The first official Laravel Meetup in Georgia

Today we have um two special guests. We're going to talk about the brand new Laravel meetup in the country of Georgia. Um so what I'm going to do is just uh I'll just go in order from my left to right which is Gaga and then Na. So uh Gaga, if you don't mind, I'll start with you. Just uh kind of introduce yourself and uh and then then I'll have Nika introduce himself and then we'll we'll go from there into some questions and stuff. Sure. Thanks, Eric. Um I am Gaga. I am co-founder and CEO of Redberry. We are a software development agency based in Tibilis, Georgia. Uh we are a longtime Laravel partner agency. Um now one of few premier partners worldwide. Um and yeah I mean like we build software for u companies throughout the world. We we got clients in 15 plus countries and also our engineering team is quite big. We're around 100 people in our engineering team. Yeah, that's briefly uh about me and about Redberry. Maybe Nika, you can introduce yourself. I am Nika. I'm engineering director here at Redberry and yeah, we've been I've been in Redberry forever now and I've been developing on Laravel forever as well. So, I'm a fellow artisan basically. So, yeah. I love that. I love that. So, so Nico, what version did you start with? Do you remember? Uh, it was back in 2016, I think, or 15. So, it's going to be like five, six. Yeah. For me, I guess it was maybe 5.3 or four. Yeah. Somewhere there. So, nice. Nice. Yeah. So, that's basically a decade of using Laravel. That's awesome. Uh, university. So, it's it was it was getting popular back then. Yeah. I I love that. I love I love that you know people pick pick up Larbell and then it's kind of like I have the same journey. I picked it up and I was like I just like this so I'm just going to keep using it for the rest of my life I guess and that makes it fun. Um so so you're Redberry is hosting or sponsoring or starting um you can let me know the sort of the details but um so there is a brand new Laravel meetup coming to the country of Georgia. Um so what I'm interested in is like how did this start? like what what was the catalyst and you're like, "Oh, well, we really need a meetup group here." Yeah, I guess we we wanted to set something like that up in Georgia for a long time, I would say. Uh it's going to be the first official LAR meetup that we will host. Um it will take place on the 14th of May. um at our office in Radio City and I guess uh our new office played a big part in actually enabling us to host uh that kind of meet up because you know uh Laravel and PHP community in Georgia is quite big although the country itself is is not that big but the but the community uh is quite big u because many companies in Georgia build their software uh with Laravel and uh PHP. So uh we wanted to create this kind of like recurring set of meetups for a long time now and now we're really glad that we have this opportunity to uh kickstart things starting u next month and yeah u we we'll we expect to continue uh this meetup service and transform it into a recurring thing. Love that. Um, so, so I know you said that there was a lot of developers in Georgia that use Laravel. Like, is is there any particular reason for that that you know of or is that just um, you know, because Redberry's there and y'all are a big company uh, within the within the country? Can I answer that? So I think that um well like from my experience like when we first started using Laravel it was kind of like a new new thing on the PHP and it was interesting and it was like a uh really interesting for the new generation so to say and like that time back in 2015 and 16 it was like the time when the most of the developers that are like kind of senior developers right now kind of go into the development and like into the PHP development and using frameworks and different technologies, right? So then they got into Laravel a lot and uh because like that that's the time that they started developing basically and the Laravel was like the shining star back then and I think that a lot of developers started out with Laravel and they kind of like skipped the uh maybe not fully skipped like we still have like symphon developers but they kind of skipped that step and just went straight to Laravel and like Laravel is a framework that if you start to develop on Laravel you're going to stay on Laravel because it's it it's like kind of gives you all the comfort you need uh in the working process no matter if you're a solo or like a agency or whatever. It's it's a it's a really really nice ecosystem kind of to stay in and core team is also like taking care of of uh the framework and like it's kind of maintaining it really well. Yeah. And people kind of stayed there and like we have huge community right now like compared to our uh our population of course but we have a huge community who uh develops and writes code on Laravel every day. Yeah, that that's awesome. And I I was looking at the uh the signup page. It's on um well, we could probably post the link after this, but uh uh the you already have 73 confirmed going, so that's really big for a very for a first ever meetup. Um h how how has it been as far as like getting the the word out? Um yeah, I guess we we just announced through our own like social media profiles and uh posted in a few uh community groups on social media in Georgia to inform people. Um you know like we expect somewhere around 150 people probably for the first meetup. uh and yeah I mean like it it it's mostly like organic word of mouth distribution of uh this just like this information that that the meetup is happening. I think uh a lot of people in the community have been looking forward to something like that happening for a long time now. So uh yeah I I I think everybody's going to have some good time coming together. Nice. And so as far as like the meetup itself, what's been the hardest part uh you know as you start planning this and building into this very first meetup, has there been any struggles or anything like that or has it been pretty pretty simple? Um I I mean like organizing an event always u has its own nuances. You have to plan a lot of things like the place, environment, like speakers etc. Um I I think that's that's been like a u normal organizational process to uh set set things up. So yeah, I I would say nothing has has been like a big challenge to uh put this together, but as I said um like we we moved to our new office a year ago and that has been probably the biggest enabler for us to do it and host it at our own office because there's no way we could do it at our previous uh place. Yeah. So yeah, probably that's that was kind of like the main factor maybe that enabled us to do that. Now also another thing uh that that I can mention is how Laravel really supports this kind of events now all around the world because you know like with within the Laravel ecosystem there are like three types of events that there are lar s Siri heard it. Uh then there are Laravel live events and then there are meetups and Laravel team has been very active in helping the community throughout the world to uh like make it happen in more places and I think that also was um kind of a trigger for for us as well because Larl team has been helpful uh for us as well to set this up and kick start things in Georgia as well with this meetup. Nick, I think you wanted to add something. Yeah, I was just going to say something similar. So the team also kind of encourages the core team and like the Laravel as a uh like a community kind of also encourages to do the local meetups and Georgia is kind of also like in the uh let's say technology we tried at least to be technological kind of hub in the area like in the south caucuses and I think that this is a really nice place to kind of organize the meetups and like organize the like a technological gathering so to say and yeah let's let's see where this goes because it's going to be interesting and regarding the hardest part uh about like organizing this whole thing I was thinking that the hardest part might still be in in the future because yeah let's see let's see how the actual uh event is going to go you know that's probably the hardest part yeah I I was going to say I can confirm that like just by you know being part of like the Larcon online you know back in the co days and and going to these events, it's like nothing ever like really prepares you for when you know the 150 people show up and you're like, "Oh no, we have a problem over here." Let's see. Yeah. So, you've um and speaking of the the conference, you've already got like uh three or four speakers lined up, I think, is what I've seen. So, y'all y'all are going all out for this first one, right? Yeah, we met most of our speakers except of course. most of our speakers uh and by most I mean two like two because we have two speakers in total. It sounds like uh there are many but there are just two and we met them on Lakon actually. So this is really uh uh that's where the networking happens so to say. So yeah we met met them uh on Lacon and I think yeah I think the talks are going to be interesting. Uh, one of the challenges is also like kind of to find the speaker speaker that kind of speaks about something new and like really useful and I think that we got like a good mix of the topics that we're going to cover. Yeah, I'm very thankful for u Harris who's gonna uh fly in uh and join us for our first meet up from Athens, Greece. um and he's going to have a great talk about value objects and uh then um it'll be uh our next speaker who's a VP of engineering at Prime Insights and Prime Insights deals with a huge huge workloads uh in production. They got like millions of customers using daily um their applications the back end of which is built with Laravel and it's going to be pretty interesting. It's always interesting you know like um having this real world experiences of battling with such huge amounts of workload and there uh then they're going to with third speaker um uh Revas who's leading AI development efforts at Redberry. So everybody's going to get their own dose of AI talk as well during the first meet up and Reas is going to talk about building production grade AI agents with Laravel because Laravel is a really great tech stack really productive for building custom AI agents for different softwares and we've been doing that for a long time now. So he was going to share um his experience with building and shipping u agents in production especially in regulated industries which expose their own constraints on how you design and build the uh AI powered systems. So I guess it's uh uh going to be interesting like all all three talks and yeah hope uh people the community will love it. Nice. I love that. And just kind of thinking, I know this is first one I'm sort of just kind of thinking in the future. Are you planning on doing these sort of once a month or once a quarter or or what's sort of your overarching goal, you know, as as the first as you start this meetup group? U we we haven't really decided on the cadence of these meetups yet. So we we are thinking between once a quarter and twice a year basically either two times a year or four times a year but yeah we we'll see how the first one goes. I'm hopeful that we can do it uh every quarter. So basically like four times a year I think that that should be a good cadence for us. But yeah let's see how how things go. But we definitely want to make this a recurring thing so that uh uh the Laravel community in Georgia has this regular meetings where people come together share about their experience what they are building with Laravel etc. That's always interesting and exciting. That that's what I love most about going to different conferences like Laracons and Laravel lives hearing all the crazy stuff people do with Laravel. That's always exciting and inspiring to get to. Yes. Yes. And what's and so this this sort of brings me into another question too as far as like your your country itself. I know let's see is English isn't the the primary language, right? But I guess most developers speak English in in the region or in the area. And so you you're going to do the conferences in English or how are you going to I guess mix and match all that? Yeah, so we we speak Georgian which is our native language but um most of the um developers speak English pretty well. Um I would say in general most of the like young people in Georgia speak decent English. uh so uh this meetup will also be uh in English. So all the talks will be uh in English and I I think also like the uh community involves uh a lot of international people now because Georgia and is becoming this hub slowly for uh people to come and work remotely etc. So I think uh the like attendees will also uh be a mix of Georgian speakers and non-Georgian speakers. So we think uh it's the right decision to have these talks uh in English. And also this really allows us to open the door for uh like speakers outside uh of Georgia. And as I mentioned um Harris Skype kindly accepted uh when we approached him and asked to join us for the first ever meetup uh in Georgia. So yeah that's that's really great. I hope I'm not catching something here. Um so let me go back to my let me go back to my list of questions because I I had a few more here. Um, so, uh, I feel like we kind of touched on this, uh, you you sort of touched on this in the sort of the beginning, but do you feel like, um, the community there is going to be big enough to eventually take this bigger than just a meetup to like the, you know, the next step, which would be like a live or do you have any of those aspirations as of right now, or are you going to be like, let's do this for a year or two and then figure out if we we want to keep doing this? I think community is big enough. Uh and also like we have other countries there are kind of like our neighboring countries that also has communities there and I think that the sheer number wise it's big enough. We haven't talked about this internally yet and we we want to take it step by step but let's see like in the yeah I guess like Lar live events are somewhere around 300 to 400 attendees normally um and I think like down the road that might be realistic especially if you take in consideration a bit larger region around Georgia but yeah as Nika said we'll take it uh at a time and Yeah, let let's see how the meetups go first and maybe down the road we can transform it into something uh bigger like a regional live conference. Uh but yeah, we are just starting with meetups now. So, Gotcha. Um and then as far as like people that want to help or contribute to this, um what sort of things do you think you might be needing in the future? um I'm assuming like speakers um attendees like out outside of that if if anybody's listening and they want to like be involved in this if they're in the area what's the best way for them to do that? Well, I think like speakers and real stories probably because that's uh one of the main aspects about like sharing the experience of using Laravel in production and there are like many interesting cases going on. Of course like uh people contributing to open source do a lot of great things in public but uh it's one thing building opensource software and it's another thing when you uh manage scale up platforms that uh you use Laravel because um having this like experience from production of hand especially like handling big workloads or maybe like specifically interesting workloads. I'll say uh that brings unique experiences and also kind of like pushes the framework and the ecosystem to its limits even in uh some cases and it's always interesting to understand the real challenges that came from from it how people actually approach that and solve it etc. So I would say probably like sharing this uh stories and the experience from people who do it every day. That's probably the most interesting thing for us and for the community as well probably. So I I'd say u if anybody has this kind of uh experience to re reach out to us because you know like we uh had an open call for like we had two speakers Revas and Harris and we had an open call for the third speaker and that's how we we got u um around a dozen applications for uh for talks and We uh decided to um invite Iraqi ultimately for this first edition of the meetup. But down the road we'll uh definitely love we definitely love to uh repeat and have this kind of open calls for talks so that we can really get to this interesting stories from the community and help people share their experience with each other. And I think that's one of the best parts of the well the meetups and the conferences and all that just you know you you meet all these people and and all the friends and stuff and sort of you know on that tangent like locally we have it's um I forgot the name but it's it's it's like an hour and a half away. there's a it's a sort of a PHP meetup that's been going on forever and uh you know I've went to it a few times and it's like you just meet all these new people that live in the area and that part is neat because you know when you do go to like aon you're meeting all these new friends but they're all all over the world so you can never like just go meet up in person um so that's you know I guess that's the cool thing about these local meetups is you get to you get to meet people that's right there with you um and uh and I think think that was the majority of my questions. Um the what I would want to say I I want to kind of open the floor to both of y'all and let you you know you know in closing talk about you know anything you want uh that we may have missed about this uh first meet up or that you want to tell the community about. Um, I think that I I can I I'm going to be really brief because uh I think that we touched upon most of the stuff, but I think that this is if if somebody who's listening is in the area, uh it's a good place to kind of meet new people who are in the same uh who who love the same things that you do. So like uh come come by Redberry's office in Radio City uh and yeah, like have fun with us. And I think that this is a really good place to start because we we really love the ecosystem as well as the community around it and we want to create something that is that resembles the global community that Laravel has around it. So we want to have kind of like a at least a small portion of Lakon here as well. If you're around, don't hesitate to kind of register and go to the event and yeah, you're going to meet good new people. Yeah. Oh, and well actually too uh as far as uh actually let me see if I can share this. I think I can. Let me see. Share screen. There we go. I think that's working. So this for everybody watching is the way to go sign up. And it's it's kind of a funky URL, so it's hard to hard to say. Uh, but you can go luma.comwz6jpl9. Um, but I was going to say, do you have a a website hosted yet or is it just you're just going to go through this for right now? Uh, yeah. I'm I mean, we we posted the link through social media, but it's also on the laravel.com website. Uh well, Laravel's website now has this beautiful page of all the events that are happening throughout the world like the meetups, Lar lives, etc. So, uh if you can't find it through Luma, you can go through the Laravel website. Uh go to the events page there and you'll definitely see uh this event and that will take you to this Luma page then. So, perfect. Perfect. Yeah. So, there you go. So, if if if you're interested, go to the laravel.com site and and and then link over and uh and register and sign up. Um well, I want to say, you know, I want to say thank you guys for come for taking the time to come and talk to me about this. Uh I think it's I think it's an awesome event. I think I think I love that, you know, the community keeps growing and and you know, we're basically I think Larville's now for sure worldwide in all the meetups. Uh there might be some missing in South America if you want to start one. But uh I think that's about all. Uh let me look at the chat real quick. Uh Harris Harris says hello. Um Bruno Bernard maybe um says hi and taken by uh gosh, she says hi. And uh so this is uh for anybody watching right now, this is one of our few live streams that I've done. I'm trying to get better at the live streaming. Uh I haven't figured out how to actually update the titles or anything yet, but you know, it's all a process. So we're going to take this and convert it to like a real podcast episode or a real uh YouTube video after the fact. And and um we wanted to do it this way because the event is actually coming up in less than 30 days. So it's it's very quickly coming up approaching. So, you know, we want to get the word out as much as we possibly can um before it starts. Um, anything else that I missed, guys? I think we covered it all. Uh, and thanks to you, Eric, for uh having us and for helping us spread the word u about this meetup. Um, always a pleasure speaking with you. Same. Same. Yeah, I I actually just just got to meet you guys in Amsterdam and that was the first time I think we've ever actually met in person. It's, you know, so awesome now to to feel like we're old friends, but we really just met like 3 months ago. That's it's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, like uh you know, like there are like people who you like know for a long time but haven't really met in person. So that that was pretty awesome that we linked up in Amsterdam though you were you were pretty busy during the whole Lacon doing this live stream stuff for the whole conference that yeah that that was pretty cool. Yeah that that was that was fun and uh and and you got to come on we did an interview there. Um, yeah. Which sort of that does remind me, are you going to ever try to think about live streaming your meetups or is that something that it's not really beneficial, I guess, cuz the benefit is actually being there in person, right? Yeah. Well, that that's true. Like the benefit is to kind of like come together in one place like and meet with people, etc. We are not live streaming this first meetup for sure, but let's see for the future. Maybe at at some point in time we might do maybe not live streaming but just like record the talks and then like put them up as separate videos on YouTube or something like that but we are not doing that for this first edition. Um I I think this like atmosphere and the environment where people come together and meet each other in person is really special and uh it's really difficult to replace that totally with remote gatherings. Although we do most of our work in a remote way, still having this opportunity for inerson meetings from time to time is really irreplaceable. So uh yeah, we think meetups uh should primarily have this like inerson touch and uh that's why we we prefer not to live stream at least for the beginning. But yeah, let let's see what happens in the future. Yes, that makes perfect sense. Yes, I will say though, you got to do get some pictures and some uh little videos and stuff. That way you have it as the, you know, as the memory in 10 more years, you can look back on that very first one and you be like, "Oh yeah, this was so much fun back then." Um, but um, well, I want to thank you guys again for coming on here. U, you know, I appreciate it greatly and and we will get this published up as soon as possible. Um, thank everybody for watching the live stream and for commenting, you know, saying hi. That's always great. I love it. Um, but uh, but thank you everyone. All right, Eric. Thanks, Eric. It was, uh, was nice. Was pleasure.