the pictures over the years? And and uh do you what do you do? Do you have them framed or anything? I think it's awesome. I have them. I don't have them framed. And unfortunately early ones are not a great quality because it was never meant to be a thing like when many things with Larabells they happen kind of it just happened without much planning and this picture on stage we did it the first time at Lacon EU in Lisbon 2023 and I just thought oh that's a why not just and there were I don't know maybe 10 of us there possibly eight very few and when we took that photo somebody took it on the phone so it wasn't official I was like look how many and then me just carried on doing it from one Lon to another and now it's a thing and even if I'm not there people now know that there will be a lar stures amazing yeah that's awesome that's awesome I love that um so so Larels like I know um you know it's it's a group how well I guess technically you you sort of meet at conferences do you if you're a member of the group like you hang out in Slack or uh I guess I was going to say IRC but that's not a thing anyway more discord or or some other way like uh uh I guess I I guess basically just tell tell them how to hang out like if if you want to be a member of oh if you want to be a member of where so we do have discord servers we hang out there we have u I think mainly it's the discord we have a newsletter but it's for sharing information but the discord is where people share if they're looking for work if there's work happening somebody's hiring if they need help with something. It's that place where you just ask questions and you get much more immediate uh feedback. Um it's not super busy, but I like it that way in a way because having another yet another busy thing to keep up with. It's too much. So I like having Disco. It's a place where when you go there people will will reply and a lot of people then took their conversation to the DMs. So I know it works even though maybe at the first glance it seems like nothing ever happens here things do happen. Uh so this is how we get together but often it's like you said at conferences we do have occasional calls when we hop on a zoom call something just to talk um yeah whatever works for anyone like I think now by now a lot of our members are generally my friends so I have them on telegram or you know any other chat system support. I gotcha. So, so, um, if you, if somebody wanted to join, what is the best way for them to kind of reach out and and be a part of this? Discord. Well, Discord, but you can DM me. I am on most social media. I don't check it often, as in I don't tweet or post often, but I do check it. So, if anyone sends me a message there, I'll reply. LinkedIn, you can find me on LinkedIn. uh Laravel's we have a contact form so you can use that Discord any anyway whatever you use yourself you'll probably find me there just to Google it I'll be there awesome awesome and then um now for those that are unable to be a me a member because we're males in the software industry 99% of us um how can we help support the cause and basically just um help this grow and what can we do. So, first of all, I want to say we don't think of men as the enemy. I just like the mean the word. No, I just need to make it clear because without you men in general, we wouldn't be able to do what we do. We need your support in many ways. So, yes, there's the financial support I'm going to come back to, but also if you don't talk about Larels, people will not know. I mean there's only I'm trying to reach out to people but often it takes colleagues for example male colleagues finding out about Larels and sharing it with their colleagues or their family members or anyone they know and that's how you spread the word. So because I I am a larbel and I founded and I've been living this life for the past five years. I think everyone must know about Larbos but they don't like even coming here and I've been coming to Laron EU for the past 3 years four years and so I would think everyone knows they don't people don't know because unless somebody told them or they happen to read about us they wouldn't know so the one thing you can do which is I think very easy is just talk to us talk about us to other people tell people who we are what we stand for so that's very important so that we can reach people that we currently are not reaching because they are not on social media, not everyone is and not everyone comes to conferences or maybe not regularly. So just we need to reach people. So that's that's the easy one. Well easy hopefully. But then the financial side of things uh we are nonprofit. We don't have a product. We don't sell anything. And any money we get is from our sponsors. And the way we use money is not only the legal boring admin stuff because we are a nonprofit company. So we have to do the taxes and everything but when we so one thing that we do regularly I've been doing it for years that for every Lacon conference or Laravel life conference we give away a ticket uh and we also uh give some financial support for to cover at least some of the travel accommodation expensive that the person might have and for that to work we need money and since we don't have any product income we need money from sponsors in order to be doing And right now I think there's six or seven conferences larons and larives. Six or seven I don't know. And for us to be able to keep doing that we need more money. So if I can ask somebody, if I can ask people, companies, individual, whatever you can share or you know support us with, please do because without that we will still run but we will lose the what I feel is the most valuable thing sending people to conferences and it works. It works people I think we all know that when you go to conferences you meet people and opens many different doors. It's always worked for me and I think everyone should have that chance and just because tickets are not cheap and there are so many other obstacles you might face but us trying to help people get them here and I want to be doing that. I want to keep doing that but in order to be doing that we need more money. So if I can ask nicely if you have anything to you know spare please consider supporting us. Sweet. Sweet. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a good cause and and you've like you said y'all given back to you know give back to the community as far as like getting more pe more people involved in Laravel itself. So it's it's awesome. Um so as we wrap up this interview I want you to just tell everybody where to go find you um and uh where the donation thing is and join your newsletter. Right. So the labas website is labas.com. there. We've got uh links to our discord server and our newsletter and contact us. Email will be there. So, you can find us there. You can find me on LinkedIn. Even Larabos has a page on LinkedIn. So, you can find Larabos on LinkedIn as well as me. You can find me uh you can email me at suzanarbos.com. Supporting us. We've got a page on our website at support us where you've got a links to. So, the way to financial support us, we've got Patreon, we've got GitHub sponsors. You can also use direct direct bank transfer whatever works for you. We're trying to make it as easy as possible for people to donate. So there are no hassles. So if uh monthly payments don't work for you, fine. We'll take yearly. We'll take it all. We'll take anything you can get. We'll take it. Um yeah, so check out check out our website and yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Suzanne, I want to thank you for coming out and, you know, spending a few minutes here explaining Larbell's. Um, like I said, it's one of the neat things about the Larbell community that I feel like a lot of other communities don't have is, you know, the outreach, the outreach that you put in for all this. So, I want to thank you for that. Um, everybody go check out the website. Um, and I appreciate you coming on here. Thank you for Yes.