Good morning. Good morning. How are you this fine morning, Clark?
I'm doing all right. I think you said I was a little spicy, so.
Yeah. He is a little spicy this morning, and I absolutely love it.
I love the pre-show. It's a good 15 minutes where we get to know each other.
I shouldn't say get to know each other. You I know, right?
But if it's someone new, I get to know them. But we get to like sort of rewarm up and like, how's life?
What are you up to? And you have a lot of life and a lot of cool stuff going on.
And also a lot of really, for me, selfishly and many other sad stuff that has been going on.
So before we dive into all of that on the 99 Dev Problem Show, I would love to have you introduce yourself to folks who might not know you.
And then we can talk about my sadness and otherwise.
So Clark Cell, I guess I call myself a practitioner, but I own two companies, one called that conference on another one called unspecified.
That doesn't really mean much of anything because companies are just legal structures. They're nothing sexy. So whatever.
But I kind of exist in the place of connecting developers and trying to help them find their impact in life.
But also I'm an engineer, so I'm doing freelancing and we're getting ready to try to launch a product or build a product.
And so a little bit in too many places, sort of at the bottom of the bottom of life, trying to build back up and, you know, here we are on the Internet.
Yeah.
Earlier in your career, you worked at some pretty big companies. Do you mind sharing a couple kind of tidbits of your journey? Yeah.
Yeah, I started back in the day. So that would be like 1998.
You know, back in that other century.
Like, you know, they had to like ride horses to work.
I started insurance at a company called Allstate. I was part of the year 2000, which I love people today who are like, oh, that never was a thing.
And I'm like, yeah, that was a fucking thing. It was a big thing. It was a big problem.
It was.
I got some funny stories that I did, but I was a tester.
I quickly moved on to the kind of dot com team and was part of Allstate.com. And then I was part of the financial group really worked in the dotnet enterprise space.
I was part of the dotnet one, oh, like beta release team. If you really hunt around, you can find what would they be called?
Not news clips, but like we were part of their whole launch. So media team and all that.
So that's cool.
Yeah, grandpa Clark, you said it, Alec.
So, yeah, so it's part of I was part of that whole thing, part of the architecture group, you know, did some big stuff there that led to me going to Microsoft.
I started in their fintech side of things as a consultant. I did about four or five years in consulting.
Then I actually launched a product there. I was part of kind of a dev dev kind of hybrid team.
Dev dev is the whole visual studio group, you know, sort of bounced around it some, some, what we would call today advocacy work.
It's not what we called it back then. So I spoke kind of all over the nation and, you know, was on TV and all the shit.
Finish the finish my term there working with kind of like I came in, worked for the product group and worked with the like top Fortune 50 Fortune 100 customers doing sort of mobile and whatnot.
Then I just couldn't take the rat race. So that was about nine years. I couldn't take the rat race. So I went and worked for a company called Tellerick.
I was a product manager, director, whatnot. I had, I had some products that you would, you would know underneath my wing.
My job was really to just make sure everybody was unfucked and did their jobs and got inquired.
And, you know, that was sort of weird. So, and, you know, kind of all along the side, we'd started a company called that conference and was building up that event.
And when we, yeah, literally when we spun off, we spun off from Tellerick me and another gentleman and then my wife joined us.
We spun off a product that we called tangible. If you know what Heroku is, we competed against them. We had a product called modulus.
Well, I had to get renamed for some legal reasons.
And, well, we burned that fucker into the ground. Like it was a, it was a, it was sort of a Hail Mary.
And there's lots there, but we had that for about a year.
I was going to say that's a good layer, but yeah.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's just a whole other story. But I think at the time we were hosting something like 30,000 websites and all over the cloud. I mean, it was a pretty, it was a pretty legit product.
How did I not know about that part?
Because I was too busy working my ass off.
Valid.
Because nobody pays, because nobody pays attention to me as like the engineer. Everybody paid attention as me, the that conference event planner. And they think that my whole existence is I just do, I just do events.
And it really is I have like a day jobs, right? And things that have to happen. So when we were running tangible, we had six people on staff.
For me, there were six of us total, Jeremiah three. Yeah, I think we had three full times plus the three of us and maybe one contractor.
But at that time, it also started a company called on specified, which really meant I just went to legal zoom and said, I really want this name.
And when tangible collapsed, I started doing freelancing. And all that stuff was that and TC were sort of building up.
And things are going pretty well until the pandemic and then I don't know, and I'll got fucked and got weird and here we are today.
TC's in a weird space and unspecified. We're now on the build back up again, trying to figure out which I mean, it doesn't doesn't really mean anything because whatever product we build will probably be under any entity and anyway, anyway, so company lines,
like, whatever, they're just structures.
But, but yeah, products people, that's sort of where I exist.
Try to try to make people awesome connect them seem to be really good at.
I know I think I have a weird place where I can get people to be vulnerable and kind of come out and connect and talk and whatnot and I don't know how to turn that into something that puts bread on the table.
So I'm trying to figure out how do I take the superpower that I don't quite understand and make it.
I don't scale it. So, yeah.
So I started this site called from code to clarity and, you know, whatever, we're just like figuring it the fuck out.
I don't know.
Yeah, well, I mean, a little bit of a lot of things.
I'm doing a little bit of a lot of things I want to tap into a lot of different things. I'm going to come back to the sadness and that conference and and that sort, literally that that.
But to tap in, I mean, obviously you're in a space of like sort of re establishing yourself and like reshaping what the life that you want for yourself by force, which is never fun.
You know, you're doing the same over here and it's a it's a painful process. I think it pushes us to our absolute limits.
Truly our limits.
But I do think that there is also some beauty in seeing your limits.
Yeah. And in that way. But what I wanted to share is that, you know, and how you sort of presented that at you very much.
I had a connotation that was like, you didn't know what you were doing. But, you know, if I can sort of just like come back around to, you know, how you were sharing that, I think you have so many amazing life lessons that a lot of people could never ever gain that level of knowledge that you have by doing.
And I love when you and I get on a conversation like you've helped me in my business so many times, like in pivotal moments as well, like really important decisions and things that shaped in a beautiful direction.
And so I just want to call out and say, like, yes, life is in a real hard space. But also I want to personally share that you've done a lot to like change my life.
And I think your experience is just such like, it's beautiful, right. And I think code declarity, that's what it that's correct me if that's wrong, right.
Okay, perfect. I didn't want to get that wrong. I think is a beautiful space where you're going to be able to continue to do that for others.
And like, I am really, really looking forward to that. So to sort of reframe from a, yeah, you've done a lot of stuff and you feel like maybe you've had a lot of experience.
I think there's just so much that you can share and help others with. So anyways, I'm digressing on that.
I appreciate the kind words because I don't know how to frame it or say it and yet like you and I and others, like, we get on these calls and something comes out that wasn't anticipated in the first place.
Right. Yeah.
And yeah, I mean, I remember the one.
I remember the day talking to you.
And when the light bulb went off, it was like, yes. Right.
This is a fun moment. Right. I think it was, it was good. And you're in a hard, I mean, we're both in our spots, right.
Only a business is not for everybody by any stretch. And, and you get the more public you are, the more there, the just the more you get, you'll just get pushed.
Yeah.
Yeah, everybody sees everybody sees a conference and they say, oh, it's all great and this and that, but you didn't see the four years of hate email because I was trying to get people together or the, you know, the executive from
Apple who told me I was killing people and like, there's like all kinds of like things that you people don't see, like putting food on it, you know, payroll and right.
All the other stuff.
So I get it.
It's hard.
It is hard.
It doesn't get any easier. You're just, you're going to get better and then you're going to get more. The worst part is you get more knowledgeable.
And then you're like, fuck. Now I know that I don't know. Right. At least when I started like TC, but it was great because you, I didn't know what I was doing.
It was blissfully ignorant. So you're like, this great, like, of course I'm doing the right thing. You're like, I'm not doing any of the right thing.
Yeah.
But that leads you in a place where you break societal norms, you break like I, we didn't fit the norm of a conference of this and that, like we did things that for us made sense, but for an industry, they didn't.
And that's how, that's how, that's what innovation is all about.
So that's how, that's how you were like, different though, right? That was like your value proposition is like, you've got a different event.
Like, you know, so kind of coming around to sort of like why I was sad. And what I shared earlier is like that conference is my absolute favorite conference for developers or in the technological space.
My second favorite is Cabo Press, which is a business conference. And so unrelated to this, but and Clark, I mean, I'll let you speak to it obviously, but you know, had to put the hard news out that just continuing the event.
So you know what, you just speak to it. So.
Yeah, I mean,
it's different today.
People are different.
See, I got 15 years into, I got 15 years into that conference, but I probably have 20 into event planning. We used to run an event in Texas, actually in Austin.
We did code camps and whatnot.
You know, the
I, I, there's three types of events for me. There's like your just raw organic meetups.
Those types of things. I'll put them at the bottom. I don't mean that by like level of importance. Just, I'm putting at the bottom as terms of dollar wise, right?
Maybe there are five, $5,000 a year type of thing.
And then you have, and then of course, code camps, some of them are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but you know, you naturally would have a code camp or hackathon or something that kind of was above that.
And then you have what I would call us is like this super conference, the independent producer who, you know, has a day job, but these conferences turned into many hundreds of thousands, two millions of dollars to execute.
And on top of that, you've got your, what I will call money losers, the Microsofts and AWS and whatnot, where the people are the product, right? AWS is, you know, their bottom for reinvent their bottom sponsorship packages, $80,000, right?
Like, they're playing at a league that's completely different than all of us and they have different motive and, and there's different reasons to go to all those things.
Yeah, yeah, I think the biggest problem with the people in the middle, the independent producer is you're just going to squeeze from all directions, right?
You need to have the right number of people attend to attract the right number of sponsors to attract that help pay for the space.
So like we try to have a premium experience at a cost that was, you know, not a premium cost, but the shit costs money, right?
Yeah, you get, you know, in 2019, we had 1800 people, we consumed 275,000 square feet of, you know, event space, food with $400,000.
Like, I mean, it's just like, staggering amount of things that kind of go into that. And, you know, obviously all the planning and, and, you know, we did things different than other people's.
But I just say all that to say there's, you know, think of a stool, it's got four legs, you cut one leg short, stool falls over.
So if I can't get the sponsors and I can't get this and I can't get that or I can't get enough, which is really what it is, then other things have something has to change.
And whether that's like, you change the food or you change the venue or you change this, ultimately that ends up, and this is where we ended up.
It's like, if we change what we are is not what we were. So I can't really say like, if I'm going to take that conference and I'm going to do it, say in October at a different venue.
Well, it's probably not a family event anymore, because there's not really any place for the kids to go do something. It's probably not this, that or the other, because that's just not what we were for 15 years.
Yeah. And if I'm going to start the fuck over, what would I, what would I do today?
Yes, yes. Why would I try to repeat the same format that just failed. And it's not that the events were great. The events are fantastic, but they weren't amazing enough.
But it wasn't enough, right? It wasn't, I had to take out a loan. I had to pay for it. I have a loan to pay for, right? There wasn't enough. There wasn't enough. And at the other day, that means I had to pay for it.
And right.
That's, I mean, I'm obviously there's deep wounds there that have to be dealt with. But I'm not some, you know, freaking Silicon Valley VC, whatever, like, I, this has been my, like, we make all this shit, like, I don't, there's not people to do that stuff.
So, so, you know, it just wasn't working. And I, you know, I, some of it is people based, meaning they just, they're learning different.
Some of it is a, I don't want to say societal shift, but the fact that people were locked up in their house, and they kind of got out and they're not really good at communicating now, and they're lonely, and they don't know how to jump into a crowd.
And they're not going to work so they don't hear about the thing and their companies aren't paying for it because educational budgets are down. Like the list goes on and on. Like we didn't die because there was one thing we, we had to shutter because of many factors that just pointed to, you just have to refactor.
And what does that refactoring look like? I don't know. You know, I've got it on the iron, the irony right now is,
I have it on really good authority that a lot of sponsors are doing things like I'm only going to sponsor events on the coasts, only if they're AI, only if they're this.
And that was part of why we did TC in the first place was to say, there's nothing here in the Midwest, like you guys are flying over the fucking great shit that happens.
So I'm going to put us on the map.
Yeah.
And, and we did. Not that there's no other depends how you want to find a Midwest. I'm saying upper of course.
Not to diminish. I don't want anything I'm saying to diminish things as as KCDC or code match or stir track or, you know, any, any of those who are like me and I worry for all of them as well.
But, you know, so there's a whole bunch of shit.
And, and so then you, you just have to step back and say, okay, I mean, I got into this not to create an event.
Like, that's the worst part of the whole gig.
Yeah, I got into it to connect people and to build a community of people who want to help each other grow, make money, feel good about the impact that they have in life.
I, you know, I could argue I don't, I don't need an event for that.
Like,
Yeah, I don't carry and I spend with 5000 hours a year planning that conference.
Like, it's a full time job for two people. I wasn't, I mean, I didn't get paid.
Yeah, I was working two fucking jobs. So,
So you could keep doing it honestly too.
Yeah, I mean, like, like there's a cost to it. And,
for sure.
And when I see developers get like, I'm not going to spend any money on that tool.
It's like, well, hey, why don't you support the motherfucker who's been writing his ass off and who's making it easy for your job.
But you don't want to throw him a cup of coffee or her a cup of coffee. Like, come on, like, like what, like, really?
Yeah.
Like, that's the thing you can't reach in and the fact that you make 150 grand a year and you can't reach in and pull out 10 bucks to give that person who's banging away at night to give you the tool to do the thing.
Come on.
Come on. Really?
But there's, but it happens to a lot to that.
Honestly, it does. And it happens with sort of like everything to like, you know, like you and I talked about in pre show, like it also means that like, there's no self investment, right?
Like there's an opportunity to sort of self invest and say, hey, okay, my company isn't providing that continue education stipend, but I still need it.
I still have these different needs, right? Like you still have to go out and do it.
I think what's, what I think is just kind of interesting also when you think about this kind of persona and sort of demographic, right?
It's like, I think about my non big tech days, like before I got into big tech, I was in business management and like the hospitality space, right?
So in the restaurants and the venues where people are hosting events, you know, and coming from that space, like, and then coming into technology, just a level of like waste and sort of lack of efficiency and sort of big tech in general.
It's just so crystal clear to me looking back. And it's interesting that, that there's just this huge economical like influx or like sort of disaster if you think about it, right?
Other industries like invest in continuing education because they're making the right decisions so that they can invest in their people correctly.
They do have daycares on staff like General Mills had a daycare there. They had a restaurant, they had a doctor's office, they had a chiropractor tons of stuff, right?
And they were like, they were a big company and they knew they had to take care of people and it's like big tech and sort of anyone that gets kind of folded into that what I'm kind of an economical disaster when you think about it, really just, I think, sort of starts to
misinterpret where investments should be made. I don't know if that makes any sense, but
it does. And you know, Ross pointed out, developers have been getting shit for free and, and you know, I would tell people this.
You can either make a choice to be the product or support the person who is offering the thing. And if you're going to be the product, that means your data is going to get sold, that means you're going to get marketed to, that means all of that shit, right?
And for me, like we were very adamant that the people were not the product we were.
Yeah.
And you could, that was the gig. You knew that I wasn't going to sell your shit. You knew that I wasn't, you know, going to do, you knew that I was going to do right by you.
But just key for developers, key.
Not if they don't want to pay.
Well, I get that. Yeah.
Right. Like that's where they have their demands.
Right. That's the economical disaster. Right. You're like, you want, you want, you want to fill a at breakfast in a resort that's feeding a thousand people like this is not physically possible.
Right. Yeah. It's not going to be, you know, like Dick, a steakhouse, because it just, there's a thousand of them that need to come out. Right.
So let's be realistic.
But I think it's, aren't, they're not investing in themselves. And yeah, I know we said this before. I don't know if I said it now.
I mean, this feels like the dot com boom.
And so you're either going to need to, I mean, anybody who's listening to this, if you're not investing in yourself right now as to how the world's going to be in five years, you're fucked.
You're fucked. It's going to be different.
I mean, there's definitely a lot of weight to that. Yeah.
Yeah. If you think writing your next login component and react is, is that's the thing. Go check out fee zero.
Like, we're not going to need that.
You know, why do you have this eight pound brain on top of you? Like, it's to solve problems and make money and things that computers can't do.
It's important. Right. Coding skills are great. You still need those.
But, you know, the repetitive just shit over and over and over again, like that. Look, our jobs will be different.
So just like internet changed the world. We got, if you look at that history line, you know, we, the dot com, we were going to sell dog treats everybody and big NFL commercials and a lot of law.
And then it all came crashing down. And then we figured out how to use the internet.
And now we have this interconnected world that we can't fathom.
It would have ever gotten here.
And AI has been around for a long time. It's nothing new and run to come up and everybody's like, Oh, this is going to be great.
And China yesterday releases deep secret or whatever thing they did and N video is crashing and blah, blah, blah.
And right, we're going to go up on this curve and everything's going to crash again.
And then we're going to start climbing and the world will live in. It will not. It just will not look the same.
Yeah. And it's exciting. I think it's exciting. Great. I don't want to write another login screen. Like, who gives a shit?
I think that's not my value. Right.
I do agree with that.
That's so when it comes to that kind of stuff. So here's the thing and I'm curious how you see this.
Like, I absolutely love Legos. This is totally a side tension, but it's really not.
So I love Legos, but I cannot sit and do a Lego set that has instructions.
Most developers talk about how much they love Legos. And I'm like, wait, am I a freak of nature because I can't follow instructions?
So I'm curious because here's where I think this is exciting as you're talking about sort of a login screen.
I feel like that's, that's the Legos with instructions, right? Like here, here's the thing that you're going to build.
You're going to get this perfectly done thing. It's odd. The guide is here for you. Here's what you do when I'm like, no, give me the bucket of Lego so I can create it from nothing.
No, I'm going to take it even a step further. The login screen is just a brick.
Oh, it's the brick that's already made and it doesn't even, yeah, I mean, definitely.
Oh, that's a whole nother way of thinking about it, right? Because all those bricks come together and it's not difficult to just stack normal bricks on top of each other.
What's difficult is the, the culmination of the big picture.
That's right. That's right.
It's like the canvas, right? You can go, you can go get all the paint and whatnot, but you got to paint something on it and
you know, I'm picking on the login screen like we all have them, but it's just, it's not of any real consequential value.
We don't need to keep building that over and over again. And there are obviously plenty of companies, you know, and also your own octa and whatever.
There's too many of them who had them all, right? And we make them look different and we pretend like we wrote it, but we didn't.
But the reality is, we have to get the backlog done.
Yeah. Right. The backlog keeps getting bigger and bigger. The reality is, we have to make money in a digital age that we're in.
The industrial age is over. Like you're in a whole nother like way of doing work.
You're at a whole nother way of exchanging information. You're arguably, you could say that the UI that we have is sort of pointless.
Are we going to start writing UIs for AI? Like, what does, does the human aspect, if you just interact with, you know, a freaking AI assistant, will you ever go to the web again to go browse around?
I don't know. Probably not. Like, maybe not. Like, who would have thought big, big media would have, or big, big news would have died, but nobody wants to do that.
Who would have thought the weatherman or weather girl would have ever, like when I grew up, that was a big old deal, right?
Now I just go to my iPhone and I go, look, I got the five days. I don't, I don't care.
Yeah. I can just speak it out and it comes.
So I think I just, it's just going to be different. And I don't think it's bad. I think it's great.
But we have to like, why, why do we exist to solve what problem?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was, I've had a couple of folks on the show and we had a live stream that we did in the end of December and it was really, and it was over Christmas break sort of time, right?
So some folks were really checked out. So it's pretty lightly attended, but we had a really good conversation about how we can be more productive as developers with AI.
But then on the flip the script side of it, essentially, there was a great conversation. It was like, it's going to take your jobs and then sort of the, the diverse conversation of if it's going to take your jobs.
And I think what was interesting that came out of that, David Beall actually to quote, made a comment. He's like, it is going to take your jobs.
And I was like, Oh, feisty opinion, you know, and, but like he spoke to like how important it is to be creative, to have like this creative thinking to be a human, right?
And to have your artistic outlets in music or painting or whatever that looks like for you, right? I love shooting archery.
Like, so, you know, just whatever that artistic outlet is, like being even more honed into a lot of those activities and crafts and capabilities, because then that's going to speak into more of that creative side of like you're taking it.
And bringing things that a computer can build. But it needs you as that human creative layer.
I presume you think similarly, but would love to hear your thoughts on that.
Yeah, AI is going to take your job. But like anything, and no different than the car took the horse, but people still ride horses.
So true. So true.
Right. Like, yeah, it just means that we get to accomplish bigger things that we haven't had a chance to get to. It also means that people like me, like right now I have no staff.
I use AI all fucking day long.
Same here.
I have to.
It doesn't.
It also doesn't mean it also means that the next person I hire isn't to do what that's doing.
Like I want that person to have business impact and whatnot and whatnot. So there's like, it's just a shift, you know, people often don't value themselves enough.
And, you know, it's a, it doesn't matter. Nothing that we say today means shit, other than to know that it's going to be different.
Right. Because none of us know where it's going to lead.
Three days ago, everybody thought open AI was, you know, that's the sliced bread and then, you know, the Chinese release, whatever, like, whatever, like great, great, bring it on.
Cool. More competition, something will come from it.
But it just won't, you know, if somebody's sitting there thinking like, you know, I can just keep doing the same thing. I would just argue, think about what your value is and what you bring in.
I think he said in here, login pages don't earn raises. Yeah. Nobody cares. It's just like, it's just part of it.
Good.
I miss that one.
I think what is interesting about it too is like you were just speaking to, so there's been sort of this like theme, right? Of like, okay, if this is where things are going, you know, harnessing your inner self.
But there's a lot of what I think is like self hate right now and hate is a really strong word.
But I think, you know, like I can, I can speak to it personally, like admittedly last year, I was like, I felt that the right decision was to be in the weeds, deepen my business, crafting, understanding, working directly with clients,
revising, iterating and making that a perfected offering so that, you know, the next year, now this year, I would just be like, boom, I've had this perfect offering, right?
Well, it turns out if you do that, you don't get clients. If you don't get clients, you don't pay bills. And then you get to a space where you're like, well, guess what? Perfecting my offering wasn't exactly what I should have been doing.
Yeah.
I believe, I believe, I probably told you that as well.
Oh, no, we had many conversations. And I knew this many failures, right? This wasn't just a one failure. So I think it's hard until you're in it, you get it. But yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, no, it's not even it's, it's that you had to earn that scar.
Right. You, you, you need, you need the scar so that the next time something comes up, you're like, ah, fuck, I need to validate faster, exchange money faster because money is validation of a thing.
Right. I can say that the TC events were fan fucking tastic. They were great. But you know what? The money did not validate that that was the case. Otherwise, more would have sold.
That's right.
And people will sit there and they'll tell me, and I don't, and I don't mean to be like, disparaging of what people have said. A lot of nice things have been said.
The thing is not enough were right. We saw tens of thousands of people's over the years. Right. Like the money is ultimately what showed its value.
And it was not valuable enough, right for it to exist. Now, and of course there's slices through that. But yeah, but you needed this car and
it's there and, and like I got a scar for having to shutter a business and take on a business loan and all that. Like that's a scar that you ask every entrepreneur or business owner.
They all have those. Everybody's got a closet of failures. Yeah. And I, you know, I got to build mine up too. Yeah.
Will you put Zach's comment back up there? Because I think it, I think that's, that's actually a, I think it's a super important point. I really agree that the, the architects will survive.
Not only that, I think that role has been shit on the past five to 10 years and devalued as to what it takes to build a system and what it means and why it's important because everybody got in a loop of like,
I can just do a thing and deploy it and I don't need all this stuff and blah, blah, blah. And you could be like, you could be wasteful because it was cheap.
Yeah. It's like, yeah, okay. So whatever. I just spin up another, you know, a versatile thing and it does it because it's only this and that until it matters.
Right. Exactly. I don't know how many customers I've walked in. I was like, what's your bill every month? The thousands? Oh, great.
Cause mine's 30. Like mine's 75. Like cause that's the most valuable skill set in today's AI world.
Yeah. Like I knew how to build the system so that it wasn't like the costs weren't spinning out of control. And I still served. Like am I serving millions a month? No, but I still served 30,000 uniques a month.
Like it wasn't like it was three. It was tens of thousands. It wasn't costing me, you know, an arm and a leg to do that. So I agree.
I just, it's an important point for those who are listening. I think it's a big deal.
I agree. Well, you and I talked to on the pre show, right? We were talking about understanding systems versus being a framework developer where you just bring all the different frameworks together and you're connecting pieces, you know, like there's a skill for, I mean, that's, it's a skill that is necessary, right?
But it's like looking at AI, it's a skill that can be done by a computer and like telling the computer how to, you know, actually create something based on human creative knowledge.
Right. It's the value. Yeah.
Yeah. For those front end folks that have been, haven't been paying attention to CSS probably be a real good time to learn that one myself.
Like, like that's a thing that the AI, right, isn't really going to be able to do until you can draw a picture and say, Hey, make this pretty picture. Right.
Oh my gosh. I'm wanted again. I'm like the CSS master. Just kidding. I used to be so man, that used to be like my damn because I loved it.
But that's the example of where the creative piece comes in. Like you can write the login screen who gives a shit, but I gotta, you know, I've got to sprinkle my, my lovely bits on top of it.
So yeah.
And I think humans will become even more demanding if anything right because we're given everything. And so then we're going to be used to sort of this age of like seeing prompts and seeing boxes and seeing whatever so anything that is outside of that aesthetically is going to be very appealing to us.
Admittedly, like I have been on a phone hiatus and that I took everything that is work related and social media related and doom scrolling possible off of my phone.
And my screen time I think yesterday it was literally 30 minutes and I am just living the best life ever I'm spending time with my kids my toddlers happier my big kids are happier they're around coming back around their parents more I'm like, huh,
there's something here this evil little device that like has made everything so available is like almost something that I now demise you know it's just yeah I checked out.
I sort of checked out a social media a few months ago. I mean when I knew I had to make this announcement. Unfortunately, like I started the YouTube channel and then all this other shit just to just kept consuming more and more like headspace.
But on the end of the year.
It was we did the same I've been doing the same kind of thing like getting everything off the phone. I would really actually love to have just two phones.
A social media social media phone because I can't really not do social media like that's sort of part of the business.
It's painful on desktop. That's the problem.
Yep. But I also don't want it on my phone. So the way I've solved that problem is I made the the watch the second phone.
And so I try not to have the phone around.
I'm trying to keep it like in the other room, especially I mean I'm in the Apple ecosystem so I can I know what is it called screen mirror and my phone if I need to.
Yeah.
But like my watch is dialed in like there's no it's it's messages. It's yeah there's no there's no notifications like it's if I need to get a hold of somebody I make a phone call like it's on lock.
But yeah I got a I want to create I don't want to consume and exactly that that little slab of glass will just take you into consume mode and and melt your melt your fucking time away.
So it's really interesting if we start thinking about sort of like this like less consumption like what does that mean in terms of like we're creating but we're not consuming right do you think that means we're going to start consuming only the like very direct tight network around us will there be tighter circles or will consumption just be like we're just creating because we want to create.
You know what back in the olden days your tight circle was your town.
Yeah there was no like I needed to be globally connected to every motherfucker to know that they were taking a shit while watching tiktok.
Right.
Yeah.
Yep.
Right.
Like I can't tell you the amount of dumb shit that is online.
You know what it's I mean obviously there's a lot of funny stuff like you can't.
But animal videos you can't deny them.
But but you're right like okay so what if you're so what if you're you're cadre is 25 people.
Right.
I mean if it's the right 25.
Great.
I don't like my my yeah my business come out here.
My business folks like that's a pretty small neck group like I don't I don't know a ton of business owners.
Yeah.
But I can tell you that those relationships are deep like real deep valuable.
Right.
So I would much rather less deeper than more I don't know broader.
So and I honestly I also think that that's I think that's part of the problem with the big events like there's not really if you're the reality is I wanted to grow.
Community and that meant people but everybody else thought of it as an event which meant learning.
So we read odds with one another.
Right.
Yeah.
And the learning was supposed to be the thing that got you there the community was supposed to be the thing that you realized you didn't know you needed once you got there.
Right.
And then COVID sort of reset that and said I don't really need community anymore which is the irony is you got live.
You are you need it now more than you ever did before.
But so then so then I so then I just think you go OK well what does what does an event who is unapologetically that mean like who is unapologetically just about people and impact on some fucking thousand person event.
Hell no.
That's like a 50 to 100 person.
That's like a very curated.
It's like the Kabul thing you go to.
It's a very curated experience.
It's a very drawing lines between people where you can still kind of have the Pac-Man you know there's still a piece that's open for others to come in right you don't want to be in an echo chamber.
But at the same token not everybody's in the same place at the same time.
Yep.
So like you know if you're 20 you're looking to learn and grow up and get the raise but if you're 40 you're going what the fuck am I going to do with my life right now.
Right.
If you're 50.
What have I got.
Well if listen I'm turning I'm going to turn 50 this year.
Dude I'm going to 40 this year.
Okay.
So you're going to hit a point.
I hit a point.
I'm going to start taking down and not taking up.
Yeah.
And that in that impact like starts these things start to change and you start to go.
All my time is way more important than I thought it was and I'm not getting any of it back.
But that's the hard part not getting any of it back right and like.
Look I only got one more summer arguably two with my daughter before she's in college.
Right like.
One already in college if you don't know Clark.
Right you only have so many of them right I wish somebody would have grabbed me by the collar when I was young and had said like listen I think there's a book called for 4000.
So 4000 weeks.
7000 weeks.
I haven't heard of that one.
Oh it's good.
For.
Yeah for.
Yeah 4000 weeks.
Here I'll put it in.
Yes please do.
You are on fixed fucking time.
So and this is this is sort of the stuff that.
This is some of the stuff that I talk about in like my coaching thing is like make your shit.
Work for itself.
Like it needs to stack it needs to point together it needs to fuel your purpose.
It may take you five or 10 years to get there but if you're just doing activities that don't have alignment to where you want to go when you get older like me and you didn't and you have all these things that are kind of like I'm good across a lot.
Look, I mean, I guess the large majority of people start businesses after 40.
It's a very high percentage of people.
But you have fixed fixed time and you have fixed time less fixed time with your family, your kids, your parents.
People, community, humans is is is an hour on tick tock here.
Like is this a good you see your time or I don't reading a book or writing a book or taking your kid to the park or going to work out.
Learning how to milk the cow.
Yeah, I mean that one arguably depending upon where you live might be a little harder.
Come to my house I'll show you how to milk the cow.
It's easy.
Yeah, I some money is great because it allows you to not have to do things like that.
See like that.
That's where I like see it differently and that by the way cows are way more expensive than going to the grocery store and buying milk like milk cows right now are like $4 to $5,000.
So like it isn't about that you like have to truly love what you're doing but I love that's the thing is I want that I want the raw.
I want my diet to come from the source that I'm like creating and seeing and raising you know.
And I'm not here microwaving microwaving a brisket.
I'm sitting here.
I'm sitting outside spending 18 hours cooking a piece of meat that is well now overpriced but hey I'll send you some meat.
That's what we should do.
I'll send you some some beef and you can cook it up in the Midwest.
Yeah, go ahead.
You send me all the briskets.
Turns out cows don't have unlimited briskets there's only so many of them on a cow.
No, you only get like a good well I think I was trying to on ours we only got two big chunks of it basically.
Yeah, I mean it's a big animal for only two little small piece of meat.
Yeah, yeah.
Anyways, I just you know.
I think where this is leading to though is I think that you know lots and lots and lots of things we've talked about.
I'm feeling it you're feeling it I think everyone's feeling it right is like we're in this space of like the world is clearly changing and we either evolve and change with it or we fall behind but at the same time also in this vein of we need humans like I'm sorry but we were created as human creatures to be with other humans.
And that's why like reproduction is so predominant in all of animals right it's like it is this this creation it is a life and I think that we have COVID allowed us to think that we didn't need people because we could function that way but at the end of the day we couldn't function that way because now we are seeing it right we're seeing the repercussions
of humans and from the supply chain to the politically to socially to sort of everywhere and I think that what is honestly the saddest part about that conference is that we need that conference more than ever this year like this is the year and I'm seeing it and the developer curated
things are coming to life and they're coming back again and devs are creating meetups again by nature from their peers right to devs are like let's bring people together because we need to talk again because we did get reset someone threw it in the chat it's like getting reset to 2006.
I agree I wasn't a dev in 2006 I was in hospitality management, but like I reference it to sort of like the mid 2000s 2010s like I remember when dev meetups in around 2015 2016 were just like fire fire you go there and you met 30 other developers and there is a couple people from companies but they were cool they knew what was up
they like kept to themselves shared as they needed to write it was they were dead whatever was a big piece of how we all learned 100% it was a piece of how you navigated the unknown and that's sort of where we are today in the island right this is exactly a bunch of a whole bunch of unknown it feels like that again it feels like the
dot com, but I think to your point.
People just need to be human and they need to realize that people are carrying a lot of a lot of shit.
Some of the stuff that they don't know that they're carrying some of it is people's financial situations, some of it is, or confidence got knocked out because they can have a job for so many months.
So a little empathy, right and little kindness and a little just like check in on your on your friends.
The attention management that we live in today people people are just like they're on to the next thing, right. And, you know, it was a fair, fair speeler quote that was something like you know sometimes you got to stop and
how I got to find it now sometimes you have to stop and should be asking the AIs.
Life moves.
Yes, so he was telling I forget the other guy.
I had to watch that movie. Life moves pretty fast if you don't stop and look around once in a while you can miss it. And not that Ferris is you know, the savior of humanity but you know,
the quotes accurate.
Yeah, like, you know, Ross who's in here we put together a little meetup in Madison over the weekend and, you know, it was
like, I think the original intent was people would be doing open spaces and kind of talking about technical stuff and whatnot. And really what it turned into is everybody just wanted to talk to one another and get shit off their chest
and bitch about work and just see what others were doing and just hang out. And that kind of shows you just like how far away from some normalcy we got.
So, yeah. Yeah, Ross, by little I didn't mean it in any condescending ways I just meant it in size of people like it was. It was actually the right we had 20 other 20 folks.
And that he was the right size.
That is right size for people that meant everybody had space to, you know, to talk exactly, right.
Yeah, together together. Yeah, right. There wasn't nobody, you know, split off into kind of different things. It was like everybody was involved in was involved in which, yeah, it was good to see.
Yeah, I think that's where meaningful interactions come from right so coming back around to you referencing Cabo press. So for folks to just kind of elaborate on that and like what Clark meant by that is that it is a very curated
business event. And so the host invites people you have to apply you have to sort of speak to what you do in your business why you're looking to attend the event.
You know that sort of thing. And then when you do get accepted there's a curation like they get to know you like it's understanding your business the challenges you're facing how it they can connect you because there's a it's a curated lunch right I've got a group of people I have lunch
with every day and we're talking about our businesses throughout the entire week so it's it's very much like this. It's an investment right it's an investment in for me it's an investment in my business because I know and I absolutely know because many things came from that event as well as a learning
experience is like it changed my business and these types of events where we can come together in a smaller.
Can I change can I change what you said. Yeah, sure. It changed it changed your mindset.
It did change my mindset you're right you're right it changed my mindset which in turn changed my business which in turn changed more than what you more than just your business there's this whole like flywheel of things that that changes around it right your
interaction with your family the time you put into it right that and that's why I say it it it changed up here which in turn had a cascading effect.
Yeah, not to interrupt you I just didn't want to lose that point.
No I love that I'm glad that you did because you are right that's exactly what it and it's it's far more there's far more impact than you think when you walk away right I walked away thinking that I was like holy crap boom this is what I'm going to do here's my future here's
my strategy lots of clarity but that meant that everything that I understood and how to do that in my business it meant I can do that in other people's businesses and I understand how to get more business and yes I agree I agree agree.
Long story short, I would love to see a lot more of these events and I think you know obviously we're going to do what we're going to do but I think there's been for me starting this live stream was a realization of something I didn't realize I had and I was like deeply depressed
and didn't realize it because like I'm not really a depressive type of a person right I go go go I get crap done yeah sometimes life is hard but that's just a stage and you push through and you get out of it.
And I really thought that that's all it was it was just me in my business trying to grow business just learning all the hard lessons and just being deep in that when and at the end of the day I was so focused in my business that I wasn't really talking to other people I was talking to you my business coach which
hire a freaking coach by the way such a smart thing is like you who also helped coach me and guide me the my business coach I had hired early on like a few other handful of people but I was living in isolation and I was freaking sad.
I was sad because as soon as I started the live stream on December 16 around Christmas time I had had why don't even know a week's worth of sessions at that point and all of a sudden I was like oh we should hang up Christmas decorations which previously I was like nah we don't need to do decorations this year it's fine like it's just
takes up too much time I was like the Grinch anyway so I think I know that you're feeling this too and I think it's I can like give any wisdom to anyone out there who is like worried about a hour trying to look for a job or in the crap like get with your people they will figure out the crap with you because odds are you just need to get with your people to get your brain reset so you can deal with the other crap.
Yep.
Okay, Clark you're doing a lot of stuff and I do have to wrap up soon thanks to lovely meetings.
What are really really could go for another hour.
So you just schedule schedule round two because we didn't even talk about anything that we said in the pre show.
We talked about some of it some of it. Okay, what should we what should we fire drill bring out. They scratched it.
Fire drill. I don't know.
I mean for those who are listening. I would just you got into you got into a
industry that's ever changing. So get good at learning. Have an open mind to what
how things could be different. I would say be you know like just be curious.
Yeah.
Because it's changing. And that means you're going to learn a lot of things that will be pointless.
You'll learn things that will eventually go away but they should be foundational and the things that will help shape
just those scars right. I mean everybody who was involved in the dot comp.
Still has scars of all the things that we did wrong and whatnot.
So I don't go subscribe to my from code to clarity like go over there and subscribe.
I haven't even written the newsletter yet like we just launched it. It's hot garbage. I'm going to completely rewrite it.
But she launched it.
Yeah, I did it. And it's not by the way. It's good.
I mean it's there.
But you know if you're if you're looking for help, you know, I do have a one on one coaching program. We're going to do some
group accountability coaching curated type things not try to put the words around that. So if that's something you're interested in hit me up.
It's necessary.
We'll do something in the DC. I have a few one idea that I think I need to scratch.
But do you want to drop any hints? Are you keeping that close to your heart for now?
Yeah, I'm not going to say anything about it.
He's going to leave us hanging folks.
I know I'll just tell you that it won't be anything like it won't be anything like what anybody else is doing.
I want the invite.
Yeah, well, you would have to have one of those two.
Exactly. I figured so.
All right, we all have to get in in Clark's good graces so we get the invite because honestly, like I'll tell you what these like smaller intimate
invite sort of curated events where everyone is getting beautifully connected together for their life and career purposes.
It's powerful. So that's maybe a little thing that you're coming towards.
I can't wait to see it.
I mean, I don't know how to explain it. I don't know what it means and I don't know how to get paid for it.
But I get my superpower sort of bringing people together and getting people vulnerable to talk about the real shit and connect with one another and create those deep connections and engineering teams where people aren't assholes to one another, but you're building stuff to you and joy and the community and the culture around it.
And I just need to figure out.
I need to figure out what that is and how people I guess want to pay me for it.
But I don't know. I don't know the words to put around any of that.
Yeah, all new ventures.
Yeah, you know, I mean, I love writing code.
I guess that's fine. What I really love about it is making tools that enable people.
So we're going to take some of the tech and TC and productize it and sell that but or at least try to give it a go.
But I don't think that's the eventual destination of anything. I think it's more on the how do I create impact with people.
So, yeah, I love that.
All right, code to clarity folks check that out.
I'll put that in the show notes as well as the book that Clark mentioned that I got in the private chat.
So, yeah, anywhere else the folks can come and go and find you.
I would say right now just go to from code to clarity.com.
Okay.
Go get on the newsletter.
More will come on that hot hot mess. I don't know you can go find me on the socials or go to the YouTube at Clark cell or the Clark cell, whatever.
I don't know if you can't find me in the socials then you're not really looking very hard.
I feel like it's pretty easy to find.
Right. Like if you can't find me on a come on like, I'm sort of around like, you're around may not always say something but I think you can find this mug.
Yep. Clark cell pretty much everywhere honestly, you're pretty easy to find out.
I was tagging you this morning in post so.
Yeah.
All right, well, we definitely should chat again.
Honestly, we should maybe do like a co lab you can come into the built for devs hub because I'm trying to host a bunch of different types of events.
Maybe do something around like there's a round table feature in there to sort of limit the number of folks that can join and kind of a version of like Clark therapy maybe where you can kind of chat about some of this stuff because I know you personally helped me just
sort of get off on a personal level right is like just kind of like stop being so hard on myself and a number of other things I think others could benefit from so.
Oh yeah and Josh has a great comment here we got a shout out.
I think this is a beautiful way to leave so for anyone on the podcast if you're listening to just the audio version Clark you're an awesome person and you've done a ton or you've done a bunch of incredible work for the world we do not deserve your special brand of wholesome
amazing as I honestly I guess that totally would love to just echo that.
I think there's so many different ways that you've changed and shaped my life, you know personally and I think that that's the case for a lot of other people.
I think sometimes it's like you said we're all just moving we're moving so fast that you know we're like forgetting the people that have mattered and that have have like rippled and changed our lives and you know when your dear friends who have benefited from that
conference, you know you don't see see them or feel them with all of the big news and things I think that's that's hard right I think that's hard.
It's hard for everyone like I don't want to hear that.
I adore you.
I mean, that's going to be a hard thing for me is when you know the eventual July comes around and it doesn't happen and I mean every year I get you know pictures of somebody wearing their shirt and met somebody.
And I think it's just that you who was a met Germany.
They met somebody in Germany that had the shirt on like they're walking through the Munich airport and they're like, holy shit.
Of course that's shit has never happened to me.
It's never once nobody's it's never happened to me.
This happened to a lot of other people and we're still going to make a shirt.
We're I mean we're still going to do do.
Like I said, it's not over.
It's just yeah, we're refactoring and the.
It's an event at the end of the day.
Like if if if people think that the event is the community and not the people interactions inside of it, then I have failed.
But you can still be part of the community and you could still be active and you can still do stuff and we can still do meetups and we can still do all of that stuff.
And you still get all of my support and just because there's not an event in July at a Calhari doesn't mean that there's not things in the future or this or that and none of it is reflective of the community because the community are people and what people do.
And I'd like to think that the people who we've.
I don't want to say curated but brought together.
I've embodied what we envision like there wasn't. I mean, there's always an asshole somewhere but I think we did a pretty good job of like, you know, having good wholesome people who did stuff and cared about one another.
And that should continue to exist.
Regardless, right, like I don't need to be in that exchange for that to happen.
Right.
I agree. I agree. And like you said, it turned into an event because that's sort of the way that it just kind of brought itself to life, right?
When at the end of the day you're looking to bring people together around a shared purpose essentially.
So it did that doesn't have to be an event.
And I think, yeah.
Right. I mean, we can keep going.
We can live streams and all that kind of shit.
Like it's exactly.
Again, it's people's actions, right?
If you choose to participate, then you become part of it.
If you choose not to, and it doesn't, that's not just ours thing. That's any thuddy's thing.
You choose not to.
Well, then you're not fucking doing it like you're not.
You might as well just sign out of that fucking discord and move on.
Like take the noise away.
So, yeah.
But I think lesson here is slowing down a little bit in life and consuming what actually matters, right?
So investing in ourselves, investing in the conversations and the human interaction that we like deeply, deeply, deeply need right now.
And I think is, is, I think is the summary of this conversation today.
Amen, sister.
All right. Well, it has been a fabulous show.
Thank you all who joined us in the chat and all the amazing things that were said.
Clary, Terry came in at the last minute there.
Glad to see you, Clark online and in action.
I agree.
I texted Clark just really quick before we jump off.
I texted him like what this is maybe like a month or two ago.
And I don't even remember what I texted and he came back with like the craziest answer.
And it wasn't crazy, but it was just like different than I'm used that I'm used to.
And I go to my husband and I was like, I think something's wrong with Clark and I keep texting and I'm like, okay, yeah.
And it wasn't necessarily that was like something was first day wrong.
But like, I think you and I were both in sort of the depths last year a little bit.
And I'm glad to see you out on a live stream too, because it was a, it was weird.
I was like, did I make it mad?
I'm like, what did I do? Did I hurt him?
Like, did I not share something I should have shared?
Not that you would have ever gotten upset about that.
And then I was like, no, shoot, this is not normal Clark behavior.
That's, I'm going to keep poking him and checking on him.
Right. We're all human, right?
Yeah. You were being funny in the end of it.
But in the beginning I was like, hmm.
Yeah. I mean, a lot of people like they are the ones who just, they just took the news of TC like in January.
But Carrie and I have been living it for a fucking years.
Like though we took on the loan over a year and a half ago, right?
I went into AFib because that was the moment where the company went upside down.
That's the, that's the true story that I didn't fucking tell anybody.
It was because of stress. It was because the whole thing was like falling apart.
And yet I say falling apart.
I mean, this is just financial woes, but that's happening.
But I have to go on stage and smile and meet the commitments and make sure the sponsors are happy and make sure we sell the tickets because now the commitment is even more, right?
Because I can't, I don't want to say that I can't like show the cards.
But if I, if, if for some reason a sponsor thought we weren't going to make it, like now sponsors are super hyper sensitive.
And if anybody's on the line of not making it, they won't sponsor.
Is there a freight they're going to lose their money losing their fucking money?
There's so many contracts involved and all that stuff.
They're not losing their money. I'm losing my money.
And, but you can't like, I couldn't like, I had this like, like Superman slash Clark Kent like thing.
Like I couldn't, I, I, I couldn't tell. We couldn't talk about that.
Like we're getting ready to lay off people and like, how are we going to do this? And, and then we had contracts.
Like, so there was six months of legal shit come this past, whatever past event that we needed to deal with.
And that went on for whatever, ever.
So yeah, it's a lot.
I mean, people, you know, people don't, people also don't ask all the right quit.
They don't ask the questions either. They assume and you go, well, I mean, maybe read a little deeper, you know, when other, when other events come to me and say, Hey, will you give me your list?
I'm like, did you fucking read it? Did you read anything?
Like, fuck you.
That's hard. That's hard.
Oh, that's, that's especially when you didn't hit the Titanic, didn't fucking sink. Like, are you serious?
Like, swoop in and be like, Hey, sell me your people or give them to me. Fuck off.
No, it's not. It's not how this works, man.
Yeah.
And that's not the developer curated channels that all of us want to be hanging out in honestly, if we're selling emails and things.
And of course we go to conferences and big events knowing exactly knowing some things, right?
But like, that's not the events we want to be spending time at. And honestly, in the fragile state that we are in, just coming back to that blog post I was talking about, right, is like, we are in this state of like, we need trustworthy information and we just need the humans that we want to be around so that we can get out of these little cocoon that we have been in.
And the humans that we want to be around is like our peers, right, is like our fellow developers. So it's like going to events like that conference, commit your code, you know, the ones that are curated by the developers themselves are like the really key important events right now.
And my agreement with you, right, the collective view was that I wouldn't do that to you. So I'm not going to do it now. Like, why, like, for what, for what end? Like, what's that going to do?
So you're good people, Clark.
I am people.
You are.
Sometimes I swear too much.
Yeah, that happens. I try not to swear at all ever anymore.
It's, it's hard.
I gave up. I gave up.
Honestly, it's a slippery slope for me to letting my emotions get out of control because I'm a very sensitive emotional person when it comes to sort of anger, you know, sadness.
I get to like the depths of the highs and the depths of the lows. And so I try to keep it out of there for that very reason. But digressing from that.
Gosh, what was I going to say? Dang it.
Now I forgot what I was going to say.
I don't know. I don't know. Let's schedule another one of these though for sure because this conversation could just keep going and going and going and going.
So, tell me when.
All right, we'll find out anytime.
I'm happy to.
Okay, well, thank you for all who have been listening an additional 10, 10 minutes.
This has been lovely.
I hope to bring more people together. Clark, you have done an amazing thing and even though it's hard and there's a though there's a lot to all of it, right?
There are so many of us who have gotten an immense amount of value out of that conference and the community that you have brought together, both online and in person.
And so I am eternally grateful even though that doesn't help your pocketbook.
And I want you to know that my heart is grateful and thankful.
Hopefully that means something.
They all help in other ways, right? We're on a new journey now and new things will come.
Exactly.
Maybe so to the future.
Yeah, like chapters, right? Just like that scar you like that scar you got about ship earlier, right?
Yep.
They're all chapters. They all mean something.
I'll figure out what this one means in like five more years.
Yeah. Hopefully sooner. Hopefully sooner.
Okay. Bye friends. I hope you all have a fabulous Tuesday.
And I will see you all tomorrow with Kevin Griffin, actually, who is a friend of both of us.
Kevin, this guy, you know, he seems to like every time I'm on something or whatnot, I'm like right after him or before him, whatnot.
So you just, you just tell him, I said, hi.
I absolutely will tell him. You said hi.
Okay. Bye friends.
See ya.