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

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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

Brice Ayres, founder of Axio Intelligence, on fractional engineering and what changes when one senior engineer can run a team of AI agents. Brice went from the Army and a 3.7 million follower Facebook cause to finding Elixir at Topgolf, leading engineering orgs, and going out on his own.

We get into managing agents like an engineering org, whether you still need to read every line, and why Ash keeps LLMs on the rails. I share how a team of Grok Bots handles marketing, support, and QA for Killswitch, and we close with Brice's playbook for cutting cloud costs.

00:00 - Introduction

02:51 - Web dev class, the Army, and a viral nonprofit

08:38 - Finding Elixir at Topgolf

13:00 - What is fractional engineering?

16:10 - Vibe coding and why engineers still matter

24:03 - Think like an engineering manager

26:32 - Reviewing AI code, Ash, and established patterns

29:55 - Offmic, a live AI podcast producer

35:18 - Running agents like an engineering org

40:51 - Read-only agents in prod and self-healing infra

42:05 - A Polymarket bot with agent consensus

47:06 - Marketing Killswitch with Grok Bots

52:06 - Lighthouse scores and agentic browsing

56:13 - Getting found by LLMs

59:27 - Order with Surf: agentic food ordering

1:02:48 - Agent QA and local testing with K3s and Floci

1:05:40 - Data labeling, synthetic data, and edge AI

1:08:55 - Nerves, Peridio, and Avocado OS

1:11:47 - Bot traffic, analytics, and self-hosting

1:16:00 - Hardware stories and real-world edge cases

1:26:24 - When engineers ship faster than you can plan

1:29:10 - Monoliths, Postgres scaling, and ETS

1:36:40 - Where to find Brice

1:37:44 - Cutting cloud costs: logging and AZ traffic

Resources Mentioned:

- Axio Intelligence: https://axiointelligence.com/?utm_source=elixir-mentor

- Grok Bot: https://x.ai/news/introducing-grok-bot?utm_source=elixir-mentor

- Killswitch: https://killswitch.app/?utm_source=elixir-mentor

Connect with Brice:

- X/Twitter: https://x.com/briceayres?utm_source=elixir-mentor

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briceayres/?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

Mark Cotner is a DBA managing around a thousand databases by day and a telecom CTO by night — building hospitality cable networks for RV parks, nursing homes, and apartment complexes at 100% annual growth. In this episode, he walks through the infrastructure, the business, and the two-year project that just landed on Hex: Timeless, an embedded observability suite for Elixir built on Rust NIFs, hitting 3 million metric inserts per second with 14:1 compression.

We get into what a hospitality network actually looks like — branded cable hardware, DOCSIS provisioning, and mesh Wi-Fi across dispersed sites — and how Mark's team handles monitoring across thousands of cable modems using a full Elixir stack (DHCP, TFTP, NTP, and Ash). He also shares how a frustrating Ansible setup led him to build something he thought should exist: a lightweight, embeddable observability backend that drops into a Phoenix app in under five minutes via Igniter, with less than 5% CPU overhead.

The technical core of the conversation covers the Timeless architecture in depth — PCO compression for metrics, OpenZL for logs and traces, 15 rounds of iteration before landing on a single consolidated Rust NIF, and why the Elixir-to-Rust translation layer ended up being the real bottleneck. Mark also talks benchmarking against Victoria Metrics on a 192-core AWS ARM instance, the custom C web server (Rocket) he built to cut HTTP latency 30x below Bandit, and how supervision trees let him pack an entire DOCSIS provisioning stack into one Elixir app without worrying about cascading failures.

Whether you're curious about Elixir in telecom, Rust NIF development, time series database internals, or just want to hear what 30 years of observability experience looks like applied to the BEAM, this one is packed.

Resources Mentioned:
- Timeless on Hex: https://hex.pm/packages/timeless_phoenix

- Timeless website): https://timelessmetrics.com

Connect with Mark:
- X/Twitter: https://x.com/awksedgreep

SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR
- Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com

Sponsored by BEAMOps — scalable Elixir deployments and infrastructure migrations, authors of Engineering Elixir Applications: https://beamops.co.uk
Elixir AI Collective Discord — your community for coding Elixir with AI: https://agentjido.xyz/discord

In this episode of the Elixir Mentor Podcast, I sit down with Amos King, Senior Staff Backend Engineer at Adobe, founder of Binary Noggin, and longtime Elixir community contributor. We dig into mentorship, knowledge sharing, and the team dynamics that make software organizations actually thrive.

Amos traces his non-traditional path into software — from structural engineering to manufacturing automation to Erlang on Navy submarines — and explains how that background shapes how he thinks about building reliable systems. We talk about his decade running Binary Noggin, why he ultimately made the move to Adobe, and the hard lessons learned when the consulting market shifted. From there the conversation goes deep on team composition, why diverse backgrounds matter more than uniform credentials, and the mindset shift from object-oriented to functional programming.

We also get into the practical side of Elixir: when GenServers are the right tool and when they're not, why vibe coding worries him from an engineering quality standpoint, and why teaching is actually a selfish act that benefits the teacher most. We close out with what separates a real staff engineer from a senior one, a call for the Elixir community to revive local meetups, and a real-world database query optimization story that reframes how to think about performance problems.

Resources Mentioned:
- Binary Noggin: https://binarynoggin.com

Connect with Amos:
- X/Twitter: https://x.com/Adkron
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amosking/

SPONSORS
- BEAMOps: https://beamops.co.uk
- Paraxial.io: https://paraxial.io
- Jido: https://agentjido.xyz/discord

SUPPORT ELIXIR MENTOR
- Elixir Mentor: https://elixirmentor.com