Tomáš: each year it's a little bit different. It's whatever we will make it to be in the end. It depends on the people who will attend and, uh, what, they would bring in with them.

Katja: if went along to a session and you didn't think you had anything to contribute and you ended up saying something, whether

it was helpful or whether it wasn't helpful. Well, it was 'cause you were part of the conversation. So whatever you said was helpful.

Jared: Hey folks. Welcome back to Elm Town. I'm your host Jared M Smith. We'll be visiting with some of the organizers from Elm Camp: Katja Mordaunt and Tomáš Látal.

[00:00:33] Sponsored by Logistically

Jared: But first, let's talk about our sponsor Logistically.

At Logistically, we make intuitive software to help logistics teams make better decisions and improve efficiency. We build the front end for all new features in Elm. If you're interested in our mission and enjoy writing Elm, please drop us a line Elm Town at Logistically inc.com. I'll put a link in the show notes.

[00:00:54] Introducing Katja Mordaunt &  Tomáš Látal

Jared: Now, Katja doesn't really need any introduction. She's been on the show a couple of times before. If you've listened to Elm Town 59 Elm Camp with Katja Mordaunt or Elm Town 78 Elm Camp 2024, with Katja Mordaunt and Wolfgang Schuster, you would get to know her a little bit better, but first say, hi Katja.

Katja: Hello. Thanks for having us along.

Jared: Thanks for coming, and then a new voice on the podcast, tomáš Látal. you mind to introduce yourself a little bit?

Tomáš: How much time do we have? No, uh uh. Hi everyone. Um, my name uh, Tom or Tomáš Látal You can Tom, or I go with Tom quite a lot and I'm based in Czech Republic and I love Elm.

Jared: Beautiful. Beautiful.

Katja: Nice,

Jared: Maybe, maybe a little bit more we could hear like,

uh,

Tomáš: all.

Jared: what kind of, how do you use Elm? you Yeah. Or Katja, do you have something?

Katja: Yeah. Well,

I was, I was just gonna say, uh, what made you decide to help out with Elm Camp.

Tomáš: Mm, you did or can I tell you? Can I, can I say it like this or is it a public information? No. Okay. Uh, I'm, uh, I, I have jumped, uh, the Elm bandwagon in 2016, and it was, uh, kind of because of Tereza, Tereza Sokol, uh, Evan's wife. Uh, we met at the, uh, React Conference in Paris and she had a quick lightning talk about, about Elm there. it was just after Coderetreat that I have attended, like, uh, two months ago. Uh, before this, uh, uh. Uh, uh, React Conference. And at, uh, each Coderetreat I attended, uh, I kind of set myself a goal and the goal for that time was, uh, to learn myself a functional programming language. given I was, uh, heavily in the front end, then like Elm being presented to me by Tereza, uh, back then, it felt like, okay, match made in heaven, let's try it out.

So I tried uh Elm back then, uh, fell in love with it kind of instantly. And then I try to spread the word about the Elm, uh, in general. So I created a workshop in, uh, for Elm in, uh, Czech Republic where I'm based. And, uh, I went to some Google Meetup groups around the place and trying to like slowly spread the word. And because of that, I have been hired as an Elm developer for another company, uh, by one headhunter. And then from 2017, I'm writing Elm professionally all the time, and I love it. It's the best thing that has happened to me so far, and I'm just trying to get more people to love it as well as I, as I do.

So I'm helping with everything that can help Elm including Elm camp.

Jared: And so where is it that you work now? Is it that place that you were hired on in 2017 or.

Tomáš: no, not, not anymore. Uh, right now I'm working, uh, as consultant for Scrive. which is a Swedish based company, uh, Scrive is using Elm on, uh, like either the back office tools, but slowly it, uh, creeps into the front end, the general front end that the customers can, uh, use and try as well. So,

Jared: Excellent. All right. Yeah,

Katja: Do you, do you open source your packages, your backend tool packages, or are they very specific for Scrive?

Tomáš: Um, we have some open source packages, uh, in, uh, in Elm. Definitely there is, I think there is personal number and, uh, also we, uh, did some, form library, uh, for ourselves, but with the specific needs. Uh, we forked elm-form, I believe is the one I'm not sure right now, but we are trying to open source, uh, open source packages as well. And, uh, given Scrive backend is, uh, heavily, but probably mostly written in Haskell. There are also some Haskell packages, uh, open sourced Scrive well.

Jared: Cool. Wow. So you use Elm on the front end, Haskell on the back end,

Katja: Dream.

Jared: It is the, yeah, that's the dream, and eh

Tomáš: yeah, I mean, there, there is Elm team and there is front end team, uh, in, in Scrive. And, uh, most of the front end is, uh, React,

Jared: mm-hmm.

Tomáš: kind of have our foot in, uh, in, in the front end with, uh, micro front ends. And so some portions of the whole pages are written in uh,

Jared: Okay. Yeah. Like you said, a a little bit of the customer facing is,

Tomáš: Mm-hmm.

Jared: is Elm as well.

Tomáš: Yeah.

[00:06:22] Elm Camp Info

Jared: Yeah. Mostly back office. Cool. Excellent. All right, well, uh, thank you and welcome and, uh, we're excited, I think. I'm excited anyway, um, to, uh, talk a bit about Elm Camp this year and to start out maybe Katja, would you just say when it's going to be,

Katja: That, that would be good if I knew. I

Jared: if you have to look it up, that's fine. You know, we,

Tomáš: don't have the Elm.camp webpage in front of you? Come on.

Katja: hang on, hang on.

Tomáš: It'll

Jared: that's good information. elm.camp. Yeah.

Tomáš: .Yeah,

Katja: right? So, Elm Camp this year is taking place, um, in the Czech Republic. Um, and the name of the town I'm gonna get Tomáš to pronounce,

Tomáš: Olomouc

Katja: and, uh, it will be from Monday the 15th to Thursday the 18th of June. So, um, people will arrive Monday afternoon and people will leave Thursday morning. Um, so we have two full days of conference, as with the, the last couple of years. Yeah.

Tomáš: Mm-hmm.

Jared: Excellent.

[00:07:33] The town of Olomouc

Tomáš: Or they can stay for a little while and explore a really nice town of Olomouc.

Jared: So what, why would you be so interested in Olomouc? mean, would you have any information about it, do you

Tomáš: Well. Coincidentally, it's, uh, the town where I have been born, and it's a town where really I, I live in a town close by, so it's really easy for me to check the venue, and I, I know the place quite well, so,

Jared: And so

Tomáš: that's pure coincidence. Pure coincidence.

Jared: Yeah, as far as the, um. The location, obviously it's special to you personally, right? As, as the place where you grew up, uh, for folks in the Elm community who might want to attend? What would be special about it in particular for that?

Tomáš: Well, uh, when we were, uh, thinking about where we can have the next Elm Camp, uh, and we kind of thought about it'll be nice to have it in Europe. And in Central Europe, where in a, in a place which is, uh, quite nicely reachable, and it'll be in the middle of everything. The Czech Republic is in the middle of Europe and uh, or like originally we thought about, uh, kind of tying it to, uh, Lambda Days conference, which is in Krakow and, uh, Olomouc, uh, is on the, well, you can, you can get from all modes to Krakow, via train in few hours.

It's really close by and, uh, there is a train connection. Well, this, it's a kind of like a, a railway junction. So, uh, you can get to Olomouc from, uh, Prague pretty easily, from Vienna or from Krakow or from Poland, or from three or four sites. Uh, so it felt natural to choose this location, which is really nicely from major airports for attendees of Lambda Days

Jared: Beautiful.

Katja: And is, is there anything special in the town that we should, we should definitely check out when we're there.

Tomáš: oh, yes. So, uh, but for this, for, for, for the facts, please, uh, double check Wikipedia, uh, because I did this today. Just to, just to be sure. Uh, Olomouc as a city, uh, has been like, there is a legend that it was founded by Julius Caesar, uh, because there were Roman Roman troops on the hill. In, in, in the Olomouc uh, in the Olomouc region.

And that's why it is called Olomouc because of, because it was called, uh, Iuliomontium. So Olomotium in whatever whatever and it has been butchered to  Olomouc , that's just a legend. Uh, but there are proofs, uh, for like in inhibit, uh, this place being inhabited from, I don't know, year 700 or something like that. So it's pretty, pretty old.

And it has been in place, uh, uh, for, for the church govern, governors governors and also there, there is a really nice castle and really nice cathedral as well in  Olomouc. whole place around this really nice and beautiful. So for anyone who likes history, you can see really nice historical city in there.

Katja: Yeah. And I know in the past, past Elm Camps people have kind of self-organized in the spirit of the, um, conference, um, to go and do tours of the local city. There's a, there's a very active Discord, um, which ramps up activity right around Elm Camp that you should definitely join in.

can put it in

the show notes as well

and invite that.

Um, and, and yeah, people organized to, to go around and I'm sure that  Tomáš also, I'm gonna volunteer you to, uh, to make a little, make a little tour for people who, who do wanna like, hang around. There's, there's always people hanging around a couple days before and a couple days after the camp. Yeah.

Tomáš: Yeah, I would. I would definitely love to. And even  Olomouc is like the fifth biggest city in Czech Republic with roughly around 100,000 people. There is plenty of opportunities or of things to do, not only the inside, of Olomouc, but in the vicinity of it as well. So, yeah,

Jared: Okay. That's great. Yeah. When you described all the, how it's sort of surrounded by all of these major places, right? Folks can come from, I think that that really centers it and then knowing, you know, the little bit of the history and understanding, you know, it's a beautiful place and so yeah, visiting castles, I enjoy doing that.

So yeah. That's exciting. Um

Katja: We hope day to have on camp in a castle again. We did, um, in, in the first year we did have it in a castle in Denmark, but the word they used for castle is really manor house. So it's kind of like it was a castle,

Tomáš: you, if you would like a medieval castle, Czech Republic has quite loads of them and, uh, in my previous, previous company we were staying, uh, at one of them as a, as a team building activity. So

Katja: Great.

Tomáš: it's doable, although. Traveling there. It's a little bit offside, so you would need to accompany for travels and stuff,

Jared: Hmm.

Tomáš: it's doable.

Jared: Sure. Okay.

Katja: I guess that's a problem. Castles aren't often easily reachable like by design, right.

Jared: Yeah, good

Tomáš: moats, crocodiles, yeah.

Jared: Yeah. All right. All right. And so. That, that's the area. We've talked about that.

[00:13:28] The venue: Park hotel Prachárna

Jared: What about the venue itself? Where will folks be

Tomáš: Mm-hmm.

Jared: in

Tomáš: So it is, um, uh, it is a small, uh, small hotel, uh, on the, on suburbs of, uh, Olomouc it'll be not directly in the center, uh, Olomouc . Uh, so we will some quiet place for, only for us, but, uh, we, we were able to reserve the whole place, for the Elm Camp, for those dates.

It's a really nice place for weddings and it's being used as such. So there are like, uh, there, there, there are, um, quite nice, how do you say it, like outside places? There, there is a pond nearby. Uh, there is also a sauna. There is a place for camping actually, even though it's not used as a place for camping, but for us

Katja: We do

Tomáš: we do, we started it.

Katja: this is, this is one of the criteria for Elm Camp. We, we will always hold it in a venue where you can pitch a tent or park a van. Because, we, the part of that is, is that we want it to be as accessible as possible, like affordable to people. And so, um, if, yeah, if you can bring your own

accommodation, then it's, then it's much, um,

cheaper and, um, those people don't lose out at all.

They get all the food, they get all the, co you know, all the meetings and all the, they can even use the toilets and the showers that we use as well. Um, but yeah, it, it's been really important to us as organizers to kind of ground Elm Camp in that, in that sense and like to, you know, give people the spaces that they feel comfortable in. And so we, we will always, um, try and have it in a place where. Where you can pitch a tent and, and also where you have access. Like we have managed it every time to have like a lake or a pond or something where people can, can have access to that. And then yeah, nice walks out in nature. We, we definitely like to hold some of the sessions, uh, in, in the outside and, and in fact, like I would say the majority of of sessions in Elm Camp do end up being without screens.

So like, yeah,

that's a kind of by design and by encouragement to like, Hey, let's just, let's talk, let's draw pictures. Let's look at what's around us and not, not automatically open our computers and show each other stuff. So that happens more in the evenings, I think.

Jared: Yeah.

Tomáš: And, uh, you, you can see the place, uh, the, where Elm Camp is going to happen. On the Elm.camp website. There is a link for that. So

Jared: Okay. Yeah, we can check it out. And so there's natural attractions, there's places to wander around and, um,

Tomáš: fort nearby.

Yeah.

Jared: okay.

Katja: Nice. I didn't know that. Been keeping secret.

Jared: Within walking distance?

Tomáš: Within walking distance, like, uh, two kilometers away, roughly. Something like that. 'cause, uh, Olomouc, uh, historically has been quite heavily fortified. Uh, during, during the, uh, uh, Maria Theresa times, like 1800, 1900, something like that. And, uh, there were, there are forts around the city, quite abandoned one.

Uh, but there are events happening inside those forts. So I, I were at some concerts there. One of the Czech, uh, famous photographers took like the photos there as well for, for the group of people. It was like, there are, there are theaters and it's like, it's, it's still alive a little bit.

Katja: Great. It's gonna have some Elm talks inside it. I think

Tomáš: I was, I, I was not able yet to get to the managers of the fort that is nearby, uh, of, uh, of, of ours. So it might be just that we will be able to get in front of it and then go back. I will just need to double

Katja: we can hide around the side. Yeah,

Tomáš: it's a fort. Come on. It should be

Katja: in.

Tomáš: it, but yeah.

Katja: fine.

Tomáš: No, but, uh, that's, that, that's on the one side.

And, uh, there is also, there is also some farm, uh, with, uh, lots of horses nearby. So, yeah, it's a really nice place.

Jared: Nice. Yeah, there were horses at the 2025 Elm Camp, which was nice, so.

Katja: Yeah, and we had llamas year before.

Jared: Oh, nice. Yeah.

Tomáš: Yeah, no llamas, this, this year. Sorry.

Jared: Horses are great. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Alright, so, uh, we know the place, what's the name of this place? This,

Tomáš: Uh, it's, it's, it's called, uh, Park Hotel Prachárna,

Jared: okay.

Tomáš: and it's, uh, yes, no.

Jared: Yes, exactly. That's what I

Katja: Great.

Tomáš: that's, as he said. Yeah. No, but, uh, it's, um, most of Does it translate?

yes. And there are like two possible translations. Uh, the informal one is, uh, place with a lot of money for rich people

Katja: Oh, no.

Tomáš: in, in, yeah. And that's what I thought.

That's, I thought, uh,

That's

Katja: why you haven't told me that.

Tomáš: No, no, no, no, no, no. That's what I thought for most of my, most of my youth, that this is like, this is okay. It's like for fancy, rich people, kind of like whatever. But actually given that fort is nearby, uh, Prague, which is also, which is which translates to dust's also a gunpowder. So it was a place where the gunpowder has been stored.

Katja: Oh. I don't know which is better.

Tomáš: You decide.

Jared: And there is a link to the location,

Tomáš: Yes, yes.

Jared: um, from the Elm Camp website as well. So

Katja: Yeah.

Jared: yeah, if you wanna look at that

[00:19:50] Unconference format

Jared: Alright. So we've talked a little bit about the when and the where of it. And so I know in the past we've went a bit into the structure of the Unconference and so I don't think we necessarily have to describe the entire structure of an unconference.

We can if you want, I don't care. But, uh, we can also refer back to the episodes I mentioned Katja as well as, Elm Town 85 Wander. About Elm Camp 2025, um, or, you know, if we wanna just talk maybe about what might be different this year versus previous years. It's up to y'all.

Katja: Yeah, so I, I'll, I'll start by doing like a very brief description in case people don't have time to listen to the other ones. And we, we, we want people to like come along to Elm Camp who've not been before. Um, and so just like a very easy, uh. Uh, short description is that it's a very informal conference, so, um, and it is designed by the participants.

So like all the attendees will arrive on the Monday afternoon and we'll get settled into our rooms and then, uh, come back down and have a supper together. And at some

point, before or after supper, depending on how it's all working out, we'll have a meeting with everybody who's attending the conference, uh, to initially talk about ideas for things that they want to talk about in, in sessions. Um, and then, uh, we'll make a, like temporary plan for the Tuesday day so that people can go to bed knowing what to expect the next day. And when we get up on Tuesday morning, we'll all have breakfast together, um, or, you know, drop in as, as early or late as you want to during And then immediately following breakfast we'll set a plan, uh, for the day, um, and answer any questions and things like that. And then we'll just. Go, and people can opt in and out of whichever sessions they want to go for. Um, I think one of the very, very important things about it, and that we're also encouraging more this year is to talk about things that aren't just elm. And we we're very much not about like, demonstrating our Elm tools and things to each other, but more about like, talking about ideas that we're having and um, like experiences we've had.

And, and you can listen to the other Elm Camp episodes, but we do have like sessions as diverse as like book clubs and, uh, what's the next step we need to take to save the world and things like that. So, um, so we very much want people to come along who are, who are just, um, elm adjacent and interested in functional programming. Um, but beyond that, like, yeah, it's very open to other, other conversations.

Jared: Yeah, great. And from my experience going to Elm Camp 2025, it was really nice being someone who just arrives and then suddenly has the ability to have input into the structure of the conference. Um, and it, and not having been to an Unconference before, I thought it might be a bit chaotic, but it wasn't chaotic. It was, you

it was, it was, nice. It, well, at least it didn't seem ca didn't seem too chaotic to me. I mean, I, you know, I guess there's, there's certainly, certainly uncertainty

Katja: Yeah, so like, yeah. I would say like the, the one of the reasons why it's not chaotic is because we do have like a fixed timetable. So sometimes sessions might run into two slots or something, but we have a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner that are on fixed times. And in between that we have a number of sessions, um, that are also on fixed times.

And sometimes we mandate that everyone has to go outside for the for example, things like that. So there are, there is structure around it, but the actual content, like filling the filling the slots is, is totally down to the people who, who are, who are there. Um, and the one other thing that I'll mention that kind of makes it different to other conferences, at least other conferences that I attend that aren't work away days is that we're all together, we all stay in the same place together. There, there is an option, um, if you want to stay offsite, you know, people, some, some people do do that. There's always a small proportion, but those people who do that do tend to come like first thing in the morning. They're also welcome at breakfast and, and dinner, and they do stay through to like the evening activity. So they're literally just like sleeping in a, in somewhere else. But, um, for the most part it's, it's a, it's a community activity, right? So, and we're, yeah, we're all, we're all together and we're all, um, I don't know what the right word to say, but we're all kind of equals like, um, there's no, like, there's no celebrities. There's no, you know, there's no distinction between like the speakers and the attendees and things like that.

Jared: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. There's not like a speakers go off into their,

Tomáš: There is no stage

Jared: and, yeah.

Katja: Yeah, not even organizers. We, you, you'll probably notice if you've been following Elm Camp, um, this is our, is this our fifth, fifth one or fourth one? Uh,

Tomáš: think, fourth

Katja: I think fourth. Yeah. Um,

Tomáš: 3. Yeah. Fourth May. It, it depends whether you include the Elm in the woods, uh, kind of session that was being done by John. I believe, John Pavlik

Katja: oh, no,

Tomáš: something like that.

Katja: But, um,

Tomáš: four or five. It depends on what events do you count Elm Camp.

Katja: Anything can be, no, no. What, what the, the point I was making is that even in terms of organizers, like every year we've grown year on year, like adding more or more organizers and more because like, yeah, everybody who wants to be involved can be involved to whatever extent they want to be involved. And like, we don't even have like secret organizers meetings during the conference or anything like that.

So

yeah.

Tomáš: Yeah.

Katja: We're just there to like, help make it happen or, or I guess take responsibility for, for making the space to make it happen. But yeah, we very much rely on, on everyone else to make the content and, and make it happen. Yeah.

Tomáš: Yeah, which is really nice because it feels like from the, from the general conferences, I would say the best times that I personally have, were not the talks, but the hallway kind of conversations and tracks and this unconference style things like it's only hallway conversations.

Katja: Yeah.

Tomáš: It feels, it, it feels like a nonstop hallway time for, uh, speaking about interesting stuff. with people all around you where you can meet the speakers as well and talk to them. Unconference all the all day. Love it.

Jared: Yeah. that's what I started doing with regular conferences is just basically staying on the hallway track the whole time. You know, I'd go to one or two and yeah. Um, so yeah, I think that it, it, it is befitting in that way if you find yourself, um, in those, in those scenarios and enjoy that.

[00:27:16] Intentionally Elm-curious

Jared: So yeah, we, we talked a little bit about Elm adjacent, or as you said before, Elm-curious folks, which I, I love that, um, term there.

So, uh, it did happen last year as well in Michigan where someone who knew somebody who was into Elm, but they themselves didn't know much about Elm. And then they had come and they had been using a tool that was inspired by Elm, uh, which I, I've, I've talked about that on a previous episode. Um, the Bubble Tea, um, library.

And so what was interesting to me that, that came out of that is, is not only did we get people who were not necessarily directly interested in Elm, but somewhat Elm curious or Elm adjacent, but we also got people in the community who got to learn about the bubble t uh, tool. And then now since then, I've seen people making more TUIs, which a Bubble Tea is TUI, uh, in Elm that are, you know, similar to this. So it, it's sort of like inspired and, yeah, going full circle there. So, yeah. Very cool. Um, and so that would be exciting to see. Do you want to talk any more about, I know that there was a, a bit of a, a specific reason to include Elm-curious folks, um, explicitly here.

Katja: Yeah, well, there are, there are a couple and, and, I also have a kind of secret mission myself that I, to,

Jared: Ooh.

Katja: you about. No, now don't get too excited. Um, but, but, um, firstly in terms of like inviting folks who aren't like, um, just sold on Elm, um, that is because, uh, Lambda days, which we mentioned earlier, um, which usually happens in Krakoff at this time, um, this year is on a hiatus, so will not be happening. And i, I know there's a lot of folks who come to Lambda days, um, who will feel like they would like to get together with other functional programmers or other functional programming academics, um, in Central Europe perhaps. Um, and we're hoping to maybe encourage some of them along, kind of like just advertise it less, that less Elm centric. Although Elm is obviously the thing that got us all together in the first place. Um, and the second one is that we've become aware of a new functional programming group, like physical meetup Meetup that's trying to get off the ground in Vienna and we've been reaching out to them as well. There's a couple of Elm folks in that group, and they're very interested in exploring the whole palette of functional languages that is like used in modern technologies now. Um, and hearing from people from all of those communities. So we're, we're reaching out to them and like may just, we might just go and have a chat with them in Vienna afterwards. And, and a couple of them are gonna come along to Elm Camp, who may be people who already are into Elm, but like just trying to grow the functional programming and like networks, um, internationally is like yeah something that I wanna do. And, um, and my secret plan, which is like somewhat, somewhat related I'd like, uh, there to be, uh, like an explicit, um, mission, like an explicit endeavor of Elm Camp to, um, to make sure that we're kind of carrying forward a community, um, a community desire, a community want. So if at Elm Camp we can have a session, which I will propose, and if nobody comes, then I'll talk to myself, um, about like, what do we as a community, like, what do we think that we can give to the world in a sense? Like, how do we think that we can grow or not grow how we want? Um, and, and kind of get some like very explicit actions out the other side of that. And I would, I would like Elm Camp to be like. Uh, uh, ground, like for the, for that to happen because as jared pointed out, like there's always inspiration that comes out of Elm Camp and collaborations that happen because of Elm Camp. And there's always a massive amount of activity like in the weeks, like the first few weeks or months that follow Elm Camp, and there's a lot of productivity like at elm Camp itself, there's a couple of members who people will probably know that, um, will like build whole things overnight. Every night during Elm Camp they get a, um, and, and yeah, so, so I would, I would kind of just like to be like a little bit more, uh, more, I can't think of the word, intentional, more intentional about that and, and say that it's one of the aims of Elm Camp to kind of come together once a year as a community and decide some kind of collective goal that we have and like, how, how can we make that happen? Like Who can do what to help move that forward one step, because I personally think that it's really important that people have as much choice as possible of what they use to build things. And also that it's, the bar is as low as possible for people to be able to publish things on the internet because it's such a integral part of like our society, um, that it feels like everyone should be able to participate and like anything that we can do to make that easier, um, feels great to me or feels like a good step forward.

Yeah.

Jared: I like it. Yeah, I like the intentionality moving toward that. That's good. Okay, I'll, I'll join you in that session. So

Katja: Hooray, there's two

Jared: if I'm able to make it,

Katja: I know. Yeah, we can, that's a, that's a really good point as well. Like, I dunno if you are, if you're able to make it as a financial decision, but. We really, really, really want people to come, um, who, you know, feel like, who maybe feel like they can't afford it for whatever reason. And we're making it like even easier this year to, um, access our opportunity grants. So we have some very generous donations coming in from individuals and companies that are explicitly there to enable people to come who, who can't afford a ticket. We try and keep our ticket prices as low as possible so that we break even on providing all the food in the rooms. Um, and we facilitate people's travel from the, like, transportation hubs, um, to get to the actual venue as well. So like, yeah, if you think it's gonna be difficult to get there for any reason, let us know and we will, we will help you. And yeah, if you can't afford a ticket, then also just, yeah, just let

us know and we will give you a

free ticket.

Jared: Beautiful. Yeah. Okay. So, and that all that will be available on the Elm Camp website, right? If people wanna reach

Katja: Yes. Yep. Yep.

Jared: Okay.

[00:34:16] The beauty of Elm Camp

Tomáš: It's, it's, it's, it's really hard to like speak about this in, in specifics because the agenda is going to be decided on, on the spot. Um, it's, each year it's a little bit different. So it's, it's whatever we will make it to be in the end. It depends on the people who will attend and, uh, what, uh, they would bring in with them.

Jared: that

Tomáš: that's, that's the beauty of it.

Jared: Yeah, that's great. And maybe that's a place to end it, right? Is is saying that if you want to be included in the way discussions go, then come to Elm Camp.

Tomáš: Hmm.

Katja: Absolutely. Yeah.

Tomáš: Yeah, I would, I would maybe add that even if you think you don't have anything to chip in or add, uh, to the conference yourself, feel free to, but, but you are interested in general, uh, to attending. Don't hesitate and just join us and you will see for yourself. Because mostly it's like the first day, some known people are presenting because they are like used to this format a lot already, but on the second day, the people, it's like, yeah, I haven't had anything prepared and yeah, but I can talk about this.

Hmm. So who has an idea for a session? Well, maybe I can, yeah, you come on. No problem. Who would like to see, who would like to hear about, uh, the stuff that you, uh, would like to propose? See lot of people find a place. Go talk.

Jared: Yeah.

Katja: and I would say also that a session is not, not necessarily somebody presenting something, but actually a session can be proposed that like, I have a question or I, I

Tomáš: I would like to, you know, your opinion on stuff

Katja: yeah, yeah. Or could somebody run, could somebody run a, like tutorial session for me on how to get set up with my vim editor or whatever?

And then you'll have people in the room who, who think, yeah, that's really exciting. I, I, I love to share my vim configs with everyone. So like, let's make a group, let's go and do it. And it can be a group of two or three people, or it can be a group of 25 people or 50 people or whatever. Yeah.

Tomáš: Mm-hmm.

Jared: And that, that's a great point about if you don't feel like you have anything to add, because there were certainly ones that I went to where I didn't feel like I had anything to say, but because of the format, because it's this, you know, everybody's in a circle and it's not someone up on a stage.

I would think of things along the way and then share them and like, oh, okay, well I got that, you know, in there and, and if it's helpful, great. But. Although I went in not thinking I had something, there was something that, you know, that was there that, um, was able to definitely learn a lot throughout. So, and that's actually how I came to Elm in the first place, is going to elm-conf, back in 2017, I think.

And not knowing Elm when I went in. Like I, you know, I knew about Elm. I knew I, I liked the concept of Elm, but not knowing how to program Elm, and then meeting the people and like seeing the talks and, and just hearing the ideas that people had and just, you know, how kind people were. And so it all just worked in such a way that I was like, it clicked and I was like, yes, this is the place for me.

So if you're on the edge, you should do it.

Katja: Even if you're not on the edge. Come on, come over. Come on over.

Jared: you're going,

Katja: You must see.

Tomáš: We would, we, we, we would like to see you and, uh, hear all your ideas or questions.

Jared: Yeah.

Katja: It's so ama like exactly what you said, Jared. When you, if you went along to a session and you didn't think you had anything to contribute and you ended up saying something, you kind of, you talked yourself down a second ago saying like, oh, whether it was helpful or whether it wasn't helpful. Well, it was 'cause you were part of the conversation. So whatever you said was helpful.

Tomáš: Hmm.

Katja: It's, it's, it's always, it's always helpful to hear what other people are thinking, regardless of whether it hits the mark you think it should be, or what you were expecting. Like in some ways it's even much more valuable to hear from people, something that you. totally weren't expecting was part of the conversation you were having? Like it's, that's, that's the whole beauty of it.

Tomáš: Also, one, one thing that I really liked and we haven't mentioned it, um. Is that, uh, what happens on Elm Camp stays at Elm Camp by default. So you are super, it's, it's, it's, uh, for people or we, we try to create a super encouraging and, uh, like welcoming environment even for the ideas that you are, you wouldn't like to go public with, but you would like, uh, to get some opinion on, some feedback on, in a small group. So by default, uh, what's, what you hear on Elm Camp stays on Elm Camp unless the author or like the group decides that it's okay for, uh, these things to go public. So that's another really nice way to validate your ideas or your, like, experiments and get, uh, your first MVP out, that's the place to be.

Katja: Yeah.

[00:39:41] Picks

Jared: Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, should we move on to picks?

Katja: Yeah, I'm ready. I've got one.

Tomáš: Go.

Jared: Alright, well, Katja, you said you have one.

Katja: Yeah, so my pick is a, uh, youTube video called Teaching haskell to Kids, which is, uh, I think about 20 minutes, very lightweight, uh, experience, um, of someone presenting. I don't remember which conference, but I'll put the link in the show notes. Uh, someone presenting his experience of taking a group of, uh, 11, 12 year olds, um, who are not programmers and using Haskell to make hangman, and it's a very light watch, uh, very interesting. Has a lot of insights into what it's like to do programming for the first time. And, uh, the difference between like functional programming and object oriented programming or imperative like, yeah, but it's very like very surface. Really nice, very nice watch. Yeah,

Jared: Okay. Yeah, that sounds interesting. I'll have to check that out. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes. Tomáš you said that there were a few, uh, before we, we started recording that you were

Tomáš: Yeah,

Jared: share. And if you can't pick, you know, just

throw out there.

Tomáš: I, I had really hard time to like go with like one or two picks. So I have like four of them, uh, noted down something that, uh, I'm, one might say obsessed, uh, for the past weeks, let's say, or maybe, maybe a

month

Katja: long obsession.

Tomáš: long obsession. Yeah, yeah. No, I have, okay, let's start with a long obsession. So, uh, my first pick would be, if you haven't been to Code Retreat, find the nearest one this year and go. Because for me, it's, uh, it was a life changing event, which, uh, put me on the Elm path in the first place. But before I am, oh, I'm choking a little bit, but, uh, not much. Each time I attended the code retreat, I changed a job for better because, uh, it, uh, it, it, it showed me that there are ways, uh, how I can code.

There are other ways that I can think about, uh, how I can think about code. And it was a really nice platform for me to try things out in the similar way as, uh, ELC camp is there for ideas, code Retreat is there for code. and it's. Yeah, just, just go and try it out. Each year there is a global day of code retreat, uh, roughly in November when the code retreats are happening all around the world at the same day. So go and check it out. me later.

Katja: Is that a brand? Is that a brand, like one organization that runs them or are you just saying any

Tomáš: is a, it's a, it's a self-organized event. Uh, there is an organization with the, like, uh, the ideas which provides you with the ideas on the code katas that you can try or, uh, some other, well,

Katja: cool.

Tomáš: in, in, in, in short code retreat is a one day event where you write program all over again, which is a game of life.

You have 45 minutes for that. Each time you have a different, well, it's a, each time is it in a, as a pair program. Programming. So each time you get a different peer, you can try different language, you can try different approach to the same problem all over again, each time you have a different constraint, which will push you out of your comfort zone a little bit.

So one constraint might be for this session, don't use mouse at all. How well do you know your ID shortcuts? Mm. For

Katja: I have done this. I didn't know that was the name. Yeah.

Tomáš: yeah, yeah. Uh, for this session, you can communicate with your partner only through code, so it'll be mute session, you can't communicate otherwise. And it's mostly focused on, uh, teaching people how to write unit tests and testing in general.

So, again,

Katja: Great.

Tomáš: event every, each and every developer should have attended this at least once in their career.

Jared: That's great. Yeah, I had not even heard of that. So sounds, yeah, it sounds

Tomáš: I can, I can talk days about that. So it's, it's, it's something that's really close to my heart and I also, uh, help to host a few of, few of those events as well, uh, and share the general knowledge about it.

yeah,

Jared: Cool.

Tomáš: it's awesome.

Jared: Hmm.

Tomáš: Yeah. And from, from the other ones, if you, if you are a fan of a podcasts, uh, Darknet Diaries is something that you definitely have to have to hear. It's, uh, it's

Katja: told me about it a couple

Tomáš: oh boy. Yeah. I'm blabbing, I'm blabbing about it

Katja: do still listen.

Tomáš: Now, if you are not, uh, uh, paranoid you will be. Uh, you will become No, it's a, it's, it's a podcast show about, uh, well, yeah, darknet, hacking, hackers and, uh, uh, penetration, uh, penetration testings in general.

So how people are actually going to the building, uh, awesome stuff all the way around, uh, from how Xbox has been, uh, has been hacked, how, uh, Mt. Gox has been hacked and, uh, put down awesome sneak peek. One of the stories that, uh, penetration Tester has been hired to do a, a job, uh, for a bank to find out, like to get to the bank and try whether he can get in or he can get his hands on the computer or like get the computer out of the bank, which he did, only to realize that it was the bank next door that he was having a contract with.

So he hacked a real bank without anyone

Katja: Without being invited.

Tomáš: without being invited. Yeah. So, oops. Yikes. But no, it's a, it's a really, really great show, and it's really well produced. Uh, I love each and every episode of it. Um,

Katja: I can second that. 'cause the way you described it makes it sound like you should be like a security nerd to care. But actually they're just very human. They're very human stories. They're not, it's not about like, yeah, it's not like, yeah.

Tomáš: You, you don't, you don't need to be hardcore hacker or a security expert, uh, even though after a few episodes you start to be like, okay, so, hmm. My security is really quite on the low side and I probably shouldn't store a password, uh, under the, under my keyboard, like on the post-it and stuff, which you shouldn't. Now it's, uh, yeah, it, it's, there is a history. There is a, uh, current event as well. Highly, highly recommended podcast

Katja: Yeah.

Tomáš: from what I can say, for the third pick from the recent, recent days is I'm starting to explore a little bit, uh, of a small web, which, uh, I found out through Kagi. Kagi.com is a search engine that is, uh, being, um, that, that you have to pay for, to use, but they have, uh, really nice initiatives one of it is, uh, Kagi.com/small web, where they kind of handcraft you the blog posts that are, uh, crafted by individuals to express themselves and to share, to share knowledge without seeking any financial gain.

So there are no ads, there is no, like back in the. It's a time traveling back to days when the blocks, uh, or where the driving force of, uh, of the internet. And it's a nice curated set of, uh, blocks and blog posts that you can get to randomly. I replaced my doom scrolling with this and I already get quite a loads of ideas for projects that I will never finish or ideas in general.

Uh, I really do enjoy that. Uh, so check it out. There is also an, there is also the article about what a small web is called. The Small Web is Beautiful by, uh, Ben Hoyt. Highly recommended reading.

Jared: Yeah, that's, that's a great one.

Katja: sounds great.

Jared: I, use Kagi. I pay for Kagi. I've been using it for a couple years now since I first heard of it, and yeah, through that, uh, found the, the small web and, uh,

Tomáš: So, you know.

Jared: Yeah, I, I know, and I, I love it. It actually, uh, made me of reinvigorated to try and write on my blog, which, I mean, still it's a try because can't say I've done, I did write about Elm Camp, uh,

Katja: was gonna say, I know one post you did.

Yeah.

Jared: So, uh,

Tomáš: Yeah.

Jared: I think what, um, you were saying about, you know, it doesn't have to be perfect, uh, early on here, you know that, uh, but I think it was before we started recording. You were, you were talking about that I said we should have had that in the, yeah. Yeah.

Tomáš: I can definitely, uh, sum it up as well because, uh, it was one blog post, uh, was about this, uh, that in like today's on the web, everybody, everything is trying to be perfect. In Instagram, you have, you get like the perfect pictures of everyone in, uh, uh, social, um, social networks.

You get the perfect picture of everyone. Uh, everyone's trying to present their best, which is totally okay with it. But, uh, then AI came in and suddenly, like everyone is trying to create, uh, perfect thumbnails for, uh, everything or, uh, make a joke, uh, visual somehow. But you can see that it's being generated by AI, uh, because it's looks too good or it's too perfect.

And one of the blog posts, and I'm sadly, I can't recall which one was it because I haven't saved it, uh, put the idea in my head about like, it's nice to embrace the imperfections, uh, these days and be proud of imperfections because that's what actually tells everyone else that this part has been done by human. Most of the time, if you look for some thumbnail picture or some, like, if you'd like to really do some joke and stuff, you can either generate it with ai, which is easy, and it looks like everything else generated with AI most of these days. Uh, it's like, yeah, please, AI, this in the cartoon style.

Yeah, it looks like every cartoon style, uh, all the time. Uh, you should, you, you can either do that or you can draw a stick figure with a crappy text on top of it and just like, uh, uh, scan it and put it out instead. And the latter, the, the, uh, the latter one tells everyone, yeah, it's imperfect, but it's mine. I embrace these imperfections and I'm embraced that I'm not going to do, I'm not going to aim for the perfect things because the imperfections is what makes us human. And I love the idea. So I'm trying to like, think about more things. So while trying to feed less the AI slop and try to actually express myself, even though I know it's not perfect, and trust me, I was the first one who was try to do everything perfectly, all, most of my life.

So, uh, it's a, it's a really nice freedom you have. You can express yourself. And again, like with the small web, in the end, it's all the same. It can be even like one sentence blog post. No one cares. It doesn't need to be perfect.

Katja: People care. People appreciate it. It's not, it's not. No one cares. It's, it's people appreciate that

Tomáš: You should, you should not care about the, about things being perfect.

You should, uh, be able to embrace that. They might not be perfect and that's okay

Katja: And that's good.

Tomáš: and that's good these days even that's better.

Katja: But yes.

I.

Jared: human made. Yeah. And

Tomáš: In me,

Jared: yeah. That

the,

Tomáš: in music for example, like these imperfections is what makes you to go to the concert and hear this person to play live because they don't hit the note perfectly.

Jared: Yep. That's a great point. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, I, I've talked about this before on the podcast, but there's a, um, a particular passage in, uh, Kafka the Shore by Haruki Murakami talks about this, uh, this imperfection and of a particular piece. And I don't remember the piece offhand, but, um, it talks about, yeah, just like that's what makes it so interesting is like everybody's trying to figure it out and it's, you know, never works out the way you think it would be if it, you know, could be perfect because it was made by an imperfect being, and

Tomáš: exactly.

Jared: and

Katja: I think we need to probably also just come away from even just using that concept, using that word, that there obviously is no such thing as perfection. Right? So, and like  Tomáš said, a lot of programmers are people who come from that background of like, all their life, trying to attain perfection, perfection, logical, perfectly.

You know? And, and actually let's stop talking about it like that, because it's not, it's human. That's what, that's what we are, that's what we value with each other, is being human, not being perfect. Yeah.

Jared: Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Tomáš: That's a hard, hard, a hard and long way ahead of us.

Katja: No, it's tomorrow, it's at Elm Camp on the 18th, 19th of June after Elm Camp, the world is gonna be like this.

Tomáš: Ah, love

it. Looking forward to that then

Katja: Yeah.

Tomáš: The last pick is, uh, I am, uh, for the last two months, I'm, uh, trying to use, uh, jujutsu instead of git as a version control system, and I love it.

Katja: Oh, have not heard of it.

Tomáš: The best thing I love about it, and it reminds me of Elm, uh, a little bit with that, is that you can try to mess things up. But there is always jj undo command that gets you to the previous state, including all the, all the files that are there that, that were there. And you accidentally delete it because everything is being committed by, uh, by default.

When you mess up your nice rebase tree with a lot of, uh, and you end up with a lot of conflicts, jj undo. Done. Magic. Magic done. When you have the way how to undo things or how to, when you have the safe net of that, it's really easy and nice to explore things, which is the same with Elm.

You have the safe net of types. You can go crazy with refactoring knowing that. You are still on the good path. So when you have a safety net, exploring is quite encouraging and I love this, uh, the most probably about the jujutsu, so And it's git compatible, so you don't need, I'm using, uh, jujutsu locally, but I push everything to GitHub.

Everything seems like it's in, so

Jared: Yeah. To anyone

Tomáš: excuse not to try.

Jared: Yeah, I, I've, I've heard of it and I haven't tried it yet, so yeah, I guess I, I should just try it and see how it goes, but I have heard that, so that you could be using jujutsu, but else would still be using git and have basically no knowledge of it or care for,

Tomáš: Ex exactly. It flips your mind around a little bit because you don't end up with commit, you start with commit, so you create commit of things that you would like to do. Everything is automatically kind committed there, recorded there. And if you would like to, uh. If you are satisfied with, uh, how things are, you just create a new one.

it, it's not called commit, it's called change there, but you create a new change on top of it. And if you, if you find out that you messed up like three steps below, you can jump to the com, uh, to this, uh, commit before, like three commits ago, change something and it'll be automatically rebased and propagated up the, up to the newest one. Really nice, really nice. Love it.

Jared: Cool. Okay.

Tomáš: And I'm done with picks for today.

Jared: All right. All right.

Katja: Great.

Jared: then let me just summarize here for folks about Elm Camp. It'll be in Olomouc, uh, Czechia, in Czech Republic. And it'll be June 15th through the 18th, 2026 and it's Unconference format. And you should come. And even if you are only Elm curious or you're a functional programmer and you enjoy the paradigm, please come and Katja.

You had something you wanted

Katja: Yeah, I was just gonna remember, remind people that a lot of people do actually bring their partners. Some people bring children, um, and we do have sessions of like, where, you know, those people get involved and they can get involved as much or as little as possible. But some people do see it like a little, you know, away break that they can include their family in, um, or, or their friends.

So yeah, so it's, we'd like to encourage that as well.

Jared: that is a great point. Great point. Thank you, Katja. Okay. Yeah. So that is Elm Camp and it'll be at the website elm.camp. You can find all that information and tickets. Well, I think we're trying to plan to have this out by the time or around the same time that tickets go on sale. So, um, this is recorded at the end of January and I think they're going on sale.

When is it

Katja: mid-February we hope like it could be any day now. We're just waiting. It's all volunteer contributions, so we're waiting for everyone to have time to get that all put together, but should be any day now, so we'll let you know. But Yeah.

Jared: Yeah. So hopefully by the time you're hearing this or at the time you're hearing this is

Katja: should be.

Jared: have it. Yeah. We'll have a, the tickets up and so Yeah. Great. And.

Katja: don't have, we, we don't have endless capacity either. We, we, we have like quite small venues as well, so like I wouldn't leave it to the last minute to buy or ticket. Um, if we do get overwhelming response, then we'll, we'll be, yeah. flexible, uh, flex out to another venue maybe. But um, but yeah, I would

Tomáš: more or less, if you, if you listen to this episode, just go to the elm.camp site and you will see whether there are tickets or not, whether or, and this is the universal statement. For any day of the year. Of any year, probably. Right. Next year it'll be the same, hopefully.

Katja: Yeah,

Yeah.

Tomáš: Yeah.

Katja: Yeah.

Tomáš: you re-listened this check, check the site again, you'll never know.

Jared: yeah. There you go. I

Katja: That's true. 2028, it'll still be there. elm.camp. There may be tickets on sale. Yeah, it won't be in the Czech Republic though, probably in 2028, but

Tomáš: It'll be in some other place.

Jared: Great. Alright, well thanks to all the folks listening out there. Please rate and share if you're enjoying the show. Thanks to Tereza, I wanna say this mentioned this from earlier, uh, for introducing Tomáš to Elm. So you and

Katja: you very much.

Tomáš: Thank you very much. No, thank, thank you. Thank you all because I love, I came, I came for the language. I stayed for the community.

Jared: Yeah. Yeah, well put.

Katja: And thanks Jared for keeping Elm Town going. It's really, really important, really inspiring, and really great. The, yeah, the way you've held it, it's good.

Tomáš: thank you. I see you at at Elm Camp.

Jared: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you all. You're welcome. And, uh, I thank you all the organizers of Elm Camp for your time and including those who weren't able to make it, uh, on this call. And, um, I hope to be able to see you all at Elm Camp this year. See you and, uh, thanks Katja and Tomáš for coming to Elm Town.

Katja: Yeah. Thanks for having us. See you again soon.