November 14, 2025 • 41 mins
In this solo episode, I open up about what’s been going on behind the scenes with Ruby Rogues and why you’ve been hearing more solo shows from me lately. Between new full-time work, family life, and shifting schedules among the panelists, it’s been a wild stretch — but I’m committed to keeping the show coming to you every week. From there, I dive into something that’s been on my mind for a while now: the health of the Ruby community and what Minaswan really means in 2024.
I reflect on the growing cultural and political tensions I’ve seen spill into technical spaces and why I believe our community is stronger when we focus on behavior, kindness, and collaboration rather than labels and ideological litmus tests. I talk about how we can disagree without dividing, maintain safe and welcoming spaces without gatekeeping based on worldview, and get back to what brought us all here in the first place: a shared love of Ruby, learning, and helping each other grow.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ruby-rogues--6102073/support.
I reflect on the growing cultural and political tensions I’ve seen spill into technical spaces and why I believe our community is stronger when we focus on behavior, kindness, and collaboration rather than labels and ideological litmus tests. I talk about how we can disagree without dividing, maintain safe and welcoming spaces without gatekeeping based on worldview, and get back to what brought us all here in the first place: a shared love of Ruby, learning, and helping each other grow.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ruby-rogues--6102073/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, folks, welcome back to another episode of Ruby Rogues.
So I'm gonna let y'all know, since this is the
second Ruby Rogues episode in a row, that is just
me let y'all know kind of what's been going on.
So in uh, and then I'm gonna talk a bit
about Miniswan and the community and things like that, because
(00:27):
I'm seeing a lot of things that are concerning me there.
Let me jump in and talk a little bit first
about just where things are. So I wound up getting
a full time working at Price Picks in March, and
that has taken up a lot of time and and
so I've put a lot of effort in there. And
between that and all the stuff going on with my
(00:48):
kids in school and and all that stuff, I haven't
been as good about scheduling guests to come on the show.
And Valentino got a new job as well. He's not
a doctor anymore, and so anyway, it's just there's been
a lot going on, and so we haven't been as
diligent about recording. But I want to get back into this.
(01:10):
I actually intend talked about this on another show just
out Ruby Tip of the Day, do some stuff about
AI and Ruby and so keep an eye out for
that stuff. But yeah, so there will be an episode
every week, even if it's just me for the foreseeable future.
But I have started inviting guests, and so we're going
(01:31):
to see if we can get some of the folks
on who are talking about interesting stuff or doing interesting
stuff in the Ruby community. In the meantime, I wanted
to talk today a little bit about miniswan. So if
you're newer to the Ruby community or I haven't heard
the term before, Miniswuan stands for matts is nice, and
(01:52):
so we are nice. And when I joined the Ruby community,
that was kind of a mantra that all cited as
one of the things they really loved about the Ruby
community was that they would join the community and people
would embrace them and invite them to be part of things,
and would be excited to have them around and would
help them out and things like that. And over the year,
(02:16):
feels like some people have need to embrace that, and
we've also had other elements of the community that have,
let's just put in a friendly way and say they haven't.
Some of this is down to kind of the political
climate that we find ourselves in right so some people
just don't want to associate with people on the other
(02:36):
side of the political aisle, at least here in the US.
I have tried to keep my politics out of the
shows for the most part. I mean it's cropped up.
I got canceled on Twitter for it in twenty nineteen.
But for the most part, you're not listening to hear
what I think about social issues. You're not here to
(02:59):
hear what I have to say about Utah or US politicians. Right,
You're not here to get my take on some of
these other issues. Right. You're here because we all love Ruby,
and we all want to level up with Ruby. We
all want to learn to write code better. We all
want to, you know, remain employed. I'm trying to think,
(03:22):
you know what other things you know, write code that
we love, build businesses, all of that stuff, Right, And
so if I'm talking about that stuff and I'm providing
you with things that help you with those areas, then
I feel like that's you know, that that's the powerful thing,
that's that's where the payoff is. But if I'm out
(03:43):
there and I'm saying, well, I don't want to talk
to so and so because they don't align with me politically,
then that's not in the spirit of Minnsuan, But it's
also what does that have to do with you and
I loving Ruby and having that in common? And so
let's just speak about this for a minute, because I
want to talk about a few areas where I'm seeing
(04:03):
this crop ups. One of them is there's a fairly
large Ruby discord out there that I've seen them ban
or otherwise pile on people because of their stances that
they've taken on various things. And you know, usually it's
not something has to do with the Ruby community, right,
(04:23):
I mean, if so, let's back up for a minute, Right,
So last week I talked about the situation with Ruby
e gems and Budler and things like that, which, by
the way, apparently the ruby gems and Butler repos have
moved over to the Ruby organization instead of Ruby Central, right,
So Ruby Core team's going to manage those, which is awesome,
right because it kind of takes a lot of this
(04:45):
out of the hands of people that some of the
community doesn't trust anymore. And the other thing is is
that they're kind of more core to the Ruby core
than they are to the Ruby Ruby Central can hopefully
just hopefully just can continue to maintain ruby gems dot
org and you know, we can tamp down some of
the concerns there, right, so then they can just be
(05:08):
good stewards of that, they can keep it running and
everybody can be happy and move along. Right. But yeah,
so we've seen a lot of anger and frustration and concern, right,
and to my thinking, right, a lot of that is
appropriate to our community because it's like, hey, you know,
we saw Andre log onto those servers when he shouldn't have, right,
(05:32):
and so we can express concern about that. Right now.
I'm not going after him for anything that has to
do with anything outside of the Ruby community, because that's
not really relevant to what we're talking about. But I
can express concern over whether or not I feel like
I can trust the guy based on his behavior, Right,
you know, look at some of the other things that
(05:53):
are going on out there and recognize that, you know,
if somebody's not being a good steward of the gem
that they write, right, and so that they'll open up
security vulnerability or you know, there's a team out there
that maintains a framework or something you use, right, and
(06:14):
you you find that they're hero days and then they're
not taking right. So all of those things I feel
like are appropriate for us to call out and say, hey,
look right, you're not you're not being a responsible actor community.
As far as ideas and issues and practice go, the
(06:39):
community has a reasonable expectation that you will uphold. Right.
But again, a lot of that really just boils down
to the code and things like that now into personal conduct.
I also, I don't I'm not opposed to saying, hey,
look you know uh Miniswan, for example, we're going to
try each other with respect, We're going to be kind
(07:01):
to each other, We're gonna we're going to help each
other where we can, right, and having those be values
that we appropriately affect within the community. Right. And so yeah,
I see Coft right where it says, hey, don't don't
treat people poorly because of their sexual orientation or this
(07:25):
or that or the other. Right, And I would like
to add political leanings to that. Right, So we don't
discriminate people, we don't bully people, we don't mistreat people.
We don't ban people because they think differently from us,
or because they behave differently from us. Now, if you're
coming into my community and you're being a total jerk off, right,
(07:49):
You're you're just mistreating people, and you know that does
maybe reflect you know, some value that you hold. Then yeah,
that's behavior that I don't have to tolerate. And I
can say no, you're out right, but the reality is
is then I have that code of conduct to fall
back on and say, you should have known that if
you started mistreating people, I was going to kick you out.
(08:13):
I want to call out one thing in particular. So
I was at a Rocky Mountain Ruby conference a few
weeks ago, and there were a couple of talks where
they talked about their communities, and I'm going, yeah, and
then I love that, right, I love that, Hey, you
know we've got this library or this you know. One
of them was Hanami and dry RB, right, and they
(08:35):
do cool stuff, interesting work. But the guy up there said, yeah,
and we put together this community. And then he basically said,
and I'm gonna use some politically charged language here again,
I see it from both sides, and so I'll call
it out from the other side in a minute. But
you know, they basically said no Nazis, transfoms, or fat
phobes or fascists right in the channel, and I was
(08:58):
sitting there thinking to myself, well, how does somebody know
if they meet your definition of a Nazi, transphobe or fascist? Right?
You know. On the other side, you know a lot
of times we hear what snowflakes or libtards or you know,
things like that, and again, you know, not helpful, right,
(09:18):
And again it is down to, hey, you know what
kind of people do we want? And for me, it
has a whole lot more to do with your behavior
in the community. Right, So just to go back to
the nazi and transphobe and fascist for minerals, those terms, right,
So what does define a Nazi? Like? How do you
(09:39):
how do you determine if somebody who joins your community
meets that definition and is not welcome? Right? As you know,
I see some people and it seems like they would
categorize that as you know, maybe people who voted for
Donald Trump, or people who have conservative politically means, or
(10:05):
who support Republican candidates in any way. But what I
find is that there are a lot of people out
there that I talk to that Donald Trump kind of
drives him nuts, but they voted for the guy because
they thought that the economics would be better, or maybe
they don't buy into some of the premises or messages
(10:26):
where people are trying to make him out to be
you know, hateful or this or that or the other, right,
and they're like, well, no, I see him doing the
things that you're calling out as evil for reasons that
I think are reasonable. And so to me, the concern
over the idea of calling somebody out as a Nazi
(10:49):
is that what you're saying is is that fundamentally they
want to harm people of the specific race or religion, right,
or that you know, they're looking and to some kind
of purity with the Aryan purity thing that the Nazis
did or something like that, and so, and it's got
this historical context and so it it it doesn't have
(11:12):
a good definition. And if you're concerned with, okay, well
you know these people have some issue with some other
group of people, well then just call that out in
your you know, in your code of conduct. And instead
of saying Nazis, say look, we don't mistreat people based
on race, we don't mistreat people based on religion. Right.
(11:32):
It's the same thing with transphobes, right. So the term
I mean, it's it's a little more directed, because if
you're mistreating people because they're transgender, right, and I don't
think anybody gets behind that, or at least no reasonable
people do, right, I think again, going back to Minnisuan,
we want people to feel welcome, you know, just to
(11:54):
put kind of a finer point on it, right. I'm
a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
day Saints. A lot of people call us Mormons, right,
and the church specifically teaches that transgender surgeries and transgender
stuff is just you know, it's not okay, it's not
(12:15):
in line with what God teaches us. Right now. The
church is also pretty explicit about, hey, look, we're kind
of people who don't believe what we believe, and we're
kind of people who you know, don't act in line
with our beliefs. Right. Another one of our beliefs is
that we don't drink alcohol or coffee or tea. And
you know, again, I don't go and you know, shun
(12:38):
people because they drink alcohol, right, just like I don't
go and shun people who are transgender. A couple of
the shows on this network, including Ruby Rogues, have had
transgender hosts, and you know, they were great hosts. They
talked about stuff they knew. There's stuff they were you know,
(13:00):
knowledgeable and friendly and helpful, and that's what I wanted
in a host and so I had them around. Right now,
do am I going to sign off on their lifestyle
and say that that's the right way to live? No? Right,
because I don't believe it. But am I going to
mistreat them? No? Why? Because they obviously have a different
(13:21):
value system than I do, and so they're going to
make those decisions based on whatever it is that they believe.
And you know, and so we can have discussions about
what we believe is fundamental truth without beating each other
up verbally and without mistreating people and still walk away
as friends. And that's a lot of what's in the
(13:44):
spirit of Miniswan. But you know, if somebody doesn't want
to talk about it, I'm going to I'm not going
to force them to talk about it. I don't have
to write. I have plenty of stuff going on in
my life to where I don't need to worry about
what they're doing. Right, And you know, if it's my
kids or somebody else that I have that kind of
a relationhi ship with, then I can have that conversation
with them, but I have that kind of relationship with
(14:04):
them too, and so I just I get really frustrated
with this. The other one is fascist, right, And again,
you know it's like, you know, I think it's kind
of become this code for authoritarian authoritarian or you know,
somebody who kind of moves a little bit beyond what
(14:25):
has been the norm and does things that makes people uncomfortable.
And what I again, what I want to push on
there is, you know, I would be much more comfortable
if we're calling out the behaviors that we don't want
to see, right. And so it's like, again, you know,
you're not going to do these kinds of things. You're
not going to attack these kinds of people, at least
(14:48):
within our community right now. If you're going out and
supporting other political movements or you're speaking in public or
things like that, then you know, do whatever you want.
But within the community, if if you're going to be
mistreating these people, then you're not welcome, right, And and
I would rather make that distinction then go off into
(15:09):
this other stuff, right. And it's the same thing for
going the other way, right. So I mean, I'll confess
that I'm very politically and socially conservative, right. So, and
I talk to people that kind of on my side
of the aisle quite a bit because I'm involved in
politics here in Utah, and some of them make out
(15:32):
that well, if these you know, liberal people weren't such morons,
they would understand how this stuff works. And I look
at them and I go, well, look, you know, the
thing is is that I know a lot of liberal
people who are really really intelligent people, right, and they
care deeply about other people, and they're they're looking for
(15:54):
solutions to these places where they see people suffer. And
so I can't just write them off as idiots, right,
because I know that they're not. I know that they're
intelligent people. I know that they have, you know, some
values that I share, right, because I don't want to
see people suffer either. And so for me, I have
to look at it and go, Okay, well, then what
(16:16):
are the fundamental things that are different between me and
them and what we believe? Right? What do I believe
that they don't or what do they believe that I don't?
That fundamentally shifts the argument for them, right, placing more
weight on than I am. What things are they hearing?
That I'm not hearing what things am I hearing that
they're not hearing, right, And if we can get down
(16:38):
to that, then it starts to make sense. And I
can see the a, the humanity and the other people,
and B understand that, you know what, they may vote
different from me and may vote for things that I
think are scary. Right, It's like, hey, look, you know,
if we go all the way down that road, you know,
talk about your tutalitarianism or authoritarianism. I think we get
(17:01):
way down that road and it gets freaky scary. But
I can see where they're coming from with that stuff,
and then we can have a conversation about it, and
I don't have to hate them for doing things that,
you know, enable some of these movements that I honestly
think are evil, you know, because at the end of
(17:21):
the day, yeah, there may be somebody up the chain
that's giving them bad information on purpose to gain power,
or maybe the people up the chain believe it too. Right.
I think there are both kinds out there. I think
they're both kinds on both sides or all sides, I guess,
because sometimes it's not a two sided thing. But at
the end of the day, right, we need to recognize
that there are reasons why people behave the way that
(17:43):
they do. And so if you come back to this, well,
Nazis because through Trump, right, And the thing is is,
I know, like I said before, I know a lot
of people who voted for a lot of reasons, and
a lot of those reasons have nothing to do with
hating a particular group. They just had specific concerns about
the way the country was going and how that affected
their lives, and so they voted that way. And a
(18:07):
lot of people are centrist enough to where in the
next election they may vote the other way. And that's
all understandable. But you know, demonizing people as Nazis is
just not helpful, especially when you're not getting into the
nitty gritty of Okay, the things that I specifically think
are evil and we're not going to tolerate those in
(18:28):
our community. I want to get into another one, and
I'm sure I'm definite with some people here, and that's
David d So, David says a lot of stuff. I
could say that about a number of people, public people,
(18:48):
but he says a lot of stuff, and to be honest,
a lot of the things that he says I agree
with me, will go as far as he does on something,
or you know, maybe I have a little bit more
nuanced than he does. In a lot of cases. I
think he's diagnosing a lot of the in the world
at large, and he does right and and out on
(19:12):
a lot of issues in the world at large. Now
I want step back because when I see him at
like Ruby Rails World and other Ruby, he expresses a
strong worldview, but it's almost always within the realm of
the Ruby community and what's going on with Ruby or rails,
(19:34):
and so you know, if you want to go watch
a Rail's World keynote, more power to you, right, don't
like his worldview on other stuff, then don't go read
his blog. And I don't know. Maybe I don't have
a problem separating things that way, and and maybe other
folks do. But honestly, it's it's just I get I
(19:57):
get so worried sometimes that we get so wrapped up
in this. And there are folks that tried to kind
of stage this boycott of anything involving DHH because of
his stances on things. And again, you know, I think
we have all been richly benefited by having things like
(20:20):
Ruby on Rails and the work that he's done out
there in the world. And I think we should all
support him when he does the right thing with Ruby
and rails, and then if you want to go and
fight the other political battles on the other fronts where
you don't agree with him, that that's fine. But I
don't understand the point of shunning somebody like DHH based
(20:45):
on his wider worldview when most of the time when
he's working within the technology industry, he's either calling out
problems that specifically exist there or he's you know, otherwise,
you know, he's kind of stayed in his lane. And
then when he steps out into the wider world of hey,
there are these other concerns or political movements or things
(21:05):
like that, you know, it doesn't have to bleed back
into the technology arena. And so you know, again, I
just I want to talk about just how we maintain
that idea of accepting and understanding other people instead of
(21:26):
shunning them because they hold some kind of different view
from what we care about what we think about. So
I just when it comes right down to it, what
I'd like to see, if anything, is that we have
more conversations that we reach out to more people that
we open up, open our minds and open our hearts
(21:48):
to people and just say, okay, look, you know, you
clearly believe something different from me. Let's talk about why
that is. Right. You you clearly value different things from me,
or at least value some things more strongly than I do.
You know, let's talk about why that is. You know,
why do you do the things you do? Why do
(22:09):
I do the things I do? And if we can
break things down to that point and then have the conversations.
I'm not saying that we come to agree. That isn't
necessarily you know where I think we necessarily end up.
I have plenty of friends where we have these conversations
and we walk away still friends and still disagreeing on stuff. Right.
(22:31):
But I want the community to be open to people,
and I want people to feel like they can come
and they can express themselves in ways that are beneficial
to the community. And sure, you know, if somebody comes
in and they start spouting off about, you know, some
political thing here or there that has nothing to do
with community. I also have a problem with people saying, hey, look,
(22:53):
you know, we understand that people strongly disagree in these areas,
and so that belongs to it different discord channel, or
that belongs in a different forum, or that belongs in it,
you know, and so you can go and have those
arguments somewhere else, but here we're going to talk about
stuff that is relevant and matters to the Ruby and
(23:14):
Ruby on Rails communities, and we can kind of open
that up. So a few things that I've seen that
are encouraging to me. So one of them is Greg
Molnar opened up another Ruby discord and I'll put the
link in the show notes. But he's been pretty explicit
that he's taking all comers and they're not going to
ban people for having points of view, which I think
(23:37):
is awesome. Right, And so I think if you show
up and you start picking on people or bullying people
or causing problems, then he'll probably throw you out, and
he probably has every reason to do that. But if
you come in and it turns out that you have
pretty strong opinions on this social issue or that political issue,
(23:57):
as long as you're not broutbeating people with it, you're
probably fine in there, which is great. And so then
we can talk about, Hey, I love Ruby and you
love Ruby, right, I love working in Ruby on rails,
and so do you. I think these features of PostgresSQL
are awesome. I've been deploying with kamal. Oh well, I've
been deploying on Kubernetes. Oh okay, Well, you know what
(24:20):
are the benefits? What are the frustrations? What are you
doing different from me? How can I benefit you? Know? Oh,
you've got this scaling issue. Oh, I might be able
to help you, right. And I feel like if we
do those kinds of things and we have those kind
of communities, right, then that's the kind of thing that
can bring us together. Right. And we see this in
other communities, right. I mean I go to church every week.
(24:42):
I know everybody there doesn't agree with me on everything, right,
even within the church and church doctrine. I know some
people have some different ideas for me, right, I think
the fundamental core things we agree on, right, because those
are kind of foundational to the faith. But you know,
they're other ideas out there and things that people consider
(25:03):
and stuff like that that they may come to a
different conclusion than I do, right, but they're still welcome.
I'm still welcome, right. I may have a different political
leaning than some of the other folks at church, I'm
still welcome and they're still welcome, right, And again, you know,
maybe we don't talk about it, or maybe we talk
(25:26):
in general principal terms, or maybe when we walk outside
of the door of the church. You know, I have
I go to lunch with you and we have a
deeper conversation about it. But at the end of the day,
that's what we're really looking at is then I can
I can still love you for who you are, you
can still love me for who I am. I can
(25:48):
accept you for what you believe and why you're different,
and you can accept me for what I believe and
why I'm different. And we don't have to get into
this tiki tac you know, tit for tat because you
know you're this and I'm that. Right, Let's just go
and help everybody succeed as a part of our community,
(26:09):
and let's go create that kind of place where people
can come and say, oh wow, this is a great
place to be, right and so kind of beyond the community,
things like conferences and discord channels and podcasts and things
like that, where you know, we kind of have these
open conversations about things. You know, again, I'd love to
(26:32):
see us be doing more things like you know, you've
got go rails or drifting ruby or some of the
things that I'm working on putting together. Right, You've got
video courses, you've got YouTube channels, You've got all of
these places where people can come and level up and
feel like, hey, look, we want you here. And so
(26:54):
we built these resources so that you can come and succeed.
You know, We've built these resource so that you can
come and find acceptance and family in the communities that
we've created. Right. I mean, I can't tell you how
many of my friends over the years have come out
of this community. And it's because we all got together
(27:16):
and we celebrated the things that we had in common
and that we loved that they loved too, Right, And
so at the end of the day, that's really what
I'm pushing for, is I'm just pushing for. Hey, look,
so next time you see somebody and you kind of
have that reaction of oh, they might be you know,
(27:37):
politically non desirable, they're a privileged person or this or that, Right,
instead look at them and go, how can I help them?
And then the next person you see, how can I
help them too? And the next person, right, how can
I help them, and then maybe when you ask for help, right,
then maybe it's my turn. How can I help you? Right?
(27:58):
And then you ask that along. Right. I had a
conversation with somebody yesterday that I worked with, you know,
because they have they call him virtual coffee. But basically,
you know, we just get on a call for a
half hour and we just chat, right, and and it's
for me to get to know my coworkers and then
(28:18):
to get to know me, and it tries to pair
you up with people who are not on your team
that you don't interact with on a regular basis. And
you know, so we were chatting, and uh, you know,
I had just gotten done recording JavaScript Jabber and he's like, oh, well,
you know what what podcast do you record? And I
was like, JavaScript Jabber. He's like, oh, I listened to that,
(28:38):
you're him, right. But then he proceeded to tell me
that he had, you know, when he was learning the
program that he had gotten in and that he had
listened to us on a regular basis to learn and
level up. And you know that some of the things
that we had talked about on the show where things
that helped them out, and and those are the kinds
(28:58):
of things, right, if we're going to focus on anything
instead of being focused on is this person an undesirable
Is this person not politically aligned with me? Is this person,
you know, supporting causes that I find hateful? Instead it's
you know, is this person somebody that I can help?
Is this person somebody that I can make a difference with?
(29:19):
Is this a person somebody that I can you know,
that I can really you know, bring into the community
and help them thrive and help them thrive in a
way that then they in turn will help others thrive.
And if I can do those kinds of things, and
I can have those kinds of relationships with people, then
if it does come down to some of these other
(29:39):
things and we want to discuss what we see is
true and what we understand to be right and things
like that, then those conversations are a whole lot easier
because then it's Okay, well, I know that you're a
good person because we've had all these interactions, and I
know that you care about a lot of these things
that I care about because we've had a lot of
these interactions shown it through your actions. So now we've
(30:02):
got this cognitive dissonance between what you believe and what
I believe. But we can talk about it, right, Oh okay,
I understand why you think the way you think. I
understand why you believe the way you believe. Here are
some things that I you know, here's the way I
see it. Oh okay, I thought about that that way before,
and so then I go and I think about it
and decide, you know, if if there's some truth in
(30:26):
what you're telling me, and I decide if that's you know,
how deeply to consider that. But if we're coming at
each other and going, you know, you're you're a Nazi,
or you're a fascist, or you're a transphobe, or you're
a moron, or you're an idiot, or you're a communist,
or you're a this or that, the labels just don't help,
right because at the end of the day, then I'm
(30:47):
just gonna shut I'm going to shut off. I'm gonna go, well,
I don't need to listen to you. You're you're attacking me.
But if we're friends and we can build those relationships
and understand each other, then I think we begin to
bring people around and understand. Oh okay, you know, this
is why we see the world differently, and then maybe
two I can have a conversation with you and basically say, hey, well,
(31:12):
you know, so we kind of agree on this stuff.
Does this thing happening right now concern you, right, and
then we can talk about it. Oh yeah, you know,
I'm concerned. I think this is the you know, the
reason why this is happening and not that, but I
am concerned that it could lead to this other thing,
just as you're saying. And then we we have that
(31:33):
back and forth and we have that understanding. But we've
got to be creating this community where we can bring
people in and accept people where they're at, and then
from there we can build into some of these other
things and some of these other ideas. So anyway, that's
mostly what I wanted to talk about today. So I
am going to wrap up the show. What I'm going
(31:56):
to get into at this point is the picks, and
so I've got a couple of picks. My first pick
I always do a board game. I'm sorry this was
a little bit heavy this episode, but I just, you know,
I wanted to make sure I cover it. I guess
I should also talk about that probably about half of
the people that i've had as hosts on the shows.
(32:18):
I don't even know what they're religious, or political or
any other leanings are, because I just haven't thought it
was that critical to know. And I've also gotten crap
for platforming people who hold some of the opinions that
are less palatable to people. And again, I just, you know,
I've never understood what the problem is if if they've
got a different idea, then let's talk about it. Anyway,
(32:41):
So picks. So my first pick is it's a variation
on Pandemic, and it's called Lord of the Rings Fate
of the Fellowship. And what it is is it you
So you've got this big game board, and in Pandemic,
you're usually fighting a disease strain, right, and so you're
(33:04):
collecting cards so that you can cure a disease. In
Fate of the Fellowship, you're doing some of that, but
instead of a disease, it's the armies of Souron and
you know the other bad guys, I guess the Orcs
and stuff like that. So you have good armies, right,
(33:25):
So you've got the row heroin Elves and I think
there was another group I can't remember, but anyway, so yeah,
So you're moving armies around the board and you know,
taking territories and things like that, and you're also trying
to get Frodo to Mountain Doom to destroy the Ring.
But before you do that, you have to do other things, right,
(33:46):
So you have to you have to take I Guard over,
right and turn it into a haven. You've got to
There was something about a battle we didn't actually win,
and so we didn't get them all done. But anyway,
there are three mission you have to complete before you
before Frodo can destroy the Ring. And then Frodo has
to be a Mountain Doom and you have to have
I think five Ring cards in order to win. And
(34:11):
so you have different characters that you move around the board,
and I have to say the game is actually very
visually stunning. Right. You've got the tower with the Eye
of Sour on it and you roll the dice through it,
which is cool. It has nine nas Ghoul and there
(34:31):
are fairly large pieces that you move around the board
and they're awesome. Most of the character pieces are pretty awesome.
The armies are just little wood cutouts, right, so they're
not as exciting, but you know, you move along the
map and the armies move across the map in different
(34:54):
prescribed ways based on the cards you flip to quote
infect the map, and anyway, it's it was really really fun.
We lost twice. We lost the first time within like
a turn and a half, just bad luck. And then
the second time we you know, we played for a
while and lost. I kind of want to play again
(35:14):
just to see if we can make it work. We'll
be teaching the game at Tipcon in Provo, Utah on
November seventh and eighth, So if you're in Utah, you know,
come out. I'll be spending some of the time at
the Hot Games table teaching the games. But anyway, it's
it's very fun board game. Geek waits it at two
(35:37):
point ninety nine on Amazon. It is not currently available.
It has sold out. But yeah, it's a cool game,
very cool game. And my wife is a big Pandemic fan,
and so I think we own all of the pandemics
except maybe that one, and there might have been another
one that's come out since then, because a lot of
games use the Pandemic engine and then build on it
(36:00):
from there. So anyway, so I'm going to pick that. Yeah,
I guess the other thing that I'll just put out
there is I am starting a new podcast about building
a SaaS. I'm working on a software as a service
that will host podcast networks, and specifically I want to
get more into media and you know, it will have
(36:24):
all the podcast features, but you know, kind of branch
into the other you know, videos and training and coaching
and masterminds and you know, things like that, and so
all the things that I've talked about doing with top
end devs and say Ruby and JavaScript, where it's hey,
you've got the tip of the day videos. You've got
(36:46):
a weekly you know, more in depth video on the technology.
You've got a weekly you know, group coaching calls that
are anywhere from hey, here's an expert I know that
came in to talk about a thing to you know,
maybe asking questions or getting to know each other, or
book clubs or things like that. Doing the summits. I
(37:07):
want to do more of those over the coming years,
you know, putting out other video content. I'm also imagining
this for some like a local media channel where it's
you know, like in Utah, right, so it's, hey, here
here's the stuff that's happening in Utah. As far as
news goes, here's you know, stuff that's happening, you know,
(37:28):
in the legislature and how that affects us, because a
lot of that stuff, especially when you get more and
more local, is less and less partisan, right, and so
it's hey, look, you know, like Utah's a super majority
Republican state, right, and so the things that the Republicans
tend to get right, sometimes they still make poor decisions, right.
(37:54):
And you see this in super majority Democrats states too, right,
where there's not really it on one of the parties,
and so they tend to do what they want, and
so a lot of times there's not somebody really pushing
back and saying, hey, this what you're trying to do
make sense, but the way you're doing it has problems,
(38:15):
and so you know, just kind of pushing down to
that and saying, hey, here's how we protect our freedoms,
here's how we protect our ability to live and things
like that, and so, you know, just getting into some
of the more local issues, right traffic, I'm trying to think,
you know, we have other resource issues here in Utah
with water and stuff like that, and so yeah, just
(38:36):
providing kind of an outlet for that stuff where maybe
you don't have the money to go and set up
a traditional or proper TV channel, right, you can still
have the Utah channel app on your Apple TV or
Firestick or Roku and you can, you know, you can
(38:58):
get all the shows and watch all the things. He's
just like you do on Netflix. So anyway, that's the
SaaS I'm building. And so I'm working on putting together
a show called Single Player SaaS and it's focused mostly
going to be focused on single developers or small teams
that are building out SaaS products. And so I'm going
(39:18):
to kind of chronicle my journey. But the other thing
is is that I'm also going to be bringing on experts.
For example, I just I finished listening to this book
on Audible. It's called Email Marketing Demystified. I'm almost through it.
I'm about halfway through it. I don't know, let's see
it there. And so because I read, I like to
(39:43):
read the physical book, but I listen to a lot
more books than I physically read. And so if I
like the book, then I'll buy it and I'll actually
read it, read read it, and then sometimes I pick
up other books. So like I've got software as a
science is the book right there behind my head. I
don't think there's an audiobook. I just so I just
(40:04):
got it because it looked like it was in line
with what I wanted. So I'm going to bring some
of those authors on and talk through things, right, you know,
I know Rob Walling and some of the other folks
from like Startups for the rest of Us and so
and micro Confidence. So just kind of pull some of
that together and say, Okay, if you're building a software
as a service, right, what do you have to do?
And whether it's you know, kind of a broad use
(40:26):
category king kind of app, you know, so I'm trying
to create a new category with my app, or whether
it's hey, you know, there are a few others out
here that do the same kind of thing, and so
I'm going to create a software as a service that
plays in that space. And it's going to be a
smaller microsas, right, I'm going to put that together, so
that's going to be single players SaaS and so yes,
(40:53):
keep an eye out for that as well, just to
kind of provide a lot of that, Hey, here's how
you build and market it while you're small. And then
I do plan on getting into a little bit of
and here's where maybe you want to grow beyond a
single developer or a small team. And here's maybe when
you don't want to. So anyway, those are my picks.
(41:14):
Hopefully you all enjoy that, and then just a quick
remind you again, you know, just just be kind to
each other and just try and understand where people are
coming from. It's been my experience that even the people
who are kind of supporting the scary, weird or frustrating things,
they have reasons, right, and so I can at least
(41:38):
try and understand those, even if I can't get behind them.
So anyway, until next time, Max out
Hey, folks, welcome back to another episode of Ruby Rogues.
So I'm gonna let y'all know, since this is the
second Ruby Rogues episode in a row, that is just
me let y'all know kind of what's been going on.
So in uh, and then I'm gonna talk a bit
about Miniswan and the community and things like that, because
(00:27):
I'm seeing a lot of things that are concerning me there.
Let me jump in and talk a little bit first
about just where things are. So I wound up getting
a full time working at Price Picks in March, and
that has taken up a lot of time and and
so I've put a lot of effort in there. And
between that and all the stuff going on with my
(00:48):
kids in school and and all that stuff, I haven't
been as good about scheduling guests to come on the show.
And Valentino got a new job as well. He's not
a doctor anymore, and so anyway, it's just there's been
a lot going on, and so we haven't been as
diligent about recording. But I want to get back into this.
(01:10):
I actually intend talked about this on another show just
out Ruby Tip of the Day, do some stuff about
AI and Ruby and so keep an eye out for
that stuff. But yeah, so there will be an episode
every week, even if it's just me for the foreseeable future.
But I have started inviting guests, and so we're going
(01:31):
to see if we can get some of the folks
on who are talking about interesting stuff or doing interesting
stuff in the Ruby community. In the meantime, I wanted
to talk today a little bit about miniswan. So if
you're newer to the Ruby community or I haven't heard
the term before, Miniswuan stands for matts is nice, and
(01:52):
so we are nice. And when I joined the Ruby community,
that was kind of a mantra that all cited as
one of the things they really loved about the Ruby
community was that they would join the community and people
would embrace them and invite them to be part of things,
and would be excited to have them around and would
help them out and things like that. And over the year,
(02:16):
feels like some people have need to embrace that, and
we've also had other elements of the community that have,
let's just put in a friendly way and say they haven't.
Some of this is down to kind of the political
climate that we find ourselves in right so some people
just don't want to associate with people on the other
(02:36):
side of the political aisle, at least here in the US.
I have tried to keep my politics out of the
shows for the most part. I mean it's cropped up.
I got canceled on Twitter for it in twenty nineteen.
But for the most part, you're not listening to hear
what I think about social issues. You're not here to
(02:59):
hear what I have to say about Utah or US politicians. Right,
You're not here to get my take on some of
these other issues. Right. You're here because we all love Ruby,
and we all want to level up with Ruby. We
all want to learn to write code better. We all
want to, you know, remain employed. I'm trying to think,
(03:22):
you know what other things you know, write code that
we love, build businesses, all of that stuff, Right, And
so if I'm talking about that stuff and I'm providing
you with things that help you with those areas, then
I feel like that's you know, that that's the powerful thing,
that's that's where the payoff is. But if I'm out
(03:43):
there and I'm saying, well, I don't want to talk
to so and so because they don't align with me politically,
then that's not in the spirit of Minnsuan, But it's
also what does that have to do with you and
I loving Ruby and having that in common? And so
let's just speak about this for a minute, because I
want to talk about a few areas where I'm seeing
(04:03):
this crop ups. One of them is there's a fairly
large Ruby discord out there that I've seen them ban
or otherwise pile on people because of their stances that
they've taken on various things. And you know, usually it's
not something has to do with the Ruby community, right,
(04:23):
I mean, if so, let's back up for a minute, Right,
So last week I talked about the situation with Ruby
e gems and Budler and things like that, which, by
the way, apparently the ruby gems and Butler repos have
moved over to the Ruby organization instead of Ruby Central, right,
So Ruby Core team's going to manage those, which is awesome,
right because it kind of takes a lot of this
(04:45):
out of the hands of people that some of the
community doesn't trust anymore. And the other thing is is
that they're kind of more core to the Ruby core
than they are to the Ruby Ruby Central can hopefully
just hopefully just can continue to maintain ruby gems dot
org and you know, we can tamp down some of
the concerns there, right, so then they can just be
(05:08):
good stewards of that, they can keep it running and
everybody can be happy and move along. Right. But yeah,
so we've seen a lot of anger and frustration and concern, right,
and to my thinking, right, a lot of that is
appropriate to our community because it's like, hey, you know,
we saw Andre log onto those servers when he shouldn't have, right,
(05:32):
and so we can express concern about that. Right now.
I'm not going after him for anything that has to
do with anything outside of the Ruby community, because that's
not really relevant to what we're talking about. But I
can express concern over whether or not I feel like
I can trust the guy based on his behavior, Right,
you know, look at some of the other things that
(05:53):
are going on out there and recognize that, you know,
if somebody's not being a good steward of the gem
that they write, right, and so that they'll open up
security vulnerability or you know, there's a team out there
that maintains a framework or something you use, right, and
(06:14):
you you find that they're hero days and then they're
not taking right. So all of those things I feel
like are appropriate for us to call out and say, hey,
look right, you're not you're not being a responsible actor community.
As far as ideas and issues and practice go, the
(06:39):
community has a reasonable expectation that you will uphold. Right.
But again, a lot of that really just boils down
to the code and things like that now into personal conduct.
I also, I don't I'm not opposed to saying, hey,
look you know uh Miniswan, for example, we're going to
try each other with respect, We're going to be kind
(07:01):
to each other, We're gonna we're going to help each
other where we can, right, and having those be values
that we appropriately affect within the community. Right. And so yeah,
I see Coft right where it says, hey, don't don't
treat people poorly because of their sexual orientation or this
(07:25):
or that or the other. Right, And I would like
to add political leanings to that. Right, So we don't
discriminate people, we don't bully people, we don't mistreat people.
We don't ban people because they think differently from us,
or because they behave differently from us. Now, if you're
coming into my community and you're being a total jerk off, right,
(07:49):
You're you're just mistreating people, and you know that does
maybe reflect you know, some value that you hold. Then yeah,
that's behavior that I don't have to tolerate. And I
can say no, you're out right, but the reality is
is then I have that code of conduct to fall
back on and say, you should have known that if
you started mistreating people, I was going to kick you out.
(08:13):
I want to call out one thing in particular. So
I was at a Rocky Mountain Ruby conference a few
weeks ago, and there were a couple of talks where
they talked about their communities, and I'm going, yeah, and
then I love that, right, I love that, Hey, you
know we've got this library or this you know. One
of them was Hanami and dry RB, right, and they
(08:35):
do cool stuff, interesting work. But the guy up there said, yeah,
and we put together this community. And then he basically said,
and I'm gonna use some politically charged language here again,
I see it from both sides, and so I'll call
it out from the other side in a minute. But
you know, they basically said no Nazis, transfoms, or fat
phobes or fascists right in the channel, and I was
(08:58):
sitting there thinking to myself, well, how does somebody know
if they meet your definition of a Nazi, transphobe or fascist? Right?
You know. On the other side, you know a lot
of times we hear what snowflakes or libtards or you know,
things like that, and again, you know, not helpful, right,
(09:18):
And again it is down to, hey, you know what
kind of people do we want? And for me, it
has a whole lot more to do with your behavior
in the community. Right, So just to go back to
the nazi and transphobe and fascist for minerals, those terms, right,
So what does define a Nazi? Like? How do you
(09:39):
how do you determine if somebody who joins your community
meets that definition and is not welcome? Right? As you know,
I see some people and it seems like they would
categorize that as you know, maybe people who voted for
Donald Trump, or people who have conservative politically means, or
(10:05):
who support Republican candidates in any way. But what I
find is that there are a lot of people out
there that I talk to that Donald Trump kind of
drives him nuts, but they voted for the guy because
they thought that the economics would be better, or maybe
they don't buy into some of the premises or messages
(10:26):
where people are trying to make him out to be
you know, hateful or this or that or the other, right,
and they're like, well, no, I see him doing the
things that you're calling out as evil for reasons that
I think are reasonable. And so to me, the concern
over the idea of calling somebody out as a Nazi
(10:49):
is that what you're saying is is that fundamentally they
want to harm people of the specific race or religion, right,
or that you know, they're looking and to some kind
of purity with the Aryan purity thing that the Nazis
did or something like that, and so, and it's got
this historical context and so it it it doesn't have
(11:12):
a good definition. And if you're concerned with, okay, well
you know these people have some issue with some other
group of people, well then just call that out in
your you know, in your code of conduct. And instead
of saying Nazis, say look, we don't mistreat people based
on race, we don't mistreat people based on religion. Right.
(11:32):
It's the same thing with transphobes, right. So the term
I mean, it's it's a little more directed, because if
you're mistreating people because they're transgender, right, and I don't
think anybody gets behind that, or at least no reasonable
people do, right, I think again, going back to Minnisuan,
we want people to feel welcome, you know, just to
(11:54):
put kind of a finer point on it, right. I'm
a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
day Saints. A lot of people call us Mormons, right,
and the church specifically teaches that transgender surgeries and transgender
stuff is just you know, it's not okay, it's not
(12:15):
in line with what God teaches us. Right now. The
church is also pretty explicit about, hey, look, we're kind
of people who don't believe what we believe, and we're
kind of people who you know, don't act in line
with our beliefs. Right. Another one of our beliefs is
that we don't drink alcohol or coffee or tea. And
you know, again, I don't go and you know, shun
(12:38):
people because they drink alcohol, right, just like I don't
go and shun people who are transgender. A couple of
the shows on this network, including Ruby Rogues, have had
transgender hosts, and you know, they were great hosts. They
talked about stuff they knew. There's stuff they were you know,
(13:00):
knowledgeable and friendly and helpful, and that's what I wanted
in a host and so I had them around. Right now,
do am I going to sign off on their lifestyle
and say that that's the right way to live? No? Right,
because I don't believe it. But am I going to
mistreat them? No? Why? Because they obviously have a different
(13:21):
value system than I do, and so they're going to
make those decisions based on whatever it is that they believe.
And you know, and so we can have discussions about
what we believe is fundamental truth without beating each other
up verbally and without mistreating people and still walk away
as friends. And that's a lot of what's in the
(13:44):
spirit of Miniswan. But you know, if somebody doesn't want
to talk about it, I'm going to I'm not going
to force them to talk about it. I don't have
to write. I have plenty of stuff going on in
my life to where I don't need to worry about
what they're doing. Right, And you know, if it's my
kids or somebody else that I have that kind of
a relationhi ship with, then I can have that conversation
with them, but I have that kind of relationship with
(14:04):
them too, and so I just I get really frustrated
with this. The other one is fascist, right, And again,
you know it's like, you know, I think it's kind
of become this code for authoritarian authoritarian or you know,
somebody who kind of moves a little bit beyond what
(14:25):
has been the norm and does things that makes people uncomfortable.
And what I again, what I want to push on
there is, you know, I would be much more comfortable
if we're calling out the behaviors that we don't want
to see, right. And so it's like, again, you know,
you're not going to do these kinds of things. You're
not going to attack these kinds of people, at least
(14:48):
within our community right now. If you're going out and
supporting other political movements or you're speaking in public or
things like that, then you know, do whatever you want.
But within the community, if if you're going to be
mistreating these people, then you're not welcome, right, And and
I would rather make that distinction then go off into
(15:09):
this other stuff, right. And it's the same thing for
going the other way, right. So I mean, I'll confess
that I'm very politically and socially conservative, right. So, and
I talk to people that kind of on my side
of the aisle quite a bit because I'm involved in
politics here in Utah, and some of them make out
(15:32):
that well, if these you know, liberal people weren't such morons,
they would understand how this stuff works. And I look
at them and I go, well, look, you know, the
thing is is that I know a lot of liberal
people who are really really intelligent people, right, and they
care deeply about other people, and they're they're looking for
(15:54):
solutions to these places where they see people suffer. And
so I can't just write them off as idiots, right,
because I know that they're not. I know that they're
intelligent people. I know that they have, you know, some
values that I share, right, because I don't want to
see people suffer either. And so for me, I have
to look at it and go, Okay, well, then what
(16:16):
are the fundamental things that are different between me and
them and what we believe? Right? What do I believe
that they don't or what do they believe that I don't?
That fundamentally shifts the argument for them, right, placing more
weight on than I am. What things are they hearing?
That I'm not hearing what things am I hearing that
they're not hearing, right, And if we can get down
(16:38):
to that, then it starts to make sense. And I
can see the a, the humanity and the other people,
and B understand that, you know what, they may vote
different from me and may vote for things that I
think are scary. Right, It's like, hey, look, you know,
if we go all the way down that road, you know,
talk about your tutalitarianism or authoritarianism. I think we get
(17:01):
way down that road and it gets freaky scary. But
I can see where they're coming from with that stuff,
and then we can have a conversation about it, and
I don't have to hate them for doing things that,
you know, enable some of these movements that I honestly
think are evil, you know, because at the end of
(17:21):
the day, yeah, there may be somebody up the chain
that's giving them bad information on purpose to gain power,
or maybe the people up the chain believe it too. Right.
I think there are both kinds out there. I think
they're both kinds on both sides or all sides, I guess,
because sometimes it's not a two sided thing. But at
the end of the day, right, we need to recognize
that there are reasons why people behave the way that
(17:43):
they do. And so if you come back to this, well,
Nazis because through Trump, right, And the thing is is,
I know, like I said before, I know a lot
of people who voted for a lot of reasons, and
a lot of those reasons have nothing to do with
hating a particular group. They just had specific concerns about
the way the country was going and how that affected
their lives, and so they voted that way. And a
(18:07):
lot of people are centrist enough to where in the
next election they may vote the other way. And that's
all understandable. But you know, demonizing people as Nazis is
just not helpful, especially when you're not getting into the
nitty gritty of Okay, the things that I specifically think
are evil and we're not going to tolerate those in
(18:28):
our community. I want to get into another one, and
I'm sure I'm definite with some people here, and that's
David d So, David says a lot of stuff. I
could say that about a number of people, public people,
(18:48):
but he says a lot of stuff, and to be honest,
a lot of the things that he says I agree
with me, will go as far as he does on something,
or you know, maybe I have a little bit more
nuanced than he does. In a lot of cases. I
think he's diagnosing a lot of the in the world
at large, and he does right and and out on
(19:12):
a lot of issues in the world at large. Now
I want step back because when I see him at
like Ruby Rails World and other Ruby, he expresses a
strong worldview, but it's almost always within the realm of
the Ruby community and what's going on with Ruby or rails,
(19:34):
and so you know, if you want to go watch
a Rail's World keynote, more power to you, right, don't
like his worldview on other stuff, then don't go read
his blog. And I don't know. Maybe I don't have
a problem separating things that way, and and maybe other
folks do. But honestly, it's it's just I get I
(19:57):
get so worried sometimes that we get so wrapped up
in this. And there are folks that tried to kind
of stage this boycott of anything involving DHH because of
his stances on things. And again, you know, I think
we have all been richly benefited by having things like
(20:20):
Ruby on Rails and the work that he's done out
there in the world. And I think we should all
support him when he does the right thing with Ruby
and rails, and then if you want to go and
fight the other political battles on the other fronts where
you don't agree with him, that that's fine. But I
don't understand the point of shunning somebody like DHH based
(20:45):
on his wider worldview when most of the time when
he's working within the technology industry, he's either calling out
problems that specifically exist there or he's you know, otherwise,
you know, he's kind of stayed in his lane. And
then when he steps out into the wider world of hey,
there are these other concerns or political movements or things
(21:05):
like that, you know, it doesn't have to bleed back
into the technology arena. And so you know, again, I
just I want to talk about just how we maintain
that idea of accepting and understanding other people instead of
(21:26):
shunning them because they hold some kind of different view
from what we care about what we think about. So
I just when it comes right down to it, what
I'd like to see, if anything, is that we have
more conversations that we reach out to more people that
we open up, open our minds and open our hearts
(21:48):
to people and just say, okay, look, you know, you
clearly believe something different from me. Let's talk about why
that is. Right. You you clearly value different things from me,
or at least value some things more strongly than I do.
You know, let's talk about why that is. You know,
why do you do the things you do? Why do
(22:09):
I do the things I do? And if we can
break things down to that point and then have the conversations.
I'm not saying that we come to agree. That isn't
necessarily you know where I think we necessarily end up.
I have plenty of friends where we have these conversations
and we walk away still friends and still disagreeing on stuff. Right.
(22:31):
But I want the community to be open to people,
and I want people to feel like they can come
and they can express themselves in ways that are beneficial
to the community. And sure, you know, if somebody comes
in and they start spouting off about, you know, some
political thing here or there that has nothing to do
with community. I also have a problem with people saying, hey, look,
(22:53):
you know, we understand that people strongly disagree in these areas,
and so that belongs to it different discord channel, or
that belongs in a different forum, or that belongs in it,
you know, and so you can go and have those
arguments somewhere else, but here we're going to talk about
stuff that is relevant and matters to the Ruby and
(23:14):
Ruby on Rails communities, and we can kind of open
that up. So a few things that I've seen that
are encouraging to me. So one of them is Greg
Molnar opened up another Ruby discord and I'll put the
link in the show notes. But he's been pretty explicit
that he's taking all comers and they're not going to
ban people for having points of view, which I think
(23:37):
is awesome. Right, And so I think if you show
up and you start picking on people or bullying people
or causing problems, then he'll probably throw you out, and
he probably has every reason to do that. But if
you come in and it turns out that you have
pretty strong opinions on this social issue or that political issue,
(23:57):
as long as you're not broutbeating people with it, you're
probably fine in there, which is great. And so then
we can talk about, Hey, I love Ruby and you
love Ruby, right, I love working in Ruby on rails,
and so do you. I think these features of PostgresSQL
are awesome. I've been deploying with kamal. Oh well, I've
been deploying on Kubernetes. Oh okay, Well, you know what
(24:20):
are the benefits? What are the frustrations? What are you
doing different from me? How can I benefit you? Know? Oh,
you've got this scaling issue. Oh, I might be able
to help you, right. And I feel like if we
do those kinds of things and we have those kind
of communities, right, then that's the kind of thing that
can bring us together. Right. And we see this in
other communities, right. I mean I go to church every week.
(24:42):
I know everybody there doesn't agree with me on everything, right,
even within the church and church doctrine. I know some
people have some different ideas for me, right, I think
the fundamental core things we agree on, right, because those
are kind of foundational to the faith. But you know,
they're other ideas out there and things that people consider
(25:03):
and stuff like that that they may come to a
different conclusion than I do, right, but they're still welcome.
I'm still welcome, right. I may have a different political
leaning than some of the other folks at church, I'm
still welcome and they're still welcome, right, And again, you know,
maybe we don't talk about it, or maybe we talk
(25:26):
in general principal terms, or maybe when we walk outside
of the door of the church. You know, I have
I go to lunch with you and we have a
deeper conversation about it. But at the end of the day,
that's what we're really looking at is then I can
I can still love you for who you are, you
can still love me for who I am. I can
(25:48):
accept you for what you believe and why you're different,
and you can accept me for what I believe and
why I'm different. And we don't have to get into
this tiki tac you know, tit for tat because you
know you're this and I'm that. Right, Let's just go
and help everybody succeed as a part of our community,
(26:09):
and let's go create that kind of place where people
can come and say, oh wow, this is a great
place to be, right and so kind of beyond the community,
things like conferences and discord channels and podcasts and things
like that, where you know, we kind of have these
open conversations about things. You know, again, I'd love to
(26:32):
see us be doing more things like you know, you've
got go rails or drifting ruby or some of the
things that I'm working on putting together. Right, You've got
video courses, you've got YouTube channels, You've got all of
these places where people can come and level up and
feel like, hey, look, we want you here. And so
(26:54):
we built these resources so that you can come and succeed.
You know, We've built these resource so that you can
come and find acceptance and family in the communities that
we've created. Right. I mean, I can't tell you how
many of my friends over the years have come out
of this community. And it's because we all got together
(27:16):
and we celebrated the things that we had in common
and that we loved that they loved too, Right, And
so at the end of the day, that's really what
I'm pushing for, is I'm just pushing for. Hey, look,
so next time you see somebody and you kind of
have that reaction of oh, they might be you know,
(27:37):
politically non desirable, they're a privileged person or this or that, Right,
instead look at them and go, how can I help them?
And then the next person you see, how can I
help them too? And the next person, right, how can
I help them, and then maybe when you ask for help, right,
then maybe it's my turn. How can I help you? Right?
(27:58):
And then you ask that along. Right. I had a
conversation with somebody yesterday that I worked with, you know,
because they have they call him virtual coffee. But basically,
you know, we just get on a call for a
half hour and we just chat, right, and and it's
for me to get to know my coworkers and then
(28:18):
to get to know me, and it tries to pair
you up with people who are not on your team
that you don't interact with on a regular basis. And
you know, so we were chatting, and uh, you know,
I had just gotten done recording JavaScript Jabber and he's like, oh, well,
you know what what podcast do you record? And I
was like, JavaScript Jabber. He's like, oh, I listened to that,
(28:38):
you're him, right. But then he proceeded to tell me
that he had, you know, when he was learning the
program that he had gotten in and that he had
listened to us on a regular basis to learn and
level up. And you know that some of the things
that we had talked about on the show where things
that helped them out, and and those are the kinds
(28:58):
of things, right, if we're going to focus on anything
instead of being focused on is this person an undesirable
Is this person not politically aligned with me? Is this person,
you know, supporting causes that I find hateful? Instead it's
you know, is this person somebody that I can help?
Is this person somebody that I can make a difference with?
(29:19):
Is this a person somebody that I can you know,
that I can really you know, bring into the community
and help them thrive and help them thrive in a
way that then they in turn will help others thrive.
And if I can do those kinds of things, and
I can have those kinds of relationships with people, then
if it does come down to some of these other
(29:39):
things and we want to discuss what we see is
true and what we understand to be right and things
like that, then those conversations are a whole lot easier
because then it's Okay, well, I know that you're a
good person because we've had all these interactions, and I
know that you care about a lot of these things
that I care about because we've had a lot of
these interactions shown it through your actions. So now we've
(30:02):
got this cognitive dissonance between what you believe and what
I believe. But we can talk about it, right, Oh okay,
I understand why you think the way you think. I
understand why you believe the way you believe. Here are
some things that I you know, here's the way I
see it. Oh okay, I thought about that that way before,
and so then I go and I think about it
and decide, you know, if if there's some truth in
(30:26):
what you're telling me, and I decide if that's you know,
how deeply to consider that. But if we're coming at
each other and going, you know, you're you're a Nazi,
or you're a fascist, or you're a transphobe, or you're
a moron, or you're an idiot, or you're a communist,
or you're a this or that, the labels just don't help,
right because at the end of the day, then I'm
(30:47):
just gonna shut I'm going to shut off. I'm gonna go, well,
I don't need to listen to you. You're you're attacking me.
But if we're friends and we can build those relationships
and understand each other, then I think we begin to
bring people around and understand. Oh okay, you know, this
is why we see the world differently, and then maybe
two I can have a conversation with you and basically say, hey, well,
(31:12):
you know, so we kind of agree on this stuff.
Does this thing happening right now concern you, right, and
then we can talk about it. Oh yeah, you know,
I'm concerned. I think this is the you know, the
reason why this is happening and not that, but I
am concerned that it could lead to this other thing,
just as you're saying. And then we we have that
(31:33):
back and forth and we have that understanding. But we've
got to be creating this community where we can bring
people in and accept people where they're at, and then
from there we can build into some of these other
things and some of these other ideas. So anyway, that's
mostly what I wanted to talk about today. So I
am going to wrap up the show. What I'm going
(31:56):
to get into at this point is the picks, and
so I've got a couple of picks. My first pick
I always do a board game. I'm sorry this was
a little bit heavy this episode, but I just, you know,
I wanted to make sure I cover it. I guess
I should also talk about that probably about half of
the people that i've had as hosts on the shows.
(32:18):
I don't even know what they're religious, or political or
any other leanings are, because I just haven't thought it
was that critical to know. And I've also gotten crap
for platforming people who hold some of the opinions that
are less palatable to people. And again, I just, you know,
I've never understood what the problem is if if they've
got a different idea, then let's talk about it. Anyway,
(32:41):
So picks. So my first pick is it's a variation
on Pandemic, and it's called Lord of the Rings Fate
of the Fellowship. And what it is is it you
So you've got this big game board, and in Pandemic,
you're usually fighting a disease strain, right, and so you're
(33:04):
collecting cards so that you can cure a disease. In
Fate of the Fellowship, you're doing some of that, but
instead of a disease, it's the armies of Souron and
you know the other bad guys, I guess the Orcs
and stuff like that. So you have good armies, right,
(33:25):
So you've got the row heroin Elves and I think
there was another group I can't remember, but anyway, so yeah,
So you're moving armies around the board and you know,
taking territories and things like that, and you're also trying
to get Frodo to Mountain Doom to destroy the Ring.
But before you do that, you have to do other things, right,
(33:46):
So you have to you have to take I Guard over,
right and turn it into a haven. You've got to
There was something about a battle we didn't actually win,
and so we didn't get them all done. But anyway,
there are three mission you have to complete before you
before Frodo can destroy the Ring. And then Frodo has
to be a Mountain Doom and you have to have
I think five Ring cards in order to win. And
(34:11):
so you have different characters that you move around the board,
and I have to say the game is actually very
visually stunning. Right. You've got the tower with the Eye
of Sour on it and you roll the dice through it,
which is cool. It has nine nas Ghoul and there
(34:31):
are fairly large pieces that you move around the board
and they're awesome. Most of the character pieces are pretty awesome.
The armies are just little wood cutouts, right, so they're
not as exciting, but you know, you move along the
map and the armies move across the map in different
(34:54):
prescribed ways based on the cards you flip to quote
infect the map, and anyway, it's it was really really fun.
We lost twice. We lost the first time within like
a turn and a half, just bad luck. And then
the second time we you know, we played for a
while and lost. I kind of want to play again
(35:14):
just to see if we can make it work. We'll
be teaching the game at Tipcon in Provo, Utah on
November seventh and eighth, So if you're in Utah, you know,
come out. I'll be spending some of the time at
the Hot Games table teaching the games. But anyway, it's
it's very fun board game. Geek waits it at two
(35:37):
point ninety nine on Amazon. It is not currently available.
It has sold out. But yeah, it's a cool game,
very cool game. And my wife is a big Pandemic fan,
and so I think we own all of the pandemics
except maybe that one, and there might have been another
one that's come out since then, because a lot of
games use the Pandemic engine and then build on it
(36:00):
from there. So anyway, so I'm going to pick that. Yeah,
I guess the other thing that I'll just put out
there is I am starting a new podcast about building
a SaaS. I'm working on a software as a service
that will host podcast networks, and specifically I want to
get more into media and you know, it will have
(36:24):
all the podcast features, but you know, kind of branch
into the other you know, videos and training and coaching
and masterminds and you know, things like that, and so
all the things that I've talked about doing with top
end devs and say Ruby and JavaScript, where it's hey,
you've got the tip of the day videos. You've got
(36:46):
a weekly you know, more in depth video on the technology.
You've got a weekly you know, group coaching calls that
are anywhere from hey, here's an expert I know that
came in to talk about a thing to you know,
maybe asking questions or getting to know each other, or
book clubs or things like that. Doing the summits. I
(37:07):
want to do more of those over the coming years,
you know, putting out other video content. I'm also imagining
this for some like a local media channel where it's
you know, like in Utah, right, so it's, hey, here
here's the stuff that's happening in Utah. As far as
news goes, here's you know, stuff that's happening, you know,
(37:28):
in the legislature and how that affects us, because a
lot of that stuff, especially when you get more and
more local, is less and less partisan, right, and so
it's hey, look, you know, like Utah's a super majority
Republican state, right, and so the things that the Republicans
tend to get right, sometimes they still make poor decisions, right.
(37:54):
And you see this in super majority Democrats states too, right,
where there's not really it on one of the parties,
and so they tend to do what they want, and
so a lot of times there's not somebody really pushing
back and saying, hey, this what you're trying to do
make sense, but the way you're doing it has problems,
(38:15):
and so you know, just kind of pushing down to
that and saying, hey, here's how we protect our freedoms,
here's how we protect our ability to live and things
like that, and so, you know, just getting into some
of the more local issues, right traffic, I'm trying to think,
you know, we have other resource issues here in Utah
with water and stuff like that, and so yeah, just
(38:36):
providing kind of an outlet for that stuff where maybe
you don't have the money to go and set up
a traditional or proper TV channel, right, you can still
have the Utah channel app on your Apple TV or
Firestick or Roku and you can, you know, you can
(38:58):
get all the shows and watch all the things. He's
just like you do on Netflix. So anyway, that's the
SaaS I'm building. And so I'm working on putting together
a show called Single Player SaaS and it's focused mostly
going to be focused on single developers or small teams
that are building out SaaS products. And so I'm going
(39:18):
to kind of chronicle my journey. But the other thing
is is that I'm also going to be bringing on experts.
For example, I just I finished listening to this book
on Audible. It's called Email Marketing Demystified. I'm almost through it.
I'm about halfway through it. I don't know, let's see
it there. And so because I read, I like to
(39:43):
read the physical book, but I listen to a lot
more books than I physically read. And so if I
like the book, then I'll buy it and I'll actually
read it, read read it, and then sometimes I pick
up other books. So like I've got software as a
science is the book right there behind my head. I
don't think there's an audiobook. I just so I just
(40:04):
got it because it looked like it was in line
with what I wanted. So I'm going to bring some
of those authors on and talk through things, right, you know,
I know Rob Walling and some of the other folks
from like Startups for the rest of Us and so
and micro Confidence. So just kind of pull some of
that together and say, Okay, if you're building a software
as a service, right, what do you have to do?
And whether it's you know, kind of a broad use
(40:26):
category king kind of app, you know, so I'm trying
to create a new category with my app, or whether
it's hey, you know, there are a few others out
here that do the same kind of thing, and so
I'm going to create a software as a service that
plays in that space. And it's going to be a
smaller microsas, right, I'm going to put that together, so
that's going to be single players SaaS and so yes,
(40:53):
keep an eye out for that as well, just to
kind of provide a lot of that, Hey, here's how
you build and market it while you're small. And then
I do plan on getting into a little bit of
and here's where maybe you want to grow beyond a
single developer or a small team. And here's maybe when
you don't want to. So anyway, those are my picks.
(41:14):
Hopefully you all enjoy that, and then just a quick
remind you again, you know, just just be kind to
each other and just try and understand where people are
coming from. It's been my experience that even the people
who are kind of supporting the scary, weird or frustrating things,
they have reasons, right, and so I can at least
(41:38):
try and understand those, even if I can't get behind them.
So anyway, until next time, Max out
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