Elixir Mentor

Nathan Hessler, organizer of ExMex and RBQ Conf, is back four weeks out from ExMex 2026 in Austin. We cover MCing Rails World, how he picks speakers and keynotes for a single track, what running a Ruby conference taught him, and the free CFP he built on Google Sheets that's turning into an agent friendly event harness. Then we get into TUIOS and agents that talk to each other, why PR review still matters, bootstrapping vs VC, and why conferences beat job boards for landing your next role.
Use code MentoredFriends for $50 off your ExMex ticket (enter it in the promo code field on the site, not the checkout pop-up).
00:00 - Introduction
01:38 - MCing Rails World and introducing DHH
05:45 - Picking speakers for a single track
08:26 - What makes a great keynote
10:41 - Why he doesn't curate topics
14:01 - Four weeks out: hurry up and wait
16:14 - How RBQ Conf went
18:42 - Scheduling a single track
19:50 - Using AI for conference marketing
21:58 - Privacy and what agents can see
25:36 - A free CFP built on Google Sheets
32:30 - An agent friendly event harness
38:52 - TUIOS and agents that talk to each other
43:23 - Why PR review still matters with agents
45:03 - MCP, skills, and usage rules
51:23 - Building is the easy part
56:30 - Bootstrapping vs VC
59:01 - ExMex promo code and swag
1:06:47 - Why go to conferences
1:09:00 - Hiring, AI slop, and referrals
1:14:02 - Do conferences make money?
1:18:27 - MicroConf comes to Austin
1:23:33 - Remote work still needs in person
1:27:07 - Free community tickets
Resources Mentioned:
- ExMex: https://exmexconf.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- ExMex community tickets: https://exmexconf.com/community-tickets?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- RBQ Conf: https://rbqconf.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- KinSwitch: https://kinswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
Connect with Nathan:
- X: https://x.com/spune?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhessler/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Hessler Consulting: https://hesslerconsulting.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
Sponsors:
- BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor
SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR
- Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
#ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

Alex Koutmos, CTO of EagleMMS and author of Elixir Patterns, is back with two books in beta: Programming Nerves, which gets web developers building hardware from Livebook, and Elixir For Finance, written with his brother Dimitri on real market and Federal Reserve data. Then we ask whether anyone still buys technical books, and get into running on one server, what canceled trials teach you, and a laid off engineer with 1,000 applications.
00:00 - Introduction
02:41 - Programming Nerves: from Etch A Sketch to joystick
05:36 - The Patio Defender
07:40 - Why the book starts in Livebook
13:12 - Is anyone still buying technical books?
14:40 - DHH's Campfire rewrite and knowing your tools
18:00 - Shipping without a staging environment
20:42 - Cold outreach and email reputation
28:27 - Elixir For Finance: Yahoo Finance and FRED data
33:57 - Info products after AI
38:51 - Start on a single server
43:05 - Lessons from a failed two sided marketplace
47:04 - Splitting EagleMMS with his brother
51:55 - What canceled trials taught me
58:03 - Putting your work out there and ignoring trolls
1:04:45 - Laid off, 1,000 applications, and the death of software engineering
1:10:10 - Standing out in a tough job market
1:15:37 - Niche SaaS for the trades
1:20:21 - Grok Bots for clips and cold email
1:23:21 - AI pricing and platform risk
1:28:08 - Writing books without AI, and where books go next
1:30:18 - AI training and the authors' class action
1:35:24 - Where to find Alex
1:37:24 - What to buy for Programming Nerves
Resources Mentioned:
- Programming Nerves: https://www.programmingnerves.dev/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Elixir For Finance: https://www.financialelixir.dev/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Nerves Livebook: https://github.com/nerves-livebook/nerves_livebook?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
Connect with Alex:
- X: https://x.com/akoutmos?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/akoutmos.bsky.social?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-koutmos-b8b2bb93?utm_source=elixir-mentor
Sponsors:
- BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor
SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR
- Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
#ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

Mike Hostetler, creator of Jido and ReqLLM, is back for round three. Jido 2.0 hit the top of Hacker News and took his docs server down with it, and Jido v3 betas are already on Hex. We get into agentic back pressure, why models write better declarative Elixir, why most actors don't need an LLM at all, durable workflows with Jido Flow, and the multiplayer harness he's building on OTP.
Plus Grok Bots and personal agents, reverse engineering bad IoT apps, and live questions from chat.
00:00 - Introduction
02:56 - The Jido 2.0 launch and a Hacker News hug of death
06:27 - Lessons from Ralph Wiggum loops
08:51 - Why models write better Elixir
11:44 - Agentic back pressure
14:22 - Jido v3's Spark DSL
20:48 - When do you need 10,000 agents?
26:28 - Q&A: A public actor mesh?
27:59 - Actors vs agents: Jido without an LLM
30:38 - Halo 2 NPCs and classical AI
33:36 - What's new in Jido v3
35:03 - Durable workflows with Runic and Jido Flow
39:34 - Property and fuzz testing with agents
42:27 - Who's building on Jido
44:27 - Q&A: TermUI and the Jido harness
48:28 - DASP, the Durable Actor Session Protocol
50:39 - Q&A: Pods, topologies, and the signal bus
55:01 - Grok Bots, Dots, and personal agents
57:20 - Reverse engineering IoT apps with an LLM
1:06:24 - LLMDB and LLM Catalog
1:07:51 - 600 PRs a month and vibe coded PRs
1:12:12 - The Founder Playbook skills repo
1:14:37 - Teaching and community after LLMs
1:17:31 - Will AI replace engineers?
1:22:57 - A hard lesson migrating Killswitch data
1:25:01 - What's next for Jido and the harness
Resources Mentioned:
- Jido: https://jido.run/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Runic: https://github.com/zblanco/runic?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- LLM Catalog: https://llmcatalog.dev/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Founder Playbook: https://github.com/getagentseal/founder-playbook?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
Connect with Mike:
- X: https://x.com/mikehostetler?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikehostetler?utm_source=elixir-mentor
Sponsors:
- BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor
SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR
- Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
#ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

Michael Lubas, CEO of Paraxial.io and the first guest ever on this podcast, is back to check in on the state of security. We get into Microsoft's record Patch Tuesday, why AI keeps lowering the bar for attackers, the OpenAI sandbox escape story, and whether the AI labs are overstating the risk.
Michael shares why cheap foundational checks still beat a frontier model, why small companies should skip bug bounties, and why Elixir gets no credit for its security. Plus live questions from chat.
00:00 - Introduction
02:34 - ElixirConf US and the Hex pentest talk
06:20 - Microsoft's record Patch Tuesday
13:50 - Engineers who stopped reading their code
14:54 - LLMs as offensive security engineers
17:40 - Sandbox escapes and the OpenAI incident
23:00 - Are the AI labs overstating the risk?
26:09 - The open weights debate
29:32 - Developer anxiety and the Rails World keynote
35:00 - Why it's getting worse for defenders
38:30 - Run grep before a frontier model
41:11 - Why Elixir has an edge right now
45:21 - Patch windows in the AI era
47:11 - Can a startup stop a nation state?
50:06 - Securing your Elixir app with AI
57:17 - Letting AI patch production live
1:01:38 - Learning security as a developer
1:03:42 - Why small companies should skip bug bounties
1:04:54 - Insecure MCPs and AI assistants
1:10:14 - Verifying beneficiaries in Killswitch
1:12:36 - Q&A: Simulating catastrophic events
1:13:25 - Q&A: Learning ethical hacking with AI
1:16:22 - Kids, social media, and regulation
1:23:17 - Q&A: Are garbage collected languages safer?
1:27:26 - Where to find Michael
Resources Mentioned:
- Securing Hex: https://paraxial.io/blog/hex-pentest?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- PortSwigger Web Security Academy: https://portswigger.net/web-security?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- The Web Application Hacker's Handbook (2nd ed.)
- Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
Connect with Michael:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaellubas?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Paraxial.io on X: https://x.com/paraxialio?utm_source=elixir-mentor
Sponsors:
- BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor
SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR
- Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
#ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor

Adam Gusky, solo founder of Blawgy, on how businesses get recommended by ChatGPT and other AI tools, and what technical founders get wrong about marketing. Adam went from a college wrestling meme page and 30 side projects to quitting his job, selling Blawgy as a hand-built service, watching it churn, and rebuilding it into a product agencies now run for their clients.
We get into SEO vs AEO, whether a post every day still works, and why most people will buy software instead of vibe coding it. I share how customers are finding Killswitch through AI answers, the Grok Bot team behind its marketing, and the partner program I'm building with attorneys and financial advisors.
00:00 - Introduction
02:19 - A college meme page and 30 side projects
04:05 - What Blawgy does
04:51 - Is SEO dead? SEO vs AEO and GEO
07:18 - How long before it works
10:34 - FoodBuddy and the menu item calorie play
12:21 - Agent readiness and llms.txt
15:23 - Customers finding Killswitch through AI
18:35 - Quitting the job to build Blawgy
22:12 - From hand-built service to real product
24:26 - Guardrails and multi-pass quality checks
26:17 - The Blawgy pixel and refreshing old posts
33:30 - Why people buy software instead of vibe coding it
38:37 - Handoff plans for solo founders
45:23 - Blawgy's stack, AI coding tools, and Tmux
54:06 - Marketing Killswitch with Grok Bots
56:31 - CAPTCHAs, bots, and AI slop on social
58:48 - A partner program for attorneys and advisors
1:01:09 - Local cold outreach that gets replies
1:03:02 - Why Blawgy sells to agencies
1:09:50 - Tiered pricing and finding agencies with Apollo
1:13:23 - SEO agencies, backlinks, and a cold email experiment
1:16:34 - Is a post every day overkill?
1:19:08 - Building an AI podcast producer
1:27:42 - Where to find Adam
Resources Mentioned:
- Blawgy: https://blawgy.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- MyFoodBuddy: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/myfoodbuddy/id6505124191?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Is It Agent Ready: https://isitagentready.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
Connect with Adam:
- X/Twitter: https://x.com/adamc0dez?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Blawgy on X: https://x.com/blawgyseo?utm_source=elixir-mentor
Sponsors:
- BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io/?utm_source=elixir-mentor
- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord?utm_source=elixir-mentor
SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR
- Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor

#ElixirLang #MyElixirStatus #ElixirMentor