Carlton and Will catch up after the holidays and look ahead to Django news in 2025, new tools, new roles, launching the LearnDjango.com site, upcoming Django events, and more.
Will Vincent 0:06
Hi. Welcome to another episode of Django chat 2025 edition. I'm Will Vincent, joined by Carlton Gibson, hey, Carlton,
Carlton Gibson 0:13
Hello, will and happy new Happy New Year.
Will Vincent 0:15
Yes, we are recording on January 2. It will come out a little bit later. But yeah, what? This is us. There's no guest on this episode. We're just going to talk about what we did over the break. Talk about goals for 2025 there has been some interesting news for both of us. And talk about Django. There's a whole bunch of Django news. And so this is just a back into the swing of things, just to warm up on, get the shoulders, yeah, just, just a warm up. You know, feel, feel, it's like, I'll say I'm in a new space, so the sound might be a little bit different. I'm in a same co working space, but I'm not in my padded, soundproof room that any guests have seen. This is a private office in quotes that has nothing in it, so the sound is a bit echoey, but that will be changed.
Carlton Gibson 0:59
You need to move in the library to make it more Yeah,
Will Vincent 1:01
yeah, as you have so Carlton, how was your break?
Carlton Gibson 1:08
It was awesome. Will? It was awesome. I booked off two whole weeks, and I finished sort of slightly early. I finished, like, Wednesday lunchtime on the week before. So I've had like two and a half weeks off, and it was just like, oh, so needed. So needed, so needed, you know, it just gets the days get short that, you know, it's a long time from summer, it's like, yeah, I know a proper break has been amazing. And I didn't do that thing where I was like, No, I'm going to work on, I'm going to work on side projects and pretend that I'm resting. I actually rested so
Will Vincent 1:39
well because you are, I always forget that Boston. So I'm in Boston. Boston is Rome. So even though you're warm, you are a bit more north. So it does get darker. I mean, here it gets dark at four o'clock, I think, you know, on the December 21 or so. Yeah,
Carlton Gibson 1:53
and it doesn't get it's the morning times that get me. I don't, yeah, it's something like that. It's not, it's not particularly late. I'd have to look it up. But it's like quarter past eight and before the sun's coming up in the morning, and it's like, no, no, I don't want that because I, you know, especially because I get up in the working week at 650 and open the curtains. And most of the year I have light at that point, it's like, Oh, lovely daylight, yeah. And I can, but those, these sort of two, three months over the winter, or the winter, the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. It's like, Ah, just horrible. It's horrible. I just need more daylight.
Will Vincent 2:27
Yeah, yeah. Well, same so, well, that's good. I remember you mentioning to me that you, you're, you know, I was like, how are you gonna do? Because I was still in that mindset of, like, Oh, so much to do, which I'll mention, but I ended up not really doing much. So I think that was good, but, yeah, breaks are needed, right? Because it's like, you feel, on the one hand, it's like, there's so much piling up, but then is the world gonna spin? Probably, like, you know, it's hard to quantify the benefit of checking out a little bit, but obviously there's a benefit. But
Carlton Gibson 2:57
we've talked about this a billion times, right? It's, it's the marathon, not a sprint thing. It's like, Yes, I can work over the Christmas, but at that point, where do i Where's my energy reserves for the next cycle? And by the big, you know, the last few weeks before the end of Christmas, I was really feeling that, no, I need a, I need a I need to stop at this point. And if you don't do that, it's, it's not sustainable. And okay, you can, you can always push that one time, but when do you, when do you recoup it, right? That? Oh, I made the extra effort. But when do you buy it back? Well, very rarely. And so it's really important to maintain some discipline about the self care, because without it, the whole thing falls over. I think I've, you know,
Will Vincent 3:39
yeah, well, yes, you've done talks on as much. And I think that's the thing. As an adult too, like when you have to care for others and responsibilities, you know, if you're you know if you're in college or something, you know, you can sprint to finals, and then you can just, just do nothing for two weeks, you know? But as an adult, like, your day off is a lot less restful than you know what it is when you're 20, there's
Carlton Gibson 4:03
that, yeah, but 2020, is like a glorious time, right? I mean, the town should be burning as you leave them when you're 20. That's just, that's the rules. There's this way in Spain, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, I had to leave. I've got this posters of me. That's out. The thing that I can't go back. There's this phrase, youth is wasted on the young. I don't know the young seem to do a good job of using it so. But when I love the way you said, when you're an adult, because when you're 20, you're meant to be an adult, but you're not really, right. It's, it's when you get a bit older, I think
Will Vincent 4:35
you all fit in at different times. Like I feel like I'm way more, uh, rebellious, in a way, than I was when I was 20, like, which is hard to imagine, but, you know, when I was, I was, I was so serious. I mean, I'm still serious, but, like, I was very like, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this. And then, you know, and then you get in the working world, you're like, Oh my God. Like, I had all these breaks. You know, that's an adjustment, but there's still this sense of like, up and. The right, at least for me, and I think a lot of my, you know, academically minded friends, but that a certain point, like, there is no up, you know, once you get into your 30s, like there is no objective, up into the right, like it all becomes trade offs. Hopefully, if you're maturing, you know, it's like personal, professional, like, what do you like doing? Where do you want to be? You know, I think hopefully it's a little bit less of the, you know, answering questions about, you know, what are you up to? It's like, you know, just kind of more like, what do I really want to do? You know, do I yeah, do I want to maximize prestige or money or education? It's like, well, you know, no one, you know, you really internalize, I think, in your in your 40s, like, no one cares. Which is, which is great, you know, because I never did care, you know, it's just like they don't care, and then you realize that you don't care as much. And so hopefully you can be a little more to your true self, and it just relieves a lot of that anxiety. And when you're making decisions, you know? And I, we probably see this weird, you know, you were PhDs, and I, you know, I don't talk about it, but I have, like an Ivy League MBA, and so you're surrounded by these people who are who are very smart and hard working, but a lot of them don't know what they want to do. And so the obvious thing is, you just chase the the money and the prestige or whatever, and then you you know, but at some point you have to pay the pay the piper, and maybe not, maybe, just like you're in a big house with a lot of money and you're happy and you have no soul to begin with. I think there are some people like that. But, well, you know, it is
Carlton Gibson 6:26
people at the moment, but they don't really look happy, do they?
Will Vincent 6:31
Well, I don't know,
Carlton Gibson 6:32
it just I saw a good two go by the other day, said something like, capitalism isn't even working well for these people. They're clearly not happy, right? And it's kind of true, it seems, it seems,
Will Vincent 6:42
I hope so. Politics mostly out. But yes, I think it's
Carlton Gibson 6:46
philosophy, right? It's finding yourself. It's that existentialist question about choosing your own path and discovering what it is to be you and to it takes time to get to that, that that's that point about still being a child when you're 20. Is that? No way. Do you find that when you're 20? You don't find that. It takes years to find,
Will Vincent 7:06
yeah, and if you don't take the time to listen and all that stuff, you know? So part of, you know, we're patting ourselves in the back here, part of, I think the appeal of taking a break of sorts, is you come back and it's like, like, what am I doing? What do I want to do? And then, you know, it's like, Oh, yeah. Like, you know, I still like Django, you know, like, I still like coding, you know, it's because, yeah, when you're running on fumes, you're just sort of, like, I just want to get through this. And then, yeah, you need that. Like, okay, like, you know, just a reset in a way of, like, what do you like? What do you not like? You know, like, I was at my in laws for a week and a half and came back and, you know, cleaned a whole bunch of stuff, just threw out a bunch of stuff that, like, I knew I needed to, but I just when I'm stuck in the space, it's hard to do that. And so it's just like a cleansing of them, of the mind, hopefully both professionally and personally in a way. Yeah, oh, absolutely. So breaks. One thing we have to mention, we were talking before, so we both so you've gotten me hooked on these lectern notebooks. We'll put a link, which are fantastic. And last year we accidentally picked the same color. This year we have different colors. But you've gone a step further now. So it's not just the journal. You've gone double you've got the planner. What are the words? Well, it's
Carlton Gibson 8:17
just a notebook. So the so for years, several years it took. I've tried every notebook, every diary out there, and it's I've settled on this b5 page weekly views. You've got a week the week on one side, you've got a page of notes on the other. And I just live in these. And I've had one them now, four years, five years running now, and I'm just so adored. And I've had bigger ones. I've had smaller ones. My b5 is the perfect format. And this
Will Vincent 8:41
is your true self crystalliser, yeah, but
Carlton Gibson 8:44
literally, living in this diet, this planet, this agenda, I mean, like every page is full to the brink. I My work is my working week is in it, and it's a tool. And then I had a an A four notebook of theirs, which is very, was very high quality. It was just too big. And I was like, oh, it's taken me quite a few years to get through it, but they're expensive things, so I couldn't just like, be like, no, no, I'm not gonna use it. I had to use it because it's too much to just be like, Oh no, no, no. It's not good enough for me. No. So I finally finished it, so I treated myself to a b5 notebook, and it's got little dots on the pages, and it's got numbers. It's got a bit at the front where you can write what you want, and it's, I'm just in love with it. And so I've got the notebook and the diary the same size, and they both. It's a good portable size. You can take it to the coffee shop and you get it out. It's big enough to write in, but it's not so big that you can't put it on the table and have a cup of coffee and etc. So anyway, I'm just literally in love with my notebooks at the moment. And, yeah, you know when, when you've taken the time over Christmas and you've broke relaxed and you've got some mental space to have a nice artifact to write into, to put your thoughts into, and your plan, it's just, it's just a wonderful experience. It's Anyway, welcome to, yeah,
Will Vincent 9:59
a sci fi. Castle, yeah, well, it's, you know, tooling. Tooling matters. Like, I think you're like me, I try to be very judicious and minimal in my tooling. Like, I'm not excited about every new tool, but, you know, the the handful of things that I use, I really want them. I really want to like them and use them, yeah, and so, you know, notebook, keyboard, laptop. I was mentioning to you before we started, I got a new, I upgrade my personal laptop. So it's just a MacBook Pro, but mine was a number of years old, and I went on the Apple site and I saw that you could, you know, I could get a still get some money back. So I was like, Okay, I'll upgrade. Shipped it to New Hampshire too. No sales tax. Whoops, I had to drive up there in a snowstorm. But then, as they do, they it, they they, they were like, Oh, your laptop was too banged up. So now, basically, they didn't offer me what they said they would. So now I was like, you know, instead of $1,200 they're like, how about $200 and I was like, Oh no, no, that's $1,000 like, oh, so it's gonna be a family laptop for the next 15 years, and
Carlton Gibson 11:06
but it's a good laptop. Like, you've got the same one you or you had the same one that I had. Yeah, I believe Yeah, I got the DM 120
Will Vincent 11:13
21 Yeah, no. And then, of course, I was like, Well, why did I even do it in the first place? And then in my new so not so much guilt. Just like annoyance, it's less, it's less guilt. It's more. Just like, you're like, there's, there's this, there's this, Reddit mildly infuriating. Like, I try really hard not to go on Reddit, but I love the mildly infuriating subreddit, because just all these things, you're just like, Oh God, I'm not alone. You know, it's like someone parking slightly, or someone just these, it's like, I don't know, maybe Seinfeld kind of stuff, where, in small amounts, I love it. So that's, that's my laptop saga, but, but that being said, having good tools matters just, I think, but you and I both don't go overboard, because then you're just wasting time. It's like, there's a new, there's a new way to do the same thing. I know it has to be a lot better to
Carlton Gibson 12:03
warrant it. Yeah, so can I ask? I mean, um, so I've we had, so we've got the, I don't know what it was, it's the m1 pro Max thing. It was the, like, the, yeah, the biggest one when it came out, and it had, I don't know, 64 gigs. Yeah, I'm just using it for programming. And I'm still, like, enamored by it, and it's still a great laptop for me, and it's still the best machine I've ever owned. But you making videos, and I guess that's where it starts to I'm gonna be
Will Vincent 12:32
doing videos, and then I have a lot of I ran out of hard, uh, hard drive space. I had two terabytes, and I needed I was Mac. I that was the real thing that put over. I was like, so part of that is this audio, video takes up a ton. I also have, I have, like, 700 What is it, gigabytes of, like, personal, family photos and videos, okay, like, it's not all mine, but, like, my my father passed away, so I now I have, like, my dad on my laptop, you know, like, which I haven't fully gone through. So I was just like, You know what? Like, if something is worth just keeping, and I have this whole system, as you do, so I have external hard drive. So, external hard drive, laptop, and then Cloud. So I'm like, I don't want to lose this stuff. Yeah, right. So anyway, so the external hard drive, but yes, the videos, more, more to come on videos. So anyway, so mildly, and, you know, worth it, mildly annoying. You know, what's $1,000 between friends, you know
Carlton Gibson 13:25
the people at Cupertino? Oh, my god, yeah,
Will Vincent 13:28
this is why they're so profitable. Don't, don't wind me up, Carlton. But one thing before we get into, like, real work stuff. So you were on the socials yesterday, so you have been rereading, there's, there's this book working in public that we both, both read, both really loved about open source. What, what was, where were you beating the drum? About you, you had it came at it with a new angle A couple years on. And maybe post break. Well,
Carlton Gibson 13:57
post, I mean, I guess I must, it must have been pre COVID that it came it was published, I think so, right? And so it, and I remember reading it back then, and I was just enthused by it's like, it kind of, if you read the opening chapters of working in public, it kind of described, like, working in Django,
Will Vincent 14:15
we felt seen. You felt seen. You're like, oh yeah, this is a thing. It was
Carlton Gibson 14:19
amazing. And and so anyway, I remember being really positive about the book, and then in the last six months or so, I've heard a few critical reviews. You know, the author's personal opinions might have gone a bit sort of left field in
Will Vincent 14:31
she's gone way off the reservation with other stuff. Yeah, okay, so, but
Carlton Gibson 14:35
that didn't necessarily affect the court the book. I was a bit sad because I enjoyed the book, but then I saw a talk from Christopher now burger, yeah, I'm
Will Vincent 14:45
not going to try to pronounce it. Yes, yeah.
Carlton Gibson 14:47
Really good, really good talk. We'll link it. We'll link it in the thing about and criticizing it the book in terms of how it didn't account for the kind of Python model it kind of puts forward this model of a stadium. Approach to running open source projects, and it kind of makes this argument that it's a necessary development of the way GitHub and all the rest makes it so that the only sustainable model is this stadium approach, where you've got a few kind of like stars and then a big audience watching them do and that's not how it's done really in the Python world, and it's not really how we think of development in Django. We think of it as being community based, as being a federation or a club or being a commons that we're building together. And the argument in working in public kind of is telling the story of how that Commons is eroded by things like GitHub and eroded by the the growth of of open source so that more and more projects become available, but people are less and less engaged with them and like and as I'm rereading it, I'm like, wow, this is just in contrast to reading it four years ago. As I'm re reading it, I'm like, this is describing a hellscape. It really a dystopian hellscape is,
Will Vincent 16:02
I think that was your quote. I saw that, and I was like, Okay, fine, I'm gonna, like, because you had a thread, I think, with Jeff, but, yeah, like, words, yeah. But it
Carlton Gibson 16:10
really is, and it's, it's like, you know, I can't remember the exact quotes that I pulled out. I pulled out a few on the on the to put it in the notes. It's like, you know, if you're, if you're, if it's not fun anymore, you're, there's absolutely no, nothing to be gained from maintaining a popular project. It's kind of, and there are points in the book which it would it the book is kind of making as a sort of positive thing. Hey, isn't this great that we're devolving this way, which, as a member of the Django community, I look at and think, but if that's the exact thing we're trying to avoid, that's what we in Django fight so hard against. And so I from in January. I'll finish reading it. I'll finish writing it. Probably my stack Report for January will be a kind of write up on my take of rereading, rereading, working public after this time and after watching Christopher's talk. And, you know, a few other things I've heard. Well,
Will Vincent 17:03
it's always that question of, like, you know, what's changed, how much of his is the landscape and how much of it is, is you right? I mean, I remember her, she, I mean, she, when she wrote that book, she was, she was in Silicon Valley, so I think it was pretty rah, rah. And there was a sense of people didn't know how open source worked, right? So it went, it has details, but I think it's more designed for people who are like, what is this open source thing? And I was, when I read it, I was impressed by the by the depth and the commonality, you know, she spoke to a lot of the things that we felt in Django, which it felt like, Oh, that was unique to Django. But it's like, no, there is this thing around popular open source projects, but, you know, extending it out now where, you know, GitHub has really monopolized things, right? And then, you know, people buying stars. And then, is it just like, is it just like, LinkedIn? Is it just something you're putting on your resume? You know, you can buy stars like, it's a little bit of a perversion. And at the same time, the bag is being held by these tiny people, you know, supporting monopolies that, you know, it's not just that they're stealing the code. They're also like, making money off GitHub on it, and so
Carlton Gibson 18:03
there's a lot still good in it, and the descriptions it gives of open source is still accurate in many ways and then, but there's this kind of celebration of a thing that four years later, we're looking back and think like, there's one line about how GitHub did to open source what things like Facebook and Instagram did to the web. And isn't that great? That's the exact thing we don't want. It's like, Oh yeah, okay, so I've got a lot to I'm still, you know, I'm still going through it, I'm still reading it, and I it'll take me a little while to put together my thoughts slowly, but as I was reading it, I just increasingly found my my jaw dropping and sort of, sort of Oh, like, and eventually I just cracked and had to post something on the social but I had been off. I'd been I'd been I'd, you know, poked in occasionally, but I'd from the Wednesday when I finished my work, I I'd sort of stopped at lunchtime, and then I had to knit back on because there was some Django news. Someone was wrong on the internet. And, yeah, it wasn't so much that it wasn't so much wrong. It's that there was a Django the steering Council. Okay, well, let's, all
Will Vincent 19:11
right, let's, let's just jump to that. Then we're gonna, we're gonna talk now about our professional stuff. So congratulations steering council member, Carlton. You know, so you were totally sure that you wanted to do it, but then you like talk about the process for you.
Carlton Gibson 19:27
So why? When I stopped as a fellow, I kind of mentally said that I might go back to a leadership role in Django being, let's be clear, the fellows are the most have the most significant leadership roles in Django. They they are the driving force behind the project, and they are. They're just involved in so many decisions that
Will Vincent 19:49
they are there for everything. Everything passes through the fellows. Yeah,
Carlton Gibson 19:53
it is the most influential role in the whole of Django, and it's not meant to be a leadership role, but it, but it. It's it just stay back who is. And so when I finished, I was very much like, No, I want to step away from that. And I might not leaving Django in any way, not leaving Django, but I didn't want to be in those leadership roles. So I thought I might run for the board in the future. I might run for the steering Council in the future, but it would be like after the five point X cycle, and after this six point X cycle coming up. And so maybe seven point x, I might, you know, see where we were then, but that was what I'd mentally said. And then, of course, because we had all the issues with five point X steering Council and it being short handed, and the election there didn't go well. And then there was a big talk, and then I still wasn't sure. And and then somebody who I won't name explicitly reached out and said hey. And I was like, okay, all right, I will run. And I put my hand, my hat in and, well,
Will Vincent 20:45
well, I remember you, you asked me, and I'm sure a couple other people too, just sort of like, Oh, I'm thinking about it. And I think my, you know, my take to you was, well, I know you have opinions. It's just, do you feel like you have the energy to, I know, do you feel like you have the energy to do it? You know, it's like, it's hard to shut me up. Like, don't be, don't be spouting off about various things if you're not going to go and a little bit. But, you know, I think, yeah, you you got in the push and hopefully had enough of a break. And then it's also the steering Council, historically, and probably in this new iteration, it's not being a fellow like it is, yep, it's not a full time thing. You're not being paid at the same time. There are these overriding things we've talked about in the podcast in the community, that it does feel like some, you know, some changes need to be made. That's why some people step down. So it's probably more important than ever to have committed people on it. Yeah,
Carlton Gibson 21:37
and I wouldn't have run if I didn't feel I'd got something to offer. And I think it is a delicate time for Django. I think there's a lot of new enthusiasm, and we need to make sure that that's channeled effectively. And Django is a big beast, and it's hard to steer, and if we push in the wrong way, there will be resistance, and we will spend an awful lot of time just fighting and achieving very little, whereas, if we can just angle ourselves right, we can probably work around the concerns that people will have and find that we can make progress much more effectively. And so the reason why ultimately I ran was I think I can be helpful in that discussion. I feel like I can be helpful in those discussions. And my experience as
Will Vincent 22:24
a fellow and others felt the same way. So you got, you know, that's the thing that I was surprising to me, is I didn't realize we're now at 400 individual members of Django, which is, which is great, which is a lot. It was under when I, when I got in, you know, brought in and was on the board, we are under 200 so that's a doubling in four or five years. And you know, it's, as with all growth, it's good in that it more people, you know, more people can vote, you know. So more than half of the people voted. It also means, instead of being something where, reasonably, at a DjangoCon, US or Europe, you can decide things, it's not the case. But, you know, the community is not just people who have the ability to go to these conferences. It never was. But I think that's a that's ultimately a strength, but it brings growth challenges in a way that, you know, the community is global, and you know, 400 people is a lot to manage as the, you know, first ring, and then I suppose the, you know, the board and the steering Council and the fellows, and that's, but that's it, right? And then there's just the online forum. Like,
Carlton Gibson 23:28
no, I think, I think we need a bit more structure, like the, I mean, what this is coming out of my reading and working in public again? But one of the problems that we're going to have is we either find a way of breaking the work up into smaller groups that can operate individually, or we're going to reach these kind of communication barrier problems where we we see this in Django at the moment, where we try and reach consensus, but there are so many voices and so many opinions and so many legitimate concerns competing legitimate concerns, that we reach impasse very quickly, and if we can't find a way of modularizing, we're not that's the challenge I think we have to
Will Vincent 24:10
solve. Yeah, you can't just say no all the time to people who Yeah, ultimately, something has to be done. And I think most people, well, I don't know. Maybe that's not true. When I worked in companies and in organizations, it's better to make a decision and then maybe say, Oh, that was the wrong one, rather than not make any decisions and not make any changes, because then everyone's unhappy and you're just sort of hypotheticaling things to death. And so along those lines, we have this came out in November, but there's a new board, or there's new four new board members, and there was a lot of, I think 19 or night was it? 19 people went out for the steering council was the board. There was a lot of, there's a lot of people for both, which was great to see. I feel like there wasn't always aware. I mean, I don't want to just paraphrase everything as when I was on the board, but I feel like most people didn't even know there was a board. Now, sure, like I feel like the awareness and. Has grown a little bit about, you know, how Django is actually run, and these issues, and in a way that you know. So we have a lot of people, and a lot of people who come in, you know, with mission statements, saying, This is what I want to achieve. And, like, clear goals. And it's, it's moved a little bit from keeping the lights on to no we want to, you know, the number of people want to have an executive director, you know, not, not everyone, but like, that's, that's a very clear thing that the board is going to discuss and maybe do things on, as opposed to, let's just not go bankrupt, you know, yeah,
Carlton Gibson 25:31
well, yeah. I mean, I think there's two, there's two aspects. One is the change in the generation, the change of the generate the guard, changing of the guard, so to speak, like there's a whole new wave of people globally that are involved in Django. And then there's that combined with the bad timing of, I mean, COVID was never going to come at a good time, right? Global pandemic would shut two years, shut down, and all the rest that was never going to come at a good time. But there was almost like a perfect storm of people, older hands stepping away, exactly as at the moment when the COVID hit, and it's like, Oh, are we going to survive? Well, okay, yes, now and now we've got fresh impetus. And it's nice to see so many people stand for the board, and then the people who are elected, they're going to do a great job. And the same with the steering Council. I think it was 1112, people for the steering Council. And any of those, any would have been just, we'll be fine. We'll be fine. This is, this is all positive. So, yeah, you know, I'm excited. I'm excited. I always say I'm excited, but about where we're going, but I really am. I think it's a good time. Yeah,
Will Vincent 26:36
and just, while we're on the topic, there's, there's a whole bunch of events that have been announced that are coming up. So Django Congress Japan is February 22 that's online conference. DjangoCon Europe in Dublin, April 23 DjangoCon us was just announced. Yeah, and don't forget, djancon
Carlton Gibson 26:53
Africa is Africa right in Tanzania, yep. So we've got August in August in Tanzania for djancon Africa, and then September for djancon Europe. Us, right?
Will Vincent 27:05
Yes. And then Dublin coming up. So lots of events. And I think the call for proposals for jencon Europe is open, about to close.
Carlton Gibson 27:16
It's open as we're recording, whether it's whether it's closed by the time the show goes out, I can't say this
Will Vincent 27:22
is the thing. When we started, we're like, we're both trying to restart our brains, or, like, how professional do we mean to be here? Like, what? What's going on when I think,
Carlton Gibson 27:30
after five years, we don't need to be professional. That's
Will Vincent 27:34
funny. Alright, so let's just suppose you will though you've got, I got some I do have some news, but you so stack report, this was like, your big, your big, well, you have paths, but that's sort of your professional thing. That's not for public consumption. But stack report 2024,
Carlton Gibson 27:50
yeah, the work project's going well, I'm still, I'm still having the time my life from there. And all I'm trying to do, really, is keep that's maturing nicely. And we've got with two years in nearly we've got a year to go. We need to get we've got runway for that year. We need to get some more customers in that year. And if we do, we've got a proper business. So that's quite exciting. I can't say any more than that.
Will Vincent 28:12
The sounds like you can just kick your feet up and go to your partner and be like, All right, sell this bad boy. Well,
Carlton Gibson 28:20
recently, the baton has sort of shifted from me building out features
Will Vincent 28:23
to him reading to see minimum amount before he can really do but
Carlton Gibson 28:27
I've still got, like, a massive right? You know, it's like, No project is ever like, there's always a million more things that you want to build than you've got time for. So I'm exactly in that place, but it's enriching nicely, and there's some really exciting things that I'm getting to build, and things that have been on the pipeline, they think, oh, yeah, I don't want to, want to work on that and extracting those slowly but surely, into, you know, upstream, into Neapolitan, or into Django, or into channels, and see where those go. And I would be much further ahead if, if I could clone myself two or three times, but I can't. So, you know, these things happen as the time now, but I'm really enjoying it, and that's going well. And then the sort of side project for 2024 was the stack report, which is my monthly newsletter, which is a premium thing. It's, you know, five bucks a month, or, you know, 50 a year, if you want to. And that's just a nominal thing. People always like, do GitHub sponsors. And I was like, I hate GitHub sponsors. It's not for me. So I wanted to do something where there was a kind of actual thing you've got, and what you get is the newsletter, and it's been really well received, and it's been going really well, and I'm excited to be writing each month. It's given me a kind of discipline to that writing. It's given me a kind of like, because I've got subscribers, I'm committed, and it out, it's coming regularly, and I'm having, I'm having a good time with it. And so, yeah, that's that was really nice to a a launch it and be for it to be so well received. Yeah. And. I
Will Vincent 30:00
think there were some talks I was watching. I mean, I'll put a link to it that, gosh, I'm forgetting the title of it. But someone who'd worked on, um, oh God, was it puppet, one of the orchestration tools, you had this amazing talk about, you know, free versus not talking about Docker and Kubernetes and all these things and like, everything doesn't have to be free, I guess is the point like, and, in fact, like, and then, you know, for someone like you, like you do so much for the community and things like, to have something that's paid, like, it's not changing your life money, but it's enough to give you the discipline. It's enough to feel like, Oh, these are people who, you know, they really want to read it, right? Like, I do think it's important to have a couple things where it's like, this is this, this is a paid thing. And then I have all these other things, like, you can't just into, you know, because then if you get then if you get burned out, it's like, Well, okay, like, I'm gonna stop doing stuff, you know, like finding that balance. I see more and more people, especially writing, who are like, you know, I'll take 100 paid people, over 1000 free ones, and trying to monetize that elsewhere. And I think that's ultimately healthy. Like, if you have a niche, if you have things you care about saying, and if people care about it, like, you know, it doesn't, everything doesn't have to be free, I guess. I mean, because certainly everyone else, look at the llms, everyone else is hoovering up our free stuff and charging for it, you know. So there's some balance there that requires a recalibration or a rethink, you know, periodically.
Carlton Gibson 31:19
And it's not about the money, because, like, you know, like, there aren't, I haven't. I've got a few subscribers, but not many. It's
Will Vincent 31:26
a way to support
Carlton Gibson 31:28
it. Just yeah, it cleans its own face. Rather than me being out of pocket to do a newsletter, I can do a newsletter like
Will Vincent 31:35
the like, at least, like this podcast, until recently,
Carlton Gibson 31:37
speaking, yeah, exactly, exactly. Um, but yeah, and I don't know, I mean all the open source stuff and again, this that keep harping back to this traumatic experience of rereading working in public, but like, you give away so much, and the value is constantly degraded. And it's like, without the community aspect, without the buy in from people, there's nothing that makes it worthwhile. And so to have a small community around the newsletter is a really nice thing, and people can reply and, you know, have conversations with them. And it's, it's a bit of, it's a pleasure to be able to write something slightly longer form, slightly more considered. I took, you know, I think about it all month, and I write it and, yeah, it's, it's, it's just enjoyable in a way that if I were to just put blog posts out, it
Will Vincent 32:27
wouldn't, and it's, and, you know, stuff to say. I mean, I've felt recently that I've looked, look back over a year in reviews. Sometimes I there's a lot of public facing stuff, and sometimes there isn't so much, right? Sometimes there is, I feel like, yeah, what do I what do I have to say? Or what is so I have to say about a thing? Like, I feel like there's some periods you're just like, well, I want to share a lot. And then sometimes it's just absorbing and taking things in. And, you know, like speaking for myself, like, I don't think I have a, I couldn't do a monthly newsletter, not on programming, you know?
Carlton Gibson 33:00
Well, you just do weekly news that, right?
Will Vincent 33:03
But I'm not, yeah, I just do all the work and none of that, yeah, but, you know, but there's, I know, there's periods of life, and maybe, anyways, it's good that there's clearly a lot of things, you know, we talk about things in the podcast, but to have the discipline and think, like, oh, there are these things changing and and someone with experience and thoughts, you know, that's what I want to read, right? Especially these days, you don't want to just read noise, you know, someone who has a take and has a considered opinion, even if you don't agree with it, at least it's something feels like, you know, eating your vegetables. And I like vegetables, right? It's not like a painful thing, anyways. So good. Well done. But
Carlton Gibson 33:35
like this one, anyway, this year, I managed to, there was a kind of, amongst other topics, spaving. I managed to get out a kind of four part series on Estimating Software, on how I how I plan and how I, you know, how I write software and how it how I'm able to freelance, how I was able to freelance profitably for, you know, best part of two decades. Why was I able to do that? Well, because I could, I could come up with a quote, and nine times out of 10 I'd hit the quote right,
Will Vincent 34:04
and you're, you know, you're like your user model, you know, posts which you know you've been talking about for a long time, that that generated a lot of things. I mean, that led to, I think previous you talking about, led to me doing my talk. It led to actual changes. And in Django itself, things that, you know I still have a ticket to add user protocol models to, you know, so has real well done
Carlton Gibson 34:30
any, yeah, anyway, the core one as well. And this year, I've got thoughts already lining up. Well, what am I going to do on the this year I've got thoughts on, like, some more software engineering topics about, you know, hey, why it is, you know, people Django? Why? Why do I still use Django? Well, because it's the perfect starting point, right? But then, how do you grow it? And this is when we had here Nick on the podcast, and we talked touched on some of those. But to, like, look at, I always say the I've been for years, I've hated the soft delete. The flag, you know, when you got deleted flag. And I just think that's an anti pattern. I think causes all number of problems that, you know, people don't like. And I've never had the time to sit down and write up exactly why it is that.
Will Vincent 35:11
I think it's, what do you Sorry, just quickly, what do you want instead? I
Carlton Gibson 35:16
so I would have a an event, life cycle event, events for models, and so if you need to reconstruct the Delete, you delete the model, but you've got the history events in a log, which you can then reconstruct the life of the model from. So you don't keep a deleted model in the database, but you you're able to, or you've got an audit log on its entire history. Basically,
Will Vincent 35:39
do you use that? There's that Django lifecycle package, right? Is that? No, I
Carlton Gibson 35:44
don't. I use a kind of, almost an event sourcing approach, which then what's nice about it is you can grow from basic Django models into audit logged models, and then you can go all the way to event sourcing if you need to, if you get to the sort of scale where you can't write, you can't do these transaction bound rights to an active record, because you just got too much traffic or too much contention, or, you know, you've got competing requests that you need to handle in a non racy way. So you need to go to one of these command query, request separation, ooh, you know.
Will Vincent 36:21
Okay, all right, I want you,
Carlton Gibson 36:21
don't you? Yeah, you can grow to that now, but for me to write that up, it's been something that I've had on the back burner for years, but literally, I've never had the time to write it up. So, you know, yeah, having the newsletter is a way that I'll be able to write that up over a few course of a few months. So that's exciting anyway.
Will Vincent 36:38
And I do think, you know, there is that old adage, you don't really, you know. Why do you write? You know you write to know your own thoughts. Was that, you know various people have said words to that effect. But it's true, yeah, yeah,
Carlton Gibson 36:50
no, exactly. If you can't write something down, the process of writing something down clarifies what you do. In fact, think yes,
Will Vincent 36:57
yes. So we've been banging on for a little bit. So quick, quickly on me. So I have a new job. I guess that's the big news, and something I've been doing in the background, which has contributed to not maybe seeming like I'm publicly doing all that much, which is starting Monday, January 6, I've I'm joining jet brains pie charm as a developer advocate. So I'm very much looking forward to this. Actually, I've, I've long planned to go back to keep, keep all my stuff, but move it a little more into maintenance or on the side role, and, you know, get back in the swing of things. And the jet brains crew, I've known for enough, for quite a number of years, they stewards of the Django community. They do the sponsorship every year, which I worked on, as on the board. I know, you know, Paul Everett, who's been very involved. And Sarah Boyce, before she became a fellow, was briefly in this role. So I'm planning to stay a little bit longer than she did. I have no no goals. Or probably anyone wants me to be a Django fellow, but it will be so I don't have a lot to say about it, because I haven't started, but it will be working, doing, writing, videos, podcasts, I think, still going to conferences, being part of the communities, being the web communities. It might expand beyond that to Python is big in data science. ML, there's other people who work on that. We shall see. But so
Carlton Gibson 38:27
I'm hoping we're going to get you as a little mole into the ML, Django small into
Will Vincent 38:33
I definitely, yeah, I definitely, there's, there's definitely some of that. I mean, that is the big fish these days. There are people who do that. But, you know, that is the question, how do you, how do you, how does Django fit in there? How does web fit in there? Because, you know, they still got to put it out there and share it somehow and like,
Carlton Gibson 38:49
well, but everybody does their their ml, their pandas, put your pandas online using the flask or the fast API, you know, but you could just spin up a nano Django example and you, yeah, that's in your video. And then all of a sudden, these people are using Django instead of some Django instead of something else. So this is our this is our secret weapon,
Will Vincent 39:05
yeah. So I think there'll be a lot of videos which I'm very excited to get better at, videos and to do videos in a new format. And a big part of having this private office, which nobody can see, is to have a dedicated space to do these things. So yeah, that's a new thing. I'm excited. I'll mention things I have to mention. But also I want to make clear that that is separate from this. So they know the JetBrains team knows that I have the podcast, I have the newsletter, I have the Learn Django site that will all exist and that will all still be doing stuff on it. I'm just not going to be doing as much, maybe new things. So I have, I have my three courses. I'm finishing up the updates on APIs and professionals. I'm very close, not quite there. I wanted to, I wanted to, you know, pre, pre break. I was like, I'm gonna get that, all that done, and just come in, you know, with all that done, but it's not fully done, but it will be, I've been working on it. It'll be better for the break, to be honest. First I have the E commerce course, which is still half to two thirds done. So that probably won't come out this month, but it will come out the next couple of months as I but
Carlton Gibson 40:11
you should just back bracket that for q3 right? You should say it's coming out in q3 like, yeah,
Will Vincent 40:17
we'll talk about, but I do want to talk about the big thing for me, you know, last year was I finally got the Learn django.com site out, which I don't think we've talked about, and so I had a Black Friday sale. I had the user payments. It all worked, which was honestly a little bit surprising, because it's just me, you know, staring at my computer and but I
Carlton Gibson 40:35
don't really, I don't really think it's surprising, because you like, you dot the i's and cross the T's, right?
Will Vincent 40:39
I know, yeah. Well, this is the thing, like, when you, when you work in code, and then you work for yourself, it's, it's so easy to just all the demons kind of crop up, right? Like, there's no, there's no external thing. There's nobody who's like, reviewing my stuff and saying, like, Oh, that was good. You know? It's just like going down the list one thing after another. And then I think I was also very tired at the end of the year, and so I finally got out, I did the Black Friday, but that meant the whole Black Friday period, I was online the whole time, and I mentioned to all the people who bought ebooks that you can get access to the new site, because I'm the long term goal is to switch the site and then print books. So a lot of you know, hundreds and hundreds of emails from definitely, a couple 100. I'm not, I'm trying not to exaggerate, at least three or 400 emails from people. And that's still manual, so I have the Django admin going for my courses. And, you know, can I make that better? Yes? Will I Yes? No. At this moment, you know, and this moment, I'm just going to get done. And it's also a chance to email with people, because ultimately, like, if I look at my sales and how I've made my living the last 656, years, it's not that many people, you know, I mean, it's a couple that it's 1000s, but it's not, it's not more than 10,000 and so it's important to, like, have a chance to, you know, have a brief conversation, if they want, about, like, Oh, like, what? What did you find useful? Like, updates, new things, you know, because that, that is who, in a sense, I work for, you know, the paid people anyways, no,
Carlton Gibson 42:10
and I was, I remember you saying that at the time, because I was like, when you just script up so you've got the emails and just scripted up so it's automatically created, and you're like, No, I'm enjoying speaking to these people like, I'm enjoying communicating with my users, with my client, with my customers, with the people who bought the books, and seeing what they've got to say. And I was, like, really touched by that, that you, you know, ultimately this is what, no, but they see, ultimately, this is why your stuff is so good, right? Is because you, you've got that empathy to reach out. Instead of just, I'm going to script it. I'm not speak to No, I'm going to, one by one, deal with these, with these requests to see, and that connection is irreplaceable, right? You can't, you can't get that back. If you script that, I
Will Vincent 42:48
benefit, yeah, I benefit from it, and I think it comes through in the in the text. So, yeah, so that's that. Maybe we'll do a longer one. I mean, the site itself, I think I don't have enough distance on. You know, we talked one time like, let's do a whole episode on like, building this e commerce site, which we could do, but it's a part of me is also like, I just want to go on to the next thing, but at the end of the day, like, I very much like elegant code. Like I work in all my examples and books to think a ton and then try to make it as elegant but not overly clever. So like, I still want someone else to be able to come in and see how it works, but ultimately I have, it's a Django site. I've got markdown. I write things in the admin. I've got tutorials which are free, and so there's some views and permissions on that. Then I've got courses where you have to have an account and you have to have access to that payments. Yeah, at some point I'll do a there's a User Progress thing. I think this. The problem with coding, in a way, is that you do all these things, and as soon as you're done, you're just like, man, onto the next thing. There's no sense of like, oh, that's quite this is kind of, that's like,
Carlton Gibson 43:52
right? This is the infinite list of things you could possibly do which you haven't yet done.
Will Vincent 43:58
Yeah. It's not like, you know, I stare at a painting on the wall and go like, Oh, that's okay, you know? And it's also, and I think maybe the slightly insidious thing is it's not, it's just this sandcastles, you know, it's sandcastles on the beach, and so you it requires constant maintenance, too. So, yeah, that's, that's part of the thing that I've spent this past year. I spent a lot of time updating my tutorials, updating courses, and that's like, kind of the that's the less satisfying work, but that's also the necessary work that you know makes a difference. So well,
Carlton Gibson 44:28
people don't realize how much maintenance you know. You think the core, the source code, is just what I download. It's just that. It's this fixed thing, right? It's not the fixed thing. Like, all the time, you're constantly needing to keep it maintaining well.
Will Vincent 44:42
And that's the thing. When someone's like, I want to write a book, or I want to do this or that, it's like, yeah, you know, do it. It's a ton of work to do, but, like, keep it going more than a year, and then you're like, you know, I think then you get the gut check of, why are you doing it? Because it's not financial, like, I've certainly, I. I would have, you know, as well as I've done, I would have done better just having a job. But it was, I wanted to. I had, you know, personally, I've got young kids, so I had flexibility, like, but you have to, I think you have to really, really want to teach, to keep it going, because it's, you know, like, I updated 50 blog, 50 tutorials last year. But, like, it's invisible. It's completely invisible. You know, whereas somebody could look and see, ooh, you 50 to 50 tutorials, and every time you write it, you post it on LinkedIn and Reddit, and you get feedback and blah, blah, blah, blah, no, it's like, I just took that thing, and it's almost more work to update something, because both the code changes a little bit, but also my understanding of how I had to present it changes. And that's and I was actually happy to see that emailing with customers. There were a few that had read the 5.0 update to beginners and had recently read an earlier version. And some of them were pointing out, you know, oh, I really like this, this, this, I saw you did that, and I was like, Oh, thank God, because I don't expect anyone to know that, but, like, it's so much work, and there is so much difference, yet it's all within the marketing banner of the same thing. And so, yeah, this banging in the background. That's okay. Carlton, anyway, so big news, new job. Yeah,
Carlton Gibson 46:15
no. Hang on. Hang on. Two things. I sorry there was just banging in the background. So I was a bit like I was wincing, and I put you off your stroke, but I just want to comment on on two things you said there. One, you should make sure that you boot you you do mention every time you update. One because, and you do repost on LinkedIn because, like, yes, you being modest, right? You back. I'm
Will Vincent 46:37
back on LinkedIn. I had to, you know, because when I was interviewing with jet brain. So like, Well, do you have a resume or LinkedIn? And I was like, Oh, I have had those. I like, you know, gleefully or whatever, got off LinkedIn to six years ago. Like, I will at the time. I was like, I'm never gonna get a tech job through LinkedIn, which I think maybe six years ago was the case. But now, you know, everyone's on there, so it's a chance to, you know, see what everyone knows up to see what my MBA classmates are up to in their, you know, glass mansions in the hills. But, yes, but even I, even I doing it professionally, fall into this trap of you do all this effort to make the thing and then to just put it on those socials, to do all the things. Sometimes you just, like, can't be bothered. Yeah, I should do the updates. Because it doesn't, I know, in a sense, it doesn't feel like a lot of work to it doesn't feel like noteworthy to update
Carlton Gibson 47:29
that tutorial now has a new version for the latest channel. Yeah, the latest is, that's important thing, because then people see it and they go, oh, yeah, I'll read that one. But no, so that was one point. Second is you must have some, some call to action, or some, oh, thing that I know you're too shy to like. Yes,
Will Vincent 47:46
I have a three correspondence. So I have my beginners book, APIs and professionals. The Beginners one is fully up to date. The APIs and professionals are in the process being updated, so they're still on the 4.0 version, so they almost entirely work. But there's a couple small things. I will have updates for that soon. But you get $30 off if you buy all three, plus you get lifetime access, lifetime updates. You can email me. I'll engage with you. So I highly recommend you do that. That's the offer that it will always be. The offer is something of individual and then something for all of them, like, I don't want to play games with being too,
Carlton Gibson 48:24
so no. But if somebody's got a New Year's resolution to level up their Django skills, then you know they should act on that. Now, before that, absolutely.
Will Vincent 48:31
Thank you. Thank you. Yes, yes. Well, and I would just say people teach differently. If you find any tutorials or things and you think that's a mind I can follow like you're gonna like it, and enough people like it that I have done it and continue to do it. So thank you. Yes, and yeah, even as an MBA,
Carlton Gibson 48:51
I mean, I'm gonna make you my God, even if you won't do it yourself.
Will Vincent 48:56
Yeah, no, but I honestly hadn't even thought about saying anything about the updates. I should, I should do that. That's smart. See, this is why we need colleagues and you need COVID. Sorry, what else? Oh, the podcast we are going to have. We have some people lined up to sponsor the podcast, which you'll see them in here. There's information on Django chat.com, but basically you can do per episode, or if you do five episodes, you get a discount. It's the price of four. It reaches a couple 1000 people, highly engaged,
Carlton Gibson 49:23
yeah, quite niche as well, though, if you're in the Django space, then it's not that if
Will Vincent 49:28
you were in the Python space, maybe not exactly a cup of tea. But if you're in the Django space, like this is, well, this is it, oh, there we are. There we are. And we are, you know, we are. We are back. Our brains are, will be fully started up with we have guests after this. We have a whole bunch of guests lined up. It won't just be us going on and on, but we'll have guests diving into Django. And there's a lot, there's a lot that's happening both in Django and the guests that we have lined up, I'm super excited about because we just get to ask them questions and. Um, I'm not gonna say names until the episodes come out, but we have a whole bunch of people lined up that we've wanted to have on for years. A couple people we've had on before. They're doing really new, cool things. So yeah,
Carlton Gibson 50:12
what else I don't think there is any. I mean, we say Happy New Year to everybody, right? And, yeah, yes, enjoy
Will Vincent 50:18
Happy New Year. Any complaints about Django King Carlton, because he's those during Council now you have to open Don't, don't ask me about it. All right, folks, thanks everyone for thanks everyone for listening and Django chat.com We'll see you all next time. Join you. Next bye.