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Welcome to Podcast Awesome, where we chat about icons, design, tech, business, and nerdery with members of the Font Awesome team and the broader Awesomeverse. Every company has a name for the week everybody flies in. You know, the offsite, the summit, the all-hands. At Font Awesome, ours is called the Snuggle. Yes, really, it's called the Snuggle. And the first thing anyone wants to know is how a software company ends up calling its most important meeting of the year the Snuggle
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I'm your host, Matt Johnson, and wouldn't you know it? Here I am at the time of this recording at yet another Font Awesome Snuggle. So it felt fitting to bring together the top hits of all things Font Awesome Snuggle from the Podcast Awesome episode vault
Love the name of the Snuggle. Travis, if I'm remembering, uh... Well, you tell the story of the Snuggle, how the name came about. That- that's good stuff.
Travis: Oh, man, if I remember right, I think, well, when it was just the four of us, we would, we would get together, uh, two people lived in Boston, two people lived in Missouri.
Every other quarter, we would go spend time there, and, uh, we'd go out to a place on the Cape, and we called them the Cape Cuddles for a while. And I- I don't remember how it became Snuggle. So a- a- and
Dave: partially is that like, it is such an absurd word-
Travis: I think that's really what it is ...
Dave: for adults to use- Yeah
for [00:02:00] something that is work-related, and like very work... You know, like it- Yeah ... right, like, uh-
Matt: It should be qu- the Quarterly Sync, people.
Travis: Yeah.
Dave: Right, i- in- in an effort to like, to- to make fun of and- and make, just make fun of businessiness to begin with, right? To make fun of businessing to begin with, uh, l- let's go with like an absolutely ridiculous name for this, right?
So that's the name, Four Dudes, Two Cities, a Beach House on the Cape, and Cape Cuddles. I love that. And that worked fine when there were four of them, but Font Awesome kept growing and everybody hired work from home.
And remote work gave everybody something. And if you'd asked Rob Madol, Font Awesome's principal software engineer, it also cost them something
Rob: / What I think you gain from remote work and from setting up your company in, in, in that fashion [00:03:00] is there is a level of focus that you can get by not being distracted in an office all day.
Matt: Mm-hmm.
Rob: If you leverage that well, then you can accomplish a lot and you can move forward as a company. People can grow and get better in their craft.
You can get work done.
Matt: Mm-hmm.
Rob: I, I truly think that remote work is, is a great way to enable that. The trade-off is that you now get disconnected from the people that you're working with. It's, it's a lot easier for them to become a resource or someone that will do the thing you don't wanna do or can't do, and now we're, um, in the name of accomplishing work and getting stuff done, we're not getting that human thing, that thing that we have identified as so important.
Mm-hmm. That's, that's one of our core values is treating each other well and taking care of each other. Well, remote work is, is... it works against that. It took me a while to realize Dave would always expound the value of [00:04:00] those. And then the first few, I would be annoyed- ... because I wanna get work done.
Matt: Uh-huh.
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Matt: Okay, so hold that thought. We'll be coming back to Rob because while Rob was busy being annoyed, some other things were happening at The Snuggle. At the start of 2023, Jory told me about one of them
Jory: /
Actually, in fact, one of the, one of the things we released towards the end of last year kind of had its roots in the most recent snuggle, which is the, the icon wizard. Mm-hmm. And that was, uh, that is on our site now, and it's a, it's a pretty cool way... We've got a lot planned for it, but right now it's a pretty cool way to just take any Font Awesome icon and pretty easily add, um, any modifier to it.
Matt: Well, that's one thing that came out of a week in Bentonville together. [00:05:00] And, uh, here's another one, except this time it's, it's not a feature, it's actually a person, and that person is Cory Leviska
Cory: / i, I actually remember very well the day that...
I mean, you guys obviously were thinking about stuff and talking about stuff before this ever happened, but I remember the day it sort of went down for me, and it started with me. I was, I was at work, at home, at work. And I see this like doink on Twitter, and it was like, oh, Dave Gandy followed you, and I was like, "Oh, I, I totally know that guy."
In fact, you know, been using Bootstrap for years, and Font Awesome was pretty much the unofficial official Bootstrap icon library. And then a few minutes later, doop, direct message from Dave. And so, and, and I, and I think a few hours later, maybe even an hour or so later, I was on my porch outside talking to him, and then, what, what, what was it?
Like a few weeks later if that, I was, I was in Arkansas having the time of my [00:06:00] life with, like, what felt like a new family.
Robot: Mm-hmm. That's
Cory: awesome. And, uh, this is actually my third trip out here. Yeah. And it's pretty awesome, and you guys have just been incredible. So just, uh, that was sort of a life-changing moment for me, a career-changing moment for sure, uh, going from a very, very big company with hundreds of thousands of people- Yeah
to, you know, 18.
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Matt: hundreds of thousands of coworkers down to 18 And then his first snuggle
so Cory, uh, glad to, to have you here and to meet you here the first, your first Snuggle. First of all, how, how, how was the Snuggle? Did you think maybe you were joining in a cult initially when we called it-
our s- our, our biannual meetup, uh, is called The Snuggle. What's your first impression?
Cory: I mean, you saw the shirt I showed up in, and, and it was, uh, the Snuggle bear, and it said, "The Snuggle
Snuggle Bear: Is Real." [00:07:00] Snuggle is the best choice because there's a lot of softness in a little Snuggle
Cory: Well, I'm all in. Oh, yeah.
It's, it's awesome. Um- Everyone I talk about the Snuggle to, they're like, "The w- the what?" Um- It's, it's so I think I share the same awkwardness or, or the ambition to make people feel awkward when we talk about it- That's right ... as Travis and Dave.
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Remember the icon wizard, the thing that Jory said came out of the snuggle? Well, it didn't stay small, and a couple years later, and Ed and Francis are still pulling on that thread
Frances: /
It's a toy. Yeah, I think that's where it started, right? It's just a little side project. Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of snuggles, and you roped me into working on it with you.
And I got, I was hooked just 'cause it was fun.
Ed: Yeah. [00:08:00] Most of this work did come out of our snuggle. After, you know, the, the success of the Icon Wizard, I kept thinking, "Well, what else could we do?" Putting a modifier on an icon through the Icon Wizard is great, and I, I kept thinking like, "What if we pushed it farther?
What other things could we do with this?" And then, you know, talking with Mike and Frances, it just kind of came up, and this has just turned out to be a really great idea, so.
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Matt: And these projects have a name, by the way, because obviously, of course they have a name. They're called Snacktivities
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Yeah. So the reason we call them snacktivities is because they are little bite-size, uh, projects small enough to just be able to get done in a week.
Uh, so a lot of times they involve kind of collaboration between a couple of different people, um, because it's kind of neat whenever you're able to y- everybody's in person. [00:09:00] There are things that you can only uniquely do when you're in person, so we try to take advantage of that, and that's what snacktivities have typically been.
But when everybody's in, there's a lot of stuff going on, and it's generally pretty hard to get that done. So usually there's maybe one or two that people finish in a given week. Uh, they turn out pretty neat. We've got some really cool features that have come out of those. Um, the, uh, Font Awesome reusable tidbits and, uh, parts.
Font Awesome reusable tidbits, otherwise known as icon farts. Wait, I'm, nope, they got renamed. It's the icon wizard.
/
And then, for a while anyway, there were no snuggles at all
Matt: / [00:10:00]
Uh, yeah, I mean, how's it going this time? We had to, we had to cancel a few of them because we're in COVID times. Yeah. You wanna make sure- Yeah ... it was a safe time to meet. Uh, how, how did they start?
How are they going now? Is it still a good cadence for Font Awesome?
Travis: Yeah, we often look at that and revisit that and, you know, when you're in a worldwide pandemic, what does that mean? Yeah. And so, yeah, we had to miss some, and you could definitely ... You could feel it.
Matt: Yeah.
Travis: You, you know, there was, there was a lot of
It's like, "Oh, man, I really, I was really looking forward to that. I really needed to, to, to, to meet, you know, see these people again. I miss them." And then when you finally get to, to do it, and you ... We made sure we, we, we just kept on top of things, made sure we could make it as safe as possible for everybody.
And then, you know, we got to meet, and then it was just like, "Oh, this is, this is amazing," so much so that, like, by the end, you're [00:11:00] probably the most exhausted- Yeah ... in work- Mm-hmm ... versus the other times when we don't meet just because- Yeah ... there's just a lot of emotion and just a lot of, a lot of goodwill.
/ Mm-hmm. And, you know, when a lot of your medium is through, you know, a text interface, maybe you lose some context or you're not quite sure what somebody meant, you can get together and go, "Oh, yeah, I remember these, these people are awesome, and I love working with them," and, and you get to rebuild that. So it's almost like we emotionally snuggle.
Matt: Right. Yeah. Yeah, you can't, uh, you can't really, like, grind an ax when you're standing next to somebody making- Right ... chocolate chip cookies, you know? Absolutely.
Dave: But it's the, it's, it's the, it's the problem, uh, honest- it's the problem of, of technology and social media, right? Yeah. The lack of looking somebody else in the eyes and having any sort of history whatsoever to soften it and to recognize this is another human that you're talking to here.
Travis: Yeah. We love snuggles.
Matt: I told you a little earlier we'd get back to Rob. So last we heard from Rob, he was annoyed by the snuggles. Not only was he away an entire week [00:12:00] from his family, he could have been getting some work done, but here he was stuck at a snuggle
Rob: /
And Dave is making me come to whatever place we're, we're doing this, and I have to spend a week with everybody away from my family, and I hate- Yeah ... I hate, you know, like... But eventually I came to agree with him and realize that what we're doing is that we're, we're reseeding the relationships and strengthening those so that we can actually go back and get work done-
Robot: Mm-hmm
Rob: without beginning to treat each other poorly.
Robot: Mm-hmm.
Rob: Because if we never saw each other, if we never got to empathize and care for each other and say, "You know, how are you doing?" and, "How are things going?" If that care wasn't there, then what are we? We're just- Mm ... another one of the soulless companies that use people to make money.
/
Rob: Before COVID, it was kind of more of a controversial thing. There was a lot of... [00:13:00] And, and actually Y Combinator said that you can't do remote. They, they really discouraged that. Huh. But Dave and Travis did it anyway, kinda despite what they said.
What I think you gain from remote work and from setting up your company in, in, in that fashion is there is a level of focus that you can get by not being distracted in an office all day.
Matt: Mm-hmm.
Rob: If you leverage that well, then you can accomplish a lot and you can move forward as a company. People can grow and get better in their craft.
You can get work done.
Matt: Mm-hmm.
And that was 2023. Here's what the snuggle sounded like a year and a half later, October 2024, sitting down with [00:14:00] Dave somewhere between karaoke and game night
all right, we are here with Dave Gandy in the 2024 Snuggle, October, and, uh, having a great time, the usual, usual stuff and shenanigans, eating good food, hanging out with our friends, uh, and coworkers, and, uh- Occasionally getting some work done ... get- getting some stuff done- Yeah ... but mostly hanging out. Um, Star Wars game nights, movies, good food.
Mm-hmm. Karaoke. Oh, man, karaoke this year, uh, you got... You're gonna have to go next time. It was, uh, it was pretty amazing. Uh, don't worry, everything was recorded for posterity and blackmail. Yes. Yes, indeed. And, um, I have to say, honestly, I have to blame Ed that I have a Hoobastank chorus stuck in my head since about midnight last night.
Um, poorly sung. But, uh- That's okay ... yeah, good times.
Matt: All right, so just [00:15:00] one more bit here. Did you know that in tech, the average person stays at a job about 18 months? At that 2024 snuggle, the company was over 10 years old and nobody had ever left
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Um, the nature of loyalty is actually quite trivial. Um, sane humans respond to loyalty with loyalty. It's very, ve- it's this... Company loyalty is relatively trivial, and it's you have to actually be loyal to that person first. This is how loyalty- Right ... always works. This is how it's built.
Which brings us back full circle to where we started, the name
Travis: /
We're, we're just basically making fun of ourselves. Yeah. And it then seemed to resonate with the team, you know? Right. We're- And it's just like, we're gonna go to the snug- And when you tell... You know, it's become s- it's, it's become a commonplace that you'll start, I start hearing people, uh, you know, talk about their friends, they're like- Yeah
"Oh, I gotta go. We're gonna go meet- Yeah ... [00:16:00] for our snuggle." And everybody's like, "Wait, what? What is this?"
Dave: And it, and it's such a ridiculous- You're gonna have a snuggle? It's such a ridiculous name. That's ridiculous. It's got- My kids love it ... it's got this, it's got this great side effect- Yeah ... where you kind of now have to tell the story.
Yeah. You gotta tell the story. Sorry. Have to tell the story
All right, there you go. Well, I guess we just told the story of Snuggle. So here I am, here we are at the 2026 October Snuggle here right now, actually in my hotel room telling the story.
So wherever you are figuring out that balance between work from home and in person, hope it's going well for you out there. And, um, I don't know, how do you guys do it? We'd be curious to know. Anywho
As usual, Podcast Awesome is produced and edited by this guy speaking to you right now, Matt Johnson. The Podcast Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin. [00:17:00] and this is not a video production, so I didn't get Isaac's help this time,
But you know, anytime we do have a video production, Isaac just routinely is knocking it out of the park. So thank you, Isaac So I guess at this point you know what to do. Go make something awesome
Dave:
