Brian Liles

Hi, I’m Mike. I’m here at Windy City Rails again with Brian Lau, who is, if you’re in the Ruby community, you’ve probably heard some of his talks or some of the fallout from some of his Twitter conversations with a certain other person who’s well-known in the Ruby community. One thing is you’ve been around kind of forever in the community, and you’ve presented at many, many conferences. Over the years, kind of like how have you seen things evolve or change in the community? So, here’s a good way of putting it. So, let’s go back. Let’s start at the beginning of Rails, 2006. I mean, really, the first RailsConf. There was the Canada on Rails before. Let’s talk about that one. So, at that point, we just learned that we were on something, and then as the years progressed, we learned how to do something with that. And then as the years progressed, we got even better with it, and now, not only are we good at it. We’re good at making money with it. So, I think that’s actually, we’ve basically evolved from, hey, look, we have a cool toy. Now, look how much our toys make us. Yes. So, it’s kind of matured from, oh, this is a fun kind of hobby, neat, we can do cool stuff, to we can do cool stuff and make money making cool stuff with the tools we like. Right. We are actually living the dream. How many people actually can say, hey, my hobby is my job, and by the way, I paid a lot of money to do it. Yeah. And if I didn’t like it right here, I could actually pick up, I could pick up shop and move somewhere else. Not many people can do that these days. Yeah. And with the conferences, though, in particular, you know, audiences mature. I mean, even, I’ve only been coming to Rails conferences for a few years, and I can see changes in the audience. Has that affected, like, your perception of working with the Ruby community, or? Well, I mean, what’s going on now is that. Yeah. When we first started, we were all getting good together, but now, a few years in, actually at RailsConf the last couple of years, I’ve just been giving beginner talks, and the reason why is because there’s so many people that we forget that not everybody has been doing this for a long time, and not everybody actually thinks like us and even understands why we think like we do, so we need to give those lessons to those people. So, I mean, that’s actually a really big thing to show how we are maturing is that, hey, there’s a lot of people who don’t know how to do this and have never even heard of Rails before. This year or last year. Wow. And, you know, and also, you speak at a lot of conferences. Do you have much experience working, speaking at user groups? You know what? Local, I’ve actually spoken at user groups in a few states. Yeah. And, actually, across the pond over in Europe. I’m actually, I think I’m actually approaching my 20th conference. That’s a lot. I do think I’m approaching that. It’s actually, I’ve spoken a lot. And, actually. Now, so I spoke today about ZSH, which has nothing to do with Ruby. Yeah. I’m actually speaking at the beginning of next month in Belgium at R camp, and I’m speaking at RubyConf, and I mean. Now, R, do you mean R as in the platform, or? No, R as in, hey, matey. No, R as in pirates. Pirates, yeah. Yes, as in pirates. It’s a Ruby conference in Belgium, and that’s what I hear. It’s very good. My first time there. They’re flying me there. It’s pretty awesome. Okay. So. So, having spoken at user groups versus speaking at, do you ever use, like, try-out material? One thing that I’ve heard people do is they like to try out material. No, no. I’m like Jay-Z. I don’t even practice my talks. I said I practice my talks. I don’t practice my talks. I never do. I get up there, and the only part that you notice that I didn’t even think about is the part that I was actually reading off of my tablet because I just thought of it. I actually write my talks about a week ahead of time. I actually keep notes for months ahead of time. I write the talk about a week ahead of time. And then I look at it before I talk, and I say, you know something? I know what I’m talking about. Why don’t we just go up there and have a conversation with the crowd? And that’s what I did. Everything, most of that talk was unscripted. Yeah. Yeah. So, you like to just, I mean, a lot of people, you wouldn’t recommend doing that. No. I mean, did you start off being kind of like, I’m going to wing it kind of guy? Well, no. Here’s why. I have a different outlook on talks. You’re either, you’re coming to educate, and you’re coming to entertain. Most people forget about the entertain, and they try to educate. You know something? In 30 to 45 minutes, I’m not going to teach you much of anything. But, if I tell you about a whole bunch of cool stuff that you could look at, and then I tell a joke or two, you’re actually going to remember, hey, remember that funny guy from that conference? Hey, what was he talking about? Oh, Brian said that. And that’s what it is. It’s actually using the humor and using the personal, like, I feel like I’m talking to you because I am talking to the crowd. I feel like it’s a mutual thing. But I use that to actually get my point across. Yeah, and it’s how you got to be known as the T-A-T-F-T, is it? Yeah, I don’t, yeah, I mean, like I said. People know that, I mean, because it’s memorable, and it’s a hook. It is a hook, and actually, that was the whole point. The whole point, so that was the second time I gave that talk. I actually gave it a little bit more serious the first time. I was talking about why people should be testing. And then I gave it again as a lightning talk. So I pared the talk down, and I said, you know something, this is a lightning talk. I only have like five to ten minutes to give this. So every other slide, I just put, test all the fucking time in there. And it was like, it was like, really tiny type, every single time. And, you know, people were like, by the tenth time they saw it, they’re like, oh my God, this guy’s a nut. But you know something? It works, because I’ll tell you what, someone mailed me a shirt. Actually, I’ve had two shirts mailed to me now with that logo on there. With that on there? And I was like, you know something, it’s great that I was able to inspire people to do this. And that’s why I continue coming out and talking at conferences. Okay, well, you know, again, I want to just thank you for taking a few minutes to talk with me. Well, thank you. I appreciate what you’ve done. Well, thank you.