Laravel is for the Builders

Speaker 1

Uh, for the past four or five years, that's been a community member. Um, but this year we decided to switch it up a little bit and, uh, this is his first day on the job as our new VP of Marketing and Community, Aaron Francis.

Aaron Francis

Yeah. Surprise. Um, today's my first day at Laravel. Um... Didn't wanna spoil anything, so we put the old title up there. But, um, you can just do things, I guess. Here we are. Um, so several weeks ago, um, Taylor came to me with this idea of joining Laravel, and I'd always wanted to join the mothership, you know?

Um, but the timing, I didn't feel like the timing was ever right. And so, why did I feel like the timing was right now? So when he came to me and said, uh, "Do you wanna join the marketing team?" I felt like the timing was perfect. And you may be wondering, okay, you've got these products, you've got these courses, you've got these two sets of twins at home.

Like, what, what changed, um, to make this the perfect time? Um, before I do that, the two sets of twins are at home, but for the first time ever, my wife is here. So give it up for Jennifer. I don't know who is with the twins, but I am sure that someone is with them.

Um, so I think, um, I think the world has changed quite a bit in the past year. Who feels, show of hands, who feels like their professional life has completely changed in the past year? Yeah. Exactly. So why is now a good time for Laravel?

The world has shifted quite a bit, right? Small teams are out-shipping big teams. Individuals are out-shipping companies. Everything that we used to... All the rules that we kinda used to operate by have been upended, right? I stood on the stage last year in Denver and said, "Wow, AI is kinda crazy, huh?

Anyway..." And then the whole world changed overnight. So where do, where does that leave, where does that leave Laravel? Um, I think this moment is the best moment for Laravel, and I think this moment came to us. We were prepared for this moment as Laravel.

Laravel has a 15-year history of craftsmanship and care. Laravel has a 15-year history of, um, artisanal handcrafted code for the purposes of shipping. If you've ever heard Taylor talk, and you have, the goal is always shipping something out into the world.

Taylor's story is basically the story of all of us, except we don't live in Arkansas. He was a kid in Arkansas, and he wanted to change his life, and so he started building something, right? That has been the ethos of Laravel from the beginning. So now, now that perhaps a machine is writing our code for us, what, what do we do, right?

Well, Laravel has a 15-year history of building a solid, cohesive, comprehensive foundation. There is no other ecosystem where you can get such a, a tight, well-thought-out, and well-understood foundation that you can build your hopes and dreams on top of, okay?

There has never been a... I mean, we go from local development, uh, through deploying to scaling with cloud. There's never been a more cohesive story. And if the future, and this is what I believe, uh, we hear a lot about the death of SaaS, right? Software is dead. Your jobs are done. I don't believe any of that whatsoever.

What I do believe is that small teams are gonna outship big teams, and I believe that they will be doing that with Laravel, the most comprehensive, strongest foundation for builders. And in this room, we all have, for many years, identified as artisans, right? We care about the craft.

That's something, uh, that has always-- It's in the name everywhere. We're artisans. We care about the craft. But each and every one of you is also a builder. You want to build something. Of course, we care, but you wanna build something. You wanna ship something out into the world. You wanna change your life, the life of your family, and you want to have something out there in the world.

So you all are artisans. We have always been builders. But you know who else is now a builder? Almost everyone. The sales guy that's frustrated with his tooling. Andrew, you're here somewhere. They're... Sales guys are building their own internal tooling. Founders in little towns in Arkansas are building their own apps to make their dreams come true.

Back office workers, uh, no-code refugees, they run, you know, from Lar- uh, Lovable, and then they hit the wall, and they're like, "What the hell am I supposed to do now?" And they're like, "I need an actual solid framework." So I believe that the next couple of years, our community of builders is gonna grow by leaps and bounds.

And my challenge to you, and I don't think it will be, be very hard for you, is to welcome all of these new builders in. This is a, this is a welcoming place. It has always been. One of my favorite places to be is in this room 'cause everyone is so kind and welcoming. And y'all, we have the best way to build and ship applications.

And I think we're gonna see a big influx of people who wouldn't have traditionally identified as maybe even programmers, but definitely not artisans, and we get to bring them all in. We get to welcome them to our community. We get to help them fulfill their hopes and dreams by building something and shipping it into the world. That is, that is my ask for the community, is that we find these new builders, and we bring them in, just like we've been doing for the past 15 years.

This is, in my opinion, this is the era of the builder, and Laravel is the best place to build. Should we get this party started?