A conversation with the person who inspired my channel, Travis Neilson

Key Takeaways

hello and welcome to my podcast General musings and today's episode is not just going to be me rambling on about stuff but instead we're going to be jumping into a conversation that I had with none other than Travis neelen who if you don't know who he is he currently works at Google he's a uiux designer over there and we'll be talking a bit more about his roles and the types of stuff he's worked on he's working with YouTube music stuff right now and it's really cool stuff but more importantly at least from my perspective and probably not his but from my perspective he was the person who ran the dev chps Channel and you may or may not know it but from basically the day that I discovered that channel it was easily my favorite one and I was very sad when he stopped and we talk about a little bit why actually he stopped and how he's actually back with the channel now which is why I reached out to him to see if he'd be up for a chat and I was super excited that he was and so yeah we're going to be jumping in through a whole bunch of different topics but the first thing we're going to be talking about is a little bit of my channel and then we're going to go from there so it was a really awesome conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I had fun talking with him yeah yeah I was talking to Andrew uh Krauss who was the previous um host of Dev tips and I was I was mentioning that I was going to be on the podcast today and he was like oh yeah Kevin's cool and he was like you know Kevin kind of stayed in that pocket because I always felt a lot of pressure to go bigger to go like more back Endy stuff and to and to like do Frameworks and all these things and I was always just a little front-end dude and um and I so I saw yeah I saw your your videos I checked at your channel and and and like you know we had had conversations even back when I was at Dev tips and I was like I was like man he like managed to like find that find a home there and I'm I was so proud of you but also like just like excited that you did it you know because do do you feel the pressure to like go into spaces that maybe you don't want to go into because of the because of the requests because of the algorithm because of the numbers like do you get pressure sometimes yeah there there's there's a lot of I mean the main thing right now is everyone wants me to do Tailwind stuff and I'm just like no I don't want to so I'm not going to and so you yeah you kind of like you're like I want to do what I want to do and you stay there yeah and and it's also it's also now I see it as i' I've sort of verified that what I'm doing is working with sort of the size of my audience and everything else so like you know what I can just keep doing what makes me happy um it wasn't always that yeah yeah you have to like find it right yeah you a lot of experimentation maybe like a lot of like mistakes or something along the way bumps you know along the way but it's so cool that you landed it's kind of like it's kind of like yeah trying a new trick on your skateboard right you have to like try it so many different times eventually you land it and eventually it becomes like the trick that you're known for so this is cool yeah so do you like so what is your like schedule do you keep a tight schedule like every this like what's your yeah yeah so I was when I started my channel I was really inspired by everything you'd had done with Dev tips and I know at one point you know you had your like you know you committed to your schedule and I'm the type of person that I I think I could be wrong but just based on seeing other stuff that you've been up to I think you like you know it's easy to be like here's a new thing I'm G to try yeah yeah so I'm I'm very much the same on that and so I was like if I'm going to do it I'm going to commit try and do one video a week and just stick with that and see if I can keep up with it right um I did obviously it took a few breaks along the way but I was pretty consistent with that yeah um and then I ended up going full-time with it and then was like I'm GNA be able to do like five videos a week this is going to be amazing and I do two videos a week and that's like yeah that's a lot of content realizing now yeah how long you been doing two a week um three years oh okay yeah yeah yeah so yeah that is definitely a lot of content especially if you're like doing like high quality deep Dives and just like it because because you can go fast if you skim you know like oh just I just read the API here's a preview next video you know what else is new what framework should we just read the docs about but like if you're like giving like you know in the trenches insights because you have to like you have to be a practitioner yourself yeah yeah so how do you stay sharp what do you do yeah um I mean it's a little bit of just trying to keep up with what's happening and then playing with it as much as possible um on the things that look interesting it does lead to like these waves on my channel where all of a sudden like one thing will be talked about a lot because I'm really jazzed about that like just I I I have no idea where you're at when it comes to like the state of CSS and everything nowadays yeah um for me like when I like toward the end of my channel I realized because because I you know I had joined Google and by that time I was not coding at all because like they like I I would try like I would show up with prototypes and stuff and the engineers would be like oh that's cute you know like and so like like they kind of like I don't know I didn't really code anymore and so the only reason that I was kind of keeping up with it was for the channel and so when I stopped the channel it was amazing how fast the world just blew right past me man like yeah I I was talking to Adam Argy just like the other week he and I are buds we we keep up offline yeah he's a great guy and uh and he was just like explaining to me like what he's excited about and what he's into and I'm just like I just I kind of know half the words you're saying and then like and then we could talk about banjos for like 20 minutes I I could hang yeah I love talking with Adam just he you know I I always feel like people are like you know so much about CSS and stuff and then I talk to Adam and I'm like I know nothing like this guy is on another level yeah he's an encyclopedia of that stuff and and I guess like you right like he's he's keeping sharp because it's his it's his main focus right he's not doing something else on the side and this is an interest that kind of got bigger and he has to balance them and I think that that really helps him and and like not just like like it enables him you know what I mean like like it like like imagining for you too like like that's that's like your secret weapon maybe I don't know I'm just projecting I guess yeah I mean I think looking back because I didn't realize it at the time but the reason I sort of got into development was just because I was playing with CSS so much I think it's fun like it was my favorite I never wanted to move like to these you know like the angulars and the and the all these kind of what's the other one the reacts and stuff and I was just like I was like I just want to do really complicated selectors guys let's yeah and it's it's definitely one of those like I I mean at the time I was doing like WordPress stuff and I would just I realized making custom themes was a waste of time and I'm like I could just make a child theme that's always the same thing and I just delete the CSS file and start over again and it's and so like that was the early early days um and then I ended up be I ended up teaching like in the classroom and that's how I found channel oh okay so you had like a group of students that you taking to some coursework it was I I was when when I first started teaching it went from being like I know what I'm doing with this stuff to then like you're in front of a class trying to explain it and I'm like I have no idea what's going on here right um and then it might not have been the floats video that you did but I think that was the first video of yours that I saw okay and it was just cuz like I don't know how to explain floats like I have no idea yeah yeah yeah and back then you needed to not so much now right no thankfully um this is kind of like the era of like do you guys remember tables like that's when we were in that floating world it was like thankfully we don't have to use tables anymore yeah but now it's like there's much more uh like um like like they much better Solutions now than floats thankfully yeah we've come a long way um and in I mean in a way that was lucky for me with when I started my channel mhm just because CSS sort of started the whole let's make it into like give it the right tools now basically as I was starting like flexbox finally was working is um and then grid became a thing um and then sort of from there but yeah it's it was good timing out of just pure luck on my part and now I I only talk about it and I have trouble keeping up with it right but and yeah because it's ating even more than it was at that time yeah yeah it's it's crazy now it's crazy so like even if like the like the authority spaces you know in the industry are having trouble keeping up with it like it's pretty like who is expected to be you know proficient in these things yeah well do you see AI changing that much because like I don't know I saw these remarks from the Nvidia fella what do you what is your take on that it right now I don't really see anything that's like I'm too worried about and for early on when like the whole thing was happening I was sort of you know trying to get you know what other people think and you're keeping like seeing where where the thoughts are because obviously especially in the early days it was very um it couldn't do too much in the coding spaces um but there there seem to be a lot of people saying like oh front end's going to be the first thing I can do and I was like to me that's the hardest part cuz there's like everything is in context there you can't just I like it's on a page and it lives with all these other stuff that's on the page and if you change one of those it changes the other one that's there and yeah and like with with like you know programming when you run a test you know you can you can run a test and see if it compiles or not you know if it throws an error or not but with with like front end your test is your eyeballs you're like like does this look right so that's that is interesting yeah yeah and especially now too with like you know well now it's been forever I guess but like the responsiveness and everything has to work and it's just like you can't there there are there is testing stuff you can do but it's so limited still um so what are the new tools that you're interested in I'm not I haven't really been blown away by anything I keep yeah what is the IDE that you use oh yeah I'm using uh vs code vs code okay I was a big Adam us back in the day follow yeah uh and then I'd already switched to vs code at the time but it was still sad when this when that hit end of life and I was like oh that was a good time my my wife took um a you know a web development and programming course at at Berkeley it was like a like a 10we intensive or whatever it was and um and she was using VSS code and they told her to use VSS code and and I I was like I was like what's this go but she was right like that's like like things change right they take off yeah yeah it's funny how like there's just those shifts and I remember when it was happening too and I was like I was in I was like no I'm sticking with Adam I'm going to use that and I was like oh there seems to be a lot of hype maybe I'll give it a try and just see and then I was like oh okay I kind of get why people like this one more and then yeah there I can't even count the the amount or the you know the number of code editors that I've used I remember one one that I loved was called espresso and like you remember espresso okay cool it was made by the guys who made CSS [Laughter] rabbit which is like such an old tool now like I can't even imagine uh anybody using that stuff yeah but we see that in the in the ux side too like for example um Invision just closed that was like big news in our industry because like they're like oh if if like like they were the top of the the world at one point you know and like I think I'm actually I can't don't think you can see it but this is like an envisioned shirt you know like it's all faded because like all of the t-shirts that I have are like 10 years old shirts that I got from like some conferences back in the day but but yeah like um like and and I saw this uh post on on medium that was like figma's next like you got to like realize that even though right now it seems like they're like a 10 10 billion thing it's pretty wild cuz yeah I remember when Invision started and it was like with I think they were the ones that started with like the interaction right where you could actually like create the different ones but then show what like and it was cool like you'd had like the things that would slide in and move around it was like mindblowing at the time yeah yeah but at that point we were all using or at least I was I was using Photoshop to do ux and you could like fudge with it like have different folders for different views you know like View but ESS it was like one doc per page this is the home screen this is like the profile page and there two different documents in a folder somewhere and they're all like 80 megabytes each and now they're just like a hundred 100 hundred of those on one artboard in a browser it's like what I don't know like I wonder like if I could have like if I could step back and show that version of Travis like what we're working with now like would he feel overwhelmed and just be like I can't even there's no way I up with this I don't know and and and like to like you know to complement that idea like if you could go you know five six years 10 years ahead and that Travis showed me what they're working with then like would I even like you know how would I feel about it like is it's all AI generated or whatever I don't know yeah what's your take on the the AI it's interesting yeah like um so I'm kind of like in a privileged position with that because I work at Google and YouTube and we're like we're always experimenting with it and messing with it and and so like for example when Sora came out and everybody was like oh my God like like text to video that's incredible it's gonna change everything and for me it was just like yeah yes you know like uh so yeah I mean and then and then there's the thing where like there is a walled like I can't see over the wall like I can't see what open AI is doing what Microsoft is doing I only know what Google is doing and so like you do get kind of like oh oh that's a they did a pretty good job of that thing that everybody's thinking about you know so like there's like a it's very heated competition it's I feel very excited to like be inside of one of the think tanks and and in particularly in my role at YouTube music I've been fortunate because I because of my like eagerness to embrace that type of stuff and and maybe a bit of dumb luck in the positioning of what what you know uh things I'm in charge of so like I'm in charge of playlists and we recently released a like a feature on YouTube music where you can generate an AI cover image for your playlist so that was a really cool project to work on because that that was like it was incepted right right when um chat GPT came out and I was like I was just like whoa this is crazy and then I and then I got into mid journey and I was like hey guys what are we going to do with this and they're like hey we have we have these models I'm like really well and like we kind of like put it together and and at first it was like um it was kind of just me and an engineer just like talking to each other and messing around and sending each other weird ideas and and then uh you know my my good friend my PM uh Chris came back he was on a paternity leave and he came back to this changed world right like like he stepped out for I don't know he was gone for like two months and he came back and he was like what is going on and then like and then like we spin up you know and like yeah we just like really aggressively and we just launched that feature worldwide now so anybody on YouTube music can um can use this tool to to create uh imagery for their playlist covers and what's cool about it is that like because of the explorations and because of like the weird ideas that we were shooting each other back and forth we kind of keyed in on a few like principal truths you know early on and one example of that is that like you know the a blank text box like a prompt box is pretty intimidating and one of the things that people need in order to kind of like effectively work with uh AI is an articulation they need to know how to talk and specifically talk to an AI which is a little bit different than talking to a human although it's getting closer and closer so it's kind of like do you know how to Google like how good are you at Googling the answer to your your you know coding problem it's like how good are you at prompting to get the thing that you want and one of the things that we learn like especially when you're prompting for visuals is that you need to have the articulation of somebody who understands visuals so like we we really leaned in with our really great um our visual designer our our uh design direct or what is her her title anyway Gabby Nam she's like she's incredible she's so inspirational but she's our visual design uh lead and uh you know and we started talking about like okay what are the terms that people use to describe images what are the what are the ways that people kind of like communicate emotions visual visually and and leaning into those things so we created this I could show you I could hold it up if that's not to too dorky yeah so like I'm uh let's find a playlist that I've made here okay so here's a playlist and I I hit the little button and I go into this kind of theme picker and so and like the theme the theme picker itself now it's like so obvious to us but like at the time I wasn't doing like a theme so but but like this is like an what I was saying like another way to help people to be articulate about what they want is is to know that like oh the idea of jumping into to colors or or to like seasonal Cycles or um moods or animals those are all distinct kind of like lexicons that like do you know how to speak about animals or do you know how to speak about Landscapes or fantasy characters and things so um jumping in like yeah let's say animals so the what'll happen is you'll have a a prompt uh come up that will like like default suggestions and stuff and you can select the different ones it looks like this one is Eagle in the style of art nuuvo drawing but I could I could select art nuuvo drawing and have some suggestion chips come up right and these chips will help me to articulate different art styles so a lot of people may not think like oh a scientific illustration and what does that mean so I to hit generate a scientific in illustration after you say it is pretty obvious what the differences are especially if after you see it but a a blank text box you may not think be like oh uh give me in the style of like you know hokus side like the wave like I want that kind of like Ido Japan Japanese print style and and it's hard to like be articulate about like these visual um you know terms and and and ideas if you're not steeped in like art history and things like that so there was a few years ago where gosh you know I just had a 14-year-old birthday party for my but when they were young when they were in in grade school kindergarten in first grade my wife and I taught um art class to the you know the students and we would go through and be like okay you know um this is a Kandinsky it's it's a it's like very like lines and signs symbolism and and it's like um you know we we' practice these things with the students and and show them that like you can like jump into expressionism where it's not really about the subject it's about how it makes you feel and what does that mean and and unless you've had like the the you know the fortune of of like having that type of instruction or somebody to think through that stuff with you it's hard to be like to describe what you want from these models and so oftentimes you'll see very basic like give me an anime character you know because that's that's all that most of us have like the articulation for but if we had like more you know linguistic like powers in that area you could you could describe with more accuracy what you're looking for and and get better results and and like the same you know the same principles apply to whatever your AI model is trying to do whether it's generating text or images or or programming code you know like like the the the the superpower of somebody using AI going into the future is their actual articulation how well are they able to express what's in their mind and in their heart which is like is interesting because it's going more into those soft skills of like negotiating with an AI is this correct or is this not correct and like editing and and really thinking through your ideas so I don't know it's cool I I think it's pretty exciting in those ways that like like it helps us to be expressive and communicative and even like the act of prompting helps you to talk you know with with more accuracy about what you're thinking so I think in that in those ways it it's pretty cool yeah that just showing how you have like how that's working where it's helping the prompts along um I appreciate just cuz I remember when I first started playing with mid Journey you're basically going through looking at what the other people did that got the really cool stuff and you're like what what words were they using in there that looks awesome and like try right yeah reverse engineer something to look good yeah yeah but I think what you just mentioned is a really good point in that I think like so many tools that we have now as and I think it's something we've gone through for for so long now like even with like Photoshop um you know when it used to be like to make a good selection was hard and you had to know all these techniques and do all these things yeah and now you have you you draw a circle and it just removes the background you're like okay yeah right or it has or even now I think you can just add stuff to your picture too right and like it's crazy but I think like you're saying it's in it's democratizing a lot of these skills that you know like and I get people that have you know if if you're that photoshop expert that spent like 10 years perfecting the using your pen tool and then the different things you had to do to like get the right background to get the complicated hair selection I can see why You' be disheartened that anybody can do it now yeah well you you have to have a group of people at the Forefront to kind of like solidify what are the use cases that we need and then eventually you'll a canva who says oh we have a template for that but they wouldn't have known what to make a template for unless they had the people who are trailblazing and trying to like prove the use cases you know Leverage The the existing technology for their application and and I think the same is true for AI today you know like there's going to be people who are like oh yeah I'll do the circle thing here and and feel good about it but there are people who are pushing pushing pushing the boundaries and I think yeah I think both of them can I think there's room for both you know and uh and they're both kind of fun too like it is fun to think that I don't have to mess with the with the you know selection tool anymore yeah because then it frees you up to like you know to push the boundaries in other spaces exactly yeah and I think that's the interesting thing is like what what by making that a lot less time consuming what new things does it enable people to do uh and like you say that there's these other people that are coming now that are taking those things that it's making easy but then pushing the boundaries and it's like it brings us to a new place that we didn't even know existed before which is always exciting so so yeah so sometimes you get that feeling of like oh no like like my skills are no longer relevant and you kind of get a little gatekeeper is like yes like oh back in my day with that selection tool you guys have no idea you know uh you don't deserve to select the way I do but um but yeah I think you're right like there's there's people who will just be like okay yeah selection is taken for granted you know or or like in you know like like setting up a CSS uh you know like we we used to spend so much time on our um what do they call them our boiler plates and things like that you know but like now that like those kind of things are taken taken care of for you the newer people or the people who are like leveraging them are just like leapfrogging and pushing those use cases forward forward to where the things that they're doing now that seem crazy and complicated animations whizbangs pops and dads those are going to be canva style templated for the next you know um the next round of things next round of Innovations and so I think that that's kind of like a common cycle that happens and appreciating that can can like enable you to be excited about what what's coming you know yeah I definitely agree yeah and it's but at the same time I do like you know I I get the constant thing now of everybody asking me like is it should I become a software engineer now or whatever like is this job going to disappear and I understand the you know you don't want to learn something and then find out as you're sort of okay I'm ready to apply for a job that that job doesn't exist anymore right uh so I understand that but I also think like I'm like if if it if it really is good enough to be a software engineer is it probably going to be good enough to do a lot of other things too so you know it's it's one of those things that I think we're things are changing um yeah I think in the short term people don't have to worry too much and I think it's just going to be sort of an evolution more than it's going to be a revolution maybe I'm wrong I don't know um yeah I was I was listening to this economist who was talking about the future of universities saying that like it's going to be a lot more trade schools like two year like um becoming a plumber becoming an electrician kind of things and and that makes a lot of sense to me because like people will always have a toilet you know like there'll always be like a pipe busting somewhere um whereas like you know maybe yeah I don't know maybe that maybe there might be like a little AI that'll fix your pipes you know like who like I can't really tell the new the new Roomba can also fix your plumbing yeah but I mean it's it's it's more likely that those types of things will be like hypers specialized so like when you buy the pipe it will be the self- fixing pipe or something yeah you know at the at the time whenever pipes do that but Mario will always be needed right the princess will always be need to be save from the castle yeah and there's always be so yeah there's always something that's going to need to be done and it's we just don't know what that will be until we get there I think yeah and when it comes to coding and programming I think that like specifically there's a lot of value in like just the modality of thinking that way and like understanding the text act from top to bottom enables you to like understand the problem that maybe somebody who just interfaces with a prompt box may not be able to kind of you know go in and understand yeah and it's just it's problem solving at the end of the day which is a skill that you'll is always going to be useful yeah I have a good friend uh Nick Mesi who's who's kind of like in my opinion on the Forefront of like you know AI um with ux and and I'm like I just asked him today I was like Nick what do you do most of the day like like this is very interesting that you're showing me all these interesting demos but like what are you doing and he's like he's like I'm reading most of the day I'm reading white papers talking to engineers and researchers and asking them questions and when I see something here and see something here I ask them if they can connect and then together we kind of come to something new and so like I think those skills you know of just like ingesting information looking for connections and trying something new I don't think that'll ever go out of style if you don't mind if I shift the conversation a little bit yeah yeah just because you as I as I sort of allude to you you were one of the reasons I started my own channel umet so nice to we'll go to like the the early days actually when I found as I said I found you because I was trying to teach floats of of all things you know now we're now we're worried about the AI being able to take over things so it was a simpler simpler times back then oh yes I remember floats yeah um but I'm wondering just when I guess you know why do you start Dev tips oh wow yeah so um okay there's a few ways to attack that story I guess I'm just trying to like catalog which one is the best here I think okay so I was at a startup and I was a ux designer and um the startup was it it was called tubular and their job was to kind of like understand the world world's information in terms of video so we would ingest a lot of video perform analytics on it like big big data number crunching and then we'd help Disney understand their you know Their audience we we'd help MGM figure out their new approach to whatever and a lot of that was YouTube right like ingesting YouTube understanding it helping creators like grow their audiences and stuff we had a tool that was self- serve and then we also had like a um like a um what do you call it when you talk to somebody uh like a service you know you're right yeah um a cons a consultation arm of the of the thing so anyway I was I was in charge of building this tool for mostly YouTubers to help them understand and grow their audiences kind of like basically what YouTube analytics is now um but back then YouTube analytics wasn't that great and I I remember being at one of the vidcons where YouTube released Studio you know YouTube studio app and they're like you can reply to comments and we were like wow reply to comments on the phone this crazy like I I remember I legit I remember when I first started my channel I had to go to Google um plus to reply to to reply to comments on YouTube yeah like it was the only way I could be on the train and try to reply to comments because I had this thing in my channel I would reply to everybody for like years and years but um I remember when you made the video saying like I can't do this anymore and you seemed really bu but you're like I I just I can't keep up with it yeah yeah you there's a Tipping Point but um but so oh yeah anyway um going back to this why I started the channel so I one of the the functions was I went to um VidCon and my first VidCon I was there and I didn't really know much about video I was making these uis and like these analytics for people but I had no idea not a lot of empathy and I had met a few creators you know they brought them in we talked to them but that was it wasn't real you know when I went to VidCon I started like talking to these like basically kids like teenagers who were making channels they were making content they were I was standing in line with them and I'm like what do you do and they're like oh I do this and like this one girl played a song for me and I was it was just like it was like the energy was just like like vibrating right it was electric and um I was there with with one of my co-workers and I was like I was like this I think I kind of get it I think I see something here and I'm a you know I'm a creative person I've always tried to like do things I've always been publishing I was writing a lot before I did Dev tips and um and I was like you know I'm a much better designer than I am a coder but I think like I could I could teach that easier because it's like does it compile or does it not compile so it's easier to teach for me at least I thought and so I sat down right in the middle of the show floor at VidCon oh cool 200 whatever and I registered Dev tips Dev tips for designers was like the long name and um I just didn't know what I was doing and so I just started making these goofy videos in in the garage and uh just started uploading them and fast forward a few years and like it had kind of like taken off and and by that time like I had become a little bit better at coding so like I was always trying to get better so like you I was always I was here's a here's a here's a true secret I was always afraid that people would figure out that I didn't really know that much I was always like oh my audience knows way more than me and they're they're asking for things I don't even know what they're talking about like I was always like very self-conscious of that but um but yeah that was the Genesis of the channel um eventually it became something else right it became a journal it became a community it became a way to like I I still talk to people that I met back then um you know uh some of them were just like people who would show up in the com like you like I'm talking to you now because of just we meeting back then there's there's a fell fell Joey Burger on he he invited me out one year to a conference and he put me up at his like at his house you know I met his parents and like it was like really cool and we're still friends I call him like every year and how you doing what's what's the latest you know and and that so I like to do that like I like to call people on the phone just to like catch up because I think like that's like the last real uh real piece of like connection technology that like that um that requires no anonymity like you have to put your voice out there and you have to be in real time and it's not exactly a FaceTime but yeah one of the those examples was um I partnered with Adobe for a while doing live streams and stuff and and the guy who had me on Michael Chase I uh had lost contact with him and then I was just think about him like a month ago and I called him up and I'm like what are you doing he's like oh I'm over here now I'm like really okay wow and and it turns out that he's like the director of uh of apps and AI at at Shutterstock at like this you know other company and like and like their their business has been changing with AI quite a lot too he's like he's like yeah people don't really look for shutter uh like like for stock photos anymore uh so they're like more of a data company now that serves um large like models like you know Google and that's like the training ground yeah like training training content yeah it's really interesting like people do shift around like now that we're like maybe 10 years out of the beginning of Dev tips a lot of the people that I met and associated with early on have kind of landed in different spots and it's kind of like a graduating class you know like where have you where have you gone to so it's kind of fun I don't know um but that was the yeah the beginning of Dev tips I mean a lot of what you said there is I think why a lot of people you know like you said it became it was more than just the channel like there was other I guess you were early enough in YouTube there wasn't as many just like development channels around either yeah but you know because I think there was probably the New Boston I'm trying to think who else New Boston that was like the big one yeah yeah the other the other one was um Scott tulinsky and he was doing level up of course yeah and so and then there was also like uh will uh he was doing he was doing oh the name of his channel but he was doing Gang Busters and he wasn't even making that many videos uh I could tell you his name if I looked it up but I called him like last year as well like what are you doing he like oh not too much anymore of the videos but yeah um the space was not as crowded and also the production uh was like the production like like bar was like way lower yeah yeah but I think that's you you also like had the different aspect of that where you had a lot more like it was you right you were like you were the of it but it wasn't just like this dry cating tutorial where it's like here's a screen share like you know you're writing selectors on your face and like everybody remembers that one of course I look back and it's so cringy like it's so bad I I I I saw see it every now and then it comes up and I go I guess I'll go watch that like what are they talking about I'm like oh I I used to get the comment like back away from the camera you're way too close like because I would always just be like so close to the camera I didn't know how to film myself right back then I didn't know and I didn't have like the camera that would show you a preview of what you looked like either you know like a flip out or whatever just guessing that I was framed well like maybe I was just like this who knows oh goodness yeah a lot of that early stuff is super cringy but like but like in an okay way I don't know yeah but I think that's you know I think it helped sort of you know it had that personality and it had you know you you you were having fun with it and just like you know experimenting and playing which I think is important I know when I started mine like I think that was one thing I wanted to have was that like personal connection because as much as like that's what I loved about your channel and with Dev chps it wasn't I love the code like that was the fun part that's what brought me into it but like you know knowing the person who was there and feeling like there's an authentic on the other side was a big part of it too it means a lot it's and I would say it's even more valuable now yes right because like it it's so quick like to to have an AI generated video that'll answer your problem um or just or just talk to chat gbt to answer the coding problem but like there is something like you know I I don't know about you but I'm I'm in front of this screen like 10 12 hours a day like all my friends are in this box you know and so so like it's really nice to have like a a pleasant personality to kind of like to consult with do let me ask you this do you have any channels that you've watched for like more than a year like a like longterm you know that like you followed for a very long time yes uh but a lot of them I don't follow anymore I still make lots of videos but I don't actually consume as much as I used to interesting um so yeah actually I mean that's not now I got into SIM racing I I spend what is Sim racing I spent way too much money on driving fake race cars on my computer oh it's like a like a video game very immersive yeah yeah I have like you know like a fake cockpit in my basement and yeah yeah um so they there there's two two channels that I follow quite a bit there um and try and keep up with them and you've done it for like a few years now like you're yeah you've seen them grow and change yeah so one of the guys started as like this I don't know he's probably like 21-year-old whatever that was in his apartment like this little apartment nothing just doing his Sim racing and like making ridiculous videos like it was for fun and now he's actually like professional driver on a racetrack with real cars and stuff you're like yeah yeah like he's completely like you're like oh he made it like he's living his dream and like everything like it's it's so that's you know stuff like that's cool to see um yeah and even there there's lots of channels that follow that stuff but it's definitely the ones I actually watch are the ones where the person is sort of the right right yeah yeah like there's like and you kind of get to know them over the years and and like if they yeah like and like you I don't know it's it's comforting I guess it is right it's like a friendship but it's like one it's onesided which is like that awkward thing because like even for me like you've obviously you know you've you've talked with and met people but I find like I've whenever I do meet somebody who knows me it is that weird thing like they know me but I have no idea who they are and there's that like weird like that relationship's kind of awkward at the beginning parasocial that's what that that's what that's called parasocial relationship yeah it it could be awkward for you yeah I think I mean for I think for them it's not because I'm I think the same person that you know so like on that side of things it's exactly the same but it's sort of like you know they're very they know me and everything and I'm sure like you know if I was to meet somebody that I've been following online for a long time in person I'm sure I'd be a little bit nervous or whatever but at least Yeah you sort of know who you're talking to and it's just like it's a dichotomy is not the right word but there's like a yeah it's like an imbalance an imbalance exactly yeah there's an imbalance in like how it starts but I mean it it doesn't it goes away pretty fast but it's like that initial thing can be kind of have you ever um like kept kept in contact with anybody that like has been a fan and transformed into a real friend yeah for sure um there's there's a few people in my Discord that I'm always talking with and we're sort of like you know not just in the Discord but we're like dming um and stuff that keep in touch with um and the one thing I've never been good at is like meeting people because I just stay in my my little space but last year was the first time I went to an actual in-person conference oh okay which one it's called that conference okay um so they and there I met people that I knew just like through Twitter and through other stuff but now it's like oh now we're good friends cuz we actually met and I met other people that knew me that I didn't know them but now we're actually like chatting all the time and talking and I'm looking forward to meeting them next year when I go and like you know it's so that's and it's one of those things where it's funny because like I always you always hear like you know it's like a little bit like we mentioned where it's like we're always on the computer and in this and like that that thing of actually meeting in person is such a different Dynamic and something that I probably put off for too long and I'm happy that I'm getting out of that box now do you get uh do you get energy from meeting people or does it drain you so I've always considered myself an introvert in that it but I'm also I'm a little bit weird because I I tend I won't shy away from social like interactions and stuff um but just like once it's done I definitely need to like unwind afterwards same yeah same I I read the book quiet and I took the test and and it said I was an ambivert which is like in the middle so yeah and and I'm like all right but but I feel like I'm like that like like I'll like if I'm in in the zone you know if you kept me if you kept me at a good time and I I can definitely like be fully engaged in what's happening but then like don't talk to me for two days like I need yes yeah so circling back to a little bit with Dev tips you were saying you're meeting all like you're getting in contact with all those people and building stuff at what point did you realize like oh this is you know because I guess at the beginning you're you know you're planning out a channel sitting on the floor at VidCon like when did that like when did it start getting to the point where you're like oh this is actually like a thing um well the I I had partnered with a few Channel Quint and wat is it name yeah he did PHP so like I guess even then I was setting myself up with like these people that were like going into areas that I really had not a lot of interest or skill in but um but that I remember like yeah waking up the next day after like I released a video with Quenton and having 300 subscribers and I was just like wow that is incredible and and it was like yeah I think I think that was when I realized it was something that could could be could be bigger you know it could be something and so um I realized also like partnering with other channels and like doing like like you know collaborations and stuff was a big part of that because there was just a lot of exposure that I didn't have and I I felt like um people might like it if they were exposed to it so I think that was like the the part where I realized and also like I was I was also being reinforced by my employer to do it because like I was like the only person working at this company who is doing you know we were doing analytics for for online video who was a Creator and so often in meetings they'd be like Chavis what do you think you're a Creator like I am and here's what I think you know so like it was there was a lot of reinforcement there um also like my my wife and kids were they were cool with it and they were um helpful and you know accommodating I would say more more so like like I yeah my um my kids were small back then you know like I mentioned I we just had a 14-year-old party over here it's crazy uh so crazy that they're so big now but um back in the day yeah they were small like I was I was watching a video because now just taking over the channel again I'll tell you a really crazy story about that um but taking over the channel again uh I was going back and I was like trying to make a playlist of like my favorite ones that were old so people kind of like could get a taste of old yeah the classics yeah yeah and I found this video where like my son was sitting on my shoulders and I was like just doing like a selfie talk about some coding and I'd just be silly and like what do you think buddy or whatever it was you know and like now he's 11 he's a big boy you know like and the other day we work out together on Saturday mornings now we have hurdles and we have like cones and we do like the things and situps and all we have like a little regimen which we actually got from Chachi BT I was like hey my son's 11 I'm 40 what what's our workout plan they gave us one it was pretty cool but anyway he's so big now and so to see him just be like this little boy sitting on my shoulders just like not even aware of what I was doing it was it was it was interesting a little bit of mixed feelings because I knew my focus wasn't on him at that time you know so so yeah there's some there's some interesting sadness that goes along with the whole thing as well is like I I had you know a full-time job and I was youtubing full-time and and the other things I was writing a newsletter I was doing an I was doing several podcasts I was doing a bunch of like attending conferences I was flying around and traveling like and it was like it was some in some ways going to my head like oh I'm cool I'm important like I've never had this much attention in my life and at the same time like I was leaving Behind these beautiful little kids where I could have like had a nice like walk in the park with them and that would have been maybe just as important you know or maybe more important but um you know it's not all regrets I think that like since leaving the channel and having that space uh like especially during the pandemic where I transition into a work from home situation like my relationship with my kids is like Rock Solid like we are best friends you know and and they're cool they're respectful they're smart they're they're like really good kids you know I'm just bragging at this point but like I'm jealous I could say the same of kiding um no I just yeah I just brag I I just like I don't know like I like I'm like a fan of them you know instead of like me thinking that people should be a fan of me I kind of you know the tables have turned maybe there I don't know there's been a few there's been some growth in on all the angles I don't really know where I'm landing with this with this point but I'm just kind of like I guess in my own mind comparing and contrasting life when I was doing all of this it was so much right it was like 80 hour days like I think I made a one blog vlog post it was like my 20-hour day and and I that was kind of normal for me I was doing this sleeping schedule where remember okay yeah so yeah I was sleep hacking so I would could work more like come on come on I remember I remember when you're talking about it I'm just like I don't think that's like enough sleep like however it works well I fell off of that schedule because you it's like you have to get your maps in at the right time of the day and then when I got hired at Google I would like be sleeping in the conference rooms and people just walk in and turn on the lights and I'd be like oh like laying on the floor I was like this is not sustainable I would try to like leave sticky notes on the door like I'm taking a nap in here leave me alone but it didn't work there's just not enough conference rooms to have a nap schedule like that um yeah but uh yeah like so so like leaving the channel was a really big wakeup call to like my personal life and like trying to get that house in order because all of that work it was it was uh inflating my ego so much that like I thought it was important and then when I s