MageTalk - Episode 149
Phillip: Hello and welcome to MageTalk, the Magento Community podcast episode 149. I'm Phillip, and we just couldn't wait; we had to get an episode out. So, I'm bringing to you three great interviews here today with some folks that you've probably heard us name drop over the years here on MageTalk, and I couldn't believe that I got to hang out with these awesome awesome people, great contributors in the Magento Community. And I did that at Meet Magento Spain or Meet Magento España in 2017, just about a week ago, and I got back and I couldn't wait to put these interviews together, kind of retelling my time there. And one of the things that I've been fixated on is asking people what's your Mage story? What's the story that connects you to our larger story, which is how you became involved with Magento, or how has Magento helped you in your career? And how has your identity in the Magento community shaped and changed over these last few years? A lot of change in our space, and hearing everyone's Mage story has really given me a lot of encouragement and I hope it does for you, too.
So, we have three interviews for you today. The first is with David Manners who has done a lot in our Magento Communities, but most notably, MageEngage is one way he's contributed. He's spoken at a lot of events and spoken a lot as a developer, and outside the realm of developer on mental health and some other areas. Great blogger. But David is actually now a part of Magento's Community Engineering Team, and we'll hear a little bit from him about that. We also have an interview with Slava Kravchuk, whose last name I don't always pronounce correctly, sorry, Slava. But Slava's from Atwix and they've just been contributing on their blog and in many many ways for so many years, and so to get Slava on the show is a real great honor, and glad to have him on our show. And then, finally, an interview with Ray Bogman, which is sort of a retake. We got a redo. We started that interview at Meet Magento and then unfortunately something happened with the recording and it would not play back. So, I got a second bite at the apple and he joined me on Skype, and so you'll hear that interview here in just a little bit. We want to hear your Mage story, and the best way that you can get that to us is to either send us some email or engage on social, and you can do both of those things and find all of those addresses at MageTalk.com. And I can't think of any better way for you to get your voice heard than to go on Apple Podcasts or on Google Play and leave your feedback, give us a five-star. We'd love to have that. Okay, so without further ado, let's get right into the show with an interview with David Manners, Slava Kravchuk, and Ray Bogman.
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Hello and welcome to MageTalk, Magento Community podcast. I'm Phillip, and this is another one of our sessions where we're coming to you live from Meet Magento Spain 2017, and I'm sitting with one of my most favoritest people in the world. I'm allowed to have favorites. I can have favorites, that's an okay thing. That's not an elitist thing to say. No, I've really really enjoyed spending time over the past couple years as I've gotten to know David Manners, formerly of Sitewards and now part of Magento Community Engineering. Say hello, David.
David Manners: Hello, everyone.
Phillip: Congratulations on your new role.
David Manners: Thanks.
Phillip: And glad to have you back on the show. Have you been on...?
David Manners: I hosted it once.
Phillip: Oh that's right, I forgot about that. Welcome. You might be in like a small group of alumni of former hosts of MageTalk.
David Manners: I think so.
Phillip: I like that. So, tell me a little bit, you know, for those who haven't listened to the past 150 episodes and don't remember when you hosted, tell some of the new folks about yourself.
David Manners: Yeah, so, my name is David Manners. I originally am from the U.K., but for the last six years I've been living in Frankfurt in Germany. Started working with an agency there in Frankfurt, and then as of October this year, started... switched over to Magento with the Community Engineering Team. Focusing on that 20%.
Phillip: Which was a figure that I heard for the very first time today. So, in the keynote this morning, the opening keynote here at Meet Magento España, which I will never not say it that way -- next year they're changing the name to Meet Magento Amman, in case nobody knew that. But there was a 20% number that was sort of thrown about. What is that 20%?
David Manners: Yeah. So, as of... I guess it was about February, January time, Magento really started focusing on Community Engineering. So, for people that don't know, Magento 2 is available on GitHub, and the great thing about that is it means if you want to provide code back, if there's a bug fix, if there's a new feature you want to help develop, there is a team in place, myself included at the moment, that helps you with that, it has core architects to help you with the whole process, from conceptual to merge to even with release as well. And over this time period, 20% -- or, as of now -- 20% of the code that is in Magento 2 has come through this process, has come from the community. Whether that's just a pure bug fix or whether that's what is coming with the MSI project, which is a project that-
Phillip: That's a multi site inventory.
David Manners: Yeah, exactly, multi site inventory. This is a project that is really driven by the community, so there is... Igor, one of the Magento Community Engineering Team, is heading this up, but there is a team of four or five community developers who are setting aside their free time-
Phillip: Speaking of which, he's walking up right now. Yeah, but when you say community engineers or people on the Magento side that are sort of shepherding the contribution, it's really you're teaching them how to be good contributors.
David Manners: Yeah, exactly. So, basically, our job is to turn people purely from a consumer to a contributor. So, rather than just using the Magento system and then complaining if there's bug or whatever, but saying, "Look, here. We'll give you the support, we give you the tools, we give you whatever you need to give back. And not just once but to come back and do it more often." So, even this 20% figure, we're not just focusing on new people coming in, but also repeat contributors is a real big focus for our team as well. So, like, satisfaction for the contributors, making it as easy as possible so that people want to come back and do it again.
Phillip: And you're no stranger to community contribution yourself.
David Manners: No.
Phillip: You've been very engaged in a number of things over the years. Most notably, I remember a series of events called MageStackDay that you helped organize.
David Manners: Yeah.
Phillip: So tell me a little bit about that.
David Manners: Yeah, so MageStackDay came out of a conference trip we went to and that was with Anna, Sander, and not sure if Marius was there or whether he was just helping us-
Phillip: So, Anna Völkl-
David Manners: Anna Völkl, Sander Mangel, and Marius with an unpronounceable surname.
Phillip: Strajeru.
David Manners: So, we saw the need of Mage Stack Exchange was kind of filling up with questions and we kind of wanted to build an environment and help that environment grow, where people could kind of... the community can come and support each other. And so we set this up, I think there was... Well, I did very little, the others did a lot more than me.
Phillip: Well, your face was attached to it.
David Manners: My face was attached, and I think most of the memes I wrote. So, you know, the important stuff.
Phillip: Yeah, the important part of contribution is actually getting the community excited about it, and I would say contribute.
David Manners: And I think I'm head of memes and gifs.
Phillip: Yeah, 20% of all memes and gifs contributed by the community for MageStackDay. Well, what was great about Mage Stack Exchange was it was the only real place for just about anybody. Prior to Community Engineering being sort of Magento-lead effort, it was the only place that any random Joe or Jane could come and contribute somehow meaningfully, where others could make use of it. And contribution isn't always just code, right? It's the thoughtfulness that kind of goes into implementation... We're live by the way, if you guys couldn't tell. So, just go with it. You're fine, listen, Talesh, I know you're complaining about the audio right now. Just chill out, it's fine. You're gonna be okay. But, you know, asking a question is contributing. Because most of the time, especially on Stack Exchange, the way that you find the answer to your question is by asking the question yourself in natural language, how do I x? And to find y, we have to know what the x is first. And I think that that's really really important, and I know that it happens on GitHub to some degree. Stack is still a very important channel for us.
David Manners: Yeah, I think the issue with GitHub is that it is very developer focused.
Phillip: And it's solution focused. A question always should arrive at some sort of actionable solution and code, right?
David Manners: Yeah, so we definitely still need the kind of different places to go for your question, you need a wide range, you can't just all go into GitHub or all to the forums or whatever, you need that space.
Phillip: And prior to those events, you had a video podcast called MageEngage.
David Manners: Yeah, we were talking about this last night.
Phillip: Or "mahe engahe" as they pronounce it here in España. "Mahe Engahe" which came live from your kitchen.
David Manners: Live from my kitchen- Well, one half was live from my kitchen, the other half was live from wherever the other person was. Yeah, this was a lot of fun. So, I'm a very... I like to see myself as a very average developer. And what I loved about going to events and meeting people was exactly that, was finding that personal side and finding out something about someone that isn't code, isn't work-related. No offense to the other podcasts that were around or still are around, but I was looking to find out a little bit more about people, but not just like, "Oh, what do you do for work?"
Phillip: Right, I understand that.
David Manners: There are so many interesting... interesting stuff that's going out there that you just don't see. Like, it started with Anna Völkl, we were just chatting about it once and she was explaining her stuff with the Red Cross-
Phillip: Yeah, she's a volunteer for the Red Cross in Austria.
David Manners: Yeah, and she spends so much time on that as well as the Magento stuff, but you only really hear about the Magento stuff.
Phillip: That's true, and she comes up a lot on the show, and I feel like in the same way that I have told Magento folks -- this is sort of a weird tangent -- but I have told Magento folks that BlueFoot is the reason why we've 3x'd our Magento builds in 2017 at Something Digital. And they're like, "BlueFoot is the reason?" I said, "Yeah." Because BlueFoot drove our ability to stop focusing on producing style guides, stop producing... so we could actually focus on delivering for the client, right? It changed our focus, it drove our costs for builds down 30%. So, at the end of the day, it was BlueFoot. BlueFoot's the thing that changed our business. And when I look at MageEngage, MageEngage was the thing that I think became the Magento Masters Spotlight Program. And that MageEngage kind of had this ability to introduce people that were doing notable things who were contributing, but not focusing on just their contribution and their value in the ecosystem from like the business value they drive, but focusing on who they are. And I feel like that was a wonderful precursor to what became the Magento Masters program. So, I always look at things like that. Even if you didn't keep doing MageEngage, what you did with that was transformative for us, and we needed that in our community at the time, and it's now, in my opinion, had a very lasting impact.
David Manners: I was just nosy, to be honest.
Phillip: He's like, "I just want to know people." You've talked in the past about sort of anxiety and some of the things that come along with putting yourself out there, how are you dealing with that these days? And what do you think... What do you think like the public persona of David Manners, is that a thing that you still struggle with?
David Manners: That's a question, Phil. That was a question. A hundred percent. I still... I love giving talks, I love giving presentations, but I rewrite my presentations. I think my favorite talk I ever gave was in Meet Magento Romania, and it was a good talk, and I wrote it and it was great, it was fine. And then the day before on the way to the train I'm like, "This isn't me." I was doing something that I thought people wanted to hear, but I wanted to do something that I was 100% happy with.
Phillip: And that you were proud of.
David Manners: Exactly. So, on the train to the airport, I completely rewrote it. And I think for me it weighs a lot on my mind as to making sure that I'm happy with something and I'm fully confident in giving it out. And maybe I play a bit too much on that, and I think I could definitely spend a lot of too much time in my own head, and I find that the best way for me is to just be honest about it and talk to my wife about it as well. And she will tell me just to like... just to deal with it or just to do it or not to do it, you know?
Phillip: Yeah, and that's important. I know my family plays a big role in trying to keep me grounded and... it's important for me to always have somebody else that's sort of like checking my motive. What's your motive here? Like, what's the point of... You put yourself out there in all these different ways and sometimes you're really happy with yourself with it, and sometimes you're extremely upset with yourself. And so, you know, just because you're kind of doing a thing now doesn't mean you have to do it forever. I sort of really appreciated the way that you've really put yourself out there, and even in the way that you've been really honest about the struggle in doing that, and I think we're all better for it. So, I really appreciate you and I wish you the best of luck and most success, and thank you for what you're doing with Community Engineering. I think it's actually the fulfillment of what we say we do in the Magento Community; it's the actual embodiment and Magento's sponsoring it now, and seeing people like you who have been doing it for a long time, fulfilling that, is such an honor. So, any last words?
David Manners: Elephant.
Phillip: Alright. Well, thank you so much. David Manners from Magento Community Engineering, thank you for joining us on MageTalk. And we'll continue to bring you live coverage of Meet Magento España, here from the 2017 Meet Magento Conference in Spain. Thank you so much.
David Manners: Thanks, Man.
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Phillip: Hello and welcome to MageTalk, Magento Community podcast. I'm Phillip and we are live... sort of live, we're in a side room at Meet Magento España 2017. And I'm here with Slava [Kravchuk] and I keep saying "Kruvchek" is that correct or is that a total bastardization of your name?
Slava Kravchuk: No, that's fine, I've heard worse.
Phillip: That's close enough. We're here, we stole away a little bit. And as you know, Kalen is out, celebrating the new arrival of his... his new pull request has been merged into master, if you will. Gosh, that's terrible. Kalen is out for a few weeks while they celebrate the birth of their new baby. So, congratulations to the Jordan family. But, Slava, have you been on the show before? I can't remember.
Slava Kravchuk: Briefly, we had a few minutes of airtime during Magento Imagine earlier this year, but this is the first time I'm actually participating on this kind of scale.
Phillip: So, you're the founder of Atwix.
Slava Kravchuk: Yes, the founder of Atwix.
Phillip: And I know that you're from Ukraine?
Slava Kravchuk: Yes, I'm from Ukraine, currently living in Slovakia. But living is kind of legally set, so when I look back about four months from now, I was in Slovakia just for about two weeks. So, it's been quite intense travel and I'm not sure what to say when people ask me where I'm from or where I live.