The Art of Teaching Laravel With Christoph Rumpel  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Laravel Podcast]] - Full Title: The Art of Teaching Laravel With Christoph Rumpel - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/5eb54a9e-a7b3-4966-8921-339b99ac8e15 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **First Pull Request Sparked His Journey** - Christoph's first Laravel contribution was a small, messy PR to add a plural method to a DB facade. - That early interaction launched his long involvement in the Laravel community and learning curve. Transcript: Christoph Rumpel To the framework, must I remember my first PR. So I can also mention this for a couple of seconds because I had this idea. There was this method. I think it was on the DB facade. It was something like get table. I can't even remember, but there was one method and I needed the plural version of the method. And I thought like, Hey, this is something that I maybe could PR to the framework. And I never had done a pull request before. And I was like, okay, how do I do this? And then I found this blog article by Dries Wins, which was back then also doing something else, not working at level. And I also messaged him, Hey, I want to do this PR. Can you help me a little bit? And I did this PR and it was super simple PR, but I messed up a lot of things like the formatting. Everything was where people like, Oh my God, this guy, maybe I should do it myself. It's easier than accepting this pull request. But that's how I got into the framework. That's one thing I still remember. ([Time 0:01:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2fcb19ed-b316-4240-a744-d650cf1f96fa)) - **Applied After A Video Opportunity** - Christoph hesitated to apply to Laravel until Taylor asked for people to make a few videos weekly. - He created a standout application video, sent it, and joined Laravel part-time making videos. Transcript: Christoph Rumpel And I think there were like 10. And then at some point Taylor tweeted, I still remember it. He said like, Hey, I need some help with creating videos for Laerval, maybe one or two videos a week. If you're interested, just message me. And then I was like, hmm, maybe this is something that maybe is a better fit because I was always between, I was always a developer, but I always had this very creative side in me. And I wasn't sure, am I fully a developer? Am I fully doing videos and creative stuff i was somewhere in between so that's why i always hesitated and i felt like maybe this could be something that leads into yeah a job at level that Would be my perfect fit and he also said it was like one or two videos it wasn't a full time gig so i thought i should give it a try one way i said if i didn't try it i surely would regret regret It yeah so i still remember the whole night i was laying in bed talking to my wife should i do this i talked to a few friends and yeah everybody said yeah you should try it so the next day i still Remember it was a saturday and just had our first kid. I'm not sure how old she was, but maybe a couple of months. And she was like, you take the day, you do the video and you can repay me later. And yes, but the whole day I was locked into my office, thought about, okay, if I wanted to apply, it should be something cool and special. And I don't want to be a guy message. I think i'm the right fit please hire me you always want to be on the top 10 of people applying for the job and you really want to stand out and thought like if i want to apply for this job doing Videos i should do a video yeah and the day before i was already in bed thinking about what the concept of the video could be and i woke up, go to my office. I was there, I don't know, five, six, seven hours. And I did everything. And at the end of the day, I sent it to Taylor. And yeah, a few weeks later, I joined the team. Matt Stauffer Very cool. Christoph Rumpel Part-time doing videos for two days a week. ([Time 0:04:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e685f41e-95a9-4b27-8449-721ffa37fd7f)) - **Learn Platform Complements Documentation** - Laravel created Learn to offer more than docs for newcomers and rising contributors. - They aimed for short, practical courses to onboard people quickly and effectively. Transcript: Christoph Rumpel Because we always felt like if you're coming to Lerval, and Lerval is growing, the team is growing, but also the community, our products. So a lot of new people come to Laravel, to the documentation. As you know, we have really good documentation, but still we felt like we want to give people a little bit more than just the documentation example. We want to give them a little bit more with those two video courses, which we just created. So we're not trying to be the next Laravel cast. We love Jeffrey. We love what he does. But yeah, we just wanted to have something on our side officially for new people. And that's why we created the Learn Platform and the PHP Fundamentals course and the Getting Started with Laravel course. ([Time 0:08:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9953426e-2dc1-4dee-88d8-6db77f576799)) - **Teach Fundamentals Through Practical Shorts** - Teach essentials practically by building short, focused episodes that show usage in context. - Prioritize the most useful constructs and point learners to deeper resources if needed. Transcript: Christoph Rumpel Yeah, so basically it's a PHP Fundamentals course. We want to show people, especially because we have more people also coming from other languages to Laravel, because they see that Laravel has an amazing ecosystem. It's so productive, and a lot of developers come here, but they're not that familiar with PHP. So we felt like we have to do this PHP fundamentals course. And we also had the goal to be both courses just around one hour in length. So we really had a hard time thinking about what do we put into the course. And we are all fans in Leavel, especially with being very practical. And yeah, just going in, doing some things without too much overhead. And that's what I also tried with the PHP fundamentals course, give you the most basic things that you need to know about PHP, like variables, function, classes, all those basic constructs That you have in PHP, but in a very practical way so that you have the small episodes, five to 10 minutes, and you just get started very easily. And without thinking about all the other things that you maybe can know or learn about PHP, we want to give you a showcase, hey, this is what you can do in PHP. And of course, if you want to learn more, there are lots of resources to dig deeper if you want to. ([Time 0:09:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9d95d20c-3a63-40ab-978d-63646aa66a6a)) - **Scale Requires Production And Collaboration** - Creating for Laravel demanded higher production and collaboration but retained Christoph's core video approach. - Team input raised quality and pressure, while his narrative strategy stayed consistent. Transcript: Christoph Rumpel It's funny because a lot of things that have changed from switching from my own videos, my own courses to doing stuff for Laravel, but there was a lot of things that haven't changed. So for example, I still do videos very much the same way that I did before. So I always tackle them in a very specific way. So maybe here's something new that you can use in Laravel. And I'm thinking about what is the state that you were in before? What is maybe an issue that I have with the state? Then here's this new feature and this helps you to overcome this. And that's what I do with most of my videos. Show the people not just here's this feature. You can use it like this, but give them perspective, give them little demos, examples. And yeah, take them on this little journey from here's where you are, or probably might be. This is maybe some of the things that could be improved and here's how we can help. And here's where you can be if you want to. And this is a very simple strategy for most of my videos, and I still do this for LeaVal. So this hasn't changed at all. But of course, I'm doing now videos on the LeaVal channel for way bigger communities. So I thought like, okay, I have to change a few things. I level up my studio here. So that's all what I built just right before the job. So I can bring in a little bit more professionality to my videos and a better look and of course i have now a team when i started at leal i was the only one doing videos so for the first i don't Know one year i just did everything on my own which was also cool but now of course i have a team now we talk about topics that are interesting i have josh next to me doing a lot of videos too. So we have the DevRel team, but we also have the marketing team now with a lot of people. So of course, there's a lot more input, a lot more people that I can talk to. We can discuss things. So yeah, this side has changed a lot for sure. And also the pressure because I'm doing videos for Laval. So they really have to, they better have to be good. ([Time 0:11:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f69a4f0b-ffbe-49cb-be30-a6eb5fbda985)) - **Be Both Engineer And Communicator** - DevRel combines engineering and community representation; be ready to build and communicate. - Contribute code, create content, and act as a bridge between the brand and the community. Transcript: Christoph Rumpel Yeah. So one funny thing is Hank, our leader of the marketing team, he once said in the podcast, if you're going to hire a DevRel, the first one that you hire for a team should be someone who is Not a DevRel person. And I thought about this a lot because it was the same case for me. So I had no idea what DevRel was before when I started doing the things that I do. And I wasn't hired as DevRel when I started at Laval. I was just hired for doing videos. And in some way, I'm still doing just videos. It's a little bit different for Josh and the other people of the team because they work more on also our marketing sites, building the learn platform. So there's a lot of things that the team was working as well. But I'm a little bit in a unique position inside our team because my focus is mostly on the YouTube videos because that's what I'm good at and very productive. And yeah, the others help a little bit more with the other things to do. But if you're in the team, you should be able to do videos, but also help with coding. And yeah, we also do a lot at conferences. So the last time I wasn't there, but Josh and Chris also set up this little YouTube video studio at the Laracon with all the interviews and the shorts video we did, which really turned Out really well. So, yeah, you have to be a good developer, but also someone who can represent the brand, the community, the brand a lot and be this communication point between the brand level and the Community. So I think that's why it's called DevRel Engineer, because it's a combination of being an engineer and also being able to talk to the community and be for them as well, be there for them. ([Time 0:13:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/84177253-aa3c-4be9-aa75-1bda4a11b42f)) - **Automating Video Prep With Tools** - Christoph experiments with AI and Remotion to programmatically generate video assets and animations. - He automates preparation steps like generating Notion pages of PRs and authors to speed video creation. Transcript: Christoph Rumpel And also, now with AI, and currently I'm experimenting a lot with Remotion. Do you know this tool? It's a React tool to create videos through code. Oh, cool. Matt Stauffer Okay. Christoph Rumpel And it's super interesting. I'm not that familiar with React, so I have a little bit of a hard time, but with AI, a little bit help of AI, I experimented a lot. And the cool thing is you can just create anything, move it around and make videos from it in very good quality. And it gives you a lot of possibilities on how you can programmatically create videos. I'm currently experimenting with, I have this What's New series on the Laravel channel where I tell the people about what's new in the framework with every release. And I already have a lot of tools that help me to prepare those videos. So I have an artisan command that gets me all the new releases. I pick one of them. It shows me all the features. I pick the ones that I want to include into my videos. And then it generates a Notion page with all the information about those features. That's fun. The authors of the PRs, the PR links, and the names of the people, because I always mention them in the videos. So there's a lot of preparation work that I need for these kind of videos. And I try to let AI help me as much as I can. And currently I'm experimenting if I can bring this information from AI to Remotion and create automatically some demo examples, for example. That's very interesting. And it's not like that I want to create a video completely with AI because that's not the direction that I want to go. There's too much of my personality and creativity that I want to bring into the videos. But I think it's very important to try those tools out and see what you can do. And especially with creating videos through code, there are a lot of things, animation, that you probably could do easier through just HTML, CSS animation, than doing this maybe in DaVinci, Resolve, and Fusion. That's what I use for my editor. ([Time 0:16:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eb6b8607-ba9d-4726-a674-c9f60c60c883)) - **Make Fast, Organized Intro Videos** - Accept that you'll often learn and teach a feature quickly; focus on creating a solid first explanatory resource. - Use organization, demos, and checklists to bridge initial knowledge gaps and follow up later. Transcript: Christoph Rumpel Yeah, that's a good one. So I often have to do videos about things that I just learned. So that's very tough. And there are for sure things that you can think about or that you don't have the experience so that you don't know all the gutches from those things. But I think I've become quite good at checking out a PR, checking out what's new, thinking about how you could use this, of course, reading the PR description and making a video about It the same day or the next day. And I think that's also a kind of skill that you have to bring if you want to do this kind of work, because yeah, that happens just a lot. Hey, here's Forge. Now we have zero deployments on every new site. And here on cloud, we have hibernation. I have no idea what hibernation is. And now I need to learn about hibernation. Yeah. And next day I'm doing a video about it. Matt Stauffer Yeah. Christoph Rumpel And it's not like faking it. It's more like giving the current view. And you can learn a lot about those things in just a couple of hours. And it is enough to make a good first video about it. And then maybe a year later, you can do another video about it with all things that you've learned. To be fast at learning things and preparing stuff and also knowing how you can, what you need in order to prepare yourself for a video, because that's also very different. ([Time 0:19:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7c0ea0c4-87c0-4b8c-ace6-e4b215b09e60)) - **Balance Levels And Voices In Teaching** - Teaching requires constant re-evaluation of level and format to hit beginner and advanced needs. - Diverse instructors and voices help learners find relatable explanations and styles. Transcript: Christoph Rumpel I think teaching in general is a topic that I'm very excited about. And I think it's also something that you constantly have to reconsider how we teach people and how we can bring the right amount of videos with the correct level of knowledge that you Need for the video. So bringing in basic videos, bringing in more advanced videos, I had queued up for you. Is course, it's always easier to bring in the more basic stuff because that's also for us easier. And I also believe that this is one of my biggest skills that I can create very simple videos, even though the topics are maybe a little bit more complicated. And I think this is still the case because that's also where I came from. I have no technical background. I just started coding when I had to work on websites for the band that I had when I was in my teenager days. And when you had to use CSS to customize your MySpace profile. Oh yeah. Matt Stauffer I very much remember that. Christoph Rumpel So there was this little tiny box where I could add CSS for, I don't know what it was for, but it gave you the possibility to just change the whole look of your MySpace profile, doing those Nice background images of the band and things. And that's how I started with CSS and then HTML. And then at university, I started writing PHP the first time and Java. And I was like, I think it was already 25. So I had also a hard time learning these things. And that's why I believe I'm still quite good at imagining what it is like for someone else to learning those concepts. And I think it's also very interesting. Also, again, with a set with the amount of beginner videos and more advanced video, what is the right amount of videos in those areas that you publish? And that's still something that we try to figure out so i don't think there's a good answer to that but especially now with the bigger team we have way more personalities and people bringing Different things into our work and our videos because it's also everyone who works at level brings their own personality their own way i know that a lot of people who are not that familiar With english maybe like me speaking a little bit more than someone who is more familiar with English because they can see themselves more in like someone who is not native or the other Way around. So that's also very interesting. So I think it's also good to have a very diverse team. And that's also what we're trying here with our DevRel engineer team. ([Time 0:21:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cf008a8a-0494-42b1-9dd8-71f8e5212a1b))