Podcasts about ActionScript

An airhacks.fm conversation with Christian Humer (@grashalm_) about: early programming experiences with DOS text Adventures and Captain Comic, transition from graphics design to computer science, work on Java Server Pages (JSPs) and point-of-sale systems, development of Swing GUI for touchscreens, introduction to GraalVM and Truffle framework, ActionScript, Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex, explanation of Futamura projections and partial evaluation in Truffle, discussion on the challenges of implementing dynamic language runtimes, de-optimization in JIT compilers, Nashorn JavaScript engine vs. GraalJS, language interoperability in GraalVM, reuse of libraries across different programming languages, embedding of JavaScript and React in Java applications, comparison with PyPy in the python ecosystem, current work on bytecode DSL for generating bytecode interpreters, the importance of math in computer science and its relation to programming concepts Christian Humer on twitter: @grashalm_

Phil Alves, founder of DevSquad and LiveStats, is a software entrepreneur driven by building impactful solutions. From his humble beginnings, coding at age 12, to becoming a leader of development teams, his path has been marked by curiosity, determination, and a desire to improve developers' lives.Phil placed the start of his journey with Flash and ActionScript and then with PHP, with which he created his first business at the age of 16. We then discussed learning in the open, growing and selling his business. Moving to the USA, returning to school, and taking his first (and last) "job." We talked about his side business, which became DevSquad, his company of 100 people now. We talked about product developers vs. software developers. We discussed development cycles and customer relations. And we finished talking about the SaaS business he is creating, DevStats, and how to create hyper-performing teams.In this episode, Phil discusses his journey from a self-taught developer to an entrepreneur creating high-performing development teams. He delves into the challenges of growing a company and transitioning from deep work to managerial tasks. He also shares insights on building a solid company culture, fostering efficiency, and promoting a balance between productivity and preventing burnout. The conversation further delves into the role of data in improving team performance and the importance of product mindset in developers.If you want to learn more about fostering high-performing development teams and get inspiration from Phil's incredible journey, tune in to this episode!Three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:Learn from Phil Alves' journey from being a self-taught programmer to a successful entrepreneur. His experiences offer a unique perspective on the different paths one's career in tech can take.Understand the importance of strong company culture and the role of data in improving team performance. These are critical elements that can contribute to the success of any tech team.Gain insights into the importance of a product mindset in developers. This can help aspiring developers understand their work's broader impact and become more effective team contributors.Support the show

Few eras of gaming history are more legend filled than the British bedroom coder boom of the early 1980s.  Martin Wheeler wasn't just one of them but continues to be a pioneer or one-man coding in the VR space of today. Recorded March 2022. Get us on your mobile device: Android:  https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly92aWRlb2dhbWVuZXdzcm9vbXRpbWVtYWNoaW5lLmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz iOS:      https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/video-game-newsroom-time-machine And if you like what we are doing here at the podcast, don't forget to like us on your podcasting app of choice, YouTube, and/or support us on patreon! https://www.patreon.com/VGNRTM Send comments on twitter @videogamenewsr2 Or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vgnrtm Or Mastodon https://oldbytes.space/@videogamenewsroomtimemachine Or videogamenewsroomtimemachine@gmail.com Links: https://recluseindustries.github.io/website/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinwheeler/?originalSubdomain=uk https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,57393/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/dr-franky-and-the-monster https://www.mobygames.com/game/sorcery https://www.mobygames.com/game/zx-spectrum/dan-dare-pilot-of-the-future https://www.mobygames.com/game/dan-dare-pilot-of-the-future_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Dare https://www.mobygames.com/game/zx-spectrum/action-force-ii-international-heroes https://www.mobygames.com/game/prohibition https://www.mobygames.com/company/system-3-software-limited https://www.mobygames.com/game/dominator https://www.mobygames.com/company/bits-studios-ltd https://www.mobygames.com/game/gameboy/t2-terminator-2-judgment-day/screenshots/gameShotId,201379/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/warlocked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language) Surveillant - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ6DwiUIPk8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_VR https://www.mobygames.com/game/sentry_ https://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation-4/separation https://www.mobygames.com/game/ico  

Season 5.3 Opening, some of my history with Movies, TV shows and plays 第5.3季开篇，独白碎碎念一些我和影视剧的渊源 For more information, you can follow the WeChat public account: willyi_ You can also follow personal ins: willyi_ 更多内容，可以关注微信公众号：不著 还可以关注个人ins：willyi_ 「This Season」 I want to know, How the dramatic text affects you Act the part and speak for yourself Which one is more like you 我想了解， 戏剧文本在张力之外 对真实的你有何影响 演绎和发声 哪一个更像我们呢

Shawn Young is the CEO and Co-Founder of Classcraft, an innovative platform that motivates students using the culture and mechanics of games. Victoria talks to Shawn about edtech, behavior intervention, and the challenges he's faced with going from a homegrown tool to something big and out there in the world. Classcraft (https://www.classcraft.com/) Follow Classcraft on Twitter (https://twitter.com/classcraftgame), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/classcraftgame/), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/classcraftgame), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/c/classcraftgame), or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/classcraft-studios/). Follow Shawn on Twitter (https://twitter.com/_shawnyoung_) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnyoung1/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! 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 Shawn Young, the CEO, and Co-Founder at Classcraft, an innovative platform that motivates students using the culture and mechanics of games. Shawn, thank you for joining us. SHAWN: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Victoria. I'm happy to be here. VICTORIA: Wonderful, yes. So just tell me a little bit about yourself and maybe what brought you to start out as a teacher initially. SHAWN: [laughs] I have an interesting journey. I was originally a physicist, a physics major. Although I loved physics because it really gives you a deep understanding of the world, I realized that physics research in a basement with machines just on your own [laughs] wasn't for me, so that's when I started substitute teaching. I really wasn't going to go into education at all. It was just there was availability, lack of teachers. And it's kind of ironic. I really did not enjoy school. High school, in particular, was just a really challenging time for me, mostly because I just didn't see the point of it. I didn't have any problems in school. I had great grades, but I just was bored out of my mind. And so, as a teacher, I became really, really obsessed with making school meaningful for the students that were there, and because so many kids, so many learners just don't see the point. And so I did a lot of really cool project-based learning type of stuff. So that's where instead of lecturing the kids, you get them doing things and learning by doing. And so I was teaching physics, obviously. And so we were building hot air balloons and cannons and all kinds of stuff to study Newtonian physics. And kids were super happy to come to the class because we were doing some cool stuff. But I realized as that was happening that another part of meaning generation for kids and learners is the community and the social aspects. And so, I started thinking about how I can build community in the classroom, make the social experience of school relevant for them? And that's how Classcraft was born, really. I kind of put together my interest in motivating and building community with kids. I was a developer at the time as well, so I was able to develop a platform. And, of course, I'm a gamer, so I kind of put all those things together and built this platform in my classroom. VICTORIA: That's great. I was going to ask what skills or experiences from your teaching background translated to being a founder. SHAWN: That's interesting because clearly in the product...Classcraft was never meant to be a company. I already had a company. [laughs] I was freelancing as a developer for pretty large clients in New York. I was working with my brother, who's a creative director there. And we worked for Chanel for three years building apps and websites, and that was probably our biggest client. I wasn't looking to make a company. I just built it for me. It was my quest to make school meaningful and relevant. And after three years of just tinkering around with it with my students, I realized it was having a massive impact on their outlook, on the way they collaborated together, on their motivation. And because Classcraft is a platform that basically gamifies education, so kids level up and they earn points. They're on teams. They have a character class. All the things you would see in an RPG are translating to how teachers are running a school. And so I made a website just to talk about it after three years of this garage project I had going on. And the day that website went online, 130,000 people came to the website. It just started trending on Reddit gaming. And overnight, a lot of people were asking, "How do I download this?" I'm like, "You can't. There's no company." [laughter] So that's how the company started. Teaching is an interesting profession. I think that teaching is a job that requires you to, A, motivate and manage a whole bunch of people, so there's a lot similarility there to management. It's a group of humans that you want to work together to get to their full potential, just like your team should be. But then there's also independent planning. As a teacher, you have a set amount of time to get through X amount of curriculum. So you're always, you know, project management basically, 101 is the same thing as running a curriculum through the year. So there are a lot of those types of soft skills that translate really easily to entrepreneurship. And ultimately, as a teacher, you're responsible on your own for your own successes and failures, which is the type of attitude you need to have if you're going to be a successful entrepreneur is to be responsible, you know, [laughs] take control of your destiny a little bit. VICTORIA: Right. I hadn't thought about it from that angle. It makes a lot of sense. You're really an independent owner of that classroom, right? [laughs] SHAWN: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And trying to get humans to collaborate and do stuff sounds a lot like running a company. [laughs] VICTORIA: Right. I saw the tagline on Classcraft: relationships are everything. And I was like, that's a perfect DevOps kind of statement. [laughs] SHAWN: Yeah, that's funny. [laughs] We're thinking more like human relationships, but that's so funny [laughs] from the DevOps side for sure. VICTORIA: In and outside of the classroom, you need...it doesn't matter how great your technology is or your strategy. If the people aren't talking to each other and you don't have the right relationships, you're not going to be successful. SHAWN: Correct. And ultimately, that's the value proposition of Classcraft. Schools that don't build good relationships between students that don't do it between teachers and students, that don't do it between teachers and administration are dysfunctional. And what we're seeing in education today is one of the fundamental breakdowns that's happening and, you know, that's proxy for what's happening at large, and society is relationships are quite strange right now in schools, and that's making it really hard for them to be effective. VICTORIA: Right. It sounds like this app was built out of your direct experience and your direct experience working with these students. What do you find is unique in working with students, and how do you appeal to them as a user base? SHAWN: What's really special about edtech is that your buyer or the user that makes the decision to use the product is not the end user, and that's true in all B2B, SaaS. The decision maker who purchases the software isn't necessarily the employee who's going to use it. But in education, there are multiple levels. Like, if we sell to a district, they're the ones buying, but ultimately, they need to get the teachers to use it. And then, at the end of the day, the actual real users are the students. And so, there are a lot of design considerations when you think of UX. And even when you think of user permissions, there's a lot of complexity there in education because our goal is to build as much motivation and engagement mechanics as we can for kids. And so that means leveling up, and random loot drops, and all these things you see in video games but applying that to school. But then you need to build all this plumbing [laughs] basically to make it usable by a user who's the teacher who doesn't really know much about games, and that's changing as the teacher...average age of teachers is going down, a lot of retirements, et cetera, so that's changing. But at the base of it, the kids are really well versed in games, game mechanics, game culture, but the teacher who's running it is not. So we have to speak two languages, one of pedagogy, and classroom tools, and data, and saving time. These are the things that educators care about. And incidentally, they care about motivation and motivating the kids, and all of those things. But for kids, we're talking about avatars, and pets, and gear, and leveling up, and all this whole other set of language. And so when you think of design considerations, we always have to be thinking about how do I make this as motivating and engaging as possible for the kids, but how do I make it as easy to use and not complicated for teachers? Because if the teachers don't use it, then these kids aren't going to see the value anyways. So it's pretty complex because we don't have one single end user. VICTORIA: And so you have the challenge of making it fun for kids and then also providing useful and understandable data for teachers and probably parents and other people, right? SHAWN: Yeah, yeah, exactly. There are lots of stakeholders. [laughter] VICTORIA: So I want to ask more about how you make it fun, and then I also want to know more about the teacher's perspective, so whichever one you want to start with first. SHAWN: Perfect. I mean, those two questions are literally the placement of what Classcraft is. Classcraft is the Venn diagram between what in education is behavior intervention, so managing kids' behavior and motivation. And so, from a motivation angle, how do we make it engaging for kids? In essence, kids are earning points in Classcraft for things that they're doing in school that we want them to do. And by we, schools can configure whatever it is, but it'll be things like handing in homework, being respectful, being inclusive, participating, being on time, these behaviors that they want to see in kids to make them better learners. When those behaviors occur, teachers can give them points. And the points allow them to level up. As they level up, they each have a character. They have an avatar, and they can be warriors, healers, or mages. And based on that character class, they have a different role in the team. So they're playing in teams just like in an MMORPG or on a football team. And everybody has a different role within the team. And you win as a team. And so school is quite competitive. Kids are always compared to the class average and their grades. And there's a lot of competition happening in schools. What we've built is a way for kids to be motivated by collaboration. And so they're playing on teams. If they do good things, they get these points, and they level up. And there are millions of combinations of gear that they could buy for their avatar, but they're also unlocking real-life powers. And so these powers are things like, you know, in a video game, power could be like you could shoot a fireball. In Classcraft, shoot a fireball is the equivalent of you can skip a question on an exam, or you can go to the bathroom, or you can hand in homework a day late, or you can listen to music while you're doing your classwork, so giving them real-life privileges as they level up. And these aren't one-offs; they're skills that they have that they can trigger whenever they want, just like in a game. And some of those skills are things like being able to heal up your teammate because kids can also lose lives if they do negative things. So if you're late or you're rude, or whatever it is, just like in Mario, what's failing in Mario is falling in a hole, and what's failing as a student, it's not doing what you're supposed to do, or being a bully to other kids. And so, as that happens, they can lose lives. But then they can come in to help each other out. There are boss battles where they can fight monsters by answering quiz questions, et cetera. So all these motions that are ultimately the things that are happening anyways in school, what we're saying is instead of punishing kids or forcing them to do this stuff, make it feel like a game. Speak their language, use the same mechanics that we know are super effective at motivating players. Nobody is forcing people to play video games. Everybody's doing that of their own volition. It's the most popular cultural medium that exists today, well surpassing film, movies, music. And so, why are games so good at doing that? It's because they fulfill fundamental needs: being in control, feeling like we're progressing, social relatedness. That's what we're bringing to school. So that's the student side of it. The other side of it, behavior intervention, is...well, one of the biggest challenges for teachers is managing kids. It's not like showing you how to do a math problem; it's getting you to care about it, listen to it, stop disturbing other people. And so, a lot of time and energy is spent on classroom management for teachers. And so what we do is we use best practices there. For example, there's a lot of research out there in education that says that praising kids for good behavior is a lot more effective than punishing them. And so games are really good at praising you. You level up, and you gain points. It tells you your score. What we're doing here is giving them that framework but applying that to classroom management. And so instead of saying, "Hey, Victoria, stop goofing off," or "You're not dressed well, go to the principal," or whatever it is that's happening in schools, what we're telling teachers to do instead is say, "Hey if Victoria does something good, recognize her. Give her a high five." And in Classcraft, a high five is gaining points. And so we're shifting and applying this pedagogy, shifting towards a positive reinforcement mindset. And at the same time, because these high fives are digital, then you get all the data so you can know which behaviors did Victoria do at which time with which teacher? Hey, she didn't get a lot of points this week. What's going on with her? Maybe we should talk to her and see what's going on before her behavior escalates. And so there's a lot of value from a behavior intervention standpoint. But ultimately, it's super effective because the kids really care about it in a way that they don't normally care about classroom management. VICTORIA: Well, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm hearing something I've studied before when looking at technology organizations which is that growth mindset I think you're describing, the positive reinforcement, praising the effort for something versus their intrinsic skills. And that's something I love about teaching. I think that really, really translates to running a technology organization. SHAWN: Yeah, totally. Ultimately, what we're doing is giving schools and teachers a platform for really effective culture building. And what you're talking about is culture within a company, in essence, and it's really the same thing. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about managing a group of kids [laughs], and managing employees is super similar. It's all about what type of positive culture you are building. VICTORIA: I think there's something really universal about that. It's actually even true with dog training. I have a dog, and it's the same kind of motivational theory that works for them too. [laughs] SHAWN: Yep, yep. VICTORIA: I love it. And you mentioned that you built this tool yourself, and then suddenly, it became very popular, and now it's really, I'm sure, scaling. So what challenges have you faced with going from this homegrown tool to something big and out there in the world? SHAWN: Lots of challenges. [laughs] I would say working in education itself is a challenge. It's a pretty challenging vertical to work in. It's ripe for disruption at the same time, pretty conservative. There are a lot of forces working in education systemically not have it move forward. Working with schools and districts is challenging. They have a lot of requirements. And, of course, they're custodians of kids, so that's legitimate, but it does make it more challenging. One of the things that we had to evolve was we were very much a teacher-only tool when we started. I had built it as a teacher. Our user in mind was a teacher. Even our business model initially was selling to teachers basically. There was a free version, and they could upgrade to a paid version. And as we got more and more scale, you know, we have ten million-plus kids in the platform now. As we got more and more scale, what ended up happening was we were working more and more with schools and districts. And so we went from a B2C go-to-market and product vision to a B2B/enterprise where we have to roster 10,000 or 100,000 kids in one shot, so all the user provisioning, connecting to information systems that these districts have, et cetera, all of this ginormous plumbing that needs to happen in order for it to continue to be easy to use for every single teacher. And alongside with that, the other challenge is we were super appealing to teachers that were interested in games. [laughs] And so when you think of some teacher who's in their 60s and has never really played any games and just thinks that they're a silly waste of time, there's a different sales pitch that needs to happen there to get them on board and a different onboarding. One of the things we had to completely overhaul was the onboarding to make it really progressive. Classcraft, now when you start it, there's no avatar. It starts super lean on the feature side so that these teachers that are, you know, we're basically educating them as they're using the platform, educating them on all this game stuff. There are a lot of learnings in terms of what's our actual target audience. And if our target audience starts to be enterprise customers, how do we evolve our platform to appeal to a much more diverse type of persona from a teacher standpoint? VICTORIA: I was thinking, actually, a good friend of mine who is a teacher and has been running Dungeons & Dragons campaigns for us for several years. [laughter] SHAWN: There you go. VICTORIA: And, like, you'll love it. [laughs] SHAWN: Exactly. [laughter] VICTORIA: But I could see that being a challenge now that you're shifting your target business model, really, and how do you adapt to that? Mid-Roll Ad: As life moves online, bricks-and-mortar businesses are having to adapt to survive. With over 18 years of experience building reliable web products and services, thoughtbot is the technology partner you can trust. We provide the technical expertise to enable your business to adapt and thrive in a changing environment. We start by understanding what's important to your customers to help you transition to intuitive digital services your customers will trust. We take the time to understand what makes your business great and work fast yet thoroughly to build, test, and validate ideas, helping you discover new customers. Take your business online with design‑driven digital acceleration. Find out more at: url tbot.io/acceleration or click the link in the show notes for this episode. VICTORIA: What else are you looking ahead with Classcraft? What's on the horizon? SHAWN: There's a lot. Like I said, we have 10 million kids in the platform plus. But we have teachers in every single country you could imagine, and there's a universality to what we're proposing. We're not saying here's the best tool for fifth-grade math in the U.S. We're saying, solve this universal human problem that's prevalent in education. And so we have teachers in, you name it, Taiwan, and Australia, and Singapore, and all over Europe using Classcraft. And so there's definitely opportunity for us to look at the international landscape and identify opportunities. Another frontier beyond going out of North America is going beyond the brick-and-mortar experience of the classroom. A lot of what's happening in and around your software is actually not happening 18 inches from the screen. It's happening in this context where there are 30 other kids, and there are all these interactions going on. For example, if you made a reading app, you can imagine the kids sitting in a quiet space on their sofa at home reading this thing, but the reality that's happening is they're in a really loud classroom [laughs] with lots of other kids around them, et cetera. And so the design context for designing for edtech is really interesting. We have some views that are meant to be only on a projector in front of the class. And when that happens, the font size needs to be 80 point because a kid in the back needs to be able to see it. So the screen real estate you're playing with is pretty unique scenarios. Like, what does this look like at 120 feet, let's say, because people are using it in the gym? So interesting design challenges, but they have been really ensconced in the idea that a lot of how people are using Classcraft is with real-life physical situations. But Classcraft, in essence, we have an API. So you can also imagine behaviors that are not brick and mortar behaviors, like, if I'm being participative, that's something that a teacher would see and observe and give you points for. But there are 3,000 edtech platforms, and all of them have digital behaviors that teachers want to see. They want to see kids handing in homework in these platforms. They want to go see them complete assignments. They want to go see them participating in digital communities. These are all basically the new frontier for digital behaviors that are a part now post-pandemic of the ecosystem of education. And so we're really interested in connecting to other platforms. I don't need kids to be in Classcraft; I just need them every day. I need them to be earning points. And I'm happy if they're doing that in other platforms and that those interactions are rewarding them experience points and points in Classcraft. And ideally, automatically, that way, the teachers don't have to do anything. VICTORIA: And so you're integrating with all these different platforms, and you're working with all these different school districts. So you've had to make some difficult technology choices in your stack. Do you have any examples of those? SHAWN: Yeah, absolutely. When I started the company, I'd come out of programming in...I started building cool websites in ActionScript, [laughs] so that dates me a little bit. But I'd just come out of a decade of ActionScript and PHP. And I'm like, PHP does not scale, and it doesn't afford the same type of real-time interactions that you'd expect from a game. When I decided what the tech stack would be, right at the outset, it was, okay, we're going to do this all JavaScript. It's going to be Node. And at that time...now that's a pretty, like, anybody would make that decision. But this was nine years ago, and it wasn't as mature as it is now. And so that was a pretty ballsy move and one that we never looked back on. But we had a lot of things that we had to build ourselves because the libraries didn't exist yet. And we were really pushing the edge of what was possible in a browser, especially in a browser in school with a crappy internet connection. And often, they are on older browsers. Although it was the right decision to lean into the leading edge on the tech stack, it did afford us with a lot of specific challenges that we might not have had if we'd said, oh, let's just keep this super old school. Some other things that we've been challenged with over the years is just scaling the number of concurrent users is always a thing. When we started, we had a single database, one server, and I was doing all the DevOps. And a lot of what we've done since that is just move everything to services. So we've got, you know, MongoDB database-as-a-service. [laughs] We're all on Google Cloud now. From an IT standpoint, we think a lot about what stack we're going to be using. And to me, what really matters is build the product as fast as you can and as well as you can. So outsourcing all of the DevOps pieces to cloud providers is, in my opinion, [laughs] a really good use of funds versus maintaining it yourself and spending tons of money on sys engineers and architects. The reality is that for most products today, what exists as a service in the cloud already bundled is, you know, and we've got auto-scaling. When there are too many concurrent users, it automatically spins up new Docker servers, et cetera. So we've really evolved from this monolithic single-server approach to this imminently highly scalable solution that is all virtualized, but in doing that, moved all of it to services. And I think that's the right move because we're not, you know, if I was really, really core, if was, I don't know, [chuckles] an online video game, then the speed of connections and all these things become super important. But in our case, reliability, scalability is more important than the fine-tuning to a precise degree of specific tech infrastructure. And I'm seeing more and more founders now, Victoria, as well go-to codeless solutions as well. I think we're kind of abstracting a lot of what was core to product development from a tech side. You know, first, it was the DevOps, then it was the cloud, and even now, code, I think, is moving in the direction where we're systematizing, bundling, and having other services generate code more and more. I think we're moving towards that just in software in general. VICTORIA: Yeah, I think that is becoming prevalent. I do think low-code automation has also been coming around every 5 or 10 years or so. [laughs] I have the belief that technology never disappears; it just keeps building, and new tech gets created, and the user base shifts around a little bit. And, of course, for you as a technical founder, putting it all in Docker and setting up the auto scaling on Google is probably within your reach, whereas a lot of founders, that might be something more challenging, and you might need to have some support for. But that's essentially what we work on for Mission Control as well is helping teams set up their platform so that it will scale automatically that if there's an issue, you know about it in advance. [laughs] You can take care of it before it falls over, and that way, your users just see a reliable, happy system. SHAWN: I'm so grateful that I am a technical founder. [laughs] I know a lot of founders, and the ones that don't know how to code really are at the mercy of so many unknown variables. I'm not coding anymore, but I'm very aware of what's going on in the platform. And I think that helps me make better business decisions every day. So I have a lot of gratitude when I compare myself in that regard. VICTORIA: And I think it's really about communication then too. Like, having a good understanding of your system is helpful but being able to understand it well enough to then communicate it to other people, and what the value is, and how you want to invest money in different parts of the system. I think those are two things that having maybe a little bit more of experience in technology and then also having a teacher experience, I think, sets you up to be successful. But we also, of course, at thoughtbot, we offer a lot of that technical expertise to help founders navigate some of that. So there's a little pitch just for us. [laughs] But let's see, let me go through...I think I've gone through a good amount of questions. Here's one that I like to ask everybody. But if you could travel back in time to when you first started Classcraft, what would be the main piece of advice you would give yourself? SHAWN: If I could go back, there are some big lessons that have been learned. I've been for almost a decade now as a founder and CEO. One of the things we didn't do early enough was user testing. If I split the life of Classcraft into three eras, there's the first third we didn't need to because we had all of my own experience. But once we started moving past what was the initial product that I had built in my own classroom, we continued to make assumptions. And we, of course, always listen to our users, but now we're super systematic about it, and any new feature has research behind it and a really solid UX practice that we should have implemented much earlier. I think we're making much better roadmap decisions today than we were three years ago. A lot of companies hire UX people super late, and I would do that early or at least develop the chops to do it myself as early as possible. So I think that's one thing. I think as well...and maybe this is tied to that. I think we should have and could have iterated faster as well. A lot of startups in the tech scene talk about iteration, but there's a difference between incrementally iterating and just adding on, adding on, adding on, and actually making the kind of iterative decisions that, for example, pulling part of the product and discontinuing it for example. And we've done some of those moves, but I think we could have done them faster. And we should have done them faster if we'd had that UX research data to help us make decisions faster. So it's more than, like, common truism is like, oh, listen to your users and listen to their feedback. Like, yes, that's true, and we were doing that. But I'd say go further and create robust structures to get that data faster, not just wait for it to come in but actually go out and get it and digest it in a way that's actually usable. Because you have a whole bunch of testimonials and feedback, but if it's not organized, it's not somebody's job to make sense of it. It's just kind of sitting there. So there's a lot of value from that perspective that you can quickly generate for your users and, therefore, for your business. VICTORIA: Right. Save you some time and some money, probably in validating your ideas, right? SHAWN: Yeah. And the problem with education is that it's a yearly cycle, right? VICTORIA: Mmm-hmm. SHAWN: We're not looking at monthly scales; we're looking at the whole school year. So back to school happens once a year, and that's when you get a ton of data because that's when there's the most activity. Like, right now, August, September, October, these are the moments where we're getting the most data. And then when you make changes, you got to wait all the way back to the next back to school. So, in particular, in education, I think the cycles are long versus, let's say, more B2C-type consumer verticals where the test length is like a week. [laughs] So if it's coming once a year, you better make sure you're organized, I guess, is what I'm saying. [laughs] VICTORIA: Because we only have one shot. [laughs] SHAWN: Yeah, exactly. VICTORIA: That makes sense. Well, thank you so much for sharing all those insights. And I want to give you a chance to promote anything else you'd like to share with our listeners. SHAWN: Thank you so much for the conversation, Victoria. I appreciate it. I think if anybody wants to find out about Classcraft, classcraft.com, tons of content and resources that we're generating about these topics of building meaningful relationships in school but in general with human beings. Classcraft is a B Corp, and so for people who don't know what that is, it's a certification around impact. And so we have built-in commitment to generate good in the world. And it's a pretty hard certification to get, so we're pretty proud about it. But I think that this commitment that we have of generating meaningful relationships both with kids but also with our employees, with our community, with our different stakeholders, has been really core to a lot of the decisions we make and how we make them, and how we approach different problems. And so I think that as a tech founder, sometimes we can lose sight of what are we actually generating in the world. And so I would encourage people to think about, you know, if you're thinking about starting a company or thinking about your own company and the impact its having to look up that certification. But also, just look up triple bottom line, these types of concepts that are becoming more and more prevalent that really give meaning to the endeavor. Starting a company and running it is a lot of work. You need to believe in what you're doing. [laughs] And I think having a mission that generates impact in that way is a good way to motivate yourself and your team to go the extra mile and deliver. VICTORIA: I love that. And did we really cover the full impact this app has had on kids that are using it in schools? SHAWN: There's a ton of research about Classcraft; actually, that's been done by pedagogy professors in colleges. Literally, thousands of papers have been written on Classcraft because there just aren't a lot of...everybody's interested in student motivation. There aren't a lot of scalable systems for doing that other than Classcraft. And so a lot of research that's been done about that topic incidentally happens to be using Classcraft. And a recent meta-study about Classcraft was conducted, and they saw a significant statistical impact on student motivation and learner outcomes. And so it's hard in education to really understand impact easily because it's social sciences. So you need a lot of big data samples, and you need the control groups. It's complicated. So we're pretty proud about that because a lot of companies that work in education don't have that kind of hard data. It's like, okay, it seems to be having an impact. We've got pretty hard proof; literally hundreds of millions of positive behaviors that kids have done that are being reinforced every single year. And when you think about that, most kids don't get any positive feedback. The kids that get the most attention are the ones that are acting out and being the worst. So 90% of teacher energy is being directed at 10% of the kids, and so most kids go through school without ever feeling a sense of belonging, or accomplishment, or praise. And we've had kids write us saying, "I was suicidal. Classcraft changed my life," like these types of user testimonies where the impact, the human impact of the approach, is really, really real. And for teachers as well, like, "I was so demotivated with teaching. I found the spark again thanks to Classcraft because school is fun again." [laughs] So there's a lot to be proud of there, for sure. VICTORIA: That's wonderful and really powerful that you've had that impact and have been able to see it both from a scientific perspective and from those user testimonies. So I think that's wonderful. And I think it's an inspiring story. And that's probably why you're also so involved; it seems, in leadership groups in edtech and in other communities in Quebec. Is that right? SHAWN: Yeah, totally. I mean the reality...so I'm the president of the Edtech Association here in Quebec, which I helped co-found. We've got 100-plus organizations working in edtech that are part of the association. I'm also Co-chair for The Global Collective for Social Emotional Learning, Digital Learning for UNESCO. And I have been involved in numerous different systemic endeavors in education throughout the years. The truth is changing education is hard, and the way we're going to succeed is...it's fundamentally something I believe that we should really be focusing on as a society is improving education, education outcomes. All the positive changes we need to see to tackle the incredible challenges that are upcoming for us as a species are going to happen through education. But for that to happen, we need to make education evolve, and for education to evolve, we need to all work together. So the association is interesting because it's like a coopetition [laughs] in a sense. All these entrepreneurs we're all competing for the same budget dollars, but we're looking at education problems in different ways. And if we're more successful as an industry, individually, everybody's going to be more successful, and more kids are going to be impacted. So I just believe that and this is true specifically for education, but I do believe this for any vertical. If businesses are collaborating to elevate, if the water rises, everybody's boat goes up. I really believe that that's true in business in general and in education in particular. VICTORIA: It reminds me when I was at Pluribus Digital in my last position. We were a part of the Digital Services Coalition, which is another coopetition group of federal contractors who are going after the same money. But we are all trying to see the government be better, part of that collaboration which sounds like what Classcraft is all about too. We're all in it together. [laughs] SHAWN: Yeah. And if that's not the case, especially for incumbents, then what happens is status quo. And for startups, for tech companies, usually the status quo [laughs] is bad. That's where you're trying to generate opportunity from. But sometimes the systems that are there, government systems in particular...we've seen a lot in health as well over the last few years in clean tech. All of these impact tech sectors part of what they're fighting against are market forces of status quo. And so it's only by all working together that we can really move that. VICTORIA: Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure we could keep talking about that for a long time. [laughs] But unless you have anything else you'd like to share, I'll go ahead and wrap up. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Shawn Young.

Stephanie's story is one of creativity. She told us how she got into Flash animations and ActionScript in high school. We then talked about WordPress and how she slowly but surely drifted toward web development while freelancing on the side. We discussed open source, pushing projects out of communities, giving back, creating courses, and giving talks. Finally, Stephanie encouraged us to find what sharing medium works for us!Here are the links from the show:https://www.twitter.com/5t3phhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stepheckles/https://thinkdobecreate.com/https://wordwrap.dev/https://ModernCSS.devhttps://StyleStage.devhttps://SmolCSS.devhttps://11ty.RocksBadger Badger Badger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGlyFc79BUEhttps://twitter.com/tackjhompsonhttps://devroulette.live/https://learnfromsteph.dev/CreditsCover Heliotrope by Blue Dot Sessions is licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.Your host is Timothée (Tim) Bourguignon, more about him at timbourguignon.fr.Gift the podcast a rating on one of the significant platforms https://devjourney.info/subscribeSupport the show

Nesse episódio trouxemos as notícias e novidades do mundo da programação que nos chamaram atenção dos dias 09/07 a 15/07! Breakpoint: Nessa semana o tema foi: "Como ganhamos um bom dinheiro usando Flash e Actionscript?". CallStack: Dos dias 18 a 22 de julho a Alura vai promover a Imersão Java, um intensivão para você aprender na prática uma das linguagens de programação mais utilizadas. Serão 5 dias com profissionais do mercado passando experiência e te ajudando a desenvolver um projeto do zero. A Imersão Java é online e gratuita! As inscrições vão só até o dia 17 de julho e são feitas através desse link: https://codft.me/imersaojava2022 Hosts: Somos Gabriel Fróes e Vanessa Weber, um casal de programadores que dá as caras desde 2016 no canal Código Fonte TV no YouTube. Links: Receba as Notícias do Compilado no Email: compilado.codigofonte.com.br Assista o Compilado no YouTube: codft.me/canalcompilado Esse é o momento ideal de pegar um café e se atualizar com notícias sobre programação que nos chamaram a atenção essa semana.

Nesse episódio trouxemos as notícias e novidades do mundo da programação que nos chamaram atenção dos dias 09/07 a 15/07! Breakpoint: Nessa semana o tema foi: "Como ganhamos um bom dinheiro usando Flash e Actionscript?". CallStack: Dos dias 18 a 22 de julho a Alura vai promover a Imersão Java, um intensivão para você aprender na prática uma das linguagens de programação mais utilizadas. Serão 5 dias com profissionais do mercado passando experiência e te ajudando a desenvolver um projeto do zero. A Imersão Java é online e gratuita! As inscrições vão só até o dia 17 de julho e são feitas através desse link: https://codft.me/imersaojava2022 Hosts: Somos Gabriel Fróes e Vanessa Weber, um casal de programadores que dá as caras desde 2016 no canal Código Fonte TV no YouTube. Links: Receba as Notícias do Compilado no Email: compilado.codigofonte.com.br Assista o Compilado no YouTube: codft.me/canalcompilado Esse é o momento ideal de pegar um café e se atualizar com notícias sobre programação que nos chamaram a atenção essa semana.

Those of you who remember the glory days of web design, Web 2.0, Flash and ActionScript, when the FWA and Deviant Art were just getting started, and when everything felt new and exciting, almost like a Wild West of the Internet, then our next guest will make you smile. Elliot Jay Stocks is a legend in the web design world. He began working as a junior designer for EMI Music, which he admits was a lucky break thanks to his portfolio, which had all the websites he'd designed and built for friends' bands while studying Contemporary Media Practice at university. Some of you will remember Elliot's time spent at Carsonified – the website he designed for that agency went down in the web design hall of fame and today is still seen as a turning point for the industry. With all that experience, Elliot has done a ton of talks around the world and written for magazines such as Computer Arts and Dot Net. In 2010, he launched a print magazine called 8 Faces, dedicated to type, typography and lettering. Later on, he joined Typekit as Creative Director, which has since become Adobe Fonts. Then, after getting married and becoming a father, he and his wife Samantha launched their own magazine on the elusive idea of work-life balance. Today, he's working with Google on Fonts Knowledge, a library of original guides to the world of typography. Interestingly, he's been remote since 2013, working from his peaceful garden office near Bristol and where I was invited to sit down and chat about his journey so far. Surrounded by many keyboards and instruments, showing a clear passion for making music on the side, we wanted to know if Elliot ever sits still and whether side projects and experiments have always been a focus. We wanted to ask how he feels about working for Google. And whether he's managed to achieve that ultimate goal that we all dream of – to balance life with work and be happy. Season Four of The Creative Boom Podcast is kindly sponsored by Astropad Studio.

Qué es HTML 5. El lenguaje que se utiliza en la World Wide Web, el ecosistema de páginas de Internet, es el HTML. Su nombre son las siglas de HyperText Markup Language, que significa literalmente Lenguaje de marcado de hipertexto. Es el estándar con el que están programadas todas las webs, y aunque algunas puedan tener elementos o fragmentos programados en otros lenguajes, siempre tienen que ser "encajados" en el total con este lenguaje. Pero Internet evoluciona, y el contenido que se sube a las webs también cambia con los años, lo que quiere decir que estos lenguajes pueden quedar obsoletos y necesitan ser actualizados. En 1999 se lanzó el estándar HTML4, y como imaginas, las páginas web ahora no tienen nada que ver con lo que eran entonces en cuanto a sus contenidos, y por eso desde hace unos años se está implementando el nuevo estándar HTML5. Por lo tanto, el HTML5 es la última versión del estándar HTML que se utiliza para crear las páginas web que estás visitando, e incorpora algunas novedades interesantes. Una de las novedades, es darle cobertura a la reproducción de contenido multimedia, de forma que ya no tengas que ir a recursos de terceros como el obsoleto Flash Player. Qué cambia en HTML5 Este nuevo estándar no tiene una enorme cantidad de novedades, pero las que tiene son revolucionarias. La más destacada es la posibilidad de añadir archivos multimedia a la web, como vídeos o audios, y que estos no tengas que instalarlos utilizando otros plug-ins. Todo está incluido dentro del código. También se han añadido etiquetas que permiten crear animaciones en 2D, con una etiqueta de canvas y una API que permiten que puedas dibujar elementos en dos dimensiones y animarlos en la web. También se pueden añadir eventos para el teclado, ratón o mandos, que permiten poder utilizarlos para interactuar con una página. Relacionado con lo anterior, también se pueden programar aplicaciones web en HTML5, lo que quiere decir que las páginas pueden ser apps, y no necesitarás instalar una app independiente en el PC o móvil, ya que podrás usarlo igual desde el navegador. También se pueden crear videojuegos con este método, lo que se complementa con poder utilizar teclado, ratón o mando. También se han añadido opciones de geolocalización, de forma que una web puede detectar la ubicación de los usuarios que acceden a ella. Con ello, se pueden ofrecer opciones de idiomas dependiendo del país desde el que entras, o la posibilidad de enlazarse a la página específica de un país. Por ejemplo, si entras en la web de una empresa internacional, puede enviarte a la versión de España de su web si detectas que entras desde aquí. Toda esta funcionalidad hasta ahora se daba a través de Flash, de la compañía Macromedia que después fue comprado por Adobe. Flash en sí representaba un lenguaje de programación, llamado ActionScript y se evolucionó hasta poder hacer aplicaciones de escritorio en ese lenguaje. Flash ha dejado de ser soportado y ha sido sustituido por HTML5 concretamente por Javascript, que a día de hoy también tiene la posibilidad de usar un entorno como Atom y hacer aplicaciones de escritorio que llevan por debajo el motor de chromium como navegador para ejecutar la aplicación.

Qué es HTML 5. El lenguaje que se utiliza en la World Wide Web, el ecosistema de páginas de Internet, es el HTML. Su nombre son las siglas de HyperText Markup Language, que significa literalmente Lenguaje de marcado de hipertexto. Es el estándar con el que están programadas todas las webs, y aunque algunas puedan tener elementos o fragmentos programados en otros lenguajes, siempre tienen que ser "encajados" en el total con este lenguaje. Pero Internet evoluciona, y el contenido que se sube a las webs también cambia con los años, lo que quiere decir que estos lenguajes pueden quedar obsoletos y necesitan ser actualizados. En 1999 se lanzó el estándar HTML4, y como imaginas, las páginas web ahora no tienen nada que ver con lo que eran entonces en cuanto a sus contenidos, y por eso desde hace unos años se está implementando el nuevo estándar HTML5. Por lo tanto, el HTML5 es la última versión del estándar HTML que se utiliza para crear las páginas web que estás visitando, e incorpora algunas novedades interesantes. Una de las novedades, es darle cobertura a la reproducción de contenido multimedia, de forma que ya no tengas que ir a recursos de terceros como el obsoleto Flash Player. Qué cambia en HTML5 Este nuevo estándar no tiene una enorme cantidad de novedades, pero las que tiene son revolucionarias. La más destacada es la posibilidad de añadir archivos multimedia a la web, como vídeos o audios, y que estos no tengas que instalarlos utilizando otros plug-ins. Todo está incluido dentro del código. También se han añadido etiquetas que permiten crear animaciones en 2D, con una etiqueta de canvas y una API que permiten que puedas dibujar elementos en dos dimensiones y animarlos en la web. También se pueden añadir eventos para el teclado, ratón o mandos, que permiten poder utilizarlos para interactuar con una página. Relacionado con lo anterior, también se pueden programar aplicaciones web en HTML5, lo que quiere decir que las páginas pueden ser apps, y no necesitarás instalar una app independiente en el PC o móvil, ya que podrás usarlo igual desde el navegador. También se pueden crear videojuegos con este método, lo que se complementa con poder utilizar teclado, ratón o mando. También se han añadido opciones de geolocalización, de forma que una web puede detectar la ubicación de los usuarios que acceden a ella. Con ello, se pueden ofrecer opciones de idiomas dependiendo del país desde el que entras, o la posibilidad de enlazarse a la página específica de un país. Por ejemplo, si entras en la web de una empresa internacional, puede enviarte a la versión de España de su web si detectas que entras desde aquí. Toda esta funcionalidad hasta ahora se daba a través de Flash, de la compañía Macromedia que después fue comprado por Adobe. Flash en sí representaba un lenguaje de programación, llamado ActionScript y se evolucionó hasta poder hacer aplicaciones de escritorio en ese lenguaje. Flash ha dejado de ser soportado y ha sido sustituido por HTML5 concretamente por Javascript, que a día de hoy también tiene la posibilidad de usar un entorno como Atom y hacer aplicaciones de escritorio que llevan por debajo el motor de chromium como navegador para ejecutar la aplicación.

EP 32: Firechat w. Scott Oppenheim The simple way to create NFTs, PFJS, and Action Script I had a chat with Scott Oppenheim. He shares his tools and skills to create his NFTs. Scott Oppenheim's collection https://opensea.io/collection/generativeartist Twitter @DG8TAL We talk about how to start as a “creative coder”. The video is available to watch on my Youtube channel. https://youtu.be/401_lZkUn0E ----------------------- Produced and interviewed by Dubwoman AKA Giovanna Sun Not financial, legal, or accounting advice. For educational purposes only. Join Artbit DAO, meet and connect collectors. https://opensea.io/collection/artbit-dao-club Questions and inquires: Contact: dubwoman@gmail.com Instagram and Twitter @giovannasun ClubHouse @dubwoman Website: https://linktr.ee/dubwoman

200 episodes. What a wild ride! To celebrate, Scott is joined by two people who have helped make Podcapers grow and develop, Alex Mirabal and Mark Russell, to read the truly atrocious script for the Powerpuff Girls live action pilot. Hey, what else did you expect from this show? It's been a long road getting here, but we haven't done it alone. A massive thank you to everyone at AP2HYC, all our wonderful guests, and to every single Caper that listens to our show. We love you 3000!“Every day is a new adventure” - Stan LeeListen and Subscribe wherever you get your Podcasts!Edited by Alexandra MirabalTimecode:Reading Starts - 08:41

BGBS 063 | Douglas Davis | The Davis Group | Decide To Learn Something NewBrooklyn-based Douglas Davis enjoys being one of the variety of voices needed in front of and behind the concept. His approach to creativity combines right-brained creative problem solving with left-brained strategic thinking. Douglas' integrated point of view has enabled his natural evolution from designer to strategist, author, and professor. His expertise spans advertising, design, and business education and has found an international audience through presenting his tools on combining the three to produce more effective creative business solutions. Douglas enjoys interacting with creative people and regularly presents at industry conferences including HOW Design Live, RGD Design Thinkers, The One Club Educators Summit, Midwest Digital Marketing Conference, Revolve, and The Art & Branding Conference. In 2016, Douglas wrote his first book Creative Strategy and the Business of Design, a title currently being translated into Chinese by Beijing Normal University. He is a former co-chair of AIGA's National Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce and regularly contributes to the business of design discourse in Printmag.com, Applied Arts, and The European Business Review. In 2011 Douglas founded The Davis Group LLC and continues to offer strategic solutions to client branding, digital, and design problems. In addition to client work, Douglas leverages his professional experience to inspire high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. As the longest-serving member on the 4As High School Advisory Board, his experience was translated into the four-year curriculum at New York City's High School for Innovation in Advertising and Media. Following the launch, Douglas contributed as an education consultant for the launch of the Manhattan Early College School for Advertising (MECA). Currently, he is Chair of the Emmy-Award winning B.F.A. in Communication Design program at New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn and serves on the advisory boards of the University of Oregon's Masters in Advertising and Brand Responsibility and City College's Masters in Branding and Integrated Communications. Douglas holds a B.A. in Graphic Design from Hampton University, an  M.S. in Communications Design from Pratt Institute and an M.S. in Integrated Marketing from New York University. In this episode, you'll learn…The importance of diversifying the minds and perspectives to address the world's issues and industry changes. Try something new. Master something you're not good at. Find the fear and reinvent yourself. ResourcesWebsite: douglasdavis.com Case Study: Imported From Brooklyn Youtube: Imported From Brooklyn Film Win Without Pitching Article: Red, White, Black and Blue: The Land of Mixed Signals COMD: douglasdavis.com/comd LinkedIn: Douglas Davis Quotes[15:49] I like to say our job is to take the rational language of business and turn it into the emotional language of design…I also like to say that creative people really are the spoonful of sugar that make business and marketing objectives palatable to the public. [42:52] We have to keep changing, we have to keep growing, we have to keep learning, to even keep up, to even remain relevant. Why would you not want as many different minds or perspectives on a problem that you can grab? [48:12] I'm going to turn my weaknesses into strengths. And that is the evolution. It's a mindset. Leading is a verb and a posture. [53:55] We can't measure everybody by the same yardstick…creative people like me and you can grow up comparing themselves to other people based on those measures and conclude that something's wrong with them, when they're the ones with the superpowers. Have a brand problem? We can help.Book your no-obligation, Wildstory Brand Clarity Call now. Learn about our Brand Audit and Strategy process Identify if you need a new logo or just a refresh Determine if your business has a branding problem See examples of our work and get relevant case studies See if branding is holding your business back and can help you get to the next level Book Your Brand Clarity Call TODAY Podcast TranscriptDouglas Davis 0:00 I think when you look at what's going on in society, when you look at design needing to become more diverse when you look at the demographics in America, when you look at how some people will describe what's going on in the southern border as an, you know, an infestation. terrible word, other people describe it as well. It's what humans do when they're fleeing or in a situation where they have to flee. It's what happens on every border, because if we're having a crisis, here you go, and seek a better place to be. Marc Gutman 0:41 podcasting from Boulder, Colorado. This is the Baby Got Back story Podcast, where we dive into the story behind the story of today's most inspiring storytellers, creators and entrepreneurs. I like being backstories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman, Marc Gutman, and on today's episode of Baby got backstory, we're talking about strategy and changing the world. I'm not kidding. This episode goes deep and calls out those with the creative spirit to stand up and be the change. Before we get into today's show. Can I level with you? This podcast ain't cheap. But we continue to produce it as a service to you, the audience. And if today's episode isn't worth the price of admission, your time, then no episode is I need you. If you like enjoy the show, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over Apple podcasts or Spotify, Apple and Spotify. Use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines rating on their charts. If you haven't reviewed, you know who you are. And by the way, I do see who is reviewed and who hasn't. What are you waiting for? review service. That's it guilt trip over. Let's get on with the show. Today's guest is Douglas Davis. I really don't know where to start with Douglas. I first learned of Douglas when I read his book, creative strategy and the business of design. And it's one of those books that literally changed my perspective and worldview on strategy and business. So I had to meet the person who wrote such an influential piece of work. And Boy, was I in for a surprise. Douglas Davis takes great pride in being Brooklyn based and in his words, enjoys being one of the variety of voices needed in front of and behind the concept. His approach to creativity combines right brained, creative problem solving, with left brained, strategic thinking. Douglass's integrated point of view has enabled his natural evolution from designer to strategist, author, and professor, and his expertise spans advertising, design and business education, and is found in international audience through presenting his tools and combining the three to produce more effective creative business solutions. Douglas enjoys interacting with creative people and regularly presents IT industry conferences, including how design live RGD design thinkers, the one club educators summit, Midwest digital marketing conference revolve and the art and branding conference. In 2016, Douglas wrote his first book, creative strategy in the business of design, a title currently being translated into Chinese by Beijing Normal University. He is a former co chair of AI je A's national diversity and inclusion Task Force and regularly contributes to the business of design discourse in print mag comm Applied Arts in the European Business Review, Douglas founded The Davis Group, and he continues to offer strategic solutions to client branding, digital and design problems. In addition to client work, Douglas leverages his professional experience to inspire High School, undergraduate and graduate students as the longest serving member on the four A's High School advisory board. His experience was translated into the four year curriculum at New York City's High School for innovation in advertising and media. Following the launch, Douglas contributed as an education consultant for the launch of the Manhattan Early College School for advertising. Currently, he is the chair of the Emmy Award winning BFA and communication program at New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, and serves on the advisory boards of the University of Oregon's masters in advertising. And brand responsibility, and City College's master and branding and integrated communications. Douglas holds a BA in graphic design from Hampton University, an MS and Communication Design from Pratt Institute, and an MS in integrated marketing from New York University. Wow, that was a big, big bio, we really don't touch any of it, except for the book in this episode. And that's why I wanted to share that with you. Now. I'm going to stop talking and turn it over to Douglas because well, this is his story. I am here with Douglas Davis. And I couldn't be more excited. Douglas. Douglas Davis 5:47 I'm excited to be here to thank you so much. Marc Gutman 5:49 We were just having a little conversation before recording. And I wish we were recording it. And I know this is going to be a great conversation and in a great episode. And Douglas is a strategist and author and a professor. He's also the author of a book that I think is just gold called Creative Strategy and the Business of Design. Here's my copy Douglas. It is less it has dog years. It's got notes, it's got. It's got post it notes, I mean, this thank you for your support. Yeah, this is like a resource for me, and I can't wait to talk to you about it. It's definitely one of my top, you know, 10 books on branding. Absolutely. But thank you for having me. Yeah. And in addition to being the strategist, author and professor, what are you doing right now? I mean, I see some Emmys in the background. I'm super impressed. When they tell us once you tell us a little bit about what else you're doing cuz you wear a lot of hats. Douglas Davis 6:43 I do. And first of all, Marc, I want to just say thank you, to all your listeners. Thank you all for spending time with us. My name is Douglas Davis, as Marc said, strategist, author, and professor. And right now my current role is that I'm also the chair of the BFA in Communication Design that New York City College of technologies, you know, Department of Communication Design, it's sort of a big mouthful, but we're part of the City University of New York, and over my shoulder, or the Emmys that we were able to when we were nominated for two of them for this story, imported from Brooklyn. And overall, it's about, you know, what, what, how you find the path the possible when you have more ambition and resources. And so overall, we offer graphic design, illustration, we offer web design, we've got advertising, we've got graphic design, so you can come to our program for a fraction of the resources for a fraction of the cost is, you know, going to the design schools. But it's a wonderful, wonderful opportunity to be here. And that's what I do in my day job. Marc Gutman 7:55 Oh, that's so awesome. And I saw that you had put a Vimeo link in the chat is that to the piece that you just described, Douglas Davis 8:02 That's actually, we just recently entered the one show. And, you know, please Wish us luck, we're in three different categories. But this is to the case study of what the impact of that piece imported from Brooklyn was. And so I just wanted to sort of throw that into the mix. Maybe I can go into the show notes, but I'll also send a link to to import it from Brooklyn. It's about 22 minutes documentary on Tony de spinia, who was my professor of prep, and I didn't realize this until years later. But the program that I'm the chair of right now, Tony, when he emigrated to America, he wanted to go to Providence to didn't have enough money. So he went to the communication design department. And just, you know, how wonderful, certain serendipitous, you know, that sort of connection is that I'm now the chair of this program that's offering, you know, private school education and public school prices. So his story is the same story as our Asian, black and Hispanic, Eastern European students today. So it's, it's pretty wonderful in that way, you'll check it out. Marc Gutman 9:19 Yeah, absolutely. We'll link to that in the show notes. We'll make sure everyone knows about it. And I'm going to be watching that. Absolutely. After the after the interview. Thank you very much. So Douglas, what is Creative Strategy and the Business of Design? You know, I was thought design was just a bunch of like, you know, pretty colors and logos and, and some maybe some posters, Douglas Davis 9:39 To a lot of us it is and I was really fortunate enough to have my skills polished in places that I couldn't afford, like Pratt Institute for my first Master's, but uh, just to back up a little bit. I went to Hampton University is historically black college, and I went to study graphic design and photography. Even before that in K through 12, I'm from I was born and raised in Lexington, South Carolina, a very small town, right outside of Columbia, South Carolina, the Capitol there. And surprisingly, we had really wonderful art program really wonderful. And wonderful in a way that I had, you know, in K through 12, murals, rock carvings, ceramic sculpture, the wheel, had exposure to printmaking, drawing, painting, all those different things, right, you know, going through K through 12. Marc Gutman 10:35 So that, was that your primary interest then was that, like, were you? Or was it like a side thing? Or were you you were kind of an art art kid? Douglas Davis 10:43 I was an art kid only because I was really bored, I didn't have a place to channel that energy. And it was just a really great place to to focus my F, my just effort and attention on, I literally applied myself, you know, really didn't apply myself Truthfully, I could go to class and listen, you know, be the class clown. And then the teachers like, what did I just say, and I could verbatim spit back every single thing, because I could do two things at once I wasn't being engaged mentally. So when I found art, it was a place for me to focus and channel that energy and my behavior changed. And so maybe some of your listeners would be able to relate in that way that just having an outlet really did change my life in that way. But in terms of what Creative Strategy and the Business of Design is, it's what I was able to write down as, just as I fumble through my career, I realized that I had gone as far as I could go with my aesthetic training, and again, going to undergraduate going to graduate school, bouncing around from agency to agency design, firm, publishing digital. I also went to NYU and got another Master's. But I realized that design school doesn't teach you business, it teaches you to focus on what are the tactical parts of what should be strategic decisions, largest strategic decisions, without even explain to you what those decisions are, then. So the challenge there is that when you are working somewhere, and you get promoted for doing your job really well for answering those client briefs in ways that are not only creative, but effective. I think there's some assumptions sometimes that you must know strategy, because you're able to knock it out of the park on, you know, all these different points. And so eventually, what I started to notice is that clients were not just coming to me for creative content, they were coming to me for strategic context. And I was uncomfortable with that, because I didn't know strategy. And so I realized that over time, I started losing battles, even though I could write the proposal, build the team, you know, pitch the business, do whatever I needed to do. And I was able to get positions of responsibility relatively quickly as a result of that. But eventually, I started losing battles, because I couldn't justify by the creative decisions within the context of the business and marketing objectives that we should have been trying to hit. And so I lost those battles. Because I fell back on my aesthetic, you know, I was arguing typefaces, well, we should have been talking about marketing objectives or metrics that we needed to hit within the business, you know, objectives. And so one day I stumbled into a strategy session, I realized, Oh, this is that thing that keeps beating me This is that that language that I don't know how to speak. And so let me learn this. That's why I went to NYU, to add the strategy to the creative side, so that I could, my rationale was that I could, you know, become a better creative because I could think, how they think to do what we do like to speak their language, in order to justify what was there. And I'll give you one more piece of that, because this was, you know, you know, you've been in the business for a while. This is back when you could learn ActionScript flash, this is back when you could choose to just double down on the execution part of things. And so even then, I realized, you know, what, I don't want to sit outside the meeting, and wait for these people who are making decisions inside the conference room to come out and tell me what to do and when to have it and, and whatever. So how about I inject creativity into the beginning of solving a business problem, versus being a better executer? And I'm so glad I did that, obviously, because flashes no more. And I think that that's, that's a really important lesson. And a lot of those lessons are what, what I wrote down and Creative Strategy and the Business of Design, in addition to the tools, the frameworks, and the things that allowed me to get to where I needed to go when I added strategy to my creative skill set. So hopefully It'll be useful to somebody to listeners. Marc Gutman 15:03 Yeah, well, you know, I think so I mean, the concept of strategy has completely changed my life. I mean, when I started my career, like, I was exactly the the executer I was like, someone wanted something. And yeah, you know, I started in the movie business, and it was like, you want a story? Great. I'll write that right guys. I didn't even like ask why do you want the story? Right? Like, I was, like, so excited. And, and actually, I, I had a limiting belief that if I asked why that if I questioned it, I would either lose the job, or they would think I was, I was less intelligent or unintelligent, because I was asking questions, you know? Douglas Davis 15:36 Well, that's part of our that's part of our superpower, right? In terms of those emotions, that you need to find a way to channel you need to find an outlet for It's why we are I like to say our job is to take the rational Language of Business and turn it into the emotional language of design, that's our job, we translate that for people. I also like to say that, you know, designers are the spoon. creative people really, are the spoonful of sugar that make business and marketing objectives palatable to the public. And so I can absolutely agree that that insecurity and even navigating those rooms where you don't even know why they want something, and you're a little afraid to ask questions, because you don't want to seem as if you shouldn't have been in that room in the first place. All of those things, I think, are really, really important. And I dress dealing with your emotions, and just how to navigate different rooms. Because if you as you know, if when you're walking into that room, after pouring your heart and soul into whatever you're going to show, and you walk into that room full of people who you don't know, and your emotions, that thing that got you into the room, because of your creativity are now your worst enemy, because you can't even formulate the words, to articulate what it is that you've done. And I think, you know, all these things were things that I had to learn from failing. And so the other piece, too, you know, design schools don't teach business is that business schools don't teach how to get the best out of designers how to inspire creative people. And I realized that because after going there, there was still this gap. And, you know, I had to learn that when you walk into that room as a creative person, they're not going to learn creativity, you have to learn their language. And you have to then put the recommendation up front, instead of walking into the creative side of things where you're going to tell the story. And you're going to talk about the insight and we're going to arrive at the end here it is, you have to completely flop how you even tell the stories in these rooms. But all of those things were things that I had to learn through failing through having outcomes completely opposite of what I wanted to happen. So I can absolutely agree with some of those insecurities. And, and some part of what I teach now is really about organizing the chaos, questioning the answers that clients will come to you with, because they think that they know, or they're still trying to get the same solution that worked six months ago, or in this case, now that we're in Coronavirus times, you know, a year ago, but the environment shifted, and none of that still none of that's even applicable anymore, in order to then turn insights in execution. So we have to retrain the way we listen as creative people. And some part of that is exactly what you're talking about. Marc Gutman 18:34 I mean, thank you so much for sharing that. And I couldn't agree more. And, and and that in itself is a tremendous insight. I mean, what do you do when, you know, let's just hop right to it, like, what do you do when a client has skipped that step? So, you know, hypothetically, you come in, and they've either, you know, started down a campaign road, or they say, look, we've chosen, you know, an identity, but, and you're and then you know, you start to ask your questions, and you're like, Well, wait a second, you haven't gone to step one, like how do you handle that? Like, what do you do when that happens? Douglas Davis 19:06 Yeah, well, overall, one good thing about having been in the business for a while and just being really, really specific about what it is that I do and what I don't do. I haven't been brought in, in a in a situation where there's miscommunication like that in quite a while. But when I was in a situation where people thought that they needed me, but didn't know how much the value of what I would be bringing with cost in asking those questions and and realizing, oh, okay, you're not clear that the way that you're going about this is what you want, but it's not what you need. And I think for me, I've always just walked into the room and been very Matter of fact, and either you hire me or you don't, but I'm going to tell you what you need because I'm the expert and I'll make The recommendations, but as the client, you will make the decisions. And so it's become really easy to to really listen and to know really quickly, whether I'm going to refer you to other sites or other people, because either a, you don't have the budget or B, you're not clear, you need a little bit more information, in order to shift away from being price sensitive, or you need a little bit more information to shift away from that thing that you saw that you liked, that you want the exact copy of that you're not saying. But that you, you're basically going to critique all the work and through a series of meetings, you know, we're going to come out with the exact copy of something else. And so I think, being willing to walk away, being willing to refer other people and being willing to say, you know, if you go to this website, you can be up and running in an hour. Or if you go to this mix of websites, you can have what you need to and under five grand, and then I add the last piece, and so can your competitors. And after that, I think there's a little bit of a pause, been, you know, we can have a conversation where we back up a little bit, and then we can start talking about the value of the services that they need, whether they hired me or not. But I think it's important to just take control of the conversation in a way that you are offering things that makes the client think and it may not even be in that current conversation, it may take a couple of weeks, but giving them something to think about. And then sort of being willing to let it go, has been the way that I've been able to navigate situations where I'm really not the right person. It's best for everybody, if you just you know, shut it down. Marc Gutman 21:54 Absolutely, I've had to walk away from my share. And that I also learned that the very hard way, I mean, I look back at all the things that went bad and all the mistakes I made. And I wouldn't know that without doing it. But it was typically like, there were a lot most of the time, I'd say there were like misalignment issues. Right now. And, and you just learn that the hard way. And I think that's sometimes the only way to learn. So when we look at your book, and we look at it, a lot of the work you've done here, if there was like one thing that we were to know about this book and take away, what would that be? And then what framework is like, you know, I know there's no silver bullet, but which one is the one that's like, if I had to only kind of do one, i i'd lean into that. Douglas Davis 22:37 What chapter six and seven? That was the last question first chapter six and seventh deal with the creative strategy framework, which is literally an alignment exercise. You know, it's, it's something I developed when I was at NYU, when one day, my competitive strategy professor, you know, sort of looked out at the class and held the the whiteboard, pen out, and looked out and says, you know, who's going to step to the board, and I stepped to the board, I was the first one grabbed that pencil. And I started working out this column that, you know, was was four columns and three steps that would help me to organize the chaos, because when I first started learning the language of business, it was new. And so I could be on brand, but off strategy or message on message, but off strategy. And so it takes a little time to speak and understand the language of business. But this tool helps to organize all the information by going through a series of steps where you qualify what the information is that you're dealing with, to create and build your creative work or concepts or just coming up with thought starters, you could use it as a brainstorming tool. I've actually sat in meetings with clients and literally started to write the notes from the briefing into the framework so that I could take what wasn't given to me back to the creative team, stick it up on the whiteboard, and we could just literally hit the ground running where the client left off. But that's really what I would say that that tool and any tool, any framework, you know it we're not talking about something that's a recipe, right? We're not talking about something that is, you know, fill in the blanks, and you'll voila, you'll have this any strategy, any any design even, that's worth its salt is going to be a custom solution. And so the framework, I always like to say is only as good as the information that you put into it, the thinking that goes into it. So yeah, that's that's the one tool that if you didn't go anywhere else, Marc Gutman 24:49 This is the one we're talking about. Right. Great. And so I'll just kind of hold it up there so people can see and get a sense about it. But that's, that's it. Douglas Davis 24:56 That's the one tool that would be that now, the one thing That I would tell people about the book would be that this book is for someone who understands that our careers are a series of transitions, right? You go to you go to college, and you transition from being a student, to breaking into the industry, then you break, you've broken into the industry, you transition from being a junior, to someone who's seen a little battle. And then you transition from someone who's seen a little battle to someone who gets a little bit more responsibility. Now, there are people who report to me, I'm sort of client facing now. And then you move from that person to someone who, at different points might even be a little bit intimidated that the people who are coming in might be a little faster, might have a little edge, because they're the last people and even though they're going to get paid the least, you know, you start to wonder whether you can hold your own as things shift so fast. So the one thing that I would tell people about Creative Strategy and the Business of Design is that it's built for a person who understands that what we do evolves, it shifts. And we all know that, whether it's learning flash, or ActionScript, or whether it's learning about new typefaces, or learning about Slack, or and how to use Basecamp. And all these different things are like a timeline that sort of bring us from the very beginning, and to where we, where we are, and then it keeps going because now we have Tick Tock and we got clubhouse, and you know, everything is going to continue to change. And as creative people, we've always understood that we've always done that in a way that would allow us to, you know, survive, because we're continuing to change. But I think when I think about 1999, when I entered the industry, you know, the.com recession, and all the websites that were there, people didn't know how to make money on the web, I wish that people would have known that, you know, direct marketing was the father of digital because it's, you know, accountable, you can track it, right. But nobody knew that. So they're throwing all this money into this new medium, that my professors at the time I was at Pratt, my professors at the time and not worked in. And so I'm applying my skills, these traditional skills to this medium that no one's worked in who's taught me and you realize that, you know, in 99, no one had a web design degree, because it didn't exist, you couldn't study it. Everybody who was there participating in that industry was there because they decided to learn something new. And I think that that's a really important insight, because I think we're back there right now. If you think about the ways that the Coronavirus has made everyone have to pivot, we have to figure out ways to do the same thing, the exact same thing and complete different ways. Or we have to figure out ways to take what we've already what we have on hand skills or equipment or whatever, and do something completely different. And so I think, when you look at where things were back, then and 99, where you can go to school to learn web design, but there's this industry, you realize that your skills, your willingness to be agile, to change, to morph, that's what actually allows you to survive. And when you add on top of it, the trend, you know, Apple, Microsoft, Google, they're saying the you know, since actually since 2017, that you don't have to have a college degree to enter their ranks, we're back to a point where skills, what you can do, the value that you bring as a person, regardless of what your degree says. That's what matters. And so I think that the book is about those transitions. And, and I wrote it obviously, before we were in this point, because the principles are what we're really talking about here, when you're really understanding that what we do will always evolve, and it's going to evolve at the speed of business, it's going to evolve at the speed of the next thing that marketers are going to create that we're going to have to figure out ourselves to engage and build the relationships that our clients want us to build with our customers who are going to join that platform, and who are going to adopt it in mass in ways that we're gonna have to figure out how to show up and you know, entertain them in a way that they're not shutting us off or blocking us. And I think that that evolution and change that constant change is something that I'm encouraged that as creative people that we're dealing with this pandemic right now. Because who better? Who better to deal with something to change the whole world in an instant? If they no snapped his fingers? We literally were in a situation Where how you enter the industry was different. How you work when you're in the industry is completely different. And we're literally back where we, as the people with experience, we're in the exact same position, as I was saying about in 1999, where my world class practice, the two professors had no experience in this thing that I was going to apply my skills to, were literally back to that point where none of us with experience has more experience than any student. And any, like, we're back, it's leveled the playing field, but who better to to navigate that, who better to lead that then creative people who have to do that to save their lives, every single time anyway, you have to reinvent yourself. So that's the one thing that I would say that the book will help you to do. And you know, I always tell people, it's very similar to like a Harvard Business Case Study, if you're, if you're familiar with that, where your objective is to read it, and then figure out who the decision maker is, and then play that person's role, you step into their role. And everything that you're reading for is to find your, your recommendation, the risk and rewards are what you would do in that situation. So it's about role playing, and sort of stepping into those shoes. The book gives you the stories of why these things are important that I'm going to talk to you about. The book tells you the stories of how I got here, it gives you my story and the way I do it, but it's asking you to bring yourself to it. It's asking you to take the thought process the principles, and then apply it to your own situation, and figure out how to save your own life. That's what this is about the transitions. So that's the one thing that I would tell you, if you're interested in the book, if you want to keep reinventing yourself, this is this is going to help you do that, because it's going to teach you the language of how things change. And that one tool that, you know, if I said, you know, all the other ones have to fall away, would be the creative strategy framework, because it helps you to organize that chaos. And it'll help you to only focus on what's relevant, and solving the problems and those four columns and three steps in order to question the answers that the client comes to you with, so that you can you know, organize that chaos, question those answers and turn insights into executions. And those executions can be the actual work themselves, it could be the brainstorming session, it could be the brief because sometimes, going back to what I was saying about business school doesn't teach how to inspire designers, we've all had a brief that's the size of a novel that's completely worthless, that was given to you by somebody who has a strategist title, and who came from sort of the business side of things, but who has no idea how to talk to a creative person. And that's what's so ironic that the very things that make us professionals to be on the same team to service that client don't even teach us to talk to each other. So sometimes to have a sound strategy, you got to write to yourself as a creative person, to even have one. And so this framework will help you either get started on the creativity part of things, thought starters, it'll help you write the briefs. It can help you with strategy itself. But it's a very, very elastic tool that I'm asking you to bring yourself to. Marc Gutman 33:39 A common question I get all the time is Marc, can you help me with our brand? Yes, we help companies solve branding problems. And the first step would be to schedule a no obligation brand clarity call, we'll link to that in the show notes, or head over to wild story, comm and send us an email, we'll get you booked right away. So whether you're just getting started with a new business, or whether you've done some work and need a refresh, or whether you're a brand that's high performing and wants to stay there, we can help. After you book your brand clarity call, you'll learn about our brand audit and strategy process will identify if you need a new logo or just a refresh, will determine if your business has a branding problem. And you'll see examples of our work and get relevant case studies. We'll also see if branding is holding your business back and can help you get to the next level. So what are you waiting for, build the brand you've always dreamed of. Again, we'll link to that in the show notes or head over to wildstorm comm and send us an email. Now back to the show. I just feel like I got a master class in a few minutes. There. are on strategy and you've really changed actually my perspective and worldview I'm, I'm kind of caught up in obsessed with relevance and this idea of staying relevant being relevant, am I relevant? How do I stay relevant? I recently had a post where I was music, I have never felt the right age, you know, when I was younger, I always wanted more, and to be in someone else's seat. Now, as I'm further my career, I'm looking back and be like, oh, there's all these tick trackers, like, as you're mentioning, all these things happening, that I don't know, but, but the way you just describe that, and what I heard was that reinventing yourself and always learning something new as a gift and an opportunity. And, you know, I haven't always looked at it that way. And so I just want to take a moment and pause. And thank you for that. Because that's changed really how I am seeing this, this concept of relevance. And I want me to ask you, like, on this topic of relevance, is that one of the reasons you teach? Douglas Davis 35:55 It is, and yet, I, you know, if you were to ask me, if I was going to teach one day, this is, you know, back when I'm bouncing around from agency to agency, I'd say the guy you know, and I thought, the farthest age that I could think I was, like, yeah, I teach when I'm, like, 35, or something, this is me like 22 or 23. And it ended up that I started teaching at 25. And, you know, the model was always there that my teachers, I pride, they worked in the day, and they taught at night. And so I saw that. And so I realized that, you know, ended up being what I saw. And yet in some ways, the relevance part, I'm going to sort of unpack this as well, because I think that this word and the change, and what's going on in our industry is something that is a larger issue that's also going on in our society that I think we have to deal with. But I remember, as I mentioned earlier, I went to Hampton University, historically black college to study graphic design and photography. After leaving there, as I mentioned, I went to private Institute to get my masters. And then after maybe about seven or eight years of losing, like I said, while winning but losing different battles, because I didn't know how to speak that language. I then went to get my second Master's in integrated marketing, I didn't want you. And what I realized lately is that not only did my high school guidance counselor not have a one, even one conversation with me about college, but in those three institutions, there was no one black teaching design or, or strategy. And then I became a design professor, then I became a strategy professor. I think, when you look at what's going on in society, when you look at design needing to become more diverse, when you look at the demographics in America, when you look at how some people will describe what's going on the southern border as an, you know, an infestation. terrible word. Other people describe it as will, it's what humans do, when they're fleeing, or in a situation where they have to flee. It's what happens on every border, because if if we're having a crisis, here you go, and seek a better place to be. I think when we're talking about relevance, when we're talking about representation, when we're talking about being able to see yourself, I can't say that I teach because I, I didn't see someone like me. But I can say that, if we're talking about design changing, if we're talking about the issues that are in our profession, also being a part of what's in our society. I think that when we talk about relevance, I think we have to really have the conversation that is on the base of the Statue of Liberty. It's calling out to immigrants. But our policy has been so different in the past, you know, very different in the past four years, if equal justice under law is on the top of the Supreme Court, and yet, we're watching the George Floyd trial right now in front of us. And there is witness after witness up there telling you that the sequence of events that happened were completely unique and different than what would have normally happened. Then, I think when we talk about relevance, and when we talk about America living up to its melting pot, you know, equals and, you know, liberty and justice under our equal justice under law. I think we have to really talk about belonging. We have to really talk about the fact that people are coming to us because they believe what we say If we were a company, these would be our mission statement documents, these will be our vision documents, but there's so many mixed signals that are built into what they say, and what the actual experiences. And a lot of times, as you mentioned earlier, alignment is what we're being asked to do as creative people we're being asked to come in and align some problem. And I always start with, well, where's the gap between what we say? And what the people's experience is, whenever they trust us? I close that. And I think relevance and belonging are why people are coming to us. But I think that we have to start asking ourselves, as institutions as an industry, are we relevant? Because there's a call and response here? various people come to various institutions or employers or countries, they're basically asking, do I belong? And based in their interactions with the country or with the employer, or with the client, good or bad? They're going to conclude yes or no. And I think that if we can, as an industry, but also as individuals continue to ask ourselves a question that you asked, am I relevant? Are we relevant? If your metric on yes or no, I am relevant or not, I'm not relevant. It's tied to how many groups of people feel comfortable in the space that you've created, how wide your arms are open, then that is a call and response because it's connected. And if you do care about being relevant, but you do see that some people have decided that they don't belong, based on whatever environment you influence or which is created, or what you're a part of, the next step is to go get those people to understand why, right? And so I'm mixing culture, I'm mixing, you know, what's going on in America. But you can't separate it from the problems that are in our industry, you can't, it's not possible to separate the two. And when you look at it like that, it explains what's going on in our industry, whether we're talking about relevance, or belonging. And I think that if we don't become really serious about this, we're there will be threats to creativity, because of diversity being hindered. And I'll go back to just on this point, I'll go back to again, we got clubhouse. Before that it was you know, tick tock. And before that it was Snapchat before that was Twitter, right? And before that Facebook, and I can keep going because it's gonna keep going. So why in the world, would you not want as many different types of minds on the problems when the industry moves at the speed of business, and we've already covered that we have to keep changing, we have to keep growing, we have to keep learning, to even keep up to even remain relevant. Why would you not want as many different minds or perspectives on a problem that you can grab? And so I say this, in hopes of some of your listeners who I know are creative professionals who have influence over their studios, who could determine how exactly to staff, I'm saying this to your listeners, because I'm hoping that they can really think about the new barriers that COVID-19 has posed, since we're all in our houses. You know, right now, going to school depends on your own bandwidth, your own internet speed, your own Mac, your own whatever, right. But if you think about it, we're asking people who don't have a lot to buy the equivalent of a computer that cost as much as the car just to go to school. And, you know, if you don't control what your internet speed is, because if you live in public housing, you know, again, people are going to college in order to get out of this the circumstances that they were born into in many cases, and all they need is a chance. And so, the Coronavirus has put us in a situation where, you know, there are a lot more barriers that are different. And some of the barriers that were there before are not there anymore. So some of it is leveled the playing field. But I think that belonging and relevance like these, these words that we we often talk about as people who are tasked with solving brands problems, you know, do our customers feel like they belong? are we creating a culture where we're solving their problems, like what are their pain points that we discussed that stuff all the time, we talk about relationship management, we're a field built on targeting, we craft messaging, you know, there are all these different words that we talked about. And yet, when we exclude groups of people from sitting around the table, then not only can we not hear their perspective of what creativity is, and how we can solve this problem that it's, it should be different than ours. But we also put ourselves in a situation where we're not helping ourselves in in the demographics that are shifting, you know, because either what's either your client base is going to become more black and brown, or either the people sitting at the table, this should be it should be, shouldn't be really an ad or should be both. But overall, on order to serve that client basis, becoming more black and brown with the demographics of the nation, you got to make sure that they're people behind the concept, who actually understand how to talk to these groups, so that you're being authentic, and you can build that trust. And that you can actually build the customer base because that takes, you know, making promises, and then actually delivering on them. So, again, I know I expanded that into way more, but it's bigger. And again, the strategist in me won't allow me to sort of just look at those two words, as just those two words. The strategist in me says, You know what, this is much bigger. And there are a lot of pieces to this, if we're going to continue to evolve to remain relevant, if we're going to continue to, you know, now I think apply our skills to new systems design, operations, forecasting, decentralized decision making, all those things are the things that I believe are the new creative skills as a result of the Coronavirus. All of that is what's coming out of how you got to pivot because your clients are asking how we're going to pivot, then it's going to be your job to also have an opinion on some of those things. This is the next evolution of all the things that creative people have to learn. In order to stay relevant. I'll give you this one last piece. I literally just days ago finished a class on finance, from Harvard Business School online. I hate Numbers, chapter one in the book, first paragraph, I take you back to NYU when I'm sitting in my statistics class, and I want to somebody shoot me in the face, because it was too much. However, what is my point? I understand that at my altitude, and at my point, like where I'm at in my career, if I don't understand how to talk to other people who do get it. If I don't understand how to ask the right questions, if I don't understand which levers I can pull on my level, then I'm not going to get the business, I'm not going to be chosen, somebody else is going to be chosen. So me taking a finance class 15 $100. Okay, I hate numbers. But I'm going to find the fear. Gonna find the fear just like I did when I was bad at typography. And I said, I'm only going to use type on this particular solution, because I'm going to turn my weaknesses into strengths. And that is the evolution. It's a mindset leading is a verb, and a posture. And as creative people, I believe that we will lead us out of this crazy mess that we're in right now. Whether it's climate change, whether it's our social ills that we're going through right now, this just horrible Asian hate, or just you know, what happened in your area with, you know, people not having access to mental health and just having so many guns, I don't even know why people do what they do, but that the systems need to be redesigned. And relevance and belonging are the questions that we will be judged by. It's bigger than just words, this is how we are going to survive. And I'm hoping that in talking about it in a way that I'm scaling it up, unpacking all the different pieces, connecting these dots on something that's much bigger than just your job, the problems your client has, and you being able to like navigate that stuff. It's much bigger than that. And if we can see it as creative people, as bigger than that, I believe that they're the opportunities there for us to lead. That's what I believe. That's what I believe. Wow. Marc Gutman 49:36 I mean, I believe the same and taking that leadership role. And you know, what I've always loved about this idea of design. So when we take it in a very literal sense, you know, I think of it in terms of graphic design of aesthetics of type and I'm like, I wish I was a designer. I'm not a designer. I love designers. I love being around them. I love being in their spaces. There's every there's something magical about it. But when I really think about what design means to me, it's exactly what you just articulated. It's it's seeing the problems, both the ones in front of us and the ones that that expand out of Yeah, of the the the first maybe insight or initial problem, and then coming up with creative, innovative solutions to solve those problems. And I agree, I think creatives are our only hope right now. And they're going to lead us to, to the new world. And yeah, no dog was on that topic of diversity. I mean, what is the step that creative leaders can take? Besides the the obvious of like, Hey, we need more representation at the table, because I hear that a lot. And I hear people putting energy into it, but I'm not seeing it in the way that you just articulated. And I think that's where we want to get to, you know, no doubt. Douglas Davis 50:56 So I'm gonna be I'm gonna be blunt, like we are in Brooklyn. I think a lot of times when I hear, again, our industry that's built on targeting and messaging and, and like, we get that stuff, but yet there are a lot of people are excluded. Right? as a percentage of the population, you can't understand that stuff. Like that can't be your job, your industry, and yet, we're leaving people out. Right, like, and that's what targeting is right? You not you, you, not you, right. So we're deciding to leave people out. And I like to tell people who asked this question, I think it would come from a really good place who really do want to do something different. Now school, you know, what do we find people can't really find, you know, qualified candidates of color and x y&z. I, my answer to that is that I'm not a black white person. Don't look for me in the same places, and in the same way that you would if you're looking for white person, of course, you can't find me. Of course you can't. I'm not there. You're looking for me as if I was not me. And then when you say, Well, I looked, and I can't No, you didn't look, and you didn't even understand that you're not looking for me. And I think that that's the part that has to be corrected. I also think that we have to rethink the measures of what we've used to determine someone's aptitude or potential, whether it be for leadership or, or carrying a gun, frankly, as a policeman. I think we've got to rethink what we've used to judge someone's worthiness or potential. I took the LSAT probably about three times. And again, I mentioned earlier that my guidance counselor in high school, we never had one conversation about college, not 1/11 grade summer, I said to myself, you know, what, if I don't go to college, I wanted to be because I didn't choose to go versus I couldn't go. So I chose to go to summer school, I chose to finish my foreign language requirements, I chose to take extra math, like get it right, I chose to take the LSAT three times. And in those three times, I got to like a 720, or 780, I can't even remember. But on that measure, Marc, I'm stupid. If I were to let that number, tell me dictate to me what I was and was not capable of in the future, then I'm stupid. And I'm so thankful that that's not how I didn't listen to that, like, What do you know about me? None of these questions were even crafted with me in mind. So of course, I didn't do well. And I'm not just saying that, like, Everything about it is wrong. I am saying though, that we can't measure everybody by the same yardstick. And that doesn't mean that one is better than the other. It just means that there are other ways. And and people learn differently as creative people, you know that we all know that. And yet, we don't apply that to the standard measures that we've always used to gauge someone's potential. And I think that there's something wrong with that. Because, you know, creative people like me, and you can grow up comparing themselves to other people based on those measures, and conclude that something's wrong with them, when they're the ones with the superpowers. You know, and I think that that is something that's really important. We have superpowers and I'm not saying that being able to crunch numbers is not a superpower. It definitely is. But I am also saying that being bad at numbers is an indicator that you might be a creative. Think Overall, we really have to rethink our measures. We've got it and again, this is back to new systems design. This is back to us thinking through what's wrong? And if you if you really look at this right, I love this example. You know, there are more design decisions than there are visually literate people to make them. How do I know this? Well, if on live TV, the best picture is announced lala land and not moonlight because of the card, then that tells me that there was a problem that needed to be solved. There were people around who who had the title and the tools, but who are not visually literate. What is another example, if the wrong Mr. Universe gets crowned on national TV? What is another example if the Supreme Court has to determine who the President is because of the ballot design? What is another, I can keep going all day? Right? So there are more visually, there are more design problems than there are visually literate people to make them. And so again, like I'm back to this place, that we've got to redesign our systems, there's so much broken, and there's so many sort of problems to solve. And, you know, if you're like me, as a creative person, you can't unsee all the work around us. Because there's so many things to redesign. There's so many things to rethink, but I think we can do it. And I think, you know, I was thinking about Okay, so what are the new measures, I would argue that we should have a grid metric, you know, if you don't come from money, the money's not the first thing that you think about to solve a problem. I want that person on my team, because that person had everything but money, that person has creativity, that person is thinking creatively, that person is not just like, yeah, we'll throw XYZ in the budget at the problem. Yeah, we're gonna need money at some point. But if you don't have money, you still got a problem that you got to solve. And, you know, I would much rather have a grip metric, somebody who had to fight through some stuff. In order to get here. I want to know your story. How'd you get here? What do you do when you have more ambition and resources? You know, how did that work? And how, you know, what is your origin story? How did you get here, I can only see you now. You know, and oftentimes, I'm always really, really clear that, yes, I have three Emmys, you know, over my shoulder, and yet, it was not always like that. And so I'm making a point to tell young creators, that it was a struggle, it was a struggle, because I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea. It wasn't always easy. And it's not easy now. And so I think there's so much work to do. There's so many systems that we have to redesign and rethink. And the right people to do that, are you and I want to put another link in the chat that sort of deals with all of this, this sort of social, creative sort of mix that I'm putting together, because I'm looking at this as our competitive advantage as a nation, just like Michel Porter's book, you know, competitive ventures of nations, this is a big problem that if we're not careful, we are going to lose out because there's so much human potential that we don't allow, because of the color of somebody's skin, or because of their gender, or because we're worried about which bathroom, you're going to use stupid stuff that if we could just focus on, you know, how someone's mind would process dealing with this issue. We can be so much farther ahead than we are right now. But we're caught up on stupid things that divide us. And I think that, you know, I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful, especially in this generation, because they grew up in a time where, you know, the only president that they knew was black. But it wasn't even a hurdle that like a black person could be president, right? They grew up in a time where now the vice president as a black woman, who also is, you know, has Asian descent as well, like these MCs, these these barriers that we had, like, you can have same sex unions, like all the stuff that took forever, right? It was just it was here, we had made the progress by the time that they were born. And so I hope that they can do something about the climate. I hope that because of their energy, and because they don't have the same limitations that we had. I hope that their creative problem solving skills that we we get out of the way that we let them apply themselves to these big problems. Because if we, if we're not talking about if we keep talking about logos, we keep talking about like the job, then we're part of the problem because we're not even addressing all the other things that we better start to like attention to. And it you know, it would be embarrassing if I didn't speak out, based on all the things that I had to navigate to even get here. And I think that, that that's just always a really important thing that, you know, I have to touch on those things, things that, you know, may seem, you know, like third rail, but I, you know, I think we have to be more deliberate about closing the gap, the mixed signals that are there between what we say and what the experience is in America, you know, none of us as professionals would advise our client to do the complete opposite of everything hit the brandy, mission statement, and just the who would do that? Who would do that? No, but none of us. And so why do we tolerate it? Why do we tolerate it in society? And I think that again, because that's what we do, we should be the ones leading the conversation about how to make change. And I know that, you know, some people might be listening to like, well, this is outside of the lane of what I do. You know, I'm here to learn about tips and tricks about how to, like, you know, do better my job. And yes, I hear you, you know, I hope that there was something there that you could also listen to, but I also hope that you'll take your superpowers and think about our systems that are broken, they need your skills. That's why I'm talking to you about this, because you're a part of who can fix it, because of your creativity. And so I'm calling out, because, you know, we need a different type of person to go into these other professions, you know, or else we're lost. We're lost. But I'm hopeful. Marc Gutman 1:01:52 In that is Douglas Davis. I've goosebumps as I sit here, goosebumps and a bit like I was just shaken into my senses, that we need to stop talking and start doing that I me, because it starts here must work to close the gap, to open my arms and bring more of the world into the conversation. I hear you, Douglas. There was so much gold in this episode. And I can't wait to get Douglas back on the show. So we can hear his story. As he shared it hasn't been easy. And he's worked his tail off to find success in this industry. I hope you're as excited as I am to hear all about that in the future as well. Inspired by Douglas, I challenge you. What new thing are you going to decide to learn? make a commitment to learning something new, put a flag in the sand. Email us if you're so bold with what it is. I want to know that I'll share it with Douglas as well. We are living in such an exciting time as the story is being written as we live it. We have an incredible opportunity to reinvent ourselves, learn new things and change the world. really change the world. It's our job to reinstate that American mission statement on the Statue of Liberty. I'm up for the challenge. Are you a big thank you to Douglas Davis. You inspire me professionally, personally, and culturally. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, my friend. We will link to all things Douglas Davis, his book Creative Strategy and the Business of Design, imported from Brooklyn, and much more in the show notes. If you know of a guest who should appear on our show, please drop me a line at podcast at wild story calm. Our best guests like Douglas come from referrals from past guests and our listeners. Well that's the show. Until next time, make sure to visit our website www.wildstorm.com where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS so you'll never miss an episode. I like big stories and I cannot lie. You other storytellers can't deny. ‍

Anyone who has written software for the travel industry can tell you that it is in desperate need of innovation — shockingly many of their cobwebbed systems were built in the 70s. Today we speak with Duffel CEO Steve Domin, who is building tech that can finally align travel with the expectations of modern consumers. We open by exploring Steve’s journey into coding before diving into how Duffel is innovating travel. After touching on how the pandemic has impacted Duffel’s roll-out, Steve shares horror stories about the outdated tech and API systems that airlines use. We discuss Duffel’s service offerings and why Elixir is uniquely suited to solve the problems that Steve’s company is addressing. Steve then talks about the types of engineers that Duffel hires, his client base, and where his company is heading. Near the end of the episode, we ask Steve for his advice on selling your company on Elixir and we chat about the status of the London Elixir Meetup. Tune in for more insights on how Steve is using Elixir to make travel an effortless experience. Key Points From This Episode: Introducing Duffel CEO Steve Domin. Steve shares details about his coding journey and career highlights. Insights into the old school ecosystem of Flash, Flex, and ActionScript. Exploring how Duffel is innovating the travel industry. Why Duffel accelerated their roll-out due to the pandemic. Steve unpacks the outdated tech and API systems that airlines use. Why Duffel decided to use Elixir to tackle their problems. The benefits of using Elixir when dealing with airline data. Steve gives listeners an overview of Duffel’s pipeline. Insights into the types of engineers that Duffel hires. Who Duffel’s clients are and how they’re onboarded. Steve reflects on some airline API horror stories. Hear about Duffel’s roadmap — the future is bright. What Elixir has uniquely enabled Duffel to do. Steve’s advice on selling Elixir to stakeholders in your company. The status of the London Elixir Meetup. Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode: SmartLogic — https://smartlogic.io/ Steve Domin — https://stevedomin.com/about Steve Domin on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevedomin/ Steve Domin on Twitter — https://twitter.com/stevedomin Duffel — https://duffel.com/ Duffel Careers — https://duffel.com/careers José Valim — https://twitter.com/josevalim Flex — https://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html Passenger Service System — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengerservicesystem Global Distribution System — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globaldistributionsystem Sabre — https://www.sabre.com/ Amadeus — https://amadeus.com/en ‘Why does NDC matter to my travel business?’ — https://duffel.com/blog/why-does-ndc-matter-to-my-travel-business IATA — https://www.iata.org/ Next.js — https://nextjs.org/ GoCardless — https://gocardless.com/ Twilio — https://www.twilio.com/ Stripe — https://stripe.com/ Thomas Bates — https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-bates-3908a74b/ Elixir London Meetup — https://www.meetup.com/Elixir-London/ Baris Balic — https://twitter.com/barisbalic Special Guests: Steve Domin and Sundi Myint.

.NET 5 RC1 is now availableIt's great to see .NET 5 so close to release. The blog post announcing, however, has a whiplash moment I just need to note: and the first of two RCs before the official release in November. RC1 is a “go live” release; you are supported using it in production. At this point, we're looking for reports of any remaining critical bugs that should be fixed before the final release.So what I'm reading is that the target demographic for .NET 5 RC1 is people who want to use it in production and aren't afraid to encounter critical bugs.Oh.Big hits in .NET 5 include C# 9 Records, System.Text.Json (replacement for Newtonsoft.Json)'Single File Applications' are making it into .NET 5Ok, terminology pop quiz.Does "Single File application" mean a single source control file or a single output file?So to correct the lede, it's a "Self Contained Application", where a single output file is published that contains the runtime, references, and the application code.There is also a push for "Single File" applications where you can literally write your entire program in one source control file without the ceremony you normally need. the .NET team calls this a "Top Level Statement".Naming is hard and we as an industry are especially bad at it..NET standard is going the way of the dodo bird.Long story short, target .NET-5.0 if you want cross-platform, and target .NET-5.0-windows if you want Windows specific features.EFCore PowerTools have been updated for .NET 5 RC 1https://github.com/ErikEJ/EFCorePowerTools/wiki/Release-notes#24212-september-17-2020Jetbrains is hosting a webinar on Service Creation via .NET Core TemplatesIt's on Wednesday, October 14, 2020, at 10:00am EDT.If you're interested in learning more about .NET API Templates, give this webinar a shot. I'm not really sure what they mean by "service" here, whether it's "Micro services" or some other usage, but that's really an us problem. Let's retire the name service. That and eliminating timezones is my 2024 campaign platform.Jerome Hardaway and Michael Brown talk about how hard it is to get developers to embrace .NETMichael's thread is hereThe elephant in this particular room is that the .NET community as a whole isn't seen as welcoming or as a place where new developers should invest their time.Jerome runs vetswhocode.io and put .NET up for a vote as the next platform to teach, and it was struck down by a vote of 121-1.Your programming framework is only as relevant as it has new blood. Having new developers unceremoniously dumping .NET says a lot about where people outside the community think we stand.We can go two ways from here: We can listen, ask questions on how we can improve, and do so; or we can stick our heads in the sand and in 10 years hang out at the "Dumped platforms convention" with Cold Fusion and ActionScript..NET Core has re-invigorated the .NET community in a way I wouldn't have thought possible, but unless we act as the ambassadors .NET needs to thrive, we'll lose that momentum.JetBrains Rider 2020.3 will include the Immediate WindowI'm surprised Rider has made it this long without the Immediate Window. I'm not sure if this is an argument for or against an MVP but it does emphasize a bonus of switching to CalVer: No one knows how old your software is. (For the record, JetBrains rider has been out for 3 years)..NET Foundation will host an All Hands meeting on October 13-14th, 2020The event will take place: Tuesday, October 13th, at 11:30-12:30 Eastern Daylight Time, and it's going to take place via Microsoft Teams. Microsoft is placing a lot of trust on Microsoft Teams, and we'll see how it goes.Rick Strahl talks about the perils of misuing await in ASP.NET Core MiddlewareThis post is a good read if you are new to async in ASP.NET Core Middleware.And that's it for what happened Last Week in .NET. I'm George Stocker, and I help .NET teams deliver better software faster. If your team feels like it's struggling against the wave of feature requests and roadmap changes, reach out at www.doubleyourproductivity.io.

An airhacks.fm conversation with Frank Delporte (@FrankDelporte) about: first experiences in computer club - a retail store, C64 love with 11, enjoying printing a line of text repeatedly, a book by elektor about C64 and hardware, controlling lego trains with soldered relay boards with C64, disco bar with peek and pokes, programming over games, film school in a castle in Vorst, bombastic intros to movies with Amiga 500 at technical film school, editing documentaries and cooking shows, burning 15 seconds of video on 15 MB CD-ROMs business cards, programming with Macromedia Director in Lingo, Lingo became ActionScript with Flex Builder, bringing videos to websites, programming CMS with C# and MS-Access, migrating to MySQL, clean and beautiful HTML markup with MS FrontPage, suspicious web editors, Flex 2 backend with streaming data and charts, writing applications with Flex 3 with C# backend, desktop applications in the browser with Flex, Steve Job's "no flash", building passenger information systems at: www.televic-rail.com, flash on all devices, automation of rail station announcements, replacing flash with browser, adobe donated flex to apache, compiling Flex to HTML and JavaScript, syncing powered-off trains, C# was a moving target, Java is stable, killing a train blocks passengers, challenging kids to program at coderdojo.com and devoxx4kids.org, powerful and underestimated RaspberryPI, the killer use case is the GPIO, the story behind RaspberryPI, the ToC of "Getting Started with Java on RaspberryPI", PI4j by Robert Savage, JavaFX for RaspberryPI, using RaspberryPI as a server / edge device, running Quarkus with Panache on RaspberryPI, Quarkus starts 3 times faster as Apache Spring on RaspberryPI in JVM mode, Quarkus native mode didn't ran on RaspberryPI / ARM, starting with Quarkus and MicroProfile was easy, clusters with turingpi.com, migration from Spring to Quarkus took a few hours, Frank Delporte on twitter: @FrankDelporte, Frank's blog: webtechie.be and Frank's book: "Getting Started with Java on Raspberry Pi"

An airhacks.fm conversation with Viktor Gamov (@gAmUssA) about: Russian, pirate 286 intel knock-off, starting with BASIC, typing programs from magazines, fun with computer graphics primitive in BASIC, Flash animations with ActionScript, drawing buttons with Visual Basic, learning C/C++ at the university, implementing a log scraper in Pearl to get an aggregated view, Unreal Tournament was the secret goal, enjoying the lack of no compilation in excel macros, Java and Flex development, creating GUIs with Borland C++ builder at university, the size of statically compiled libraries matters, optimising the size with MS Visual C++, exploring DirectX SDK, OpenGL vs. DirectX, enjoying MSDN with Visual Studio .net and C#, the Russian Development Software Network rsdn.org, Thinking in C++ over Thinking in Java, nice looking and opensource Eclipse IDE, writing web servers in Java, JRE vs. JDK, Moscow State University for Railway Engineering, writing backends with WebSphere and RAD, WebSphere Community Edition 5.0 vs. Geronimo vs. Tomcat, Borland JBuilder with JBCL, great DeveloperWorks from IBM, Scott Davis' articles about Groovy, smart and motivated kids, nice Ruby and Rails, Scott Davis and Grails, working on Russian Google -> Yandex, working with Yakov Vain in Flex and Java, writing the Enterprise Web Development book, working for Hazelcast and Talip Ozturk, speaking at JavaOne, working as solution architect, meeting Cay Horstmann - author of Core Java book, the CAP theorem, from Hazelcast to Conluent and Apache Kafka, building kafka-tutorials.confluent.io, Kafka and JMS are following opposite principles, from JMS persistent topics to Kafka, from Hadoop and Big Data to Kafka, BigData and lambda architecture, from batch to real time processing, data is an immutable set of events, no replay in JMS, the outbox pattern, Change Data Capture (CDC), debezium, Viktor Gamov on twitter: @gAmUssA, Victor's website: gamov.io

We here at David Sizemore think we know that it is better to transition macro-robustly than to maximize dynamically. We pride ourselves not only on our value-added feature set, but our user-proof administration and user-proof configuration. Think plug-and-play. Think social-network-based. Think web-enabled. But don't think all three at the same time. The metrics for applications are more well-understood if they are not affiliate-based. Our clicks-and-mortar feature set is unmatched, but our synergistic Total Quality Management and non-complex use is constantly considered a terrific achievement. If you actualize transparently, you may have to deploy iteravely. We believe we know that if you upgrade wirelessly then you may also actualize efficiently. We think that most real-time web applications use far too much ActionScript, and not enough Flash. What does the term "bricks-and-clicks" really mean? We believe we know that if you orchestrate holistically then you may also optimize strategically. We understand that it is better to enable robustly than to revolutionize dynamically.David Sizemore has revolutionized the conceptualization of Total Quality Management. Without CAD, you will lack data hygiene. What do we engineer? Anything and everything, regardless of unimportance! Imagine a combination of Perl and CSS. Our feature set is unmatched, but our B2B2C revolutionary, real-world, wireless blog-based, back-end, leading-edge TQM and simple operation is usually considered a terrific achievement. We usually repurpose killer bandwidth. That is an amazing achievement considering this quarter's conditions! We apply the proverb "A barking dog never bites" not only to our B2B social networks but our capability to productize. The six-sigma re-purposing factor can be summed up in one word: virally-distributed. We have come to know that if you mesh extensibly then you may also drive efficiently. Think clicks-and-mortar. What does it really mean to exploit "holistically"?At David Sizemore, we have come to know how to embrace intuitively. We will revolutionize the term "24/7, virally-distributed". Without cross-platform TQM, you will lack six-sigma, intuitive, plug-and-play accounting compliance. Is it more important for something to be collaborative or to be co-branded? Without well-planned e-services, initiatives are forced to become out-of-the-box, B2B2C. The metrics for structuring are more well-understood if they are not synergistic. Think dot-com. Think short-term, clicks-and-mortar, impactful. Think vertical. But don't think all three at the same time. We will augment our aptitude to redefine without depreciating our aptitude to enable. Our feature set is unmatched in the industry, but our robust compliance and newbie-proof operation is usually considered a remarkable achievement. What does the commonly-used term "front-end" really mean? Your budget for morphing should be at least three times your budget for transitioning.At David Sizemore, we have come to know how to expedite intuitively. We constantly repurpose frictionless development metrics. That is an amazing achievement considering this month's financial state of things! Do you have a game plan to become transparent? We think we know that if you matrix perfectly then you may also e-enable compellingly. What does the term "turn-key compliance" really mean? We will revolutionize the term "B2B". Quick: do you have a client-focused plan of action for regulating emerging eyeballs? Quick: do you have a out-of-the-box plan of action for monitoring emerging functionalities? A company that can innovate faithfully will (one day) be able to streamline fiercely. What do we target? Anything and everything, regardless of abstruseness!We here at David Sizemore believe we know that it is better to maximize mega-dynamically than to monetize magnetically. Your budget for meshing should be at least three times your budget for syndicating. Our technology takes the best features of VOIP and J2EE. Your budget for deploying should be at least one-third of your budget for scaling. We understand that if you enhance transparently then you may also synthesize mega-strategically. What does it really mean to evolve "intuitively"? Without well-chosen architectures, channels are forced to become impactful. Is it more important for something to be interactive or to be cross-media? Think macro-scalable. The functionalities factor is sexy. Imagine a combination of CSS and XForms.At David Sizemore, we think we know how to embrace strategically. What do we leverage? Anything and everything, regardless of obscureness! What does it really mean to reintermediate "seamlessly"? What do we reinvent? Anything and everything, regardless of abstruseness! Is it more important for something to be front-end or to be C2C2C? What does the commonly-used industry jargon "C2B2B" really mean? We will whiteboard the term "robust". We think that most out-of-the-box web applications use far too much Python, and not enough JavaScript. Think vertical. Think robust. Think C2C2B. But don't think all three at the same time. We have proven we know that it is better to repurpose wirelessly than to architect transparently. Think nano-frictionless, C2C2B. Our technology takes the best aspects of HTTP and VOIP.David Sizemore has refactored the concept of experiences. The macro-one-to-one, front-end Total Quality Control supervising factor can be summed up in one word: user-defined. What does it really mean to enable "holistically"? Your budget for morphing should be at least twice your budget for meshing. What does the commonly-accepted buzzword "viral" really mean? Think magnetic. Think transparent. Think e-business. But don't think all three at the same time. The metrics for cutting-edge portals are more well-understood if they are not open-source. If you drive globally, you may have to implement compellingly. We will innovate the ability of systems to e-enable. Think intra-B2B2C.

We here at David Sizemore think we know that it is better to transition macro-robustly than to maximize dynamically. We pride ourselves not only on our value-added feature set, but our user-proof administration and user-proof configuration. Think plug-and-play. Think social-network-based. Think web-enabled. But don't think all three at the same time. The metrics for applications are more well-understood if they are not affiliate-based. Our clicks-and-mortar feature set is unmatched, but our synergistic Total Quality Management and non-complex use is constantly considered a terrific achievement. If you actualize transparently, you may have to deploy iteravely. We believe we know that if you upgrade wirelessly then you may also actualize efficiently. We think that most real-time web applications use far too much ActionScript, and not enough Flash. What does the term "bricks-and-clicks" really mean? We believe we know that if you orchestrate holistically then you may also optimize strategically. We understand that it is better to enable robustly than to revolutionize dynamically.

This week the DevPlebs talk about: Getting slapped with a DMCA notice! Calling out Joshua Fluke! Debating if every Brad is terrible! George Lucas's jowl! A small amount of web development content! Filler episodes! A cattle of interns! ActionScript being the new Star Wars! Working your way up the corporate ladder by driving your boss to work! Watching online chess! Comically deflating like a cartoon character! Giving your opponent your biggest weak points! A devastatingly will-crushing Kickstarter! A BILLION USERS! Missing the mark on Facebook games! Cheating on your spouse! Centipede camp! An actual fan email!

An airhacks.fm conversation with Robert Brem (@bremrobert) about: Windows 95 with 15 for gaming, Nascar watching Korean StarCraft streams, writing the first Hello World in Visual Basic for Excel, in programming you can retrying without breaking anything, in ABAP everything had four letters, automating Excel merges with visual mode "on", hiding ABAP skills, ABAP could strike back with: Abular.js, Java 5 was released in September 2004, Generics were introduced with Java SE 6, annotations with Java SE 5, Sun Certified Programmer Certification was really hard, connecting WII controller to ActionScript 3, developing games in ActionScript 3, J2EE was too much, sustainable economics game as master thesis, saving the state of the game by serializing the board, the HSR in Rapperswil the beatiful place for lazy students, Peter Sommerlad was a demanding teacher but introduced Jenkins and automation, getting the color of the surface from satellites, the hosted GWT was slow, Spring Implementation of EJB container - project Pitchfork (now https://oss.oracle.com/projects/pitchfork/), deleting over upgrade, dependencies are fun for green field projects, the sequence of joy: GWT, ABAP and Eclipse RCP, the mensa club, the most sophisticated loading screen ever, the multi-dimensional Map (MapMap) solves all problems, automating infrastructure with Vagrant, Ansible and Packer, www.confirm.ch, all nails in the food has to be published in Switzerland, lit-html is the only dependency in the frontend and only Jakarta EE in the backend, sub MB ThinWARs and a few seconds deployment, building an entire application on one day, Robert Brem on twitter: @bremrobert

Chris is an independent consultant working with open source startups. He taught himself to program and started in open source. He talks about how he got into programming and how he learned to code. Chris' first access to programming was writing index.hml files when he was younger and again when he was majoring in Arts in university he was introduced to ActionScript. Host: Charles Max Wood Joined by Special Guest:  Chris Biscardi Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan iPhreaks Adventures in DevOps CacheFly _______________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood will be out on November 20th on Amazon. Get your copy on that date only for $2.99 _______________________________________________________ Links JSJ 386: Gatsby.js with Chris Biscardi Chris' LinkedIn Chris' Twitter https://www.twitch.tv/chrisbiscardi Picks Charles Max Wood: Follow Charles Max Wood on Instagram at CharlesMaxWood Follow Charles at https://devchat.tv/events/ Suggest a topic/guests on podcast pages at https://devchat.tv Follow Devchat.tv on Instagram at devchat.tv Join us on Discord by going to https://discordapp.com/invite/z7RNTHR Go to Maxcoders.io to find out more about MaxCoders movement Chris Biscardi: Follow Chris on Instagram at ChrisBiscardi

Chris is an independent consultant working with open source startups. He taught himself to program and started in open source. He talks about how he got into programming and how he learned to code. Chris' first access to programming was writing index.hml files when he was younger and again when he was majoring in Arts in university he was introduced to ActionScript. Host: Charles Max Wood Joined by Special Guest:  Chris Biscardi Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan iPhreaks Adventures in DevOps CacheFly _______________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood will be out on November 20th on Amazon. Get your copy on that date only for $2.99 _______________________________________________________ Links JSJ 386: Gatsby.js with Chris Biscardi Chris' LinkedIn Chris' Twitter https://www.twitch.tv/chrisbiscardi Picks Charles Max Wood: Follow Charles Max Wood on Instagram at CharlesMaxWood Follow Charles at https://devchat.tv/events/ Suggest a topic/guests on podcast pages at https://devchat.tv Follow Devchat.tv on Instagram at devchat.tv Join us on Discord by going to https://discordapp.com/invite/z7RNTHR Go to Maxcoders.io to find out more about MaxCoders movement Chris Biscardi: Follow Chris on Instagram at ChrisBiscardi

Chris is an independent consultant working with open source startups. He taught himself to program and started in open source. He talks about how he got into programming and how he learned to code. Chris' first access to programming was writing index.hml files when he was younger and again when he was majoring in Arts in university he was introduced to ActionScript. Host: Charles Max Wood Joined by Special Guest:  Chris Biscardi Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan iPhreaks Adventures in DevOps CacheFly _______________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood will be out on November 20th on Amazon. Get your copy on that date only for $2.99 _______________________________________________________ Links JSJ 386: Gatsby.js with Chris Biscardi Chris' LinkedIn Chris' Twitter https://www.twitch.tv/chrisbiscardi Picks Charles Max Wood: Follow Charles Max Wood on Instagram at CharlesMaxWood Follow Charles at https://devchat.tv/events/ Suggest a topic/guests on podcast pages at https://devchat.tv Follow Devchat.tv on Instagram at devchat.tv Join us on Discord by going to https://discordapp.com/invite/z7RNTHR Go to Maxcoders.io to find out more about MaxCoders movement Chris Biscardi: Follow Chris on Instagram at ChrisBiscardi

In this episode of My JavaScript Story is Charles talks to Mike Hartington. Mike Hartington is a Developer Advocate for Ionic Framework and a Google Developer Expert, but he is most famous in the developer community because of his beard. Charles asks how Mike got introduced to development. Mike tried to code Tic-Tac-Toe and that was a challenge because knowing the rules to the game and trying to tell a computer the rules are two very two different things. Mike then majored in Graphic Design at Rhode Island College, and started learning Flash and ActionScript. Mike talks about what kind of projects he created with Flash and ActionScript and then the process of teaching himself JavaScript. Host: Charles Max Wood Joined by Special Guest: Mike Hartington Links Mike's Twitter Ionic Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan Adventures in DevOps Adventures in Blockchain CacheFly Picks  Mike Hartington Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailer Charles Max Wood: Atomic Habits by James Clear Superfans by Pat Flynn

In this episode of My JavaScript Story is Charles talks to Mike Hartington. Mike Hartington is a Developer Advocate for Ionic Framework and a Google Developer Expert, but he is most famous in the developer community because of his beard. Charles asks how Mike got introduced to development. Mike tried to code Tic-Tac-Toe and that was a challenge because knowing the rules to the game and trying to tell a computer the rules are two very two different things. Mike then majored in Graphic Design at Rhode Island College, and started learning Flash and ActionScript. Mike talks about what kind of projects he created with Flash and ActionScript and then the process of teaching himself JavaScript. Host: Charles Max Wood Joined by Special Guest: Mike Hartington Links Mike's Twitter Ionic Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan Adventures in DevOps Adventures in Blockchain CacheFly Picks  Mike Hartington Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailer Charles Max Wood: Atomic Habits by James Clear Superfans by Pat Flynn

In this episode of My JavaScript Story is Charles talks to Mike Hartington. Mike Hartington is a Developer Advocate for Ionic Framework and a Google Developer Expert, but he is most famous in the developer community because of his beard. Charles asks how Mike got introduced to development. Mike tried to code Tic-Tac-Toe and that was a challenge because knowing the rules to the game and trying to tell a computer the rules are two very two different things. Mike then majored in Graphic Design at Rhode Island College, and started learning Flash and ActionScript. Mike talks about what kind of projects he created with Flash and ActionScript and then the process of teaching himself JavaScript. Host: Charles Max Wood Joined by Special Guest: Mike Hartington Links Mike's Twitter Ionic Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan Adventures in DevOps Adventures in Blockchain CacheFly Picks  Mike Hartington Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailer Charles Max Wood: Atomic Habits by James Clear Superfans by Pat Flynn

In this episode of My JavaScript Story is Charles talks to Mike Hartington. Mike Hartington is a Developer Advocate for Ionic Framework and a Google Developer Expert, but he is most famous in the developer community because of his beard. Charles asks how Mike got introduced to development. Mike tried to code Tic-Tac-Toe and that was a challenge because knowing the rules to the game and trying to tell a computer the rules are two very two different things. Mike then majored in Graphic Design at Rhode Island College, and started learning Flash and ActionScript. Mike talks about what kind of projects he created with Flash and ActionScript and then the process of teaching himself JavaScript. Host: Charles Max Wood Joined by Special Guest: Mike Hartington Links Mike's Twitter Ionic Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan Adventures in DevOps Adventures in Blockchain CacheFly Picks  Mike Hartington Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailer Charles Max Wood: Atomic Habits by James Clear Superfans by Pat Flynn

In this episode of My JavaScript Story is Charles talks to Mike Hartington. Mike Hartington is a Developer Advocate for Ionic Framework and a Google Developer Expert, but he is most famous in the developer community because of his beard. Charles asks how Mike got introduced to development. Mike tried to code Tic-Tac-Toe and that was a challenge because knowing the rules to the game and trying to tell a computer the rules are two very two different things. Mike then majored in Graphic Design at Rhode Island College, and started learning Flash and ActionScript. Mike talks about what kind of projects he created with Flash and ActionScript and then the process of teaching himself JavaScript. Host: Charles Max Wood Joined by Special Guest: Mike Hartington Links Mike's Twitter Ionic Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan Adventures in DevOps Adventures in Blockchain CacheFly Picks  Mike Hartington Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailer Charles Max Wood: Atomic Habits by James Clear Superfans by Pat Flynn

In this episode of My JavaScript Story is Charles talks to Mike Hartington. Mike Hartington is a Developer Advocate for Ionic Framework and a Google Developer Expert, but he is most famous in the developer community because of his beard. Charles asks how Mike got introduced to development. Mike tried to code Tic-Tac-Toe and that was a challenge because knowing the rules to the game and trying to tell a computer the rules are two very two different things. Mike then majored in Graphic Design at Rhode Island College, and started learning Flash and ActionScript. Mike talks about what kind of projects he created with Flash and ActionScript and then the process of teaching himself JavaScript. Host: Charles Max Wood Joined by Special Guest: Mike Hartington Links Mike's Twitter Ionic Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan Adventures in DevOps Adventures in Blockchain CacheFly Picks  Mike Hartington Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Trailer Charles Max Wood: Atomic Habits by James Clear Superfans by Pat Flynn

Ele também trabalha de casa, no Brasil, como desenvolvedor remoto para uma empresa da Califórnia. Ganha em criptomoedas. E compartilhou conosco as suas experiências como desenvolvedor remoto internacional. Essa é um bate-papo com o Thiago Ramos. Você que vem acompanhando os conteúdos que eu venho compartilhando, em texto, vídeo, e-book, sobre trabalho remoto para clientes do exterior, vai saber um pouco mais sobre trabalho remoto, mas antes disso, um pouco sobre o perfil do Thiago. Segue um resumo feito por ele mesmo: "Sou engenheiro de software (programador para os íntimos) trabalho na area a mais de 15 anos. Comecei com Objetive-Pascal e já trabalhei com Java, Flex, ActionScript, Ruby, Python, Php, Javascript, Objective-C e Swift. Fundei uma empresa em 2011 com dois sócios e o nosso negócio principal era apps mobile, tivemos grandes clientes como o Grupo Abril e a Golden Cross junto com essa empresa nós fundamos outra empresa filha, mas depois de um tempo eu acabei enjoando de ser empresário como eu era e por outros problemas resolvi sair da sociedade e me dedicar ao que gosto mais que é programar. Hoje eu trabalho para uma empresa na Califórnia, no conforto da minha casa em Maceió-AL". Nesse bate-papo nós conversamos sobre contratação, entrevista, forma e importância da comunicação no trabalho remoto. Falamos também sobre a fase de adaptação. Diferenças culturais e muito mais. Aproveite.

Our first guest! The talented Charlie Gleason joins us and chats about his journey into creative coding and the things he has built. All the way through Actionscript, sound engineering, design and of course there's some generative art in there!

An airhacks.fm conversation with Ben Farell (@bfarrellforever) about: copying and pasting game programming logic from magazines into a TI 994a, the ugly purple people picker, accidentally buying Java books, boring C++ without visual elements, dangerous assembly classes, Macromedia Director in 1996, developing with Flash, suddenly in 2010 Flash lost its popularity, writing casual games for kids, a thick book about LiveScript, JavaScript is just Java with a bit script, Java was great and the visual stuff was boring, writing code in key frames, Adobe Flex, Adobe Flex Builder, typesafe ActionScript, GreenSock, GreenSock started with Flash, the book about WebComponents, plain vanilla, no thrills, JavaScript, developing applications without a framework, potential migrations, stable React, JavaScript becomes more and more similar to Java, CSS 3 without less or Sass, plain lit-html and hyperhtml as fallback, template literals vs. lit-html, partial rendering with lit-html, no virtual DOM, possible security issues with plain template literals, lit-html and event binding, lit-html vs. custom attributes for wiring, separating templates and business logic with modules, bad experiences as Java developer with maintaining multiple files, CSS extensions with houdini, a standard for hooking into browser's CSS processing, is there no more need for frameworks?, frameworks as hindrance, the Vaadin Router webcomponent, building a navigation component, the magic under the hoot comes with good intentions, building fusion reactors for CRUD, using custom elements for application structuring, the reflection best practice, shadow DOM is supported on all browsers, shadow DOM is problematic with CSS design systems, Constructible Style Sheets to the rescue, start without Shadow DOM, then introduce it on demand, customizing styles with CSS properties, using IDs without Shadow DOM is hard, ShadowDOM with querySelector, Adobe Project Aero, browsersync in development mode, obsolete build systems, bunding with rollupjs and babel plugin for legacy browser support, pikapkg - the anti-bundler, 2005 EMMY for Sesame Street Games Channel, cheating with annoying Elmo, WebComponents in Action (discount code: podairhacks19): a book about making WebComponents without a framework, outdated Polymer, VR and AR with WebComponents, a-frame, Occulus Quest and Tiltbrush, Ben Farell on twitter: @bfarrellforever Also checkout: http://webcomponents.training, http://effectiveweb.training or visit http://airhacks.com

This week on WPwatercooler we went back in time and talked about ActionScript, Shockwave, Director, Server Side Includes and all the technologies that we learned leading up to WordPress.Panel: Ross Gile, Leo Postovoit, Manny Costa, Steve Zehngut and Jason TuckerWhittier CA representing on the show todayMore information on WordCamp Long Beach coming soon!WordCamp Las Vegas is later in the year.Jason mentions this week’s WPblab EP126 – Marketing Yourself as a WordPress DeveloperSteve talked ActionScript, Shockwave, JavaScript, and jQuery.Manny wrote some e-commerce stuff in ActionScriptLeo talked about how he learned about AMP from WPwatercooler and got his job at XWP from that knowledge.Ross was the first web developer in Whittier back in 1997 at DigiCal.Steve talks about the times he was mentioned in old articles like Ross was in. Steve’s dad did picture framing and he has a bunch of places where he was mentioned online. Heaven’s Gate was mentioned in the same page of the article that Ross was mentioned in.SHTML and Server Side IncludesSteve talks about this being a circular business.Jason asked if Steve was featured in Webmonkey and he said that the Shockwave Site of the Day was where most of his stuff showed up. Steve won a SXSW Award for Big Pussies Poker Heaven.Leo missed the Flash days but has been building and working with making simpler tools to build things much like Flash was back in the day.Steve was a film major and ended up doing web development.Leo has had to take about 6 months to learn web pack and is “looking forward tomorrows problems but at the same time celebrates yesterdays victories.”Manny asked the question if everyone works from home making the point that going to WordCamps and WordPress meetups are important. He spoke about Prestige Conf and meeting Pippin of Pippin’s Plugins.Ross talks about taking home “golden nuggets” from meetups and events he goes to.Jason “ruins” Ross’ workflow when showing him things like Beaver Builder as a way of changing his workflow of building a website.Leo talks about how open source works and how documentation is important. Technologies change quickly.Manny talks on using Canvas and how they had to change to something new.Steve was “all in” on Director and Shockwave and overnight that technology disappeared. The same can happen to WordPress, don’t put all your eggs in one technology basket.Steve is observing that you don’t need to use WordPress for everything and WordPress isn’t made for everything.Manny interjects that backward compatibility and is it important?Leo talks about Drupal and their backward compatibility issues.Steve mentions Shopify and working with scaling issues with it. Not every tool is the same.Jason compares this to Windows and Apple and how they ditch their backward compatibility issues. Join us on this episode of WPwatercooler by visiting our Participant guidelines page.WPwatercooler network is sponsored by ServerPress makers of DesktopServer. Be sure to check them out at https://www.serverpress.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan CacheFly Host: Charles Max Wood Special Guest:  Vladimir Dementyev Episode Summary In this episode of My Ruby Story, Charles hosts Vladimir Dementyev, a backend engineer at  Evil Martians and a mathematician who found his happiness in programming Ruby and Erlang. He is also the author of Author of AnyCable, TestProf and ActionPolicy. Listen to Vladimir  on the podcast Ruby Rogues on this episode. Vladimir studied mathematics in university and started programming with ActionScript in an internship during his university education. He then went onto developing with Ruby and became heavily involved in open source projects. He is originally from Moscow but is currently based out of Brooklyn, NY working for Evil Martians, a web development consultancy company that supports open source projects. Vladimir will be a speaker at the RailsConf 2019. Links   Ruby Rogues: Cables, Concurrency, and Ruby 3×3 with Vladimir Dem Evil Martians Vladimir’s Twitter Vladimir's GitHub Vladimir's LinkedIn Vladimir's Dev.to https://devchat.tv/my-ruby-story/ https://www.facebook.com/DevChattv   Picks Vladimir Dementyev: danger.systems Charles Max Wood: MyFitnessPal CardioCoach VO2 Max App        

Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan CacheFly Host: Charles Max Wood Special Guest:  Vladimir Dementyev Episode Summary In this episode of My Ruby Story, Charles hosts Vladimir Dementyev, a backend engineer at  Evil Martians and a mathematician who found his happiness in programming Ruby and Erlang. He is also the author of Author of AnyCable, TestProf and ActionPolicy. Listen to Vladimir  on the podcast Ruby Rogues on this episode. Vladimir studied mathematics in university and started programming with ActionScript in an internship during his university education. He then went onto developing with Ruby and became heavily involved in open source projects. He is originally from Moscow but is currently based out of Brooklyn, NY working for Evil Martians, a web development consultancy company that supports open source projects. Vladimir will be a speaker at the RailsConf 2019. Links   Ruby Rogues: Cables, Concurrency, and Ruby 3×3 with Vladimir Dem Evil Martians Vladimir’s Twitter Vladimir's GitHub Vladimir's LinkedIn Vladimir's Dev.to https://devchat.tv/my-ruby-story/ https://www.facebook.com/DevChattv   Picks Vladimir Dementyev: danger.systems Charles Max Wood: MyFitnessPal CardioCoach VO2 Max App        

Sponsors Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan CacheFly Host: Charles Max Wood Special Guest:  Vladimir Dementyev Episode Summary In this episode of My Ruby Story, Charles hosts Vladimir Dementyev, a backend engineer at  Evil Martians and a mathematician who found his happiness in programming Ruby and Erlang. He is also the author of Author of AnyCable, TestProf and ActionPolicy. Listen to Vladimir  on the podcast Ruby Rogues on this episode. Vladimir studied mathematics in university and started programming with ActionScript in an internship during his university education. He then went onto developing with Ruby and became heavily involved in open source projects. He is originally from Moscow but is currently based out of Brooklyn, NY working for Evil Martians, a web development consultancy company that supports open source projects. Vladimir will be a speaker at the RailsConf 2019. Links   Ruby Rogues: Cables, Concurrency, and Ruby 3×3 with Vladimir Dem Evil Martians Vladimir’s Twitter Vladimir's GitHub Vladimir's LinkedIn Vladimir's Dev.to https://devchat.tv/my-ruby-story/ https://www.facebook.com/DevChattv   Picks Vladimir Dementyev: danger.systems Charles Max Wood: MyFitnessPal CardioCoach VO2 Max App        

This week's episode is another edition of Code Comment, where your nice hosts look at the project, code, assets, and design of an indie game in development to see how it's made.This week, we look at our first non-Unity project (!!!) as Mark walks us though the ActionScript codebase of Metro Nexus, his in-development homage to the classic(?) arcade-era game City Connection. We also look at the art asset workflow Mark designed for the game. Video

El pasado 25 de julio Adobe anunció la muerte de Flash. En este PlatziLive Freddy Vega (@freddier), CEO de Platzi, recorre toda la historia de Flash recordando su importancia dentro de la web moderna. Una historia que se remonta a los tiempos en que impulsó el éxito de Cristalab, la comunidad más grande de diseño interactivo del mundo.Son muchas las cosas que debemos agradecerle a Flash, entre ellas un formato estándar de video, la posibilidad de hacer streaming, infinidad de juegos, Actionscript 3, Rich Internet Applications, y lo más importante: el primer entorno que reunía en una misma interfaz a programadores, diseñadores y artistas gráficos y de sonido. Descansa en paz Flash.Más de la muerte de Flash en nuestro Blog: https://platzi.com/blog/flash-actionscript-3-muertos-lo-mejor-de-la-web-moderna/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/platzi-podcast/message

Drew Covi: @drewcovi | about.me Show Notes: 01:04 - Honeywell User Experience (HUE) 05:00 - Deliverables 06:55 - Being a “Devsigner” 17:26 - Flash and Leading to Unique Skills 30:00 - Advice for People Straddling Roles 35:27 - Leveraging Design and Development Skills Together 39:41 - Embracing the Hardware Element 42:05 - Why the “Devsigner”? Resources: AOLpress CSS Beauty CSS Zen Garden Contribute Crave Transcript: CHARLES: Hello, everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast, Episode #76. My name is Charles Lowell. I'm a developer here at The Frontside and your podcast host-in-training. With me is Elrick Ryan, also a developer at The Frontside. Hello. ELRICK: Hey, what's going on? CHARLES: Not much. Are you excited about today's topic? ELRICK: Very excited. CHARLES: Yeah. You got a personal stake in it because today, we have in the room, not only you but also two developers who are also designers or designers who are also developers. Our guest today is actually the first person who fit this description that I ever worked with. It was a great experience, a great collaboration and his name is Drew Covi. Drew is a senior supervisor of product design at HUE Studios in Golden Valley, Minnesota. DREW: Howdy. How are you doing? CHARLES: Good. Thanks for joining us. Now, you're going to have to explain to us two things, one, what is a super senior product designer and let's start off talking about HUE first. What exactly is HUE because I think it's a cool organization? DREW: I'm working with four people and I'm working on all sorts of brand new ideas. I think the greatest opportunity that I've had in my career at this company, Honeywell is just working with physical product and the digital space. It's a unique opportunity. Not all companies focus on both so it's really been a learning experience for me and working with a great group of creative individuals is also been a real privilege. They say that at the end of the day, the most important thing is other people that you work with and really the entire team here has been fantastic in welcoming me and letting me explore and grow as a developer and as a designer. It's been great so far. CHARLES: Fantastic. Working with that group was absolutely wonderful. What does HUE stand for? DREW: HUE is Honeywell User Experience. Our previous CEO, Dave Cote often called it 'huey' but it's just HUE, without the Jersey accent. I'm going to probably misrepresent but we have over eight to 10 studios throughout the world. Each one focuses on different businesses for the most part. The one here in Golden Valley tends to focus on homes and buildings technologies. The studio out of Seattle, actually tends to focus on, again I'm going to get the acronym wrong here but it's essentially worker safety in industrial safety. CHARLES: What is it that you all do at HUE? DREW: What we do here at the studio here in Golden Valley is we support various businesses throughout the homes and buildings technology space. About fall of last year, Honeywell went through a bit of a shift in their business and they used to do all automation control solutions. Last fall essentially, we saw that one large business that was headquartered and based out of Golden Valley, break into two areas of more direct focus. Out of Seattle, we have folks working on, I think I mentioned before but Seattle works on sensing and productivity solutions. We focus on homes and building space so we're both providing upfront research to understand what the customer needs. We're actually creating everything from very rough user flows to final UIs and we're also working with industrial designers to create final products. Those industrial designers work very closely with engineering. Honeywell has a long reputation of very strong engineering when it comes to the hardware space. We've prided ourselves on excellent instruments and excellent performance. One thing that very few people understand is that we don't just do thermostats. We're in the business of turbos. We're creating the turbos for your car. We're creating all sorts of HVAC equipment. We're also handling various safety equipment. All of these items need designing, not just for end users and consumers but they also need designing for the workers in the field. If we make a product that is more efficient, easier to use and in some cases, more attractive, not only it does lead to more sales, it leads to more efficient work forces that can work quicker essentially. You could get up on a roof and get off in record time. We're not just designing consumer products. We're actually focused on a lot of other items as well, with oftentimes very large returns on investment. CHARLES: In the work that you do and HUE does in general, it sounds like there might be a large software component. Digital design is kind of we know in the web space but then also a lot of industrial design of just how does this thing going to look, how is it going to feel, how is it going to persist, how durable is it going to be, how is it going to withstand usage. Would you get involved in that process? DREW: Usually, the entire organization gets involved with the process very early on. One of the other shifts that happen in the fall as we get involved less in the production and more on the actual marketing side, like marketing deciding what's going to be built. We're actually really at the beginning and understanding what problems need to be solved at first. As far as my practice and my skill set, we do get involved with all that discovery phase work but when it comes to actual deliverables, we oftentimes see our deliverables around the actual creation of understanding user interactions. We will take research from our user research in OVOC, which is an acronym for Observational Voice of the Customer and we'll take those learnings and translate them into whatever solution we decide to build as a team. My output is going to look like a user flow, something you build in OmniGraffle or Visio and then it can start there, which is in the physical space and then we'll actually revolve those concepts into wireframes as well. Wireframes that will then be handed off to other team members who specialize and focus on visual design. Basically, it's kind of a very hands on process from the very beginning to the very end. It's essentially just understanding everything from the physical to the digital. CHARLES: When we were working together, at least in your case, it doesn't stop there. You're actually doing a significant amount of the implementation as well. Let's explore how did you actually end up getting to that position where you were working through interactions, wireframes and workflows and then also, getting to actually build the product in the form of a complex single-page application. DREW: Sure. Absolutely. One of the components that I kind of brought here to the team was a bit of a deeper understanding of frontend web development. I'm often pulled into conversations here and there. In the case of the project that we were working on specifically, it was essentially kind of early days on that project. We had a product that was pretty old and need a lot of work and it was basically, need to be rebuilt. We hadn't seen a lot of single-page applications at that time. In my case, I actually had worked on a couple small projects in my previous job and we can get into that in a little bit, where my career path took me. But essentially, it was me trying to kind of pave the way and eventually have that work scale. It was kind of proving that it could be done, showing how it could be done and then getting other developers on board. My role here has oftentimes involved, basically becoming a liaison between our design teams and our development teams. Ultimately in this case like you mentioned, it did wind up in turning into code that ultimately got factored into production code. It was definitely a time where we were experimenting with what role we would play. I will say in full disclosure that more or less which we're trying to move towards, basically making better informed decisions but not playing as much of a role in actual production code writing. It's something that we want to help scale. I think we'll talk about that kind of role and how well it scales hopefully in a little bit here but ultimately, it kind of changed a little bit. I don't do as much code as I used to. CHARLES: Right but nevertheless, the skill is there. Don't sell yourself short. You weren't slapping together a bunch of jQuery plugins. You were standing up, basically a full stack system with a StubDeck background, then Node.JS. This is back in early days where there was a custom-build tooling. You were using CoffeeScript. There was a lot of exploration and clearly, there is a fierce curiosity which you are actually exploring and actively kind of skinning and moving into the development space, which doesn't happen until people achieve a certain level of comfort. Whether or not you're exercising those skills, I think they have served you well in terms of the things that you've been able to build but also acting in that liaison and understanding what's possible and stuff like that. Obviously, once I met you, you were already there. I'm curious in exploring that journey of coming up the design ladder but also coming up the development ladder too. Maybe we can talk about each one separately and then see how they intertwine. Let's start with the design side. How did you get into that? DREW: I can take you way, way back. I love to talk more about this in a little bit but I think we, as a generation, are kind of very unique in that. We were raised in the birth of the internet. Some of us are old enough to remember the early dial up days and I certainly was one of those. I grew up basically obsessed with drawing and art and painting. I was a designer and artist raised by an engineer, essentially. My dad didn't really have a lot of opportunities to explore his creative side to basically make a living. I want to say that although graphic design existed to a certain extent, there wasn't really the same blend of engineering skills required so he decided to take the tack of I'm going to become an engineer so I was raised in a household where he was building everything but he was also a talented artist. As a kid, I basically did a lot of advanced art classes. I'm kind of a nerd, pretty much a huge nerd. I dropped my entire tenure as a high school student. It was also kind of dawn of video games as well so we had computers coming of age. We had video games coming of age so I was raised looking at digital art effectively, 8-bit, super accessible. It's kind of so early on that it was something that I could actually fathom getting into and creating on my own. I never got to creating any games but I will say that by my late high school years, I was using a tool called AOLpress. For anybody who has ever heard of that, congratulations. You're one of the few. CHARLES: I've never heard of that. AOLpress, we're going to have to link to that in the show notes. ELRICK: I've never heard of that either. DREW: It's awesome. It's got a Wikipedia page. It's got hieroglyphs and stuff. They really went all out on this product. It's basically the precursor to the Dreamweaver. It was a very, very WYSIWYG. I'm sure you've heard of Microsoft FrontPage, maybe. It was basically a precursor to FrontPage, I would say. Same thing, those are the days of framesets and all of that. I was a kid in scouting at the time and I wanted to build a web page for the troops so I built one and put it out there. I kind of remember that moment where I was like, "I'm going to write something and put it on the internet and anybody can see it." That whole experience was just super exciting. I know that if anybody's following Kickstarter, there's one that was started called 'What Comes Next Is the Future.' It was made by Matt Braun and Matt Griffin and it really explored the birth of the web. I would recommend it on your listeners to want to really dive deep if you didn't live through it, check it out. It's a great, great film. All the regulars are there as you'd expect. Zeldman on there, talking about it amongst others. But if it were for the web, I don't know that I would be who I am or where I am today, just because it's such a unique platform. It's so open. It's so readily available. There's no barriers. I would say that I was just an arts student in high school that picked up AOLpress and then got addicted to the web. From there, it was kind of off to the races. In fact, I didn't even know that I could make a living as a graphic designer until late high school. I decided that I wanted to go to school for graphic design, went a year at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and at that point in time, it was pretty much all print design and then Flash. Flash took over in my second year and at that point in time, it was Flash and framesets and tables. There was no CSS for layout. It's very early days. It sounds like you might know what I'm talking about. Have you been there? ELRICK: Yeah. You know, they say everyone in the world has like a twin and I'm like, "Drew is like my technology twin." DREW: Yeah. When we were raised in that time and we had to hack it with framesets and whatever tool -- FrontPage or AOLpress -- you basically, from very early days, realized that you had to force this stuff to happen. It was not easy. There was no documentation and where there was documentation, you were grateful to have it. I remember when I was, probably just about to graduate and if I look back at my portfolio piece, it was definitely still Flash. It was Timeline-based Flash. I also think that in many ways the way the web evolved was perfect. As a designer, I was very comfortable in the Timeline tool. Before ActionScript 3.0 and before they went on object-oriented on us, it was super accessible. You could add little bits of code here and there and create animations. It kind of got you hooked. Then suddenly, I found myself needing to create full screen Flash applications and needing to actually write code. I actually having to say, "If I want this Flash experience to scale, then I need to calculate where things go. I can't just X-Y coordinate and done," so that's where I jumped off and started getting into CSS. CSS was kind of early days as well. Again, this is before iPhone. This is like people were using CSS but people didn't really think it was that important. It was actually kind of discouraged because everybody in the world was using Internet Explorer and why would you need to know CSS. It was unreliable for different browsers and Internet Explorer was the worst. I remember sitting in a Dreamweaver conference, when it was Macromedia had a conference and they showed a webpage and then they hit the print button and they said, "Does anybody here know how this happened?" because the layout had changed, everything looked better and different. It was perfect for print. I remember my hand shot up because they was like, "Nobody was really familiar yet with that print style sheets?" Incidentally, I don't think that people still are familiar with print style sheets but it was a time when finally people were starting to understand that style sheets were more than just a layout tool. You could change them for all these different form, factors and all these different platforms. It was a fun time to be coming up in this age. CHARLES: It sounds like one, CSS and two, Flash were actually kind of gateway drugs into the development world? DREW: Absolutely. CHARLES: We still have CSS, clearly but do you feel like Flash, despite what some people might think about it, it was a full virtual machine that was running. You could code on it with ActionScript. It's kind of like the JVM but only for running inside the browser. Do you feel like designers might not have that gateway available to them anymore or maybe is the web just as big of a gateway to move into that? DREW: Yeah, for sure. I certainly think, beyond a doubt that had it not been for Flash, we would see a lot less creativity in the space. I say that only because at the time, if we had just gone from tables and tried to slowly evolve things, we'd have a much different feel, I believe. Certainly, it's a gateway drug. We'll be in a different web today without it. Is it still required? Are there any equivalents? I've seen a number of drag and drop web UI on the web tools out there and many of them claim to create production quality code. It's certainly possible to get there without Flash. I think, it's certainly its time has passed but we do see tools like Sketch for instance. These are all very much screen-based design tools that seem to leverage a lot of the same web styles and the web approaches. I think we definitely have the tools there to replace Flash. But I think from my perspective, it would be very interesting to go back and imagine, would we have immersive full screen web experiences without that Flash? CHARLES: Yeah. I remember it being very much a topic of conversation, certainly at the beginning of each project or when you were going to implement a feature is, "Are we going to do this using Flash? Are we trying to do this with native HTML? Are we going to use EGADS or Java applet?" ELRICK: Oh, man. Java applets. CHARLES: That was a conversation that was had before the web eventually went out but I think when it was, everything was very, very static. I do think that Flash definitely set the expectation higher and forced the web to evolve so that it could be the natural choice in those conversations. ELRICK: The time when Flash was around, I called it the 'golden age of user interface' because you can literally build any user experience, any user interface with Flash that you could dream up. There was no limitations creatively in the world of Flash. Nowadays, we're kind of limited without box model but it's getting better year-by-year. DREW: It's interesting to me because before Flash really died out, we had these... Let's put it this way. I feel as though, for a long time the web was a very much like a poster site kind of approach. You would have tools that were pretty rough on the eyes, pretty hard to use and then like for certain films, you have these very high budget, fully immersive Flash experiences. For a blip, that did actually translate at some point into Canvas-based and then Three.JS, like 3D WebGL-based experiences in native HTML but I don't see a whole lot of that anymore. It seems as though, it kind of settled down and in many ways, I would say killing Flash kind of evolved the web from more of a presentational platform to more of a usability first platform. It was a bit of a double-edged sword. You could build anything you want like you said but there wasn't a framework to it. It wasn't really responsive and then certainly, when Steve Jobs decided he wasn't going to Flash an iPhone, that was the end of it. Essentially now, we have -- ELRICK: Steve Job dropped the hammer. CHARLES: That was the memo that was heard around the world, right? DREW: Yeah. CHARLES: I just realized that was like 10 years ago. DREW: Yeah, they're celebrating the anniversary for the last couple of months here. It's been a huge deal. CHARLES: There's probably listeners that never heard that memo but it's definitely worth a read. The memo obviously, that you guys are referring to is when Steve Jobs basically said that Flash would not be on iPhone or iPad, not now, not ever. That was the end of it. DREW: People often forget too that when it was first launched, there was no app store. He basically said point blank, "Anything you need to do on this phone, you should be able to do using the web, using native web coding," and Safari at that point in time is really paving the way to bringing those native APIs into the web. You had geolocation through web. In many ways, that too is a huge gateway drug. Suddenly, you start looking at the web, not as just like, "I could use this as a poster site or as an informational site or a new site. I can actually use this to get things done." They're actually treating this platform as a first-class citizen. That to me was super exciting. I don't know if it gets as much attention anymore in the days of Swift and the App Store but I will say that if your listeners do get a chance to check out the show I mentioned earlier, 'What Comes Next Is the Future,' they even dive deep into just how limiting the app store experience can be. At least with the web, you can create whatever you want to create and people seemed to go that you URL and install on their home screen. This is a feature that nobody uses from what I've seen but if you bookmark a web app on your home screen, you can have an icon, you can have a loading screen, you can have all this stuff and nobody really uses it for whatever reason. CHARLES: I think it's the install, it's getting the knowledge about the fact that you can do that. It's not widely disseminated. ELRICK: Yeah, I think its capabilities starting to come up now with people making progressive web apps. They're starting to utilize that being able to put icons on people screens and loading screen and splash and etcetera. CHARLES: Flash really was kind of the gateway into the development world. I'm curious what opportunities do you feel opened up as you started taking on more web technologies, more JavaScript, more CSS and mixing that with the design that you were doing? What unique skills/superpowers do you think that gave you, that made you, that helped you at that stage in your career? DREW: Yeah, for better or worse, it really was the opportunity to get a job first of all. I know that the job market has been in all sorts of flux in the last couple of decades but I would say 12 years ago, in 2005 when I was entering the workforce, graphic design was not necessarily a hot field. I can say with relative certainty that the majority of the people I graduate with, didn't necessarily make their way into graphic design as a profession. I would say probably maybe 30% to 40% actually wound up following their degrees. For the obvious reason at that time, we were starting to see digital replace print. It meant that I was able to get a job for one. It wasn't a dream job necessarily but I was basically a one-stop-shop. I was designing and developing websites as working for a company but in many ways, shapes and forms, I was kind of freelancing as things were. I had a very direct relationship with the clients that I worked with. It was basically churning out websites. If I recall correctly at the time the company wanted to essentially create a Domino's Pizza of the web where we could use CSS to essentially build the actual HTML once and then restyle it. This is actually was a time when a site called CSS Beauty was just coming of age, I think the site still exists but back then, if you want the CSS Beauty, it's big thing was you have one website and people could upload their own CSS and completely change the layout, completely change the look. CHARLES: Are you talking about CSS Zen Garden? DREW: Maybe that was it. There's two of them. CHARLES: I remember that one. DREW: CSS Zen Garden was one of them and I think CSS beauty was a clone maybe of Zen Garden for sure. Maybe you're right, Zen Garden was the one where you actually had a website and Beauty was just showcasing certain CSS sites. I think you're right. Zen Garden was the one. When they saw that, they're like, "Wow, business opportunity. We can build a whole site." We were using something called 'Cold Fusion' and... Oh, it will escape me now. I think it was called 'Contribute.' There's a product called 'Contribute' that Macromedia come up with that worked on Cold Fusion. It was basically a WordPress. You basically set up editable regions, you basically code the site once in that regard in the backend coding and then just rework CSS to create multiple sites. Actually, the opportunity to open up for me, that job was very squarely-focused around the benefits of leveraging CSS. Eventually, that grew tiring. I kind of wanted to get into the actual marketing and advertising space. From there, I started to just jump to the next job. I worked for a very, very small marketing agency. It was called 'Vetta-Zelo' at that time and we focused on lots more Flash, a little bit of CSS websites but mostly Flash Experiences and they actually used Flash in a lot of kiosks and physical spaces. I started to jump into that, understanding PHP, understanding databases because we would do things like we would install Flash Experience on little portable tablets that would then sync up survey responses to a web URL that it would then dump it into a database. About that time, I was always trying to teach myself how to get really deep into the backend of the stack. CHARLES: That was just to make sure that these Flash sites that you're developing would be scalable and more robust? Was that the natural next layer to dig down? DREW: Absolutely. At the end of the day, we wanted to have immersive Flash experiences and we wanted to have the content easy to update. I would build these really crude backend with text areas and they would update a database and then the Flash Experience would pull that in as content. In that way, we didn't have to go in and re-publish the Flash every time, essentially. It was a much more streamlined process. I think we even gave some of our clients the keys, gave them a login and password and they could change certain things. There's an outfit around here called 'Crave.' They are a restaurant in town and we built the website for them -- one of the earlier websites. When you have to do things like update times and menus and things like that, it became pretty essential to having some sort of a CMS behind it. It was all based on necessity, in other words. What you said is absolutely true. We had to evolve what we learned and I had to push what I did to lever on different needs. Throughout my career, I've been the guy who does web and design. One of the things about that is it's kind of a lonely place to be and find yourself in creative agencies, where the majority of skill sets are not in development and trying to explain what's going on or make commitments on timelines and deliver on them. Whenever a bug shows up, it's never really fully understood. It's also a challenge to manage expectations, certainly as a young professional at that point. CHARLES: Yeah, I would say, what would be some advice you would give to somebody who is straddling these roles at that early career stage where they're maybe working for creative agency and fulfilling these two roles but most of their surroundings is towards the design end. DREW: Yeah, I would say for the most part, just be upfront. If there's anything that's unknown, be upfront about it and explain. If you are early in your development career as a designer, do your homework before you committing any commitment certainly. I think it's always better to be upfront about these things than to try to over-promise and then scramble at the end. I will say that a lot of my career has been marked with the term code 'code cowboy' as a designer and teaching myself to code. It was a disparaging term, I guess. I didn't really necessarily take it that way but I think other developers are trying to use it in that way. CHARLES: [Singing to the tune of Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys] Cowboys ain't easy to love and they're harder to hold... ELRICK: It's so true. DREW: You know, I'm not even embarrassed to say it because the truth of the matter is when you're a designer, you're used to just making a mess before you kind of landed on what you're done and what's right. The entire creative process is messy. I think it's inherent. If you're one of these designers turned devs and you basically just hack it until it comes together, that's kind of a natural flow from the creative process. Certainly, as you get more experienced, you want to reduce all that uncertainty and potential for error so you do learn to hone your craft, to use version control, to embrace a framework or embrace some model-view controller approach but none of that really existed in the early days of the web. I kind of came up in a time when you had to hack it. CHARLES: Well, there's a lot of learning that can happen when you're hacking and building things that are kind of ad hoc. As you go, you get to perceive firsthand the problems with them. Without perceiving those problems first, it's hard to really understand the solutions that the internet has come up with to deal with those complexities. DREW: I would say I was like a solo designer developer throughout the early years, because at 2010, I found my people in a local agency called 'Clockwork' and for the first time, I wasn't the only developer on staff. There was a whole team of developers. In fact, the shop was started as a development shop and they were making headway into the creative space and eventually, becoming full digital partners. But had it not been for my opportunities at Clockwork, I wouldn't have picked up my skill set as a backend coder. From the very beginning at Clockwork, they expected you to get your hands dirty and code and get your hands dirty in the terminal, honestly. Command line was required even in our design work. CHARLES: And this is all designers needed to be familiar with the terminal tools --? DREW: Correct. CHARLES: -- Basic coding? DREW: Yeah. Essentially, all of our work, whether it was creative or whether it was documents, were all managed in Subversion. As a part of onboarding, you basically learned how to use Subversion. There were some GUI tools for it but for the most part, it wasn't that steep of a learning curve. It was pretty easy to follow instructions and that was the second gateway drug, I would say. My first gateway drug, again was kind of coming up in the age of the web and getting into CSS and Flash. The second gateway drug was basically being required to learn command line and learning how to navigate a computer without a display. Had not been for that, I don't think my career would have taken the turns that it did. I basically got more into the IoT space. I had set up a home NAS server with Drobo FS, is what it was called at the time and it was just a really basic machine but by jumping into that, I could start to play around with UNIX and tools there. I started using home automation, playing with that and at some point in time, I made the jump from just web into the role that I play here at Honeywell, which is Internet of Things. We do a lot of Internet of Things. In fact, our latest tagline is 'the Power of Connected' so we've embraced it all the way down to our wood mark. It's becoming the new normal for most products so it's a good time to be at the center of all these different areas of expertise, to be in development, to be in IoT and to be in design. That's my path. That's my journey. I would kind of pick it up at a bunch of fortunate circumstances, honestly. ELRICK: Having these two skill sets: your design skills and your development skills, what do you believe that that gives you in terms of an advantage? Having these two skills set and being able to leverage these two? DREW: From my perspective, having both skill sets allows me to understand. I think the biggest challenge when working with large teams, particularly in this space or in any space is to really have a common level of understanding, stepping aside from a functional role and becoming more of a liaison between design development and to be honest with you, as we look beyond that, I took a three or four or five month course in business administration, actually. It was just a night class but I wanted to be able to speak to those needs as well. I think it really is becoming a translator. Serving as a translator between those items and then also being able to understand where the actual boundaries lie, there are a lot of very talented engineers and talented designers and sometimes opportunities are missed because, either timelines are pushing engineers to cut certain functionalities or certain features and there's a lot of pressure. Where we can lend a hand, where we can point to possible alternatives, I think that's where we really build cutting edge products. When we really know each domain, we can push those boundaries. That's where I'd enjoy bringing my skill set to the table. CHARLES: Yeah. I can second that. Having actually worked with you, I think one of the greatest things was the one just with the interactions that you were coming up with, were just really spot on. It wasn't ad hoc. It wasn't some -- ELRICK: Helter-skelter? CHARLES: Yeah, it wasn't helter-skelter. It wasn't some developer coming up with like, "Hey, this is what this looks like," Or, "This is some designer putting up pie in the sky stuff." It was, "I understand what's possible and I'm going to use that to design the best thing that can be possible." It made the designs very pleasant and some of them were just really fun, I think. Thinking especially like that, the hierarchical tree selector was one -- ELRICK: Yeah, that was fun. CHARLES: -- Which the implementation of that was just a joy. But then the second thing is being able to speak with you on the development challenges and really know that you understood that language. It really is being bilingual, I guess in the sense that I'm talking to you in French and you're talking to product owners in German or whatever. But because you're bilingual, the flow of information is as frictionless as possible. DREW: I will say that it was a real pleasure from our end working with your team as well because one of the trends in many businesses throughout the world today is embracing a lean and agile approach to product design development. One of the growth opportunities, I would say in any business is fully understanding how that process works, having the courage to be upfront about what can be accomplished in the time available. I think one of the other things is fully understanding those three pegs of the stool. There's always the budget, the time and then the features of any projects. I think that working with a team that understands that really changes the dynamic. I will say that it was equally a pleasure for us to work with your team because there was just a level of courage in being very forthright and very upfront about what do we need to get the job done? What has to happen? You made my job as a translator, essentially. CHARLES: We aim to please. ELRICK: Absolutely. DREW: Absolutely. The latest evolution of kind of where my career has taken us in the company is embracing the hardware element. We've talked a bit about the web and then how that evolved and then having to get comfortable of the command line and where that took place. I've always wanted to build. I've loved designing but I always want to build it and I want to put it out there. In the last six months actually, I finally decided that I would pull the Band-Aid off and jump into soldering hardware, writing what code I could and building actual physical hardware prototypes. I think the next step for anybody who likes to follow this maker trajectory, for a creative looking to become a maker or a developer looking to get into creative is just not stopping. There's always something there and we're also fortunate to live in a time when I can go on at Adafruit, pick up a kit of parts for under $100 and build something that's completely new. Then by the way, they have a full-on tutorial that takes you through every step of the process and gives you bits of code to get started so what's your excuse at that point? If you've got $100, then you can throw and toss into a hobby, pick up a soldering iron and go to town because there are videos, there's the documentation. Documentation is just everywhere now, where it was never there before. I think the next step for us is seeing how can we very early on show real physical world products to end users and get feedback. How we're taking design now is beyond the digital and into the physical. CHARLES: That's fascinating. I feel like there's this pendulum that swings through the tech industry of things moving from hardware to software and back again. We're in the middle of the swing towards the outside or towards the hardware again, like the distributed hardware versus the dumb terminals. It's distributed across a bunch of devices rather than concentrated on one super-powered desktop computer. The pendulum is going to swing in it but it's just always fascinated to see what the actual arc that it takes is going to be. This has been a fascinating conversation and the reason I wanted to have it and we were actually talking about this before the show started officially, why this topic of 'devsigner?' I think that it's a role that is emerging. I think it's still in the early days. I think that I went from three years ago having never really met this type of person to having met and worked with you. Now, I would say having met and worked with three people here at Frontside who fulfill that role and now knowing a couple professed devsigner or people who operate clearly in the design and the developer space on Twitter. I feel like it's this emerging career track that might not be fully understood or defined right now but clearly, there's something there so we wanted to explore that. I'm curious if we might be able to open up the discussion a little bit on what is the future of this role? What tasks will it be set to accomplish? When you're assembling your team, you say, "Get me one of those because we're going to need that." How is that going to be further refined and designed so that it scales as, perhaps an official career in one, two, five, 10 or 20 years? DREW: I can only speak to my experience in this area and I can say that for the most part, it is a very unique skill set and sometimes, it's hard to come but like you said, you're working now with three people. I think it's growing in prevalence. I believe that where coding was less common in the past, it's becoming so much more common now that it's almost like an expectation just like typing. It is an expectation now. People expect you know how to type. It's not a surprise that we're going to see more and more of these individuals. I would say that any design team out there could almost invariably benefit from having somebody with this skill set, somebody who can translate design concept into a working prototype. I've seen it manifest as a prototyping role, more or less just so that we can have a tangible deliverable for developers. I think it does depend on the team, certainly. If you have small teams with talented frontend developers, then certainly you can work in a lean and agile environment and make very quick iterative change. If you have very large design teams and very large development teams, I would say that having a frontend developer with the skill set in a creative team allows that communication to happen without routine phone calls and lots of meetings, essentially. It's a crystal clear example. I've see it manifest as a prototyping role because the expectation is this code will end up in production but some of the code may. The layout code may end up in production but the functional bits may not. That's not to say that the functionality isn't a part of the experience and that, designers don't care about how well an experience performs. But typically where many designers see the disconnect is in the presentation layer. Having somebody who can carry that over is usually something that is far smaller team can handle. Does that align with your experiences? CHARLES: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I would say that the compliment from having this person on your development team, if you're in mainline development mode or maybe you are a small team, even if it's a production system but you don't have full time design resources, this person can slice and dice the features and understand the hierarchy of interactions and being able to put together some wireframe, some very concrete goals and set those goals for the rest of the development team. But yet also understand what goals are achievable in the iteration. I think it works from the flipside as well. Maybe what we're seeing is the agile of the [inaudible] of everything. What we've seen over the past 15 years or 20 years, what has been the arc of my career is just seeing these feedback loops in every element of product development getting smaller and smaller and smaller. On the development side, we recognize this as being able to feedback loops and verification. Having your tests, you don't actually have to deploy your system to be able to get feedback about whether it works or have it be fully assembled to get feedback about whether it works. But then that manifests in terms of continuous integration and deployment. You're bringing down the feedback loop of getting this out in front of people versus these long deployment cycles that maybe you really have a release every year. It was hard to believe but that was the norm when I started. It was yearly, maybe even once every 18 months. It was not uncommon at all to have released cycles like that. Certainly, three months was very, very short but then those tight feedback loops can also manifest itself, internally in terms of team communication and I think having people who can make those feedback loops between the product and between the implementation, every time you shorten that feedback loop, you're unlocking an exponential amount of time. DREW: Yeah, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head when you talk about setting scope and understanding things as well. Strictly speaking from agile terminology, having a product or a role that can bridge those gaps is critical. I think that the best product owners that I've worked with have understood, have had an appreciation for design but also have had some degree of a development backend as well so they know how to make those critical decisions. In any sort of iterative or agile environment, you have to dice up these features and figure out which ones are going to ship when they're going to ship. I think, yeah you hit it right out of the park with that. Whether or not you can ever have a full-on team of just prototypers, I'm not as convinced that that's necessarily scalable. It seems like there's certainly a role for teams of developer that will break down features and then there's teams of creative as well. CHARLES: I think in terms of the person who would lead that team, this role definitely seems very well fit. DREW: Exactly. CHARLES: I think it's a great opportunity for someone who's looking for a leadership position in terms of developing and seeing products to market, which is kind of similar to what you're finding yourself in today or where you're headed towards, it sounds like. DREW: Yeah, for the most part. It seems like I do find myself in a number of calls in kind of bridging those gaps. It's certainly a different dynamic in the agile environment when work with hardware. That's something that I think we're still exploring and still understanding. Certainly, there are companies that do agile with hardware but there's a whole slew of different challenges. You're not just deploying anymore. You're actually building manufacturing understanding what needs to ship with what. I think the next evolution of our company's growth into this space is how do iteratively produce hardware. ELRICK: Interesting. CHARLES: You got to keep me posted. The next time we have you on the podcast, you're going to have it all figured out, you're going to be presenting your thesis, it's a conference talk upcoming, agile hardware. ELRICK: Yeah, that would be pretty interesting. DREW: Yeah, I'll let you know. CHARLES: In the first iteration, you just throw a bunch of boiling solder on the breadboard and see what works. "Okay, now, that didn't work." DREW: I'll be honest with you. The 3D printing is making lots of possibilities open up in that space but ultimately, you got to ship. We use 3D printing and now we are using these low-cost computers to really prototype real world experiences and near-to-final industrial design. We can do that. CHARLES: Drew, this sounds like you have the coolest job. ELRICK: I know, it sounds awesome. DREW: It become even more exciting than I had initially intended. It's fun times. I think, again we're living in a time when we can 3D print stuff and have it done within a couple of hours. What better time to embrace these technologies and this creative spirit. It's kind of all around us. Honestly, it's just being fortunate. CHARLES: Yeah. Fantastic. This has been a great conversation. Thank you so much, Drew for coming on. DREW: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, guys. CHARLES: It's an amazing place. It sounds like even more fun since we got to work with you. If anybody is out there and they're in the design space and they think that, "Oh, maybe I can't do development," or it's too hard. It's not. There's a lot of people out there who are doing it and experiencing lots of good benefits. I would say that the other thing is if you're a developer, you should think about looking into the design space, something that you might be interested in. I think it's probably less common that the vectors people move from development into design and not vice versa but there's nothing that says that it can't go that way. Mostly, it's because people just aren't doing and they think that that option is not available to them but clearly, it is and clearly, it's a valuable role. I think this role is going to only get more valuable in the future. DREW: I would second that thought and that notion. I give a quick shout out to Erin O'Neal. She's a former colleague of mine who's given a number of talks about that very topic -- backend developers caring about user experience, caring about the design. She's given some talks. You could probably find her on YouTube. Anybody who wants to talk about it, I'm all over the web as DrewCovi. I think I pretty much have that user name in every platform so if you Google me, you'll find me. CHARLES: We'll look for you. Obviously, you can find us at @TheFrontside on Twitter, TheFrontside on GitHub and feel free to drop us a line at Contact@Frontside.io. Thank you for listening everybody and we'll see you next week.

In this episode: Clark makes his debut appearance, Adam keeps the boys on track, Jim discusses his approach to prototyping in AE and Eric prototypes in... ActionScript?!? Please note that the opinions expressed here are not that of Rally Interactive and any possible reference to anyone living or deceased is purely coincidental. Also, we have no idea what we are talking about. Banter on iTunes: https://itun.es/i6hD2P3 Banter on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rallybanter

In this episode Shawn McCool discusses Laracon, OOP, ActionScript and Chris' new Laravel 4 practical implementations book.

Timers are important in all sorts of Flash/Flex applications. Any screen that updates frequently can make use of a timer. Games where elements change on a regular basis can use a timer. Timer objects in Actionscript are relatively easy to … Continue reading →

Events are serious business in Actionscript– When the user clicks, double clicks, focuses on an object, right clicks, etc., an event is generated. Dealing with those events is a large part of successful Actionscript programming. In this video, Mark will … Continue reading →

Getting started with Flash Builder (Flex) is easy! Flash Builder (Flex) allows you to build complex web applications using MXML and Actionscript. Due to the impressive and extensive Actionscript API, Flash Builder (Flex) applications can do almost anything. From streaming … Continue reading →

Actionscript 3 has a convenient, yet powerful, drawing API. It is easy to learn and use and allows you to draw lines, shapes and curves. You may need to do custom charting or drawing for data visualization or perhaps you need to use the drawing API of a video game you are creating. Continue reading →

In part three of our series on developing an MP3 player with Actionscript and Flash CS5, we'll take a look at the SoundTransform() object as we add a volume slider and a pan slider. We'll also examine how to work with the slider component and the events associated with it. Continue reading →

In part four of the Mp3 player Actionscript tutorial series we'll create a counter to display how long the song is and a counter to display how long the song has been playing. We're going to use the Timer() class in order to update the user interface regularly. We'll also write a function that converts milliseconds to a familiar time format. Continue reading →