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Adrian's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/adrianthedev

Transcript:

1 00:00:03.880 --> 00:00:12.010 Travis Dockter: Okay, cool. So welcome to these casual off the Cuff Conference, organizing

2 00:00:12.735 --> 00:00:15.114 Travis Dockter: chats that I've been having.

3 00:00:15.830 --> 00:00:25.795 Travis Dockter: You are, Adrian Maren, the organizer of friendly Rb, for the for the past couple years. And

4 00:00:26.570 --> 00:00:31.229 Travis Dockter: I guess to just start us off. I'd love to hear about your

5 00:00:31.340 --> 00:00:38.340 Travis Dockter: 1st conference. How that came about like maybe why you started it, and how it went.

6 00:00:39.992 --> 00:00:50.860 Adrian Marin: So the 1st edition of Friendly? That's an interesting question. So that happened in 23, 2,023, and in 2,022.

7 00:00:51.140 --> 00:01:15.590 Adrian Marin: I went, I think, to my 1st ruby conference. It was Wrocloft, Rb. In Poland. I went before to different web conferences and different technology conferences. But this was the 1st ruby one, and I quite liked the vibe and the community, and everybody who put together that whole event and that whole experience.

8 00:01:15.590 --> 00:01:31.729 Adrian Marin: And then, you know, of course, I knew about Railsconf. I knew about Uruko, the big ones, but I didn't know a lot about the smaller conferences, railsas. I think the 1st edition was in 22 as well in September, and

9 00:01:31.780 --> 00:01:34.859 Adrian Marin: being 2022, 2023.

10 00:01:34.910 --> 00:01:42.260 Adrian Marin: There weren't as many conferences around because it was after the pandemic. So many of them, you know, shut down.

11 00:01:42.280 --> 00:02:00.049 Adrian Marin: We didn't even like we. We didn't know exactly if they'll ever come back or anything. So it was, you know, a little bit of a gray area, and you know I just tweeted like, Hey, if I run a Conference in September, in Bucharest.

12 00:02:00.050 --> 00:02:18.160 Adrian Marin: Would anybody come? And I got a lot of interest in that, you know, a lot of people said, like, Yeah, how much? When who's coming? Get it? And then I got to. I got to talk to more people I spoke with Andy Kroll and some other conference organizers to like, you know.

13 00:02:18.160 --> 00:02:39.579 Adrian Marin: try to figure out, hey, is this feasible? Is this something that I could do on the side? Because I'm not an event organizer, and I don't have, you know, a team and everything. It's not just me. This is not a thing. I'm not the only host of friendly Rb, I have 4 other friends. But we're not like this big team of like I don't have, like, you know.

14 00:02:39.580 --> 00:02:55.159 Adrian Marin: 50 employees that I can just throw on the on a conference, you know. So I had a conversation with a few people. I had good positive feedback on Twitter, and I said, like what the hell let's just do it. There aren't so many conferences around. So let's just, you know.

15 00:02:55.190 --> 00:03:00.539 Adrian Marin: let's try and make this like a very memorable one. The small one, but very memorable.

16 00:03:01.120 --> 00:03:03.520 Travis Dockter: How big was that 1st one? How many people came.

17 00:03:03.880 --> 00:03:10.099 Adrian Marin: So one of the things that I we wanted to do was.

18 00:03:10.240 --> 00:03:36.960 Adrian Marin: I wanted to make it as professional as I can, so as professional as I can without making it like on an enterprise budget, because we don't have that. I was con like I knew that not I won't. We won't have a lot of sponsors like I hoped. But we kind of knew like nobody's gonna like everybody told us, you know, like nobody's gonna sponsor the conference. Now they will. Maybe they'll they'll sponsor you, you know, because they they know you.

19 00:03:37.350 --> 00:03:55.389 Adrian Marin: So we wanted to have a swanky like a nice a nice place, a nice venue, and we did find an independent theater, which had a club nearby, and it had like very plushy seats, and it was very dark, and has like

20 00:03:55.390 --> 00:04:18.820 Adrian Marin: this nice wooden stage and everything, and they had, like projector and mics and everything you needed. And then the club was looking amazing, so that that was kind of the place where people can get out from the conference and go there, and the only thing was they can only host, 1, 31, 40 people, if they like, add another row. So 1 40. That's a big, you know. It's a hard stop for us.

21 00:04:20.029 --> 00:04:22.380 Travis Dockter: And did did you fill it up that 1st year.

22 00:04:22.660 --> 00:04:40.350 Adrian Marin: Yeah, actually, we sold out. I think we sold 140 a little bit over 140 tickets every time. Not everybody showed up. But yeah, most like both both editions. We sold more than I think, 130 tickets. Yeah.

23 00:04:40.350 --> 00:05:08.290 Travis Dockter: Wow! That's pretty awesome. I feel like that's actually an anomaly in a lot of the people that I've talked to. When their 1st conference, like, you know, when you if you don't have already have a following, it can be hard to sell tickets that 1st time when nobody knows who you are. Did you have any sort of like online presence before that? People kind of knew who you were? And so that's kind of how you got more people to come, or.

24 00:05:09.010 --> 00:05:24.029 Adrian Marin: A little bit like a little bit of an online presence, but nothing big like even now on Twitter. I think I have 2,000 followers or something, and then maybe I had a thousand. So not a huge following. But what I did. I went and toured

25 00:05:24.050 --> 00:05:30.869 Adrian Marin: a lot of the conferences in Europe. Like most of them, I think I was going to a conference every month.

26 00:05:30.890 --> 00:05:58.489 Adrian Marin: and I was meeting people like I spoke to a few conferences, maybe one or 2. But I was going to them. And, like, you know, of course, as a research as well, I want to see, like, what do people do what you know the ruby people love, you know, at the conference in an event. And then I started talking to people, you know, like, hey? I'm running like a boutique conference, and I told them like, Hey, if you want to come and hang out with cool, nice people in a nice city and learn some something about the ruby

27 00:05:58.490 --> 00:06:09.900 Adrian Marin: in the fall. That's perfect friendly. Rb. Is just for you. And I think that's that's why, you know, maybe that was the half of of our success. Another

28 00:06:09.950 --> 00:06:39.600 Adrian Marin: good thing that happened is that a company from Spain? They had their company retreat in Bucharest at the conference. So that was like about 25 tickets or something. So that was just awesome whenever they filled in. Just great to be able to host them. So that's a good chunk of everything. But I think that the gist was that I was going and talking about it. I was going to other conferences, and I was speaking about what I wanted to do.

29 00:06:39.870 --> 00:06:47.339 Adrian Marin: and as a result we only had maybe 20 people from Romania. In our 1st edition all the other people were from.

30 00:06:47.490 --> 00:07:01.960 Adrian Marin: you know, international from other places. So that was, you know, it was a very big surprise for us. I think the name had something to do with it. You know it's friendly, friendly. Rp, it's like, you know, and it really attracted only the friendliest people at this event.

31 00:07:02.530 --> 00:07:09.470 Travis Dockter: That's cool. Do you know, like what kind of percentage were from Europe versus from like Americas?

32 00:07:10.670 --> 00:07:39.469 Adrian Marin: So I think a big percent like maybe 80% were from Europe. And then we had from we had people from the United States. We had people from Australia, we had people from Brazil, we had people from Kenya, so like all over all over the place we actually had a whenever. So whenever we you bought a ticket, I think this still stands. Whenever you buy a ticket for Friendly, we ask like, Where are you coming from what? What country.

33 00:07:39.470 --> 00:08:05.809 Adrian Marin: which country? And then we go on the website. And we add the flag somewhere in one of the sections, you know, and I said, like something like, Hey, like come and meet people from 30 countries or something. 22, I think we 24 we ended up with in the end. So that was that was awesome. I I haven't seen that, you know, being made in other places and other conferences, but I thought like that would be cool like, I want to see who's coming like and and we had people from all over.

34 00:08:06.190 --> 00:08:21.320 Travis Dockter: That's really cool. Did you do any like besides doing the tour and just talking to people which, you know obviously works really well. Did you do any other marketing that 1st year? And has that changed over the years at all?

35 00:08:22.340 --> 00:08:27.920 Adrian Marin: Not that much like I tried. We did. We did a little bit of a guerrilla marketing. So

36 00:08:28.030 --> 00:08:32.789 Adrian Marin: we posted on Twitter things like, you know, photos from

37 00:08:33.220 --> 00:08:53.290 Adrian Marin: Bucharest, because it is a very nice and beautiful city. So we had, like, you know, beautiful photos that we post and like, Hey, let's come and like, whenever, like, we're going to have this activity here because this is another thing. We we wanted to make it special. So, for example, like between day, one and 2. At the end of day. One, I hired tour guides.

38 00:08:53.480 --> 00:09:08.240 Adrian Marin: and we split people into groups, and we did walking tours, and that was just, you know. It's a great opportunity to like, you know. Get together a little bit and walk through the city and learn about the history, and learn about that place, and we advertised for that.

39 00:09:08.240 --> 00:09:33.180 Adrian Marin: And then on the 3rd day we advertised like, Hey, we're going to go to the mountains. We're going to meet, you know, on the 3rd day, like in the at the train station, we're gonna get on a train 2 h to the mountains. We're going to visit some castles and some mountains, and we're going to eat like very traditional food. And then we're going to come back with in the evening with the same train. So that was a little bit self. Serve like in the second edition. I think we did the we charge for that, so we can buy the tickets for everyone and and

40 00:09:33.330 --> 00:09:42.170 Adrian Marin: and stuff like that. And but we we try to advertise the things that it's going to make it special

41 00:09:42.640 --> 00:09:49.560 Adrian Marin: like, you know, the speakers and some other some other things. But it wasn't, you know, advertising, advertising.

42 00:09:49.560 --> 00:09:50.260 Travis Dockter: Sure. Yeah.

43 00:09:50.260 --> 00:09:52.629 Adrian Marin: Paid, paid ads in the paper.

44 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:55.072 Travis Dockter: Right? Yeah. Did you?

45 00:09:56.570 --> 00:10:02.169 Travis Dockter: did you? How did you get speakers that that 1st year? Did you have a Cfp or did you reach out to people.

46 00:10:02.450 --> 00:10:03.300 Adrian Marin: Oh, my God!

47 00:10:04.590 --> 00:10:10.917 Adrian Marin: And that's a that's a very good question. So be right. Before we announced the the actual

48 00:10:11.480 --> 00:10:21.589 Adrian Marin: conference, I reached out to a few people very influential people from the community, and

49 00:10:21.640 --> 00:10:49.329 Adrian Marin: a few were able to come back to us with a yes, and one of them was Javier Noria, and he was the keynote speaker at Railsconf the previous year. And you know he's a he has like a very heavy name in the community. And when I told him what we wanted to do, what kind of conference, what kind of event? And it's all for the community and everything. And we'd love

50 00:10:49.330 --> 00:10:59.579 Adrian Marin: for him. We'd love him to come to the conference and speak, he said, like, Yeah, sure, count on me. You figure out the details. I'll just come. And that really gave us

51 00:10:59.590 --> 00:11:08.219 Adrian Marin: the trust. And the you know. Okay, we can do this if we have Javier here like that's going to be wonderful, and we opened with 2 speakers.

52 00:11:08.550 --> 00:11:26.910 Adrian Marin: Shavier, like. Another thing we wanted to do. So this is something that and Andy Kroll told me like I asked him at some point like, Do would you like to come and speak at friendly? And he said, like, Yeah, I'll come and speak, but only if it's not like a an all

53 00:11:27.090 --> 00:11:44.189 Adrian Marin: white male, you know. Speaker, you know. Line up, and then everything clicked for me like, Oh, my God, you're absolutely right like. It's so easy. It's so easy to make it like, you know, an old male, you know, middle-aged white.

54 00:11:44.720 --> 00:12:01.609 Adrian Marin: so we were lucky enough to have people very like influential people from the community wanting to talk. I know why? Because of the name or whatever. So we had. Like Jeremy Smith, we had Jason

57 00:12:29.790 --> 00:12:46.929 Adrian Marin: from code, with Jason podcast, and a few others like, I'm blanking out on the names right now, but a few other influential people. So we were like, Oh, my God, what's happening? Like? Everybody wants to come like perfect. Let's do that. And we had a little bit of a half and half lineup in the 1st year, so we had, like

58 00:12:46.930 --> 00:13:12.969 Adrian Marin: a few very famous people and and some newcomers to the stage, because that was another thing that we wanted to do is to actually bring new people. Because my 1st speaking gig was like a year previously, and I know how difficult that was. And we we are trying to, you know, bring new people to the stage, and, you know, give them the microphone so they can start their careers, and you know, and kick it off and and do their own things as well.

59 00:13:13.540 --> 00:13:31.189 Travis Dockter: Yeah, did you do anything like honorariums? Or you know, did you help pay for the travel and stuff for the speakers, because that can get very expensive, especially with people coming from, you know, across the ocean. How did you do that?

60 00:13:32.420 --> 00:13:36.870 Adrian Marin: Yeah. So what we did was.

61 00:13:37.100 --> 00:13:39.669 Adrian Marin: we knew that we're not going to have

62 00:13:39.800 --> 00:13:48.419 Adrian Marin: the big sponsors with us, and we also knew that conferences, like, you know, respectable, are pretty good conferences.

63 00:13:48.570 --> 00:13:59.869 Adrian Marin: or the ones that have it. The have the means they pay for, you know at least the the stay, or for the travel, or for both, or whatever they can. We couldn't do that, because

64 00:14:00.221 --> 00:14:28.539 Adrian Marin: we didn't have the money once and second of all, like for 2 days. That's twice as many speakers from like one day, and the math doesn't really add up if you're not like a big big conference. So if you if you have like one day, that's probably what 6 or 8 speakers that's a different, you know, versus like 12, or you know 16. I don't know how many 14 I think we had in total. So we couldn't do that. But we said something else like, Okay, we're gonna

65 00:14:29.090 --> 00:14:37.459 Adrian Marin: we're gonna give everyone $300 or euros or something, and you can do whatever you want with it. It's gonna be cash.

66 00:14:37.630 --> 00:15:02.787 Adrian Marin: That's what we can do. And at that point I think Railscom, for, like a big conference, was offering 500. And I said, like, Hey, if they're like the big conference is doing 500. We can do 300 like it's it's at least, you know, a good amount of money. And if you're like, you know, savvy like. It's not a lot of money, but in Romania, like you could get like you can pay the hotel, and maybe maybe the flight as well in Europe, because you know the low cost

67 00:15:03.450 --> 00:15:28.769 Adrian Marin: Flights and everything. So we did that speaker honorarium. We have an amazing speaker dinner. This is another thing we had. So in the 1st year we went to a very nice traditional restaurant, where, like at some point, people come and do like traditional dancing and everything and amazing food. You know, vegetarian and non-vegetarian. We wanted to have, like an amazing experience for the speaker, so that was a great opportunity for us to get to know them a little bit better to get

68 00:15:28.770 --> 00:15:34.299 Adrian Marin: for them to get to know each other better, and, you know, be more familiar and a little bit like unwind

69 00:15:34.300 --> 00:15:41.379 Adrian Marin: for the whole thing. So speaker, honorarium, and the speaker dinner, and I think we give gave them

70 00:15:41.440 --> 00:15:47.200 Adrian Marin: a small swag bag. It wasn't like, you know, everything anything big, but it was a good, nice one.

71 00:15:47.580 --> 00:15:48.250 Travis Dockter: Yeah.

72 00:15:48.802 --> 00:15:56.260 Travis Dockter: So speaking of sponsors, did you have any that 1st year? And how are you able to get those.

73 00:15:57.220 --> 00:16:04.730 Adrian Marin: Oh, that's a funny story. So again, you know, you kind of wing it in the beginning. This is what we did. We kind of went to different

74 00:16:04.850 --> 00:16:18.149 Adrian Marin: conferences. And we check like, okay, what kind of sponsorship packages they offer, like, you know, Booth, no booth, Logos, big Logo, 5 Logos, 5, you know, postings on Twitter or social, or whatever, and

75 00:16:18.320 --> 00:16:41.690 Adrian Marin: at 1st we had kind of those packages of I don't know. 1,500 2,500 for 4,500. I think we kind of like stole them from Blue Ridge Ruby, because they did like, you know, they had an amazing display of them like they thought it seemed that they thought thought it out. And it kind of seen that we're kind of like the similar size of of conference.

76 00:16:41.690 --> 00:16:51.889 Adrian Marin: and for the 1st few months nobody said, like we tried to reach out to a lot of companies from like Big Shopify and Github to smaller ones and everything. No, nothing panned out.

77 00:16:51.890 --> 00:17:06.020 Adrian Marin: And then Lucian had this idea of like, Hey, what if we do like one package it's going to be. I think it was $1,250 or something like that. We said, Okay, it's called community.

78 00:17:06.020 --> 00:17:25.660 Adrian Marin: you know. It's very. It's pretty affordable, and whoever wants to do it, let's do it. We're going to have like only 10 spots available. Everybody's going to do the same. And we had 5 people, 5 companies, slash people that wanted to get in on it. So it was Andy Kroll. It was evil Martians. It was Nick from

79 00:17:25.849 --> 00:17:29.353 Adrian Marin: Trailblazer. Who else and

80 00:17:31.070 --> 00:17:54.770 Adrian Marin: I'm blanking out again, and a few other companies, and a few other one from Romania and one flagrant from from the Us. You might know them and flagrant. They just use a stripe link, and that was amazing, like in the morning I checked my stripe account. Somebody sent you some money like, Oh, my God! Why did you do that like? We think you're doing a nice, you know. Conference, a nice event, and we wanted to help out. And no, it's a thousand dollars. That's not a lot.

81 00:17:54.770 --> 00:18:05.859 Adrian Marin: And and it worked. It really worked. So we had like 5 sponsors of 1,200, you know, dollars for each one. So we made it work. Let's let's call it that. We made it work.

82 00:18:06.220 --> 00:18:20.270 Travis Dockter: Yeah, do you think that the change was just making it simpler? Made it easier for companies to say yes, because before they were just overwhelmed with choice, and they were just like, I don't wanna think about it. Is that? Is that what changed.

83 00:18:20.440 --> 00:18:47.230 Adrian Marin: Maybe. Yeah, maybe that's 1 1 way of putting it. But it's also affordable, like, it's a thousand dollars. If you're like a well good enough paid developer. You're probably going to make like 4,000 6,000 8,000 per month, whatever you know, depending on so 1,000. It's not that much. So we kind of hoped we kind of have, like you know how Andy did it, you know, you know, from evil Martian like, you know, it's very affordable. And

84 00:18:47.390 --> 00:19:03.229 Adrian Marin: people and organizations that believe in this thing believe in the community. It's just going to be like, okay, a thousand dollars. I want to pitch in like. It's not that big of a deal. When when you have like. Okay, it's 1,500. Then it's 12, 2,500 is 4,000 and which one should I take because this one.

85 00:19:03.230 --> 00:19:03.570 Travis Dockter: Yeah.

86 00:19:03.570 --> 00:19:13.079 Adrian Marin: But we don't have, you know, but making making it simpler and affordable. That was, that was, I think, why it worked.

87 00:19:13.660 --> 00:19:30.303 Travis Dockter: Interesting. Yeah, I'm I'm kind of. I just got my venue. And I'm thinking about sponsors now. And I I'm doing that thing right now where I'm like, what packages do I have need to have? What do I name them like?

88 00:19:30.700 --> 00:19:31.030 Travis Dockter: I like.

89 00:19:31.030 --> 00:19:51.180 Travis Dockter: you know, Ruby gold, you know all that stuff. And I'm like, but I I really like the idea of just making it simple. And I feel like, you know, to be honest, companies don't really care what the name of the sponsor package is, or you know they they just

90 00:19:51.330 --> 00:20:09.149 Travis Dockter: a lot of them just want to support the community or get their name out there or be there, have a presence for hiring purposes. And yeah, maybe just simplifying it, especially the 1st year. If you're doing a lot of the work as a single person or splitting up the work.

91 00:20:09.440 --> 00:20:17.139 Travis Dockter: I feel like that. That might be an interesting strategy to take, so I might. I might steal that. That's pretty pretty interesting.

92 00:20:17.140 --> 00:20:17.460 Adrian Marin: Yeah.

93 00:20:17.460 --> 00:20:20.060 Travis Dockter: I haven't heard of anybody else doing that, so I like the.

94 00:20:20.060 --> 00:20:30.330 Adrian Marin: We actually, we actually like, we actually sponsor with Davo. It's called Tiny Rubiconf in Helsinki. So they they are the organizers of Yoruco 2020, I think.

95 00:20:30.330 --> 00:20:51.159 Adrian Marin: So. They said the same thing like we're gonna have like 2 spots for, like a thousand dollars or 1,500 or whatever. And we said, like, whenever I saw that, I said, Okay, this is my time to pay it back, like, okay, we want to sponsor and whatever. So it's not a big effort. And I think it's another thing to think about is like, what kind of event are you planning like if it's a big one like

96 00:20:51.180 --> 00:20:57.280 Adrian Marin: companies. For example, when they sponsor, you look, or else Kaf, they usually usually they want to hire.

97 00:20:57.810 --> 00:21:20.389 Adrian Marin: because that's a big pool of developers. You're going to get in front of a lot of eyes. And of course you're gonna make a big deal like it's it's gonna cost $10152550000, and whatever you're gonna have a booth and people there and training, and you know everything when it's a small conference. We actually last year we did have booths for 2 of our sponsors.

98 00:21:20.780 --> 00:21:45.050 Adrian Marin: but like it was nice, but they weren't at the booth every time. You know the booths were open, I think, in the 1st day, and then they mingled. Because with 100 people, you're gonna know, you're not going to get to know everybody, you know, half of them, or you're gonna Demo, maybe at the booth and half of them. You're gonna talk with them in the crowd. So you gotta figure out what's in it for them? So you know

99 00:21:45.050 --> 00:21:56.669 Adrian Marin: what we say is like, hey! Do you want to have a friendly brand in you? Do you want to align your brand with a friendly brand, like something, you know. And some people feel that and say, Okay, yeah, we want to do that like, we see that you're doing an amazing, you know.

100 00:21:56.670 --> 00:21:59.750 Adrian Marin: community work. And we want to help with that.

101 00:22:00.410 --> 00:22:02.000 Travis Dockter: Nice love that

102 00:22:02.450 --> 00:22:25.530 Travis Dockter: alrighty. So you mentioned earlier that you did a lot of research by just touring all these conferences the year before you did your 1st friendly. How was that? And like did you like? Did you learn anything? Did you steal any ideas from other conferences that you brought back for your 1st one. How was that.

103 00:22:26.010 --> 00:22:35.099 Adrian Marin: Ton ton of learning. That's a big learning experience, because you learn the things that you want to do. And you learn about the things that you don't want to do.

104 00:22:35.390 --> 00:22:35.780 Travis Dockter: Yeah.

105 00:22:35.780 --> 00:22:59.370 Adrian Marin: That's another like you're gonna see? Like I remember, like I went to conferences, you know, people, you know mumbled on the stage, or it took a long time to like, you know. Make the switch between the presenter and the actual speaker, and I wrote that down like in my, you know in my mind, like, okay, we're gonna make. We have to make that switch fast. And then, like, okay, I kind of saw that you gotta have

106 00:22:59.370 --> 00:23:17.879 Adrian Marin: a place where people can evacuate the room and kind of have some talks, and whatever. I made a note of that, and then you know the drinks, and maybe the food and maybe activities and everything like it's a big learning experience. It would be a lie to say I didn't steal some of those ideas like.

107 00:23:18.050 --> 00:23:22.680 Adrian Marin: of course, one of the things that I'm sorry.

108 00:23:22.680 --> 00:23:23.919 Travis Dockter: Borrowed the ideas. Yeah.

109 00:23:23.920 --> 00:23:24.830 Adrian Marin: Borrow the existing.

110 00:23:24.830 --> 00:23:26.647 Travis Dockter: Of course, you know, we're sharing.

111 00:23:26.950 --> 00:23:36.830 Adrian Marin: No, it's okay. It's okay. Like, I've. We've been seeing some of our ideas, you know, pop up in the community. That's fine. That's all. That's all good, because we it's all you know in the community. So it's all.

112 00:23:36.830 --> 00:23:38.940 Travis Dockter: It's all positive positive impact.

113 00:23:39.180 --> 00:23:49.470 Adrian Marin: Exactly, exactly. And one of the things that we I really did was I kind of enjoyed. I actually loved the showmanship of of Andy's like we're getting back to Andy Kroll like Andy, if you see this.

114 00:23:49.470 --> 00:24:12.869 Adrian Marin: and I wanted to do the same thing, you know, like, be like friendly and talk about. We talked. We talked about the code of conduct in the beginning, in the opening and everything. So a lot of that showmanship. And you know it's it's not just a ruby conference. So a different, for example, it's a very technical conference. You go there. You're going to be in this auditorium in the, you know, informatics like University.

115 00:24:13.200 --> 00:24:20.420 Adrian Marin: You know, the computer science University. Everybody's doing like hard, deep ruby, you know, talks

116 00:24:20.420 --> 00:24:45.399 Adrian Marin: and discussions. And that's a nice. That's a nice one, but I didn't want to do it like that. And we had people that talked about that spoke about mental health, about the history of Roma people I'm going to bring like we had dancers last year, like traditional Romanian dancers. I wanted to make a show out of it like that was. This is my opportunity to, you know, show people a good time and also learn like we have amazing

117 00:24:45.400 --> 00:24:53.140 Adrian Marin: speakers, but also show people a good time. So you know, I wanted to do that. So it's a different. It was a different type of.

118 00:24:54.410 --> 00:25:20.850 Travis Dockter: That's really cool. I did want to get into that, because I think that I want to do that as well like, I like the technical conferences where it's just talks, you know, one after another, for the whole time you learn a lot you get inspired by other people. But I think that something that makes conferences more memorable is the stuff that happens. Besides the talks. And I heard that you did dancing.

119 00:25:21.159 --> 00:25:33.519 Travis Dockter: I heard did you have. I don't know if it happened last year. If you're planning for like hack spaces and like pair programming, can you talk about some of the things that you're doing besides, talks.

120 00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:45.169 Adrian Marin: So this year we're gonna have yarrow came up with this idea so last year, and and the previous year, and me and Yara. We go to a lot of conferences together

121 00:25:45.720 --> 00:26:03.509 Adrian Marin: because he's an educator. He has this education channel superrails and education website with videos and everything. He talks to people about a lot of whatever he teaches in those videos. You know he does a lot of hotwire native now and hotwire, and whatever. And he did that

122 00:26:03.630 --> 00:26:24.410 Adrian Marin: unofficially at Friendlyrb and other conferences. And now, he said, like, Hey, I want to do like my like super rails, office hours like super rails, hackspace where people can come over and we can hack things together. You know that maybe hardware, hotwire native. Whatever is, you know people want to do, and we want to do something like that. I know that Railsconf did it, and Rubyconf and Ruby Central does it.

123 00:26:24.410 --> 00:26:37.930 Adrian Marin: And that's like an amazing. That's a big production. We're going to be with Avo and some of our other open source projects. We're going to be at this railsconf and do the same thing. But that's a big big production. They invite everyone and they do everything

124 00:26:37.930 --> 00:26:39.129 Adrian Marin: we can do that.

125 00:26:39.130 --> 00:27:07.750 Adrian Marin: Yeah, I don't want to do it, I said, perfectly like, I'm going to help you. I'm going to bring you a TV, and whatever we're going to do it with Avo because Paul is going to be there. So you know, it's a low hanging fruit. So we're going to do that. If anybody else wants to do it like we're going to figure out something because we're like, you know, this kind of open like we can do that. But it's not that big hack spaces kind of thing. Otherwise the dancing. That was a surprise. I wanted to do that. I want to do something special. We're going to have a few surprises this year as well. I don't want to spill the beans right now.

126 00:27:07.750 --> 00:27:08.120 Travis Dockter: Oh, God!

127 00:27:08.120 --> 00:27:08.769 Adrian Marin: And have a few

128 00:27:09.180 --> 00:27:24.830 Adrian Marin: surprises as well. But every year I try to do at least one thing interesting, because I don't know. I just feel that people that are coming back. They want to see some, some novelty as well to get some value as well out of it.

129 00:27:25.330 --> 00:27:52.870 Travis Dockter: Yeah, definitely, definitely, like, you remember, you remember the people that you meet, and you remember the the things that happened, and I'm always inspired by the talks, but I I can't tell you which talks I went to at rails, Comp. 2 years ago, but I can remember, like some of the conversations that I have with people or the people that I met, you know. So yeah, that's always a nice thing to add to conferences.

130 00:27:52.870 --> 00:27:57.840 Adrian Marin: So if there's 1 thing that I want to tell you, and everybody that wants to do a conference

131 00:27:58.830 --> 00:28:05.569 Adrian Marin: is try to create the environment for people to get together and to open up

132 00:28:05.870 --> 00:28:14.679 Adrian Marin: for us one of the biggest, the biggest ones were like, you know, we had long breaks, not a fixed schedule. That's another thing. We had the

133 00:28:14.890 --> 00:28:29.959 Adrian Marin: day, one activity. So going. And throughout the city a lot of people got got to chat there, and the 3rd day activity, which was a full day in the mountains, everybody told me like, Hey, oh, my God! We had so much like I bonded with so many people, and we had this

134 00:28:29.960 --> 00:28:53.880 Adrian Marin: amazing opportunity that we couldn't have any other way like, when would I get to meet? You know Jeremy Smith, and talk to him about like his family, and how we do things, and how he does things. You're never going to have that like, you know, for a full day, right? So try to create these opportunities for people to get together and and do all of that. Jason did something at Sin City Ruby.

135 00:28:53.880 --> 00:28:56.380 Adrian Marin: which was amazing. It was very Jason E.

136 00:28:56.380 --> 00:29:22.870 Adrian Marin: He had a ruby script, which, with everybody's names, and he created like groups of like 4 or 5 people or 6 people, and he called it forced socialization. And you got together. And I said, Okay, for 5 min, 10 min, whatever you're going to talk about something personal. It was a little bit forced, but whatever it was, you know, Jason, it was Sin City, whatever he can do, whatever you want. So that was a good thing@firstst It was a little bit cringe, but I found out, like a few.

137 00:29:22.870 --> 00:29:36.800 Adrian Marin: like a few amazing things about some people from the community which I wouldn't have been able to do. Because when you get to railsconf, whatever or I'm not, gonna I don't want to point fingers when you're going to a big conference.

138 00:29:36.800 --> 00:30:01.589 Adrian Marin: and you have this large hall. It's not, gonna you know. Get to go to a person like Hey, Travis, how how's your family. You know what's up with you like. You're not going to do that. It takes a while to get to that to that spot right to that place. So try to create. Try to think about creating these kind of moments where people can get together. And they actually, they can actually share from their lives.

139 00:30:02.070 --> 00:30:15.940 Travis Dockter: Yeah, I think that's another thing that's like, you know, like Sin City is, I think last year it was like 80 people or something. You know that some people are like, Oh, I wanna sell like

140 00:30:16.250 --> 00:30:29.839 Travis Dockter: 200 300 500 tickets. But it's actually we need the regional conferences that are smaller because those are so much easier to meet people. It's so much less intimidating

141 00:30:29.880 --> 00:30:47.380 Travis Dockter: in a room of 80 people to just sit down next to somebody and say, Hi! My name is Travis versus like a rails Comp. Where it's a, you know auditorium of a thousand people, and you walk in. Everybody's already kind of in groups, like everybody's there with their company or whatever. And

142 00:30:47.680 --> 00:30:51.559 Travis Dockter: it's it's it's a lot harder to to meet people you have to.

143 00:30:51.800 --> 00:31:15.359 Travis Dockter: You have to try a lot harder, and you have to be a lot behavir at those at those conferences, but at the small ones that environment is is nice. I think that's you know. That's kind of the point of the small ones is like you said, making that open space for people to meet and and just be social. Yeah. So I love that definitely gonna focus on that for the for the conferences that I hopefully put on.

144 00:31:17.130 --> 00:31:22.636 Travis Dockter: Okay, cool. Let's see what other what other questions I had here.

145 00:31:23.660 --> 00:31:47.179 Travis Dockter: can you think of? I always ask everybody this because we get some some interesting answers. Can you think of a small thing that you did that had an outsized or unexpected impact on the conference like something that you just did. You threw in there, and you didn't even think about it. And then, later, people were like, I love that you did that thing. And you're like. Wow! I I almost didn't do that because I didn't think it was important.

146 00:31:47.970 --> 00:32:08.910 Adrian Marin: Yeah, there was one thing so, and it's the not non-fixed schedule. So what what I do in the beginning of the day I go through like, Hey, this is what we're gonna do today. And what I did. I didn't, even, you know, put my mind to it. It just happened. I said, we're gonna start at 10.

147 00:32:09.010 --> 00:32:22.489 Adrian Marin: We're going to have 3 talks break at 12 or one. We're going to have 2 h of a break. We can go for lunch, and then another 3 h, you know of talks and breaks, but not

148 00:32:22.620 --> 00:32:33.949 Adrian Marin: scheduled. It's not like okay, from 10 to 1030, and then a break, and then from 1045 to whatever. No, no, we'll figure that out. And what happened was, people were just.

149 00:32:34.110 --> 00:32:36.370 Adrian Marin: you know, they went to for breaks

150 00:32:36.520 --> 00:32:55.650 Adrian Marin: very long breaks, you know. 30 min. And when I was coming into that, you know that hole to actually, you know, bring people into like, Okay, it's time for the next talk. Come on. Everybody was like, so into it. I I kind of felt, you know, a little bit bad, you know as getting into their conversations. Everyone was having so many conversations. And

151 00:32:55.940 --> 00:33:12.089 Adrian Marin: That was good thing, and I remember Javier came to me, I think, in the 1st day I said like, Oh, my God! That is an amazing idea that you did without like having a fixed schedule. Just leave it loose and everything. And then that's when it clicked with me like, okay, yeah, that was, that was a good idea. That was really nice.

152 00:33:12.360 --> 00:33:19.010 Travis Dockter: Yeah, that's cool. I haven't heard of that at at other conferences, either. So I I like that one and it definitely,

153 00:33:19.300 --> 00:33:42.689 Travis Dockter: Sin City ruby, I think, kind of. I referenced that a lot, because it's I've only been to a couple of conferences, but that one was kind of like that where he was pretty pretty lax with the schedule, and he just kind of let things flow. And I think people do appreciate that. And and having those longer breaks to, allows people to get into their conversations, whereas, like.

154 00:33:42.910 --> 00:34:04.649 Travis Dockter: you know, if you only have 15 min in between. Sometimes people won't even start a conversation because they're just gonna like, check their phone and their email really quick and maybe go to the bathroom. And then it's the next talk. And they, you know, then you don't have maybe the opportunities to to actually get people to say, well, I have 30 min. I might as well go start a conversation with somebody.

155 00:34:04.780 --> 00:34:06.890 Travis Dockter: So yeah, that is really nice.

156 00:34:10.110 --> 00:34:12.022 Travis Dockter: Is there any

157 00:34:13.510 --> 00:34:26.690 Travis Dockter: Is there any piece of advice that you would give to anybody doing their 1st conference. Anything off the top of your head that maybe we haven't covered, or anything that you want to talk about, that we haven't. Maybe we haven't covered.

158 00:34:28.699 --> 00:34:32.190 Adrian Marin: It's a very, you know. Open, ended question, I think.

159 00:34:34.020 --> 00:34:45.189 Adrian Marin: The answer that comes to my mind is, try to be intentional with what you're trying to do. So if you want to make a nice regional, you know, friendly, cozy conference, do that.

160 00:34:46.150 --> 00:34:50.410 Adrian Marin: If you want to do something bigger. Okay, do that. But tell people about it.

161 00:34:50.590 --> 00:35:09.309 Adrian Marin: But be intentional, like, you know, at some point we were, you know, thinking what what happens if we sell more than 140 tickets. Where would we have to find a bigger venue, like, you know, we were asking the wrong questions. So try to be intentional about what you're doing, and try to do that thing

162 00:35:09.510 --> 00:35:19.480 Adrian Marin: in a nice way. So you know, if it's a regional small conference and you can do it on a lower budget. Okay, do that one package of sponsorship. It's going to be easier for you to do that.

163 00:35:19.480 --> 00:35:47.040 Adrian Marin: Do the activities because people are going to appreciate those and also do the marketing a little bit like I said we didn't advertise. But actually, you know, I whenever like, I think, like a month before, 3 months before, like I got on in front of a camera. I said, like, Hey, this is what these are the updates. We have 3 new speakers, and we're going to do this. And we're going to have this surprise like, tell people about that, because that's how people are going to find out about the activities and everything else that you're, you know, planning to do?

164 00:35:47.326 --> 00:35:52.189 Adrian Marin: Yeah, and be intentional about it and tell people about what you're going to, what you're going to do.

165 00:35:52.770 --> 00:36:05.180 Travis Dockter: Yeah, definitely, is there anything that you can give away, maybe for your upcoming friendly this year that you're excited about, or anything? Maybe that you like change, that you're trying out.

166 00:36:07.910 --> 00:36:14.110 Adrian Marin: One thing that I every year I'm excited about that. And then once once it ends, I'm

167 00:36:14.440 --> 00:36:29.435 Adrian Marin: I'm like afraid of what's gonna so every year we we have a very nice lineup for a conference of our size. We have speakers that you won't see in too many places, or you haven't seen them before?

168 00:36:30.110 --> 00:36:41.650 Adrian Marin: And then at the end of the conference, my question, like every time, I'm afraid, like, what are we going to do next year. So you know the lineup. I'm very excited about this year's lineup. One thing that we're going to do different.

169 00:36:42.760 --> 00:37:10.129 Adrian Marin: I don't know. I think the the mountain trip. On the 3rd day we have more like we usually have, like 2530 people. Now we have 30 people, and we still have a few months until the event. So we're probably gonna have more. So we're probably gonna rent a bus or something to do that we'll figure it out. But no, I think we're just gonna go with the flow. It's nothing, very, you know. We do have some surprises. But again, I don't want to talk about that. But yeah.

170 00:37:10.280 --> 00:37:13.680 Adrian Marin: it's gonna be good. It's gonna be an amazing experience.

171 00:37:13.680 --> 00:37:19.639 Travis Dockter: Cool. One question I forgot to ask, do you have any favorite conferences that you've been to? And why.

172 00:37:20.640 --> 00:37:50.109 Adrian Marin: So yeah, I think Sin City Ruby is one of the. So it was the 1st conference that I got Fomo over not going like it wasn't rails comfort. It wasn't Yuruko. It was. It was Sin City. Everybody had so much fun, you know. Andrew Culver rented a Limo and got people like went around Las Vegas, and, like everybody, sounded like they had so much fun. And that's what I wanted to do. Like people show people a good time. So Sin City ruby. Definitely, I enjoyed rail sas in Athens

173 00:37:50.490 --> 00:38:03.440 Adrian Marin: we went like the one activity that I organized. After the conference we went to an island. We rented mopeds and convertibles, and we went to the beach, and it was just. It was just a nice overall experience, but

174 00:38:03.720 --> 00:38:21.019 Adrian Marin: every conference that we go like I go to, and some of my friends go to. I try to make it memorable. In some some way we do some activities in between after or whatever I try to do, something to make it memorable. So every conference has, like a special place in in my, in my heart.

175 00:38:21.710 --> 00:38:46.290 Travis Dockter: Awesome. Yeah, I will. I hope that I can get to Friendly one year. It's a it's a long trip, so I'm not going to make it this year, but I hope I can make it in the future, because I really do love the the intentionality that you put into organizing, and the care that you you put into the conference. So just, I'm sure I'm speaking on behalf of the community. Thank you for

176 00:38:46.370 --> 00:38:56.869 Travis Dockter: for doing what you do, and and putting on the conference and you know, to all the all the people that help you as well. And you're you're come to rails. Comp, this year, right?

177 00:38:56.870 --> 00:38:58.609 Adrian Marin: Yes, I'm gonna be there next week.

178 00:38:58.840 --> 00:39:01.180 Travis Dockter: Awesome. I hope to see you there.

179 00:39:01.180 --> 00:39:03.609 Adrian Marin: Of course, of course, in the sea of people.

180 00:39:03.840 --> 00:39:11.130 Travis Dockter: Yes, yeah, yeah. Alright. Well, thank you for the time. And we'll see you around.

181 00:39:11.830 --> 00:39:13.510 Adrian Marin: Awesome, Travis. Thanks for having me.

182 00:39:13.930 --> 00:39:14.780 Travis Dockter: Thank you.