Road to Laracon US: Speaker Spotlight with Christina Martinez

Okay, we should be live. Yes, we should be live now. Hi everyone. I always forget the day of the week when I do this, but it is it's Thursday, right? It's Thursday. Okay, happy Thursday. I'm like, is it Tuesday? Is it Wednesday? Is it Thursday? This has been a weird week, too. So, I get you. It has. It's been a really weird week cuz I barely know what time zone I'm in. Like I I took a nap from 6 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 last night and then I was up till 3:30 in the morning and then I slept until like 10. Dang. Yeah, that jet lag from Japan to Colorado has to be crazy. I don't know how you're doing it. I'm I'm doing it, but yeah, it's 15 hours different time difference there. Yikes. That was a lot. Did you land and then like immediately start doing stuff? I So I landed So it was like 23 total hours of travel for me to get there on like I don't even know what day I left at this point. I think I left Friday, not last week, the week before. So like two weeks ago from tomorrow I left. It took me 23 hours to get there because I had an 8 hour layover in Seattle. So, I just sat in Seattle for eight hours and then I did my flight to Japan. And then I got in at like 7:00 at night. So, I had to get to my hotel, which was like an hour and a half bus shuttle away. And then I got to my hotel um like settled in, took a bath and everything. And I went to bed by like 11:00. So, I didn't like go and see the city or anything, but I didn't like get to sleep right away. Um, which I think sleeping that night, like getting in and then going to sleep, I think that actually helped me not feel as bad in Japan. Yeah, whenever I travel with like a big time difference, that's what I try to do is like land in the evening so you can just like go to bed cuz you're always tired from travel and stuff. But yeah, it's still rough. Yeah, I if when I go to Europe is always hard because it's always I get in early. Like when I get to London in like a week, um I get in at like 2:00 in the afternoon and that's rough. I remember one time I did that in London and I like was trying to just walk around to like stay awake and stuff and was just like wandering around this mall like a zombie. Like I don't even know where I am. Like where's my hotel? Like yeah, it's rough. That's probably going to be me, but as long as I get a jelly cat, it'll be fine. It'll be worth it. There we go. It's worth it. I saw your Japan swag haul. That's crazy. All the stuff you got. They're all like all the little San Rio and like plushy looking things. They're keychains or they're like purse purse. Um like the things people put on their purses like laboo. They're those. So I I counted them. I literally have 17. I bought 17 of them. Your purse is just covered with keychains. I know. Like, and my new purse doesn't even easily fit in them, so I can't even use any of them right now. I'll have to like put them on different purses and backpacks. It's true. See? Hi, Florian. I am still jetlagged. That's what we were talking about. It's getting better, but my sleep schedule is like all over the place, and I can't go a day without taking a nap at this point. Hi Sean, welcome in. I'll give people another minute or two to trickle in. Um, and we'll do intros and stuff after that, but this is a road to Laracon US speaker series. Um, I did two episodes already, one with can't see Dods and one with uh, Pavalos. And today I'm here with Christina. So, we will get in intros in a minute. As everyone's uh tuning in, I'd love to know where you're tuning in from, like what time of day it is for you. We'll get like a lot of people in all different time zones, which is fun to see. And Christina, are you in Pacific time? Yeah, I'm in California. So, yeah, Pacific is one hour behind you. Mhm. It's not bad. It always throws me off because I'll go to California and then I'm like, "Oh, they're like I'm two hours different now, right?" And it's like, "No, it's just one." Yeah. Yeah. The US time zones are weird. And now uh I'm working at Resend and like half the company is Brazilian and so a lot of them still live in Brazil and they're four hours ahead. So um I'm just logging on to Slack and have all these messages because they're like they've been working for half a day. It's lunchtime there and stuff. So um getting used to that. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, I get FOMO and so I'll check Slack even at like 3:00 in the morning because we have a lot of co-workers that are in we have a whole team in Australia so they're like 16 hours ahead of me. We have um Leotaa in Japan. We have a lot of people in like the UK which are at least 7 hours ahead of us right now I think. Um so they're just all all over. So there's constantly messages in the Slack and I like will just check them. Yeah, same. I need to get more disciplined at that. I'm like I don't know. I set up a shortcut on my phone to like shame me by sending me a notification with like vibrations and stuff saying like get off Slack. It's outside of your working hours. Um I don't know that that works super well. So I need to look into other solutions that like lock me out because I'm always like oh I'm getting pings from my designer or like whatever right now and I'm I'm just curious of what's going on. So but I need to turn it off when I'm offline. I was thinking of that too. Like I know Aaron Francis like bricks his phone at some point. So I'm wondering if I can like brick my phone for certain apps like for certain times. Just have it like block me from Slack. I also recently installed linear on my phone. So I got like a linear notification at like 1:00 a.m. I was like I can't I can't do this. Yeah. I at my last company I deleted we used Outlook and Slack and I deleted both of those off my phone at one point because I was like I'm offline like if I'm at my computer I'll be working otherwise not and now that I'm at a startup it's like I don't know just the energy is like addicting but I need to chill out. So we'll we'll see how I how far I get with that. No, I agree. When I worked at one company doing email development, I was like, I'm deleting team. I still would have teams, but I would like silence it and I was like, I'm not checking teams. Nothing to do with it. But it's different here because it feels more like a group chat. Like not everything's like a ping to do um an email template within an hour. Yeah, that would be rough. Let's see. Sean said, "I'm from Thailand. BKK 1:00 a.m. now." Well, thank you for joining us at 1:00 a.m. in the morning. That's dedication. It is. And then, hi Al, welcome in. How are you doing? I think we can kind of get started now. So, like I said, this is um another episode in the speaker spotlight series for Laracon US. I already did two episodes, one with Kenty Dods and one with Pavalis. And I'm here today with Christina Martinez, who is another one of our lovely speakers for Laracon US this year. Um, and if you don't know about Laracon US, it's in Boston this year and it is July 28th and 29th. So, it's coming up pretty soon, but let's start with some intros. So, my name is Leah Thompson. I am a Devro engineer here at Laravel. And if you've been on any of the streams, you've probably seen me here, but I mainly work with our online communities at Laravel, as well as go to a lot of our Inerson events um and meet you all. And I'm here today with Christina. Christina, do you want to do a quick intro? Yeah. Um, I'm Christina. I'm a DX engineer, so developer experience engineer at Resend. It's a small uh email API company. So, we help you send emails from your apps. Um, and Deil and you know, developer experience is such a huge um field. There's so many options that you can take it, but lately I've been really focused on events. So, um, we're organizing our first conference this year called Resend Forward. It's in October. So, that's been a huge focus of my job and also organizing like meetups and other community events, uh, leading up to that. Um, so that's been a lot of fun. And on the side, I like to collect hobbies. Um, coding started as a hobby for me, um, and kind of turned into my job. And, um, I like to knit and I sewed a skirt last weekend. So, you know, lots of different things going on in my life that uh I just like to learn new things. That's so exciting. I've wanted to get into sewing and I've wanted to buy a sewing machine, but I'm so scared I'll buy it and like never touch it. Yeah. Yeah. I found mine on the side of the road actually and was like, there's no way this thing works, but I'm just going to grab it and took it home, plugged it in, and it like totally works. It's a little squeaky, but like yeah, it it works and I can sew basic stuff now. So, I had never touched a sewing machine before that in my life. So, I was a little afraid of like sewing into my finger or something. Um, but I I went on YouTube, looked up tutorials, asked some friends for help, and um it it's been going really well. I'm trying to make my first quilt, which is a lot of cutting and sewing and cutting more and ironing and stuff. So, it's like it's taken me probably more than a year already and it's not done. So, um it's like the back burner project that I'm working on, but it's I don't know. I I find it a great way to like kind of blow off steam and and do fun projects in your free time. So, it's been fun experience. Mhm. That's how I feel about crocheting, but it's just there's so many stitches. So, I like I would find a YouTube video, learn one stitch, and I'd make something with the one stitch. Yeah, that's it. That's why I knit cuz it's like two maybe four stitches that you have to learn, but crochet is like 50 and so I'm I'm not that advanced yet. Maybe someday. There's so many. I'm sure you'd get it though if you got sewing from a video. Um, but let's see. We have Hello from India. Welcome in. It's probably late. I feel like it's late in India right now. We also have Golem. Welcome in from India as well. Hi Caesar who's joining from Venezuela. Nice. Yeah, Sean said, "Nice to meet you, Christina." Good to meet you. And then, hi Andy. How are you doing? Yeah. So, I think you did a great intro like mentioning what you do at recent and stuff, but for anyone who doesn't know you, how how would you describe what you do? Like I know you already kind of went over like you working on events and stuff, but how would you describe what you do in general? Um it's kind of a unique um mix between software engineering and marketing. Um so I actually started my career in marketing. Um I have a business degree and then I taught myself to code kind of on the side. I mentioned it was a hobby. Um so it was like code academy, free code camp, like those kinds of resources that I slowly learned how to code. Um and got really addicted to it. I think we all know the feeling of like like you can start from an empty file and build literally anything that you want. Um and it's just really cool a like really nice hobby to have. And so um I just wanted to practice it more and was like um yeah asking the company that I was at at the time if there was any way that I could practice. Um so they allowed me to do some side projects and then hired me on full-time as first a web developer and then a full stack developer. Um, but so I've had this progression from like marketing to full stack development and then this job opened up at Reend. Um, a friend of mine worked there and it was like a really cool mix of both of the things. So um there's like like you need to be technical and you need to understand um what developers are looking for as they're looking for these solutions. Um you know code and writing code and what makes code elegant um is really important. So we can like build side projects and you know make videos or write docs or blog posts that talk about them. Um updating our docs, updating you know outputting change logs. Um we also do more like traditional marketing stuff. So like social media posts. Um and I mentioned before I'm doing a lot of events. So um it's just it's like a very broad mix of all these things. There's PR, there's partnerships, and um now I guess I'm speaking at conferences. That's kind of crazy. Um but yeah, it's like it never gets old. Excuse me. It changes like every day what you're doing. Um and there's just like endless opportunities for things that you can do. So, um I've been really liking it that this really cool uh Devril type of space. No, I love that. And it's funny um cuz I was talking to someone in Japan at Laravel live Japan um and they came up to the Laravel cloud booth and we're asking questions and they generally wanted to know like what I do as a deval engineer at Laravel and I gave my explanation like we were using chat GPT to like I'd speak in English and it was converted to Japanese and my like explanation was so long cuz I feel like there's so much you can do in Devril and so I was explaining it and I can just hear it like talking off in Japanese for so long like translating what I'm saying and he He was like, "Wow, that's a lot." And I was like, "Yeah, yeah." But I feel like it makes it more fun because then there's a lot of variety and you can kind of like um grow into different areas and try new things and stuff. So, I really like that. It's been really fun. I did really like being a full stack engineer cuz kind of in a similar vein like you can never master coding. it there's like all these languages and like just even the techniques that you have to use and stuff like that is um difficult to like really get good at. Um so it like you're always a student and you're always learning. Um but I feel like Devril and and developer experience is like even more that way because there's so many different areas. Um and you get to like talk to real people instead of just being isolated at your desk in your home office and stuff. Um, so I've been really enjoying that part as well, like going to conferences and hosting meetups and stuff. It's been really cool. Yeah, I really like meetups, which is funny because the first meetup I've ever spoken at is the recent meetup. Yeah, that was super nice. I was so glad that you were able to come. Me, too. I I was really excited about it. And it's funny because I went to it and then I also had to fly to Japan the same week, but I was like, "No, I'm not missing it. I can do it." Yeah. Yeah, I felt like the speakers for that one were really nice. I I feel like you guys all did a super great job and really liked all the talks and it was kind of a weird coincidence that they were all sort of like focused on design and um how to work better with design. I thought that was cool. Yeah, I thought that was funny because we didn't really coordinate either. Like I did see what some of the titles were and I was like okay I can give this talk and like revamped an old talk but then listening to all the talks I was like oh we're all kind of like design like they all like flow into each other. Yeah. Yeah. It worked out really well. And I know you mentioned that like now you're getting into conference speaking which is still like crazy to you. Um which kind of brings us to the point that like you're newer to conference speaking. This is This will be your second ever conference talk, Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. I um was asked to speak at React Miami and that was my first one ever. And at first I was like, I don't know. I'm not really the type of person that goes on a stage and that freaks me out a lot. Like even being in live streams is just very new to me. Um so at first I was like I don't know if I should do it. But I don't think that fear should hold you back from stuff like that. So I was like, "Okay, I'll try it one time and if I totally hate it, I'll never do it again." Um, so I like prepped and prepped and prepped for that. Like for months I was like um I got some advice from friends where like you can um record yourself speaking into like your phone microphone or something and then just like listen to it on repeat and that helped me um I memorized my whole talk so like that helped me a lot. Um and yeah, there were different tips that I needed like beforehand to just like calm down so I wouldn't be so like uh nervous going up on stage and I feel like it turned out pretty well. Um, but when I got off stage, it wasn't like, I can't believe, like, I'm so glad that that's over. Like, I'm never doing it again. Like, that's what I expected to feel. Um, and it was actually more like, no, wait, I can do better than that. Like, I want to try again. Um, and so I'm really excited for Laracon to see if I can make some improvements and um, do a better job this time. So, we'll see. And you did great at RIT Miami for anyone who hasn't seen the talk which I think the YouTube videos are up of the talks now, right? Yeah, they got posted recently. So yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. But no, it was great. And I also like how you said like you listen back to the recording because something I do like something I even did to prep for um the recent meetup is I record myself when I talk and then I'll send um I'll like post it unlisted on YouTube and I'll send it to a friend and my husband and I make them listen to it and then I'll also like throw it into somewhere to get a transcript from it and then I'll throw the transcript into like Claude or something and see what it thinks and things I could improve and then I just keep rehearsing over and over. I don't always watch it all the way back, but even just like recording it and doing it, like I know what could have sounded better or what I didn't like and then like I get some feedback from like human beings and AI and then I like reiterate and I keep practicing. I don't like to do a script. I like to add libit, but I rehearse so many times, like I rehearse at least six times all the way through, so I know like my talking points and basically what I want to say. Okay. Yeah, I that's really smart. And I feel like I wish that I could go up on a stage and adlib, but I know that I can't and my brain will just go blank. So, I was like, I have to memorize every single word of this, you know, 20 minute talk. Um, which is fine. I was able to do it and I I stumbled a couple times, but it was fine. Um, but yeah, like I feel like listening to myself back really helped with just like the flow and sometimes you write something out and it like it sounds good on paper, but when you say it out loud, you're just going to stumble over it every time. And so, um, that helped me. I wished that I had filmed like body language and stuff more. Um, I'm not like super expressive and outgoing and stuff, so um, I need to work on that a little bit before Laron. Um, but yeah, like I said, I'm super excited to um try it out again and see if I can do better, which you definitely will. And then how did you like end up speaking at Larcon US? What was that journey from like your first talk at React Miami in April to speaking at Laron US? Um, I met Hank um at a marketing summit in Utah. uh he hosted like a he calls it an excuse for a ski trip with a friend or like a group of friends. Um but it was like a marketing to developers summit um that he was running and uh we had a really great time. He he's a great organizer and it was it was really fun to go skiing with everyone and and learn stuff about um marketing. And so, yeah, Hank just asked me like if I'd be willing to speak. At that time, I hadn't spoken at React Miami yet. So, I was like, "Can you check back with me in like a week or two when I have this under my belt and I can let you know if like if I hate it and I never want to do it again, like I said." Um, and since that went like pretty well, I felt more confident and was like again, I shouldn't let fear hold me back. I shouldn't uh I should just do it. This is a really cool opportunity. So, um, I'm going to try it again. And I feel it's a little silly because I'm on loan from the JavaScript community, the React community. I've never written a line of PHP in my life. I probably need to do that before the conference, so I'm not such a poser, I guess. Um, but yeah, like it'll be really interesting to be immersed in this new community and get to meet a bunch of new people that I've never met before and stuff like that. So, looking forward to it. And I feel like at least for me picking up PHP and Laravel really wasn't that hard. I was doing some um like Java and Spring Boot for fun. I know saying for fun. I say for fun and people are like what's wrong with you? Um I know it's like I was doing Java and Spring Boot for fun. I was doing email development at the time. So Java and Spring Boot was fun. That's the step up. But I was doing that and then I touched Ruby a little bit in Ruby on Rails and then I learned about Laravel and I was like, "Oh, I love this." So if you do play around with Laravel and PHP, you'll have to let me know what you think. Okay. Yeah, I've heard a lot of things about like the developer experience and stuff. Um I'm friends with Dave Kiss who spoke at Laracon last year and he um I remember in his talk he said like coming from JavaScript and React and Next and all those things it was just like a really nice experience and it was like a lot nicer than he expected. Um and he has some past PHP experience and stuff like that but like it was like a renewed perspective on what the framework has become. Um, so yeah, really I I need to find a side project to use Laravel for because I feel like I shouldn't go be on a stage and I've never touched the framework before. So, but I also think there's like value in that too, right? Because the top the conference is also like a full stack conference. So there are people who are front end as well or are full sack developers who touch some of the front end. So, like I use Laravel, but whenever I go to different Laravel or Laron um conferences, I like to mainly do front-end talks just cuz I feel like there's not a lot of front-end talks. And sometimes like I'll give them and people be like, "Oh, I didn't know that. Like, I didn't know about this new um property or thing in CSS or this new pseudo selector." And so, I really like going all in on front end. I always get a little scared cuz I'm like they're going to hate me cuz and it's like I'm in the community but I'm always get nervous giving like a front-end talk but people always really enjoy it and I get thanked sometimes for like giving frontend talks. So like also if you aren't able to touch Laravel before then that's completely fine too. No one will boo you off stage I promise. Okay good. Yeah, I my talk is very like um software development in per like in general um and really has nothing to do with like what language or framework are you're using. So I feel like it'll be okay if as long as I don't broadcast that I'm not a a Laravel developer, but I also I hear really good things about the community and uh people seem really welcoming and stuff. So really looking forward to meeting more of you guys. Yeah, the community is great. We also have Ashley here. Hi Ashley says, "Everybody is lovely in Laravel land." I believe it from the people I've met so far, they're all great. So, and also you'll probably hear this, but herd Laravel herd is um like what you can use to run and like install PHP and Laravel. Um and so that's what you can use to run Laravel through. And Ashley said, "Recken Herd runs on the PC behind." Oh, yeah. this this computer is two months younger than I am. So, I found it on Facebook Marketplace and I got email running on it. So, um that was a fun experiment. You know, I work at Reend, so I I I have to, right? Um but yeah, it it's been another one of my hobbies that I'm collecting is vintage technology type of stuff. So, so we might have to test if if Laravel herd can run on it. Yeah, there we go. That's an excuse to try Laravel, too. But I think you're just mentioning the community, too. What do you kind of know of the Laravel community or what has been like your exposure to the Laravel community? It's mostly been through people um that I know are like involved in it. So, I've had some chats with Aaron Francis and yourself and Hank and um a couple others and um yeah, I've only heard good things. We recent sponsored a booth at Laracon US last year and um just had a really good experience. I wasn't there. I wasn't at the company yet, but um that was probably one of the top conferences for us from what I hear um for the whole year just based on like the quality of interactions that they had with people. Everyone seemed really like interested in um learning more and really welcoming and kind. And the events that you guys do around Laracon are cool. I think it was like at a golf course and stuff last time that sounded really fun and just like the conference seems very well organized. Um, so that's like the main uh exposure that I have. And then I don't know, I've I correct me if I'm wrong on this. Um, in JavaScript, it seems like there's so many different like competing frameworks and like um syntax things that you can argue about and stuff like that. Um, and in Laravel it seems like there's kind of like like Laravel is the main framework that you guys use and there's like standards and um yeah like a I feel like that kind of naturally causes like less infighting about syntax and why you should be doing this over this and that kind of thing because you have um these like sources of truth I guess from the framework itself. And so it just seems like a lot of people that are happy to help each other out and willing to um be kind to each other and not like just fighting over stupid things that don't really matter. Um but again, I'm I'm looking at it from the outside, so I could be wrong on that. Maybe there's more of that than I've seen. Uh so you tell me. No, I'd agree with that a lot. It's like I feel like the Larbell community is just people who want to ship things or they're people who's just like building stuff and so they don't have time to like fight about nuances like that and usually people in the community they just love Laravel so much of course like on the front end it's kind of like choose your own adventure for that. So there's some people like who use React, like I love React. And then you have other people who are like full send on Vue or on Livewire, which is a way to write PHP for the front end. And so like they don't really like React, but if you tell them you like React, you might just hear like, "Oh, I don't like React." But they're not going to like fight with you over it or like try to like tell you the 20 ways you're wrong, you know? It's just people wanting to like hang out and just talk about the thing they really enjoy, which is Laravel. Um, and people are just really nice. Like when I first went to Laracon US in 2024, I had like a month of Laraveville experience and I had like just finished the boot camp on the website. Like I was a JavaScript developer and people were just like very nice. Like I felt like I was like adopted into the community. Good. Yeah, they seem very welcoming. So I'm I'm excited to be somewhat a part of it, you know. No, you'll fully be immersed after your talk. You'll be adopted. And you've kind of like briefly touched on your talk because you did say your talk is more like general, right? And it kind of fits for any kind of like language or framework agnostic. Um, so that kind of leads us to like what are you talking about at Laracon US? Um, my talk is called whimsydriven development and it's basically an impassioned plea to build more silly software. Um, so I just think silly software is a great way to like fight burnout. It's a great way to learn new skills and you can use it strategically, I guess, to like connect with other people. And so kind of going through those things and showing examples and um hoping that by the end you're kind of amped up and wanting to play with code a little bit more. I think um when you start learning, you feel I I I said this earlier, but you feel like that coding is just a magical thing. It's it's a skill that's really cool. You can start from nothing and end up with anything that's in your brain. And um it's really easy to lose that feeling because, you know, you're doing it 40 hours a week for your job. you have to build what your boss tells you or your PMs tell you or um maybe add things to the product that you wish you didn't have to do. Um and I don't know like it's just hard to keep that like magic alive over time, especially if you're in it for years and years. And so, um, yeah, I think that like intentionally getting into this state of like building silly software, adding whimsy to software on purpose is, uh, a great way to just bring back the the memory of how special it is to have this skill and like be in this industry. Um, so that's that's uh what I'm talking about. I'm hoping to inspire people to be more joyful as they're coding. No, I loved that. And I feel I feel like you explained it well, too. But in case anyone's like confused about it, what is whimsydriven development? Um, it's basically like developing just for fun. Um, it's probably a temporary state. So like if our S SRRES were just adding whimsy and joy into their day every day uh at recend, I think that would be very scary because a lot of people depend on us for like the infrastructure of their app like onetime passwords and like you know those kind of email notifications. Um so it's it's not something that you can probably do every day, but um it's finding ways to build projects on the side that are really fun. um even take like existing apps uh and adding something that's like kind of unexpected and fun. Um I guess like one example from resend could be like we didn't have to do this. Um but all of our icons in the dashboard when you hover over them they animate. Um, and so just like kind of surprise and delight people uh in even in serious projects, but like inside projects as well, um, by adding just like little touches or by building something that's really crazy and no one asked for and it's totally overengineered. Um, so there's a lot of ways that it can be manifested, but um, just joyful, fun software that's kind of out of the ordinary. Mhm. And I know you've like So, do you mainly practice this in your side projects? Yeah. Yeah, I've done a bunch of these. Um I think the the biggest or like most I don't know successful project was a Babel plugin. I know maybe this is unfamiliar to this crowd, but um in JavaScript, Babel is a a tool that can basically like transform um JavaScript code into other JavaScript code. So if like you're using new frameworks with an old browser, you need to like trans, you know, transpile it so that it works everywhere. Um so like polyfills, stuff like that. So um I built a Babel plugin that basically allows you to code in Gen Z slang. Um, and then it transpiles it into like valid JavaScript that actually works in the browser. Um, so you can yeet an L instead of throwing an error. Um, stuff like that. I think uh, cap was false. On God is true. Um, and what are some other examples there? Uh, oh, Loki.Sus is console.warning, I think. So anyways, there was like all these like you can code that way and it like totally transpiles it into code that works. Um, and that one got 3 million views on Instagram. I I was not I had no platform at all on Instagram, but just like posted things like little short videos to keep myself accountable during my coding journey. And so I did not expect that to take off, but it like went viral basically. There were people um submitting pull requests to the repo. Um the the repository has almost a thousand GitHub stars right now. And so uh yeah, it like stuff like that I feel like really resonates with people because like no one asked for that. No one's going to actually use that um in production, but it's like an example of someone just having fun and building something silly and uh using your magical powers of software development for good. I guess I don't like it's kind of neutral because no one's going to actually use that, but it it's just kind of funny and fun. And so, um yeah, building projects like that are just uh it could be really powerful in even inspiring people and um just blowing off steam and helping yourself to like learn something new or or just feel not so burnt out at work just kind of going through the slog every day. So, uh, something that I really like doing on the side. I definitely agree cuz also like what you mentioning burnout, it's like if you're doing this every day, it can be easy sometimes. So, like lose the joy in it. It's like whenever you're like learning software development at first, it can like be fun. and you're like building all these little side projects, but then like once you get in the routine of doing it for work, you can like lose that joy and like forget about how it was fun before, like when you were just building little side projects and doing it as a hobby. So, it kind of helps you like find that again. And I feel like it's like reinvigorating and makes it easier to then like get back in to doing it for work. Absolutely. Yeah. And I found it to be a really good skill to learn new skills, too. um or like a good practice. Um like one time I saw that Code TV and MX were running a competition to see who could use MX to build like the worst video player possible. And so um I decided like that would be kind of fun to enter like it would be really cool to you know enter a competition. I probably won't win. It won't go anywhere but like might as well do something on the side. Um, so I decided to like use that to kill two birds with one stone and um enter a fun competition and also learn about websockets which is just something that I wanted to learn um like a concept in JavaScript that um I was hoping to uh learn at some point. So it was just like a good excuse. So I like combined these two together. I found a project that would work that um uses MX but also uses websockets and um was able to get something going and actually won the competition and got to fly to New York. I went to my very first tech conference um that was Versell ship last year um almost a year ago exactly and um yeah I got to hang out with the M team. I got to meet a bunch of really cool people that I'm still friends with and keep up with. Um, and it was just a really cool experience. And it was all because I uh decided to do some silly software and like and invest in my learning in this way. Um, I think if I just sat down and read docs and did something basic with websockets, it just like wouldn't have been so fun and it wouldn't have won the competition either. And so, um, making something that's like helps you learn and allows you to practice, but it's like just adds a little twist and is more interesting, I think, uh, is a better way, at least for me, that's more motivating and it's something that I'll actually sit down and spend my free hours doing even after a 40-hour work week. So, uh, something that I I am evangelizing quite a bit to tell people like you guys should do this, too. It's really great. I love that it also kind of fits into the building with public building and public stuff too. Um but who would you say this talk is for then? I think um any software engineer that's been in the industry for a little bit. Um I mean newbies as well, but um we've mentioned a couple times that like we all fell in love with coding at some point and that's why we're here. I think it's a very unique industry in that way because, you know, in marketing, people get into marketing because they don't mind it. It's it's cool, you know, um but it's not like something that they're like in love with and uh you know, there there are exceptions to that. Um, but I feel like in general in the tech industry like the software engineers are in it because they love it. And um, it's it's like yeah that I mentioned that it's very easy to lose that feeling over time and to for it to kind of like dull over time. Um, but I I want to inspire you guys to just play and do this more often and to remember why you fell in love with coding in the first place. And so uh this is for any any developer really u but the I think the seniors will feel it especially like it especially deep cut because uh it's probably true of you I feel like it's true of any software engineer that's been in it long enough. Yeah, I agree. Even like me, I'm thinking back like when is the last time I've actually built a side project or like a silly side project? Yeah. Yeah. And especially with AI, like I know there's different ways to look at it. Like AI will allow you to do things faster and and get more of those projects out the door. So it enables a lot more um silly software that couldn't have existed originally because people just didn't have the time to like sit down and do this thing. Um but on the other side, like your involvement in building it isn't quite the same. So it's not like you are writing each character of the code. And so um yeah, I don't know. There's there's different ways to look at that. I I'm considering spending a lot more time like actually hand coding my projects um and building more just intentionally on the side. So something I want to work on as I get more free time. I agree with that too. And it's funny cuz um null Mike wrote this like right as you were like talking like right as you mentioned AI this chat came in uh saying I lost the passion for coding since AI arrived. And it's also something I've like thought about more is I want to spend more time like handwriting code again too especially for like side projects and like little things to just keep that skill and to make it more fun again cuz that is kind of the fun part. Yeah. Yeah. And I actually I wrote a blog post recently on my personal site um called Hand Coding Will Never Die. And it's basically me saying like like I knit in 2026 and that's how I know that hand coding is never going to die. Um I know like I don't knit because I have to put clothes on my back. Um I knit because it's fun and I enjoy it and it's like a side thing. I can gift it to people. um you know, a Christmas sweater for my mom or something. Um and so that's that's how I feel coding is going to go. Um we need to use AI just for speed purposes and like keeping up with everything. Um but I think you can still like make time like you're talking about to like keep up your skills and just practice and just just do it for fun because we're all in this because we like it and it's fun. Um so it's something that I want to get better at. I' it's been like in the back of my mind for a couple weeks, but I I need to like we need to start a movement where it's like a challenge and and we we go through this, you know, once a week do something for five minutes or even, you know, something small. But, uh I need to I need to code more like actually hand turn all the AI off, no autocomplete, stuff like that. I agree. I agree 100%. Also, we have Roxy. Hi, Roxy. Oh, hey Roxy. And we have Henri welcome in. We have silly projects for the world. I always say for the world instead of FTW and I feel like I get made fun of for it. I always thought it was for the win. I don't know. Oh my god. Maybe it is. It probably is. Okay. Maybe that's why I get made up fun of for. I came up with my my own acronym. Who knows? I I never know the acronym, so I could be wrong. No, I think you're right. Why would it be for the world? Okay. Anyway, yeah, for the win. That's why people laugh at me. It's all making sense now. So, I think you mentioned before, well, a you mentioned that Versel ship was your first conference last year. So, I'm assuming this is your first Laron and like Laracon US. So, what are you most looking forward to for Laracon US this year? Well, so last year I was aware that Laracon was happening and um you know at that point I I wasn't hired at Resend yet, but I had it like in my sites and I was following what they were doing and I saw that they were there. Um and so I actually watched um your talk. I watched Dave Kiss's talk from MX. Um he's a friend of mine and so those were the two experiences of of Lar that I saw. Um, but yeah, I'm really looking forward to kind of uh getting to know this new community. I think the conference seems to be organized really well. I saw a lot of pictures of like really cool swag from last year. Um, so I'm just really excited. Also, Lara prom looks really fun. So, I'm not like a dancer at all. Uh, so I don't know how involved I'll be, but maybe I'll be off in the corner just observing. But, uh, really fun to see everyone getting into that and see everyone all dressed up. I feel like the developers are usually in t-shirts from some other conference or whatever, some swag that they got, so it'll be fun to see some bow ties and stuff like that. So, looking and I don't know if like everyone will go full out, but I plan on going full out like prom. And I know um Margot from Vehicle is like making her own dress for it. Yeah. And so like some of us are like really going all out. Um so I'm really excited for prom too. I think I'm most excited about the events which I did link our website for Larcon is laron us. You can go there to buy your tickets, learn more information and also see all of the community events that are at the bottom. We're also having dodgeball on the first day. So like dodgeball and then later that day is prom. People show up all sweaty just like normal prom. It'll be like in gym shorts. Like, no, I'm going to be in a prom dress. Um, Mike, it's so Laracon US is in person. It's an in-person conference on July 28th and 29th in Boston this year. Um, you can learn more information about it on the website I linked here, but it will also be live streamed. Um, and then I know Josh and I will be making content at it. Josh theory is also a deval engineer at Larville, so we'll be making content there and posting things and it'll be live streamed. Um, but you'll get the most out of Laracon if you go in person. And like I said, like Christine and I were talking about all of the inerson events as well as well as the hallway track at Laracon is always really great. And I always just enjoy the hallway track at conferences in general. Yeah, same. I know now that I'm a like DX engineer Devril space, I basically am only in the hallway. So, React Miami, I think I caught like maybe five minutes of one talk and that's it. So, I feel really bad because a lot of the speakers were friends of mine that I wanted to listen to. But there was so much going on and so many great people there that it's like I'll I'll catch the talk later. I I swear I'll watch it. But the hallway track is so fun. Mhm. That's where that's where I am. Like a lot of times it's like I only get the hallway track. It is nice when venues have it where like the speakers are kind of in the back and you can still see the talks or hear some of it too because then you get some of it but yeah it can be hard it can be hard to like actually see the talks. And then what would you say to anyone who's on the fence about attending Laron US or conferences in general? Um, I think so. I mentioned I started going to conferences last summer and I've been to a bunch since then just for work and stuff. Um, I think being a software engineer alone in your office, like a lot of times that's something that we enjoy because most of us are introverts. Um, and you can like really get heads down focus time and you know ping your friends on Slack when you need them. But um I think there's something really special about gathering in person and um getting to talk shop about the uh coding and and like these experiences that we're having with like the shifting um environment with AI and all the all the craziness that's going on there. Um I think like you can talk to other people that understand what you're feeling and thinking and their eyes aren't going to glaze over. Like I know if you talk to your partner or like a family member, even your best friend, like they're going to try to understand, but they just don't. And so, um, getting a chance to go to these events is really special. And especially events like Laracon that, um, there's so much care and, um, just joy and, uh, welcoming environment that's put into this. And so, um, I think it's a great opportunity to go, especially if you're in the Laravel community and wanting to learn more. There's always a great mix of like learning, just meeting people, making connections, uh, making friends, and uh, just having fun. Some of that, the the dodgeball and stuff like that, I feel like is mostly about just having fun. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It's like funny though because you do something like that, right? And so like say at React Miami um at like the speaker sponsor dinners or stuff like that, you're like, "Okay, we're going to dinner. This is more fun. It's not like going to be valuable." Like maybe you think that, but then I feel like I make the most valuable connections from stuff like that. So even like from dodgeball, it's like anyone can talk to you about tech and like that is what we're going to do at the conference, right? we're going to end up talking about tech, but it's also about like actually making lasting friendships and like connections with people. Yeah. Yeah. And at first I always thought like, oh, a conference like it's going to be people walking around trying to collect LinkedIn connections, you know, like like the networking thing is kind of a dirty word to me. I just it's not my style. Um, but I feel like at conferences a lot of people are just there, like you said, to like make friends and make connections, like actual connections, not like networking or LinkedIn connections. Yeah. Um, and so I've found it to be really rewarding, which surprised me because like I said, like I'm an introvert, too. So, uh, but yeah, it's it's really fun. I really enjoy it and I think Laron is a special one of these conferences. I'm excited for you to experience it and to see you in Boston in like a month and a half at this point. Coming up soon. Yeah, very soon. But thank you so much for being on today. I think we should start wrapping up. So, where can people find you offline? And are there any kind of like closing thoughts or closing words you want to say? Uh, yeah. I So, um, you can find like all of my social media. I know everyone's on a bunch of social media profiles, but I'm on uh christinaodes.dev is my website, and so you can just like find them from there. I'm mostly on Twitter or X nowadays. Um, and yeah, feel free to reach out and ask any questions about Reend or Silly Software. I run a newsletter called sillysoftware.comclub. Um, and this is just my collection of fun, whimsical software that I found online. Um, some of it is my stuff, but mostly other people's stuff that they've built. And so I send out a newsletter about every month and just sometimes post other projects as they come up. So feel free to go there and subscribe and get silly software delivered to your inbox every month. Um, can't wait to come talk about silly software more at Laracon. It's gonna be really fun. Yeah. And I also pinned them. So the website's christinacodes.dev dev and then to sign up for silly software club it's silly software.com club for that and yeah please follow Christina and then you can talk to her about silly software at larconus in Boston which I shared earlier but if you haven't bought your ticket yet and you're interested you can look here at larcon us um but I also feel like I should mention if you want to start going to conferences and you're local to UK or you're close to London. We also have Laravel Live UK coming up. It's actually this month, uh, June 18th and 19th. So, that could be a good one to start out with as well. And you can go to laravelive.uk for that one. I am speaking at that one, so I will be there as well. So, maybe I'm a little biased sharing that one. Um, but yeah, I hope to see you all in UK or in Boston. And again, thank you so much, Christina, for being on here today. And bye everyone. Thank you for having me. See you guys.