Irinia Nazarova is CEO of Evil Martians, a product development consultancy that works with startups and established businesses while creating open-source products and services.
Victoria talks to Irinia about getting a sense of what people are interested in learning about or what kind of problems they have, how consulting and product development complement each other, and of course, the question on everyone's minds: Is Evil Martians really evil? ?
Evil Martians (https://evilmartians.com/)
Follow Evil Martians on GitHub (https://github.com/evilmartians), Twitter (https://twitter.com/evilmartians), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/evil.martians/), or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/evil-martians/).
Follow Irinia Nazarova on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nonconstant/), or Twitter (https://twitter.com/inazarova).
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Transcript:
VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Irina Nazarova, CEO at Evil Martians, a product development consultancy that works with startups and established businesses while also creating open-source-based products and services. Irina, thanks for joining us.
IRINA: Hey, thank you for having me.
VICTORIA: You're welcome. Tell me a little bit about what's going on in your world this week.
IRINA: So I just returned from Rails SaaS in Athens, which was pretty incredible. It's a smaller conference, but it has amazing vibes, amazing people. And, like, I just loved it there in Athens.
VICTORIA: Mmm.
IRINA: And, yeah, I wonder how your experience was? Because I know you also went to Japan, right?
VICTORIA: Yeah, I went to RubyKaigi in Matsumoto last month. It was a good community, and to get to travel to a cool place was really fun. So I feel really lucky that I was able to get to go. Did you eat a lot of Greek food while you were there?
IRINA: Not that much. I was a speaker. So I was a bit nervous, and I skipped some meals. [chuckles]
VICTORIA: Oh no. [laughs]
IRINA: Just to prepare. But we did have a super nice dinner with Xavier Noria, and, well, we had some Greek wine. All right, we did that.
VICTORIA: That sounds fabulous. And, you know, I was going to ask you...one of my questions was about the conferences you've been attending because we met at RailsConf in Atlanta. And I saw you went to Rails SaaS and maybe some other ones recently. So, how has that been for you overall?
IRINA: It's amazing. I think, like, all the conferences are suddenly back. And the energy is different than maybe pre-COVID. I didn't really attend many conferences pre-COVID, but I did attend some. Now people are so eager to sort of reconnect. And me, I think, I feel like I'm only starting to make those connections. And it's so emotional to meet people that I only see on Twitter, but meeting them in person is magical for some reason. So this is what's happening. Like, to me, I'm just amazed by all this energy and support coming from the community towards many people, like, towards each other.
VICTORIA: I also feel amazed when I meet someone I've followed on Twitter for a long time but in real life [laughs]. I'm like, wow. That was Aaron Patterson for me. I was like, oh, this is someone I followed on Twitter a long time ago because I thought they were funny. And now they're a speaker at this conference I'm at [laughs], which is really nice. And do the conferences help you connect more to potential clients? Or what's, like, the business reason for attending all of these events?
IRINA: Good question. So I'm not expecting any, you know, direct sales to happen at the conferences. But, for example, I get to understand the clients, maybe better, the potential clients. And I get to conne