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Hiring at Laravel, Laracons & Laravel Lives, and Typesense · The Laravel Podcast

• Matt Stauffer: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Laravel podcast, season six. I believe it's episode nine, but at this point, it's just all magic numbers that other people take care of for me. I am one of your hosts, Matt Stauffer. And Taylor, you want to say hey? Taylor Otwell: Hey, everybody. It's Taylor Otwell here. Matt Stauffer: Taylor Otwell back in the studio. So we've got a lot of conference things to talk about today. We've got a couple tweets that went out. But before we talk about those, I want to talk about the fact that you recently announced that you're going to be hiring a position for head, I think, head of engineering or VP of engineering at Laravel. And I feel like the ripples went out through the world. Every single time you hire somebody at Laravel, ripples go out. The first time you hired, the idea to be an employee of Laravel was such a big deal. And sometimes you put out job positions, or sometimes you just say, hey, I went through the networks and hired somebody. But I feel like this is one of the most formal and structured ones that you put out. So I just wanted to check in with you about it. Let's say somebody hasn't seen the job position, or even if they have, can you talk a little bit about what you imagine the relationship between you and a Head of Engineering looks like? What are you really looking for in this role? And in what ways are they going to be taking over for pieces of what you do or working underneath you? Just what does Laravel look like with the Head of Engineering, right? Because I think the world thinks of Taylor as the Head of Engineering of Laravel, but obviously when you grow, you've got to delegate things. So can you talk about that a little bit? Taylor Otwell: Yeah. So you're right. A lot of the hiring I've done in the past has been internal, behind the scenes, picking people out of the open source community that I thought would be a good fit. This is definitely our most formal job posting we've ever made. And it really comes down to the fact that we would like to scale the dev team at Laravel. Right now we have about eight or nine developers full-time. Some are more full-time than others. And others work, you know, three to four days a week. But we would like to get somewhere, let's say around 20 devs, and possibly a couple infrastructure people. Mainly because not for no reason, but because we have some ambitious projects that we'd like to tackle in 2024 that will really be some of the most ambitious projects we've tackled to date, and it's gonna require more people. So when you get more people, you sort of potentially need people to manage those people and to lead those teams. So I wear a lot of hats at Laravel right now. I'm CEO, I'm CTO, I'm CPO, I literally enter expenses into the books for accounting. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, you're CFO, you're COO, you're everything, man. Taylor Otwell: Yeah, I manage Laracon, I manage refunds on customer support, so I do a lot. And, that works out. Okay. Right now, even now, like we probably could use like some sort of Director of E ngineering. B ut basically what this person will do is help us navigate scaling the company in that way. So lead some of our future hiring as we bring on more devs, formalize our onboarding process, uh, manage the teams day to day, as far as making sure no one's roadblocked or that we're making sort of the right technical decisions. fielding questions from the developers on overall architecture or guidance, and making sure it's aligned with what we want to build as a company. As well as, as we grow the team, we could have sub-teams working on, responsible for certain segments of applications. You could maybe imagine like, let's just say, for example, there's like a Forge API team or a Forge deployment team and coordinating those teams so that they're working on towards the same direction, you know, takes effort and planning. So a lot of that. And then, you know, a lot of behind the scenes stuff, like working with vendors, as you know, as we work out partnerships with different vendors for different things, which we do from time to time, navigating that so that it's taken off my plate so that I can focus on what I really love to do, which is steer our high-level product direction, curate the open -source framework, which I do every day, and focus on those sorts of things and not necessarily like the day-to-day management of the individual dev teams. So yes, if that sounds like something you're interested in, please apply. You know, we're looking for someone. Yeah, we're looking for someone definitely with some management experience, because this is actually the first mainly management position we have ever hired at Laravel. Previously, we've only hired either devs or customer support or whatever. So I'm pumped, man, because I think the things that we want to work on are really exciting, and I'm excited to get started. So there you go. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, I mean, for those who aren't kind of in conversation with you as often, I think it sometimes can be easy to forget the fact that Laravel is an open -source framework and community and also a business, and they're both named Laravel, right? And you are over both. They're not necessarily the same thing in a lot of ways. And of course, they benefit each other, but like Vapor, Forge, Envoyer, all these things are paid products run by a company. And then there's also Laravel and Laracon. Well, I guess Laracon kind of sits in between the two. And so thinking of VP of Engineering, I think one of the first places some people's minds have gone is like, is this an open- source thing? I was like, no, he's running the products. And so it's cool that the idea that you having delegation and management beneath you in the product world actually enables you to be more involved in the vision for the products and the direction for the products, but also more involved in the open -source aspect if you want. Because if you're running a company, as I'm very intimately familiar, the day-to-day work of running a company can often get in the way of the fun stuff that you want to do like writing things and creating and making videos and writing code or whatever. So that makes a ton of sense. So if anybody's interested, we will put a link in the show notes to the application. Obviously, if you're listening this month later, it'll already be out. If you listen live, you'll take a look at that. Okay. So the next thing I had on the list is conferences. It feels like this is the season where all the conferences are either happening or announcing that they're happening. And so I've got like a long list of what's going on, but I'm just going to start in order of what's going on. Laracon EU, I believe, is this weekend. I think by the time this comes out, it will actually already be happening? Taylor Otwell: Yeah, February 5th and 6th, Monday and Tuesday of next week. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, this will probably come out Tuesday. So basically, if you're hearing this and it just came out, Laracon EU is probably wrapping up. I want to talk about that in a second. And then you also started putting out some announcements for Laracon US, which is this summer, and there's three other Laracon conferences. But let's start with Laracon EU. You're going there. I assume you got a pretty decent amount of the core team because a lot of them are in the EU. What's your thinking? What's your plan? Are you just going to hang out? Have you got some big announcements lined up? Any other notes you want to share about what you're looking forward to at EU? Taylor Otwell: Yeah, we definitely have things that are coming out at EU, multiple announcements coming out at EU actually, which I'm really excited about. You know, we've got some Laravel Herd related announcements, which by the time this comes out will probably be public. We've got a new package coming out at Laracon EU, and I'm going to spend a lot of time going over Laravel 11 at Laracon EU, which we're hoping to release the first week of March, so about a month away from that. So I'm gonna cover a lot of stuff. I've actually been, you know, pretty much heads down so far this week working on my talk and making sure it's all polished up and I'm excited to show everyone everything like usual and I think it's gonna be an exciting time and you know, it's gonna be some cool stuff coming out. Matt Stauffer: I love it. Um, I have a channel in my Slack where I keep up with my research assistants for the book on everything that's happening that we need to update the book for. And so every single time something comes out with Laravel 11, even if I don't get to dive into it, I kind of like grab the link or grab the note and kind of like throw it in that channel. So I just took Ana Leyba, who is my, um, current person who's helped me out. I was just like, Tentative release date, March 11th. Make sure you watch Taylor's talk. I don't even know if she's going to Laracon EU, but I'll tell her she needs to anyway. So that's cool. So, package, update to Herd, Laravel 11 stuff. You know, that's a lot going on, considering how many other conferences you're going to be involved in. So you're definitely going to be at EU, you're going to be at US. You're not going to the Lives this year, right? Not going to UK or Denmark? Taylor Otwell: I'm not, I won't be at Denmark. I won't be at Denmark because it's literally just a few days before Laracon US. The Laravel Live UK, I'm not sure it's possible. I haven't, I haven't firmly decided there. So yeah, I could make an appearance at one of those, it's possible. Matt Stauffer: What about India? Taylor Otwell: We'll see. I'm not going to be at India this year. Yeah, it's just like during our spring break here in the United States. So I'll probably be with the family like on vacation, unfortunately, because it looks that's always a fun time. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, we'll talk about all the rest of those. And like, actually, let's talk about Laracon India just real quick before we get to talk about Laracon US. So Laracon India, is February 25th and 26th, so it's coming up pretty soon as well. I tend to assume that the people who are coming from outside of India are usually speakers, and the people who are coming from inside of India already know about it and are already going to it. But if for some reason you're somewhere who's near India in any way, shape, or form, who hasn't heard of it, Just go to laracon.in and watch the videos from previous years. It looks like the most amazing freaking party ever. I was so sure I was going this year and then decided to, you know, up and get married and that kind of threw off my plans a little bit. But next year we're going to be there. Taylor Otwell: Yeah, yeah, it is a crazy time for sure. They're very passionate about Laravel at Laracon India. Matt Stauffer: I love that. Okay, so let's talk about Laracon US. So you have announced some of the details in terms of the dates and the times and also speaker lineup. So for those who don't follow you on Twitter and who have not been on top of all that, can you talk a little bit about when and where it's going to be, but also a surprise outside of the Laravel industry speaker announcement? Taylor Otwell: Yeah, so Laracon US is August 27th and 28th in Dallas, Texas this year in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, which is kind of a hip hip vibey part of Dallas right now with some cool restaurants and bars and stuff, music venues. And so that's where the conference will be. It's about a month later than usual. But other than that, I think it will be an awesome time. And we have so far, myself speaking, Caleb Porzio, the creator of LiveWire. And this sort of, you know, outsider, new speaker this year, or new to the Laravel world is Primogen, who is, I guess you would say developer, educator, advocate, slash entertainer, journalist, commentator, you know. Yeah, developer personality online, both on Twitter and on Twitch. And you know, funny guy, charismatic, energetic guy that, you know, shares all sorts of development opinions and commentary. And his talk is actually going to be really cool, I think. It's going to be sort of a lightning talk, 15 to 20 minute talk about how to be an excellent developer, like committing yourself to development excellence, basically. Pravijan works at Netflix, I think for his day job. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I've never actually met him in person, but he seems to be a popular guy online and a funny guy. And, you know, I think I always try to bring in, over the years, we've always brought in some sort of like, new faces that are not traditionally part of the Laravel crowd, whether that's Uncle Bob or, you know, Ryan Holiday, the author of Daily Stoic, or we've had Jason Freed from Basecamp do a Q&A. So we've always brought in sort of interesting people to these conferences sometimes. And I think I'm glad to sort of resurrect that tradition this year with Laracon US. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, I love that. And we talked about it, about the, you know, the venue and stuff like that a little bit on previous episodes, but I am still very excited because every single time I talk to anybody who knows the area, they're like, Oh, Deep Elm, I mean, there's, there's all these this and that. And yes, it sounds like it's like a neighborhood like and you keep naming the neighborhood. It's very clearly for a reason, because it sounds like there's like a there is an excitement about that specific neighborhood, whereas sometimes it's sort of like, oh, the city's cool. But if someone's like, oh, you're going to that city, and then they're like, oh, Deep Ellum, all right. So I'm starting to really get excited about what's there and what we're all going to experience and everything. Taylor Otwell: Yeah. Yeah. It's a cool spot. And the venue is called The Factory. I think it's traditionally more like a concert venue. Just like the venue we were at in Nashville this year was also that way. It's traditionally used for concerts. It's a similar kind of venue. It's a little bit larger, so we have more room and can accommodate more people. It has a balcony and a mezzanine and stuff. And even VIP lounges, as you may see on the website. So it's a pretty cool spot. Matt Stauffer: Oh, I'm so excited about that. I'm so ready. I love it. Okay, so that is US. So Laravel Live UK, I don't remember, so I last went there in 2018, and I don't, for a lot of these conferences it's hard for me to remember who paused at various moments and versus didn't pause, but it is definitely back, it kind of feels like it maybe has a little bit more of the Laravel core team and leadership than the last couple years. And there's just something about it. The designs look great. I feel like they're stepping up their game a little bit this year. I don't know if you experienced that, but they announced it's going to be 18th and 19th of June in London. They've so far announced speakers. It's Eric Barnes, and I'm also going to be there as well. I'm super, super excited to be back. Joe Dixon and James Brooks from the Laravel team I don't actually know anything else beyond that. I don't know what's going to be anything else. I mean, do you know any other details? Taylor Otwell: I really don't. You know, I mean, I know it's happening, but this is sort of all of the Laravel Live conferences for those not kind of in the know are more community led conferences. So we have Laracons, which are sort of these big flagship events, almost by continent, you might say. So we have one in North America, one in Europe, one in Asia with Laracon India and one in Australia. So they're almost like continent-wide events, whereas the Laravel Lives are a little bit more localized, let's say like per country events with Laravel Live UK and then Laravel Live Denmark. More geared for the local audiences, a little bit smaller audiences, but UK is like a big, you know, tons of Laravel developers in the UK, so I'm sure they'll have a really good turnout for that event. And yeah, I'm excited to see it go well. And, you know, I'm always glad when people throw these events. It's good for the community. Matt Stauffer: I've just looked up the venue for Laravel Live UK, and it is, if not where it was when I went, it's at least right in the same area. It's right next to the British Library, but for Harry Potter nerds, it's also right next to, I don't know the name of the station, King's Cross Station, but they've got one of those little platform nine and three quarters things where you can kind of walk into it. Taylor Otwell: Oh, nice. Matt Stauffer: Great! So that's Laravel Live UK and then Laravel Live Denmark. I haven't caught up with it because I know I'm not going to be able to make it, but you said it's, so it must be sometime in August. Yeah. 22nd, 23rd in Copenhagen. Taylor Otwell: Yep. Matt Stauffer: Do you know who's organizing it? Taylor Otwell: I do. It's a guy named Casper. Um, uh, you know, I, I don't know if we've met in person, but he reached out to me some time ago. I mean, this was seven or eight months ago at least. And, you know, Hey, ask ed if it was cool if he organizes a Laravel Live in Denmark and, uh, you know, I said, go for it. Um, well, yeah, I asked him, you know, like how big do you want it to be and where do you think you'll have it and all of that. And it all sounded good. So just told him to go for it and give it a shot. And, uh, yeah, it seems like that's coming together as well. Matt Stauffer: Oh yeah, and they've got, Freek is going to speak, Peter from Tailwind is going to speak, Michelle Hansen, who's both from Geocodio in the Laravel community, but also very prominent right now because she's doing a ton of advocacy for Section 174, which is this big tax law in the US thing. So, that's great. And I love, just looking at the websites for each of these conferences, I'm like, people are really taking branding seriously. Like, they all look so good. Like, I just want to go to your conference because your branding is so good. Taylor Otwell: Right. Yeah, that is cool. Matt Stauffer: So Laracon AU, we know it's happening because, um, Michael has been asking who should speak, but the website is still for the 2023. So we assume that there's going to be a Laracon Australia 2024. Everybody should keep your eyes open, but we don't have any dates or times on that. And I feel like that's it. Right. Are there any other Laravel lives that you know about? Taylor Otwell: I can't think of any right now. That's all I know of. Matt Stauffer: Don't be offended if he's forgetting. There's so many things he's got to be on top of. There's no other ones that I know about. Cool. Well, that's it. So yeah, so just very exciting opportunities for conferences. I know when conferences first started opening up, people were very nervous about what it looks like to throw conferences in the days of COVID. But other than a few very notable, like people looked backwards and said, you should have done your security better. I have not seen anybody with any serious health risks in any of the major conferences I know that are opening up. You know, people are often always trying to do things to make sure that people who need, you know, X, Y, Z to feel safe from a COVID perspective are able to feel that way. But I've been to quite a few conferences over the last couple of years and have always felt safe and always come home, you know, healthy. So fingers crossed, we keep just having that experience, but it's so, man, it is so nice to be back in person again. Like, so nice. Taylor Otwell: Yeah, I agree. I like it. Matt Stauffer: All right, so I got two tweets from you that I wanted to get the folks to listen to a little bit. So the first one was you announced a new Scout driver. And for those who don't know, you know, could you talk a little bit about what is Scout? And then also, what is Typesense? And I personally don't even know what Typesense is. So if somebody's never heard of Scout, can you talk about what Scout is and then also talk about Typesense and why Typesense? Taylor Otwell: Yeah, so Laravel Scout is our first party package for making eloquent models full-text searchable. So, you know, a classic use case for this would be something like a blog post model that you want people to be able to search your posts, like the content of those posts, and you want to do it using a robust search engine that actually has like, you know, kind of fuzzy search and typo tolerance and things like this to make the search experience actually feel like a modern search experience would feel. And Scout lets you do that in sort of this driver-based way, like many other Laravel features work in this way. You know, the queue system supports Redis and Database and whatever else, SQS. Likewise, Scout supports a few different search backends that you access through a unified API. So like, for example, in your Eloquent model, you would say post colon colon search, and then your search string, which could be just some arbitrary, you know, query of text. and then Git, and it retrieves all of the models that match that search string by communicating with the search engine and then pulling the models. So the drivers we had prior to TypeSense being introduced were just Algolia, which is a commercial sort of closed source search offering. Then on the open source side, we have Meilisearch, which is an open sourced offering similar to Algolia in the sense that it's, you know, kind of fuzzy matching and works really well and is easy to configure. We also have a database option which sort of falls back to just like full text searching if that's what you want. So if you want to use it with like MySQL or Postgres, you can just slap that on there. So that's really great for smaller applications or if your needs aren't that heavy, you can just get started without any additional software. And then the newest member to this family is Typesense, which has both an open source offering and then like a cloud hosted version of that open source offering. And Algolia, Typesense, and Meilisearch all have very similar goals of basically being the anti-elastic search in some way. Very easy to get up and running, very easy to configure and just start searching, which I think is what most people want to do. Elasticsearch is a very powerful piece of software that is more than just full-text search. It has a lot of other features. So these things are supposed to be much less configuration, much less startup cost and pain. So yeah, we shipped types and support, I think it was just last week, and last week's Laravel release, so we now have a new driver on the block for Laravel Scout, so you can give that a shot. We've also already integrated that with Laravel Sail, so our Docker local development option. We already had support for Meilisearch on Laravel Sail, but we also have support for TypeSense now as well. So if you create a new Sail project, you can now select TypeSense as one of the services that your application will use, and it will be in a Docker container, you know, nice and isolated from the rest of your operating system. Matt Stauffer: I love it. And I'm sitting here on the Typesense website and they have this really great breakdown of Typesense versus Algolia versus Elasticsearch versus Meilisearch. I'm like, well, obviously it's them, so it might be a little biased. It's a pretty helpful breakdown and it definitely is giving me some reasons to consider. We've used Meilisearch for a lot of people just because Algolia is pricey and Elasticsearch is miserable. So we've often gotten people in Mieilisearch, but it has some limitations. And I'm sitting here looking at Typesense, and I'm like, oh, I think they're kind of aiming to be what Meilisearch is, which is you can self-host it if you want, maybe a little bit more affordable than Algolia if you're using their SaaS. But also it's missing some of the downsides of MileySearch. It says query field weights and boosting, so you can say certain fields are more important than others and a few of the other things that have bothered us. I'm noticing there's a few that it's pointing out things that they don't have that Algolia does, so it feels kind of fair. So I will... I'm trying not to sneeze. Come on. Okay, so I will link that in the show notes. And very cool. So I'm excited to try it out. If we don't have a driver for takeout for typesense, I'll make sure we get one added. Taylor Otwell: Nice. Yeah, super simple. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, I love it. All right, I had one other thing I wanted to ask you about, which is the tweet you put out about Vapor. So you had this tweet where you basically said, I forget exactly the words, but basically like, this is the original, you know, one of the original incarnations of Vapor. And it was literally just black text on the white screen. And it's so interesting, because when you think Taylor Otwell, you think elegance and beautiful and fantastic APIs and stuff like that. So it's very interesting that I was, it felt like kind of a surprise to see you put something out that was just this like really ugly page. Oh, here you go. You said early UI of Laravel Vapor as I was building it, April 2019. And it's literally Times New Roman, horizontal rules, default button styles. So one of the things I wanted to ask you about was like, as you're building something like that, obviously on day one, you don't always choose to build with the most beautiful thing. Although maybe that's different now that you've got Tailwind everywhere. But what do you normally build first? Do you build a UI and then start putting stuff into it? Do you build like a code module that does this action, this action, this action, and then later you're building a clickable version? Like what's your process like as you're building a software as a service? Taylor Otwell: So I used to always build the backend first without any UI and that just started to bite me over the years because as I started to build the UI, you know, the customer facing part of the application, I would see these obvious flaws like in the backend implementation. So now I almost always start with the ugly UI that you see in that tweet. And the UI doesn't have to be pretty at all. It doesn't have to be styled as long as you can put the right buttons and inputs and make sure the whole flow feels good from the customer's perspective, because it can always be rebuilt and s tyled later, but it's enough to let you get the customer experience right and get the software right as you build the back ends. I just found that as I tried to build the, if I tried to build the entire back end and then come in later and strap on a front end, like maybe I built the back end using just like a CLI interface to interact with it, with artisan commands and stuff like that. And I was going to try to bring in a UI later. I just always was such a pain because I missed o r these flows in the back end. The API endpoints were either awkward or they weren't right based on how the front end was going to work and it just never worked out well. So I think it's a good idea to always kind of build them in conjunction. And back when I was building that, you know, you mentioned Tailwind. Tailwind was out, but I didn't know it yet. And so Adam basically paired with me and gave me a crash course as we walked through the Vapor front end. This was in the early Tailwind days. You know, to kind of help me learn Tailwind and also, I guess, to be a little bit of a proving ground for Tailwind, you know, with a real project to see what it could do. And that's actually how I learned Tailwind was kind of Adam walking me through it personally as we built Laravel Vapor. But yeah, with Tailwind, it's actually, you know, kind of easy to make some semi-decent user interface without a lot of effort these days. So I'd probably just use that now. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, it's funny because I was like, I do the Tailwind version of this when I'm building things, but the Tailwind version of this makes it look so good because you've got a wrapper, you've got a header, you've got a footer, you've got default font setup. So even this exact same HTML in a Tailwind page would have looked so much different that it's sort of like this feels very much a relic of a pre-Tailwind day. It's funny you mention that because I actually, I learned Tailwind first by fighting Adam and going on his podcast and saying, utility CSS is of the future, which I'll always, not regret, but laugh at. But then being very quickly converted as he was kind of like building early stages of pre-tailwind stuff at Tighten. And then I was just like, hey, can I steal this prototype for my website? And it was the same thing, I was like try something, DM Adam, be like, it's not working. Try something, DM Adam. I don't know if I would say I was a proving ground, because they'd certainly built stuff that complex before, but, man, having to figure it out as you go, source diving, you know, having access to the source is a really fantastic way to learn something. Okay, so I guess this is gonna be a little bit shorter than usual. I thought the conference stuff was gonna take a little bit more, but I did have, as always, something fun at the end. So Imani and I got this, she found it, I'll credit to her, this little map on the wall of our bedroom that has pins for where she's been, where I've been, where we've been together, where we're going soon, and then like our kind of dreams down the road and of course it shows like that travel is really important to us but one of the things that we were talking about as we were trying to decide where to honeymoon was like we don't often get this amount of time away or like willingness for us to kind of spend money on travel so what things can you do especially you know when you it's like a special moment versus just your average travel and we realized that the length of time away therefore like the the amount of distance we were willing to travel you know like you're not always going to travel 24 hours somewhere when you got kids back home. But also, what continents have we been to? Because we want to get to every country, we want to get to every continent or whatever. And so we're like, well, we can knock out an extra continent and go to a continent that Asia is pretty difficult for Americans to get to without it being like a big ordeal. So kind of knocking those out. For me, I guess the answer to my already question, you know It's sort of like do you have any like big travel goals? Like by the time I died like to see XYZ or get to ABC and I was like the first ones we want to get to every continent We'd like to get to every single country if possible. We'll see how that works out I mean you got like North Korea and stuff like that. But I just wanted to see like do you have any kind of like travel either goals or places? You've been like I've always wanted to get here and I've never been able to get here or something like that. Taylor Otwell: Yeah, I mean, I share your goal of visiting every continent, which is definitely achievable. The only ones I lack are Africa and Antarctica. Matt Stauffer: Okay. Taylor Otwell: So it definitely feels achievable if I'm willing to like, what's the name of the ocean pass that you have to go through to get to Antarctica? I know what you mean. It's notoriously rough seas, right? I think it's called the Drake, the Drake Pass or Drake Channel or something like that. So we'll see if I'm willing to stomach that for a few days. So anyway, I mean, that's an interesting goal. I don't know that I aspire to go to every country. That feels like a high bar, but I salute your ambition there. I would actually really like to go to Thailand. But like you said, it is so dang far to get to these places. I really enjoyed going to India. But again, so far. So you really do need a lot of time. And with kids, it is difficult. But we'll see, you know, I would like to go around the world, like on one trip, sort of circumnavigate the entire world by stopping, you know, in Europe, in the middle, in the Middle East and Asia, and then work my way back in some in some route that will require a few weeks, obviously to pull off. So we'll see that would be one goal I have. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, I love that. And I remember going to Laracon AU was the longest travel I've ever done. And we were starting to plan India, it didn't happen. But yeah, with Thailand, we leave at 7pm from Atlanta, we stop in Doha, I think it's called which I assume is yeah in Qatar. It's Qatar. Yeah. Yeah And we're there for a couple hours and then we arrive in Bangkok at 6:40 a.m And I so I think that makes it 20. That's not 20 I think it's 24 hours of travel because they're like 12 hours off from us about 24 hours of travel or something like that I'm like, that's nuts, you know. Taylor Otwell: How far is your flight from Qatar to Thailand? Matt Stauffer: I think it's six and a half hours. So I think it's a 13 and a half hour flight to Qatar and then a six and a half hour flight to Thailand. Taylor Otwell: Yeah. So when I went to India, I connected through Doha. I actually stopped in Doha for like two days and hung out there for a couple of days. But that was a 16 hour flight from Dallas to Qatar. Yeah. One flight. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, so apparently Atlanta to Qatar is only at 13 and a half hours. So sometimes there may be some tricks to kind of break up the segments, you know? Yeah. But I'm very excited about it. We're also doing something where in Thailand where we're, again, this is all Imani, I can't take any credit for this, but we're going to Bangkok for a few days. And then we're going to Phuket, which is where like a lot of the beaches and resorts are for a couple days and then back up to Bangkok. So the goal being like to get some city vibes and see temples and stuff like that, but also to get some, you know, very honeymoon-y, like being in a resort at the beach kind of thing. Taylor Otwell: And it's hot there right now, right? Matt Stauffer: Yeah, it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit every day, and I'm a big guy, and I'm like, that's my biggest fear right now, is just I'm gonna be just drenched in sweat the whole time. So, but, what are you gonna do? Taylor Otwell: No, it'll be worth it. Matt Stauffer: Yeah, went to the store, the thrift, not thrift store, but like a TJ Maxx or whatever and bought as many like very, very thin, you know, linen shirts as I could and stuff like that. I'm like, well, we'll figure it out. Taylor Otwell: The Doha airport is really pretty sweet. It's a nice airport. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Matt Stauffer: We've got three hours there. Taylor Otwell: So yeah, yeah, it's a cool spot. Matt Stauffer: Yeah. My friend just invited me last year and I couldn't because of kids, but he's got a whole bunch of buddies who all wanted to go to every single continent. And so they all rented, not rented, but they bought the same tour to Antarctica. It was about, I want to say it was a week to a week and a half. And it involved, like, helicopter flights to this and all this kind of stuff. But they all, you know, every single one of them just kind of, like, booked the thing so that they had friends. Because they were like, who wants to be in a boat literally by yourself for a week and a half or whatever? So if you ever decide to go going, you know, like, send me a message and I'll give you that. But I'm hoping that the day when I get to the point, the next point where I have this much time away, that probably will be the next place I go. And honestly, one of the funny stories here is one of the reasons we're able to do this long trip is because we planned our wedding date around my kids' winter break, so that I'm like, they're going to be with their mom for a full week, so we know we have this extended period of time. Because otherwise, it would have been like, honeymoon, schmoneymoon. You know, you still got responsibilities to your kids. So we're like, no, we are going to take a long freaking honeymoon. It's going to be good. So very grateful to my family for helping for a couple of days prior to that. So. Taylor Otwell: Awesome. Matt Stauffer: Sweet. Well, thanks for teaching us things, hanging out. E verything is always , I'm going to disappear in my honeymoon for a couple of weeks. So everybody , we'll be probably a week or two delayed on our next podcast episode after that. And we'll have recaps from L aracon EU. W e'll see if we can get some other folks to get us some notes on what L aravel India happened. We might be budding up on a Laravel 11 release date at that point. So we might have to walk through some of the big features as well. There's a lot coming up in our next one. Yeah, sounds good. I'm excited. Okay. Well, thanks Taylor and thanks everybody else. We'll see y'all later. Taylor Otwell: See ya. Bye.