Impressions from Laracon EU 2024

My last Laracon was in 2018, again in Amsterdam. After 6 years, the Laravel community is alive and kicking.

I was there to take the "pulse" of the community. Laravel Pulse is a package released by Laravel to help artisans monitor their applications, see which users send the most traffic, how the queue is doing, etc. This topic was interesting to me as I've been working on Appkeep for quite some time now, and there's a big overlap between what Appkeep and Pulse both offer. So I wanted to listen to the talk by Jess Archer, chat around a bit, and refresh my Laracon attendance.

So without further ado, here are the impressions from Laracon 2024 that have stayed with me.

Good Vibes Only

During the opening talk, Caneco made it very clear that Laracon is all about the good vibes. That means, no trash talking about other frameworks, technologies, people, etc. That's something I really like about the Laravel community. Most people I've met at the conference have been friendly, curious and have had a positive mindset about things.

Even the popular names like Freek Van der Herten, or Taylor Otwell himself will listen to you attentively and talk things through with you. This down to earth attitude is really welcoming and helps everyone feel included.

Sit & listen vs. go & socialize?

As I said, I made a point to listen to Jess's talk about Laravel Pulse, which was the very first talk. She went to a great level of detail, talking about different implementation challenges and how they tackled them. It resonated with me a lot, as I've been dealing with similar problems with Appkeep.

Here's some other things I've been doing.

• I had a chat at the MongoDB booth with this guy who took over the MongoBD package for Laravel and now is maintaining it. We mostly talked about use cases for MongoDB. I learned that Atlas can be paired with a VPC in AWS and they have free plans.

• Headed over to the Sentry booth. We love Sentry at Swiftmade. Had some questions about their Session Replay feature. Pulled my Macbook and they actually went over our error capturing code with me. How great!

• Took the obligatory selfie with Taylor Otwell. Asked him briefly about Pulse and their future plans.

• Jack McDade (creator of Statamic) was showing off his Apple VisionPro :) Very cool guy, and he let people try it on as well. There was literally a queue of people nearby, so I didn't get to talk much about Statamic with him.

Unconference Track

There was an unconference happening on the top floor. I am familiar with it from my first Laracon. In that year (2018), I remember Cristophf Rumpel giving a short talk. From there, he's gone all the way to becoming a core Laravel team member.

So the unconference is a more laid-back, casual version of the conference that's happening on the main stage. The speakers register their talks on the spot. Some of them (me!) might even come up with their idea for the talk then and there.

It's a great chance to practice your public speaking skills, and share something with people who understand exactly what you are talking about.

In conclusion

It was definitely fun doing this again. Now, I believe for a seasoned Laravel developer the conference is more about networking & socializing rather than learning new things.

Is it worth €750 for the conference ticket plus the travel costs? Depends on what you are getting out of it. If you are building things for the community (packages, courses, etc) I think this is a unique chance to get synchronised with people in a unique and fun atmosphere. Likewise, if you have ideas related to Laravel and you are looking for reactions, this could be the perfect place for that. Imagine being able to walk up to Taylor and pitch any idea to him, or ask any question you want about the framework. That's big.

I don't think I will be joining annually, but Laracon is definitely worth going if you haven't in a while.