Community Building And User-group Organizing: Mike Hall Interviews Micah Martin | SCNA 2013
Community Building And User-group Organizing: Mike Hall Interviews Micah Martin | SCNA 2013
🚀 Discover how Micah Martin transformed 8thlight from a small office in Libertyville to a thriving 60-person organization. Learn about the importance of open culture, community building, and the craftsmanship movement. 🌐 #softwarecraftsmanship #communitybuilding #8thlight #pairfridays #eighthlightuniversity
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
hi it's Mike with UGtastic I'm here at SCNA 2013 today I'm sitting down with Micah Martin who is the founder and CTO of 8th Light 8th Light 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 8th Light 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 Mike I appreciate it yeah so I remember several years ago you had a small office up in Libertyville yep 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 can come in and and sit with with your company that was really interesting and progressive and I had never seen anybody doing that at the time what what led to you starting there was that your first experience dealing with opening up to the community or how did that manifest
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
well it comes from a long a 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 that community that working with the public just anyone you can get your hands on you know right working with them that's how you grow as a craftsman and you know one of my concerns at 8th Light is that you wear a really tight-knit group but if we don't have external influences we're gonna stagnate with the knowledge that we have and so it was important to kind of open up 8th Light and invite people in so that we get more cross-polonization
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
right and and was this I can't remember that you had some apprentices at the time so you were already looking at the craftsmanship concept I don't remember if this is pre uh craftsmanship manifesto when you were doing the pair of Fridays or was that
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
well it's probably around the same time
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
around the same time yeah so this was all these are all ideas that we're still formulating at the time or the craftsmanship ideas
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
right I mean that was another event that we held at our office I mean that might have been one of the uh like the spirit was already there right we were already embracing the 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 the same motivation I think
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
right in the pair of Fridays is that something I mean I know I once personally so that's that's my history I my first introduction to Ruby was actually at one of those pair of Fridays and I had no idea what was going on and to this day sometimes still don't know what's going on um but the uh uh were there a lot of people that embrace it I know a few people I've spoken to that once but was that something that you had a lot of of of participation and people taking advantage of or
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
no not when we were in Libertyville yeah and we call it waza by the way waza yeah
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Friday afternoon is our waza time
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
waza yeah what uh it's a Japanese word it's a Japanese term uh something that we used to use a lot in martial arts it basically means to practice okay uh so waza is our practice term
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
right so eighth I actually has a lot of references to um you you're big into the Japanese culture so eighth I even itself I mean it roots from like the name of the company um and a lot of the principles come from my experience in martial arts right you have like one or two black belts don't you
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
yeah I do yeah so so you know you come to a conference the where's the bodyguards yeah I'm out of practice right I could not I could not defend myself at all but uh I mean what the real value of martial arts was not self-defense I think it was the discipline the uh the philosophy I mean that was the real value that I got
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
right there and so you've been continued so now it's you've grown from being this this small tight-knit company to being 60 people yeah and it's it you don't really have or I don't think you have the the the formal pair Friday now it's kind of the 8th Light university so it seems that did it did 8th Light university which is a friday events um where people come in and do presentations and there's kind of an open time is that something that evolved from pair friday or was that a totally different initiative that you
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
it was different and it was just convenient to merge them but the whole idea behind 8th Light university was that we we expected our craftsmen to go to conferences and give talks and um you know some people did some people didn't and it occurred to us that you know giving a talk at a conference can be intimidating right and we have an audience of people that you know we share knowledge with so why not have our craftsmen teach uh or give give talks to the rest of the company and uh we started doing that and we're like well you know 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 uh and that turned out to be really popular especially when we moved to the city um and then you know we were already doing open source good practice was on friday so we're like well people can just stay all afternoon and work with us uh and so that's kind of how that evolved
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
now i mean i'm this also makes me think about a lot of those people that i met many years ago or in internet world many years ago uh are still with a flight and are still integral or growing in their in their capacity has has do you feel that this that embracing an open culture where it isn't um 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 so you can come in and talk about the tools you're using it's not like oh that person works on Clojure so they're the only ones who can work on it no they're going to teach everybody else right and learn it has that has that open nature uh do you think that has contributed to some of the long-term uh uh retention of employees at a flight um or is that something else do you think or i would say i don't know what your actual numbers are for for turnover so
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
well you're right i mean a lot of people have been at eighth life for a long time and uh i don't know if it's exactly for for openness um you know i like to 8th Light is favorite my favorite job it's like the most fun i've ever had at work and uh and my goal our goal in wouldn't in 8th Light was to make it that way for everyone we wanted to be the fun place to work for people who are passionate about software and i think that's why people stick around
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
do you think uh you've or not you wouldn't think you would know this have there been any people that have come in through uh presenting at eighth university or participating in a pair of waza events um that you've hired in has that been something that's been a recruiting tool as well or is more about just sharing knowledge or getting the name of a flight out there
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
well it's uh yeah definitely i mean people have come to that university it's a it's a one way that a lot of people first get introduced to a flight and yes we've hired several people that have come to hate flight you but that's that's not our real intent right we just want to we want to share with the rest of the world like we we believe that what we're doing is it works pretty okay um and 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 for all developers out there that's a win too
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
yeah so when a company is looking at ways uh like if you if if im a company maybe in another city and i'm trying to think of ways that i can be um more engaged with the community and 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 um that they might want to think about when they're approaching the developer technical community and how how they can maybe effectively engage the community um
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
i would say just start i mean just you post something on the web or tweet about it and invite people into your office uh you know people who see that they they value that you want to share with them and that that builds relationships and over time word will spread and it'll grow so start a lot of it is just kind of relaxed not everybody's going to steal your ip to the moment they walk in your door no no and you don't you don't need to be super prepared i know some of everything you sessions you know some of those i've done are pretty horrible um you know and people have to they have to know they're coming to this kind of informal event uh there's no it's been polished there and they they know that right but they're still about it's valuable to them anyways you know sometimes a rough cut can just be as useful as anything else
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
yeah yeah well thank you very much for taking the time to sit down i really appreciate it
Micah Martin
community building and user-group organizing
my pleasure this is not a bodyguard crushes my hand
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
all right thank you very much tastic. com