 So this is what I've learned in seven years of podcasting about Ruby. I'm gonna give you a brief history and then I'll talk about some of the lessons I've learned. But first, I'd like to thank the RailsConf organizers for putting me right in the middle of nap time. I really appreciated that. And in case you're wondering, yes, this is my son a couple of years ago. And yes, he is face down on the floor. He just fell asleep there like that. But anyway, gonna have lots of pictures of my kids and stuff too, so it's not a super serious talk. But yeah, I figure as I was talking to people, they were like, well, you're at the same time slot as Sandy met. So I figured out that you all must be one of these three groups. You're either a die hard Ruby Rogues fan, for which I thank you if you are. You don't know who Sandy is, or your overflow from her talk. Or you didn't wanna hear about nothing or something, or something or nothing. Or you didn't realize that we have a rock star next. In fact, it wasn't fair for them to put Kent after me cuz I mean, that's just a hard act to follow. But so you didn't know that you had to save front row seats to see Kent. Ultimately, the purpose of this talk, though, is to inspire you to go out and contribute to the community however you're gonna do it. And so these are lessons that I've learned as I have been involved in podcasting over the years. Over the last four years, I've been involved in these shows. And those are the stickers that are up here as well. Ruby Rogues, we started four years ago. I'll talk about kind of the origin story there. JavaScript Jabber and the Freelancer show started about eight months after that in January of 2012. And then I started iFreaks about a year and a half after that. And then Adventures in Angular started in July. So if you are interested in that, then that's been growing pretty rapidly. When I got started, I started a podcast called Rails Coach. This is not the original artwork. I had this done later because I planned on relaunching it and I never did. And then I also took over Teach Me to Code, which was screencasts about how to build things in Ruby on Rails. And I'll talk a little bit more about those as well. But did anyone listen to or watch any of these? These two? Yeah, a few people. So yeah, I mean, it's been kind of this wild ride. And I renamed Rails Coach to Teach Me to Code. And then I started another show called Rails Coach. And yeah, it's been this crazy thing. And then my latest project has been Rails Clips. And we just did a Kickstarter campaign for that. We being I, I guess. And the idea is that we don't have Railscast anymore. I wish there was Railscast, so I decided to do that. And so I'm gonna be putting out videos every week. You can subscribe just like Railscast Pro. And hopefully we can cover topics that are interesting to you. In ways that we can't really do with the audio format. But ultimately, I'm just gonna tell you my story. So these are my kids. This was also a few years ago. And I think she was three or four. And yeah, she was reading a story to her one-year-old brother. The story of me getting into podcasting is, it started when I was working for a company called Mozi. Now Mozi, they do online backup. I'm not gonna tell you the long and sorted tale about how I wound up in QA. But I was working QA and there was the other person in QA that I was working with at the time. He got one of these brand new devices. And it looked about like that too. And it was like this mind-blowingly cool technology that they don't even make them like that anymore. But he started listening to podcasts. And so I'd be sitting at my desk working and he'd be sitting in the other corner of a very small room working. And he'd be laughing at stuff that people were saying. And so I figured out pretty fast, he's listening to podcasts. And so I was like, well, I can't afford an iPod. But this sounds like fun. And so he explained to me that I didn't need to go get an iPod. I could listen to them off of iTunes. And so I got a little Mac mini, put it on my desk, which ultimately led to me running the beta test for the Mac client. But anyway, and I started listening to podcasts. And it was really interesting because I started finding podcasts about things I was interested in. One of them that some of you may have listened to. In fact, show of hands, how many of you listened to Rails NB way back in the day? Right, with Greg Pollock. So I was really new. I had done Ruby on Rails for like a year before I was in QA. And I was super excited about this show. And I thought, oh, everybody in Rails is like so much better than me. And these guys are celebrities. But I decided, what the heck, I'm gonna try something new and I'm gonna start a podcast. Another side note, this is a hamburger with egg and bacon on it. And if you look real close, the bun is a donut. Donuts, so anyway, it was actually pretty good. Anyway, so I decided to try something new. So I knew zero about podcasting. I'd been developing Ruby on Rails for like a year. It wasn't even my full-time job for the duration I did it. So I had no experience with any of it. And I emailed Greg and I was like, Greg Pollock, you are awesome. I wanna start a podcast. I wanna talk about Rails. I don't wanna start another Rails NB podcast. So what do I do? And what surprised me was that he came back and he said, that's awesome. You should start a podcast and here are some ideas. And he basically encouraged me to do a show where I would interview other developers. And so I reached out to somebody that I had already been in contact with. And Greg was the first interview I did for that show. So the first one, the first episode was what I thought made a good developer and the next one was Greg Pollock. Well, about three episodes later, I interviewed James Gray. You can kind of see where this is going, right? And he offered me a bunch of feedback on the way that I did the show, which kind of changed the way that I approached things. And one other highlight, I was actually at RailsConf. It was like 2008 or 2009. I don't remember exactly the year, but I was walking through the crowd. It was like the second day of RailsConf. And there was this empty seat right next to this guy. And I was like, I would love to interview David Hirenmeyer Hansen. So I sat down next to him and started talking to him. And as a new Rails developer, you can imagine, who here thinks David is intimidating? Maybe a little bit. So I was scared to death. And I sat down and I started talking to him and I was like, I have this podcast and I'd love to interview you. And he kind of begrudgingly said yes. I don't think he was super excited. But he came on the show and I interviewed him. It was like episode 50 of the RailsCoach podcast. You can find that on TeachMeToCode.com. But what this taught me was that you can be bold. You can go out and do things that are really scary. You can find opportunities in these places where you're not really sure what's going to happen next. Or where you feel like you might get shot down. Or you might fail. But you have to be bold. You have to go out there and just take charge and be excited. And find these opportunities. And this also affected the way that I code. And I started taking more risks in the projects that I would accept. Or in the way that I would approach specific problems. And this led to a lot of different things. I must have started like five ORMs. Jeremy knows how much work that is. But it was really an opportunity for me to grow. And it led me to other places in my career, my coding, and in my professional life. The other thing that it taught me, going back to the incidents with Greg and James, was that sometimes you have to ask for help, okay? So you might get stuck, he got stuck. And my wife went to help him out. And then stopped and said, get the camera. And so, yeah, but yeah, his foot was stuck in the drain. And we just popped him out right after that. But you may get stuck, right? You may find that I don't know what to do next. I don't know where to go. I don't know how to proceed. And if you ask for help, what you'll find is that a lot of people want you to succeed. So sometimes you'll find a mentor. Sometimes you'll find people who are willing to give you money or resources. One incident that comes to mind is with Teach Me to Code. Before I was doing Teach Me to Code, my friend Eric was doing Teach Me to Code, Eric Berry. And he started it and he started reaching out to a bunch of us in the community to start making videos for his video series. And so I put one together on Rails Routing. It's really old, don't go watch it. But what happened was I did the video and then I started tweeting and blogging about some of the things that I had struggled with. I didn't have a good mic and I didn't really have. I'd use a trial version of software to record the video. And I got this email out of the blue from Telestream. Telestream is the company that does ScreenFlow. Who here uses ScreenFlow? Anybody? Yeah, awesome company, great product. And they sent me a free license for ScreenFlow and a $200 microphone to record my screencasts. I've also, over the years, I've asked for help in finding work. I've asked for donations to the podcasts. And what I've found is that all of the listeners, all of the people who are involved in the shows, David Brady's found me work a few times. If you ask for help, people just will come out and help you. And I found this even for people that don't have a platform or people that listen to them. I mean, some of this stuff happened when I didn't have anybody listening to me. And so if you take the opportunity to find people who want you to succeed and you ask for help, you'll get it. One other thing that I've seen is when other people ask me for help, and this is kind of the reverse. But a lot of times I wind up saying things that are way smarter than I thought, right? And so sometimes the help will come when you have a sounding board. It's like rubber ducking, where you have a duck on your desk and you talk to the duck and you explain the problem. And then the solution comes to your mind. And that happens pretty commonly. I mean, some of the things that people tweet that I said on the shows. I didn't even know that I knew that stuff before I said it. And so just by asking for help or discussing the issues with people will give you opportunities to learn and to grow. And so that's just another example of some of the things that I've learned over the last few years doing these podcasts. Another thing that you want to do is experiment. And we've had, I've listened to talks about experiment driven development, or using scientific methods for exploring different aspects of code. There are a few people that really inspire me to experiment. Dave Thomas is one of those. I mean, every time I talk to the guy, it's just like, I feel all creative again. The last episode of Ruby Rogues, we had him on, and there's a lot of that in there. In the business, I have a friend, Stephen Robinson. He runs rubynow.com. And he encouraged me to actually split the sponsorships into levels. And to charge more for the first one, and charge differently for the different sponsorship levels. And just to experiment with them and see what worked. And that worked out very nicely. And I've tweaked that a little bit as time goes on. One other thing that I've really learned from Ruby Rogues, and this comes down a lot more to more of the social areas of Ruby Rogues. I don't know if people really realize how diverse a group we are. Beyond the obvious things, gender and race. Over the years, I mean, we've had very different political views, religious views, views on the way the world works, ways that the world should work. And having the opportunity to actually explore those areas and have a safe place to talk about these ideas with the different experiences not just in code, but in life, has really been a tremendous blessing for me. And in some ways, it's strengthened the stances that I have that are different from the other Rogues. And in other ways, it's really helped me to understand why people think the way they think and then to approach my own thinking and change the way that I think about things. And you get this in code and I think we come to conferences to kind of get these ideas. But I encourage you when you get these ideas or when you talk to somebody with a different background than you or different lifestyle than you, that you take the opportunity to really go explore that and experiment with it. I mean, even if it's just a mental experience, experiment, I'm not gonna go do things that don't line up with my values. But I can think about it and I can think about where that would take me. And I can really come to understand where people are at. And this is something that really came out in the Ruby Rogues retreat that we did a few years ago. We had the opportunity to all get together in one house and just talk. And we were working on a book that never materialized. But ultimately, we really did get to explore these different areas of where other people are at. And we did have a very interesting group. I mean, if you ever want to find somebody with a very interesting background, go talk to Katrina Owen. Just fascinating some of the things that she's been through. James Gray is another person with some of the health challenges and things that he's had in his life. And he's given talks on this and you can go look them up. But just imagine how that affects the way that he approaches life and approaches code and approaches his family. There's just so much to learn. And having this opportunity to kind of experience things in a small way through the way that they live is very interesting. I'm gonna talk a little bit about how we got into Ruby Rogues. So as some of you may or may not know, I'm a big fan of the TWIT network. Does anyone here listen to those podcasts? Yeah, one or two people. So I'm a big fan of Leo Laporte. Sometimes he says dumb crap, but everybody does that. So for the most part, though, it's just interesting, stimulating conversation about technology. And I had been podcasting for about three years. And I'd been thinking for a while that it would be really nice if we had a TWIT style show, which means that you bring in a bunch of panelists and you talk about the topics or the news of the day or whatever in technology. And I thought that would be really cool for Ruby. But I don't know why, but I never actually pulled the trigger on that. And then one day, James tweeted on Twitter, I guess that's redundant, tweeted on Twitter. But James tweeted and he said, hey, look, it'd be really cool if we had this panel discussion on Ruby. And of course I replied back, I've been thinking the same thing. And so we started to pull people together and pretty soon we had a panel. Now that panel stayed together for all of three months before we had people drop off and we replaced them with new people. And so we lost Aaron Patterson and Peter Cooper but picked up Obdi Grimm and Josh Susser, who are some of my favorite people in the whole world. So we started Ruby Rogues. That was four years ago next week, I think. And it was just awesome. And we've had a good run, we've really been enjoying hanging out. We've since replaced some of those folks with other folks. So now we have Jessica and Coraline and Saran on the show. And I don't know if David has anywhere else to go. So it's just this tremendous opportunity for us to sit down and talk and really explore where we're at. And so I really like the idea of experimenting and taking the things that we're learning from each other and just seeing what they're about. I also learned and I talked a little bit about this with Be Bold but being confident. So I may have an opinion that's different from one of the other Rogues. And that's totally fine. But it's that intersection and talking about where they don't line up. That's really the interesting conversation. And a lot of times what we find is that I'm willing to make trade-offs that they won't or they're willing to make trade-offs that I won't. And sometimes it just turns out that they've experienced something with an idea that I haven't. And so it was a negative thing for them. It was a positive thing when I tried it. And so by exploring these things we really get to figure things out. But initially when I was on Ruby Rogues I was very reticent to disagree with anybody on the show. And a lot of times I'm still pretty diplomatic but most of the time it's in areas that I really feel like there can be multiple right answers. And so then I just tell people what I think and then I accept that other people may have another opinion. But the times that I really struggled with Ruby Rogues or with any of the other shows were the times that I really wouldn't stand up for what I thought or where I wouldn't share my ideas because I didn't think that they merited the same consideration that the other Rogues did. And being confident also extends to code. And I like drawing these lessons from life to code because a lot of them really apply. So if you have a good idea, share it. If you have an approach that you feel I can really make things better in your code, then try it, do it. I mean, sometimes we're on teams and we can't always do it both ways. But at least bring the idea up and stand behind it until you're convinced that it's not the case. And I think the other side of being confident is also being humble enough to accept that somebody else may have a better idea. So your idea may be good, there's maybe better. And if they can present evidence to that, then be confident in switching. But more and more, the more I really stand up and tell people who I am and share what I'm about, that's really where I shine and that's really where I feel like I write my best code. So one other thing I want to talk about is there have been times, especially since I went freelance, where things got really tight money wise. And I've gone on the show a few times and said, please donate or whatever, or please help me find work. And it's really discouraging to be in that place where you feel like nobody really wants you. And when you're behind the microphone, I mean I don't see the listeners. And when I go and look up how we're doing with the show, all I see are numbers. And so I know people are out there and there may be a few people tweeting at me here or there during the day. But a lot of times it's really easy to get discouraged. It's the same thing with our jobs, you feel like you're not progressing the way you want. Or you feel like you're stuck where you are. Or you feel like nobody recognizes the work you put in. And it's easy to get discouraged. But the thing is, is that ultimately, if you really reach out, if you really look out there, there are people that benefit from what you do. And it's also okay to do something a little bit different. And that's where some of these other shows came out of, was, I don't feel like I'm growing a lot in Ruby, so I started an iOS podcast. I mean, that's where iFreaks came from, I wanna learn how to do iOS. And so if you find ways to kind of shortcut the discouragement, then you can really reach beyond where you're at. And back when I was doing Rails Coach and teach me to code, teach me to code did have at least several hundred people that were watching the screencast regularly. Rails Coach I don't think ever got over like 150 to 200 people listening to it at a time. And I really started to feel like, okay, I don't know if anybody cares. But ultimately, for the people that did care, and I did get phone calls from people wanting to hire me and things like that. If you make a difference for one or two people in a major way, it really, it really, it can make a difference for you. In fact, that's the next thing that I wanted to talk about. So one of my favorite stories about making a difference, we had Greg Bogus on the show. I don't know how many of you remember that episode. He talked about mental illness and depression. And he has a pretty, it's kind of a scary story about his depression. And then he got through it and kind of reached a point where he's healthy and happy now, but it's something that I had never thought about. Well, last year I went to a conference called Agile Roots. Which is a conference in Utah about Agile development. And one of the staff members there during the lightning talks, because they had like four people sign up for lightning talks. And then they were like, please, come talk. So he got up and he said, I listened to that episode. Now this isn't something that I feel like I did other than maybe highlight the conversation a little bit by getting him onto the show, myself and the other rogues. But he listened to that episode and he was in a similar place. And so he went and he got help. And he's like, my life is better. I have a better relationship with my wife. We now have two kids. I mean, all of these things that made a major difference for him. And I've heard other people that they listened to an episode about some technical topic and then they go and explore it. They kind of become an expert in that area and then they get a better job. You know, they move into a better life, they move into a better place. And it's these conversations that I think really make the difference from Ruby rogues and the other podcasts that we're involved with. Is that if you don't have to start the conversation. But if we can shine a light on the areas that make differences for other people and have those conversations. And sure some of them are used caching in your Rails app, your life will be better. And some of them are go get help for depression or be more aware of the minority or marginalized groups in our community. And all of these things make a difference to make things better for somebody. And so I don't take credit necessarily for starting the conversations. But in a lot of cases we've been able to have the conversations or continue the conversations in a more public way. And it really does make a difference for people. But honestly, and this is the thing that I really want you to take away is that if you're writing a blog post about how to handle an error or a blog post about how you struggle at work. Or you put up a podcast about something you're interested in. Or you start making videos or something like that. There's somebody out there that needs that information. And whether it makes a difference in their home life or makes a difference in their other endeavors. You're making a difference, you're doing good. And I think it's really important to be able to do that. And so all of the other lessons that I've been going through, I mean they all lead into this is that you can make a difference and people matter. I have to say that there are a couple of main reasons why I do the podcast now. And I kind of talked about having these conversations. But the conversations don't just happen with me. I mean they happen with people like Coraline and with Jessica and David and Abdi and Serran. They've happened in the past with Josh and James and Peter and Aaron. They happen on the other shows with a lot of other friends of mine. And to be honest, the biggest draw for me at this point doing the podcasts is that I get to talk to these people every week. We get to have conversations with my friends, with people that I care about. Every week about stuff that I care about, at least most of the time. And it makes a big difference. And these people matter to me. Coraline was out at Mountain West Ruby Conference and it was terrific to say hi and spend some time together. I got to see Jessica because she came out for the Pluralsight Author Summit. So I had dinner with her and her husband. And it's these connections. It's the connections that you all are making here at RailsConf that matter. I mean, sure, you're gonna pick stuff up from the sessions. And that's why your employer sent you here, I'm assuming. And you're gonna be able to make a difference in your work. But in the grand scheme of things, the people that we meet and the connections that we make are what matter. And so that really kind of explains the rest of the reason why I do the shows. Beyond being able to talk about stuff I like and talk to people that I like about it, is that then I get to have the conversations with you folks. So I get the opportunity to come out here and meet interesting people. I mean, I can name a few people in here. I met Zach the other day. I met Jeremy at Mountain West Ruby Conference. I've known Jim for a couple of years. And it's these connections, these opportunities. I can't see you in the corner, so if I know you, I'm sorry. But it's these opportunities to meet new people and make these connections and feel like a community that really make the difference and then being able to give back and make a difference in their lives in smaller big ways. That's what really matters. So I just encourage you, if you feel inspired to go out and do something, it doesn't have to be something big. One of the things that I did in the past was I wrote a little gem that uses Project Honeypot. I don't know if you're familiar with the project, but it identifies IP addresses for spammers, right, a little gem. It doesn't have to be a big thing. It doesn't have to be scary or frightening. You don't have to feel overwhelmed by the people that you want to talk to, but I have the conversations at work. That makes a difference. But whatever it is, find ways to encourage people and make people feel like they matter. And you've gotten to see a lot of pictures of the people that matter most to me. These are my kids. My wife took the picture. She doesn't like taking pictures of herself, so I didn't have any funny ones to share with her. But anyway, I'm Charles Max Wood at CmaxW on Twitter. And that's my email address. If you have any feedback, if you want ideas or encouragement or help getting started, just let me know. And that's pretty much it. One other thing, though, is that we're working on new material for our slides next year. So, do you have a question? Picks? Thanks. So I've got about 10 minutes for questions, which is kind of where I wanted to go. So I'm happy to answer questions about the stuff that I talked about here, or Ruby rogues, or podcasting, or anything else. But I reserve the right to say I don't know. So Jim's asking how we record the Ruby rogues episode with all of us being in different places. Yeah, we just record it with Skype. And if you want to see the rest of that set up, I have, if you go to TeachMeToCode.com, it's the last video I put on there. It's about two years old, but I'm still using the same setup more or less. And that'll show you how I record it and things like that. But yeah, we record over Skype. And my internet connection has been slowly degrading. Thank you, Comcast. But we're switching on Saturday, so hopefully it'll get better. But yeah. So yeah, we record over Skype. I have lots of ideas of things you can do. So if you want to contribute to the community, and you're not quite sure where to go, just come talk to me. And we'll figure out what you're about. All right, I don't see any other questions. So feel free to come up and get stickers. If you want Ruby rogues stickers, just tweet at me. And then I'll see if I can mail a couple out.