Live streaming, newsletters, and sponsors - Notes on Work

Happy Friday! Let's try something new here. My friend Adam Wathan used to have weekly work notes on his site, and I thought that was a cool idea. Yet, I never actually tried it. So that changes today 😄

This week was one of those “lots of small things that actually matter” weeks. Instead of coding, I was doing the media rounds. This was a super fun week, but also tiring. I don't see how those daily streamers do it.

Live Streaming

This week, I went on two separate live streams, and they are always a little uncomfortable. You cannot edit mistakes away, and you have to think on your feet. But that is exactly why they work, and something can't replace. Yet!

The first one was with the Laravel Cloud team. We swapped the Laravel News site from Forge to Laravel Cloud live.

Thankfully I didn't expose any secrets from the .env file or anything bad. We also over provisioned everything just to make sure we wouldn't have any issues. So I have some work to do to bring those down.

The second live stream was with Laracon India that is happening at the end of the month. This one was different because we had four people on the stream so we had to make sure no one talked over each other. But I think it turned out pretty well and Vishal asked some great questions.

The more I do this, the more I am convinced that live formats are one of the best ways to build trust. People see how you think, how you react, and how you handle things when they do not go exactly as planned. I've already decided I'm going to move my Laravel Creator Series over to doing it live. I think this will help me get them out quicker, and also be a little fun. Plus real time questions from the audience would be fun.

Hitting the 600th Laravel News Newsletter

This is a big milestone. This weekend will mark the 600th issue of my weekly Laravel Newsletter. I made a little short video to celebrate:

🍻 Here's to 600 more!

Laravel News Partners

On Laravel News we make money through partnerships with companies and I'm always looking for ways to bring them more value. One idea we tossed around this week was to try scrolling partner logos (stock ticker style) in our videos. The first one is an interview I did with JMac. I don't think it's too distracting, but it might be if this is a tutorial or code heavy video. This is still a WIP.

That's all for now! Next week I'll have my first live stream that I'm hosting and then I'm off to a little golf trip Wednesday - Sunday. It's supposed to be freezing so send me warm thoughts. 🥶