TD Cafe #006 - Carlos Ospina & Ana Laura Coto

Carlos: [00:00:00] So that was a fun experience and it's when I realized it's not about you having a good. Life balance is about you not letting your life intervene in your work. And, and for me it's, it's one thing, you know, life and work is only one thing. I dunno what

Ana: you think it should be. It should be the opposite way.

Work should not interfere with your life. Work should not interfere with your kids growing up. And if they need you you should be able to go to them and, and talk to them.

Ana: so we wanted to talk about, um, how do we work together and life and work balance, because I think Carlos has a pretty different perspective of what is work life balance. You'd like to start.

Carlos: Well, I think we, we should start with. [00:01:00] How we met. So, Anna, Laura, she's my wife. And we met actually being customer and, and and provider.

I was the technical account manager for her. We met and eventually when other things happened, we ended up together. And one of the things that we found, I think, um, do you agree is like we have very different approach to the work life balance from the be at the beginning. Um, I am a, what I call a life aholic.

And for me, work and life there is no balance because it's the same thing. You just, you know, you live and work. So I'm, I'm pretty good at, you know, going to a coffee place and be with the family or having lunch with the family and having to answer a quick email. I will do it without problem. I can move on from one task to the other.

So from moving from a work task to something with the [00:02:00] family, very easy. And for me, that is the balance. But I, I feel like you, you see it differently sometimes.

Ana: Yes. Going back when we met, I was working from eight to five, and most day I will stay at the office until eight or 9:00 PM and I consider myself a workaholic.

I love my job. I, I, I'm very passionate When I, when I get a problem, I, I tackle it until I finish it. And I was doing all that and I was being paid 18,000 a year for that. And I had some issues at the office. And this is another topic that we wanna talk about. Um. We decided to, we'll talk about that later.

We decided to, I, I will quit my job and we'll find a way that I could be in the US so we can [00:03:00] have a real relationship, not a long distance relationship. So I moved here and I started studying and I discover a different way of living actually. Um, I had time to go for a walk in the mornings, they then I will make something for lunch for us and, and actually enjoying life more than working.

Um, today we wake up, we have a little breakfast together, and then we walk upstairs to our office. Um, Carlos is usually sitting next to me here and we will go to separate rooms and if we have meetings so we can talk. Um. He talks very loudly. So

Ana (2): I do, I do,

Ana: we have both have meetings. We need to be in separate rooms, but most of the time we are together all day every day.

Carlos: That, that, [00:04:00] that's the fall of TaeKwonDo. You know, I, I was an instructor in TaeKwonDo for about 10 years, and you have to be loud and you have to be energetic, and you have to, you know, use a lot of up and downs in your voice to keep the kids engaged. And I became that when I was talking. But going back to the life balance, something that I all, I, I am believing right now, I, I don't think I thought about this, this way forever, but lately I do think life balance is more, I will say it in a weird way, a construct of corporations to have you decide not to live your life while you're working.

Because if you see is everything that is said, written and done about life work balance is take your work and separate it from your life. And it's more take your life and ed from the work. Don't get distracted with your kids. Don't get distracted with your wife. Don't get [00:05:00] distracted with, with what you actually want to do During my eight hours, six, seven hours.

And I do believe that, um, objectives are way more important than than time sitting on a chair. And, and, and I did that for, I was lucky with my previous employer because they had an open vacation policy. It was, um, a distributed company for the longest time. It was easy to do. Where I could, I could meet with a customer while we were having lunch.

Like we are having lunch. We went to a restaurant. I had a meeting that's 30 minutes, 20 minutes. I can, I can tackle that meeting get some tasks for myself that I will resolve whether I can do it on my cell phone or I can do it on my computer. I will, my customers knew that. Um, at some point, I remember I was interviewed for a company that was the first time they ghost me.

They did it a second time later, but [00:06:00] they said that it was too low. What? I said I was in a coffee place. It is the holidays. I was with my mom taking her for the first time to see the snow, and, and I accepted I, I will take the interview while we are traveling. I don't have a problem with that because I mean, why not?

So we stopped for a second, took the interview, and they said that I. What I got is you are in a coffee place. What if you do that to a customer? And I can only think if I do that to my customers, we probably will talk about coffee for five minutes. Especially if they are coffee buff. Like sometimes me and my friends sometimes are we will discuss coffee from Columbia, coffee from Costa Rica, which one is better?

Colombia, of course. And, and, and, and, and then we will go into, you know, topics. And after the meeting is done, we will continue doing what we're doing. If it's something urgent, I, [00:07:00] I will tell my family, okay, this needs to be taken care of right now, care of right now, and I will do it. If it's not I will do it and, and my customers know.

So that was a fun experience and it's when I realized it's not about you having a good. Life balance is about you not letting your life intervene in your work. And, and for me it's, it's one thing, you know, life and work is only one thing. I dunno what

Ana: you think it should be. It should be the opposite way.

Work should not interfere with your life. Work should not interfere with your kids growing up. And if they need you you should be able to go to them and, and talk to them. And that is amazing about working from home. And I wish everybody could do it. We, we know not all the jobs are suitable to, to be home remote works.

But it, for me, it's amazing. It's been amazing to, um, live with, with Carlos, [00:08:00] with my husband and work with him. We can do things like if, if we feel down or we feel slowing down our afternoon, we can go, um, and drive a little and find a, a good place to finish the afternoon or just to have a, a conversation between us.

We, we talk a lot. We spend a lot of time, um, driving together in, well, pretty much Carlos Drive and I am the copilot. Um, but we talk a lot about Drupal and we talk a lot about the community and the culture that is around this community is, is pretty amazing. Um, how my boss have his kids on our meetings and we say good morning to them every morning pretty much, um, how we have babies in our team that.

Just [00:09:00] sit next to a developer during the day because he has to take care of him because something happened that day. Um, and that's life. And work is part of your life is not the other way.

Carlos: And I think that's what is important about Drupal is all these I think is a catalyst, or being Drupal has been the catalyst for me to get to this.

I I always been like this. I, I, I am the one that will advise anybody. If you have an eight to five job, do not be there 15 minutes early every day. I know it sounds counter to whatever everybody says, but I'm a true believer if you are there 15 minutes early every day, the day you are at, on time at eight, you are late.

Or if you are eight, 10 because you need to do something, they're gonna go after you. So it's, it's keep your life. And it's Drupal who, who give me, gave me this. Enhanced [00:10:00] view of how important people is. And I, I love that about Drupal and, and, and all these that we are talking about it. It's funny because it sounds easy or TA or maybe it sounds like we are in complete agreement very easily, but if not, we are so different.

And I think we also, um, need to talk about that. So we are a couple, we both do Drupal each of us in our own thing. I'm starting Ra and Laura helps me. Um, I'm doing some customer work as a Drupal architect, and she works as a web developer, senior web developer for, for another company. And we do not do things the same way.

So sometimes you will think, oh, that is nice. You know, you have a, a developer that can help you as an architect, or you have an architect that can help you as a developer, but that is not. All the time. True. Because we see things so differently. And I think that is the biggest challenge for every other [00:11:00] couple, you know, that is working in Drupal together.

I don't know if you agree an Laura.

Ana: Oh yeah. We are completely different. Um, Carlos is spontaneous in, in and kind of like non unpredictable. I like to have an structure and then make a list and know where we are going next day. Where are we going to eat? I like to have everything like laid down before I, I get to, to see and finish a task.

Um, I do a lot of documentation on my tickets and even if there are only for me, I will make all this list of, of, of things that needs to be done. Um. I try to help Carlos with this. I'm, I'm the note taking while we are driving. I will, I will take little notes for him and he loves that, but, um, he won't do it by for [00:12:00] himself most of the time.

Carlos: Yeah. It's different. You are creative. I'm logical. I think that is a, a big difference and

Ana: that's another difference. Yeah.

Carlos: Yeah. And we can, you know, talk about our other pro project that started as a hobby. It's a, it's the website at Drupal Couple where Yes, at some point we wanted to write, we wanted to do things together for the community.

We both are in our job that we both are very involved in the community and Elaborate is a longtime mentor in DrupalCon. I mean,

Ana: not as long as you

Carlos: six years. I don't mentor. Yeah, because if I mentor, I have to mentor, mentor, mentor. I don't know. I like to be, like you said, my A DHD does not allow me to be in, in a room mentoring.

I love helping people, but my A DHD will not allow me to, to stay there. I've tried and, and I get very restless. So now I mentor through you. 'cause I, sometimes if you find [00:13:00] something that is difficult an Laura will call me and, and I'll try to help, or I'm mentoring some other people in other things.

But we started at Rupert Couple to do something more community oriented and, and, and, and stuff. And it has been a challenge to write together. One of the things that we wanted was to write together. Um, and, and right now at Ruper Couple is more me, but it is because I can, I can get a topic and, and, and let it go without thinking it's perfect.

Maybe. And sometimes I just release the stuff that is not as good, but hey,

Ana: and I'm the perfectionist. I wanted to be perfect, and I wanted to read it three times before we publish something and change little punctuation and rewarding and everything to be perfect. And it's been challenging for me. Um, really, [00:14:00] I, I've been struggling with my job for the last year or two.

I, Carlos said senior developer. I, I don't, um, see myself as a senior developer. Um. I'm not perfect. Maybe that's the issue. And I'm trying to write, um, more for the Drupal couple, but I, I question myself all the time. I don't know if somebody's gonna read it or if someone is gonna care what I think, but who knows?

Maybe they do.

Carlos: Yeah. And, and, and we've been thinking about expanding that, right? Like invite other couples. I think it would be interesting to see, you know, you work in Drupal and you have your family, and your family doesn't, doesn't do Drupal. It, it is a different experience. Um, they will not know [00:15:00] when you're busy.

They cannot understand your issues. When something happens in Drupal and, and there is Drupal drama, you can not talk to anybody at your house because if just foreign to them, but having a. Partner that does Drupal is so interesting because as an allowed said I don't think that it's in the recording.

We, we love road trips. We, we drove to Atlanta, we did the whole drive from Houston to Biloxi, from Biloxi to Augusta to see a friend, and then to Atlanta and then back. So that was each, each, each way like 14, 13 hour. And we talk about Drupal 80% of the time, and we can talk about what we want from the, from the community, what we are trying to do with the Houston community, what's happening with the Texas community, what is happening with the Latin American community, because we are both originally from Latin American [00:16:00] and we are in the US So we, we have our hearts, you know, in both communities, the US community and the the Latin American community.

What plans do we have? What do we want to do? You cannot do that when you, you don't have a partner that does Drupal. And, and, and I believe that is very interesting. So we wanted to open a Drupal couple for other couples and see their own experiences, because I don't know if it's the same like ours.

Ana: And I think there's more couples like us than we taught when we start talking about inviting other people and looking for, for friends that are married and both work with Drupal or whatever live together.

Um, and there are a couple of people that we know that, um, they, they may, they may ride with us in a al couple and it's, it's different. Um,

Carlos: yeah. Yeah. It's, it, it, it is very interesting to, to give an [00:17:00] idea and move it into other. Things is something that is, I, I've been doing a lot and I know you're gonna hear different perspective from the two of us is when I write, and I've been very open about this.

I use AI a lot. And now lately I've been discovering how much AI can do for coding. We both have different views there, but I would love to, for you and Laura to tell people what you think because it is, yeah, it's a very interesting point.

Ana: I, I was more scared at the beginning of, of using ai, um, more worry about, um, the creative rights.

When, when you are creating content, where is the AI taking the information and how is violating the rights of who originated? Right. That. But the way that Carlos uses the AI is [00:18:00] more like a tool, like any other tool. Like he is guiding the AI all the way from, from the beginning. He doesn't allow the AI to write anything that was not his own idea, his own co conceptualization.

And it takes a lot of work. Actually. It, it takes two or three days to finish a, a paper for Carlos. Even using the ai, it, it helps a lot in the way, it helps a lot with the research. It helps with connecting ideas and, and doing some of the work that, as Carlos say, having, having HDAD, um, won't allow him to write as much as he's doing it right now without the help of ai.

Carlos: Yeah, I started, I started not wanting to use ai when I was in, in what, in the [00:19:00] university, I believe. Second semester we got this book about AI and the dangers of AI is about, this is 1991. And from that day, I, I said, we should never do it. I mean, this is, this is a mistake trying to get ai. I read today that MIT is finally releasing, I believe it's called seal, FEAL model that actually can learn and improve itself and it creates code to improve itself.

And if it's good, it keeps it, if it's not discards it. And, and, and that I don't want, I don't think we want to have cre. You know, if we go kind of sci-fi, have a sentient being that doesn't have moral codes or, you know, whatever we humans have, although some we're not getting into that, but I, I, I, I fear, I feared AI and, but I needed some help.

So I [00:20:00] tried it and I discovered that a is what we call in Spanish a a or dumb assistant. For me. Um, I see the problem with ai, and we've been discussing about this, is like what's gonna happen with AI in two years as AI is today, is that we all are going to be fixing AI issues. And the problem with AI is that people just comes and wants to AI to write a document about Drupal AI is gonna,

Ana: people think that AI is like a wonder want.

It's going to do magic. You just tell him what you need and he will going to build it. And we experienced that. Past weeks with your little brother trying to build a tool for him. He thought this was going to be just one afternoon and, and it was done.

Carlos: Oh, yeah. That, that, that was an interesting experience because I, I, I need to, I, I had to tell him like, you trust too [00:21:00] much on this.

AI is not, it is a smart, but it is not that smart. And, and that's what people is doing. You know, like, and I demonstrated this in, in actually did in a probably life in a video. With somebody about resumes. And when we were talking about that, I started doing my resume and on all this stuff with AI and moving into, moving to, into writing for the blog.

And now I'm actually doing code with it. I'm, I'm actually about coding and on my own way. But one of the things that I then I, I, I show, um, can't remember who, but I show that person is like, you can ask him and I ask ai, empty ai, you know, no, no context, no nothing else is write a resume for Carlos Sina, who was a technical account manager for 10 year for a Drupal job.

And he brought two pages of a resume and it was an amazing resume. It only had a problem, had nothing to do. What I have done. It was [00:22:00] full of perfect skills and perfect sentences. And the, the, the. The, the little summary on the top. I can't remember. The word was amazing and it's like, I've never done this.

There is none of my experience there,

Ana: but it helped with your self-esteem. I think some of the things that the AI said about you, you were like, never going to write that for a resume. But when you read it, it was fair. It was fair to have. That only happened

Carlos: when I started making AI write what I wanted.

Ana (2): Yeah,

Carlos: what I was mentioning. If you just let it go, it would do whatever, and that's what's happening. I see people like, oh, I can create a Drupal module with ai. Look, I just told it to do a module that did this and it worked. I've seen people doing stuff. AI is. Pretty quick with React. And if you use cloud ai it [00:23:00] will provide in the canvas, you know, a game, you can tell it to do a game.

Somebody told me I ask it to do a kind of, kind of Mario Bros game and it did it and automatically show it in ai. Yes, that can happen, but you don't know what is happening in the back. And, and that's the problem. So for me, AI, as you said, is a tool, is something that I don't let move forward until I'm ready to let it move forward.

And it has to be. So my main rule that I make now, a rule for AI is do not lie, do not exaggerate, do not invent anything. Just use what I have said or what we have researched. And I have to keep reminding AI about that because from now, from time to time it goes and creates something and I'm reading and like, weren't the hell.

Did you get that?

Ana: Yeah, I remember for me it gave me a double negative in one, in one [00:24:00] case, and we only needed one negative comparison conditional, and that was screwing up with the code, right? That's the kind of things that AI will do. So, what we have discussed is if you don't know anything about what you will do, AI could do a mess for you and you will not know what it's doing.

If you know how to write the code, probably you don't need the ai, and you could write, write it by yourself, and don't worry about AI things. But if you are a developer trying to learn a new language, you just need to guide it. You just need to go through the. Best practices, um, coding standards with the ai, but the logic of the programming is, is in the human part of that.

So keep human in the loop maybe is the [00:25:00]

Carlos: Yeah, that's something that I like about the AI initiative that we have in Drupal and the way AI has been done in Drupal. And actually I did, I recently did a Salesforce ECA, you know, the ECA module integration and, and I released it and it's working and I test the actions and they work.

And I did it a hundred percent with ai. And, and this wasn't sit down and tell Claude to create this module. This was a good two weeks of work because what I'm using AI for is to quickly understand what the Salesforce module does, for example, um, I. I, I was a developer. I was trained as a developer. I started as a developer in 1987.

I graduated as a software engineer in 1995, or I finished my career in 1995, but I stopped developing probably around 1998. So I'm not a developer. I became more [00:26:00] of an architect, or what I call an architect, architect or the developer for the developers where I will, and that was my job for, for the longest time before I move into other areas, networking, security, et cetera.

Anyway, um, you need to know what you're doing. I remember doing this module. I saw, so I asked, I started like asking ai, okay, before we do anything, we need to know what we're gonna write about or we're gonna, connect to. So go read the a CA module, go read the Salesforce module and find out how they do this.

Which I wanted, like initially I wanted a little action for SOQL queries, which is a little queries that you can send to Salesforce and get any information from their entities and, and everything that they have. And as I saw the ai, I, I like to see, I like it when it chose what it's doing in thinking. And as I see it's doing all the analysis.

And I could see there was [00:27:00] this little object that was specifically for that. And at the end of the research I asked it, okay, so what I want to do is do an action an ECA, an EC, a action that allows people to send an SOQL query through the Salesforce module. And it did it. And when I was reading what it was writing, I realized it's using a completely different method.

It's using a completely different class, a completely different. Was through another class that Salesforce has that will have work. And this is the problem. It will have work works, but it wasn't the right way to do it. And that's the difference when you have human in the loop, I believe that is the power of AI is a tool that can improve your productivity, that can improve the writing of the code.

Right. And but you have to be, you have to be knowledgeable. So when I see all these magic prompts [00:28:00] and, and you, you just need to ask AI to help you, it's like, it's not gonna, it's not gonna happen. I mean, it's incredible. I had a customer that is a, was a complete, I mean, and Laura May have fear ai, he was a complete rejection of ai.

Ana (2): Yeah.

Carlos: And I told him how to use cloud desktop and I show him what I was doing. He's, no, no, I don't need that. Then he is like, ah, I played a little bit with copilot. Show me what you do. And now he has a full setup. And I remember the moment that changed for him is he asked his own AI already looking at the file system and it was a, a, a, a website that he made and like, explain this custom module and it's a custom module that he made 10 years ago or something like that.

And he was looking at that like a Carlos, this is incredible. I I made this module. That is what it does. That's exactly what the module does. So AI is pretty good to, to do that [00:29:00] and help you, you know, move forward. Understand if you're looking for debugging something guided to debug, what is the problem?

You need to guide it. You need to be there because if you just ask it, find a bug that creates this error, it may go in a different direction. So, I dunno. We, we've been seeing AI differently. I, I'm using it for everything. But you're still hesitant to use it.

Ana: I am. I, I hate it. Every time that I try to grind something, I just get lost or he get lost.

I don't know. I don't get the results that I expecting and it's, it's frustrating for me.

Carlos: Yeah. I think it's a, it's a, it's a matter of context and, you know, keep it, I use projects in cloud and I try to, you know, every time I discover something that is confusing and it is getting me angry, I will put it in an instructions or a document that it can read.

Like, don't do this. Do not do that. [00:30:00] And it's the only way.

Ana: Yeah. But we have talked about this before. Your brain works more like the computers works. My brain. It's a creative brain. I go. From one place to another place in making connections from things that maybe are not related until I get the best answer that I could came up with.

Um, and, and AI doesn't help me with that. It's, it doesn't feel good for me when I'm working with ai. I use it sometimes. I, I actually, I love how Clot make, um, analysis of how does a module work or how does something is on your code. Especially in, in Drupal a Drupal website can, can grow really fast because you install all these different modules and [00:31:00] modules are created by different people, and then you easily can end up with something that is not tune it to work together.

And Cloud does a, a really good job finding those connections and give you a summary of what is going on with, with an API or when a plugin, but that's true. Pretty much. That's all that I use from there. I try to find my own, my own way. Um, and,

Carlos: and, and I've been using it also for our, you know, Drupal community work right now.

And I would love to talk about that too in Elabor because you have so many plans and anything and so much that you want to do for the Drupal Houston community and, and it's so hard.

Ana: That's, that's been a little bit on pause for other, other things that we are working on. Um, let's talk about Drupal Cone Latin America.

Carlos: Drupal Con Latin America. [00:32:00] I don't know when that's gonna happen. I think we have bigger issues that we're working on right now. All, all, all that we're doing is, you know, I, we talk about this a lot, but I will, I would love to hear again what you think is, what's gonna happen with Drupal. We are in a really interesting crossroad 'cause people have been let go.

Companies are struggling.

Ana: These are rough times. Definitely not only for Drupal people or tech people. Um, it's a global thing. We hear from friends in Germany, in South America. Um, the us even Spain, well, Spain's been, has been on a crisis for a while now. But, um. I don't know how much the AI has influenced this crisis, [00:33:00] but people is afraid of investing and people is afraid of who they're hiring.

And we've seen hiring process where you get 6, 7, 8 interviews and you have no idea if they're going to hire you or not, or they're going to reject you at the end and you invest all this energy and whatever is happening there, I still, or I think we still have a lot of faith in Drupal and, and the Drupal community is a big part of it.

Um, the way the last Drupal con resulted it was, it was incredible. In a time of crisis, people show up, people that we, we have 10 years without seeing on a, on a Drupal event was there and was talking about Drupal and was asking how to help. [00:34:00] Um, maybe when, when I move here, we just, you just survive a, a hurricane in Houston and we were talking about this, um, back then in Latin America, when there is a hurricane, people start asking to the government, how are you going to help me reveal my house or clean up my land?

And how are you going to give me a new job because I don't have a job anymore? Because it was flooded in Houston. People was helping each other. In in, what was the, the catch phrase? Houston Strong. Houston Strong. Yeah. The, the, the energy was so different and that's what I felt in, in Drupal last month. How can we make this work?

How can make, how can we [00:35:00] use ai? How can we reinvent our business so we can work with smaller companies and be still be profitable? How can we connect with other, um, markets that we haven't included until now? And I think that's what, um, team is looking with, with the International Association

Carlos: Federation.

Ana: International Federation. Yeah. International

Carlos: Federation. Yeah. A little. I I think, yeah, Rupert Con Atlanta was amazing because, well, we launched the IXP initiative, IXP program. Now I, I wish we had more people coming and trying to publish jobs. We have ips. We have, I have been reached out by several people.

It's usually inexperienced people looking for a job, and, and there are so many opportunities there, but I believe it's Drupal is at a crossroads of a chicken and neck constant problem. And I've been [00:36:00] saying this for a while, you know, you know, talk, I talk about this is we don't need Drupal CMS to do what you were saying.

You know, go to the smaller markets, go to Latan markets. When I started in Drupal in 2012, Latin America was booming in, we, we got Drupal picture. Drupal picture was like a hundred something people. Um, I mean, it was a lot of people Drupal Latina was moving. Everybody in Latin America was doing Drupal or, you know, there was a lot of people doing Drupal all the time.

And that disappeared. That disappeared with everything that happened. And I believe a friend of mine this weekend, actually, we were talking and he, he defined it in a fantastic way. We cannot let East and West Coast drive the pricing of Drupal. We became too expensive and we became too enterprisey in terms of price.

I don't think it's a problem of the technology or anything because [00:37:00] it is, but it's not just that it was just became expensive. And of course, when a crisis comes and tech is in a crisis everybody starts with whatever doesn't impact the, you know, the bottom line. And that is. There are not going to be redesigns of our website.

There is going to be maintenance. Maybe there is going, they're going to stop, um, creating new parts of the website because there is no money and, and we are leaving that. But I love that. And that's the chicken that we are going to have again, but we need the egg, which is Drupal CMS, which I love because it makes Drupal easy again and, and feasible for another line of business.

I dunno if you remember the conversation. Where are you When, when I have, when, when we have the conversation in Drupal Can Atlanta, I can remember a lot. The guy, the person telling me he needed $250,000.

Ana: I was busy with your partner. Yeah, that was his first [00:38:00] DrupalCon, so I was taking him to all the introductory meetings and sessions.

Carlos: Yeah. First thing I came, I, I've been talking about rebuilding the Drupal pyramid and, you know, creating the base of the pyramid again, that we lost from Drupal seven to Drupal eight actually during Drupal eight. People said because of the technology got complex, I do think we lost it because we became expensive.

You know, like somebody with a $300 to do a small website, you cannot do it in Drupal. It's not because it's complicated, it's because 300 doesn't pay even two hours of a developer or use not to, and, and, and I'm saying that if we build this up, it grows. And somebody came and told me like, no, I need at least two or three, $250,000.

I. Contracts a month to survive and like, okay, how many do you get? Like, none right now. Like, exactly. But [00:39:00] this person want to fix, wanted to fix Drupal to revive that amount of money in contracts, which is good. But what was powerful is that he told me nobody can leave of a $10,000 project. And I love because Paul was there and he raised his hand.

Like, I, I can, I can, I'm a fellow agency and I can leave, give me those $10,000 contract and we can do that. And Drupal CMS is interesting and, and we were talking about how IXP can help with this. Remember I, I do believe, I do believe Drupal CMS can help because of what I call the. Jackie in Spanish.

Now that, and it's like you can start something simple. You can start your simple blog, you can start your simple marketing for a piece of your agency, you know? Or inside a big company, somebody in the marketing department can do A POC. And whenever you start something, [00:40:00] you know, it's like when you go to the supermarket and then Laura knows, I don't like that, but it's what happens.

You go and, and, and, and do the jackets. You know, like, oh, not that we are here. Why don't we buy meat now what we are here, why don't we see if there is blah? And I see that in group of CMS and you can have IXP people working on that, which is a more affordable resource and, and start creating small projects that eventually will grow.

Somebody told me that one of the biggest. And famous pages in Drupal, and I don't want to name names on, on companies, it started because somebody in the little marketing department did a proof of concept with Drupal and we lost that. And it became, yeah. And, and it became one of the most, the biggest sites in Drupal.

So I dunno if you agree.

Ana: I think that's one of the biggest differences between the [00:41:00] companies, the, the Drupal companies that are struggling right now with their budget and the ones that they just keep doing it. I work for a small web development focus company that not only does Drupal, but we have been growing our front end team, JavaScript react next year's.

And we also support websites in WordPress, Webflow, whatever our clients needs. We, we come to the rescue, um. And I think that's not because of my boss, Chris, Chris ti he, he does whatever the client needs and he promise we'll, we'll do it. But it's because he trusts his team will find a way to, to solve the issues, the client issues.

We are not, we have, we are not looking for the [00:42:00] big project project. We have clients for 10, 15 years that may not be the ones that support our, our business. We are not making a lot of money of them, but we keep helping them. We keep supporting them. With, with the budget they have, we do the most with of it.

I think, um, other friends, um, talk with us about that they didn't grow their, their, their company, um, excessively, they don't have a lot of expenses. Monthly expensive. They work with the work they have, you know, they don't do, oh, now that we are here, we're gonna invest all this money. Having more people that they may need, may maybe not.

Carlos: And it's not that it's wrong. I don't think that is wrong. I think that is okay. Some we, [00:43:00] we, we work a lot in both community, Latin America and the United States. And what is funny is that, that give us both of us, I think. A perspective on what some people, well, I have called us bias. You know, you, you think you feed your economies how they are and, and, and, and you think everybody's like that and they're different, but it also happens the other way.

So when, when we were in the Golden Asian, all the contracts was, were big and everything was so good. And I was working with one of the biggest companies in Drupal. The Latin Americans will come and tell me that it's because they are making Drupal more enterprise. They are making it more complicated.

The US is doing it. And I don't think it was a decision by the Drupal community. It was, Hey, we were being paid big money and being paid big money is good. It feels good, [00:44:00] you know, if, if there is a difference between eating at McDonald's or maybe finding the best burger in town and, and be able to go there.

It is good. And, and then you want to keep those customers happy. And also if your experiences, and it comes to these biases, you, you, we were biased by the experiences we were having. You need money to contribute to Drupal. You need to be paid a salary. You need to be paid enough to dedicate time. You need, you need to be able to do it.

If, I mean, you can be able, oh, just have

Ana: enough, just have enough money just to relax and ride or help just exactly in one of, one day of your work and not making money for your company, but for the community. Making something

Carlos: exactly. For free. And, and, and if you do that, you are getting it because you know the problems you're seeing are enterprise.

Those are the problems you're seeing. And, and, and that was took Drupal here. And that is normal. [00:45:00] That is okay. But we didn't want it. And we, but we destroyed, yeah. The base. And I was against that theory when they started saying, I remember 2015, around 2015, friends from Latin America that have been involved in the community a lot were telling me this.

And I have to say 10 years later, they were right. We're paying the price. We're paying the price right now, but we're also doing things. I think that's the positive part. We are pivoting, we're doing Drupal CMS, we're doing experience builder. The DA is trying to get more revenue to help smaller companies to give more value.

We're trying to, to create something that is more, um. Readily available for, for whether it is a marketing person in a mid-market company to do something and demonstrate inside the company versus us or, or us. And when I said us, in this [00:46:00] case, Latin Americans we're, um, we're, we're trying to start a company ra working both here in the US and Latin America, and definitely for Latin America, we need to think in completely different numbers.

If we wanna go Latam versus latam, not latam, working for the US and Anthropo is a fantastic opportunity. Even the marketplace templates, recipes, all that we're doing, but everything is happening at the same time. I, I don't know. You know what I mean?

Ana: It is a chicken and egg we're talking about. Yeah. We need the marketplace.

So a small companies can buy a template and build a website in a week instead of two, three months building front and for two,

Carlos: $3,000.

Ana: For two or $3,000. But if we don't have the small companies that, that buy the templates, we don't know if the marketplace is going to work. Right.

Carlos: Exactly. But they, we cannot have the company without the marketplace or without Drupal VMS.[00:47:00]

And we need, you know, more affordable and we need new people. And again, we did IXP, which was a fantastic experience for the two of us because it's seeing it firsthand how a person, a young person that actually put some effort in, in learning Drupal and, and was hoping, you know, find a job on the job, discover there was none.

And, um, but that also gives an opportunity. I wa I was, I was talking to DRIs in, in mid camp and, and, and I'm trying to find ways to demonstrate this thinking. 'cause I tr do believe. That the future is not, is gonna fix these big companies. I'm not saying that is bad. We went into the big companies, we went into the big budgets, the big projects.

That's awesome. I wish we can have one. I wish every company can have, can have one and make money and everybody's happy. But we need the small projects, the mid [00:48:00] market, the small budgets, and it's not little project, it's a small budget. Sometimes they're not little. If you are working with a government agency in, in Columbia, um, a $20,000 project.

It's a huge project. It's already for 20,000 is 40 million, 80 million pesos I believe, which is a, a, a big number. It's a big number. It's probably a whole year of salary for, for a triple engineer. In, in working for them. That's, that's how it is. And now we have this opportunity, but that needs to happen.

At the same time, we need the Drupal Association to be able and have money to provide value for the small companies in ways for the people that want to use Drupal to find companies. And everything is happening at the same time. But I I, I do believe we're in a bad moment, but we are in a great moment at the same time because the community is moving.[00:49:00]

Ana: Yeah, that's, that's always amazing. And, and, and the fact that a small, um, nonprofit can use the same tool that the government is using to, to build their websites, it's really amazing that they don't have to pay for that. They, they, they have to pay for the developers to, to make it the, their own, to fill their needs, but.

The, the small nonprofit can use the same tool that, um, the Olympic Games is using Right. To, to reach all this market.

Carlos: Yeah. And that's the beauty of open source. And that's the discussion I have with many people I had in the past when Drupal eight was starting. It's going to enterprise, like that's what we want from open source.

We want the poor entrepreneur in Colombia or in Costa Rica that's starting a [00:50:00] little idea to be able to use what today's ECA and AI and, and the things that the big ones use. And what do he need? What, what does he need to do or pay nothing. Just, just get Drupal use Drupal CMS. It's there.

Ana: Remember what this this girl said when she was helping us building the IXP, that if we were going to do that on workers, because she came from WordPress community to learn Drupal and we were.

Implementing some custom modules for the IXP with ECA. And she say, if I have to use this for WordPress, if I, if I have to do this for WordPress, I will have to pay thousands of dollars each year to be able to use this tool.

Carlos: She was, she was talking about EE, a and Yeah, EEA is a fantastic model and Jorgen is a fantastic maintainer.

And then, and she was talking about, I, I, she, she's helping us. She's one of the ips that [00:51:00] we want to, you know, help locate and, and, and, and find companies that are looking to get to 150 credits for an ix b. She's ready and she's amazing. And she was helping us. And she saw a CA and I told her, no, this is what I'm doing.

And yeah, what she said is that if this was a WordPress plugin, it will be a 1000 to a 5,000. A month, a

Ana (2): year, or a year

Carlos: plugin. And this is amazing that somebody is doing it. So Drupal Drupal is doing the right things.

Ana: Yeah, I think so. I think we, we are doing what we have to do and, and people is showing up and that's amazing.

Carlos: But we have a problem. I, I think we have a problem. And that's why I, I, I, I nominated myself for the board. Again. I, I've seen this problem since the beginning. This is my third nomination. One was after we did Drupal Con Latin America. Another one was last year, two years ago. Last time, two years ago.

Thank you. And, and now, and [00:52:00] this is the problem we have, is we've been, and remember when I was talking about, it's not bad, but this is the experiences that we have. So when things for Drupal were developed, and, and I was working for, for, for aia, and I can see the developers, I know them, they're my friends.

I consider them my friends they, they're not trying to make Drupal Enterprise. It is what they see. We work with enterprises. So those are the challenges that we need to solve. You solve the challenges that, you know, not these challenges that you don't know. Um, it, it's hard to do that. Right. And um, I always seen this bias and if you remember, we were in Drer Con Lil and, and, and, and Faye called this diversity inclusion buff.

And we went there and we had this powerful moment where she asked, is the first time I heard somebody asking this to other people outside the US [00:53:00] is, do you feel that we are Americanizing Drupal too much?

Stephen: I see that

Carlos: and, and and, and they say yes. And the person gave a powerful example that I don't want to it, it is not needed to be mentioned right here, but it, it was like they're talking about this and, and for our culture, that was shocking.

That was really not good. And, and it took me back, is the same when we did the per con Latin America. I remember I was so excited. I was super excited because I help a lot and I have ideas. And, and I knew the prices that we were paying. I did not the finances or anything, but I, I was thinking my quick numbers in my head like, oh, we did good.

Then we, we even maybe make money. And I went to talk to the Drupal Association and oh, we lost a lot of money. Like. How, and I started doing number, look, we paid so much for the hotel. We paid so much for this. We did simultaneous translation on [00:54:00] that one. I, I, I, I, I managed to convince them to pay for that and found a good price for that.

Um, we did, we, we paid so much for, for everything. I, I was kind of, whatever. I knew we paid. What, what am I missing? It's like, oh, we have to charge, um, Lawrence, the per Lauren, the person that was helping salary to the con, like, what?

Ana: But they charge the full salary.

Carlos: They charge the full salary. Not a portion, but she's organizing two DrupalCon at the time, Ruper Con Europe was Europe, part of the Drupal Association, Drupal Latin America, and Drupal Con and, and DrupalCon Asia was in the, in the, in the making at the same time.

And I'm like, why? Like, that's, that's the way accounting works. And now that I live in the United States, I understand it. It is how it works. But it is not what is fair because yeah, the numbers are different. It was not full

Ana: time. You, you will have to have three people, one [00:55:00] for but but wouldn't do that or

Carlos: Columbia at the same time.

You, you could do that in Colombia in the same way. Sorry, not the same time. But that salary will be a salary like yours, like you were mentioning in in Costa Rica, 18,000

Ana (2): a

Carlos: year, not 90,000 or something like that. I don't know what was the number, but it was something like that. And of course there was no way on Colombian prize we were gonna make that money.

There was no way. It was the first one, it was the small one. It's supposed to happen again and then grow. That's what I believe is gonna happen. But we've been having that kind of issue forever and now that we actually need to be more global. Can you say that more global maybe? Okay. You, we need to be more global or, or

Ana: really, really global.

In ux, we, we say when, when we train developers or when we teach developers about ux, we emphasize that developers, we [00:56:00] are not the customers. We cannot test the tools. We cannot make the decisions if, if a tool is easy to use or is not, because we are biased. Until you get in, in an interview where you have somebody completely estranged to computers world and computer development or software development, you understand how much people struggle with your applications.

But if you try to. Use your head to understand the process, it will make sense for you. It's the same with with the international Federation. Until we, that's a good example. Have people from every content, content that feels it's not being involved or it should be involved. Until we have this organization, when we have the voices there, we won't [00:57:00] be able to understand what is going on in Africa or India or South America.

Carlos: Yeah. And, and I, I, and, and you know, you and I, we are from Latin America, so we have the experience in Latin America. We've heard that it's similar in different countries, but this is still different. And, and, and, and that's, that I think is what I want. And I believe it's, you know, you, you support me a lot.

And you said you, you need to, you need to do this. I, I was struggling between doing or not being in the Drupal board election, but. I, I, I start hearing it, you know, like, but it's just a $250 fee. Like look at the MVP for the marketplace. It's just three $95 to put a template. Three $95 is what probably some people in Latin America has for a full website.

Ana: Yes. And this very is, that's just the fee. E even inside [00:58:00] of Latin America is very different. $300 could be a minimum salary in Colombia, but the minimum salary in Costa Rica's double that

Ana (2): a month.

Ana: And in, in Costa Rica is, is, I know, is a special use case because we have a, a huge relationship with American companies and we have a lot of Costa Ricans working for American companies in Costa Rica.

And the companies are. And have offices in Costa Rica. So it's it's all a different, yeah, different,

Carlos: different in, in that. But if you go

Ana: to Ecuador, to Peru, to, they even have less money. They, they make less money. So it can be, it can be a lot for them. And if, if you go to any marketplace where you can buy templates for WordPress or any other, um, [00:59:00] HTML base templates, um, there are templates of 15 bucks and 20 bucks and there are templates of hundreds of dollars.

So, for me, I would like to have in this marketplace all this umbrella of different options and prices.

Carlos: Yeah. I, I agree. But anyway, the point is the decisions are being made for the longest time on the board. And, and this is good people, again, we, these are friends of us. People that we know, people that we know are good.

It's not that there is bad intentions, but it's different experiences. Experiences that they don't know is real. It is not.

Ana: It's, it's real for them. It is

Carlos: not normal for an American person to think that you cannot trust somebody like we know, like we know if we don't, that can happen in Latin America.

It is, it is not normal to [01:00:00] know that actually 10 bucks is a lot, a lot of money. Yes. In so many contexts in, even in Costa Rica, like you see of, of this problem in Costa Rica, I see it and I see it like a. Parallel there because with so many, you know, companies that are working only with tech people, this is interesting.

It's only with tech people, so it's not the whole Costa Rica laws is getting that and there are a lot of Americans going to live there. Same is happening in me in Colombia. Same is happening in other areas in Colombia. And that makes this the thing so expensive that now those persons that we know in Costa Rica, that we know in Colombia that do not work in technology, do not work for international companies, are struggling because now everything is expensive.

Of course it's cheaper for us. We are in the us I mean, 10 bucks is money, but not [01:01:00] something bad. Remember the, the, the story of my son and, and the Ubers?

Ana: Yes. We pay two, $3 Ubers in. In a traffic jam that you can drive for an hour nowhere and, and you end up with a bill that is two bucks.

Carlos: Yeah.

Ana: And Santi will give them two bucks tips.

A hundred percent

Carlos: tip. Because he could not have 10 if like that. He, he just, he drive for

Ana: an hour and I'm paying it two bucks. And we know the company takes a big percentage of that.

Carlos: Yeah. And, and he knows car

Ana: maintenance.

Carlos: Yeah. It's because he knows what, what our family, our cousins that don't work in technology are struggling with so.

On the board going back to Drupal, that's what I want to bring to the table. Not a bad situation, not a bad point of view is these experiences that we have. [01:02:00] And when I say we is me and Ara, my son other Latin Americans that we, Latin Americans that we talk a lot. A a few people from other regions that have reached out to me in, during a Drupal Con or during Drupal Con Lila have people from Africa reaching out to me, telling us how they don't, they're not listened to.

They have the same struggles and they're not listened to, or people from Asia. We had people from Asia, but it's usually companies that are already working in from Latin America as well with American companies. So they make American money. Which is a different economy that where they actually living. And now we need these economies.

Now we need this global economy, the of small budgets, medium budgets, large budgets, not just large budgets. Anyway that's what I think about it happening and that's what we're trying to do with the company, right? Like also help these Latin Americans that do not work with American companies because [01:03:00] in many cases they don't speak the language.

It it's a different word. That's all I wanna say.

Ana: And I think we are over the time already.

Carlos: Yeah, I believe so.

Ana: So time to go.

Carlos: Yeah. I love, I love talking to you about this and this space was, was amazing. For everybody listening, this happens pretty much every day in the car. The car is kind of the place where we talk. Because when we are at home, we're either working or if we need to take, sometimes we will be doing something and Laura will be with his plan, with our plans.

I will be talking to my son or probably trying to play a little game. Or making

Ana: burgers.

Carlos: Or making burgers. And when we are in the car, we talk like this and we can talk for hours. So

Ana (2): yeah.