Building Your Village

00:00:01 LaRon Aloha I've been very excited to do that so can we do it again laran aloha aloha from the book The Alchemist every moment we live will soon be a memory I am at the beginning of a memory I want to remember forever this will soon be a memory a little disclaimer before I start just we're just so we're all on the same page but I am not a laravel developer um so this talk is going to cover nothing technical instead this will cover stories about you and stories about me and all of the quotes and

00:00:45 screenshots and stories I gathered are from things that you all shared online at points I will get quite vulnerable with my story I hope you receive it with love and kindness and I truly hope you like it because this is my love letter to laravel to the laravel community The Village this is my love letter to you my story begins in Hawaii my mom is from there I was born there I lived in a 400t house in my grandmother's backyard with my mom dad and siblings my family of eight we moved around a lot from

00:01:26 beaches to snow back to beaches and and although we had to say goodbye to good friends and move on to make new ones I always had my mom dad and five siblings my first Village that's to me and my mom on the stairs of that 400t house I grew up I married up and then my daughter was born and she was immediately taken from me born 6 weeks early her lungs were not fully developed yet they put her on oxygen an IV and a feeding tube my sweet baby was in a plastic box and all I wanted to do was to get to her

00:02:16 to protect my Village she is now a thriving 2-year-old and she is my world and then 14 months later my sweet son was born I delivered him myself I put him straight on my own chest and I never let go he is my world and this is my most important Village allow me to introduce myself my name is Cape you can call me cap for short you can find me on X at capore I am the developer Community manager at sanity.io it is a Content operating system I'm the proud mother to two perfect little babies and I married

00:03:13 to the sweetest man and we are building Chris andc cap.com in laravel of course and I'm proud to be here on this stage I am proud of my career in web development I'm proud of the friends that I've made along the way many of those sitting in this room or watching online but I haven't always been proud I was once a token hire they needed a diversity hire and they got their girl and then proceeded to bully and harass me daily I was once my manager's scapegoat every deadline he missed every project

00:03:56 that failed was always my fault I was once being sexually harassed at work and when I reported the incidences I was told I was being too sensitive and he's just having fun those moments made me feel small those moments made me feel alone but let me tell you the story about how I met you 2011 the year The laravel Village began so the first lines of code were actually written the year before in 2010 until this beautiful day in June 2011 when Taylor Made an open source and announced it to the World on day one the

00:04:41 repo got four GitHub Stars Taylor probably felt very proud today it sits at 78,000 GitHub stars and I know he is proud and that is the beginning of a series of moments that had to happen for me to be here 2012 in 2012 Eric Barn starts laravel news to report on all things laravel laravel the framework that isn't even a year old at this point this has grown into a great resource for laral developers to stay up to date and this is what it looked like back in the day looks very different now and during this time I am cruising

00:05:30 at 35,000 ft daily I'm 2 years into my flight attendant career all right this should be fun I get to travel the world but little did I know every trip you do is with a different crew so you've made a friend but there's like a 50% chance you'll never connect again oh but we travel to foreign countries and we never leave the plane the plane reboard flyback on to the next crew on to the next flight and I feel lonely at this job 2013 Ian lansman mentioned to Taylor we should have a laravel event and in

00:06:18 February of 2013 the very first LaRon happened there are some people you may recognize who spoke at that first Lon Taylor otwell of course Jeffrey way Eric Barnes Phil sturgeon Dale re just to name a few it was held in Washington DC and about 90 people attended look at us now as developers we know the struggle of learning something new Googling for hours 50 tabs open trying to piece it all together Jeffrey way was on a mission to solve that problem and in 2013 we got laric Cass lar Cass is for the PHP and more

00:07:01 specifically the laravel developer where if you are working with laravel is peace on Earth if you find a coat snippet you know it's going to work for your larel project and this is what it looked like back in the day there was some push back on this idea though this can't work it's only for the laravel developer this can't scale but these testimonials from 2013 are proof that lar Cass had a chance I really like Ian lar Cass is totally off the hook agreed and boy did it scale the list of topics and instructors goes on and on

00:07:41 most of us in this room have learned from lar Cass 2013 big year for the laravel village I'm still at 35,000 ft daily okay year for me so I'm going to jump a little bit in the timeline one day at a time one Improvement at a time laravel is steadily growing and I am steadily shrinking 2017 it was a big year for me for me 2017 started off as the year of chaos is what I like to call it the year that a few instances broke me it was in this year that one of the passengers on one of my flights a attempted to strangle me she was

00:08:32 intoxicated and as a flight as a cabin crew we decided we should cut her off and I was the messenger she didn't take it very well and jumps at me wraps her hands around my neck demanding more and then just a couple of weeks later another passenger on one of my flights got irate with a passenger in front of him for reclining their chair he stands up he slaps the woman in the face and immediately US flight attendant intervened he became very upset pushed me against the flight D door screaming in my face threatening to kill me the

00:09:08 pilots heard all of it and made an emergency landing little maybe unknown fact when you're in the air it's federal law threatening to kill a flight attendant in the air is not taken lightly and this man immediately made the no-fly list and I knew I had to make a change I had had enough in September of 2017 I enrolled into a coding boot camp I was 28 and it was the only career change I could make without having to go back to a full University it cost me $113,000 which was a fortune to a flight attendant making

00:09:52 28,000 and I found web development I was in a cohort of about 30 people all of us confused at four Loops arrays and why do we start counting at zero all of us tired yet all of us doing this together and I felt for the first time in my professional life a part of a small village we were building projects together celebrating each other and to continue our learning after graduation we were given a small um handful of resources scotch.io a coding tutorial website was one of those little did I know what that was going to

00:10:31 mean to me this is scotch Back in the Day 2017 got me one step further from loneliness but I like to think of 2017 as getting one step closer to you 2019 they say it takes a village but that phrase doesn't capture how strong a real Village can feel a safe Village a supportive Village and by 2019 laravel had built a village where you want to gather around the campfire it had built a stable Village I believe it's the most underrated aspect of a village especially in web development if a village is stable

00:11:28 members of the feel confident to set up shop and build and you built you set up shop so many projects and packages have come out of this Village and in 2019 we got two big additions most of you are probably using one of the two it was the year of the lispa in August we got inertia from Jonathan I write react this is so cool and Caleb porio was inspired to make Live Wire notice the time on this uh on this post it's 10:21 p.m. for this post only 2 hours and 31 minutes after this we got a demo of it from Caleb look

00:12:24 at the joy in Caleb's face an enduring Village breeds greatness and today it is difficult to find a laral app that is not using inertia or Livewire 2020 the year of the world held its breath The laravel Village did not and neither did I web development has been his historically male dominated there has to be intentionality to bring women and underrepresented groups together and into the village zuana did that with larabel in diversity there is Beauty and suan has brought that feeling of welcoming that is intentional and kind

00:13:21 it is a beautiful thing that she has done with larabel and and one of us in this audience is here because of larab bells and I landed my dream job in a safe and supportive Village the work Village that I had been searching for this was the year I started at sanity and this is from when I hit four years at sanity just last month I am finally in a good work Village 2021 the world is still holding its breath my Village did not we all know larab bel's or laravel's number one fan is Abigail she has been there since the

00:14:23 beginning she's been there since before the beginning and I believe I know who laravel's number two fan is Chris Sev the founder of scotch.io and the owner of much laravel swag he's so chipper that scotch.io spark sparked into my most important decision I married laravel's number two fan a good year for cap and for the sevs I'm finally in a good personal Village and then in 2022 I Met You The laravel Village seeing someone you love love something else you get quite C curious I mean how could I not be when he was uh

00:15:23 wh spr Laro for life and his sleep that's true the person who brought me into this community had for the entirety of our relationship been in JavaScript land that all changed in 2022 when he returned want to know what he was doing at 6:00 a.m. when he posted this he was a happy Dad returning to Happy Land you all welcomed him back with open arms there was no I told you so or we don't want you back it was only love and something to call out here Simeon my cooworker at sanity who doesn't use larl

00:16:06 knows how special this Village is I wonder if Adam ever made the change 2023 the world is healing and we're Gathering again for 3 years the world only connected online that deeper connection was missing in 2023 800 of you gathered I wanted to be at that LaRon so bad but I was building my most important Village snuggling my almost Irish twins 2024 this was the year you met me I had posted that the larel community was one of my favorites and although I didn't use it some of my closest friends came from this community so I did the

00:17:11 Lille boot camp I enjoyed it very much but the love I got from this post alone made me feel welcomed cozy even it's scary to join a new Village but laravel never made me feel like an outsider and these were the smiling faces that welcomed me in Sam Huckabee Jason begs Nuno Marcel Michael durinda Samuel Robertson Taylor and Abigail otwell and many more and these were the words that welcomed me in I love Michael Ward's uh comment nothing but sweethearts here it's so true I am in good Villages over 13 years laral has been

00:18:19 doing something right you all have been doing something right it takes the right kind of people to build a village this strong and there are hundreds of more moments that are missing from this timeline from my story and from yours every single one of you belongs on this timeline you built this this is your village and that's from this LaRon imagine a flame put it right here that flame is you you are that flame you know when it grows and you know when it fades my personal Village my work Village and my Friendship

00:19:12 Village all those Flames are bonfires right now but it wasn't always bad Villages can smother your flame they did to me a good Village will fuel your flame it gives us no choice but to grow we have to be able to evaluate our current Villages personal work friendship to determine if we are in bad Villages and more importantly if we if we should find better ones so how do we confirm we are in a good Village I found a simple way to always make sure I am in the right village with the right people because every interaction every

00:20:02 relationship leaves an imprint on our well-being and our state of mind to confirm you are in the right or wrong Village ask yourself this one question what does my flame do when you give feedback at work and your ideas are dismissed what does your flame do when you're out to dinner with friends what does your flame do you're here at laracon what is this doing for your flame in all of these is your flame growing or is it fading I'm at my first LaRon I have a bonfire right now I kind of mentioned this at the

00:20:53 beginning but a company I used to work for years and years ago my manager was my manager was very possessive of me I would ask for growth opportunities even show interest in other departments and he'd always put a halt to it saying no you need me without me you cannot grow I felt stuck yet he would take credit for all my successes but if there was a failure my name was written all over it my flame was shrinking I am now surrounded in my current job by people who when I have a success tag me on slack for the whole

00:21:31 company to see my mistakes are learning opportunities and my wins are celebrations my flame grows every day many of you probably don't know this about me but this is my second marriage my first one ended in divorce it's painful to go through that to walk away from something where your flame struggles daily unsure if it will ever return but it did and my flame burns brighter with Chris I found a village the start to my most important Village that keeps my flame dancing and here at laracon my flame is

00:22:30 fueled by all of you I have found good Villages not just found I searched for them I needed them so after you have found yourself in a good Village you've asked yourself what does my flame do it's dancing you've decided you're in a good place now you have a duty your job is to help grow that Village to do your part but how I have a second question for you how can I grow another's Flame the person on your left the person on your right the people that you'll talk to in the hallway track how can you grow their

00:23:26 Flames it can be something to simple as a smile or a hi or a yay online do that and the village building takes care of itself I watch all of you growing each other's flames in this Village so many of the stories that I've already shared were of people sharing their flame to make other lives better when the internet was all laravel versus react which one's better Aaron Francis cleared the air with one of the clearest videos I've ever seen on what laravel is and what react is a lot of flames were sparked that day

00:24:08 laravel devs understood react devs react devs understood laravel devs two Villages Flames grew Josh's story is one for the history books he landed his dream job at larl and gave back to the village with 35 videos in only 60 days hundreds of thousands of flames have grown in Knowledge from these 35 videos and I'm sure he's got many more to share Rissa has spoken at LaRon EU laran Au laran in laran us and many more fueling Flames all around the world and encouraging others to be brave and to submit themselves

00:25:02 what does my flame do and how can I grow another's flame a village depends on you find a village that makes your flame dance be genuine and find ways to grow another's flame build your village and I want to end on this quote from Taylor everyone wants to belong to a group everyone wants to have a sense of belonging and I wanted to to create that sort of atmosphere where everyone could feel like friends and really work to build something cool in the Lille ecosystem from day one thank you for taking me in thank you

00:25:55 for growing my Flame come on uh this might be a tough one um good job thank you um um what uh what you did in um making a change takes a lot of Bravery what is your uh encouragement to people who feel stuck who feel alone and who feel like boy that seems like a lot of work I'll touch on the um the a couple stories that IAL about but the sexual harassment one that one was really tough um I won't go into detail on what was happening but when you report to someone that you like trust and they just keep telling

00:27:27 you you're being too sensitive it's fine like he's just having fun that hurts but I feel like and web development as a whole Lille community and all of the tech communities they put a lot of emphasis on making sure people feel safe and so if you feel stuck if you feel like a it will never get better fight for it search for it because you need it you need that that good Village first time but not last time everybody Cape hey good