Micah Martin

User groups with lots to say, interviews and more, no way, sharing great ideas in the tech community. Fascinating conversations, a plethora of information, find out for yourself today at uktastic.com. Hi, it’s Mike with Uktastic. I’m here at SCNA 2013. Today I’m sitting down with Micah Martin, who is the founder and CTO of Aethlite. Aethlite is also the main organizing body behind the SCNA conference at this time. It didn’t start that way. It used to be a pair relationship, but we’ll get to that in a second. I’m sorry I went off the script there. But what is interesting is that SCNA has been around for five years, but there is a history for Aethlite working with the community and having an open relationship with the community that went beyond just a conference and a user group. So thanks for taking the time to sit down with me, Micah. I appreciate it. So I remember several years ago you had a small office. You had this office up in Libertyville, and there was a few people, but you had this idea of a pair Friday. And people could come in. I don’t remember if we had RSVP or something like that, but you could come in and sit with your company. That was really interesting and progressive, and I had never seen anybody doing that at the time. What led to you starting there? Was that your first experience dealing with opening up to the community, or how did that manifest? Well, it comes from a long, long way back. You know, starting my career, how I learned everything was really by working with other people and meeting new people. I mean, that’s how new ideas came into my repertoire, and new languages came into my repertoire. So that community, working with the public, just anyone you can get your hands on, you know, working with them, that’s how you grow as a craftsman. And, you know, one of my concerns at Aethlite is that, you know, we’re a really tight-knit group, but if we don’t have external influences, we’re going to stagnate with the knowledge that we have. And so it was important to kind of open up Aethlite and invite people in so that we get more cross-pollinization. Right. And was this, I can’t remember, you had some apprentices at the time, so you were already looking at the craftsmanship concept. I don’t remember if this was pre-craftsmanship metaphor, did you have a craftsmanship manifesto when you were doing the Pear Fridays, or was that… Well, it was probably around the same time. Around the same time? Yeah. So this was all, these were all ideas that were still formulating at the time, or… The craftsmanship ideas? Right. I mean, that was another event that we held at our office. I mean, that might have been one of the, like the spirit was already there, right? We were already embracing the principles of Software craftsmanship. But yeah, we invited about 20 people into the Libertyville office to talk about Software craftsmanship, as well. So it was all part of that same motivation, I think. Right. And the Pear Fridays, is that something, I mean, I know I once, personally, so that’s my history. My first introduction to Ruby was actually at one of those Pear Fridays. And I had no idea what was going on. And to this day, sometimes, still don’t know what’s going on. But the… Were there a lot of people that embraced that? I know a few people I’ve spoken to that once, but… Was that something that you had a lot of participation and people taking advantage of, or… No, not when we were in Libertyville. And we call it Waza, by the way. Waza? Yeah, Friday afternoons are Waza time. Waza? Yeah. And it’s a Japanese word? It’s a Japanese term, something that we used to use a lot in martial arts. It basically means to practice. Okay. So Waza is our practice term. Right, so Eighth Light actually has a lot of references to, you’re big into the Japanese culture. So Eighth Light even itself… I mean, it roots from the name of the company, and a lot of the principles come from my experience in martial arts. You have like one or two black belts, don’t you? Yeah, I do. Yeah, so, you know, you come to a conference, where’s the bodyguards? I’m out of practice, right? I could not defend myself at all. But, I mean, the real value of martial arts was not self-defense. I think it was the discipline, the philosophy. I mean, that was the real value that I got out of it. Right. And so, you’ve grown from being this small, tight-knit company to being 60 people? Yeah. And you don’t really have, or I don’t think you have the… The formal Pear Friday, now it’s kind of the Eighth Light University. So it seems that… Did Eighth Light University, which is a Friday event, where people come in and do presentations, and there’s kind of an open time, is that something that evolved from Pear Friday, or was that a totally different initiative that you… It was different, and it was just convenient to merge them. But the whole idea behind Eighth Light University was that we expected our craftsmen to go to conferences and give talks. And some people did, some people didn’t. And it occurred to us that giving a talk at a conference can be intimidating. Right. And we have an audience of people that we share knowledge with, so why not have our craftsmen teach or give talks to the rest of the company? Mm-hmm. And we started doing that, and we’re like, “Well, we’re not working on any client stuff, right? There’s no secrets here. Why don’t we just open it up to the public?” Right. And anyone can come. And that turned out to be really popular, especially when we moved to the city. And then, you know, we were already doing open source practice, Waza, on Friday. So we’re like, “Well, people can just stay all afternoon and work with us.” And so that’s kind of how that evolved. Now, I mean, this also makes me think about a lot of those people that I met many years ago in the Internet world many years ago are still with Eighth Light, and are still integral. They’re still integral or growing in their capacity. Do you feel that embracing an open culture where it isn’t an isolated, you come in, we close the doors, we lock the doors, we have trade? I mean, you do, of course, have trade secrets, but the information that you’re sharing, the tools, those aren’t the trade secrets. It’s the client’s work that’s trade. Yeah. So you can come in and talk about the tools you’re using. It’s not like, “Oh, that person works on closure.” So they’re the only ones who can work on it. No, they’re going to teach everybody else. Right. Has that open nature, do you think that has contributed to some of the long-term retention of employees at Eighth Light? Or is that something else, do you think? Or I would say I don’t know what your actual numbers are for turnover. Well, you’re right. I mean, a lot of people have been at Eighth Light for a long time. Yeah. And I don’t know if it’s exactly for our openness. You know, I like to – Eighth Light is my favorite job. It’s like the most fun I’ve ever had at work. And my goal, our goal in Eighth Light was to make it that way for everyone. We want it to be the fun place to work for people who are passionate about software. And I think that’s why people stick around. Do you think you’ve – or not, you wouldn’t think. You would know this. Have there been any people that have come in through presenting at Eighth Light University or participating in a Pura Huaza event that you’ve hired in? Has that been something that’s been a recruiting tool as well? Or is it more about just sharing knowledge or getting the name of Eighth Light out there? Well, it’s – yeah, definitely. I mean, people have come to Eighth Light University. It’s one way that a lot of people first get introduced to Eighth Light. And yes, we’ve hired several people that have come to Eighth Light U. But that’s not our real intent, right? We just want to – we want to share with the rest of the world. Like, we believe that what we’re doing is – it works pretty okay. Whereas a lot of people are not doing so well with software. And so if we can help the world get better and make software more enjoyable for all developers out there, that’s a win, too. Yeah. So when a company is looking at ways – like, if I’m a company maybe in another city and I’m trying to think of ways that I can be more engaged with the community and become more a part of the community instead of just being an isolated company, what are some of the – what’s some advice you might give that they might want to think about when they’re approaching the developer technical community? And how they can maybe effectively engage the community? I would say just start. I mean, just, you know, post something on the web or tweet about it and invite people into your office. People who see that, they value that you want to share with them. And that builds relationships. And over time, word will spread and it’ll grow. So start. And a lot of it is just kind of relax. Not everybody’s going to steal your IP the moment they walk in your door. No, no. And you don’t need to be super prepared. I know some of our ATLU sessions, you know, some of those that I’ve done are pretty horrible. You know, people have to – they have to know they’re coming to this kind of informal event. There’s no spin polish there. And they know that. Right. But they’re still – it’s valuable to them anyways, you know? Yeah. Sometimes a rough cut can just be as useful as anything else. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down with me. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. He says he’s not a bodyguard. He crushes my hand. All right. Thank you very much, Micah. User groups with lots to say. Interviews and more. No way. Sharing great ideas in the tech community. Fascinating conversations. A plethora of information. Find out for yourself today at ucdastic.com. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.