DAVID HILL Happy Wednesday and welcome to the show. I'm your host, David Hill. And joining me today, I have from Chicago Ruby, Anton Tkachov. Did I pronounce your last name correctly or closely enough? Closely enough, yeah. Closely enough, okay. And Michelle Ewan, who is also going to be one of the MCs at Rails World this year. And so I wanted to have you guys on the show. One of those things I kind of constantly have in the back of my head is I don't have an active Ruby meetup. where I'm at now here in Orlando. And I keep thinking about, well, it would be really cool to have one of those near me again, where I can make it close enough to me that I can go regularly. So I wanted to kind of start off and asking you guys about how things have been going with you kind of co -organizing the Chicago Ruby meetup and any lessons you've learned along the way. MICHELLE YUEN So one of the things... that we recently just did. We actually did a guest interview with Hans from Ruby Event Guides, chatting a little bit about like Chicago Ruby and our process and what it takes to start up a local meetup or restart up a local meetup. I will say we were fortunate enough to have had meetup .com or access to meetup .com. That whole community prior to COVID that we were able to like reach out to, to let them know like, Hey, we're starting things up again. We have some really great speakers. We have some really great locations. Thanks to Anton, who's like location recruiter. If you're available, please join us. We might have food. We might not. We'll let you know. We'll be very transparent. Yeah. DAVID HILL know. DAVID HILL You led nicely into a question for Anton. You mentioned how Anton's kind of the location recruiter. Let's talk about that a little bit. Having a place for the meetup to happen is kind of one of those things you've really got to figure out. How do you go about finding places, Anton? ANTON TKACHOV So actually, as you might know, I'm a relatively new person to Chicago. And that's why, of course, I had to double down on building my network that was almost zero two years ago. And I'm running a consultancy, and that was one of the main reasons why I was especially eager to just know the local companies, like know what local companies are doing with Rails, what do they think about Rails, how they combine it with other technologies, if they combine it. So I try to think about Meetups as a system, yeah? And I consider Meetups as a system of three things. It's your attendees. It's your speakers and it's your locations, venues where you actually meet. And of course, predictably, for B2B potential, for some B2B opportunities, aiming to build those connections with companies was the most interesting part for me. But you know what's interesting when we started to discuss all that? I thought that actually you can remove usually... almost any part of this equation of three parts. So if you don't have location, you can try to meet online in the worst case. So maybe you can just agree to meet at some cafe, bar or restaurant or whatever. If you don't have speaker, you can actually try to organize some networking event. I discussed in the show an idea to make a workshop with the attendees on how to... figure out what you can talk about and maybe raise several speakers internally. The only thing that you absolutely must have, that's your attendees. So I think that's the main priority. And David, if I would start a new meetup right now, I would probably start not with the host, but I would start with attendees. And yeah, maybe some cold contact team, reaching your network who are in Orlando or somewhere. nearby. Okay, and several words about hosts. So firstly, yeah, I was lucky enough to get to the place with one of the biggest concentration of Ruby Rails companies in the world, as I assume, because we know that Rails originally came from Chicago, and we have plenty of fintech here. We started with some warm references due to a huge legacy that we had here. And on top of this legacy, it was a little easier to build an outreach campaign. So it was just manual campaign, just sitting right into potential companies. I tried to connect with NURB engineers who are here in Chicago. Sometimes I tried to start conversation at Meetup if they attended. one of them or even just making some code outreach just writing hey i'm anton from chicago ruby it would be great to know a little more about your company and if conversation goes well i say hey by the way we are looking for hosts do you think that your company might be interested and if yes whom we potentially might speak to so that's how it all worked and usually as soon as you contact the right person in the company Usually they are quite easygoing and they can be actually really, really helpful. And maybe the bigger part of the burden for themselves, like, you know, organize everything at their place, providing snacks, beverages, whatever. Food, pizza, it depends. Yeah. And sometimes even here, oh, that's great to hear that you reached out because, you know. that we want to give back to the community. And we probably should. So I even heard words when people say, we probably should do more for the community. So yeah, usually as soon as you find this right person, it immediately pays off for nine or 19 messages that weren't replied at all or whatever. DAVID HILL Okay. That's some interesting information to keep in mind. As I've learned over the years that a lot of people in this profession kind of self -identify as introverts. And I've always had a hard time doing that kind of networking thing of reaching out and contacting people and getting to know them well enough to be able to have those types of conversations has been something that I struggle with a lot. It's good to know that there's kind of a use it for good version, I guess, of that superpower of just like. you're not just like trying to get stuff from them. You're trying to actually help build the community around and giving them opportunities to contribute to the community as well. ANTON TKACHOV Yeah, yeah, of course, partially. We spoke about job market a little. So, you know, on the one hand, usually I believe that companies either struggle with engineers. That is absolutely not the case right now, probably, because right now we know that there are more engineers than opportunities. But at the same time, right now they struggle with all the fake accounts, all the AICVs. I try to highlight an opportunity that when a person has already came to their meetup to their venue, they could meet him in person. They know that this real person is already quite a decent value and potentially a better place to start hiring process from than just exploring people you don't know, never met, and you don't even know when this person is in the US. That happens from time to time. DAVID HILL Yeah, we live in a very interesting time when it comes to hiring in general and tech hiring specifically. ANTON TKACHOV I had really tricky situation lately. So being a remote engineer first, because I worked, most of my career was remote based, remote first. So I based a work on Upwork recently. Of course, I won't discuss any details, but after a short conversation with a person, they said to me that, I'm looking for someone who will work on my behalf for a company under my name and so on. And if you are good, I will send you a laptop via Post. And just never enable your cameras. Always attend meetings without camera and so on. And it's inside the U .S. If you think about outside the U .S. with all those cases with North Korean. and Chinese people who intervene companies on purpose. It's concerning moments. And I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't do anything about it. I decided not to report to this person because it's so unusual and so surprising that I didn't even know how to react. I said, oh no, I think we are absolutely not on the same page. And that's not probably what I should do for the sake of you, myself and the company I would be potentially working on. Still. DAVID HILL It's one of those situations where it's like, it kind of catches you off guard. You don't even know how to respond to it. Did you really just ask me to? Yeah, MICHELLE YUEN that's so strange. I've never heard the story before. Like what? But yeah, I think Anton, you made a good point about the networking aspect of it's a little easier to. Talk to people cold when you have a reason like, hey, Chicago Ruby, I'm here to help and I'm one of the organizers. Are you interested? And the other part is having that face -to -face interaction is like super crucial, like especially nowadays. And with your story, I'm like, what? That is wild. DAVID HILL Anton, you said that you work for a consultancy or you have a consultancy? No, no, ANTON TKACHOV No, no, I'm running a consultancy. And the thing is like previously for the last five years or so, I was only entrepreneur and management side of things. But given that right now you have all those AI agents, I can be much more hands -on. might act as a leader on the one hand, while you still might step in into some projects and so on. And also, you know, things are changing so quickly right now that I have a feeling that if I don't step in as a founder back into technology level, so I have pretty decent engineering background. I wouldn't call myself a great engineer, far away from staff or anything like that level. But still, I think I have this good balance of business technology and all that. So yeah, right now, I would say that sometimes I can literally start working on the project to at least see what's there before assigning anyone, all the engineers and so on. Yeah, that's what I do this year. DAVID HILL year. I would be curious to hear more about what types of things you work on in your consultancy or anything that you could tell us about being an entrepreneur, running your own business. I have a lot of these ideas and fancies in my head. I'm like, oh, that'd be cool to do one day, maybe, if I ever figure out how to start it. I would love to hear how you got started doing that. ANTON TKACHOV I was young with pink glasses. And one thing that I think was the main one, I thought that I'm the cleverest guy in the room. And I always somehow partially underestimated my management. I were on their place, I would do a much better job. And then in three, four years, you understand, oh, you know, I actually wasn't the cleverest guy in the room. But this bias and this misconception allowed me to try that out and end up where I ended up. And one more important thing, I think about entrepreneurship as another learning curve. And it's quite complicated to be good everywhere at once. Right now, I do a little step back more into technology. And I think that probably it might be about actually finding good partners. So David, if you ever consider something like that, and I definitely believe that there might be huge success stories as an engineer, as a manager, as entrepreneur. Sometimes we might think that being entrepreneur is like getting... to the top of the pyramid, but actually it's not even close to that. I think there are different ways to succeed overall. And maybe it's about finding a good team. Maybe in that case, it might be a good founding team. So you might act mostly as founding CTO or something like that. And I think that may be the value, but it would be great to have someone who takes care of marketing, sales and so on. By the way, according to my experience, I think that sales might be a little easier than marketing because, you know, when you have some interest, given the expertise of what you do and given all the experience, it's easier to show the people that you are good in that rather than just create this initial attraction just to make people know about you. So that's my challenges. And so I grew up in other culture. That's why there is no And entrepreneurship is not that widespread, but according to my perspective, I would say that maybe it might sound a little more romantic than it is in practice. Usually it's like just another job, just different kinds of things, just a little more stress sometimes, and quite often a little less money. And so it depends, yeah. Yeah. DAVID HILL The sense that I get from it, the more I learn about entrepreneurship, is that you're never going to feel ready to actually do that. And it's the ability to do it anyways, even though you don't feel ready. And I've never felt ready. ANTON TKACHOV I had some issues in my last consultancy I worked for. And I was on a bench for quite a while. And we started to face some misunderstanding with management and so on. I started to do some. Freelancing on the side, it wasn't at the cost of my main job and main responsibilities. But I still had this like plan B just in case. And actually my entrepreneurship story started with being fired. So I would say that being fired is always two -edged sword. So there is definitely my responsibility. I don't want to say that my management did bad. We just faced some misunderstandings that it probably was. a logical result of all accumulated things. But yeah, it probably was the latest step that forced me into this direction. I don't know how things would turn around if I just kept working on my current place. DAVID HILL So switching gears a little bit, I want to swing the conversation back towards Michelle. You've got a big event coming up next month. It's almost literally a month away from our time of recording here. Yeah. MICHELLE YUEN I can speak a little bit about that. DAVID HILL Let's talk about, you're going to be one of the co -emcees for Rails World. Yes. DAVID HILL Amanda put out a call for applicants basically from meetup organizers. How did the application process go? And what's that process looking like for you at this point? MICHELLE YUEN I can chat a bit about the application process and why I applied specifically. So I'm going to back it up a little bit. and go back to RubyConf Las Vegas. While I was at RubyConf in Vegas, I got to connect with Rachel Wright Munn over some early morning coffee. Since I'm used to Chicago time, which is two hours ahead of Vegas, and she's three hours ahead of Vegas, we were both up pretty early throughout the whole conference. And that worked well for us because we got to get a nice, quiet coffee and have... a great chat about various things. One of which we talked about our upcoming conferences. So I mentioned that I was heading to Rails Camp in Portland, which I'm really excited about to like hanging out with the folks there. And Rachel mentioned that she would be speaking at Rails World, which was news to me. And I'm like, oh, I'm so excited for you. Like I was super excited for her. And I did mention that I'd love to attend Rails World someday. Unfortunately, at least at the time, it wasn't in the cards for me. I didn't have enough professional development funding left for the year. And since I work for a nonprofit like at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, making another big conference trip to Austin right after Las Vegas and Portland just wasn't going to happen for me budget -wise. Fast forward to maybe a day after RubyConf. I get a message from Rachel with a link to the announcement that Rails World was looking for MCs and that they were looking for local Ruby community organizers to MC. So I hopped on that opportunity and filled out the application because honestly, the prospect of getting to introduce and celebrate my friends who are also speakers in... the Ruby and Rails community was so hard to pass up. I couldn't do it. I had to apply. DAVID HILL Right. Yeah. MICHELLE YUEN So I filled out the application. I can't remember what the questions were or what I answered on the form, but I do remember a couple of things. So I should note. I really wanted my application to stand out. So I added links to my Ruby events profile page, which showcases all the Chicago Ruby events that I emceed, as well as one of my talks for WNB. I think I also added a link to my guest spot on the Ode to Rails Conf podcast, where you and I chatted a bit about my experience with the Scholars and Guides program. That's been a hot minute since we had that conversation. DAVID HILL been a hot minute since we had that conversation. MICHELLE YUEN Yes, yeah. Shout out to listeners. Highly recommend you check that episode out if you haven't. MICHELLE YUEN But the other part of the application that I do remember... was that they were asking for a personal reference on the application. Again, I really wanted my application to stand out. So apologies here, David. Just knowing how close you and I have become, and at the time of applying, you just took over this podcast, and you've also been part of... other big podcasts, Remote Ruby, O2 RailsConf. I used your name as a reference. DAVID HILL In your defense, you did ask me beforehand and I enthusiastically said yes. MICHELLE YUEN Yeah, thank God you said yes. But I want to say maybe those were the two big things that were the biggest factors of why I got to move on to the next stage of that application. Yeah, so... I remember filling out the application really early, like pretty much as soon as the form opened, I applied. And then knowing that it was closing like maybe two, three weeks later, I went on with my life after I applied. Come the day after the form closes, I get an email from Amanda asking if I could have a call with her. We had that call. She's amazing. I really like her. But yeah, in that call, she asked a couple questions, one of which is why I've never been to Rails World. I can't afford it. That's pretty much the big thing. It's on my bucket list, but I would love to go. Please say yes. She also asked about Chicago Ruby, and I mentioned that... We're a pretty great crew, not to be biased or anything. But Chicago Ruby is slowly coming back to our pre -COVID numbers, which is great. It's great to see. When she made the decision, I think it was on that call that I'd be MC. I can't remember what she and I were chatting about, but I remember that she and I were giggling probably over some silly joke. I remember Amanda saying like between her giggles, like, oh, and by the way, I want you to do this. And me thinking like, yes, yes, I would love to. Like, we're still joking here. Let me know when you make the decision. I would love to do it. And she's like, no, no, seriously, I want you to do it. You got it. And I was floored, like jaw dropping. I was a cartoon. Internally, I was jumping for joy, but also. I was trying to keep my cool. I can't remember what I said next. I just hope I had some poise and grace there. But my guess is that I said something along the lines of like, this is amazing news. Yes, yes. 1000 times yes. I had to double check with my manager, make sure that she's aware, get permission. But I'm pretty sure the answer will be yes. Thank you so much. I also asked her if I could share the news with people, and she said keep it under wraps until the formal announcement. So I told you and a couple other people. Now Amanda knows that you told people. DAVID HILL Now Amanda knows that you told people. I was like, I deliberately never even hinted to her that I knew already. MICHELLE YUEN Oops. Yeah, Amanda, David already knew. Because I was very excited. ANTON TKACHOV Is your editor good enough to remove this? That's up to Michelle. We'll leave that for her to decide. MICHELLE YUEN We can keep it. I think Amanda will love to hear that. Now I can shout to the world. I am one of the Rails World MCs and I'm so thrilled about it. I think in terms of like prep, I've booked my flights and we have a hotel, but Amanda will get back to me in terms of like next steps. She did mention that Nathan, she and I, she, Nathan and I will sync up closer to the date so that we can chat about. who's introing which speakers or which track, and then the overall script. So I'm feeling very excited for the day. DAVID HILL I remember when Amanda made the announcement that they wanted meetup organizers to apply to MC the conference. I reached out to Amanda. I was just kind of like, hey, if you ever extend this, maybe to allow podcast hosts, I would love to do that. taken a serious look at the form and at the application process and was like thinking about it, even though I didn't have a meetup. So I was like, obviously it wasn't actually a real option. But then you at RubyConf mentioning that you wanted to apply for it. I kid you not. The first thing that ran through my head was, oh, Michelle would be great. She should totally do that. MICHELLE YUEN Oh, that's so sweet. DAVID HILL Thanks. And so... The news when it came that you were picked for it was just kind of like, well, yeah, because Amanda's a smart person and she picked the right person for that. That's absolutely the choice that should have been made. MICHELLE YUEN Well, I'm flattered. Yay. Thanks, David. DAVID HILL I was already looking forward to Rails World anyways, but having you there to emcee it and introduce some of the speakers is going to be super fun. MICHELLE YUEN Oh, I'm excited. I know for sure I'm introducing a lot of my friends, so very excited. I also bought... cowboy boots to match the aesthetic yes the aesthetic yes i am planning on i think amanda said that she got a mechanical bull or something like that you did mention that yeah i might ride that just to see i will probably fall in like half a second but if it's there i'm gonna try it yeah i'm DAVID HILL aesthetic yes DAVID HILL did mention that yeah i MICHELLE YUEN might ride that just to see i will probably fall in like half a second but if it's there i'm gonna try it yeah DAVID HILL i'm Kind of still in shock a little bit about how much effort Amanda has put into like bringing the character of Austin into the conference. It's going to be an interesting experience. I expect I'm going to take a lot of pictures and a lot of video of a lot of things. MICHELLE YUEN Since Nathan is Austin native to hear everything that he has to share, because I'm sure as a local, he'll know all the cool places. DAVID HILL That's true. It's always helpful to have a local in that role to kind of help guide people to like the really, the stuff you're not going to see as a general tourist. MICHELLE YUEN Yeah, exactly. ANTON TKACHOV If they get it right, they plan to bring mechanical bull to their conference, yeah? Yep. Will there be a live broadcast of the bull? Probably not. MICHELLE YUEN But I did hear that there's also like music. DAVID HILL Live music. It was another thing she brought up that they're going to have live music. I don't know how or where that's going to be taking place, but apparently it's a thing. MICHELLE YUEN I'm excited. So one last question for both of you to kind of wrap up. DAVID HILL last question for both of you to kind of wrap up. This is a question that I need to start asking more people because my list is getting short. I would like to see if either of you could suggest other people that I should bring on the podcast to talk to sometime. MICHELLE YUEN I think Jim Remzik would be great. If you haven't chatted with him yet, I'm just recommending Jim to everyone. DAVID HILL Jim is legitimately amazing. So yeah, I don't know why, but it didn't even occur to me to ask him to come on the podcast sometime. So thank you for that suggestion already. Yes, that's definitely something I need to do. MICHELLE YUEN Ifat Rabon, she's a great speaker in Chicago. Tyler Ewing. I'm going to list a bunch of Chicago Ruby folks because I love the community. I love the members of it. MICHELLE YUEN love the community. I love the members of it. Why wouldn't I? You're just spreading the love. DAVID HILL just spreading the love. I can appreciate that. MICHELLE YUEN Yeah, those were the top three people I had in mind. I'm sure there's plenty more. So I will DM you after this with plenty more names. Oh, DAVID HILL I love it. I need more suggestions. MICHELLE YUEN Yeah. Brandon Weaver, Mike Dalton. You already had Mike on, though. Yeah. DAVID HILL That's true. I did have Mike on already. ANTON TKACHOV I think of Steven from California. I think he's pretty active in the community. He's almost... everywhere as a volunteer as someone else michelle how do you think is it a good idea do you think that steve would probably agree yeah i think he would be great i think you will have a hard time to get him to speak he likes to be behind the scenes as opposed to oh i see yeah yeah but i think he would be great thank you for that both of you because i MICHELLE YUEN that steve would MICHELLE YUEN think he would be great i think you will have a hard time to get him to speak he MICHELLE YUEN likes to be behind the scenes as opposed to oh i see yeah yeah but i think he would be great thank DAVID HILL oh i see yeah yeah DAVID HILL you for that both of you because i After like a bunch of travel this past month with RubyConf and with some other travel that I had going on, I didn't realize that my backlog of names has gotten really short. I was like, wait, I need to know who else to talk to now. ANTON TKACHOV By the way, DAVID HILL maybe another would hint. So I have no idea whether you will agree or not. ANTON TKACHOV have no idea whether you will agree or not. But our next host for Chicago Ruby September, Beyond Finance, and they have, I think, VP of Engineering, Sergio. ANTON TKACHOV And as far as I know, so maybe it's just a coincidence, but the last year I could connect with him. I don't remember. Probably it was called contact. And then I noticed, maybe it was just a coincidence. I noticed that they sponsored RailsConf, I believe. Yeah. They sponsored SF Ruby, as far as I know. They sponsor major events throughout. this year probably as well. So I believe this. MICHELLE YUEN I know. ANTON TKACHOV Michelle, do you know whether they sponsored Rubicon or not this year? MICHELLE YUEN Beyond Finance? I believe they did when we were chatting with Sergio. Sergio Rabiella is his last name. He was also in attendance at Rubicon. ANTON TKACHOV were chatting with MICHELLE YUEN Yeah, no, he would be a really great person to reach out to too. ANTON TKACHOV Yeah, so my observations, I think that the thing that Beyond Finance sponsors immense I'm pretty sure it's actually initiated and the merit of Sergio. So I think that, you know, those are kind of people that maybe almost no one knows. At the same time, I think they play quite a huge role behind the curtains. Maybe as Steven. I don't know whether Sergio is more like open and talkative. And just in case, once again, we will meet with him on September 9th. That's our meetup date. Ask him in person if that's interesting for him. Or like I can make an intro, I don't know, whatever. Any option we could set this up somehow. Awesome. We'll definitely be in touch about that. DAVID HILL I need to get more guests lined up. ANTON TKACHOV I can send you his LinkedIn to you. So at least you can have a look and have some idea. DAVID HILL some idea. That would be perfect. About this person. ANTON TKACHOV About this person. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. DAVID HILL Well, thank you both for coming on the show today. MICHELLE YUEN Thanks, David. DAVID HILL Yeah, likewise. It was a pleasure. Thanks a lot for having us. This has been the Ruby on Rails podcast. It was a pleasure talking with Michelle and Anton today, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how Rails world goes. Thank you for listening.