Matt Stauffer:
Hey everybody and welcome back to Laravel podcast season seven. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer, CEO of Tighten. And in this season, I'll be joined every episode by a member of the Laravel team. Today I'm talking to Josh Cirre, DevRel at Laravel. Josh, can you say hi and share a little bit about what you do every day at Laravel?

Josh Cirre:
Hey everyone and thanks Matt. My name is Josh Cirre and I work at Laravel as a Dev Rel. What that means is I basically get to be involved with the community as much as possible. Currently what that means is kind of having three different categories of day-to-day life of one building things. So we just about a month ago just released a kind of AI chat demo tool. And so that's fun to be able to build because a lot of people want to see, okay, how are you building something within Laravel? And it's not necessarily a starter kit, but it's more of like a demo and being able to have that in public is awesome.

Next is any kind of video content. That's where the majority of my day to day usually falls, especially around this time, which we can get into later. But then lastly, I do a lot of development still. So I got you. This is the probably the first job I've ever had where I've actually done development work for my job that wasn't just internal tools. And so I do a lot of marketing stuff, especially when we come to big releases, like I helped out with the Nightwatch page. That's not my sole focus. We do have a Dev Rel Leah Thompson, who is solely on kind of marketing development. But I helped out with that. And I did the the Cloud pricing calculator was my one of my bigger projects recently.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. When you're building those, what is your tech stack of choice? If you were to be given the more complicated calculator with knobs and widgets and tools, what would you choose today?

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, well, the current iteration of the calculator was the Cloud landing page and kind of like marketing pages were all built in Blade with Alpine. And so that was a little bit of a constraint where like a lot of the UI features that we were taking from the Cloud repo were going to be more like react. But building them out in Alpine and Tailwind was fun. I got to learn so much about the intricacies of Alpine.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
just within that one, because it's a huge it's just one Blade file for that for that pricing calculator with PHP variables at the top and everything like that. I would probably still do that if I was if I was giving that same project unless it needed to have a little bit more state like we've we've talked about if and when we revamp it, like maybe having users guidelines, maybe be able to pull specific features from their Cloud application to say, OK, what

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
would this new application look like within terms of pricing that kind of thing? That would probably be more React if I was given my choice of stack.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

And that leads perfectly into the next question have for you. You know, kind of one of the things that I always ask in the podcast is like, what is the story of what got you to Laravel? And I'm particularly interested and I want to hear the whole backstory, like, like what got you here, but I'm particularly interested in your last, I don't know if it was six to 12 months where you felt like you kind of like joined the Laravel community and then just was like, well, I don't know if there's a layoff or something, but you're like, I'm just going to start making this content for these Laravel people, whoever they are. And then you just kind of like, and then a little bit later, Hey, here you are working at Laravel and all kinds of stuff.

Josh Cirre:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
So I want to hear the whole story but for you specifically I really want to make sure that that last bit gets some really time and attention. So can you tell us your story of what it kind of brought from where you came from to where you are today?

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, it really is a crazy story, even for my own standards. I feel like I have a lot of stories and my wife will get bored of them most of the time. But it's like, it's like, hey, you know, I have this random story of, I don't know, some guy paying me two hundred dollars at a park in Chicago to slap him in the face. You know, there's things like that that just.

Matt Stauffer:
Sounds like a good story.

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, just randomly happened to me in a lot of ways. But I would put this how I. fell into the community of Laravel and then also like being working for Laravel as one of the top. I never expected that in a million years kind of thing.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
It really starts with my desire for what I wanted to do in development in that world itself, because I as a little bit of a quick backstory, I had a bunch of different hands in a bunch of different areas. Growing up, especially like in college, post-college where I was like, hey, I'm just going to try a bunch of different things and see where they fall. A lot of it came through music, acting. And then really I wanted to be in SNL on Saturday Night Live.

Matt Stauffer:
Got it.

Josh Cirre:
And so when I lived in Chicago for about four years, I took classes from Second City, which is like this improv school that a lot of the great Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, they kind of made their way up through there in Chicago and then kind of like transitioned into Saturday Night Live. So I was like, I'm just going to do that. That was my my dream for the longest time. And so on the side, I learned a lot more of tech. I was already kind of dabbling in tech within high school, within college, mostly landing pages, you know, bands that I knew that wanted a WordPress site put up for them kind of thing. I never coded really. It was more of just I know how to tweak things, look something up, modify it, you know.

Matt Stauffer:
You're an implementer. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Josh Cirre:
And so I didn't really code. I did buy some like C++ coding books and I'd got as far as like Hello World, that kind of thing, because I was like, I'm going to be a game developer and build the next Battlefield Two. But that's a whole other story. And so I I.

Matt Stauffer: Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
When I transitioned kind of back into tech, I knew two things. I knew I wanted to not give up my creative side in the sense that I really, I still do enjoy music. I still play music. But I also just like, you know, acting. I like writing. I like that, you know, artistic cinematic side, if you will. And so I knew that eventually I would get into something like that. And I didn't know if that world collided within tech. And so a lot of the... The second thing I knew I wanted to do was work remotely because my mind just worked better when I wasn't having to collaborate with people until I needed to collaborate with people. And the few office jobs I had were very tough for me as an individual because I didn't feel like I could get the deep work I needed to get done until I was home. And then I would just do extra work. And so the first couple of jobs that I had were more in the realm of customer support, technical support where I could learn how to code on the side even more depth, a lot of internal tooling that we could build, lot of automations that I could learn that process of building.

And then on the side, it was always like, hey, I could figure out how to build a SaaS. I could figure out how to build this tool that I need or, you know, one of my friends has an idea. Maybe I can try to figure that out. And so it was a lot of that kind of process. Really up until about two thousand twenty three was when I got laid off. I had just we had just had our second kid and I got laid off from the company that I was working at.

Matt Stauffer:
Perfect timing.

Josh Cirre:
I know it's always it's always perfect timing.

Matt Stauffer:
It's always something.

Josh Cirre:
And I got laid off and I was in the sales engineering space and along this time I had found that I wanted to be this new world was coming up in the 2018, 19, 20 of this DevRel role where it's like, hey, a lot of the people I was following who were writing blogs, who were on Twitter, who were on LinkedIn were like, they used to be these theater people just like me. But now they're tech people and theater people who are making videos, you know, going on podcasts, going, talking on live streams, you know, that kind of thing. I was like, that sounds like the perfect fit. And so every role that I was in,up until I got laid off, I kind of like made it an honorary dev role as best as I could. There was never dev rel in those companies, but I was like, I'm going to spend an extra six to 10 hours a week outside of my actual work and just pretend if this was a dev rel role, what would I be doing? So I made videos. I talked about it. I talked about what I was learning that kind.

And when I got laid off, I was like, hey, I don't really know what to do because I don't have the experience to jump into a dev role role. But I don't want to continue with sales engineering and I don't want to, you know, do a 180 and just go into development because I don't think that would fit really well with me or I would pretend it was a dev role role anyways.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
And so I did the thing that every smart unemployed person would do.

And I spent a bunch of money on making, spent a bunch of money and time on making a YouTube channel in a lot of ways. I told my wife, was like, I really think that this is going to, you know, I think I could do this. I think I could, if not make it to a full-time thing, I think it could lead to a full-time thing. And she was very supportive because like I was like, spending all day applying to jobs and like doing some kind of contract work. And then at night I would just, you know, pretend I was a full time YouTuber. And the thing that I had kind of learned and picked up was in all these side projects and even kind of like even these like internal tools that I was building. I was like, hey, every single night I want to try to learn something. And so I would find the frameworks, the libraries, the programming languages that I didn't know really well.

And I was just someone who just knew JavaScript. knew the back end as a service type stuff like Firebase,

Matt Stauffer:
Firebase. Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
Superbase. And I dabbled with like MongoDB within Meteor. That was kind of like my one full stack thing that I used. It's still around, by the way, which is interesting.
I haven't touched it, but it's still around. And so every night I would try like, OK, if I was to build a my next SaaS, what would this look like? And usually I always got stuck on the authentication piece. I don't know why. For me, it was just I hated doing it. And it took me longer than the actual crud piece within everything else. And I needed authentication for 99 % of the products that I put out.

And so one night I was like, I'm just going to do all the old school MVC frameworks that I've been hearing about. And this was probably twenty twenty two. And I think it was Laravel nine at the time. think level 10 might have just been released. I think it was Laravel nine and I installed a level app. I started a Rails app. I installed a Phoenix app and I installed Blazer app, which is C-sharp's. And I just did the same app.

And I timed myself of how long it would take me to learn it and do it. And I hadn't written in any of those languages. And the app that I was building, which is basically a glorified to do list that was authenticated and authorized and everything like that. Laravel, took me just under an hour and a half. And everything else was like close to four hours. And I was like, I guess I'm building all my next steps in Laravel. And it was mostly because I could.

Matt Stauffer:
Ha ha!

Josh Cirre:
Like I was shocked at Breeze at the time was where I could just install an app and like have my dashboard and everything ready. I didn't have to worry about I didn't. I still don't know too much about like how how the authentication piece truly worked. It was one of those things where I just I didn't need to know. I just needed to use it for how I built it. And so when I got laid off.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
The things that I was kind of building on the side, even like talking to people at my work who were using PHP, but not Laravel. And of course, I was just doing internal stuff for them before I got laid off. I just wanted to build projects. And so on the side, before I got laid off, I built a couple of SaaS projects in Laravel. It was the first time I actually ever released something that people paid for.

Matt Stauffer:
Nice.

Josh Cirre:
I had built a whole bunch of other tools in JavaScript and everything like that, but never, never anything people paid for other than some contract work. And so when I got laid off, I was like when I talked to my wife about making the YouTube channel, I knew that the thing that I really wanted to put out there was kind of why I was so excited about Laravel about like why me who I didn't think and I still don't think to some extent like I'm not a great developer, but it allowed me to build these projects that I'm making money off of to feed my family while I'm unemployed and doing all this.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
And so it just started this process of me having insane, uh, like imposter syndrome of here's this new guy. You know, I was, I was watching the Laracons. I was watching the Aaron Francis's, the Matt Stauffer's, the, you know, the Jeffrey Ways of the world who have been in this space for 10 plus years. And I was like, I'm, I don't want to pretend that I'm just like this expert who's come in and like, Oh, now everyone should listen to me.

But at the same time, I don't want to pretend that I am not super excited about this. And I've looked and I've and to hide all the things that I've already learned just in like past year and a half. And I don't know, it just it just kind of went on from there in the sense that every single video that I put out, like I wanted to make sure it was from this point of I want to tell you what I've learned. It might not be...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
truth that might not be what people who are building in Laravel for years might not do this the exact same way, but this is how I got here and this is something you might learn from.

Matt Stauffer:
Right. Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
And yeah, eventually I found that Laravel was hiring for jobs. It wasn't DevRel, but I kind of put in an application with the thought of, hey, here's what I can do. I would gladly do this on the side. You know, with this other job that I'd been paid for. And Taylor eventually kind of said, hey, why don't you do half DevRel to start and half customer support? And here we are now where I'm kind of all the way, all the way into DevRel now.

Matt Stauffer:
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that man. I gotta ask what on earth is a sales engineer? I have no idea what that means

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, it's it's it's interesting because it is essentially a Enterprise version of a Dev Rel it is it was the closest thing I could find that get that got paid a decent amount of money without me.. You know jumping to it like a beginner Dev Rel or like taking a salary cut at the time and kind of thing and so it is basically imagine a

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

Josh Cirre:
dev or imagine a tech company that isn't necessarily focused for developers. Sales Engineer would be you're getting on a call with all these enterprise people and they are saying, Hey, we need this tool to do X, Y, and Z. So sales engineer, would do.

Matt Stauffer:
You can't figure it that way. Can you customize it that way? OK.

Josh Cirre:
Yep, exactly demos. I would say, Hey, you know, you can use our API for this. This is what that code would look like. XYZ kind of thing. Yeah, very

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, almost like a technical salesperson. Okay, cool. Got it. Cool, cool, cool.

Josh Cirre:
Exactly. Technical salesperson for sure.

Matt Stauffer:
That's a really fun dream. I I told you this when I first reached out and was like, hey, you came out of nowhere. Let's be friends. And I meant that because, and I love it when this happens where someone I've never heard of before starts putting out consistently good content. And I'm just like, I don't know who this is. I don't know where they came from, but I like their vibe. I like them teaching people, let's be friends. And that's really what it felt like. It's just kind of like there's this guy, Josh, he's making videos. And you told a little bit of your story

Josh Cirre:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
the time about like, Hey I got laid off and I'm going to do something. What am I going to venture with? I'm just going to start publishing the content. You know, like that's a something that's a story we love in the Laravel community for sure. But yeah, it's really cool to hear that. So today, your job, you know you mentioned a little bit about kind of like what you work on day to day. But like, have there been particular projects that you mentioned working on the sales calculator. Had there been particular projects in the biz dev world or is the biz dev? No, sorry, sorry. In the dev rel world? Or is the dev rel world mainly about creating content, creating videos.

Like how big and structured is it and how much is it like just do this thing. know what, Crystal check in with you guys, make sure you're doing your thing right, but as long as you're doing your thing right, you just do it.

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, it's interesting because I think the thing that I've really appreciated about being on the Laravel team is that, you know, a lot of people think, hey, Laravel took all this funding. Now it's just this corporate entity and you have to go through all these checks and balances in order to get something out the door kind of thing. And I think, you know, there has to be some form of that that is different. And Taylor's even talked about it on this podcast and others where it's like.

Hey, things are different for him than it was a year ago, but at the same time, it still feels very Laravely. For someone who, you know, before I joined, I wanted to learn everything about Laravel as a company level as a open source thing. Laravel is, you know, these products I enjoy. And so I did look and I was like, OK, it's cool that it seems like there's like eight people. And I think there's less at the time that are just building, you know, four, three projects or three products. And...

Matt Stauffer:
Right. Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
You know, they're pushing a release every week. And I was like, this is this is crazy. Like I have been on teams where I have literally written code and I'm like, hey, we should use this as a as a feature. And then it either gets trashed or it gets built in two years and then it's finally released and all this stuff.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
And so when I joined, I was and I still am surprised at how awesome it is that literally everyone is there with the same goal of we just want to make Laravel and the products that we have better and our community better and all that thing. We just want to make it as good as we can.

And, you know, we're not going to be held back by possible questions or, or, or, you know, negative aspects that could hinder that kind of output. And so from when I first joined to now, not much has changed other than, you know, Chris being able to be a great guiding force as to, Hey, You know, let's put more attention to this or let's put less attention into this.

But in terms of like the content wise, it's very much a. Maybe myself or Christoph has an idea and then it's like, hey, why don't we do that? A lot of this past year has been very centered on product releases, and so a lot of the content that we had done last year is not as not as consistent, I would say, in a lot of ways, because this year has been more of OK, Cloud is releasing.

Nightwatch is releasing what's some great content that people don't necessarily know about Cloud or just even you know, here's how to use Nightwatch better. And so a lot of that has been what I would say is probably more marketing content, but it's not the sole focus or won't be the sole focus forever. That's kind of just a time a time frame in a sense.

Matt Stauffer:
Got it.

I know we have other topics we got to cover, but there's one thing I've been wanting to ask you for, I guess, years at this point since you said 2023. When you are creating videos on the internet, I have the sense that you have one of the least scripted kind of setups behind each video of anybody I see. And some people are just great extemporaneous speakers. That's certainly a thing. But I feel like a lot of people, it feels like even if they're not reading from a script, they knew what they were going to say pretty strongly ahead

Josh Cirre:
Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
of time and I've always kind of watched you and I'm like I think Josh has an outline and he's just kind of the words that fit in between each part of the outline are just kind of what comes out of his head and I was very curious and so you're talking about improv and I'm like well there you go but I want to know like how intentionally are you using your improv skills how intentionally are you leaning into the background that you have as the way you create videos as the way you act as a dev rel.

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, no, that's a great question because I think it kind of it's interesting that I think a lot of my background from improv to music to even sales engineer stuff has really led to my videos getting better. I think the biggest thing and what I would kind of encourage a lot of people to do is like I if I if I looked at my first video and you could probably look at it to like my first video on my channel or even the first video within the Laravel official channel to now there's been improvement at least in my mind and I think a lot of that's just from consistency but then the second aspect is I think the sales engineering piece kind of gave me the tools of how can I formulate especially when it comes to like the intro or just you're thinking of an overall key theme of the video that you want to keep in mind throughout but as you're talking as in the intro of the video you want to tell people why do you care about this particular 20 minutes? Why do you care about this particular eight minutes?
And so usually I don't I don't write much of anything for every single video. Usually the title or the topic is the only thing that I'm keeping in mind. And so if it's something like, you know, within if it's something like what is I'm taking an example from a video that I made on the Laravel official channel that's

What is Livewire Volt? And so in my mind, a lot of the, kind of goes into, okay, I'm on Twitter a lot and I could say that's probably part of my job as well, but I'm on Twitter a lot. And so I'm seeing that people don't like volt, but it's not because they don't like it being in one file. Usually it's like, they don't like that it feels different than Livewire or it feels like there's no tooling around it. And so there are all their tests don't work in this particular way. And so as I'm doing that video as I'm doing that intro, I'm thinking about the people who might be watching or the people who are consuming this. And so that improv piece probably comes in as well as that sales engineering piece. And I think probably the musical piece of like, OK, as we're going through this, we want to keep on key, if you will. Like there's different rhythms that we could go throughout this video. But the same at the end of the day, every single piece of value that should be taken out of that video is, hey, This is not different from what you might be using if you are using Livewire. But if you haven't used Livewire, here's why it might be easier than traditional Livewire for you. And so I think usually to kind of answer your question around about why I don't script anything. And it's more of if you if you if you were to get a hand on a raw video file of mine that's recorded, you will see about eight to ten takes of the two to five minute intro. Twoo three minutes sometimes. The middle I hardly ever recut. Sometimes I stumble over my words and I start again, but there's very little taken out of the intro that I or the middle of the video that is that's more I like to keep that more raw, more less polished in a lot of ways because that's just the meat and potatoes. And then the outro is probably five to seven different takes. And that's usually just

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
How am I wrapping all this up with a bow in a lot of ways?

Matt Stauffer:
Yep, I mean, my Laracast videos and YouTube videos are exactly the same way. It's getting this intro, getting this outro, and then sitting back and just do the thing, you know?

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, the rest is easy.

Matt Stauffer:
So, it's funny, this morning I was working with one of the LairCon speakers through their talk, and this particular speaker is a jazz musician and...

Josh Cirre:
Okay, yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
we were kind of relating it because they are very experienced jazz musician and a relatively new speaker. And so I was kind of saying things and I'm like, so we want to work on your pacing and we want to work on your phrasing. We want to work on the tone being high here and low here. Because right now you're at like an 80 all the time, but we want to be an 80 sometimes, a 40 sometimes. And they're like, this jazz concept, that musical concept. And I expected it to be like, I was like, I don't want to give you too much kind of notes because Laracon is in a couple of weeks. And they're like, no, because it all perfectly slots into my music.

I totally get it. I was like, that's cool. Like, you know, we're telling stories, we're doing phrasing. You got the crescendo, the decrescendo, you know, the rest makes the next thing, like the drop in a techno thing, makes the next thing even bigger. You know, it's just all that same stuff comes into play. So yeah, it's really fun kind of seeing the parallels with yours as well.

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, and it's funny because that is a working talk title I've had. I haven't gotten the chance to give this at any conference. I still apply with it every now and then for some conferences. But if you were to take, especially in the Laravel world, outside of Laravel world, I think it's still a large majority of people, but the people who have some sort of musical background as developers, there's a huge overlap there.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
And I have this kind of working talk called Music as Code, where like a lot of what we are like writing or just like the process of development and just like the process of like your creativity in general kind of leads into why a lot of musicians or developers were musicians in a lot of ways. It's funny how many people had bands or still play nowadays, too. It's a it's an incredible kind of overlap in my mind in lot of ways.

Matt Stauffer:
Yep, first being music, probably second being woodworking. So, figure that out.

Josh Cirre:
Ooh, yeah, that's a good one too. Yep.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, so there's an actual topic I'm supposed to cover, you know, each of these supposed to be I want to hear all about you and then we don't talk about the actual topic. So the actual topic right now is I have learned through the grapevine that you guys are working on boot camp and I don't know anything about this and I keep telling them like usually I have a decent idea what we're talking about and I pretend like I don't because that makes me a more curious guest or host. I literally don't know. I know what the boot camp is. I know that I know what refresh boot camp means in theory and that's as far as I've got.

Josh Cirre:
Hmm. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
So I just got to leave it to you. Can you tell us about kind of what you've been working on lately?

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, so this is something that I have kind of had on the back of my mind since I started, but it wasn't really until you know, until Chris came on and we kind of had this overall sense of, okay, what is what or what should be the main focus of stuff? Is it specifically just for YouTube content specifically for, you know, within the community and open source and templates and projects and stuff like that? What should the overall goal of DevRel be and where does that live in a lot of sense? And so I was always a fan and still am a fan of like the boot camp for Laravel that used to live at boot camped dot Laravel dot com. It's currently not live mostly because we had this revamped version kind of in the pipeline, but also because it used breeze instead of like the new starter kits. And so the process of updating it would have been the same as what we're working on now. And so...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
The thought in my mind is like there should always be a starting point for people who are new to Laravel. Usually, and I think our documentation is fantastic. It's built that way. I think we've even in past year have improved things of how you install PHP and Composer in Laravel with a single command on the Laravel docs, which is great. But there's still that process of, now if I want to...

Even if I'm familiar with web development or routing and requests and templating and all that, there's still a what if or where do I go next question for a lot of new to Laravel people or just people who are Laravel curious. And so because this has been part of my journey where I didn't know MVC or I didn't know PHP at all. And I just kind of like learn learned as I went.

The revamped boot camp was something that was near and dear to my mind and something that I've been working on, especially the past month, but really in the last couple of weeks. So we're basically relaunching the boot camp as a getting started with Laravel and we're going to still do an ode to the original Chirper application. And so it's still going to be built with Chirper.

I think the only key differences that we would note is a lot of feedback that we got from people who had taken it as well as people who we asked of when you did the bootcamp, what was the first things that came to mind is it's a lot. It's really hard, especially if you're getting started with Laravel to know where to start when it comes to the first step of, OK, we have starter kits. If you know React, you know Vue, that's great. But there's still...

Okay, how does that fit in? Where does Inertia come into play?

Matt Stauffer:
You also, and you have like 300 files in there. Even when you get the file that's, you're like, which of the 300 files do I open? I don't know.

Josh Cirre:
All of this? Yeah. I think I know and even, know, it's it was I think my the thing I really like about being a DevRel and I think, you know, all of us on the team, Chris, Christoph and Leah, like we all feel this way in a sense. Like we we watch streams like when Taylor was on Primagen stream with Teague. Like these are Two developers, both Teague and Prime. Teej had also worked in Laravel a little bit or done a personal project with them. Prime is not a dumb developer. He's a very smart developer. So, yeah, incredibly smart guy. so the fact that, and of course, like his brain's kind of all over the place too at the same time. When stuff like that is also a hard struggle to say, where would I go for this? I have an idea and most of the time,

That guess is probably correct. But what is the absolute basics of what I need to know that then brings you into OK, now let's enhance that with Livewire or now let's add inertia with React and Vue. And I think the old boot camp kind of forced you to again, I love the old boot camp. I think the old boot camp forced you because of Breeze. You kind of had to choose which one you were going to do before you even saw anything.

Matt Stauffer:
Do what you're doing. Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
And that's tough. Especially when we don't, I don't think there should be a starter kit that is just Blade. And then you add on to it in a lot of ways, like Taylor's kind of talked about that as well. And so the boot camp, which is effectively the first part of a new initiative put on by the dev rel team called Laravel learn to be able to have these micro courses in a place for a lot of this more in-depth written content and in-depth videos to live, to kind of teach the basics of Laravel in that sense. It's not meant to replace Laracast, it's not meant to replace our YouTube channel, but it's meant to be a, okay, if I'm browsing Laravel's site, what is the first thing I need to get up and running? And so this new bootcamp is just Blade. It's mostly like, what is a web request? How do we do a route? How do we do a form?

Matt Stauffer:
Yes.

Josh Cirre:
And while not all of that is probably transferable into Inertia and Livewire and things like that, I think it is. It sets the groundwork for most people to feel why Laravel is so powerful because it gives even within forms and, you know, like HTML requests and controllers, you still get the feeling of, this has everything, even if we don't touch events just yet, or even if we don't touch notifications and that kind.

Matt Stauffer:
That's nice. Did you guys, did you end up having to build like an education platform to be able to deliver this? Is it just videos? What's the situation like?

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, and it's still very much a work in progress. So like the details might change in that sense as well. But it is very much kind of like a micro education platform, I guess you could say, where the goal is definitely there's two types of learners usually text based and video based. And so that was one of the things that the dev rel team and Chris leading that kind of said, hey, we don't want this to just be videos. You can go to YouTube to do that. So we want this to be that SEO kind of evergreen content of, so all the content that I have been creating has started by text to say, this is how this bootcamp would look. They're meant to be bite-sized snippets where each video, each even written course is probably can be completed within five to seven minutes. Each course is probably eight to 10

Matt Stauffer:
Nice.

Josh Cirre:
lessons in that sense too. So the goal is to make it as consumable as possible while also being easily digestible too. So yeah, it is a micro learning platform in a lot of ways. But at least to start probably more of just like, hey, here's, here's the blog, kind of like old bootcamp style, where it was just all written content. But then here's a video to go along with it too, depending on your learning style.

Matt Stauffer:
That's very cool. As you have been building out the boot camp, obviously you've been able to bring your own experience as somebody who came to Laravel relatively recently. Is there anything where another member of the team, the DevRel team, brought an insight that you didn't have aspect to? Because maybe because you were a JavaScript programmer, right? So there was things that you're like, that's just obvious. Or is there any aspect where you've been like, that's not something I would have expected or anything you've learned along the way?

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, I think for me specifically, and I think like this is also like a great point of, you know, having to, like you said, kind of take those extra things. And even if I might not agree on my personal opinions on that, like it's having that overall sense of, well, what is the majority best good for the community and good for new learners as well? Because I personally probably wouldn't start with Blade in the sense that I would...

I like, I don't like controllers. That's just something that's never worked with my brain. But I also know that if I'm writing Inertia, I have to use controllers. And so it's this kind of like this give and take of if we are going to teach new people who are into Laravel before they even touch the, the awesome magic of Inertia, like you almost have to start. And this is probably like my own preference.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
preference to like, I like starting with like the front end and then moving into the back end. so with this starter kit, not starting with this, you welcome to the bootcamp learning, learning Laravel bootcamp. We want to focus on here's what Laravel provides. Now you can go and do with it, build out your front end. Now you can go and build out these notifications. And so the goal of it,
as a as a whole, like this initial boot camp piece is, yes, meant to be that starting point of getting started and and seeing the magic of Laravel. But the goal is also to try to be modular as well, where maybe it's and a lot of this is kind of hypothetical, but maybe it's down the line of, OK, well, now you built that. How do you add inertia on top of that? Or how do you add Livewire? Where do those pieces fall? Or what even is PHP in a lot of sense? Like what do need to know?

If you've never touched PHP, what are some things that you need to know even before you get started with Laravel?

Matt Stauffer:
Did you know that PHP is no longer named personal home page?

Josh Cirre:
I did not know that, no.

Matt Stauffer:
It was originally in the 90s when he created a call personal homepage and they renamed it at some point and it's now and I'm trying to remember what it is, but it's a it's a name that has its own name in it. There's a phrase for that. So it is now PHP hypertext processor and

Josh Cirre:
There's, is a hypertext? Yeah, okay.

Matt Stauffer:
I'm like so PHP is in the name of PHP and they're like, yeah, that's it. That's a thing. It's got a name. So anyway, you said what's it? What's PHP? Yeah, it's it is PHP is Okay, so yeah, good...

Josh Cirre:
But yeah, no, I was just gonna say like, think Chris and Christoph specifically helped to lean into that too, of like the sense of, here's, know, Chris also had people who, you know, he was teaching Laravel, especially at his time in Digital Ocean, people who were just coming into Laravel. And so there was the sense of, okay, when you got started with bootcamp, what didn't make sense or what was frustrating? What was great about it. And so being able to take so many people's like personal opinions, but then also like just the things that they've heard has been great to kind of combine this into, okay, this might not be perfect, but it gives us the starting point that allows us to branch out from.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, that's very cool. I actually need to start wrapping, which I told you at beginning, I was like, we're gonna be really short. I'm so, so dumb.

Josh Cirre:
I talk a lot.

Matt Stauffer:
Because you and I together could talk for hours every time we're in a call room. I'm like, yeah, we've got to cut for time. But is there anything else about the boot camp that you wanted to share that you had a chance to get to?

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, I think not too much. think like the the overall goal is like this boot camp is just one part of what we want to eventually become Laravel Learn so that there is multiple versions of this boot camp in a way.

Yeah, so it is meant to be text based and video based at the same time, but we will also probably release those on YouTube as like full length. All of them kind of put together and it's great to be able to get inspiration and also just look at folks like like Laracasts who are doing a lot of that kind of similar stuff. And again, it's not meant to compete with that. It's more of like, hey, how can we teach this particular aspect? And then how can you teach that particular aspect in a different way?

Matt Stauffer:
I love it. Are there any other things that you and the DevRel team are working on right now that you think some people who listen might not be aware of? Whether it's something you're excited that you're talking about in the future or whether it's something you've been doing but maybe just not everybody knows about it.

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, I think the biggest one is maybe not many people know about. They probably do, especially if they're listening to this podcast. But I think Nightwatch is definitely one that was the of the most biggest recent pushes of the DevRel team, not just for the marketing site, which Leah kind of headed up as well. But then also just a lot of content around that, whether that's live streams or things like that.

Another thing to kind of keep in mind is we are also you can kind of see past versions. We've done it two times now, but we're trying out these kind of open office hours within live streams for the Laravel as well. And then, yeah, I think that I think that's pretty much it.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, well I had one other really important question for you, which is I heard a story about some guy in a park paying you $200 to slap him and I gotta hear the story, so what's going on there?

Josh Cirre:
Yeah, it's a wild story. I was I was in college. I think I was just out of college at the time. So this is when I was kind of trying to make my dues within Second City and everything like that. And this there's a Millennium Park in Chicago, which is kind of like the biggest park there's if ever seen the bean, which is like the big metal bean that lives in the center of the Millennium Park.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, sculpture, yeah.

Josh Cirre:
But yeah, it's a lot of people hang out in the summer. It's a really nice area. And so this guy came up to me and he was kind of frantic at first. And he said, like, hey, like, I'll give you $200. You slap me on the face like right here as hard as you can. And I thought I was like either a YouTuber, joke, prank, like, you know, that kind of thing. Or I don't know. My mind first went to undercover cop like I if I hit him. Yeah, like I can't do this. But he ended up showing me these papers of how.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, you're like, am I getting arrested? Yeah.

Josh Cirre:
He was going to court and he was telling me this whole backstory of how his significant other was physically abusing him and all this thing. But he was like, I don't have any evidence. And so if you do this, then I be the part of this.

Matt Stauffer:
See what they did to me?

Josh Cirre:
And I'm not proud of it, but...

Matt Stauffer:
Highest moment Jeez. It's like I'm saying, I'm not saying I turned down $200 though.

Josh Cirre:
I'm not saying I turned down $200, but I'm not like I don't think it's my moral like I Who can tell if he was telling the truth or or lying or maybe he didn't even have court maybe that was just you know, you just...

Matt Stauffer:
Maybe he just really likes getting slapped in the face and that's worth $200 for him, you know?

Josh Cirre:
Exactly, so I'm not I'm not gonna turn it down and so I I follow I asked the questions just to make sure I wasn't you know Going to be held legally responsible for anything whether he was a cop or anything else. But yeah That was surprisingly one of the first times, and think only times, that someone has asked me to hit them for money.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, for money is really, cause like ask them, like that's happened occasionally, but never for money.

Josh Cirre:
That's the key part. And the funny thing was he said he said he had asked like four other people and everyone said no. So I was like, well, I can't leave you hanging. Like it was in. Yeah, I was like...

Matt Stauffer:
Further, you're like, he's gonna get slapped somehow, right? So it might as well be me, so...

Josh Cirre:
I'm like, I'm not going to do it too hard. I actually had to do it twice because he the first time he said it wasn't hard enough yet.

Matt Stauffer:
Did anybody stop and stare at you after the first time?

Josh Cirre:
He had made a pretty big scene, so it was more people cheering me on. This was classic Chicago at this point where we like, yeah, do it, dude. There's people I don't even know. I was there by myself.

Matt Stauffer:
Oh my god, that's so funny. Alright, last thing, I thought that was the last one until you said classic Chicago. Mal?rt, have you had the opportunity to experience Mal?rt in your life? Okay.

Josh Cirre:
I have, yes.

Matt Stauffer:
If a listener who has not lived in Chicago, I've been in Chicago for years, not for, I lived in Chicago for like three or four or five years, not a lifetime Chicagoan, but long enough to experience Malort. If somebody has never had their time in Chicago, has never gotten to experience Mal?rt, how would you describe that drink of drinks?

Josh Cirre:
I would describe it as...
I'm trying to think of like a good analogy. would describe it as the very first time. This is not described taste is more like a sensation. The very first time. Yeah, yeah, the very first time that maybe maybe you grabbed a lemon and you sucked it.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, experience. Uh-huh.

Matt Stauffer:
I was gonna say the same thing. I was gonna say the same thing. Yep.

Josh Cirre:
Initially you're like, that was way too strong or like, I don't think I'll ever do it again. But then like the after feeling is like, that was like that was rather enjoyable. I'll never experience that again. That is Mal?rt.

Matt Stauffer:
I don't think we need to do anything. I think the podcast is done. I think we're good. Look at that. It's 44 minutes and 52 seconds. We're good to go. Is there anything else you wish we'd covered in this podcast that we didn't get to today?

Josh Cirre:
I don't think so. Yeah, keep checking the Laravel official YouTube channel and the Laravel Twitter account. That's probably the best way to kind of keep up to date with everything that we're doing as a DevRel team. But yeah, overall, I'm super excited with just being on the Laravel team, being on this podcast, and for what is coming up in the future, not just for DevRel, but all of Laravel.

Matt Stauffer:
I love it. Well thank you for who you are and for what you contribute to our community and the way you're teaching everybody and all the stuff you're sharing and thank you for hanging out with us today.

Josh Cirre:
Thank you.

Matt Stauffer:
Alright, for the rest of you, we will see you all next time.