Latest / Agentic Conversations (formally mlops.community) / 4 Years of the MLOps Community // Demetrios Brinkmann // #220

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4 Years of the MLOps Community // Demetrios Brinkmann // #220 · Agentic Conversations (formally mlops.community)

0:01
Hello, I'm Dimitrius. I am the founder of the ML OPS
0:05
community and I take my coffee in a Chemex with a little bit of
0:10
chaga mushroom powder and coconut oil.
0:14
We're going to start. The last time that I talked to
0:17
you, I asked you what you thought I was listening to.
0:23
You wanna do it again? 'Cause, like, wait, I I totally
0:27
remember this. Like what your active listening
0:28
to or what you were like listening to in the moment I I
0:30
forget about. What I was listening to like
0:33
right before we hit record. Ohh, OK yes.
0:36
And it was like record. I think it's like Gregorian
0:37
chants or something like that. So I'm not listening to
0:42
Gregorian Chance today, but I am listening to Equally Banger.
0:48
Equally banger, definitely. I think.
0:51
Classical. I'm guessing like some sort of
0:52
like a light like flamenco guitar kind of thing.
0:56
Him into that, No, I went down the ASMR hole.
1:00
Ohh and I'm just. So just the sounds of people
1:04
like rubbing like Combs against like Mike I have.
1:08
Been the most unproductive fucking person today because
1:14
every five or 10 seconds I just stop and like zone out and
1:18
listen to that. So if you want to get shit done,
1:21
do not put on. Does not.
1:23
Do not. That is not the high
1:24
productivity like binaural beats.
1:28
Not at all. It's so weird to me.
1:30
That's so bizarre. But OK, I did.
1:33
I guess that I would not have guessed that one.
1:35
When we get started, Yeah, let's do.
1:36
This. Let's do it, dude.
1:44
I am here, you know, I'm Michael.
1:47
I'm here with my very good friend that you all know,
1:50
Demetrius Brinkman, that the dawn of develops community.
1:54
Some of you love them, some of you hate him.
1:56
Some of you wish he would stop playing guitar, stop making
1:59
music in general. I think we all agree we could
2:02
all come together on that point. But but he's not stopping.
2:05
The new song was a bit slap. Some people said that song
2:09
slaps, and I think that means that it's good from what I've
2:12
heard on TikTok and shit. I actually did agree with this.
2:16
And was it? Shreya, even during the LMS
2:19
Production Conference was like, damn, this is like, kind of hot.
2:22
Yep, that's it. That's it.
2:24
We got approval from Shreya. You know, game.
2:27
On good. You're good.
2:28
Solid song. It was inspired by one of her
2:30
papers. Inspired.
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And she was like, oh, the editor.
2:33
I love the book where she said, hey, I love.
2:35
I've never had someone like write it.
2:36
The song about my breast. Whoa, whoa.
2:38
Easy, easy. It's pumped the brakes right in
2:45
for you About you. No more like inspired.
2:49
We need to be very deliberate with our words here.
2:52
Can't be going around spreading rumours.
2:54
So this this episode of the podcast is about the history of
2:58
the envelopes community and it has been a tremendously useful
3:03
educational community and organisation.
3:05
Just honestly, and I I'm not even exaggerating here.
3:09
I think one of the top if not the top collection of ML
3:12
practitioners, data science people, people building ML
3:16
systems effectively and practically really out there.
3:19
I I can't think of us, you know, whenever anyone talks to me and
3:22
asks me like hey, where are people that are big into ML?
3:24
Where do they exist? Where do they go to?
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I say it's the maps community hands down.
3:27
So Dimitrios, it's his brainchild.
3:31
It's it's been the thing he's been working for four years.
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And to commemorate that four year anniversary, we're here to
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learn a bit about what it was like, you know, from early days
3:40
where are we today? And then in the in the process
3:42
learn a little bit more about this, the mysterious man that,
3:45
the man that the mystery, the legend.
3:46
So. You make it so formal.
3:50
I didn't realise I I should have come with my suit and tie and
3:53
shit. This is if you really you.
3:57
You really think it's horrible. So so.
3:59
I do have notes. Let's show everybody the notes.
4:02
In case you ask those hard questions, I have my talking
4:05
points. They're scribbles.
4:06
They're scribbles. I don't think those are.
4:08
No. It's just because you showed up.
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A notebook doesn't mean anything.
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It's a lie. He didn't prepare it all.
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But. But but I'm happy to be here.
4:15
I'm really happy to be here. I'm really excited to ask me to
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do this you know, hands down very very great great, happy to
4:21
be here. So what I what I do want to
4:23
start though here is we're gonna talk about a lot of things.
4:27
I wanna start. Give us a sense for what is the
4:30
community today? Like where is the Mobs
4:33
community? What have we become?
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Give us some numbers here so we can texturize all this.
4:38
Alright, so first of all, I couldn't think of anybody else
4:43
to do this but you. And actually, I called a few
4:46
other people, but they weren't available.
4:51
Damn it. So you're the you were the first
4:54
choice after the first choice after first wasn't exactly the
4:58
first choice. So we'll just get that out there
5:02
so we can be fully transparent in this retro we have.
5:05
What are they? They call it blameless
5:09
distribution or some shit like that.
5:10
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. But anyway, let's talk about the
5:15
community for a minute. And you are one of the, I think,
5:19
21,000 people in our Slack right now.
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And so we've got, let me break down the shape of the community.
5:25
We've probably got like 2 weekly newsletter editions that go out.
5:30
We've got the Slack workspace where there's like 21,000
5:33
people. We've got local meetups that are
5:37
happening in 37 cities from like Sydney and Melbourne, Australia
5:41
all the way to California to New York to Berlin, Amsterdam just
5:46
happened last night actually. And then we also have the
5:51
virtual meet and the virtual meetups, the virtual events in
5:55
general because we also have virtual conferences which you so
5:58
kindly did a little bit of a stand up act at at the last one
6:02
and then it was booed off dude. So, so I may have been booing
6:07
you but I was a little harsh because when we had the feedback
6:10
form and we asked people to fill out what their favourite part
6:13
was, we said what was your favourite part of the
6:15
conference. I was expecting people to talk
6:17
about my songs and Demetrius the great host and you know how
6:22
arrogant I am or can be. And they were like, ohh it was
6:25
Michael's comedy routine and I was like, I cannot show him
6:29
this, I cannot let him know about this.
6:32
So we may be inviting you back against.
6:36
Against my rates are going to go up, my rates are going up after
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that, just so you know. Yeah, exactly, Exactly.
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I shouldn't have told you that it would have.
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Been zero to 00 to 0 plus. It's between cheap and free.
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So and that's what we're looking at.
6:51
But yeah we've got the podcast obviously that people are
6:54
listening to that goes out twice a week and we do sometimes we do
6:59
like round tables or panel sessions and then the biggest
7:03
thing ohh and the blog, like the community source blog.
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So anyone can write for the blog and then it gets vetted and if
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it gets the approval then it goes on to our blog.
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And so that's another community piece.
7:15
And then the probably the scariest thing for me right now
7:19
is that we are actively we literally just closed the
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location for our first in person conference which is going to
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happen on June 25th. Wow.
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Yeah, I'm kind of like shaking in my pants because it is scary,
7:35
man. Like it's the first in person
7:36
conference that we're doing. And so I'm just gonna do what
7:40
I'm gonna focus on what I can control, which is get incredible
7:43
speakers and then, you know, make sure that there is going to
7:47
be like an amazing experience for everyone that comes.
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But you know, I'm not going to say that I'm not nervous about
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that. And so yeah, that's that's about
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it as far as like all the different stuff that we're doing
8:02
and what the community looks like right now.
8:04
I'm trying to think if there's other things that that we have
8:07
going on. I mean we also have people that
8:09
are full time employees in the community, which is huge, that's
8:13
wild. I think there's about 7 direct
8:16
employees of the community and then there's like a tonne of
8:19
volunteers. So everyone that is leading a
8:22
local meet up, I would consider them a volunteer like Meteoric
8:27
who's absolutely killing it, leading the blog posts and all
8:31
of that charge volunteer anyone that writes for the blog.
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I would say volunteers. So volunteers are harder to
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quantify, dentify, but there's a tonne of them too.
8:40
Wow. Wow.
8:41
Wow. I mean that's a lot and and look
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what I wanted just even highlight to the people that
8:47
already know this. Maybe they're tuning in.
8:49
But what I especially love about the community is not just that
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it's obviously the numbers are big, right, 10s of thousands of
8:55
people. But it's the quality that I
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think has always stood out to me because there's so many Discord
9:00
channel, slack groups, I mean you name it, of just data
9:05
people, you know people that are in data or whatever and that and
9:08
the the the quality there is just never, it's never
9:11
particularly high. Whereas when you get in the
9:13
community, that really stands out and that seems to have
9:15
always been a part of the the, the kind of the, the thread of
9:18
the community and then a centrepiece was just the quality
9:21
of the of the conversation and the quality of the people that
9:23
are in it. So that, I think, has been
9:25
amazing. I we can get more into that like
9:29
things that reasons. I think that is.
9:31
But the spoiler of that is I I'm not sure I have any idea why or
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how there is such high quality in the community.
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But I'm just as amazed as you are every day when we have these
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questions which are high quality questions and then answers that
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are coming from all different directions.
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You have data scientists, you have data engineers, ML
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engineers, scores all answering it in different ways or
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different shapes and forms. So, but on some of the
10:01
learnings, if you want, I can talk about some of the learnings
10:03
that I've had over the years. Yeah, and like what I think
10:07
could have contributed to that, but I don't know the definite
10:10
answer for why that is, besides banning people that are too
10:14
spammy. That's, that does make it.
10:18
I mean that makes a big difference for sure.
10:21
Look, I'm happy to talk about learnings, tell you about some
10:23
learnings. I also you know one thing I just
10:25
want to call out as well and we should get into this at some
10:27
point is look you you've made this whole like global movement
10:30
effectively and I'm lops and that that is incredibly
10:33
impressive And what I want to get to at some point in the
10:35
conversation is, was that always part of the the genesis was that
10:38
always do you have that in mind or did this this vision of a
10:41
global envelopes movement did that evolve over time or were
10:45
you were you born to do this. Dude, The thing is, so many
10:51
times I've tried to sit down and be like, what's the vision and
10:54
what's the mission? All that like the mission
10:57
statement, the vision. We need to have a clear idea
11:00
that people can rally behind. And at the end of the day I
11:04
haven't been able to like put anything super clear down that
11:09
isn't this, which is just like I just wanna have a place where I
11:14
can meet cool people and learn about cool stuff related to like
11:19
putting ML into production or AI into production.
11:22
So ML, OBS, LM, OBS, data engineering, data OPS, whatever
11:25
OPS, flavour of the month it is. I wanna have a a spot that it's
11:31
like you have to put it out there and then people can
11:36
gravitate to it. But unless you are the one that
11:38
is putting it out there, people don't know to gravitate to it.
11:42
And so as far as like, was that the vision all along the way
11:47
that we started the community? And I've told this a million
11:50
times, but I'll tell it again and I'll give you the the kind
11:52
of the short story. They're in long form.
11:55
So yeah, it's basically like we, I was in Spain right before the
12:03
pandemic hit. I was working for this company
12:04
called Dot Science and DOT science was doing data lineage.
12:08
And data lineage in 2019 was a little early for the time that
12:14
it was because at that time, I don't know if you remember in
12:18
2019 not a lot of people were actually like seeing huge
12:21
amounts of value in their AML efforts.
12:24
And this is all like what I would call traditional ML or
12:27
classical ML these days. And what was happening is it was
12:32
really hard to put machine learning models into production.
12:37
And so these companies that we're seeing really good returns
12:43
or ROI with machine learning, they were the gigantic companies
12:46
and they were in general building everything themselves
12:50
in house. Like now that I've talked to a
12:51
lot of them, it's like the Facebooks, yeah.
12:54
And the Pinterest even they were doing this stuff since like
12:57
2014, 2016, whatever, because they had to and they were
13:01
already what we would consider mature and maybe they would want
13:05
data lineage, but they didn't want to go buy any data lineage
13:08
tools off the shelf. And then the rest of the market
13:11
was just like I got Jupyter notebooks.
13:14
What's going on there? And so DOT Science was
13:19
floundering. And then COVID hit and boom, we
13:26
could not get anybody on the phone for a sales call because
13:32
everybody was thinking my company may go out of business
13:35
in the next like week. I don't wanna think about
13:38
bringing on a tool that is going to like involve some kind of a
13:43
sales process. I just want to focus on do, am I
13:46
going to have my job in a week or in two weeks?
13:49
And so that was March 2020. And that's kind of the reason
13:55
why I was like, ohh man, it's March 2024, it's been four years
13:59
of the community really. Because right when that happened
14:02
we said, well, why don't we try and start a community or
14:06
something. And like, I have to give a lot
14:09
of credit to the CEO of Data Science, Luke Marsden.
14:12
He came from the Docker sphere and so he was very heavily into
14:19
like the Docker movement and created Docker back in the day.
14:24
And then was very early in the Kubernetes movement.
14:26
And so he had open source in his blood, even though dozens wasn't
14:31
open source funny enough. But he added in his blood and I
14:35
talked to him one day and it was like, yeah, we should start a
14:38
community and we can let anybody in.
14:39
And I was like, Are you sure about that?
14:41
We want to let our competitors into this community and we're
14:45
we're going to like, let them give talks on our virtual
14:48
meetups because by that time everything was virtual.
14:51
If you remember, it was like this lockdown.
14:53
And so he was just like, yeah, do it like the rising tide lifts
14:59
all boats and it doesn't matter if they're competitors, doesn't
15:03
matter what, like just get the knowledge out there.
15:06
And so from that point on Luke did the first virtual meet up
15:11
and then I was in charge of finding the speakers for the
15:15
next virtual meetups. And after four virtual meetups
15:19
thought signs went out of business.
15:21
And that was the end of April 2020.
15:25
And that was scary for me because I was like, oh shit, I'm
15:28
about to move to Germany. I had already paid off the
15:31
movers and like done the down payment and everything from.
15:35
So moving from Spain to Germany, I had my little one year old
15:38
daughter and Germanys. Cost of living is lot higher
15:43
than Spain and I was expecting to like have a paycheck.
15:47
And so then I was applying to every fucking job I could find
15:53
on LinkedIn and most of them were like Zoom because Zoom was
15:58
hiring in 2020 and not a lot of other people who were.
16:02
And so then that started, and I remember talking to a friend
16:07
who's not in software or he's not a developer at all.
16:13
And I was like, man, there's this thing that is kind of
16:15
gaining traction and I feel like it might be something cool, but
16:21
I'm not sure if I should focus on it 100% or if I should like,
16:27
focus on trying to get a new job.
16:28
And he was asking me the numbers and I remember specifically
16:32
telling him and this was the middle of May and we were
16:35
planning to move to Germany in middle of June.
16:38
And I said like think if by June, so by the end of May, we
16:44
have 600 people in our Slack channel, that will be like a
16:49
huge signal for me. And then, yeah, we had, we got
16:56
that and then it was like ohh, well now maybe we can get like
16:59
1000 people in Slack. Ohh.
17:01
Now maybe we can do like do more stuff as opposed to just having
17:04
Slack. And so then it just spitballed
17:07
from there. And so I was just focused on
17:11
creating, but like being a someone who can help foster
17:19
initiatives, you know, So people started coming with different
17:24
ideas and that was it. It was like, alright, cool,
17:27
let's do it, let's make it happen.
17:28
Let's try and create more movement around this because
17:33
there's something here, there's obviously people are interested
17:36
in it and there's attention that's happening and so, so then
17:42
it it just kind of went from there and there was, there was a
17:44
tonne of things that like a tonne of milestones that
17:48
happened along the way. But I can tell you all about
17:51
some of the learnings too. I know you wanted to get to that
17:53
too. Ohh.
17:54
Yeah. I mean, like let's just go where
17:57
it goes. I mean, I you're already
17:59
touching on it. I think the origin story coupled
18:01
with the learnings, I, I suspect one of the milestones was the
18:04
600 mark, which is an interesting one to me.
18:06
I mean that you did, you have a very specific reasoning for that
18:10
number. Was it just, hey, 600 sounds
18:11
like a good, nice, good, nice number?
18:14
It was just because it felt like that's way out of reach and and
18:22
especially when this is coming from sales, like if two people a
18:28
week would talk to me, I was stoked and now all of a sudden
18:32
was like there's 100 people in this slack.
18:34
That's insane. And and then getting to talk to
18:39
people and it's so funny too. And like, I I'm not ashamed to
18:42
say this, but I find it hilarious.
18:45
And I normally don't broadcast this one.
18:48
But for those people that are listening, if you are ever
18:51
looking for some entertainment, go back and listen to like the
18:55
second virtual meet up or the third Virtual meet up because it
19:00
was podcast format. But I had no idea what the fuck
19:06
people were saying. No idea.
19:08
Like they would start talking about monitoring and continuous
19:11
training or like data drift. And I just all of those concepts
19:16
were foreign to me and I would be looking at them.
19:18
And I had questions that I had sourced from my technical
19:22
friends that I knew and that was it.
19:25
Like I had sourced those questions.
19:27
There was 10 questions. I would ask the question, I
19:30
would get an answer and then I would just kind of nod like,
19:34
yeah, great answer and then just ask the next question.
19:37
There was number back and forth because I had no idea.
19:39
Everything went over my head. That's.
19:44
I think one of the biggest accomplishments of the MPs
19:46
community in my perspective is the fact that you've been able
19:49
to lead people out for this long.
19:51
That you are bullshit everyone that you've been.
19:54
You faked, so you've made it. To to one of the.
19:57
Leading communities in the world and that that is something very
20:01
impressive to me. I mean, people, you know, take
20:04
it as you will, but, but, but Dimitrios, who doesn't come from
20:07
a traditional machine learning background, has been corralling
20:10
some of the best minds in ML into his community, which is,
20:13
which is incredible. There was 1 so we did feedback
20:17
forms, you know and and that. I would ask everyone in slack
20:22
like once or twice a year to give a feedback form or to fill
20:25
out feedback form on what we can be doing and better in the
20:28
community. And I remember one person was
20:32
like ohh maybe on the podcast and this was probably like a
20:37
year, year and a half into the community.
20:39
They said it would be nice to have somebody who doesn't know
20:43
like a beginner in ML OPS to ask beginner questions.
20:48
And I was like what the fuck do you think I am man?
20:50
You can't get more beginner than this.
20:54
It. Well, and then I I started being
20:56
like, ohh, maybe I kind of know. And that's when I started saying
21:00
like, I know enough buzzwords to be dangerous.
21:03
Yeah, I don't really know what's going on.
21:04
So that's that's. Awesome.
21:05
I still. Do the smile and nod.
21:07
Everyone's awesome. That is amazing.
21:09
I mean, like, I definitely have been.
21:11
I've been witness to this where people ask you technical
21:14
questions and like a forum or a LinkedIn thread and they're
21:16
like, what do you think about is the best way to do this, this
21:19
and this? You're like I.
21:21
Asking the community, yeah, asking, asking the public chat.
21:25
I I generally these days there are like I do have more opinions
21:29
and I do feel like I can kind of for sure give solid advice
21:34
depending on like who's asking and what the question is.
21:37
But I still try to direct people to the community forum because
21:43
that's one of the things that I'm a very big fan of, is that
21:47
if one person has the question, I think others have the
21:52
question, and it's worth putting it into a public channel so that
21:56
everyone else can learn from it. And that's why I'm like kind of
22:01
not excited when somebody says asks a question and then
22:06
somebody generally 9 times out of 10, there's the person who's
22:11
asking the question. And then you have two or three
22:13
people that are trying to clarify what's actually going on
22:16
so they can give a good answer. And when you have these people
22:20
clarifying and then you have the person that asked the question
22:23
and say something like ohh, I'll just DM you.
22:27
It's like no, don't go into DM, keep it out in public because we
22:31
need this unless it's super sensitive or you can't share the
22:36
clarification questions. But for the most part like keep
22:38
it public so that everybody can learn from it.
22:41
And that's the same with like being in a meet up.
22:44
It's great to ask questions after somebody gives a talk,
22:47
right? And so, yeah, same stuff, but
22:50
amazing. I digress.
22:51
No. Dimitrius tell tell us more
22:53
about more about the origin story coupled with the learnings
22:56
along the way. I I, I didn't actually have not
22:59
heard the full origin story, so this was new to me.
23:01
But but do tell us more about what's happened since, you know
23:04
how that all unfolded from that point on.
23:05
And then please sprinkle in the learnings that you think were
23:08
the biggest ones over the course of the community.
23:11
Dude, I think one thing that stands out to me, which is a
23:19
little bit sentimental, but like me as a really, I really enjoy
23:24
meeting people and forming connections with people.
23:28
But I also now after it's only been four years, but four years
23:32
is also a long time, kind of depending on how you're looking
23:36
at it and dog years, it's a shit tonne, right?
23:38
And so people come and go and they like float into the
23:44
community orbit. And some people are really into
23:47
this because it's very aligned with their career goals or with
23:52
what they're doing at their job. And then inevitably, like,
23:56
people will float away. And so instead of trying to
24:00
like, hold on to that, what I've started to do is just how can I
24:04
keep contact with people but not feel like I need to hold on to
24:10
people. Because there is very much this
24:14
nature of like it's tied to the career.
24:16
The community is very tied to what you're doing at your job.
24:20
And if your challenge is at your job change, or you change jobs
24:24
and all of a sudden you don't work on the ML platform, you
24:27
work on the data platform and the company isn't mature enough
24:31
to be doing ML or AI or any of that sort, then you're probably
24:35
not going to be hanging out. And then the community and
24:37
you're not going to like, wanna volunteer as a local champion or
24:41
whatever. So I'm grateful for everyone
24:46
that has come into the orbit. And I think that's one thing
24:50
that I've seen over the years is that people come, they go, life
24:56
happens. And it's so cool to have made
25:00
friends and have like this global network of friends.
25:04
And it's also really cool to like watch them grow too.
25:07
You know, like watch. You're a perfect example of
25:10
that, right? Like you're working on very ML
25:13
specific stuff. And then it's like, oh, now
25:15
you're going to go start your own company.
25:17
And so you get to, I get to watch you grow and hopefully
25:22
start a billion dollar company that you can make me an advisor
25:26
to or whatever when you want. No problem, I'll be.
25:29
I'll be here and ready for it. But the the other thing is that
25:34
like the if I'm doing my job right so I I've kind of like
25:42
come to see that the community is not a community because of
25:50
me. It's almost like in spite of me
25:54
to so much shit to that there shouldn't be the community.
25:58
But the thing that is nice is that it's not like it's an
26:04
influencer community type thing. It's not like ohh people see my
26:07
YouTube videos and then they come into the community.
26:10
They come into the community because the value that the
26:12
community has And then there's like ohh yeah and this random
26:15
guy that kind of does shit in the community.
26:16
He also has a podcast. Alright let's check that out or
26:19
ohh like we came to a meet up and then we found there was
26:22
other things that you could do right.
26:23
So it's not like it is. You come into the community
26:28
because of me, and because of that, what I'm trying to do is
26:33
make sure that in the community I can give as many people a
26:38
platform as possible because there's nothing more that like I
26:42
derive pleasure from and like see joy on a daily basis.
26:47
Then when I see people in the community that are winning in
26:52
whatever way, shape or form that is.
26:54
So if I can help them do that, that's like my true North, I
27:00
guess you could say. So whether that is giving
27:03
someone a chance to write on the blog.
27:06
And then because of that, who knows, Maybe they get a job or
27:09
they're able to. Somebody reaches out to them and
27:11
they form a new connection. Or bringing somebody on the
27:14
podcast, having like a shout out to an excellent blog that I read
27:19
on the Internet in the newsletter, all of those ways.
27:23
And then just like making sure when there is quality work and
27:27
especially when it's somebody from the community that gets
27:31
recognised. And so that's something that I
27:36
think has been a huge learning for me, just it's more, it's a
27:40
little more personal, but I think that in community building
27:43
is very valuable. And so it's just like how can I
27:46
give as many people a platform, How can I make the ML OPS
27:50
community platform so big that we can fit more people on it,
27:55
right. That's the other, I guess
27:56
another way of looking at it. And that's probably why we have
28:00
so many different manifestations of like what the community is,
28:05
whether it's the newsletter, podcast or virtual events and in
28:10
person events, all that stuff I was talking about.
28:12
And then there's another one that I think is fascinating,
28:17
which I've heard. This one I did not coin.
28:20
I got it from I think the woman's name is Rosie and she's
28:24
big in the community space and she talks about monthly
28:28
recurring relationships and so how many people am I creating
28:36
relationships with? And then like how often am I
28:39
talking to them? How am I having like recurring
28:43
relationships, not just like I get on a call with somebody and
28:46
then I never see them or talk to them again and maybe they're
28:50
never actually in the community orbit, we could say.
28:55
So those, those are a few. I mean, I've got a bunch, but
28:58
maybe you want to chime in on some of these.
29:00
Yeah, Well, I mean. There was so much gold in there
29:03
that that I could unpack a lot of a lot of things.
29:05
But maybe I'll start by saying on your points around in the
29:10
sense that the community was bigger than you.
29:12
You were at the you weren't the IT.
29:14
It didn't it wasn't like your brand that that that was the
29:17
cornerstone of the community. I agree with this.
29:20
You were enough Twitter followers for that to be true.
29:22
Like there's no there's there's no way that could have been 300.
29:25
300 Twitter followers just to let you know I'm trying to be an
29:28
AI influencer, but it is not happening.
29:31
You're you're you're not even in.
29:32
The in the running, so so that is not a concern.
29:36
But but on a more serious note, I I like this idea of building
29:41
maybe what I would call it fault tolerance around the community
29:44
right Like you set up in such a way that it's almost
29:46
distributed, decentralised. That in a sense it it it doesn't
29:50
it doesn't depend on any one person's right to to to continue
29:53
existing. All right, let's be quick.
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journey and let's get back into the pot.
31:01
And I'll speak to this from a very personal like I, you know,
31:04
I was running the SF meet up for a while and then got busy with
31:08
some startup stuff and kind of disappeared a little bit.
31:11
It became a little bit Mia for a while but then I came back to it
31:14
and it was it had grown. You know I mean like the same
31:16
meet up in one part of the world had had grown and there were
31:19
people that had jumped in because they felt there was
31:21
valuable enough to to make it happen.
31:23
And I think that speaks to the to exactly what you're
31:25
describing right this this idea of there's it's not it's bigger
31:29
than the sum of its parts in some sense that's what's so
31:31
amazing about this community. It's, you know, bigger than me,
31:34
bigger than you and and and and people see so much value in in
31:37
this, this core piece of of of like the relationship building
31:41
you described that people do jump in when they need to and
31:43
they want to keep it going. Exactly.
31:46
And that's 100% what is like for me, probably.
31:51
Why? When we go back to that, like,
31:54
what's the mission, What's the vision of the community?
31:56
And it's just like, I'm just here to have a great time and
31:59
meet cool people. That's what I'm trying to do.
32:02
But everyone has different reasons for joining the
32:06
community. And one thing that we're doing
32:09
now, which is awesome, is we're trying to map out like, what are
32:12
your reasons for joining the community so that we can give
32:16
you what you're looking for? Because some people, they join
32:19
the community because they're like, Oh well, I just started
32:22
this open source project and I might get funding for it and so
32:27
or I want to talk to people and see if it's actually valuable.
32:30
And so there's one like community user path or community
32:34
member path. Some people are like, I have a
32:37
very strong challenge that I'm trying to overcome at work and I
32:41
need to debug this and I need to know what how others have done
32:44
this in the past. So it's like Stack Overflow like
32:49
on steroids in a way or very niche down.
32:52
And then other people are like, I'm just looking for a new job.
32:55
And so I'm trying to find if there's anybody that I can
32:58
network with. And there you have that person
33:01
you have others like investors will join the community because
33:04
they're like I'm trying to find the new hottest thing and
33:07
marketers will join the community because they're like,
33:09
well, we want to show off our product.
33:12
And so those people I just say talk directly to me and we can
33:17
figure out how to make that happen.
33:19
That's an easy one, no? But we're trying to figure out
33:21
like all of these different journeys, right?
33:23
It's a different paths and different pieces of the
33:26
community are going to be valuable for these different
33:30
personas and what they're trying to get out of the community.
33:34
And so now that's something that I feel like is is happening and
33:40
is really a huge step forward. Because then you can know.
33:46
All right, sweet. You're a data engineer and
33:49
you're looking to get into MLS. Here are the top four things or
33:56
three things that we would recommend you do and we can have
34:00
that set up as a trigger when someone clicks on the form to
34:06
join the community. They say like, yeah, I identify
34:10
as a data engineer and I am looking to learn more about ML
34:15
OPS and then boom, we can have e-mail sequences saying watch
34:19
these meetups or you know, join this event blah blah blah.
34:26
And so that's that's I'm, I'm super excited about.
34:32
That is such a deliberate and methodical way to think about
34:36
community building. I can see you were a salesperson
34:38
in a previous life. I mean just this idea of of of
34:41
of different demographics and segmenting, segmenting user
34:45
groups. I love that.
34:47
I think this is I'm, I'm a big fan.
34:49
I think this is, this is, this is super cool.
34:52
I want to I want to dive into one thing more deeply because
34:54
you, you know, cool relationship building, love all that.
34:58
There is this understanding that a lot of the reason why people
35:01
come into the community something career related,
35:03
something related to their job, whether that's progress, growth,
35:06
getting a new one. You said a little bit, Tell us a
35:08
little bit about what that looks like for people and maybe how
35:13
successful do you think you have been over the course of the
35:15
communities lifetime in helping people level up in their careers
35:19
and maybe more some of the milestones around that?
35:24
All right. Charlie Rose coming with the
35:26
hard hitting questions, huh? I see you so.
35:31
And you're just sponsored the MPs community by the way, if
35:33
whoever is listening, I think it's if you're looking to get
35:36
get housing people. Strong talent.
35:40
That's a strong talent. Well actually you know there is.
35:45
I I used to like search it out and really try and make sure
35:48
that if there were jobs that were, how would I say this being
35:54
gotten from the community? Like if people got a job because
35:58
not grammatically. Correct.
35:59
But OK, yeah, let's, let's let's go with that, not.
36:01
Known for my strengths and grammar or public math, but I do
36:07
it anyway. And so the The thing is that we,
36:11
I really wanted to highlight the fact that I've seen a lot of
36:15
people get jobs because of their involvement in the community and
36:20
there are plenty of ways to do that.
36:22
I still think that if you are active in any of these different
36:27
channels or if you are volunteering in the community,
36:31
that gets like I said, I'm trying to create this gigantic
36:34
platform and make it big enough that everyone can stand on it
36:37
and we can like lift everyone up.
36:40
And one of the coolest things that I can think of, like a a
36:45
tangible outcome, is that somebody starts volunteering for
36:49
the community and because of them being on this platform or
36:54
doing things, maybe it's being a local champion now they're
36:57
meeting people and they're almost at like the centre of the
37:00
MLC or AI scene in their city and it makes them so much more
37:06
likely to get a job. And I've heard about so many.
37:09
Or just like I've heard about people answering questions in
37:14
Slack. And then somebody's will say,
37:19
ohh cool, thanks for answering that question of mine.
37:22
Like then they bring a conversation to DM, like you
37:27
wanna have a coffee sometime or whatever, virtual coffee and
37:31
then one thing leads to another and you got a new teammate.
37:35
And so those experiences 100% happen and it's really hard for
37:42
me to quantify how much they happen because it is almost like
37:46
it's not like it's behind closed doors.
37:48
It's just not like people are coming U to me and telling me
37:52
every time it happens. But when I do find out about it,
37:55
and I will say right now that if anyone has gotten a job because
38:00
of activities in the MLS community, please tell me.
38:03
Because that makes my day. Like literally That is one of
38:06
the other that that is absolutely incredible for me
38:11
because it's just like this thing that started because I
38:15
lost my job, right? Is now helping others advance in
38:20
their career. And so whether or not it's what
38:23
they learn in the community is what is helping them advance in
38:27
their career or it's just straight up like, oh, I saw in
38:30
jobs channel this job and then I applied for that job or I I DM
38:35
to the person who posted it and now I'm working for that
38:38
company. So there's a lot of that, I
38:40
think that is so cool to see. And then I I get really stoked
38:45
about that. I don't know if you can hear the
38:46
emotion in my voice, but like that gases me up man so much.
38:51
Yeah. I mean that that that's that's
38:53
capable. I I can we can all see that.
38:55
And then it what's cool about it is it happens.
38:59
You're not almost seeking it out, but it's happening
39:01
naturally And that seems like the best of both worlds right,
39:03
where you're giving people a platform to engage and actually
39:06
have a community which is something we all need as people.
39:08
But then in the process what's falling out of it is something
39:11
that is very pragmatic like very practical and you know it's it's
39:17
it's a very tricky balance to get to get that thing in the
39:21
middle because you go too hard in the career stuff.
39:23
It becomes a very transactional sort of thing and people are not
39:26
very you know it's not as it doesn't feel as authentic
39:28
organic. You go too much on the other
39:30
side and it's just we're just shooting the shit in in Slack
39:33
and saying like hey, well look at this meme, look at that meme
39:35
and it's there's nothing valuable.
39:37
But to hit that middle ground I think is is incredibly hard and
39:40
and and sounds like something that's been a big, big outcome
39:44
and success story for the community.
39:46
Yeah, I love hearing about that, dude.
39:48
I love it. I so much.
39:50
That is one of my favourite things.
39:53
I mean yeah that's right. And the other thing that I
39:58
wanted to mention there is one other.
40:00
Kind of like take away that I have learned in the community
40:04
building over the years. That I think is worth noting
40:08
before we like jump to the next thing, is that like I have, I've
40:15
thought a lot about people that come to the community but don't
40:19
necessarily actively contribute, right.
40:21
Some people might call them like OHH lurkers in Slack and I am
40:28
100% like encouraging people to do that if that's how they feel
40:35
like they wanna be part of the community.
40:39
And that mentality has changed from like when the community
40:45
started to now. And that is because you just
40:52
again like you can't quantify things that happen outside of
40:56
your knowledge. But I have heard people talk
41:00
about how they will take a screenshot of a question and
41:04
threads that happen in Slack and then share that on their company
41:09
Slack. And then that helps move the
41:12
needle for some kind of a policy or some kind of a design
41:16
decision at their company. And so those things are like,
41:21
OK, maybe you're not for some reason you don't feel like you
41:25
want to jump in on a thread or ask a question or whatever.
41:29
But if you're still getting value out of it, that is huge.
41:32
And so that's really cool or just coming in to whatever other
41:37
way like you just read the newsletter and you don't like
41:41
that. If that's how you want to
41:43
engage, that's also great. Or you listen to the podcast, or
41:45
you go to a local meet up or the in person conference, whatever
41:49
it may be like. There's so many different ways
41:53
to engage and I don't necessarily think now that you
41:59
have to be active in your engagement.
42:02
Of course, it's not like it's nicer if you are because nobody
42:06
wants to join a community. That's just a bunch of people
42:08
that aren't active, really, you know, then there's not really a
42:11
community. It's kind of like a like it's a
42:14
dead zone almost, right? So some people have to be
42:18
active, but at the end of the day, I still think that there's
42:23
a lot of value in the people that aren't like being super
42:25
active. And the other piece to this is
42:28
that kind of like dovetailing on that is the numbers.
42:34
I know, I I like said no, it was before we hit record, like I was
42:38
telling you how many numbers have come into the ecosystem,
42:41
right? But it's a lot, I would say, and
42:46
I think numbers mean nothing, man, because you can have a
42:51
community of 30 people that are super engaged and it's very
42:57
valuable and it can be the best thing for you at that point in
43:01
your life. Or you can have a community of
43:04
30,000 people and it can be absolutely worthless.
43:08
So numbers, at the end of the day, it's cool to like say
43:13
because especially if I'm trying to get like a big speaker for
43:16
the conference, I usually will put out the big numbers, but
43:20
then I think it's it all comes down to quality over quantity.
43:26
Every degree. I mean, yeah, I'm sure I've seen
43:28
this. I'm sure you've seen this many
43:30
people. I'm sure they're tuning in.
43:31
I've seen this, those communities that have that
43:33
claim. You see the numbers in the slack
43:35
at the top, right, of how many people in the channel that's 10s
43:38
of thousands if not if not more. And it's just promotion after
43:41
promotion, no ones even. No one's actually listening to
43:44
anyone. You don't even see people up
43:46
voting because no one even tunes into this.
43:48
So absolutely agree with this point.
43:49
Quality over quantity, micro communities can be some of the
43:52
most powerful ones out there. You know, I want to touch a
43:56
little bit on, you know, one of the things that I think has been
43:59
one of the strongest pieces of the community and maybe its
44:02
growth. Maybe you can speak to this just
44:04
how much of this, like collection of volunteers you've
44:08
been able to pull in, to make it, to make, to to organise
44:12
events to to to contribute different pieces of their
44:15
knowledge and their expertise. How did you foster that kind of
44:20
a community that that that allowed for that to happen and
44:22
encourage people to do that, so that people want to do that?
44:24
Because it seems like so much, so much does depend on the
44:27
volunteers. How did that happen and can you
44:30
tell us a little bit more about that aspect?
44:34
So honestly that was a huge milestone when and that was that
44:39
happened fairly early on in like the community journey which was,
44:47
and I remember it vividly too. This is another one of those
44:50
things where it's like hard to forget because it was so
44:52
impactful and probably in June, remember I was like, ohh, if we
44:59
hit 600 people in June, yeah then that'll be a lot.
45:03
And it was like in June or July and it was in slack and we could
45:06
search it right now I could probably tell you but David
45:10
Aponte was like, hey man, who's who's like running this thing?
45:15
You ever need any help? Because it seems like this is
45:19
pretty cool and I I got some free time and so and that had me
45:24
being like ohh shit like I don't have to do all this on my own.
45:28
There's other people that can help do this that would be
45:31
awesome. And then so then I was like yeah
45:33
let's let's have a call. Let's do it.
45:36
And from there, then more people started, like, raising their
45:40
hands. And and I remember the second
45:42
person was Vishnu, who is a longtime guest host on here too.
45:48
And I just remember that, like, OK, yeah, so like, what do you
45:54
guys wanna help with? And we just started jamming
45:58
every week and having jam sessions.
46:00
And in the beginning, David was who I leaned on really hard for
46:07
the technical capabilities. Like I was learning a lot from
46:10
him, because we would just have calls all the time and he would
46:15
be teaching me stuff and I could just ask him anything.
46:17
And so I could ask the stupid questions that I was afraid to
46:20
ask the guests on the podcast. And then it got to a point where
46:24
it was like, yo, dude, should we record these calls?
46:27
And he was like, yeah, sure, let's do it.
46:30
And so then he he like gave me a walkthrough of how Cube flow
46:34
works. I still had no idea what the
46:36
hell was going on. Like he was going through the
46:39
demo. I had no idea what he was
46:41
saying. And I'm like, wow, this is
46:43
awesome. Yeah, great, alright.
46:45
And just like going on mute and being like fuck, I don't know
46:48
what did he's saying. I don't understand any of this,
46:52
you know? So then, yeah, so that was
46:56
really cool. And then it just kept growing.
46:58
And what I realised now is that, again, going back to that, like
47:04
how can I create a platform? The best thing that I can do is
47:08
make it as easy as possible for people to contribute.
47:13
Like if if it's super cumbersome every time somebody reaches out
47:17
and they're like, hey, I want to volunteer and then I'm like,
47:20
alright, well let's get on a call and let's figure out like
47:22
what your strengths are and what you do what you don't do.
47:25
What now we do is we just have the docs and I put those
47:28
together and I should probably update them.
47:29
Probably pretty soon, because there's so much more that we can
47:33
do. But we have the docs and we have
47:36
areas where we need help for people to volunteer.
47:40
And we also have, if anyone says I want to be a local champion,
47:44
then we have so many resources that we can give people.
47:47
And we say it's very clear now because we've done it 37 times.
47:53
We know what people need and we know where the biggest pain
47:58
points are for somebody that is starting a local chapter, right?
48:01
It's like help finding venues, help finding speakers, help
48:05
finding sponsors, or just getting money for the food and
48:09
beer and whatever drinks and all that and help help marketing so
48:14
that people will come to the event.
48:17
All of that is stuff that we tried to like immortalise and
48:22
put into documentation so that if you are someone who wants to
48:28
do that, you can go and just read through all of this and
48:31
gain all that knowledge and then it's on you to act on it, right.
48:36
So I think that's been huge is how can we make it as
48:42
frictionless as possible and also really help people when
48:47
they want to contribute, how to figure out like how can we add
48:53
the most value in your contributions that's.
48:57
Amazing 37. I did not realise there were
48:59
that many chapters that. That's crazy.
49:01
That's. Crazy.
49:02
And you want to know 37? It almost bankrupted us, to be
49:06
honest. I could tell you that story too.
49:08
This here's a learning that I had.
49:11
Don't give 37 cities a fucking unlimited budget to do whatever
49:15
the hell they want, but definitely.
49:17
Not Sydney. Don't give it to anyone in
49:18
Australia. Exactly.
49:20
OK, Kidney and Melbourne just actually in Australia in
49:24
general. Shit, no, no, no, we didn't.
49:26
We love. I don't love.
49:28
It yeah, the no. The thing is that we got
49:34
sponsorship for the in person and it's funny because I like
49:40
sold sponsorship before we had in person stuff happening.
49:47
But I was like well if we get sponsors then that is going to
49:52
be the catalyst to make me work towards creating in person
49:55
events. And so we sold it to Neptune and
49:59
Jacob was awesome about it. He was super.
50:02
We were very aligned on like, yeah, we don't want to just like
50:05
go there and talk about our tool.
50:07
We just want to make sure that we can send some Neptune branded
50:12
beers to the event and also maybe some shirts and have one
50:17
of our representatives go to the event and meet people because
50:20
they're, let's be honest, like the networking is half the fun.
50:23
And so then we had that and one of the things that we were
50:28
trying to wrestle with was like, alright, cool, we got
50:30
sponsorship and one we weren't super clear as the first
50:37
chapters like the first city started cropping U.
50:41
We weren't clear on like what is the value that we can provide.
50:47
And one of the things that we thought would be super valuable
50:50
for people, and it turns out it's not even that valuable, but
50:53
I can get to that in a minute, is like reimbursing the cities
50:59
for food and drinks. And we said and then even like
51:04
videographers too. And so we said like in the
51:06
beginning, I think we said like you can expense the community up
51:10
to 1200 bucks. And so that was cool when there
51:14
was like 5 cities and they were doing a meet up once, 1/4.
51:18
And then all of a sudden there was like 12 cities and they were
51:21
doing a meet up once a month and it was like, holy shit, we're
51:24
paying like six or seven grand a month just for these meetups.
51:30
And the Neptune contract is like that.
51:34
Money's long gone, right? So then, and it's hard to let
51:39
like now we had to step back where we we were telling
51:42
everyone we're going to help you.
51:46
You don't have to worry about, like, paying for food or drinks.
51:49
We've got you covered. You can expense that to the
51:51
community. And then all of a sudden we're
51:53
like, actually we gotta talk about that because the monthly
52:00
bill and monthly spend is getting really high.
52:03
And so that was a a nice one. Luckily for us, dude, the
52:10
community, like this community, the members are so incredible, I
52:14
don't know how. Again, I'm not sure how
52:16
potentially it's because we just are.
52:21
It's like I'm not afraid to be weird and so people know what
52:23
they're getting when they're coming into this or they don't
52:26
because they don't come for me, like we said before.
52:29
But as soon as they come in, they get the vibe pretty quick,
52:33
I would imagine. And the people in the community
52:38
were very supportive and it was like, let's figure out how to
52:41
transition from the community paying for food and drinks to
52:46
like we help you find sponsors to pay for the food and drinks.
52:52
And so then it's not like they have to pay out of their pocket.
52:55
It's just that they have to go and find some sponsors.
52:59
That's. Incredible.
53:00
That's that's a cool story. I didn't even know that that
53:02
there was this communal effort to bring to to keep, to keep
53:06
Demetrius's bills afloat. That's that's no.
53:11
I mean, jokes aside, honest. We've had shit that I've done
53:13
with sponsors. Money, man.
53:15
Oh my God. I, I, I look at there's there's
53:19
there's so much to get stuff that's fallen out of it.
53:21
So that's really cool. I had no idea I mean funny story
53:24
but also the fact that the community rallied and came
53:26
together that's that's awesome. I one of the last kind of big
53:29
topics I want to touch on and then and then I'll I'll I'll end
53:33
with some some more interesting questions.
53:35
Not to say these have been interesting, but a little more
53:37
out there tell us about what's the future like?
53:40
What is the future of community look like?
53:43
So where we? Going.
53:46
Dude, I mean, the biggest thing on my mind is June 25th, right?
53:52
Fifth. OK, you hopefully are gonna.
53:54
I'll be there to do your sequel to the stand up comedy routine.
53:59
We are definitely not paying you to be there, just so you know
54:05
actually you have to pay to get in.
54:07
That's one thing that I'm not giving you any discount or
54:11
anything, alright, but if you want, what I'm thinking is it
54:15
would be really cool to have a stage or a section of the venue
54:21
with a bunch of musical instruments so anybody that
54:23
plays music can go and jam whenever they want.
54:26
Or. Anybody that is a comedian can
54:29
go and tell a few jokes. They can do a 5 minute set if
54:33
they want. That would be cool.
54:37
That would be very cool. But yeah, it's it's a it's
54:41
exciting. I'm trying to.
54:42
We already have a few speakers that have confirmed and I am so
54:48
stoked. So this is another thing.
54:51
It warms my heart like speakers, when I've reached out to them,
54:56
they've been really excited about it.
54:59
And so I can tell you, like Linus Lee, who I'm personally a
55:04
superfan of, he works at Notion and he's given a few talks for
55:08
the virtual conferences. He's going to be there, Ship
55:12
human who is famous in her own right, she's going to be giving
55:15
a talk. And so they like seeing that
55:20
also. I'm looking at the speaker
55:24
lineup that we have. And this is all this is buried
55:27
at the end of this podcast. So I am imagining that not a lot
55:31
of people are listening. Anyway, so I'm gonna say it
55:34
because we have a whole marketing plan on how we're
55:36
gonna get this out. And you'll, if you listen to the
55:39
podcast, you'll probably hear me say this a few times, right?
55:42
But we've got Fazan from who's been on the pod.
55:46
He's a AI product lead at LinkedIn.
55:49
We've got Shreya Rajpal, who is the CEO of Guardrails.
55:53
She's in. We've also got Janie Doshi, who
55:58
is a staff data scientist at Intuit Man.
56:02
There's a lot of incredible people looking at Cameron Wolf,
56:06
Sharon Sue, some some hard hitters.
56:09
I mean we're doing it in for I wanted to say in conjuncture but
56:17
that's not the word in collaboration.
56:19
It starts with a CI knew it right.
56:21
Again grammar not my strong suit but in collaboration with Kolena
56:27
so Colena does AI testing. Mohammed's been on the podcast
56:31
If You Weren't That's that was probably like 2-3 years ago, but
56:36
that's what I'm focusing on. And again I'm a little nervous
56:40
because it's the first time but it is cool and I like honestly
56:44
I've realised that think we've weathered the storm a little bit
56:51
on the whole LM OPS craze and whether or not the we need to
56:56
change the name of the community.
56:58
Look even the balloons, they jumped up the because that was
57:04
the whole thing last year and people saying like Ohh, ML OPS
57:07
is so dead and nobody does ML OPS anymore and LM OPS is all
57:13
anyone cares about or now it's the AI engineer.
57:17
And so that I think we've kind of weathered the storm and we
57:22
know what we're what we're doing and where the strengths are and
57:27
also like how what people in the community want to see.
57:32
And so speaking about the future though more man, I I think I'll
57:40
be winning. Or like all all consider it a
57:45
success. If we just, I can keep the
57:49
lightheartedness, I can keep meeting amazing people, like I
57:53
can keep connecting and learning and doing stupid shit and like
57:58
not taking anything too seriously, right?
58:00
That is for me the the key here because if it becomes, if it
58:08
ever becomes like that feeling of just like then I I think I've
58:15
done something wrong and it and I've created a bit of a what I
58:21
would consider like a a gaol for myself right.
58:23
So that's really that's it. And as far as the future man,
58:29
like I would love to hear from those that are still the three
58:33
people that are still listening how we can create more value for
58:38
you. Like what can we do in the
58:40
community that would be valuable for you.
58:43
And if that means more Michael comedy routines, we can we can
58:48
make that happen. I will start charging at that
58:51
point, so don't don't let that be the first answer.
58:56
Ohh, that's class. Amazing look teachers I mean I I
59:04
think you know I I'm I'm just speaking as 11 member of the
59:07
community and and obviously been so awesome to be be in it.
59:12
Excited about where it's where it's going toward what's going
59:16
to happen next. Super excited about this in
59:18
person event. I mean if you you haven't
59:21
checked out the materials and the talks from the virtual one a
59:23
few weeks ago you definitely should because it was pretty
59:26
high quality. I mean it was, it was it was a
59:29
whole thing. Thousands of people tuned in so
59:31
big deal there. If that's any indication the the
59:35
in person one I'm sure will be amazing.
59:37
There we go. That's it.
59:39
I wanna end up because this is because the vibe of the
59:43
communities more lighthearted. I I One thing I did in prep for
59:46
this is and I want to ask some some crowdsourced questions from
59:50
the community so these are you'll have to field and but
59:56
this is just shows how how how lighthearted I think the
59:58
community is. So one of the questions Burhan
1:00:01
Burhan mentioned and and is really curious about was.
1:00:05
Was was becoming a caveman A deliberate choice for greater
1:00:08
appeals of the community or an outcome of starting the
1:00:10
community? Which is a fair question, I
1:00:12
think. 1ST trick questions. There is no wrong answer there.
1:00:23
And no, this is actually very tame.
1:00:27
This is me, much more tame. You should have seen me 10 years
1:00:30
ago when I didn't have two daughters or any
1:00:35
responsibilities for. Fair enough, Fair enough.
1:00:41
That's always been a part of his look and then we'll probably
1:00:43
continue to be. So another question from Jeremy
1:00:46
McKinnon McManus, what's the stronger hallucinogen DMT or
1:00:50
ChatGPT? These days, I mean, I'm gonna
1:00:56
probably go with ChatGPT. I've got it.
1:01:02
Yeah, that. That's the right answer.
1:01:03
That's the. Right answer actually you know
1:01:05
what dude to Oh my God you're gonna love this.
1:01:08
So again, a little bit of a tangent, but remember how it was
1:01:14
like, we're gonna keep doing stupid shit and you asked what
1:01:17
the future holds? You ready for this?
1:01:22
I don't think you're ready for this, and I don't.
1:01:25
I almost like, don't want to say it to give away the fun.
1:01:28
But again, I I'm expecting there's only two people
1:01:30
listening at this point. So here is what I plan to do
1:01:37
potentially before the in person conference.
1:01:39
If not we'll do it over the summer and we'll do some like
1:01:42
summer of I think we're going to take the shittiest base model
1:01:46
you can get. So probably like stable LM.
1:01:49
And we're going to fine tune it so it only hallucinates and
1:01:55
we're gonna call it mushroom GPT.
1:01:59
Mushroom GPT. That is what we got.
1:02:02
So there you go, Jeremy. We'll see if you can handle
1:02:06
that. That's amazing.
1:02:09
That is amazing. I love that.
1:02:10
That's that's cool. That's quirky.
1:02:12
I thought you were gonna say we're gonna do like MP's,
1:02:14
branded mushrooms, but that's to hand out of the conference.
1:02:18
I think this one is more, more legal.
1:02:20
Yeah. That's amazing. kool-aid at the
1:02:23
conference. That's where the kool-aid truth.
1:02:25
Truth. That's.
1:02:26
Amazing. I I look forward to that.
1:02:29
They're just pleasure as always. This was very cool.
1:02:33
So cool to see and hear about the story of the genesis of the
1:02:36
community and all the fun stuff that you've done and learned.
1:02:40
And I suspect that it will just continue.
1:02:42
It's all uphill from here. So thank you again.
1:02:46
Said that, I have a blast with you.
1:02:49
Obviously that's why I keep inviting you back on here.
1:02:53
That's. That's my third tier in
1:02:54
interviewer. That's that's why you have so
1:02:57
much fun with me. Like, yeah, he's probably 4th or
1:03:00
5th string. Take it.
1:03:02
Take as long as I'm on the team, I'll take it.
1:03:05
Even a benchwarmer gets a championship trophy at the end
1:03:07
of it, right? Exactly, exactly.
1:03:12
Let's look on the bright side, huh?
1:03:13
Ohh, that is it. That's we We are part of the
1:03:20
first the biggest Polish and Spanish speaking in in English
1:03:29
country to community based around AIML in the mid twenty
1:03:37
20s in the world. Alright so the largest in the
1:03:40
world. I guess we'll we'll claim it
1:03:43
what we. Say when we say.
1:03:44
Also like the number 4 Lithuanian podcast on Spotify.
1:03:50
We are. We are the number 4 tech podcast
1:03:55
on podcast. Yeah, that's the way.
1:03:57
Any English speaking, English speaking.
1:03:59
Yeah. England.
1:04:01
Yeah. No.
1:04:02
Doubt, no doubt, yeah. Exactly.
1:04:04
That's gonna change though. Soon enough we're gonna be
1:04:07
getting all of the podcast dubbed with AI, AI generated
1:04:12
voices and everything so. Very cool, man.
1:04:15
This was. Awesome.
1:04:16
I always have a good laugh with you.
1:04:17
Thank you for doing it, and absolutely man humouring me on
1:04:20
this. Pleasure.
1:04:21
Pleasure as always, dude. Alright, see you man.