Hey.

I'm Mitchell Davis, a Laravel Developer.

Good day, mate.

I'm Gavin Tye, head of sales and marketing.

I'm sticking with that title.

Very good.

We are the top Alright.

Well, so you so have you, but you're just not taking it.

I haven't taken it yet.

Yeah.

You're a CTO.

Yeah.

It'll it'll click in one day.

We'll see.

What are we building?

I cut you off.

Yep.

Well, we're the cofounders of Six Sides.

We are building a community building platform, and we are documenting our journey.

And this is episode 14.

So six what's that?

Four months in a row, roughly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Congratulations.

Yeah.

You too.

It's been fun.

Still enjoying every minute of it.

It's fun sitting down and, like, going through our list of topics that we're going to talk about.

You seem quite chill about it.

I'm like, Oh yeah, we've to talk about these things.

And you're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, the order's fine, whatever.

It's all good.

So it's interesting seeing the differences.

Mate, I don't see there's any point in both of us occupying the same space.

If you're fussing over it, whatever.

I don't know.

That's like that at home.

Like, why do the housework when Mel is really passionate about it?

Yeah.

Right.

That's not true.

I had a

I'm sure she loves that.

Yeah.

Wait.

I we had words this week about my lack of housework, and so my effort has picked up accordingly.

Yeah.

Smart.

Smart, man.

Yep.

How's your week, buddy?

How's your week been?

It's been good.

There's been a lot of stuff that's happened since we recorded last time.

The main thing I've been focused on basically all week is the marketing website.

So I can get into that.

But first, I wanna give a shout out to anybody that's washing the dishes right now.

We're on theme with what you were talking about there.

So if you're out there, you're washing the dishes, listening to the podcast, we appreciate you.

Shoot us a message on wherever you can find us, and we'd love to hear what you're what you're up to after you finish washing the dishes.

Alright?

We can't guarantee we'll get all to all the messages that come to us, but we'll try.

We get so many of them.

So We do.

It's just crazy.

Yep.

The common answer is no.

Mitchell does have a partner.

Like, he's not single, so we get a lot of that.

That's right.

There's a lot of interest out there, but, no, I do.

I'm happily engaged.

Speaking of this week, we actually went and looked at some wedding venues.

So that's a little side project away from the the business.

That's where I was on I think it was Wednesday afternoon.

So yeah.

So we went and we're looking around here for some winning venues, and we found one that we quite like.

So

Oh, yeah.

What Might have some more.

What it is, or is it a secret?

What do you mean?

Like, the the venue name?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can do that.

We haven't locked it in yet.

I think it's called Burnham Grove.

Okay.

Like a cemetery.

A bit more.

Cemetery?

No.

Jesus Christ.

No.

It's not a cemetery.

It's like it's it's actually this really nice place, but it's in Camden

Oh, yeah.

New South Wales.

So Yep.

Anyway, I will have some more Oh, yeah.

I I can update state.

Yeah.

I can update the podcast listenership as things progress because you know?

Oh, yeah.

People be riveted.

Maybe we could do a livestream.

Not from my wedding.

No.

Absolutely not.

I'll do TikTok live for you, mate.

Yeah.

I'll interview you guys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Alright.

You're not invited anymore.

Anyway Yeah.

You have a date?

You have a date when it's coming?

No.

So we are we are not locked in with this place yet, but we have reserved a date, but I am not gonna share any of that just yet.

So we reserved a date or held it, excuse me, for two weeks.

We did that last night.

We sent the email.

And then we're going to very quickly go and look at a few other places in the area Yep.

To try and just see, okay, is there somewhere that's even better?

But if not, then we will go ahead with this one, and I can reveal more details later.

Alright.

So that's very exciting, and that's happening on my side of the the fence.

My only advice with that stuff is, mate, is I underappreciated how much fun I would have on a day.

It is honestly the best party day that I've ever had in my life.

And I'm not one for crowds and doing having fun stuff, but it was the best the best day that yeah.

It was awesome.

So Yeah.

I asked about that.

Yeah.

Did she?

She goes, do you think we'll get an invite to their wedding?

I was like, well, I don't know.

Maybe.

I've been thinking about it.

Yeah.

I'm like, well, it makes sense.

You and I hopefully are gonna spend years in this business.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think so.

So No.

Appreciate it.

Depends if you do anything that that pisses me off between now and then.

But Yeah.

Interesting that you referred to it as a side project as not Thursday.

Compared to this business and its goal of like, the podcast, I mean, it is a side project, but, yeah, that's something that I've been doing this week.

Other stuff has been on the I'll continue on now with the rest of the week, the marketing website.

So last week when we when we did the recording, we had just I don't think I had rolled it out yet, but rolled out the site onto Cloudflare and moved us away from Laravel and Vue.

So if you're interested in that, you can go back and check out the, like, the latest section of last week's episode number 13.

But I continued on with that, and I'm so glad that we did make the move to Next.

Js because I was able to very quickly get the get a theme designer up and running on the marketing website.

So by

the way, what you've done.

It's phenomenal.

Thank you.

And what was even better on this, like, long story arc of me adopting some of the AI tools like Cursor, I asked Cursor, hey.

This is what Six Sides is.

You know, we're an event app in this platform, and I'd love to have a page on the marketing website where people can do design their own event app theme.

And I want some controls on the left.

I want, like, an iPhone looking preview on the right.

Gave it that prompt and it immediately, like, spit it out.

A minute later, it spit out this, you know, fairly crude, but all the stuff was there.

Gave me this, like, beautiful looking iPhone preview thing.

Even had to, like, the iPhone notch at the top.

Like, it knew it was smart enough to do that.

And then the controls all worked, so I could use, like, a color picker and everything, and it just, like, instantly synced it.

It was amazing.

So that was that saved a huge amount of time.

You asked me about it when I showed you.

Like, how long do you think this would have taken without cursor?

I was like, this would have taken me days.

As it is Yeah.

I then I didn't just use that version.

I then I spent probably altogether, like, fifteen hours on this, I reckon.

Yeah.

Right.

Probably would have taken me double that, maybe more without the AI.

Mhmm.

So super impressive what it was able to do.

Anyway, so we get into it now.

The theme designer, how it works now, I got it to a point where it can it's collaborative.

So you can it'll generate like, you go to our website.

Feel free to check it out.

We'll put it in the show notes.

You go to our website, you go design your own theme.

You can then share that link with someone else and collaborate on it in real time like you would with a, you know, Google Doc or something like that.

I was able to hook that up using Cloudflare workers and durable objects, which I will talk about on this episode.

What else?

Then you can punch in, like, the name of your event.

You select your colors.

You can add your logos and, like, a background image.

Got all of that stuff working on Cloudflare, and it was really fun.

It's like a totally different way of working than what I'm used to.

It like, the development stack, the

text stack.

Productive.

Yeah.

Alright.

You are uninvited to the wedding.

Anyway and then I sent it to to Michael Dorinda of LaraCon AU, and the first thing he said back was like, oh, that's fancy.

So that made me feel pretty good that, like, yeah.

Okay.

It does feel fancy.

It feels like it's this is probably a point of difference from a lot of, like, competitors out there.

We've had early feedback.

Like before this existed, we had early feedback from conversations that we were having with leads and quite a few people asked, you know, if you just had some way to quickly configure the app independently then that would be amazing.

You know, it's such a time saver for them not having to, like, email a style guide or something like that over to this company that's gonna do their event app.

Said you can just do it all yourself.

So Yep.

This is kind of the first step towards that, and it's been great.

Yeah.

So we then shared it with a few people.

Why don't you take it from there?

Yeah.

So Holly come back and says, great to see and envision envisage how it's gonna look already.

Thank you so much.

She made a couple of bad color choices, but she was able to wind it back or go back.

So yeah.

No.

She was really, really impressed.

There are a couple of things on there, I think, which we've talked about is one, an undo button and go back a couple of steps.

And then I've noticed that if you don't capture that URL, because it's a unique URL for every design, then it can quickly get lost.

And if you lose it, you can't it disappears.

So I think that in itself trying to capture their email and send them the unique identifier Yep.

That in itself is I think it's needed because otherwise people go, that's great, but then they've they won't be able to see it.

They won't be able to find it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It it would save in their history, like, their browser history.

So I was I was aware of this.

Yep.

It could be better.

So if they're cluey enough, not to say they're not smart, but if they're cluey enough to be like, oh, okay.

This is my link.

They can bookmark that link, but I get that a lot of people won't do that.

And you would expect to just be able to go back to the designer page, and then it should pick up where you left off.

Right?

So that Yeah.

There's a bunch of things which would make it into a next iteration, but we're a bit time poor.

We have to move on to the mobile app.

So some of the other things that we wanna do is what we talked about actually, I don't know if you talked about it last week because this is only new, but you and I have since talked about, okay.

Can we capture an email and send someone a report of this?

And I was and, like, integrate it with HubSpot.

I was trying to get all of that stuff done on on Monday.

It's just it all takes time.

So Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For now, this is just a a version one.

What else would we do on there?

Yeah.

The the

other button Even if, yeah, even that what you just said there is just don't assume people know to bookmark it.

Like, just maybe do something there where once I start playing around with it, a drop down or a little thing comes up and says, hey.

Bookmark this in your history or whatever whatever you do.

That's a good idea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a good idea.

Because I've lost yeah.

Anyway.

But it mate, it looks brilliant.

So if anyone wants to check it out at 6sides.co/design.

Yep.

And, yeah, it's great.

Well done, mate.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

It was really fun to work on.

Honestly, it was it was fun.

So in addition to that, we do so

productive as well.

I'm not I was taking a piss.

I was just checking.

That's okay.

The I have been very productive with the marketing website because we also now have a blog.

So you can go check that out as well at slash blog on the website.

We have our first article up, which is you doing the the CEO sleep out.

So we put that up, and I kinda copied the design from the, like, the podcast pages.

Looks very similar, but that's now just, you know, our default kind of design.

So that was a bit of fun.

That took probably a day to get working, but and I knew, like, going into working on the blog that it could be a huge time sink, but I figured, okay, it will probably benefit us in the long run.

Like, this is worth putting the time in now so that you could start creating content.

Last week, we talked about doing newsletter, things like that.

I'm like, okay.

We need somewhere to get this this this content up without me having to be heavily involved in it all.

Right?

So you can kind of work independently on this.

So, anyway, so we got the blog article up.

We've just added a link to like, the the link now on the homepage that used to go straight to Vinnie's now goes to the blog article instead where you've gone through and explained, you know, the the reasoning behind why you're doing this, and then there's a link to go donate on the actual Vinnies page there.

So that's gone really well.

And then I guess we can kind of round this off with before we started recording the show today, we were on a screen share going through trying to get the marketing website set up as, a development environment for you on your computer.

So how did you find that experience so far?

We're not finished really yet.

Yeah.

I know.

I don't know if I got ADHD, but my I was trailing off.

It was not easy.

So it was

All we did, to be clear, all we did was download, what, free programs, I think.

So we had GitHub desktop because I think that'll be easier for Gavin to use, Versus Code, and Laravel Hurt to give you node, basically, for people in the node.

Yeah.

That was it and signed up through GitHub account.

Right?

Yeah.

But it was a that was all we did.

Doing our signatures.

I was on a back side of doing signatures.

There was a few things stuck out there.

And then I was doing some other stuff before, like, in spreadsheets.

So that was

You know what we need to do?

Here's what here's what we do.

We get we get you set up with Tuple, which is the like, a pair programming tool, which I use with Chris.

And when Michael and I get on a call, we're using Tupool.

It's like Zoom, you know, or whatever, but you can control each other's computer, basically.

Okay.

And so Yep.

If we did that, then I can just do it all for you, and then you don't have to be like, oh, yeah.

Click this button up here or do that or whatever.

So maybe we should do that.

Don't click that tab.

But Yeah.

That's right.

Keep that that folder separate.

There's some things we don't need to know about each other.

Anyway, so we are only partway through.

You now have the the git repository on your computer, which is very exciting.

You've got all the marketing code.

You've got the environment variables, and now we just need to we're literally like two steps away from you being able to edit the marketing site.

We gotta do a an NPM install, and then we've gotta run the development server, and then you will have the beautiful marketing website at your fingertips.

So

Phenomenal.

Phenomenal.

It's a it's a like, interesting road.

Like, I've been in software now since 02/2015, so ten years now.

Never logged into GitHub.

Like I've I've I've deliberately stay out of the weeds and, and just try to be the con like the operational like person and, don't understand it.

Don't understand.

Like, I'm it's I'm I now I know how you feel about sales.

Right?

It's the Yeah.

If I can avoid it, I'll I'll I'll avoid it.

So it's

It's hard.

It's hard learning a new skill.

But, honestly, like, this what I am the only reason I'm giving this to you as something that you can do is because this this is not hard.

This is, hey.

Make a new file, a text file in a folder, specific folder.

I'll tell you exactly where it should go, and then you run a command, which is just like a click of a button, and then you've got it.

And now you can work on this file as like a text document.

You're falling asleep.

Oh, sorry, mate.

But that's it.

That's all the steps that's involved.

It's not that boring.

It's super powerful.

Were you last night when I couldn't sleep?

Honestly, like, this would have been awesome to listen to it to one in the morning.

Yeah.

Well, next week when you can't sleep, you can go back and listen to this episode.

Anyway That's great.

Yep.

That rounds out the the marketing website.

That's probably all the work that I will do on it for now.

Yep.

And we can we can tackle it later.

One other thing to just follow-up on from last week is we have started the SEO titles.

So I you are yet to provide any titles, by the way.

So if you really wanna, like, make this your thing, you gotta start coming to the table with ideas.

Yeah.

Sure.

In fairness, I recorded I edited that episode at, like, 10:30 Monday night, and we put the episode out at, like, 8AM on Tuesday.

So there wasn't a ton of time.

But if you have a title in mind, you should be sending it to me.

Otherwise, I will just do what I think.

Okay.

What did you think of last week's episode?

I think it was good.

I haven't listened to it yet.

I've listened to the others, but I think, like, the SEO one oh, yeah.

No.

I think it was good.

Okay.

I think this one could be click download, install, click download, install.

Shit.

Kill me now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a good title.

Yeah.

That'll get some good SEO juice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Look, I think

I don't think there's any secret ingredients to go, hey.

Wow.

That got 10,000 downloads over Yeah.

Over the course of just from that one SEO.

We don't we're not even promoting it, so I'd expect to get those results anyway.

I think it'll come

should be.

Yeah.

Where?

Like, what's stopping us from from promoting this?

Yeah.

Well, I've got multiple different messages I'm trying to promote on LinkedIn or whatever, but we could do it once a week.

We're gonna start the newsletter.

I haven't got to it this week, but we could put it out on that.

So

Okay.

So why don't why don't when you've got the newsletter up and running and when maybe we've got another blog article, then I'll start pushing this out to my LinkedIn maybe every week.

I think I've got about a thousand people on there.

We'll just see.

Anyway, it is what it is.

We're not I mean, it'd be great to have more listeners, but, you know, I'm not crying myself to sleep about it.

It's not the end of the world.

You and I still haven't fun

recording.

So Well, I think we're doing it what you mentioned yesterday, I think we're doing it for our future selves.

So Yeah.

We're not there yet.

So, maybe that's what the titles could be is maybe think three years down the track and we have a team, and we want them to come back and search on stuff that we spoke about.

Or Maybe.

I don't know.

It feels like you really expect future employees to come back and listen to hours of us just talking.

Maybe not.

But maybe what if we wanna what if we go unicorn, billion dollar company, and then we send people back?

We'll be able to pay them then.

So it doesn't matter if we don't title it or not properly.

Pay them to listen to it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

Yep.

I'm pretty sure you will have changed with that money.

You would have gone to your head.

I'll I'll be okay.

But, but we could get them to Why's Mitch going to Turkey?

Yeah.

Bet you.

I got an afro or something.

Yeah.

That'd be alright.

Yeah.

The big orange afro.

Yeah.

No.

No.

So people will like, maybe, yeah, they come back and they're looking at they're just searching for stuff topics that we're talking about, like juggling time or whatever.

So I don't know.

I don't think it's a bad idea.

So yeah.

We'll see.

We got we got a few years by the sounds of it.

So you've been under the pump lately by the sounds of it.

You've been pretty busy.

What's going on in your world?

Yeah.

Look.

I guess it's like everything.

It ebbs and flows.

Right?

Like, you've been stressed out for these last few weeks, and this week, it's

Yep.

It's my turn.

So Yeah.

I'm doing a few different things.

I've got, obviously, client commitments.

I've started a new project with a with a great team out of, Perth, Australia.

So we're busy finding clients and onboarding them.

But I'm also building out, another software platform called, Deal Buddy.

And, so that requires dealing with another agents like, with an agency and configuring plus my day job plus this.

Yeah.

It's just it's just busy.

I the stuff that we had you know, there's some stuff in my inbox about getting set up.

I think we may have just addressed a lot of that this morning.

Sure.

Getting set up, in a way to to I think, god, there's other things here look like the Google console Cloudflare Yeah.

Which haven't got to Yep.

It's just something that's it's important, but it's not critical.

So I just can't get to it at this point in time.

So, yeah, it's been really, it's been good.

Right?

You you need you wanna be busy when you're a business owner.

Right?

Like, want the right busy.

So, yeah, it's just one of those things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's been interesting to see, how you handle it.

Nothing's really changed, but just yeah.

You've had a bit less spare time it seems or like a bit less availability.

It was interesting because I think it was yesterday you I messaged you like, hey.

Could we do this?

I forget exactly what it was.

Probably setting up one of these things.

Setting up the website, that's what it was.

And you were like, I'm really trying hard to just, like, time box.

Right?

Like, stick to a bit of a schedule and make sure you're getting to all of the commitments that you have to do.

And then that's where I sent back to you.

I'm like, yes.

This is exactly how I feel when you ask me, like, oh, go reply to this person on LinkedIn or whatever.

And I'm, like, so deep in a problem for a client or building something or whatever.

It feels impossible to, like, bounce around like that.

So it's really interesting to see you've experienced that.

Yeah.

Well, typically, I'm okay.

And then, you know, I bounce a lot of ideas off Mel, and she's kind of my what what would it how what would I describe her?

Just gives it

to me.

Would say.

Yeah.

And she gives it like a honest assessment of what's going on.

And and sometimes I like, I'm okay, but then I start straying out of the lines of where I'm most productive and she pulls me back in.

And sometimes I'll take on too many things at the one time.

That's okay.

I can do it, but I can do it for only short periods of time.

I can't do it for months.

So once we recognize it, then we'll go, okay, we need to get a plan.

And then you need to start addressing some of these things and knocking them out.

So, I could take on a couple of long term projects and a couple of medium term ones and a few short term ones.

But the short term, I need to have key key goals to get them off my plate because I can't have them stretch out because it does burn me out.

So Yeah.

I'm at not burnt out, but I'm at a point now where I've gone, hang on a second.

Need to Need to get a structure again and get it gets it.

And plus I'm going away for a week in two weeks, so and not in a week.

So I need to start knocking some stuff out and get getting prepared for that too.

So, yeah, it's all good.

It's just a reflection.

I'm quite I'm quite conscious of my stress levels.

So once I get a bit, I won't sit in I try not to sit in stress and discomfort for too long.

I I'm very I try to be very aware of it, and then I try to address what's going on.

And I'm just in that period now just decluttering.

So yeah.

Mate, it's exciting.

You got a lot going on.

Yeah.

So speaking of a lot going on, last night, you went to Start Club Brisbane.

How was that?

Yep.

What what is that, and, and how was it?

Yeah.

So it's an incubator for early stage founders.

And, so I mentor the group as well.

So I I'm quite active in the startup community here.

So last night was a pitch night, and, we've spoken to Holly, which runs the event about six sides, and she's really keen.

And she was really keen for us to use six sides, last night, but we actually asked her to pause.

And we said, look, we're not quite ready.

We wanna make sure we offer the right value because this is really important.

I learned last night at the precinct where they run this event, they run over 300 events annually.

Yeah.

It's way more.

Right?

It's all about the community building aspect there.

But Holly's liked what we've done so much.

She tried to implement some of the functionality, in through other platforms, and it she was surprised that, particularly people asking questions during the pitches and stuff.

So she'd she'd come to me last night, she said, you have till August to get me your app because I wanna use it on the next time.

I was like, okay.

So we have to we should have that done by then.

Right?

So at least a simplified version of it.

Yep.

But it's good.

So last night, I took a heap of photos like I was using six sides, and we're gonna put together a wrap video for them just to get them excited, and share it with, the community and use it as a bit of a lead generation tool, an excitement building tool.

But, yeah, it was good.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

It'll it'll be it's cool.

This feels like opportunistic of, okay, clearly, Holly really wants this, which is fantastic.

And you being there and actually being able to take photos and capture the vibe of the place and then us using our technology to create one of these wrapped videos even though we weren't officially, like, running the event.

Right?

They weren't using our app yet because it's not available.

So us being able to kind of go, well, okay.

Cool.

Something that we can still provide value for is doing this wrapped video and just using all these photos that you took separately.

I think it's a pretty cool idea.

So yeah.

And then you sent that to me, and I was like, absolutely, we can.

So you sent me all the photos, and I'll I'll get that generated this afternoon, then we can get that out nice and quick.

So, yeah, really exciting.

Okay.

Be really good.

She she's away she's away for today.

So if we can go and put that post on LinkedIn, tag everyone who was at the event, and put the wrap video there powered by six sides.

You know?

Yeah.

How good's that?

Yeah.

Yep.

It'll be great.

And, yeah, and she gets a benefit of stuff happening while she's not even doing it.

You know?

So, yeah, I I think that's a win.

Cool.

That was cool.

So we've got next on our list shirts for our partners.

What's going on there?

Mate, I think well, as you can see, I'm still the lucky one that has all the, the kit.

I haven't sent yours yet, which is in in the mail.

Not it's on the site on the store.

It's what I think our partners

are yeah.

Our partners are part of the journey.

Right?

And I think maybe we should get them a couple of shirts each, even a hat.

Right?

So Yep.

So they can feel they can feel part of it part of it as well.

I don't know.

What do you think?

What's your yeah.

I like that.

This was my idea originally.

So maybe you went back and listened to one of the old episodes and had stolen my idea.

No.

I didn't even

because this is what I said.

I was like, yeah.

We should get some shirts for or some merch for for Mel and Nicole.

So, yeah, I I think it's a cool idea.

And maybe we can use this as an opportunity to fix up the logo for this particular printer because we've noticed that there's a bit of a misprint on the on the six in our logo on this round of of merch.

We don't have to get all of our stuff again, but at least we can fix it up for the next like, for Mel and Nicole's stuff.

So

yeah.

Yeah.

I will get back to him and and just let him know.

Like, I'm sure they did it,

but it looks like they've missed

the final line on it.

So Yeah.

Because it's a half sized line.

So, yeah, I will and I will check what I've actually sent him because it could have been an error on my side.

I don't think it is because it well, if it's an error on my side, it's an error from you.

No.

Throw me under the bus.

That's fine.

Maybe it was.

I I don't know.

But when I like, when we look at our logo in Canva, it doesn't look like it looks like I mean, in Figma, it doesn't look like it does on your Mhmm.

Hat right now.

You know?

So something somewhere has gone wrong.

So if we can find it, great.

I don't care whose problem it is, but, anyway, I will accept the blame if it's mine.

So, yeah, totally.

I think we should.

Talking.

Yeah.

Sure.

Yep.

I totally think we should.

I think that'll be a fun thing for us

to do.

I'll ask Nicole if she's actually interested because maybe she's not.

Yeah.

She's like, I don't

believe in you that much.

Yep.

Yeah.

That's right.

I don't know.

Six sides.

It was the the icon.

Like, the six was her idea, so surely she'll she'll wanna rip the merch.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Anyway Yep.

We will see.

I am mindful of we've got a bit of a hard out, and I do want to talk about the database stuff.

So why don't we talk about that now?

And then if there happens to be some more time, we can get into some other stuff.

So last week, I touched on some of the technical aspects of what we're doing.

I went through how we're now using Cloudflare to do all of our DNS and then to do the marketing website.

As a part of that marketing website work I touched on earlier in this episode, the the theme designer uses this technology called durable objects, and it's kind of it's a bit of a tricky one to talk about because it's not to me, it's not super clear exactly what it is.

But in my head, it's kind of like this idea of there's just a little bit of storage space somewhere out there in the cloud, which is local to the person visiting that our website in this case.

So, like, if someone's in Sydney, somewhere in the cloud on Cloudflare, there's a little bit of space that we can put stuff in and store on behalf of that user.

That's kind of how I'm thinking about it.

So for the theme designer, we're storing their theme.

Right?

So they've given us their colors and the name of their event.

They've given us their logo, etcetera.

We just store all that stuff in this little bit of space, and we can do stuff with that data.

So they can send us an update.

They can say, okay.

Now change the color to be red or change the event name to be da da da, whatever.

And we can then, using code, we can go and change that stored data.

What you can also do with these durable objects is you can listen to those changes, and there's this technology which I've used now for many years called WebSockets, and that's how you are seeing real time changes happen, like collaborative changes.

When I open up the link and then you open up that same link, if I make a change, you see it in real time.

That, the technology that enables that that we're using.

There's lots of ways you can do it, but the way we're using it is called WebSockets.

And, basically, these durable objects on Cloudflare make that possible.

So it's not just storage.

It's also, like, this extra compute layer on top.

And I don't really know how to do that on AWS, which is what we were using before.

They have this other technology called Lambda, which we are still using for our Laravel side of things.

It actually runs on on Lambda.

But for this type of real time, like, interactivity thing, these durable objects are amazing for this.

And for now if we go back to November with the LariCon Australia app, there are a few areas of the app that were in real time.

So one of them was the the q and a area where people can ask questions on a given talk.

Go in, you can ask questions, and you can upvote the questions as well.

So if someone's asked a question that you think is really interesting, great, and you can upvote it.

And those counts were getting updated live in real time as opposed to, like, having to pull down the page to refresh and get the new list of questions or whatever.

I wanted that to just all work in real time.

The way I did that was also with WebSockets, but we used this service called Pusher.

Pusher's just like another SaaS application that they manage WebSocket infrastructure for you.

And so I use that

Do all these come with costs?

Do all these come with extra costs that, yeah, they're like subscription models and stuff?

Yep.

Pusha is yes.

So they do have a free tier, but because I knew there would be, you know, potentially 400 people all accessing the app at the same time, I got us on to, like, the next tier up, which is, I I don't know, it's like $50 a month or somewhere in that realm.

Right?

Yep.

Gotcha.

So if there is a way, which I spoiler, I think there is a way to get rid of that from our infrastructure, great.

And, I mean, that's only $50 a month, right, or somewhere thereabouts.

It's it's not the end of the world.

But if there's a way that we can provide the same functionality using these Cloudflare durable objects, which are effectively free, like, such low cost that it basically doesn't matter, you pay a $5 $5 a month fixed for, like, just access to run these things.

And then our usage, you know, we're not running the next Facebook, not right now at least.

Our usage is gonna be so low that it it's effectively free.

Right?

Mhmm.

So this using it for this theme designer to do the collaborative aspect has shown me what's possible with it.

Super powerful.

So then we get into databases.

So a problem that we are trying to solve with this business is how do we handle events in other parts of the world?

Right?

So we've talked a few times.

We've got an opportunity, which is not yet finalized, but an opportunity for an event in Denmark in a in a few months' time.

And so us being based in Australia, the, like, the latency, the lag for anyone in Denmark to connect to a database server here in in Sydney would be awful.

Right?

It'll it'll take, like, seconds to load the app, and it'll just be awful.

So we've gotta have some infrastructure overseas, and, ideally, we're wanting to go after a few different regions around the world.

Right?

So how do we keep our costs down while also providing, like, a great experience for all the different parts of the world?

So these durable objects, I think, will give us that.

So how I'm thinking about using them is that we will maintain a few fixed databases in different parts of the world.

So we will have one on AWS in Sydney, then we might have one like in somewhere in the West Of US, like of of America to kind of cover that part of the globe, and then maybe another one in Europe.

And we could spin these up as we have events in those regions.

Right?

So if we then have somehow we have an event in Africa, we could put a server in Africa as well, and that would be okay.

But to try and keep the costs down, we make these fixed sized databases, so not serverless like I was talking about with Michael when he was here in the live chat a few weeks ago.

Gonna do a podcast with him in a couple of weeks, aren't you?

I'll have to yeah.

I well, I would like to.

I haven't talked about that with him yet, but yeah.

For when you're away overseas.

So yeah.

Michael, if you're listening, you might get a message from me.

So what we're thinking with these durable objects is that, basically, when there's an event happening in, say, Denmark, we will be able to leverage these durable objects to talk to our copy of the event data, so attendees, speakers, sponsors, etcetera and that might live, I don't know, in Paris for example, right, I'm just pulling cities out but that might live in Paris and that's like the actual source of truth for the data, but then to serve an event in Amsterdam or Denmark or whatever, I don't know, my knowledge of Europe is not very good, so forgive me if I'm naming things wrong.

But in Denmark, let's say then Cloudflare will have one of their data centers or points of presence they call them.

We'll have a we'll have that, and that's where we can put this durable object, which just effectively has, like, a copy of all of that information.

And it's then, you know, milliseconds for our app to go and access that information straight from Cloudflare as opposed to having to hit our infrastructure, our databases on AWS.

Then the final piece of all of this is the real time WebSocket stuff.

So because we're using Drupal objects, if someone comes through and sends us a new profile picture or the organizer wants to change a talk title or someone needs to log in or whatever, that request will still go to our database in Paris.

But then in real time, we will sync that information over to Denmark on Cloudflare, and then that will broadcast it out immediately to anyone that's got the app open.

So and all of this, super cheap.

Like, the Cloudflare aspect, effectively free.

We'll be able to run databases at fixed size for, like, $30 a month, $50 a month, something like that.

So our cost to scale become, like, really affordable.

Yep.

And that I guess that that would because we wanna have a a freemium tier, right, where we offer people the ability to use six sides for small meetups.

So that's Yeah.

Kind of helps address that.

Right?

So, yes, of course, there's gonna be a cost to to do it, but it's not exorbitant, so we'll be able to absorb it.

Right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

And it will scale really well.

It's not it'll scale I don't quite know the right term whether it's like if it's linearly or exponentially or whatever, but we can put a lot of events on this infrastructure without increasing our costs because the real part that actually will get hit a lot, like a lot of traffic, is the Cloudflare durable object stuff, which they handle really well.

You can have thousands of connections to these things, still doing the WebSockets, like broadcasting stuff out in real time.

It'll mean there's way less traffic actually coming to us, which is just awesome.

Right?

So, yeah, I'm I'm really excited about this.

I have got proof of concepts working.

Like, I have got a version of our app which can talk to one of these things and pull down changes.

I make a change over here and now it's live on my phone a second later.

Like, it it is working, and and I had that working, you know, six weeks ago or something like that.

I now maybe I can transition because we're we're gonna have to wrap up the episode soon, but I am now back to working on the app again.

So now that the marketing website is at a version one where we can just leave that for a little bit, then I've now gotta get back into it with the the marketing with the mobile app rather.

I am now looking at, okay, how do I hook all of this up and take it out of a proof of concept stage into an actually working and deployable stage?

And this is the infrastructure that we're going ahead with for now.

We will be able to change it in the future if we need to, but this will be very likely unless something changes between now and, you know, next week, this will be the stack that we we go with.

So it's exciting.

Question for you.

Question for you, mate.

It is exciting.

How do you learn for other developers that might listen to this in the future?

How do you learn about this stuff when you don't know?

Because you you are clearly into a realm of of development that you you haven't been in before or maybe not clearly, but it seems like, I should say.

Yeah.

No.

Is.

And now this stuff.

So how do you learn it and then without making yeah.

That other people could maybe take some lessons from?

How I came across the DurableObject stuff was just looking at Cloudflare Workers.

How I got on to those was I knew we needed to implement caching better in our in our app, and caching is like not recomputing stuff all the time.

So right now, like, if you hit our LariCon Australia app, that is talking to our back end and it's making database requests, every request that comes through in the apps, every time someone opens up a new page, we're hitting our database.

And I knew that would be okay for LariCon Australia and we leveraged the serverless database so that we could spike, like, with demand.

That was all fine.

But with all of these goals that we've got of making this more affordable to run and scale, I knew I needed something else.

So immediately, like, if in my mind, Cloudflare is, like, very big on caching.

Right?

That's a huge part of what they do.

That's how they save websites from going down with too much traffic.

It's because they store a copy of that information for a while.

So that's why I went looking for this, but then what got me onto Cloudflare Workers was this database solution thing that I'm talking about.

The underlying technology is called TinyBase, if you wanna look it up, and they have a direct integration with these durable objects.

So you can use durable objects to hold this copy of a database, basically.

So it was just kind of like working my way through of, okay, what's the end goal?

We need to hit our servers less so that we can make them cheaper, and then looking at what options are out there.

Oh, well, maybe we can just broadcast changes out to the phones as opposed to them having to hit us constantly, and that led to TinyBase.

And then I knew I wanted to use Cloudflare for this.

Oh, turns out TinyBase can use durable objects.

So I was just kind of following this, like, linear path.

As far as the AI aspect, it's been super helpful for giving it just a prompt of, like, hey.

I wanna use workers on this, or I wanna use durable objects.

How might I hook this up?

And it's got all this experience with it.

You know?

It can just generate this stuff for you.

That's been really helpful as someone who, like, prior to six weeks ago or something like that, had never used any of this stuff.

Didn't know anything about it.

Right?

So, yeah, it's just kind of that's the way of learning any new technologies.

Forget about the AI aspect.

That's just made it probably a bit faster.

But, yeah, it's just like you kind of come across things, you know, maybe on Twitter or you see a news article or a YouTube video or whatever, and then it's like, oh, that's in the back of my head.

Maybe one day I could use that.

And, yeah, that's that's the path that we're going down now.

So

Yep.

Okay.

Interesting.

Yep.

It's exciting.

Cool.

No doubt next week, I will hopefully we'll be able to log log in to our our copy of the app again because right now we can't because our infrastructure is in this state of, like, this in between state.

The LariCon app still works, that's what you're using for demos.

But, anyway, we'll we'll get there.

So, hopefully, next week, there'll be a a mobile app update to to share.

Alright.

Gotcha.

So why don't we wrap up here now, mate?

So where can people find you online?

LinkedIn's the easiest place.

Yeah.

Gavin Ty, t y e.

Yep.

How about yourself, mate?

Mitch Dev, everywhere.

Oh, you have a GitHub now, you nerd.

If you wanna follow Gavin.

Yep.

I'm Oh, you don't?

Maybe trainee CTO.

Yeah.

I don't even some people follow me on GitHub, can they?

I have no idea.

Can.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They can follow you.

So I think you're Gav Ty seventy six if you wanna check him out.

Okay.

But you can follow me, Mitch Dev, on all the places.

We'll have it all linked in the show notes along with anything that we talked about today, but I think we're pretty light on links.

Maybe just the Vinny's CEO sleep out.

So if you do wanna support Gavin on that journey and and donate for a good cause, there'll be a link for that in the show notes.

Mate, let's wrap it up there.

Thank you for listening.

Leave us a rating, a review.

We'll have to check those.

Maybe we can check them next week, see if there's anything new, and hope you have a good week.

To all the dishwashers out there, stay shiny.

You've been working on that for an hour.

Well done.

Like I just actually it literally just come to me, mate.

So

yep.

He's sharp.

Alright, everyone.

We'll see you next week.