In this milestone 10-year anniversary episode of North Meets South, Michael and Jake reflect on a decade of podcasting, from their first awkward recordings and early Laravel community connections to the friendships, conferences, and recurring topics that have shaped the show over nearly 200 episodes.

A large part of the episode focuses on Michael's work-in-progress event ticketing platform inspired by the challenges of running Laracon AU. He explains the limitations of existing conference ticketing systems, the difficulties of collecting attendee information for multiple conference-adjacent events, and his vision for a more attendee-centric system that manages profiles, dietary requirements, event registrations, and conference networks across multiple Laravel events.

To wrap up, Michael and Jake discuss giving developers direct database access, the security implications of SSH access, database permissions, and Laravel filesystem configuration, including why enabling exception throwing for filesystem operations can help avoid silent failures.

Show links

• Laracon AU
• Laracon US
• TicketTailor
• Transistor
• Laravel News Podcast
• No Plans to Merge
• Notes on Work
• Talking Businessly
• Larabelles
• LaraProm
• WalletWallet
• Laravel filesystem throw on fail

Michael and Jake are joined by Jason "JMac" McCreary to talk the impact of AI on Laravel Shift and modern upgrade workflows, and his latest Fast Laravel course focused on edge caching and application performance.

Jason shares how Laravel Shift has evolved alongside AI-assisted development, why recent Laravel releases have changed the upgrade landscape, and why he still believes there's value in keeping applications aligned with the latest framework conventions rather than simply running composer update. The conversation explores how AI tools are influencing developer workflows, the future of upgrade automation, and new ways Shift is integrating with agentic coding tools.

The second half of the episode dives deep into Fast Laravel, Jason's course on making Laravel applications dramatically faster using Cloudflare edge caching. Drawing on decades of web development experience, he explains why page caching remains one of the most effective performance techniques available, how Laravel's default stateful behaviour can prevent effective caching, and the practical steps required to achieve cache rates approaching 99% on real-world applications.

Show Links

• Laravel Shift
• Shift AI Skills
• Fast Laravel
• Separate `static` middleware
• Managed queues on Laravel Cloud
• Laravel Cloud

Michael shares a behind-the-scenes look at organising Laracon AU 2026, including the new committee-based CFP review process, the tooling built to manage the talk submissions, and how AI-assisted workflows helped shape the final conference schedule. The conversation dives into balancing technical depth with audience engagement, designing conference cadence to avoid cognitive overload, and why advanced technical talks are so difficult to execute well.

Jake and Michael also discuss the realities of crafting technical presentations, from simplifying code examples and avoiding "proof of expertise" syndrome, to using AI tools as collaborative thought partners when preparing talks. Along the way, they explore how conference organisers think about audience fit, production experience, practical takeaways, and keeping attendees engaged during deeply technical sessions.

Show links

• Laracon AU
• Model Context Protocol (MCP)
• Riff & Refine: Trust the Process