If you're going to work with Laravel -- or any tech stack -- you need to find the best way to learn it, and then you need to find the best way to stay up to date over time. Eric Barnes has been a member of the Laravel community since the earliest days; he worked at UserScape with Taylor when Taylor was building out Laravel 2, 3, and 4; and he runs Laravel-News.com, the largest and most comprehensive aggregator (and one of the larger creators) of Laravel-related content.