125: Tech Conferences, Remote Work and the Intersection of AI and Web Design with Clark Sell

[00:00:05] Robbie: What's going on, everybody? Welcome to Whiskey Web and Whatnot with your hosts, Billy and Billy.

[00:00:14] Chuck: Just trying to throw me off all the time. Well, your hosts are actually Robert, or Robbie the Wagner, and Charles William Carpenter III, known in the hood as Charlie Three Fingers.

[00:00:27] Robbie: Oh, cause you lost some fingers?

[00:00:30] Chuck: So your guess is as good as mine. I don't know.

[00:00:34] Robbie: Alright, we have a guest today, Clark Sell. What's going on, Clark?

[00:00:38] Clark: I'm doing good. How about you? Two?

[00:00:41] Chuck: Superb. It does make me wonder, if you take the glasses off, then what do we call you?

[00:00:46] Clark: Blind. mean,

[00:00:49] Robbie: You

[00:00:49] Chuck: Superman reference. Yes, there you go, see?

[00:00:52] Clark: no, I knew that's where it was going, but

[00:00:54] Chuck: Yeah, I don't make original jokes, so sorry. That's an intro to that.

[00:00:58] Clark: I didn't have the [00:01:00] glasses till a few short years ago and it is ramped up relatively quick. So, you know, sucky problems to have.

[00:01:09] Robbie: Yeah. Well, before we get too dark on that do you want to tell everyone who you are and what you do?

[00:01:15] Clark: I am the founder of a little conference called that conference. I'm also the founder of a software shop that we call unspecified. And if you can't guess by the names, we like to create names that nobody has any idea why they exist or what they do. hUsband, father. Got two teenage kids. Write a bunch of code.

You know. Wrench on cars when I can. That kind of stuff.

[00:01:43] Chuck: Yeah,

[00:01:43] Robbie: Nice. Nice.

[00:01:45] Chuck: we'll come back to that, I imagine.

[00:01:48] Clark: We go wherever you want. Soccer fields, cars.

[00:01:52] Robbie: Ooh. Okay.

[00:01:53] Chuck: we just become best friends?

[00:01:54] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:01:55] Clark: I mean, maybe.

[00:01:57] Chuck: Wrenching on cars and soccer fields, although I [00:02:00] don't put on my boots. myself lately. I'm still still very much into that. So, but I guess as we start the path here, Robbie, you want me to talk about the whiskey that you and I are going to try here?

[00:02:13] Robbie: Yes. Yeah. Clark will not be drinking. We will talk more about why later, perhaps if he wants to get into it. But. No. No. We're just gonna do some whiskey real quick, and we'll try to make it short.

[00:02:23] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:02:24] Clark: I will happily share and live through you.

[00:02:28] Chuck: vicariously through my liver, which is probably deteriorating by the day. Today we're having Early Times, which is interesting to me because I feel like it's, it's, it's really spruced up as a brand. It is the 100 proof bottled in bond, a mash bill of 79 percent corn, 11 percent rye, and 10 percent barley.

And it is not age statement. It's not age stated, but at least four years, because that's the whole whiskey thing. And we'll kind of go with there.

[00:02:57] Robbie: Hmm. Yeah, to me it smells like [00:03:00] if you just literally took an entire ear of corn and put it in this bottle.

[00:03:04] Chuck: Hmm.

[00:03:04] Robbie: Like, it's not very complex so far.

[00:03:09] Chuck: it can't be, like, mellow corn, though. That stuff is the most corn, corn mixed with alcohol as humanly possible, I think. I mean, it's in the name, so. Hmm. So we'll, we'll try and, like, give you some descriptors

[00:03:23] Robbie: Yeah, let me try to be smarter about that. Let's see.

[00:03:26] Chuck: yeah. Corn syrup? I'm not getting heavy corn in the smell, to be honest, but

[00:03:35] Robbie: I don't get much from it is kind of what I mean. It smells like whiskey. It doesn't really have flavor notes.

[00:03:41] Chuck: How do they give you a show about whiskey? It's just ridiculous.

[00:03:45] Robbie: I'm usually better about this. Are you smelling anything? Because I'm really not.

[00:03:49] Chuck: Hmm. You've got to really stop drinking on the job. Yes, a little bit. I'm getting kind of like a tobacco leaf, you know? A little bit of that,

[00:03:58] Robbie: What's the level of apricot on this [00:04:00] one?

[00:04:00] Chuck: hmm, dried apricot in there. No, I'm not getting much sweetness for me personally,

[00:04:04] Robbie: flavor has a little apricot. Why

[00:04:07] Chuck: out. Did you read some notes ahead of time?

[00:04:10] Robbie: No. No,

[00:04:11] Clark: tobacco leaf is actually just the ash left over from them dumping the corn on the side of the road for

[00:04:17] Chuck: Exactly. Whatever it collected together and they put that in. Ooh, that's got a little bit of kind of a strange aftertaste for me though. Like at first, it had a little bit of sweetness. And it does have a, a bit of almost like,

[00:04:31] Robbie: it feels young and medicinal to

[00:04:33] Chuck: a gasoline at the end. A little gasoline. Like, they can spruce up the branding.

I think this is cheap shit. I don't know what Robbie sent me, but

[00:04:43] Robbie: Well, that was the point, is to have a diverse, you don't have to buy good ones all the

[00:04:46] Chuck: No, no, I agree with that. I don't know what the price point was, but if it was, was it more than a punch in the dick? Because that seems like too much still.

[00:04:58] Clark: was it in a plastic bottle?[00:05:00]

[00:05:00] Chuck: No, it wasn't actually, and I feel like that it used to be at some

[00:05:03] Robbie: should show. Yeah.

[00:05:04] Chuck: Yeah, yeah, so the branding looks decent, and yeah, yeah, no, I like how they zhooshed all of that up.

I don't know the price point as well. So we'll quickly go through, then, our rating system. Zero to eight tentacles, zero is shit, maybe this is it. Four, middle of the road, eight, amazing, clear the shelves. Let's go with it, Robert. I'm gonna keep

[00:05:28] Robbie: I'm going to give

[00:05:29] Chuck: hoping it gets better.

[00:05:31] Robbie: It's not great.

[00:05:33] Chuck: well,

[00:05:33] Robbie: I've had worse though. I think we, I think maybe two is, have we done lower than a two? So I'll give it a three cause I've had worse. Well, we'll say three. We'll say three.

[00:05:43] Chuck: I'm gonna go with a two then,

[00:05:45] Robbie: Okay. I'll say

[00:05:46] Chuck: not great. It's got a weird aftertaste, and it started to, I don't

[00:05:49] Robbie: I'm still going to drink it though.

[00:05:51] Clark: What would be worse? What would you consider worse?

[00:05:54] Chuck: Something in a plastic bottle for sure.

[00:05:56] Robbie: were the ones that we thought? Oh, no, that the [00:06:00] Derringer was definitely

[00:06:01] Chuck: That was pretty bad. That was very expensive. That helped make it worse too. It was at least a hundred dollars, and they had like a fancy bottle with like this

[00:06:08] Robbie: had this gun cork, like the Derringer gun that like goes, it was absurd. And like, that's why I bought it. Cause it was ridiculous. And it was terrible.

[00:06:17] Chuck: It was pretty

[00:06:18] Robbie: I've ever had.

[00:06:18] Chuck: Yeah. So like that was pretty low down there. I think that was like a one or something that's like, they got a one because the packaging was interesting. Yeah. So like if you bought whiskey at a gas station, I think that would be worse. Right? Like, well, I can't think of branding offhand, but that like would definitely be worse than this.

And so this has, but I mean, if you paid 30 bucks for this and then you could buy something like Buffalo trace for 25, which would be, you know, you could sip that without being embarrassed. Or, you know, not disliking it. This is much worse than that. And so I feel bad that like, yeah, comparatively. So I don't, I don't know not recommended folks.

So at least we can move on beyond that.

[00:06:56] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:06:58] Chuck: I have my trusty this episode is [00:07:00] sponsored by Diet Coke because it got that shit out of my mouth.

[00:07:06] Robbie: Oh god.

[00:07:07] Chuck: Anyway let's talk about tech and conferences and fun

[00:07:11] Robbie: Well, should we do some hot takes?

[00:07:13] Chuck: Yeah, definitely start with hot takes.

[00:07:16] Robbie: Yeah, so these are not necessarily that hot anymore, but this is all the shit that people complain about on Twitter and like to fight about. So, for TypeScript, inferred types or explicit types?

[00:07:27] Clark: You asking me?

[00:07:28] Chuck: Oh yeah.

[00:07:29] Clark: I don't do TypeScript, so how about that?

[00:07:32] Chuck: Boom. No types. Fuck TypeScript. That's what

[00:07:34] Robbie: There you go. Fair.

[00:07:39] Chuck: Tailwind or vanilla CSS?

[00:07:41] Clark: I think we both have places. I mean, we use Tailwind. Gets the job done. We're a small place. So,

[00:07:49] Chuck: Efficient tools are good.

[00:07:50] Clark: Yeah.

[00:07:53] Robbie: Yeah, this is not so hot so far,

[00:07:55] Clark: I'm currently, I'm

[00:07:56] Chuck: You're too agreeable.

[00:07:58] Clark: [00:08:00] OpenProps. It's something I've been looking at and playing around with. It's an interesting take.

[00:08:05] Robbie: I'm not familiar with that.

[00:08:06] Chuck: Mm mm. Is that a CSS thing?

[00:08:08] Clark: Yeah, it's They use the design or they use CSS variables to kind of run the system. So it's pretty, it's pretty cool. It's worth a look.

[00:08:17] Robbie: Hmm.

[00:08:18] Chuck: Yeah? Yeah, I'd definitely check that out.

[00:08:21] Clark: Simple.

[00:08:22] Robbie: Get rebase or get merge?

[00:08:25] Clark: Rebase.

[00:08:27] Chuck: Yeah. There's a right answer.

[00:08:30] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:08:32] Clark: Although I, I, I don't know what was said today at whatever GitHub universe or whatever shit's going on, but they said something about cope reef, reef, reef found. Now found, refounded with co pilot something that's got everybody all up in arms. I don't know, really know what that means, but

[00:08:53] Chuck: The production people for this show did not give us good updated notes.

[00:08:58] Robbie: About GitHub universe. And then

[00:08:59] Chuck: I [00:09:00] saw some stuff and then I

[00:09:01] Robbie: And then I don't care anymore.

[00:09:03] Clark: yeah, that's kind of where I was like, Oh, somebody's pissy. Okay, cool.

[00:09:07] Chuck: I mean, there's interesting things, and I'll read it at some point. I guess we don't need to be top of mind around that, but, uh So, then, was GraphQL a mistake?

[00:09:18] Clark: I Happen to really like it and I don't really give a shit what anybody says about it. So, we have, we have a very large GraphQL API for our platform. It's federated, it's cached, it works.

[00:09:33] Chuck: You're doing all of the things. I mean, federation and caching. Redis caching, or another

[00:09:38] Clark: A company called Stellate.

[00:09:41] Chuck: Nice.

[00:09:41] Clark: So, I, I know it's gotten a whole bunch of shit the last couple weeks. And I don't know. I, I'm too old to give a shit about all these petty little arguments that go

[00:09:55] Chuck: Heheheheh. Yeah.

[00:09:57] Robbie: right?

[00:09:58] Clark: I

[00:09:58] Chuck: why I think they're [00:10:00] funny. That's why I think they're funny.

[00:10:02] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:10:02] Clark: it's worked really well for us. Um, part, part is we've got a huge API. We know how to get to it.

It's documented. Could it be better? Sure. So could our web code. So, I mean, the shit runs and I'm not saving babies. So it's cool.

[00:10:21] Chuck: Wait, why aren't you saving babies? Why are you killing babies? You heard it here.

[00:10:26] Clark: I did, I did, I did a year on a healthcare project that was a class 2 medical device and was responsible for the architecture and everything. I would never want to live that life ever again.

[00:10:39] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:10:40] Clark: I mean, we had a nurse on staff and a doctor and they would bring down pictures of who we were, who was going to use the device and this and that.

Like I, it was hell. It was, it was, it was absolute hell. So, like this is grandma and grandma's grandchild and they're both using this. And you're like,

[00:10:58] Chuck: I'm

[00:10:58] Clark: I won't go to bed [00:11:00] tonight.

[00:11:00] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:11:01] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:11:01] Robbie: unit test coverage is not good enough for this.

[00:11:06] Clark: we had so much unit test coverage. So all the, between the unit tests and we designed the system that would test, I called it through the glass cause it had to be, had to interact like a doctor, somebody would interact with it on the screen. So we had to play through all the things. We had so many tests that the FDA, they didn't, they were like, I don't know how you expect us to validate this.

Like, well, that's why we wrote the test because you actually can't test this thing the way you think you can. And so you take something with like, you know, maybe a section on a form that's got eight radio buttons. The permutations of those radio buttons are in the thousands. Like, it's a crazy scenario.

Then per language and this and that. I'm like, you all can't test this shit. You have no idea what you're doing. So. Glad that's over.

[00:11:58] Robbie: All [00:12:00] right Chuck wanted me to add this one. He wants to know why you, no, don't do that.

[00:12:05] Clark: I'll do it. Let's go. I want to know

[00:12:07] Chuck: Just don't blame me, that's bullshit.

[00:12:09] Robbie: Okay. Well, I know it's all like probably automated, so it's all kind of silly, but he wants to know why you like me more than him. Like all the posts from that confer about me and the one being

[00:12:20] Clark: Oh. That's real simple. Because it came after all of that was done. So let me just take a note to get Chuck added in.

[00:12:29] Chuck: Voila,

[00:12:30] Clark: Whoops. Whoops.

[00:12:31] Chuck: was going to say just because he hadn't really, you know, really met me and then clearly there would be a delineation between

[00:12:39] Robbie: assumed it was automated based on like the people who submitted the talks and whatever and like, it would just put, yeah, so I, it's not a slight against you, Chuck.

[00:12:48] Clark: No, it's not

[00:12:49] Chuck: Robbie working behind the scenes talking to you to ask you to pump him up because I talked more than him when we interviewed Jack Recider [00:13:00] and

[00:13:00] Robbie: everyone, you talk more than me.

[00:13:02] Chuck: I've got a lot to say, okay?

[00:13:04] Clark: here's where the, here's where the things get hard, right? We go through all this session selection and, and the peoples, and we make the cards for everybody and the AI's and we do all this stuff and we generate, I don't know, four or 500, 600 posts, get that shit queued up, scheduled out the door, and then some changes because it inevitably always changes and.

Like, I didn't pay a designer to have a two person card, right? So that means I have to go do that, right? And there's, there's only so much time in the day, so I took a note to fix it, but I'm not entirely sure if I will. But I will try.

[00:13:45] Chuck: Fair enough. I'll take that. Just a, just a, just a comment on to the process and that Robbie didn't purposely create bias here is all I need.

[00:13:57] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:13:58] Chuck: That's part of the dynamic of [00:14:00] this show.

[00:14:00] Clark: it's definitely a hard, hard thing when you get, you know 125 speakers, 150 speakers, and it's the, the moving parts are just, you know, there's a lot of them.

[00:14:14] Chuck: Well, I just conversely want to tell you that my family and I are excited. So

[00:14:19] Clark: God bless. I will try to pimp you more. Sorry I haven't.

[00:14:25] Chuck: no, no worries.

[00:14:27] Robbie: We weren't actually upset, we were just busting your balls on

[00:14:29] Clark: No, I love

[00:14:30] Chuck: a funny question to ask, so.

[00:14:32] Clark: I, it, it, it, there's, the only people that don't get pimped are the ones who will not submit a picture.

[00:14:40] Chuck: Hmm. Oh, well that's fair. That's an interesting thing to not submit a picture, but

[00:14:45] Robbie: If you're going to be live on stage and people see you then, Just submit a picture, right?

[00:14:49] Chuck: Yeah, there's

[00:14:50] Clark: You're, you're, you're, you're public. Like, why, why are you trying to hide? Like, people are going to see you.

[00:14:59] Chuck: Yeah, [00:15:00] yeah, just change your name. Primogen. You see his face.

[00:15:02] Clark: I, I

[00:15:03] Chuck: Most people don't know his name.

[00:15:04] Clark: I don't care what you call yourself.

[00:15:07] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:15:10] Clark: But no picture, even if it's AI generated. No picture, no go. Can't do it.

[00:15:16] Robbie: Yeah. That's fair.

[00:15:17] Chuck: a hard line. Go with it. I think that makes

[00:15:20] Robbie: want to do this next one? Chuck?

[00:15:21] Chuck: Yeah, I got to bring it back in. Do you have strong feelings on this? Oh yeah, I do have strong feelings on this, but I bet, I, I bet Clark doesn't. Being in between Chicago and Milwaukee, right? Like, so is Chicago style pizza actually pie or pizza?

[00:15:41] Clark: Oh, shit.

[00:15:42] Chuck: Now I put you on the spot.

[00:15:45] Clark: I mean, if you called it a pie, it would be a deep dish. And if you called it pizza, it'd be not a deep dish. So,

[00:15:57] Chuck: Yeah, it's pie with pizza ingredient [00:16:00] ingredients. And I'm not saying it's bad. I think it's tasty as a pie,

[00:16:04] Clark: it is a gluttonous, wonderful thing.

[00:16:11] Chuck: It's a real commitment

[00:16:13] Clark: It is a real, it is a real commitment.

[00:16:15] Chuck: Yeah. The whole thing, if you go get like a legit one, I mean it takes a long time to make. There's a whole process involved there. You've like really committed yourself. You're not going in, you grab a slice, whatever else, like, yeah, nap politan of pizza, they make that in like less than two minutes.

[00:16:31] Robbie: Yeah. Cause it's 900 plus degrees, so you can't leave it in there more than two

[00:16:35] Clark: Yeah. There's 900 pounds of cheese on a, on a pie.

[00:16:40] Chuck: Exactly. completely

[00:16:43] Robbie: style is the low key winner.

[00:16:47] Chuck: Ooh. I mean, I do

[00:16:49] Clark: do. I do like it. Detroit, Detroit. And I'm assuming you're talking square pan.

[00:16:54] Chuck: Yes. Cheese, crust, all of that. Butter, cheese, crust, I mean, immediate heart attack, but [00:17:00] also delicious.

[00:17:01] Clark: Yep.

[00:17:03] Chuck: So you know, everything's a trade off.

[00:17:06] Clark: True.

[00:17:07] Robbie: All right. So let's dive more into that conf. Just tell us about like, what is it? What made you want to start it? And you know, all that kind of stuff.

[00:17:17] Clark: Well, it started in 2010. Our first event was in 2012. The intent was to try to get all of the nerds together across all walks of life. So since I live between Chicago and Milwaukee, and if you just look at the upper Midwest, you got Chicago, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Madison, the Twin Cities, Iowa. Because I was just a city, right?

Just one

[00:17:45] Chuck: Yeah, basically.

[00:17:50] Clark: each of those cities, right, you got your factions of the NET people, the Java people, the database nerds, whatever. And the goal was to try to have a polyglot [00:18:00] conference for everybody and their families. So, we run two tracks, a family track and a professional track.

And the family track's about giving. Creating exposure for kids and giving them an opportunity to speak and you know, learn about tech, get to see their parents in a, in a new light. Because obviously we make ones and zeros, which aren't really sexy to point at. You're like, Hey, I made a website and your kid's like, so what? And then on the professional side, you know, I think a lot about engagement and You know, what's the, kind of the context to the conversation, because especially today, like you can get all this shit online. So what is it that you're really trying to learn? You're trying to create a network. You're trying to, to grow, you know, on the softer side of things that you, you know, need to talk to somebody else and go, Oh, look, you're in the same boat I am.

So text kind of the thing that joins us. [00:19:00] And then we do it at a host the whole thing at a water park. In both places in Texas and in Wisconsin. So you both are coming to our third version of Texas, which is a, I'll call it a fledgling child that is, you know, growing at the time of a pandemic. So that's been interesting.

But that versus Wisconsin, they're both They're both in the same spirit, but also very different. So. That's been, been kind of fun to see happen.

[00:19:33] Robbie: Yeah, that

[00:19:33] Chuck: I'd love to

[00:19:34] Robbie: sorry, go ahead, Chuck. Oh.

[00:19:37] Clark: One of you

[00:19:38] Chuck: I'm gonna get written out of something else, Robbie, if I interrupt you again,

[00:19:42] Robbie: follow up questions was like, you know, what's, what's the difference? I think you're also trying to add some more locations too, right? Of like, you know, why should someone go to

[00:19:51] Chuck: He's like, Nope.

[00:19:52] Robbie: the other? Or like, you know,

[00:19:54] Chuck: Yeah, I would

[00:19:54] Robbie: similar

[00:19:55] Clark: I did mention that to you, Robbie, didn't I? [00:20:00] yeah, I mean, what we're trying to do needs resources, right? AKA money. And that happens at the scale we're trying to have the impact. onE event really isn't enough. Because as you guys know, like, as your audience grows, your bandwidth costs go up, right?

So, our kind of biggest challenge has been, you know, in 2019, we had almost 1, 800 folks in Wisconsin. And then, in 2020, we had zero. And it was like starting all over, but we were already this kind of large behemoth, if you will. And so That's been a challenge to come back from. Texas, the Texas plans started probably in 2017, right?

So there was a pretty long ramp up time. And there are conversations about another place that is close to somebody who's here. But, you know, until [00:21:00] Texas works or doesn't work and, you know, that's kind of to be determined. You know, for a team of a few, right? Most people think we have a team of 50, but there's a team of three.

So, um,

[00:21:16] Robbie: That's a lot of

[00:21:16] Clark: four.

[00:21:17] Chuck: That's a lot of work. Yeah.

[00:21:19] Clark: Yeah. So it's not a, it's not like, I don't know. You know, we're trying to do what a big company would do, but in the flavor of. People who are passionate about the community and growing people. So, have good food, have good times, learn a little bit. You know, everybody win. Do it at a nice place, but all of that comes at a cost, right?

It's, it's expensive. So, that's why reInvent or Microsoft's thing or this thing costs 3, 500. Cause this shit's expensive. Like, it's really fucking expensive.

[00:21:59] Chuck: The more [00:22:00] people who want to be there, the more it costs. You know, that, that's the interesting thing oppositionally to something like AWS, right? There's been a lot of discussion around like, it's an obvious business of scale because the bigger the scale, the cheaper things tend to get.

And that's why AWS. is able to like, flow that down, but like, conversely,

[00:22:21] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:22:22] Chuck: yeah, well that too,

[00:22:24] Clark: right. And like, let's be honest, like right now for us, it's really hard, right? We lost, we lost a lot through the pandemic. There's all these tech layoffs going on, people pulling back budgets, people, not, you know, companies going on, not investing in these things. And I think the, I think they're swinging too hard the other direction and it's going to cause other issues.

And in the meantime, what's falling out? User groups, conferences, like the kind of backbone of things that have made our industry pretty great.

[00:22:59] Chuck: [00:23:00] yeah,

[00:23:01] Clark: Now, we've also had this segment of like four years where you could arguably say there are people who came out of college or were new to market and have never even been to anything with community.

Like, they don't even know that it exists. And that's scary too, right? Like, think about all the shit that happens online. We don't really have, I mean, I guess we have news, but like somebody asked the other day, like, where do you get your information from? And there's a slot of people. It's like from work. for me, that's like scary. Like that's, that's maybe the wrong echo chamber for some. So

[00:23:45] Chuck: yeah. That's an interesting thing, and a point that you bring up around like, the scaling back, and like, the pendulums swinging the other way in terms of, I mean, just money, let's just say.

[00:23:55] Clark: yeah.

[00:23:56] Chuck: wide cast of money. I mean, obviously we've run [00:24:00] an agency, you run an agency along with the conference itself, and you've probably seen those things on both ends.

I

[00:24:06] Clark: Oh, yeah.

[00:24:07] Chuck: yeah, there's a real change in terms of value and and investment around all of those things. Like they perceive value and investment around those things.

[00:24:18] Clark: Yeah. And the long game is gone. Like when I talk to sponsors, all they want to know is, do you have over a thousand people? How much per head? And what's the return? All the other stuff that we used to talk about has like, and I'm, I'm sweeping broad strokes. It's not every sponsor. There are some who are absolutely fantastic, but a lot, a lot of the conversation for me is ending at the, 1000?

Cause it's like. Well, no, but nobody really does. Like we're all building back up to that and there you can swing numbers one way, the other way. But they're just[00:25:00] it's like, it's like some are just trying to play catch up. And they can only justify a certain thing, but then they don't want to do the work.

So, they want you to give your email list. And I'm like, I'm not doing that. Like, it's, it's a really weird place. And I understand return on investment and the spend and all that. But if you're going to be involved in the community aspect of it, That's not a, like that's not a transaction. That's that's something that you put into and you continue to show up.

Otherwise you lose that kind of goodwill with people and then it's worse. So

[00:25:38] Robbie: Yeah. It's a frustrating time because like. We went to RenderATL, and like, AWS had a huge contingent of people there, like, at least 20 or 30 representatives. Meanwhile, I'm working for Amazon, and I was like, can you guys like, pay for me to go to this? And they were like, oh fuck no. And I was like, what?

You guys are sponsoring the shit out of [00:26:00] this conference. Like, where is I don't understand. And it's, like, that's some of the disconnect. It's just like, you have to be with the right person in the right group, and they Can magically get money, but like otherwise you're screwed, and I don't understand like Because there's plenty of money at these bigger companies still like yes, they're having layoffs and whatever, but it's it sucks

[00:26:20] Clark: not to throw

[00:26:21] Chuck: guy is,

[00:26:22] Clark: not to throw Microsoft under the bus, but when 2020 came, Silch zero out, not talking to anybody, not interested. And, and that's a company. You know, for everybody, I worked there almost 10 years you know, they're a pretty good example of like swinging this pendulum, like doing wrong by the community, coming back to the community, doing wrong by the community, coming back to the community.

I don't know, I don't know how long those kind of cuts can last before somebody's like, fuck off, like I'm done dealing with this shit with you.

[00:26:54] Robbie: Yeah Microsoft specifically has us cornered [00:27:00] because they own github npm everything I use for leisure like xbox and like, you know, I I can't avoid microsoft Yeah,

[00:27:13] Clark: because I needed to go up a little bit more, but it's just, there's just interesting times in tech. And, and I think we're on the forefront of it really, really changing pretty. I think it's going to change a lot. I think the next 10 years will not look like the last 30.

[00:27:34] Chuck: I think I agree with that 100%. I think that it's not going to be completely commoditized as the impressions are being made around that. But I also think that like, you know, the next level of, so what America doesn't make things per se physically anymore. Right. But we had a, we had a production population, like [00:28:00] Pre Industrial Revolution, it was farming based.

Post Industrial Revolution, it was mechanical and masonry and makers of all kinds. And I think that we're looking at the next generation of makers. But unfortunately, what that means is that it's marginalized more than it has been, right? Like, so there's a ton of demand needed. In the world, global economy and and we're not meeting it to the degree.

And obviously the way that we've been able to command salaries, like the way that people are able to get to six figure salaries in three to five years at worse compared to what I had to deal with. Right. You know, like I, yeah, I think I was like 12 years into my career before I hit a hundred or something like that.

It's like ridiculous and, but comparatively, right? And there's a lot of other things to go with it, but I think that's what we're looking at. We're not looking at this isn't a career path. It's just not a [00:29:00] path to wealth like it used to be.

[00:29:01] Clark: So I, I'm not going to spit this out kind of all logically. So bear with me, but I think you, I want to hit on a couple of points. So salary, we have been normalized across the globe. So as we have all gotten more connected, and I think you see this more in tech because we typically kind of work globally, if you will.

But you've watched India and China and all those rates go up, and then you've seen our rates go down. And so, you look at some of the commodity based work, whatever that means, because there's a lot of context in that. You know, are you going to pay 125 an hour for somebody to sling some pretty simple shit?

Or are you going to pay 60 from somebody from South America?

[00:29:49] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:29:49] Clark: Now you can get developers kind of in, in time zones. So you, you've taken some of that geographic kind of shit out of the way. But, the tools have gotten [00:30:00] better that you also have to say, what's AI gonna do, right? What's the real value in what you're doing as the creative human who builds the thing versus punching buttons on a screen, which now feels more like a trade.

Now the irony in all this is Everybody's getting laid off and everybody needs people. And the industry as a whole is not, if you will, breeding more IT software engineers, like the work is outpacing kind of the, or the demand for work is outpacing it yet. Nobody can find a job.

[00:30:36] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:30:37] Clark: And I'm just like, what is going on?

Like where, where's the imbalance of. Is it a communication gap? Is it, like, did the recruiters, are they just saying so much filth that, like, the good people aren't getting through? Like, what's, like, what's going on? Because the work is out there.

[00:30:57] Chuck: Mm hmm.

[00:30:58] Robbie: I think it's the pay. [00:31:00] It's like the salaries have gone way, maybe not down, but

[00:31:04] Clark: Oh, they've gone

[00:31:05] Robbie: able to have exponential, but like you used to be able to have like crazy money for like basically no experience. You could be like, I'm a senior dev and like I've worked on an app one time, so I must be senior or principal level and like I can make, you know, 200, 000 plus from doing nothing and then it's like now

[00:31:25] Chuck: And I went through a boot

[00:31:26] Robbie: people are like well I'm making that before so I can't accept less than that So that's why they can't find a job is they don't want to accept that they were being paid too much before

[00:31:36] Chuck: I do. I do think.

[00:31:38] Clark: I'm seeing consulting gigs that are looking for senior level people at 55 an hour, and I'm going you're high. Like, that's not enough. Like, you're asking for 20 years of experience at 55? I'm sorry.

[00:31:52] Chuck: who's going to tell the AI that it's wrong, who's going to, no, I, this is a real question, who's going to tell the AI [00:32:00] that it's wrong, who's going to lead a team of, you know, for offshore, near shore devs, and I don't want to like shit on, because I've definitely worked with near shore individuals that are very highly skilled again, so then you're dealing with rates, but then you have communication and soft skills and other things.

So cultural variances that can apply there. I think that's 100 percent what's happening. It's not that there isn't work. It's not that there isn't demand. I think there's a force multiplier pushing the salary requirements and the expectations and the barrier to entry down and maybe recruiters are asked to like, say.

Let only, we're going to really scale up our hiring process. We want like 5 percent of what made it, made it through before to make it through now, because we need, we need leaders in that, not like managers and whatever else, but we just need, we need a top level to kind of [00:33:00] guide this next

[00:33:01] Clark: Yep, there's, I think there's another factor here too, which seems to be, I don't know, I kind of like pushing it, which is this whole work from home, work into office thing. And again, pendulum swung too far as somebody who's been working out of his house since 2005. I'm like, y'all are idiots. Stop pushing because you're going to ruin it and then you ain't going to get it again.

Here we go, it's like, I won't go into the office, and I'm like, I don't know an engineering project that I've been on. When you get in the shit, like, yes, we can do it online, but nothing's gonna replace sitting down at a table where everybody's banging shit out on a whiteboard. Like, yeah.

[00:33:41] Chuck: that just really works

[00:33:42] Clark: Yep, and so there's this like, you have to have a little bit of kind of grace to say, let's go, it's okay. We all need to figure out what does the new kind of work model look like now that the tools are better?

[00:33:59] Chuck: But your [00:34:00] line in the sand is a little too hard. I definitely agree with that.

[00:34:04] Robbie: Oh yeah. Yeah. RTO is such bullshit. Cause it's like, we were just talking about this in our last podcast. It was like, you know, people forcing you to come into the office when you don't work with anyone there is stupid.

[00:34:17] Clark: Yeah, totally.

[00:34:18] Robbie: I totally agree that if the people you're working with are in that office and like you can collaborate with them in real life,

[00:34:25] Chuck: You could just go connect. It's going to get better because some people don't turn on cameras. Some people don't engage in meetings because of personality types. That is an interesting thing is that like. Also, we're like, we have been in the age of engineers as celebrities and engineers as online personality types, like developing that aspect of their career.

And that's great for a lot of people, but that's not everyone. I remember people in hoodies eating Funyuns, sitting in a corner and being like, read the fucking manual. And that made me better. That made me [00:35:00] better.

[00:35:00] Clark: Well, and let's be clear, there's not that many celebrities. You know, proportionately it's everybody else that's out there. In fact, most people aren't on the Twitters or Xs or whatever the fuck it's called these days.

[00:35:12] Chuck: Fuck that.

[00:35:13] Clark: I, I had this conversation with I've had it with James quick a few times.

It's like, what are you online versus what are you at a conference, right? Because you, you have, you know, So, I invite you, or you come and speak, just because you're James Quick doesn't necessarily mean you sell tickets because people are going to, they can get your shit, thumb through and watch it, you know, at home.

So now you have to ask, like, what's the in person experience, kind of coming back to the conference? Like I think about that a lot because we can get everything online, right? So then why get together, right? And that's, just like at work, like, why get together? What high velocity things can we get done when we're [00:36:00] physically together that you can't do easily online?

Obviously, we could have all flown together and put our microphones and sat around a table. Would that be better? Arguably, maybe.

[00:36:11] Chuck: Maybe yeah, yeah, we like the in person setups and stuff and that hey, that's what so Robbie What are you bringing to that conference as the star of whiskey web and whatnot? Like what? What is that? What's different there?

[00:36:24] Robbie: what's different in person than online? I will be much less adamant about how much I hate React in person. Ha ha ha

[00:36:33] Clark: Wait a minute, did I find somebody else who hates React? Because I don't care for it.

[00:36:37] Robbie: hate React, man. Have you talked to oh shit, I forgot his

[00:36:40] Clark: Is there a support group for us?

[00:36:42] Chuck: It's called Ember Conf. Yeah, it is. There is one. It's called Ember Conf.

[00:36:47] Robbie: the the blog post about, like, React, only being good at being popular?

Josh Collinsworth,

[00:36:53] Chuck: Yes. Yes. That's a great one

[00:36:55] Robbie: I loved that, cause when he put that out, I was like, I feel seen like the, [00:37:00] I thought you just had to like react because like everyone loved it.

[00:37:03] Clark: I feel like I get punched by a donkey every time I use that shit. So, I, I, we're in Svelteland, so, like, that's our choice. I

[00:37:13] Chuck: Guillermo owns you either way. So

[00:37:15] Clark: Yeah. And I, I, the whole server action thing, it's just hilarious to me. Because it's been in Svelte for a while and Rich Harris has talked about it and what not for like a year.

I'm like, okay,

[00:37:30] Chuck: I mean, it's also been in like Django and Ruby on Rails. No.

[00:37:37] Robbie: yeah. We're just going to all write PHP again.

[00:37:40] Chuck: Well, I mean, that's just it. It's just, we're just bridging the gap for everyone that has gone through all of this to learn React for the web. We just want to make JavaScript accessible on the server. And now your skills translate.

So perfect. Whatever.

[00:37:56] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:37:56] Clark: I, I've been around long enough so it's like, whatever. [00:38:00] They're just characters that make computers do things. I don't really give a shit.

[00:38:03] Chuck: Mm hmm.

[00:38:04] Clark: Let's just pick one that's, that's cool that we all like,

[00:38:07] Chuck: so is HTML a programming language?

[00:38:10] Robbie: I was just going to say that.

[00:38:11] Clark: This is a markup,

[00:38:13] Robbie: Oh yeah. Yeah. See, that's the thing is

[00:38:16] Clark: markup

[00:38:17] Robbie: did you ever use LaTeX? Do you know what I'm talking about? It's like, it's spelled LaTeX, but they call it LaTeX for whatever reason. And

[00:38:25] Chuck: I think you know the reasons.

[00:38:27] Robbie: They, if you, if you look, if you

[00:38:29] Clark: they love them.

[00:38:30] Robbie: If you Google it, it's like, It's a programming language, but all it does is build PDFs.

Which is the same fucking thing as HTML. Like, you know? So, I don't know, like, I, I think you can do a lot with HTML.

[00:38:44] Chuck: If there's no if else, it's not a programming language.

[00:38:47] Robbie: Well, okay. Okay.

[00:38:49] Chuck: How do you like that? I just

[00:38:51] Clark: I just say

[00:38:51] Chuck: on that.

[00:38:52] Clark: I just say there's no control flow by any stretch. So

[00:38:55] Robbie: That's true. That's true. Yeah.

[00:38:57] Chuck: Well, that goes to CSS. Is it a [00:39:00] programming language? Because it does math.

[00:39:02] Clark: look, nobody knows what CSS is and nobody can get it right.

[00:39:05] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:39:06] Chuck: ha.

[00:39:07] Robbie: Does CSS need trigonometry? Probably not.

[00:39:13] Chuck: corners to be perfect in all of the nested elements.

[00:39:17] Robbie: like this.

[00:39:18] Chuck: I want, I want, I want my, my yeah, I want my corners to be as perfect all the way down. Yes.

[00:39:26] Robbie: is a problem. The border radius nested. That is, that's a

[00:39:29] Chuck: I know it's gonna match and it takes complex math to do that.

[00:39:33] Robbie: Yeah, it's it's different, but it visually matches. Yeah

[00:39:37] Chuck: all we care about.

[00:39:37] Clark: so here's, here's an interesting thing, like this is a scenario where I think AI would do really well because we don't care like, Hey AI, go write me the regular expression that does this stupid thing. And great, now I'll go write the test to make sure it does what it is, because [00:40:00] we all, none of us know what regex is, and we all hate it.

[00:40:02] Chuck: Seriously, exactly. A hundred percent. That was probably one of the first things I ever used chat GPT to do is like, can you just give me some rejects for this? Like, cause I'm done. Yeah.

[00:40:13] Clark: I could think about, think about the possibilities, I mean, we're seeing some of it to where you can say, I need these things, or I need it to look, you know, whatever, I need the border radiuses to match inside outside for the nested thing, right? That's a, Great. Pump that code out so that I can figure out what I need to go do with it.

Cause I ain't got time for that. Laughing

[00:40:37] Chuck: startups get destroyed by open AI features because. Because anything you thought of early days that you thought was going to like, you already got to profit on NFTs and whatever other stupid bullshit. So the fact that you don't get to do it this time and that the possibilities you haven't considered and you have to think about for a little while, I like that.[00:41:00]

Cause I have,

[00:41:00] Robbie: to level up now, yeah

[00:41:02] Chuck: yeah. I have a few stupid NFTs because of this bullshit. So I don't want any more early days.

[00:41:07] Robbie: Cryptocurrency

[00:41:09] Chuck: I wouldn't say a lot. I mean, I have some. I wouldn't say a lot. I have a lot in that the few times I listened to you and bought some, yes.

[00:41:18] Robbie: I have 650 million Shiba Inu, so.

[00:41:24] Chuck: Well,

[00:41:25] Clark: get in on a doge? You missed the doge

[00:41:27] Chuck: no, I got a few, and then like, I don't have a risk tolerance. So, I made a little money when like, Elon pumped it, and I was like, That's probably good enough for me.

[00:41:38] Clark: I, I was, I was talking about AI to a bunch of business owners last week. And I did the classic kind of open things up with Pixar version of Clark talking, you know, it was all text generated, whatnot. And they were like, Oh yeah, yeah. And so then I was explaining, you know, machine learning and I, I brought up the Google recapture example and I'm like, you'd notice anything that's [00:42:00] kind of similar about recapture, you know, how you're looking for crosswalks and stop lights and people and this and that.

I'm like, yeah, that's a data set. They've been using a train cars. You all did this. Like it's been around for years. The room was just like. Pitch quiet. You can hear a pin drop in the carpet. I was like, now you're paying attention.

[00:42:22] Chuck: Yeah, you don't know. You are. Yeah, you're the input,

[00:42:27] Clark: Yeah.

[00:42:27] Robbie: Yeah,

[00:42:28] Chuck: and then we replace

[00:42:29] Robbie: feed off data. That's the big thing.

[00:42:32] Clark: Yep.

[00:42:33] Chuck: Yeah, there was a smart one that was coming up for like, basically like, confirming text translation or something, but it was a recap show, and you would be like, it would be like a snippet from a book, and you'd repeat it, and you'd be like, great, we got it right, okay, good,

[00:42:45] Clark: Yep. It's everywhere.

[00:42:48] Chuck: for sure. So aside from collecting melon hats what else do you do? Like, what are hobbies that are non tech? recognize it, because Robbie and I love [00:43:00] those hats

[00:43:00] Clark: Yeah, they're

[00:43:01] Robbie: have that same hat.

[00:43:02] Chuck: hmm,

[00:43:03] Robbie: We should have worn that. I should

[00:43:04] Chuck: Had I known, I didn't get any.

[00:43:08] Clark: lot of time soccer. So two teenagers both play both playing high school both play club. So that's kind of a 12, 13 month out of the year, 13 months out of the year. That's what it feels

[00:43:22] Chuck: all that fun stuff,

[00:43:23] Clark: Yep. Yep.

[00:43:25] Chuck: What positions?

[00:43:26] Clark: We have defenders. So, one is a center back. My daughter's a center back and my son has moved from center to outside back and he's, he likes, he likes being able to run it up the field and Kind of set up to play.

So we spent a lot of time doing that. Used to wrench on cars. Still do when I have a chance. I got a couple, couple old rust buckets that I like. I like

[00:43:53] Chuck: Honda Civics? Oh,

[00:43:55] Clark: I have a 68 Camaro and a 70 Camaro. And the 70 is in [00:44:00] pieces. And the 68's runnin drivin

[00:44:05] Chuck: So, the, the 68 would have, like, the Roadhouse, like, closed lights on it? Or

[00:44:12] Clark: If you had that option.

[00:44:14] Chuck: Yeah. Do

[00:44:14] Clark: actually, no, no, that would be 69.

[00:44:16] Chuck: Ah, see, I thought it was a one year thing, and I couldn't remember exactly. But do you remember that movie Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze? Yeah, yeah, and that was what was cool. He bought this car specifically because he's a bouncer for bars and he turns them around.

So he got this car where the headlights closed so they couldn't smash his headlights out.

[00:44:35] Robbie: Oh, that's

[00:44:36] Clark: 69.

[00:44:37] Chuck: Ah, there you go. So yeah, you got like, that's right. I guess you need a 69.

[00:44:46] Clark: No, I, it's a lot of fun. I I, I, I wish I had more time. But.

[00:44:54] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:44:54] Chuck: So, do your kids follow any international teams?

[00:44:59] Clark: Yes.[00:45:00]

[00:45:00] Chuck: Okay, you have to, this is, you know, this is a thing.

[00:45:03] Clark: my son is

[00:45:04] Chuck: It does matter to me.

[00:45:06] Clark: oh, I'm, I'm losing the name. I want to

[00:45:09] Robbie: Hopefully Man

[00:45:10] Clark: man. I think it's Manchester city. I

[00:45:12] Chuck: Fuck you, Robbie. Not Clark, but you. You know the trigger.

But, you know, these kids these days, you know, whatever.

[00:45:20] Robbie: and City.

[00:45:21] Clark: no,

[00:45:21] Chuck: so there's, there's baby blue and there's red. But Manchester is red and everybody knows it, so.

[00:45:27] Clark: Yeah, we, we We like just picking up on the tournaments and and watching each of the different leagues. There's not not really a kind of hard fast my son really likes me in city, but

[00:45:40] Chuck: They're an

[00:45:41] Clark: how I'm not sure how he got there but

[00:45:46] Robbie: Hahahaha

[00:45:49] Chuck: reference. C'est ta. C'est ta. Yeah.

[00:45:55] Robbie: other stuff, by the way? Sorry

[00:45:56] Chuck: I haven't. No.

[00:45:58] Clark: great.

[00:45:58] Robbie: what, he was in [00:46:00] Some Amazon show, About

[00:46:01] Chuck: Are you required to watch it contractually?

[00:46:03] Robbie: No, no, it was good. I forget the name. I'll, I'll get it to you. But like, it's about waking up at like the devil's hour, I think is what it was called. Something like that.

So they wake up at three 33 every morning. Irrelevant though. He's like the the husband of like the lady, that's the main character and he has like a normal voice. He's just like, you can understand him. He's not like, like

[00:46:26] Chuck: I've got to go poop ah. That was a big thing.

[00:46:30] Robbie: Yeah. What

[00:46:31] Clark: There was

[00:46:31] Robbie: Poop, eh?

[00:46:33] Clark: there was a TV show called American it was about a football player.

[00:46:39] Chuck: Eggball game or proper football?

[00:46:41] Robbie: It's in America, it's probably Eggball, yeah.

[00:46:44] Clark: Here, get something, anyways there's a black guy who's the kind of main character. And it's in Beverly Hills and, I don't know, Compton or something. So there's just kind of, there's two schools, whatever.

Multiple seasons. [00:47:00] Well, the, the black guy's straight up, Like, perfect English accents the whole night. Got it all down. What? Real life, the dude's British. So you, you, you see him in something else and you're like, Whoa! Whoa, that didn't, that didn't match.

[00:47:17] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:47:19] Chuck: at doing American accents in the inverse, not so much? Like, they sing in a very clear accent, and then, oftentimes, the actors and actresses do a great job, yeah. And I don't think the inverse is true.

[00:47:33] Robbie: I always thought that was interesting in House. Did you watch House?

[00:47:37] Clark: Mm hmm.

[00:47:38] Chuck: Hmm.

[00:47:39] Robbie: being, like, super American, and he is not. Yeah.

[00:47:45] Clark: that.

[00:47:46] Robbie: Yeah. He's like, he's British.

[00:47:49] Clark: Those damn Brits. They're trying to take over everything.

[00:47:52] Robbie: have you watched

[00:47:53] Chuck: They did that once, you know, it didn't work out.

[00:47:56] Robbie: there's a new, a newest show, I think from HBO that [00:48:00] has him as like a spaceship captain. I'm trying to remember what that, what that's called. It'll come to me. But that's his whole thing on the show is he's like, he speaks British or no, he speaks American, like trying to be, and he like forgets. So, like, he's trying to be this, like, polished captain, and then, like, he lets British accents slip out.

And he's like, it's funny. AvEnue 50 Avenue something. Avenue Avenue 9? Let me

[00:48:26] Chuck: Why do you have all this time

[00:48:28] Robbie: I watch a lot of shows, man.

[00:48:30] Chuck: Yeah, I just fall asleep.

[00:48:33] Robbie: Avenue 5. That's what

[00:48:35] Chuck: Oh, I feel like I've heard of that though.

[00:48:37] Robbie: It's good.

[00:48:38] Chuck: Okay. What's it on? Where can I find it?

[00:48:40] Robbie: HBO, I thought. Let me look

[00:48:42] Clark: You, you mean Max? Come on.

[00:48:44] Robbie: Yes, yeah.

[00:48:46] Chuck: I'm so annoyed that they've like in the last few years like changed that twice. It was like HBO Go, HBO Max, now just Max. Like why is it a whole new app?

You're bad with this.

[00:48:58] Clark: They are, [00:49:00] mean, I'm assuming you two are a little younger than I am, but it's just interesting how cable TV and HBO and all these things have evolved into the epic shit show that it is today of, you can't find what you want to watch on, you have no idea where this shit is at.

[00:49:18] Robbie: yeah, you just end up paying Apple 2 to watch it.

[00:49:22] Chuck: Well, we got, yeah, we, we got, we, we asked for an a la carte option from Cable, and then we ended up paying four other services for what we want, or five other services, I don't know, and now Cable's cheaper. I don't know, Clark, so, are you Gen X?

[00:49:37] Clark: I am

[00:49:38] Chuck: So am I.

[00:49:39] Clark: proud of it.

[00:49:40] Chuck: So I'm, yeah, I'm wondering, I was born in 77.

[00:49:44] Clark: 75 my birthday, my birthday is coming up

[00:49:47] Chuck: Nice.

[00:49:48] Clark: and I love all the like Gen X bullshit on Tik Tok. I think it's hilarious and it's fantastic.

[00:49:54] Chuck: is TikTok?

[00:49:55] Clark: Oh, you should check it out. It's a good laugh.

[00:49:57] Chuck: doing it. I refuse. [00:50:00] I'm not doing it. My brother's been like, he's into it and he's like been trying for years and I'm like, no, I refuse. This is my line in the sand.

[00:50:08] Clark: It's it's yeah, well

[00:50:11] Chuck: But I'll take

[00:50:12] Clark: well, do you have, do you, do you have kids?

[00:50:15] Chuck: Yes. Four and seven.

[00:50:17] Clark: okay. So they're not quite on a social train yet.

[00:50:19] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:50:20] Clark: So my, it's, it's pop culture. Like this is, it's two things. It's Snapchat and it's Tik TOK. They don't, they don't use SMS. Everything is through Snapchat and on Tik TOK. My kids have, we, we, we've clearly been cohorted because they can search in Tik TOK and I cannot, so they get, they just.

They don't think about Google. Like, it is fascinating. They don't go to Google search. They go to TikTok. And soon it'll be AI.

[00:50:54] Robbie: problem because like, there's a lot of like medical advice and people will be like, Oh, I have this problem. And [00:51:00] doctors are like, no, you don't stop searching on tick tock for this problem. Yeah.

[00:51:04] Clark: Yep.

[00:51:05] Chuck: Interesting.

[00:51:06] Clark: Yep. It is so crazy to compare the generations.

[00:51:16] Chuck: gotta stop them. I'm gonna put up a pie hole and block that. I don't know.

[00:51:22] Clark: Huh, sure. Huh, sure.

[00:51:24] Chuck: Until they get out of my network and

[00:51:26] Robbie: They'll VPN.

[00:51:28] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:51:29] Clark: want to hear a good one? So, we have to the kids VPN back to our house from school because school locks down everything. They can't get to this shit even that the teachers ask them to get to they can't get to it on their network so because the school is Fortress and they can't get a cellular signal in it They're on their Wi Fi, but then they VPN back to our house so that they can use they can use our network

[00:51:59] Chuck: [00:52:00] Wow. Yeah, yeah. That's funny.

[00:52:02] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:52:03] Chuck: that sounds about right for, like, schools and government being like, I don't understand, we lock it all down, we don't know.

[00:52:10] Clark: It's it is Watching them figure out AI Is a disaster. I mean they They're, and I get it, they're like overly hypersensitive to cheating. But like, my kid wrote a paper and then the AI, and then did the grammar checking and what not, but then the AI said that it most likely was written by AI because he cited some notations and this and that.

He's like, I don't, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. He's like, I wrote it. The teacher's going to probably ding me. I'm like, okay, well, I'll go in there and we'll just talk to them. Like, I don't, they don't know what they're doing.

[00:52:52] Robbie: It's a hard time. Yeah,

[00:52:53] Chuck: All trying to figure it out, for

[00:52:55] Clark: Yeah.

[00:52:56] Robbie: we need the AI that tells you how to get around the AI [00:53:00] and then then we're good

[00:53:01] Clark: I mean, the teachers use the AI to tell you whether or not a human wrote it, except when the AIs get better,

[00:53:07] Robbie: then you

[00:53:08] Clark: then it sounds like it's a human that wrote it, so.

[00:53:10] Robbie: write a lot better than I can to be honest

[00:53:12] Clark: I use it all the time. It's a great first draft.

[00:53:18] Chuck: for sure. I agree.

[00:53:21] Robbie: Yeah. I was using a chat GPT the other day. We've been doing our like art for episodes, just like using Dolly or

[00:53:28] Clark: yep, yep.

[00:53:29] Robbie: I was like, can you make me an image about like this? And it was like, well, I can't make images. Cause I, I didn't figure out how to like tick the box for Dolly yet. I figured it out now.

But,

[00:53:38] Chuck: You're welcome, by the

[00:53:39] Robbie: here's like 15 paragraphs that you would tell an artist to like, Make this image and I was like, Oh my God, like this is so detailed about like, this is exactly what I want. So yeah, it's, it's crazy

[00:53:52] Clark: Have you,

[00:53:52] Robbie: come up with.

[00:53:53] Clark: have you not used Mid Journey?

[00:53:56] Robbie: No.

[00:53:57] Clark: Oh, it's, it is scary. [00:54:00] It's so fun. It is so fun. I mean, all of that stuff is right there. You just start sending it prompts and, poof, here's your picture. Yeah.

[00:54:13] Chuck: stuff is, is pretty good. Like, it's fun, right off

[00:54:17] Robbie: They really like straws though. I keep being like, give me a picture of someone drinking whiskey and it's like they're drinking it through a straw and I'm like, no, no

[00:54:25] Chuck: that's not what happens. Do this without a straw, and then it gives you a different picture. It gives you a picture of only a straw.

[00:54:31] Robbie: Yeah. I wish, I wish it would let you just delete stuff from the, cause it'll make the perfect one, but there'll be a straw.

And I'm like, damn it. I know you're never going to give me that again, but

[00:54:43] Chuck: you take that to Photoshop. See, there's the human interface of correcting things.

[00:54:47] Robbie: Yeah, we're not 100 percent there yet,

[00:54:49] Chuck: Yeah,

[00:54:49] Clark: can you not have, you can, I haven't messed with dollies. Can you not refine that, that particular image? Cause you can in mid journey.

[00:54:56] Robbie: You can, but it won't change that same image. It [00:55:00] uses the same prompt, but generates like a slightly different image,

[00:55:03] Clark: Oh, no,

[00:55:04] Robbie: takes the straw away. So I'm like, fuck, I wanted the one you've made me before.

[00:55:08] Clark: should, you should look at mid journey cause you can totally do that. Yeah. Yeah. As, as you start to refine it, like you pick an image, you can refine it and you could do, do some shit on it. It's, it's, I mean, I'm sure that they're both pretty close. But I also think it's really weird that mid journey you interact with it through discord.

[00:55:30] Chuck: Yeah,

[00:55:31] Clark: like, it's fine, but it seems like an odd user interface if you want it to catch fire. Like, hey, non nerd. Yeah.

[00:55:41] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:55:41] Clark: Why don't you use this in discord?

[00:55:44] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:55:44] Clark: What's a discord?

[00:55:47] Chuck: You're gonna find out.

[00:55:50] Robbie: All right. We have a few minutes left here, so I do want to give you a chance to plug all the, that things like where should people go to find out more and [00:56:00] buy tickets and all these things.

[00:56:02] Clark: Thatconference. com Or thatconference everywhere on the socials. Like, just go, buy a ticket, January in Texas, July in, or Wisconsin in July.

[00:56:14] Chuck: Listen, if you want to go down some water slides with Robbie and I, buy a ticket. in

[00:56:19] Robbie: our kids,

[00:56:22] Clark: for for Wisconsin, the call for speakers will open January 1st. So, anybody who's listening, if they're interested in potentially speaking, just go and we'll keep that open for two months. January, February, yeah, two months. So.

[00:56:41] Robbie: do we get a cheese allowance if we go there?

[00:56:45] Clark: will,

[00:56:46] Chuck: There

[00:56:47] Clark: will be bacon. There will be bacon.

[00:56:49] Chuck: Okay. I need cheese curds. I don't know.

[00:56:52] Clark: I mean, I'm sure there's some

[00:56:55] Robbie: I'm just kidding.

[00:56:56] Clark: that all depends on budget, but for [00:57:00] you, I will make sure that there's

[00:57:01] Chuck: All right. Yes. Cause I do like cheese. Fried cheese. Yeah.

[00:57:07] Clark: And

[00:57:07] Chuck: arrive in a cheese platter. That's a straight mid journey that me arriving in a cheese platter.

[00:57:14] Clark: That, that could happen.

[00:57:16] Chuck: Hey, good. I'm sorry to anyone

[00:57:19] Clark: in Texas, you see we have a, we have a barbecue with brisket and, and proper Texas barbecue. And then in Wisconsin, we have a hog roast. So, I get all, I get all my meats through the year. I get beef and then pork. So it's

[00:57:38] Chuck: Perfect. Yeah. There you go. Cover all that's, that's the food pyramid that we grew up on. I'm pretty sure.

[00:57:43] Robbie: Yeah, where you're supposed to have 16 servings of grain a day or something ridiculous. Yeah,

[00:57:52] Clark: of those servings?

[00:57:53] Chuck: There's grain and whiskey by the way. So there should be,

[00:57:56] Robbie: fats or sweets. I don't think so.

[00:57:58] Chuck: listen,

[00:57:59] Clark: Well, if it's [00:58:00] in suites, it's not a very good one.

[00:58:02] Chuck: no. Yeah. You, you know, the Midwest. Yes. Grains and whiskey and beer. Yeah. That's, that's a food group. It's fine.

[00:58:12] Clark: Yeah. There's a great picture of like the drunkest towns in America. And it's just like Wisconsin, like the whole

[00:58:20] Chuck: It's just Wisconsin. All the towns are there.

[00:58:24] Clark: and then you go to Wisconsin, you realize, yeah, probably it's, it's probably, that's probably actually accurate.

[00:58:32] Chuck: That's fair.

[00:58:33] Robbie: right, is there anything else you want to mention or plug before we end?

[00:58:37] Clark: No, check out that conference, check out your local user groups. Like, go get involved. Go to work.

[00:58:45] Chuck: Go to work.

[00:58:46] Robbie: Drink whiskey.

[00:58:47] Clark: Yeah.

[00:58:49] Robbie: All right. Thanks everyone for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe. Leave us some ratings and reviews and we will catch you next time.

[00:58:55] Chuck: boom, boom, boom.