Podcast appearances and mentions of charles what

It's time for your questions on The Small Business Show! On this episode Dave Hamilton and Shannon Jean take on three topics that need solutions including providing health care for you and your employees, taking loans from family members, and when the right time to hire new employees. Join us and then visit the Small Business Support Group to join the conversation! 00:00:00 Small Business Show #295 for Wednesday, September 23, 2020 feedback@businessshow.co 00:03:25 Charles: What do you two do about health insurance for yourselves, your families, and your employees? Find an Independent Insurance Agent Health Markets to find an Agent 00:17:30 Bill: Should I borrow $50K from my father-in-law? File a UCC Financing Statement with Your State Promisory Note Template Partnerships Can Kill You! Who guarantees the loan? 00:27:26 SPONSOR: BuildHR. Sync up with Kelly, Your HR Nerd. Text (720) 513-2474 to sign up. 00:29:30 SPONSOR: PDFpen and PDFpenPro is your ultimate PDF viewing and editing app for the Mac. 00:30:54 Will: When do you hire that second/third/fourth employee? “Hire an assistant and double your income” Go for it! 00:44:01 SBS 295 Outtro feedback@businessshow.co

The moment we’ve all been waiting for! Diana finally learns the truth about Liza. Will Liza move in with Charles? What will be the fate of Millenial? Find out if Nico Tortorella will return for Younger season 7 in our news/gossip segment and stay tuned for this weeks younger-isms! Join hosts Farai, Tsahai and Taylor as they dive into this weeks Younger After Show. The Younger After Show: Is 26 the new 40? From navigating life in Brooklyn and living a double life at Empirical, the YOUNGER AFTER SHOW has all the insight on just how normal hiding who you really are can be. Tune in here for reviews, recaps and in-depth discussions of the latest episodes, as well as the insider scoop from cast and crew members on the show. Younger is an American television comedy-drama series based on the Pamela Redmond Satran novel of the same name. The series stars Sutton Foster as the lead character, with Hilary Duff, Debi Mazar and Miriam Shor co-starring in other main roles. The single-camera project, was created and produced by Darren Star. Patricia Field, who worked with Star on Sex and the City, will be a costume consultant on the production. The first season will consist of 12 episodes, and is set to premiere Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at 10 pm. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

The moment we’ve all been waiting for! Diana finally learns the truth about Liza. Will Liza move in with Charles? What will be the fate of Millenial? Find out if Nico Tortorella will return for Younger season 7 in our news/gossip segment and stay tuned for this weeks younger-isms! Join hosts Farai, Tsahai and Taylor as they dive into this weeks Younger After Show. The Younger After Show: Is 26 the new 40? From navigating life in Brooklyn and living a double life at Empirical, the YOUNGER AFTER SHOW has all the insight on just how normal hiding who you really are can be. Tune in here for reviews, recaps and in-depth discussions of the latest episodes, as well as the insider scoop from cast and crew members on the show. Younger is an American television comedy-drama series based on the Pamela Redmond Satran novel of the same name. The series stars Sutton Foster as the lead character, with Hilary Duff, Debi Mazar and Miriam Shor co-starring in other main roles. The single-camera project, was created and produced by Darren Star. Patricia Field, who worked with Star on Sex and the City, will be a costume consultant on the production. The first season will consist of 12 episodes, and is set to premiere Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at 10 pm. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Some people (in fact, probably most people) find it easy to procrastinate when it comes to financial planning issues. But let’s talk about some scenarios that might cause people to have a bit more sense of urgency. Show Notes: 1:43 - Mailbag Question from Blair: Why am I not in a lower tax bracket in retirement? 5:45 - Sense of Urgency: Scenario 1 - Loss of a job 7:09 - Sense of Urgency: Scenario 2 - Receiving a retirement buyout offer 8:39 - Sense of Urgency: Scenario 3 - Procrastination in planning for retirement 11:20 - Sense of Urgency: Scenario 4 - Death of a spouse 13:07 - Sense of Urgency: Scenario 5 - Market takes a dip 15:07 - Charles makes an important announcement about financial education 17:25 - Getting to know Charles - What area is Charles an expert in outside the financial world?  

This week, Vicky and Joe answer YOUR questions. Vicky's been asking her email subscribers if they have any questions for her about writing and publishing books, and boy do you have questions! Great questions. The BEST questions. And Vicky and Joe drink misery tea and answer them. Tune in: if you've a burning question about books and publishing, maybe we've answered it. This episode contains bonus Angry Cat.   Key Takeaways: [1:45] Vicky gives a quick update on her latest soon-to-be-released book.  [3:55] Vicky will be answering your questions today!  [4:05] Roy: What bits of digital marketing actually work?  [8:15] Leslie: I don’t have anything unique or novel to say. Where does inspiration come from?  [14:45] Leslie: Do I really need a website?  [18:00] Charles: I don’t know enough to position myself as an expert.  [22:00] Charles: What would you do differently about writing your book knowing what you know now?  [27:30] Tune in next week as Vicky will answer loads, loads more of your questions!    Mentioned in This Episode: Vicky Fraser Vicky’s Podcast Vicky’s Blog Join the Superheroes Vicky’s Business For Superheroes Book The Inner Circle Borrow My Brain Vicky’s Book Club Vicky’s new book! Write & Publish Your Book in 90 Days Email Vicky Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, and Overcast Mark Dawson's Self Publishing Formula Podcast A Technique for Producing Ideas, by James Young

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Rob Eisenberg This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Rob Eisenberg who is a principal software engineer at InVision, and is the creator of Caliburn.Micro, Durandal, and Aurelia. Today, they talk about Rob’s past and current projects among other things. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:40 – Chuck: Our special guest is Rob Eisenberg. We’ve had you on Adventures on Angular (09 and 80), JavaScript Jabber, and others like Episode 203. 2:36 – Rob: That was over the period of 4 years all of those podcasts. I am getting older. 2:50 – Chuck: Anything that you’ve done that you want to talk about? 3:04 – Rob: I am known for opensource work over the years. Maybe we can talk about my progression through that over the years. 3:25 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 3:29 – Rob: When I was 8 years old my dad wanted to buy a computer. We went to Sears and we bought our first computer. You’d buy the disk drive and the keyboard looking unit. You could by a monitor, we didn’t, but we used a black and white TV for our monitor. Later we bought the colored monitor and printer. That’s where my fascination started. We set up the computer in my bedroom. We played games. I got intrigued that you could write code to make different games. It was just magical for me. As being an adult engineer I am trying to go back to that moment to recapture that magical moment for me. It was a great creative outlet. That’s how I first started. I started learning about Q basic and other flavors of Basic. Then I heard about C! I remember you could do anything with C. I went to the library and there wasn’t the Internet, yet. There were 3 books about C and read it and re-read it. I didn’t have any connections nor a compiler. When I first learned C I didn’t have a compiler. I learned how to learn the codes on notebook paper, but as a kid this is what I first started doing. I actually saved some of this stuff and I have it lying around somewhere. I was big into adventure games. That’s when I moved on C++ and printed out my source code! It’s so crazy to talk about it but at the time that’s what I did as a kid. In JHS there was one other kid that geeked-out about it with me. It was a ton of fun. Then it was an intense hobby of mine. Then at the end of HS I had 2 loves: computers and percussion. I was composing for music, too. I had to decide between music or coding. I decided to go with music. It was the best decision I ever made because I studied music composition. When you are composing for dozens of instruments to play one unified thing. Every pitch, every rhythm, and it all works together. Why this note and why that rhythm? There is an artistic side to this and academia, too. The end result is that music is enjoyed by humans; same for software. I did 2 degrees in music and then started my Master’s in Music. I then realized I love computers, too, how can I put these two together? I read some things on audio programming, and it stepped me back into programming. At this time, I was working in music education and trying to compose music for gamming. Someone said look at this program called C#! I don’t know cause...how can you get any better than C++?! In 2003 – I saw a book: teach yourself C# in 24 hours. I read it and I was enthralled with how neat this was! I was building some Windows applications through C#. I thought it was crazy that there was so much change from when I was in college. 17:00 – Chuck: You start making this transition to web? What roped you in? 17:25 – Rob: I realized the power of this, not completely roped in just, yet. Microsoft was working (around this time) with... 19:45 – (Continued from Rob): When Silver Light died that’s when I looked at the web. I said forget this native platform. I came back to JavaScript for the 2nd time – and said I am going to learn this language with the same intensity as I learned C++ and C#. I started working with Durandal. 21:45 – Charles: Yeah, I remember when you worked with the router and stuff like that. You were on the core team. 21:53 – Rob: The work I did on that was inspired by screen activation patterns. 23:41 – Rob (continued): I work with InVision now. 24:14 – Charles: I remember you were on the Angular team and then you transitioned – what was that like? 24:33 – Rob comments. 25:28 – Rob (continued): I have been doing opensource for about 13 years. I almost burned myself a few times and almost went bankrupt a few times. The question is how to be involved, but run the race without getting burned-out. It’s a marathon not a sprint. These libraries are huge assets. Thank God I didn’t go bankrupt but became very close. The more popular something if there are more varieties and people not everyone is so pleasant. It’s okay to disagree. Now what are the different opinions and what works well for your team and project? It’s important to stay to your core and vision. Why would you pick THIS over THAT? It’s a fun and exciting time if you are 28:41 – Charles: What are you 28:47 – Rob: InVision and InVision studio. It’s a tool for designing screens. I work on that during the day and during the night I work on Aurelia. 30:43 – Chuck: I am pretty sure that we have had people from InVision on a show before. 31:03 – Rob comments. Rob: How we all work together. 31:20 – What is coming in with Aurelia next? 31:24 – Rob: We are trying to work with as much backwards compatibility as we can. So you don’t see a lot of the framework code in your app code. It’s less intrusive. We are trying next, can we keep the same language, the same levels, and such but change the implementation under the hood. You don’t learn anything new. You don’t have new things to learn. But how it’s implemented it’s smaller, faster, and more efficient. We have made the framework more pluggable to the compiler-level. It’s fully supported and super accessible. Frameworks will come and go – this is my belief is that you invest in the standards of the web. We are taking that up a notch. Unobtrusiveness is the next thing we want to do.  We’ve always had great performance and now taking it to the next level. We are doing a lot around documentation. To help people understand what the architectural decisions are and why? We are taking it to the next level from our core. It’s coming along swimmingly so I am really excited. We’ve already got 90% test coverage and over 40,000 tests. 37:33 – Chuck: Let’s get you on JavaScript Jabber! 38:19 – Chuck: Where can people find you? 38:22 – Twitter, and everywhere else. Blog! 39:17 – Chuck: Picks? 39:23 – Rob dives in! Links: jQuery Angular JavaScript Vue C++ C# InVision Aurelia Aurelia Blog by Rob Rob Eisenberg’s Twitter Rob’s Website Rob’s LinkedIn Rob’s GitHub Rob’s Episode 9 Rob’s Episode 80 Rob’s Episode 203 Sponsors: Get A Coder Job Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Rob Database: Orbit DB Robit Riddle The Wingfeather Saga Charles Used to play: Dungeons and Dragons Little Wizards Park City, UT VRBO

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Rob Eisenberg This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Rob Eisenberg who is a principal software engineer at InVision, and is the creator of Caliburn.Micro, Durandal, and Aurelia. Today, they talk about Rob’s past and current projects among other things. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:40 – Chuck: Our special guest is Rob Eisenberg. We’ve had you on Adventures on Angular (09 and 80), JavaScript Jabber, and others like Episode 203. 2:36 – Rob: That was over the period of 4 years all of those podcasts. I am getting older. 2:50 – Chuck: Anything that you’ve done that you want to talk about? 3:04 – Rob: I am known for opensource work over the years. Maybe we can talk about my progression through that over the years. 3:25 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 3:29 – Rob: When I was 8 years old my dad wanted to buy a computer. We went to Sears and we bought our first computer. You’d buy the disk drive and the keyboard looking unit. You could by a monitor, we didn’t, but we used a black and white TV for our monitor. Later we bought the colored monitor and printer. That’s where my fascination started. We set up the computer in my bedroom. We played games. I got intrigued that you could write code to make different games. It was just magical for me. As being an adult engineer I am trying to go back to that moment to recapture that magical moment for me. It was a great creative outlet. That’s how I first started. I started learning about Q basic and other flavors of Basic. Then I heard about C! I remember you could do anything with C. I went to the library and there wasn’t the Internet, yet. There were 3 books about C and read it and re-read it. I didn’t have any connections nor a compiler. When I first learned C I didn’t have a compiler. I learned how to learn the codes on notebook paper, but as a kid this is what I first started doing. I actually saved some of this stuff and I have it lying around somewhere. I was big into adventure games. That’s when I moved on C++ and printed out my source code! It’s so crazy to talk about it but at the time that’s what I did as a kid. In JHS there was one other kid that geeked-out about it with me. It was a ton of fun. Then it was an intense hobby of mine. Then at the end of HS I had 2 loves: computers and percussion. I was composing for music, too. I had to decide between music or coding. I decided to go with music. It was the best decision I ever made because I studied music composition. When you are composing for dozens of instruments to play one unified thing. Every pitch, every rhythm, and it all works together. Why this note and why that rhythm? There is an artistic side to this and academia, too. The end result is that music is enjoyed by humans; same for software. I did 2 degrees in music and then started my Master’s in Music. I then realized I love computers, too, how can I put these two together? I read some things on audio programming, and it stepped me back into programming. At this time, I was working in music education and trying to compose music for gamming. Someone said look at this program called C#! I don’t know cause...how can you get any better than C++?! In 2003 – I saw a book: teach yourself C# in 24 hours. I read it and I was enthralled with how neat this was! I was building some Windows applications through C#. I thought it was crazy that there was so much change from when I was in college. 17:00 – Chuck: You start making this transition to web? What roped you in? 17:25 – Rob: I realized the power of this, not completely roped in just, yet. Microsoft was working (around this time) with... 19:45 – (Continued from Rob): When Silver Light died that’s when I looked at the web. I said forget this native platform. I came back to JavaScript for the 2nd time – and said I am going to learn this language with the same intensity as I learned C++ and C#. I started working with Durandal. 21:45 – Charles: Yeah, I remember when you worked with the router and stuff like that. You were on the core team. 21:53 – Rob: The work I did on that was inspired by screen activation patterns. 23:41 – Rob (continued): I work with InVision now. 24:14 – Charles: I remember you were on the Angular team and then you transitioned – what was that like? 24:33 – Rob comments. 25:28 – Rob (continued): I have been doing opensource for about 13 years. I almost burned myself a few times and almost went bankrupt a few times. The question is how to be involved, but run the race without getting burned-out. It’s a marathon not a sprint. These libraries are huge assets. Thank God I didn’t go bankrupt but became very close. The more popular something if there are more varieties and people not everyone is so pleasant. It’s okay to disagree. Now what are the different opinions and what works well for your team and project? It’s important to stay to your core and vision. Why would you pick THIS over THAT? It’s a fun and exciting time if you are 28:41 – Charles: What are you 28:47 – Rob: InVision and InVision studio. It’s a tool for designing screens. I work on that during the day and during the night I work on Aurelia. 30:43 – Chuck: I am pretty sure that we have had people from InVision on a show before. 31:03 – Rob comments. Rob: How we all work together. 31:20 – What is coming in with Aurelia next? 31:24 – Rob: We are trying to work with as much backwards compatibility as we can. So you don’t see a lot of the framework code in your app code. It’s less intrusive. We are trying next, can we keep the same language, the same levels, and such but change the implementation under the hood. You don’t learn anything new. You don’t have new things to learn. But how it’s implemented it’s smaller, faster, and more efficient. We have made the framework more pluggable to the compiler-level. It’s fully supported and super accessible. Frameworks will come and go – this is my belief is that you invest in the standards of the web. We are taking that up a notch. Unobtrusiveness is the next thing we want to do.  We’ve always had great performance and now taking it to the next level. We are doing a lot around documentation. To help people understand what the architectural decisions are and why? We are taking it to the next level from our core. It’s coming along swimmingly so I am really excited. We’ve already got 90% test coverage and over 40,000 tests. 37:33 – Chuck: Let’s get you on JavaScript Jabber! 38:19 – Chuck: Where can people find you? 38:22 – Twitter, and everywhere else. Blog! 39:17 – Chuck: Picks? 39:23 – Rob dives in! Links: jQuery Angular JavaScript Vue C++ C# InVision Aurelia Aurelia Blog by Rob Rob Eisenberg’s Twitter Rob’s Website Rob’s LinkedIn Rob’s GitHub Rob’s Episode 9 Rob’s Episode 80 Rob’s Episode 203 Sponsors: Get A Coder Job Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Rob Database: Orbit DB Robit Riddle The Wingfeather Saga Charles Used to play: Dungeons and Dragons Little Wizards Park City, UT VRBO

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Rob Eisenberg This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Rob Eisenberg who is a principal software engineer at InVision, and is the creator of Caliburn.Micro, Durandal, and Aurelia. Today, they talk about Rob’s past and current projects among other things. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:40 – Chuck: Our special guest is Rob Eisenberg. We’ve had you on Adventures on Angular (09 and 80), JavaScript Jabber, and others like Episode 203. 2:36 – Rob: That was over the period of 4 years all of those podcasts. I am getting older. 2:50 – Chuck: Anything that you’ve done that you want to talk about? 3:04 – Rob: I am known for opensource work over the years. Maybe we can talk about my progression through that over the years. 3:25 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 3:29 – Rob: When I was 8 years old my dad wanted to buy a computer. We went to Sears and we bought our first computer. You’d buy the disk drive and the keyboard looking unit. You could by a monitor, we didn’t, but we used a black and white TV for our monitor. Later we bought the colored monitor and printer. That’s where my fascination started. We set up the computer in my bedroom. We played games. I got intrigued that you could write code to make different games. It was just magical for me. As being an adult engineer I am trying to go back to that moment to recapture that magical moment for me. It was a great creative outlet. That’s how I first started. I started learning about Q basic and other flavors of Basic. Then I heard about C! I remember you could do anything with C. I went to the library and there wasn’t the Internet, yet. There were 3 books about C and read it and re-read it. I didn’t have any connections nor a compiler. When I first learned C I didn’t have a compiler. I learned how to learn the codes on notebook paper, but as a kid this is what I first started doing. I actually saved some of this stuff and I have it lying around somewhere. I was big into adventure games. That’s when I moved on C++ and printed out my source code! It’s so crazy to talk about it but at the time that’s what I did as a kid. In JHS there was one other kid that geeked-out about it with me. It was a ton of fun. Then it was an intense hobby of mine. Then at the end of HS I had 2 loves: computers and percussion. I was composing for music, too. I had to decide between music or coding. I decided to go with music. It was the best decision I ever made because I studied music composition. When you are composing for dozens of instruments to play one unified thing. Every pitch, every rhythm, and it all works together. Why this note and why that rhythm? There is an artistic side to this and academia, too. The end result is that music is enjoyed by humans; same for software. I did 2 degrees in music and then started my Master’s in Music. I then realized I love computers, too, how can I put these two together? I read some things on audio programming, and it stepped me back into programming. At this time, I was working in music education and trying to compose music for gamming. Someone said look at this program called C#! I don’t know cause...how can you get any better than C++?! In 2003 – I saw a book: teach yourself C# in 24 hours. I read it and I was enthralled with how neat this was! I was building some Windows applications through C#. I thought it was crazy that there was so much change from when I was in college. 17:00 – Chuck: You start making this transition to web? What roped you in? 17:25 – Rob: I realized the power of this, not completely roped in just, yet. Microsoft was working (around this time) with... 19:45 – (Continued from Rob): When Silver Light died that’s when I looked at the web. I said forget this native platform. I came back to JavaScript for the 2nd time – and said I am going to learn this language with the same intensity as I learned C++ and C#. I started working with Durandal. 21:45 – Charles: Yeah, I remember when you worked with the router and stuff like that. You were on the core team. 21:53 – Rob: The work I did on that was inspired by screen activation patterns. 23:41 – Rob (continued): I work with InVision now. 24:14 – Charles: I remember you were on the Angular team and then you transitioned – what was that like? 24:33 – Rob comments. 25:28 – Rob (continued): I have been doing opensource for about 13 years. I almost burned myself a few times and almost went bankrupt a few times. The question is how to be involved, but run the race without getting burned-out. It’s a marathon not a sprint. These libraries are huge assets. Thank God I didn’t go bankrupt but became very close. The more popular something if there are more varieties and people not everyone is so pleasant. It’s okay to disagree. Now what are the different opinions and what works well for your team and project? It’s important to stay to your core and vision. Why would you pick THIS over THAT? It’s a fun and exciting time if you are 28:41 – Charles: What are you 28:47 – Rob: InVision and InVision studio. It’s a tool for designing screens. I work on that during the day and during the night I work on Aurelia. 30:43 – Chuck: I am pretty sure that we have had people from InVision on a show before. 31:03 – Rob comments. Rob: How we all work together. 31:20 – What is coming in with Aurelia next? 31:24 – Rob: We are trying to work with as much backwards compatibility as we can. So you don’t see a lot of the framework code in your app code. It’s less intrusive. We are trying next, can we keep the same language, the same levels, and such but change the implementation under the hood. You don’t learn anything new. You don’t have new things to learn. But how it’s implemented it’s smaller, faster, and more efficient. We have made the framework more pluggable to the compiler-level. It’s fully supported and super accessible. Frameworks will come and go – this is my belief is that you invest in the standards of the web. We are taking that up a notch. Unobtrusiveness is the next thing we want to do.  We’ve always had great performance and now taking it to the next level. We are doing a lot around documentation. To help people understand what the architectural decisions are and why? We are taking it to the next level from our core. It’s coming along swimmingly so I am really excited. We’ve already got 90% test coverage and over 40,000 tests. 37:33 – Chuck: Let’s get you on JavaScript Jabber! 38:19 – Chuck: Where can people find you? 38:22 – Twitter, and everywhere else. Blog! 39:17 – Chuck: Picks? 39:23 – Rob dives in! Links: jQuery Angular JavaScript Vue C++ C# InVision Aurelia Aurelia Blog by Rob Rob Eisenberg’s Twitter Rob’s Website Rob’s LinkedIn Rob’s GitHub Rob’s Episode 9 Rob’s Episode 80 Rob’s Episode 203 Sponsors: Get A Coder Job Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Rob Database: Orbit DB Robit Riddle The Wingfeather Saga Charles Used to play: Dungeons and Dragons Little Wizards Park City, UT VRBO

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Benjamin Hong This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Benjamin Hong who is a Senior UI Developer at Politico where he lives in the Washington, D.C. area. He has worked with other companies including Treehouse, Element 84, and Udacity. Charles and Benjamin talk about his past and current projects, and how it’s different working for the government vs. working for a business. Check it out! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:06 – Chuck: Tell us a brief introduction, please. 1:23 – Ben: I am a lead frontend developer at Politico. 1:43 – Chuck: It’s an area that can affect everyone. How did you get into developing? 1:52: Ben: I had everything you can think of to develop at first. 2:10 – Chuck: For me it was a TI90 calculator! 2:18 – Chuck: Was it somebody or something that pushed you towards this area? 2:32 – Ben: I wanted to change something with the theme, Googled it, and it went from there, and the Marquis Tag. 2:51 – Chuck: And the Blink Tag! The goodies. So you got the he HTML book – and what website did you build that was your first big project? 3:07 – Ben: It was fiddling around, but it was fortune cookie universe. 3:20 – Chuck: You will have to recreate it! 3:27 – Ben: I think this was 1993/1995 timeframe. 3:40 – Chuck: Yep, me too same time frame. If you had something move on your website it was so cool. You went to building... 4:02 – Ben: JavaScript was a roadblock for me. There was nobody to correct me. I had a JavaScript book and it was a massive failure. 4:33 – Chuck: You took a break and you came back? 4:40 – Ben: Oh – people will PAY you to do this?! 4:54 – Chuck: Did you go to college? 5:01 – Ben: Yes, I have a Master’s in a different field. I was always a tech junkie. I just wanted to put things together. 5:20 – Chuck: Take us through your journey through JS? 5:30 – Ben: I started off with the jQuery piece of it. I needed Java, and it took me awhile to wrap my head around it at first. Through the trial and process of trying to get into Angular and React, too. 6:19 – Chuck: Did you play with Backbone, Knockout, or Ember? 6:32 – Ben: I did do SOME Ember and some Knockout. Those were my first interactions. 6:49 – Chuck: What got you into the profession? How did you get from your Master’s to being a tech guy? 7:14 – Ben: From the Master’s field I learned a lot about human experience, and anted to breed the two together. Also, consulting and helping to build things, too. 7:44 – Charles: What was the career change like? 7:53 – Ben: I went to the federal government at first around the recession – it was good having a stable job. I was bored, though. While I was working for the government I was trying to get my foot in the door. From there I have been building my way up. 8:30 – Ben: I was working on Medicare.gov and then later... 8:46 – Charles: We won’t use the word “disaster”! What is it like to work for the government? 9:20 – Ben: Yep. The federal government is a different area because they are stake holders. They were about WHO owned the content, and who do we have to talk to get something approved. It was not product oriented like a business. I made my transition to Politico, because I wanted to find solutions and diversify the problems I was having. 10:31 – Chuck: Have you been there from the beginning? 10:39 – Ben answers the question. Ben: They were looking for frontend developers 10:54 – Chuck: You are the lead there now. What was that like with the transition? 11:08 – Ben talks about the beginnings stages of his time with Politico and the current situation. He talks about the different problems, challenges, and etc. 11:36 – Chuck: Do you consider yourself a news organization or? 11:47 – Ben: We have Politico Pro, too. I have been working with this site more so. There are updates about campaign and voting data. People will pay a fee. 12:25 – Chuck: Do they pain themselves as leaning one way or another or nonpartisan? 12:38 – Ben: We are objective and nonpartisan. 12:51 – Chuck: I know, I was hesitant to ask. What’s the mission of the company and into what you do? 13:09 – Ben: The projects get dumped to us and we are about solving the problems. What is the best route for solving it? I had to help pioneer the new framework into the tech staff is one of my roles. 13:48 – Chuck: What’s your tech stack? 13:55 – Ben: JavaScript and Vue.js. We are experimenting with other software, too. 14:16 – Chuck: We should get you talking about Vue on the other show! Are you working at home? 14:32 – Ben answers the question. Ben: One thing I am helping with Meetup. Community outreach is important and I’m apart of that. 15:09 – Chuck: Yep, it’s interesting to see various fields into the tech world. I am not one of those liberal arts majors, I do have a computer science degree. It’s interesting to see the different perspectives. How little it is for someone to be able to dive-in right away. What are you working on? 16:09 – Ben: Meetup population and helping with the work at Politico. 16:27 – Chuck: Reusable components. Are those opensource or only internal? 16:41 – Ben: They are now opensource but we are seeing which portions can be opensource or not. 17:01 – Chuck: Different companies have come out and offered their opensource. Where do they find you? 17:20 – BenCodeZen! They are more than welcome to message me. 17:36 – Chuck: Any advice on newbies to this field? 17:46 – Ben: Attending those meetings and making those connections. 18:18 – Chuck: I have been writing a book on HOW to get a job as a coder. That’s the same advice that I am giving, too. 18:46 – Chuck: Picks! 18:51 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 30-Day Trial! Links: React Angular Vue.js JavaScript Ember Elm jQuery BenCodeZen Ben’s LinkedIn Ben’s Crunch Base Sponsors: Cache Fly Get A Coder Job Fresh Books Picks: Charles Framework Summit – UT (Ember, Elm, and tons more!) Microsoft Ignite Code Badge Ben Conference in Toronto Conference in Atlanta, GA (Connect Tech) Conference in London – Vue

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Benjamin Hong This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Benjamin Hong who is a Senior UI Developer at Politico where he lives in the Washington, D.C. area. He has worked with other companies including Treehouse, Element 84, and Udacity. Charles and Benjamin talk about his past and current projects, and how it’s different working for the government vs. working for a business. Check it out! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:06 – Chuck: Tell us a brief introduction, please. 1:23 – Ben: I am a lead frontend developer at Politico. 1:43 – Chuck: It’s an area that can affect everyone. How did you get into developing? 1:52: Ben: I had everything you can think of to develop at first. 2:10 – Chuck: For me it was a TI90 calculator! 2:18 – Chuck: Was it somebody or something that pushed you towards this area? 2:32 – Ben: I wanted to change something with the theme, Googled it, and it went from there, and the Marquis Tag. 2:51 – Chuck: And the Blink Tag! The goodies. So you got the he HTML book – and what website did you build that was your first big project? 3:07 – Ben: It was fiddling around, but it was fortune cookie universe. 3:20 – Chuck: You will have to recreate it! 3:27 – Ben: I think this was 1993/1995 timeframe. 3:40 – Chuck: Yep, me too same time frame. If you had something move on your website it was so cool. You went to building... 4:02 – Ben: JavaScript was a roadblock for me. There was nobody to correct me. I had a JavaScript book and it was a massive failure. 4:33 – Chuck: You took a break and you came back? 4:40 – Ben: Oh – people will PAY you to do this?! 4:54 – Chuck: Did you go to college? 5:01 – Ben: Yes, I have a Master’s in a different field. I was always a tech junkie. I just wanted to put things together. 5:20 – Chuck: Take us through your journey through JS? 5:30 – Ben: I started off with the jQuery piece of it. I needed Java, and it took me awhile to wrap my head around it at first. Through the trial and process of trying to get into Angular and React, too. 6:19 – Chuck: Did you play with Backbone, Knockout, or Ember? 6:32 – Ben: I did do SOME Ember and some Knockout. Those were my first interactions. 6:49 – Chuck: What got you into the profession? How did you get from your Master’s to being a tech guy? 7:14 – Ben: From the Master’s field I learned a lot about human experience, and anted to breed the two together. Also, consulting and helping to build things, too. 7:44 – Charles: What was the career change like? 7:53 – Ben: I went to the federal government at first around the recession – it was good having a stable job. I was bored, though. While I was working for the government I was trying to get my foot in the door. From there I have been building my way up. 8:30 – Ben: I was working on Medicare.gov and then later... 8:46 – Charles: We won’t use the word “disaster”! What is it like to work for the government? 9:20 – Ben: Yep. The federal government is a different area because they are stake holders. They were about WHO owned the content, and who do we have to talk to get something approved. It was not product oriented like a business. I made my transition to Politico, because I wanted to find solutions and diversify the problems I was having. 10:31 – Chuck: Have you been there from the beginning? 10:39 – Ben answers the question. Ben: They were looking for frontend developers 10:54 – Chuck: You are the lead there now. What was that like with the transition? 11:08 – Ben talks about the beginnings stages of his time with Politico and the current situation. He talks about the different problems, challenges, and etc. 11:36 – Chuck: Do you consider yourself a news organization or? 11:47 – Ben: We have Politico Pro, too. I have been working with this site more so. There are updates about campaign and voting data. People will pay a fee. 12:25 – Chuck: Do they pain themselves as leaning one way or another or nonpartisan? 12:38 – Ben: We are objective and nonpartisan. 12:51 – Chuck: I know, I was hesitant to ask. What’s the mission of the company and into what you do? 13:09 – Ben: The projects get dumped to us and we are about solving the problems. What is the best route for solving it? I had to help pioneer the new framework into the tech staff is one of my roles. 13:48 – Chuck: What’s your tech stack? 13:55 – Ben: JavaScript and Vue.js. We are experimenting with other software, too. 14:16 – Chuck: We should get you talking about Vue on the other show! Are you working at home? 14:32 – Ben answers the question. Ben: One thing I am helping with Meetup. Community outreach is important and I’m apart of that. 15:09 – Chuck: Yep, it’s interesting to see various fields into the tech world. I am not one of those liberal arts majors, I do have a computer science degree. It’s interesting to see the different perspectives. How little it is for someone to be able to dive-in right away. What are you working on? 16:09 – Ben: Meetup population and helping with the work at Politico. 16:27 – Chuck: Reusable components. Are those opensource or only internal? 16:41 – Ben: They are now opensource but we are seeing which portions can be opensource or not. 17:01 – Chuck: Different companies have come out and offered their opensource. Where do they find you? 17:20 – BenCodeZen! They are more than welcome to message me. 17:36 – Chuck: Any advice on newbies to this field? 17:46 – Ben: Attending those meetings and making those connections. 18:18 – Chuck: I have been writing a book on HOW to get a job as a coder. That’s the same advice that I am giving, too. 18:46 – Chuck: Picks! 18:51 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 30-Day Trial! Links: React Angular Vue.js JavaScript Ember Elm jQuery BenCodeZen Ben’s LinkedIn Ben’s Crunch Base Sponsors: Cache Fly Get A Coder Job Fresh Books Picks: Charles Framework Summit – UT (Ember, Elm, and tons more!) Microsoft Ignite Code Badge Ben Conference in Toronto Conference in Atlanta, GA (Connect Tech) Conference in London – Vue

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Benjamin Hong This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Benjamin Hong who is a Senior UI Developer at Politico where he lives in the Washington, D.C. area. He has worked with other companies including Treehouse, Element 84, and Udacity. Charles and Benjamin talk about his past and current projects, and how it’s different working for the government vs. working for a business. Check it out! In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:06 – Chuck: Tell us a brief introduction, please. 1:23 – Ben: I am a lead frontend developer at Politico. 1:43 – Chuck: It’s an area that can affect everyone. How did you get into developing? 1:52: Ben: I had everything you can think of to develop at first. 2:10 – Chuck: For me it was a TI90 calculator! 2:18 – Chuck: Was it somebody or something that pushed you towards this area? 2:32 – Ben: I wanted to change something with the theme, Googled it, and it went from there, and the Marquis Tag. 2:51 – Chuck: And the Blink Tag! The goodies. So you got the he HTML book – and what website did you build that was your first big project? 3:07 – Ben: It was fiddling around, but it was fortune cookie universe. 3:20 – Chuck: You will have to recreate it! 3:27 – Ben: I think this was 1993/1995 timeframe. 3:40 – Chuck: Yep, me too same time frame. If you had something move on your website it was so cool. You went to building... 4:02 – Ben: JavaScript was a roadblock for me. There was nobody to correct me. I had a JavaScript book and it was a massive failure. 4:33 – Chuck: You took a break and you came back? 4:40 – Ben: Oh – people will PAY you to do this?! 4:54 – Chuck: Did you go to college? 5:01 – Ben: Yes, I have a Master’s in a different field. I was always a tech junkie. I just wanted to put things together. 5:20 – Chuck: Take us through your journey through JS? 5:30 – Ben: I started off with the jQuery piece of it. I needed Java, and it took me awhile to wrap my head around it at first. Through the trial and process of trying to get into Angular and React, too. 6:19 – Chuck: Did you play with Backbone, Knockout, or Ember? 6:32 – Ben: I did do SOME Ember and some Knockout. Those were my first interactions. 6:49 – Chuck: What got you into the profession? How did you get from your Master’s to being a tech guy? 7:14 – Ben: From the Master’s field I learned a lot about human experience, and anted to breed the two together. Also, consulting and helping to build things, too. 7:44 – Charles: What was the career change like? 7:53 – Ben: I went to the federal government at first around the recession – it was good having a stable job. I was bored, though. While I was working for the government I was trying to get my foot in the door. From there I have been building my way up. 8:30 – Ben: I was working on Medicare.gov and then later... 8:46 – Charles: We won’t use the word “disaster”! What is it like to work for the government? 9:20 – Ben: Yep. The federal government is a different area because they are stake holders. They were about WHO owned the content, and who do we have to talk to get something approved. It was not product oriented like a business. I made my transition to Politico, because I wanted to find solutions and diversify the problems I was having. 10:31 – Chuck: Have you been there from the beginning? 10:39 – Ben answers the question. Ben: They were looking for frontend developers 10:54 – Chuck: You are the lead there now. What was that like with the transition? 11:08 – Ben talks about the beginnings stages of his time with Politico and the current situation. He talks about the different problems, challenges, and etc. 11:36 – Chuck: Do you consider yourself a news organization or? 11:47 – Ben: We have Politico Pro, too. I have been working with this site more so. There are updates about campaign and voting data. People will pay a fee. 12:25 – Chuck: Do they pain themselves as leaning one way or another or nonpartisan? 12:38 – Ben: We are objective and nonpartisan. 12:51 – Chuck: I know, I was hesitant to ask. What’s the mission of the company and into what you do? 13:09 – Ben: The projects get dumped to us and we are about solving the problems. What is the best route for solving it? I had to help pioneer the new framework into the tech staff is one of my roles. 13:48 – Chuck: What’s your tech stack? 13:55 – Ben: JavaScript and Vue.js. We are experimenting with other software, too. 14:16 – Chuck: We should get you talking about Vue on the other show! Are you working at home? 14:32 – Ben answers the question. Ben: One thing I am helping with Meetup. Community outreach is important and I’m apart of that. 15:09 – Chuck: Yep, it’s interesting to see various fields into the tech world. I am not one of those liberal arts majors, I do have a computer science degree. It’s interesting to see the different perspectives. How little it is for someone to be able to dive-in right away. What are you working on? 16:09 – Ben: Meetup population and helping with the work at Politico. 16:27 – Chuck: Reusable components. Are those opensource or only internal? 16:41 – Ben: They are now opensource but we are seeing which portions can be opensource or not. 17:01 – Chuck: Different companies have come out and offered their opensource. Where do they find you? 17:20 – BenCodeZen! They are more than welcome to message me. 17:36 – Chuck: Any advice on newbies to this field? 17:46 – Ben: Attending those meetings and making those connections. 18:18 – Chuck: I have been writing a book on HOW to get a job as a coder. That’s the same advice that I am giving, too. 18:46 – Chuck: Picks! 18:51 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 30-Day Trial! Links: React Angular Vue.js JavaScript Ember Elm jQuery BenCodeZen Ben’s LinkedIn Ben’s Crunch Base Sponsors: Cache Fly Get A Coder Job Fresh Books Picks: Charles Framework Summit – UT (Ember, Elm, and tons more!) Microsoft Ignite Code Badge Ben Conference in Toronto Conference in Atlanta, GA (Connect Tech) Conference in London – Vue

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Rob Eisenberg This week on My Angular Story, Charles speaks with Rob Eisenberg who is a principal software engineer at InVision, and is the creator of Caliburn.Micro, Durandal, and Aurelia. Today, they talk about Rob’s past and current projects among other things. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:40 – Chuck: Our special guest is Rob Eisenberg. We’ve had you on Adventures on Angular (09 and 80), JavaScript Jabber, and others like Episode 203. 2:36 – Rob: That was over the period of 4 years all of those podcasts. I am getting older. 2:50 – Chuck: Anything that you’ve done that you want to talk about? 3:04 – Rob: I am known for opensource work over the years. Maybe we can talk about my progression through that over the years. 3:25 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 3:29 – Rob: When I was 8 years old my dad wanted to buy a computer. We went to Sears and we bought our first computer. You’d buy the disk drive and the keyboard looking unit. You could by a monitor, we didn’t, but we used a black and white TV for our monitor. Later we bought the colored monitor and printer. That’s where my fascination started. We set up the computer in my bedroom. We played games. I got intrigued that you could write code to make different games. It was just magical for me. As being an adult engineer I am trying to go back to that moment to recapture that magical moment for me. It was a great creative outlet. That’s how I first started. I started learning about Q basic and other flavors of Basic. Then I heard about C! I remember you could do anything with C. I went to the library and there wasn’t the Internet, yet. There were 3 books about C and read it and re-read it. I didn’t have any connections nor a compiler. When I first learned C I didn’t have a compiler. I learned how to learn the codes on notebook paper, but as a kid this is what I first started doing. I actually saved some of this stuff and I have it lying around somewhere. I was big into adventure games. That’s when I moved on C++ and printed out my source code! It’s so crazy to talk about it but at the time that’s what I did as a kid. In JHS there was one other kid that geeked-out about it with me. It was a ton of fun. Then it was an intense hobby of mine. Then at the end of HS I had 2 loves: computers and percussion. I was composing for music, too. I had to decide between music or coding. I decided to go with music. It was the best decision I ever made because I studied music composition. When you are composing for dozens of instruments to play one unified thing. Every pitch, every rhythm, and it all works together. Why this note and why that rhythm? There is an artistic side to this and academia, too. The end result is that music is enjoyed by humans; same for software. I did 2 degrees in music and then started my Master’s in Music. I then realized I love computers, too, how can I put these two together? I read some things on audio programming, and it stepped me back into programming. At this time, I was working in music education and trying to compose music for gamming. Someone said look at this program called C#! I don’t know cause...how can you get any better than C++?! In 2003 – I saw a book: teach yourself C# in 24 hours. I read it and I was enthralled with how neat this was! I was building some Windows applications through C#. I thought it was crazy that there was so much change from when I was in college. 17:00 – Chuck: You start making this transition to web? What roped you in? 17:25 – Rob: I realized the power of this, not completely roped in just, yet. Microsoft was working (around this time) with... 19:45 – (Continued from Rob): When Silver Light died that’s when I looked at the web. I said forget this native platform. I came back to JavaScript for the 2nd time – and said I am going to learn this language with the same intensity as I learned C++ and C#. I started working with Durandal. 21:45 – Charles: Yeah, I remember when you worked with the router and stuff like that. You were on the core team. 21:53 – Rob: The work I did on that was inspired by screen activation patterns. 23:41 – Rob (continued): I work with InVision now. 24:14 – Charles: I remember you were on the Angular team and then you transitioned – what was that like? 24:33 – Rob comments. 25:28 – Rob (continued): I have been doing opensource for about 13 years. I almost burned myself a few times and almost went bankrupt a few times. The question is how to be involved, but run the race without getting burned-out. It’s a marathon not a sprint. These libraries are huge assets. Thank God I didn’t go bankrupt but became very close. The more popular something if there are more varieties and people not everyone is so pleasant. It’s okay to disagree. Now what are the different opinions and what works well for your team and project? It’s important to stay to your core and vision. Why would you pick THIS over THAT? It’s a fun and exciting time if you are 28:41 – Charles: What are you 28:47 – Rob: InVision and InVision studio. It’s a tool for designing screens. I work on that during the day and during the night I work on Aurelia. 30:43 – Chuck: I am pretty sure that we have had people from InVision on a show before. 31:03 – Rob comments. Rob: How we all work together. 31:20 – What is coming in with Aurelia next? 31:24 – Rob: We are trying to work with as much backwards compatibility as we can. So you don’t see a lot of the framework code in your app code. It’s less intrusive. We are trying next, can we keep the same language, the same levels, and such but change the implementation under the hood. You don’t learn anything new. You don’t have new things to learn. But how it’s implemented it’s smaller, faster, and more efficient. We have made the framework more pluggable to the compiler-level. It’s fully supported and super accessible. Frameworks will come and go – this is my belief is that you invest in the standards of the web. We are taking that up a notch. Unobtrusiveness is the next thing we want to do.  We’ve always had great performance and now taking it to the next level. We are doing a lot around documentation. To help people understand what the architectural decisions are and why? We are taking it to the next level from our core. It’s coming along swimmingly so I am really excited. We’ve already got 90% test coverage and over 40,000 tests. 37:33 – Chuck: Let’s get you on JavaScript Jabber! 38:19 – Chuck: Where can people find you? 38:22 – Twitter, and everywhere else. Blog! 39:17 – Chuck: Picks? 39:23 – Rob dives in! Links: jQuery Angular JavaScript Vue C++ C# InVision Aurelia Aurelia Blog by Rob Rob Eisenberg’s Twitter Rob’s Website Rob’s LinkedIn Rob’s GitHub Rob’s Episode 9 Rob’s Episode 80 Rob’s Episode 203 Sponsors: Get A Coder Job Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Rob Database: Orbit DB Robit Riddle The Wingfeather Saga Charles Used to play: Dungeons and Dragons Little Wizards Park City, UT VRBO

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Rob Eisenberg This week on My Angular Story, Charles speaks with Rob Eisenberg who is a principal software engineer at InVision, and is the creator of Caliburn.Micro, Durandal, and Aurelia. Today, they talk about Rob’s past and current projects among other things. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:40 – Chuck: Our special guest is Rob Eisenberg. We’ve had you on Adventures on Angular (09 and 80), JavaScript Jabber, and others like Episode 203. 2:36 – Rob: That was over the period of 4 years all of those podcasts. I am getting older. 2:50 – Chuck: Anything that you’ve done that you want to talk about? 3:04 – Rob: I am known for opensource work over the years. Maybe we can talk about my progression through that over the years. 3:25 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 3:29 – Rob: When I was 8 years old my dad wanted to buy a computer. We went to Sears and we bought our first computer. You’d buy the disk drive and the keyboard looking unit. You could by a monitor, we didn’t, but we used a black and white TV for our monitor. Later we bought the colored monitor and printer. That’s where my fascination started. We set up the computer in my bedroom. We played games. I got intrigued that you could write code to make different games. It was just magical for me. As being an adult engineer I am trying to go back to that moment to recapture that magical moment for me. It was a great creative outlet. That’s how I first started. I started learning about Q basic and other flavors of Basic. Then I heard about C! I remember you could do anything with C. I went to the library and there wasn’t the Internet, yet. There were 3 books about C and read it and re-read it. I didn’t have any connections nor a compiler. When I first learned C I didn’t have a compiler. I learned how to learn the codes on notebook paper, but as a kid this is what I first started doing. I actually saved some of this stuff and I have it lying around somewhere. I was big into adventure games. That’s when I moved on C++ and printed out my source code! It’s so crazy to talk about it but at the time that’s what I did as a kid. In JHS there was one other kid that geeked-out about it with me. It was a ton of fun. Then it was an intense hobby of mine. Then at the end of HS I had 2 loves: computers and percussion. I was composing for music, too. I had to decide between music or coding. I decided to go with music. It was the best decision I ever made because I studied music composition. When you are composing for dozens of instruments to play one unified thing. Every pitch, every rhythm, and it all works together. Why this note and why that rhythm? There is an artistic side to this and academia, too. The end result is that music is enjoyed by humans; same for software. I did 2 degrees in music and then started my Master’s in Music. I then realized I love computers, too, how can I put these two together? I read some things on audio programming, and it stepped me back into programming. At this time, I was working in music education and trying to compose music for gamming. Someone said look at this program called C#! I don’t know cause...how can you get any better than C++?! In 2003 – I saw a book: teach yourself C# in 24 hours. I read it and I was enthralled with how neat this was! I was building some Windows applications through C#. I thought it was crazy that there was so much change from when I was in college. 17:00 – Chuck: You start making this transition to web? What roped you in? 17:25 – Rob: I realized the power of this, not completely roped in just, yet. Microsoft was working (around this time) with... 19:45 – (Continued from Rob): When Silver Light died that’s when I looked at the web. I said forget this native platform. I came back to JavaScript for the 2nd time – and said I am going to learn this language with the same intensity as I learned C++ and C#. I started working with Durandal. 21:45 – Charles: Yeah, I remember when you worked with the router and stuff like that. You were on the core team. 21:53 – Rob: The work I did on that was inspired by screen activation patterns. 23:41 – Rob (continued): I work with InVision now. 24:14 – Charles: I remember you were on the Angular team and then you transitioned – what was that like? 24:33 – Rob comments. 25:28 – Rob (continued): I have been doing opensource for about 13 years. I almost burned myself a few times and almost went bankrupt a few times. The question is how to be involved, but run the race without getting burned-out. It’s a marathon not a sprint. These libraries are huge assets. Thank God I didn’t go bankrupt but became very close. The more popular something if there are more varieties and people not everyone is so pleasant. It’s okay to disagree. Now what are the different opinions and what works well for your team and project? It’s important to stay to your core and vision. Why would you pick THIS over THAT? It’s a fun and exciting time if you are 28:41 – Charles: What are you 28:47 – Rob: InVision and InVision studio. It’s a tool for designing screens. I work on that during the day and during the night I work on Aurelia. 30:43 – Chuck: I am pretty sure that we have had people from InVision on a show before. 31:03 – Rob comments. Rob: How we all work together. 31:20 – What is coming in with Aurelia next? 31:24 – Rob: We are trying to work with as much backwards compatibility as we can. So you don’t see a lot of the framework code in your app code. It’s less intrusive. We are trying next, can we keep the same language, the same levels, and such but change the implementation under the hood. You don’t learn anything new. You don’t have new things to learn. But how it’s implemented it’s smaller, faster, and more efficient. We have made the framework more pluggable to the compiler-level. It’s fully supported and super accessible. Frameworks will come and go – this is my belief is that you invest in the standards of the web. We are taking that up a notch. Unobtrusiveness is the next thing we want to do.  We’ve always had great performance and now taking it to the next level. We are doing a lot around documentation. To help people understand what the architectural decisions are and why? We are taking it to the next level from our core. It’s coming along swimmingly so I am really excited. We’ve already got 90% test coverage and over 40,000 tests. 37:33 – Chuck: Let’s get you on JavaScript Jabber! 38:19 – Chuck: Where can people find you? 38:22 – Twitter, and everywhere else. Blog! 39:17 – Chuck: Picks? 39:23 – Rob dives in! Links: jQuery Angular JavaScript Vue C++ C# InVision Aurelia Aurelia Blog by Rob Rob Eisenberg’s Twitter Rob’s Website Rob’s LinkedIn Rob’s GitHub Rob’s Episode 9 Rob’s Episode 80 Rob’s Episode 203 Sponsors: Get A Coder Job Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Rob Database: Orbit DB Robit Riddle The Wingfeather Saga Charles Used to play: Dungeons and Dragons Little Wizards Park City, UT VRBO

Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Rob Eisenberg This week on My Angular Story, Charles speaks with Rob Eisenberg who is a principal software engineer at InVision, and is the creator of Caliburn.Micro, Durandal, and Aurelia. Today, they talk about Rob’s past and current projects among other things. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:40 – Chuck: Our special guest is Rob Eisenberg. We’ve had you on Adventures on Angular (09 and 80), JavaScript Jabber, and others like Episode 203. 2:36 – Rob: That was over the period of 4 years all of those podcasts. I am getting older. 2:50 – Chuck: Anything that you’ve done that you want to talk about? 3:04 – Rob: I am known for opensource work over the years. Maybe we can talk about my progression through that over the years. 3:25 – Chuck: How did you get into this field? 3:29 – Rob: When I was 8 years old my dad wanted to buy a computer. We went to Sears and we bought our first computer. You’d buy the disk drive and the keyboard looking unit. You could by a monitor, we didn’t, but we used a black and white TV for our monitor. Later we bought the colored monitor and printer. That’s where my fascination started. We set up the computer in my bedroom. We played games. I got intrigued that you could write code to make different games. It was just magical for me. As being an adult engineer I am trying to go back to that moment to recapture that magical moment for me. It was a great creative outlet. That’s how I first started. I started learning about Q basic and other flavors of Basic. Then I heard about C! I remember you could do anything with C. I went to the library and there wasn’t the Internet, yet. There were 3 books about C and read it and re-read it. I didn’t have any connections nor a compiler. When I first learned C I didn’t have a compiler. I learned how to learn the codes on notebook paper, but as a kid this is what I first started doing. I actually saved some of this stuff and I have it lying around somewhere. I was big into adventure games. That’s when I moved on C++ and printed out my source code! It’s so crazy to talk about it but at the time that’s what I did as a kid. In JHS there was one other kid that geeked-out about it with me. It was a ton of fun. Then it was an intense hobby of mine. Then at the end of HS I had 2 loves: computers and percussion. I was composing for music, too. I had to decide between music or coding. I decided to go with music. It was the best decision I ever made because I studied music composition. When you are composing for dozens of instruments to play one unified thing. Every pitch, every rhythm, and it all works together. Why this note and why that rhythm? There is an artistic side to this and academia, too. The end result is that music is enjoyed by humans; same for software. I did 2 degrees in music and then started my Master’s in Music. I then realized I love computers, too, how can I put these two together? I read some things on audio programming, and it stepped me back into programming. At this time, I was working in music education and trying to compose music for gamming. Someone said look at this program called C#! I don’t know cause...how can you get any better than C++?! In 2003 – I saw a book: teach yourself C# in 24 hours. I read it and I was enthralled with how neat this was! I was building some Windows applications through C#. I thought it was crazy that there was so much change from when I was in college. 17:00 – Chuck: You start making this transition to web? What roped you in? 17:25 – Rob: I realized the power of this, not completely roped in just, yet. Microsoft was working (around this time) with... 19:45 – (Continued from Rob): When Silver Light died that’s when I looked at the web. I said forget this native platform. I came back to JavaScript for the 2nd time – and said I am going to learn this language with the same intensity as I learned C++ and C#. I started working with Durandal. 21:45 – Charles: Yeah, I remember when you worked with the router and stuff like that. You were on the core team. 21:53 – Rob: The work I did on that was inspired by screen activation patterns. 23:41 – Rob (continued): I work with InVision now. 24:14 – Charles: I remember you were on the Angular team and then you transitioned – what was that like? 24:33 – Rob comments. 25:28 – Rob (continued): I have been doing opensource for about 13 years. I almost burned myself a few times and almost went bankrupt a few times. The question is how to be involved, but run the race without getting burned-out. It’s a marathon not a sprint. These libraries are huge assets. Thank God I didn’t go bankrupt but became very close. The more popular something if there are more varieties and people not everyone is so pleasant. It’s okay to disagree. Now what are the different opinions and what works well for your team and project? It’s important to stay to your core and vision. Why would you pick THIS over THAT? It’s a fun and exciting time if you are 28:41 – Charles: What are you 28:47 – Rob: InVision and InVision studio. It’s a tool for designing screens. I work on that during the day and during the night I work on Aurelia. 30:43 – Chuck: I am pretty sure that we have had people from InVision on a show before. 31:03 – Rob comments. Rob: How we all work together. 31:20 – What is coming in with Aurelia next? 31:24 – Rob: We are trying to work with as much backwards compatibility as we can. So you don’t see a lot of the framework code in your app code. It’s less intrusive. We are trying next, can we keep the same language, the same levels, and such but change the implementation under the hood. You don’t learn anything new. You don’t have new things to learn. But how it’s implemented it’s smaller, faster, and more efficient. We have made the framework more pluggable to the compiler-level. It’s fully supported and super accessible. Frameworks will come and go – this is my belief is that you invest in the standards of the web. We are taking that up a notch. Unobtrusiveness is the next thing we want to do.  We’ve always had great performance and now taking it to the next level. We are doing a lot around documentation. To help people understand what the architectural decisions are and why? We are taking it to the next level from our core. It’s coming along swimmingly so I am really excited. We’ve already got 90% test coverage and over 40,000 tests. 37:33 – Chuck: Let’s get you on JavaScript Jabber! 38:19 – Chuck: Where can people find you? 38:22 – Twitter, and everywhere else. Blog! 39:17 – Chuck: Picks? 39:23 – Rob dives in! Links: jQuery Angular JavaScript Vue C++ C# InVision Aurelia Aurelia Blog by Rob Rob Eisenberg’s Twitter Rob’s Website Rob’s LinkedIn Rob’s GitHub Rob’s Episode 9 Rob’s Episode 80 Rob’s Episode 203 Sponsors: Get A Coder Job Fresh Books Cache Fly Picks: Rob Database: Orbit DB Robit Riddle The Wingfeather Saga Charles Used to play: Dungeons and Dragons Little Wizards Park City, UT VRBO

Panel: Charles Max Wood (DevChat T.V.) Nader Dabit Justin Bennett Lucas Reis In this episode, the panel talks amongst themselves about: What is THE dream job? How do you define YOUR dream job? And how do you GET your dream job? Check out today’s episode to find out more! Show Topics: 1:02 – What does a dream job even mean? 1:08 – Nader: It means that you wake-up and you are excited to go to work instead of dreading it. 1:34 – Lucas: Dream jobs I think change depending on your life’s moments. It changes from person-to-person and from time-to-time. After some months there you are feeling like you are always growing as a person and as a professional. 2:24 – Chuck. 2:38 – Justin: My idea is that it has some impact on the people in your world. What is my impact on the world – what is my footprint – what am I doing? My last job was advertisement, and my job was to drive eyeballs to ads. That wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore. 3:49 – Charles: What do I want to do with DevChat? It’s not always fun, and why am I doing this. For me it’s personal freedom and an impact within the world. What are your big three that will make a big difference to you? There are all sorts of reasons, but once you know that then it’s easier. When my resume comes across their desk it comes with an endorsement. If you don’t have anything else to sell them, especially if you are a new developer. The last few jobs you’ve gotten how did you find them? 6:25 – Nader. 6:52 – Panelists: Recruiters. I used that to build myself up. Then I got into: Where DO I want to work? I will check Twitter, GitHub, Hacker News, and I keep my eyes open. At Artsy we try to build on those relationships. We are hiring! 8:31 – Chuck: I think most companies are like that – they will hire the people that they know. Doing the research, figuring out what company you want 9:10 – Panelists: Don’t be afraid to meet-up with people and ask them questions. You aren’t just trying to leech off of them and figure out what YOU can contribute back. 9:47 – Chuck: Even if you are trying to network with people to get a job – make sure you don’t look like you are trying to leech off of them. 10:20 – Lucas: When I moved to the U.S. about a year ago... A question I asked myself: Where will I contribute well? There are some markets that I am not interested in and there are some that I am interested in – that’s where I want to go. I like helping people with their health. Their website (company I am working for) is very eCommerce like. I know I can contribute, and it’s a mission that I am all about. Where do MY skillsets help? For junior levels time is on your side – contribute your time. You can help them with When you are young you have time. Everyone can follow their skillset. Try to find the places where you want and where do you want to contribute. 13:06 – Chuck. 13:20 – Even senior engineers we undervalue ourselves – it’s easy to do. When friends are trying to break into the industry I tell them to track their projects. 14:26 – Chuck: It shows the eagerness to learn and be willing to learn and contribute. On GitHub – be consistent with your contributions; it shows initiative. 15:33 – Nader, how did you get your job? 15:40 – Nader: Developer Advocate is the job I have now. Nader talks about how he got his current job. The main thing that I would recommend is to learn in public. Even if it’s not that impressive – overtime you will standout. It’s all about standing out, because you don’t want to sell yourself. 17:52 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 30-day trial. 18:58 – Chuck. 19:20 – Lucas: I am doing a lot of interviews now – a lot of times we want to hire people but we can’t for a certain skillset. One interesting thing is that even though you have an initial “no,” we could use that person later. 20:04 – Chuck: If it comes down to a good relationship then you can make that work to your advantage. People should be following-up to see if HR is reposting the job. Give them a lot of reasons to hire you! 22:30 – Panelist: If you aren’t excited to work there then it’s really telling. Searching for any opportunity just to grow is okay but it will be telling to your possible future employers. 23:40 – Chuck: Nader talked about standing out, and here you are talking about the same thing. Nobody goes to this level of effort to get a job at a company. 24:13 – Lucas: Do you think this applies to the big companies like Facebook or Google? 24:28 – Nader: I think these same principles do apply. When you start thinking about these big companies as actual people – then you have a better shot of getting hired. Go through Meetups and finding people who work there. Building relationships is what it’s about. 25:40 – Chuck: Companies are made-up of people – that’s it. Sometimes the company will go to bat for you and try to convince HR that you could be the right person. Give them reasons to hire you – sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. 27:03 – Lucas: Sometimes you THINK you want to work for a company, but how do I gather that this is the correct decision. In the middle of the interview – I realized that this wasn’t the right place for me. How do I got about that? 27:50 – Chuck: I lay out the TOP Three in my eBook. The best place to find out this information is finding out through past or current employees through X company. A lot of information, too, you can get through GlassDoor. You can do a people search through LinkedIn. Have that conversation with them over lunch and ask them those questions and find out. 31:48 – Justin: As you are reaching out to these people, keep them in mind as a possible mentor. Someone who you can learn from and that they can possibly mentor you. I think that can be undervalued. Really focus on “is this someone I could build a relationship with to help me with my career.” The relationship is a give and take – you don’t want that to show through. You should be interested in the person and helping them in some way, too. 33:11 – Chuck: I agree. Chuck talks about mentor / advisor relationship some more. 34:00 – Lucas asks Chuck some questions. Lucas: Some people have a difficult time reaching out – what are some great tips for this? 34:31 – Chuck: Everyone is different. For me, I have to put out a certain number. You have to be willing to go out and do it. If you can’t work with people, then sorry tough luck. Nowadays you will be working with a team of other programmers. Relationships are all about give-and-take; like my wife and me. 36:17 – If you aren’t comfortable in social situations there are things to slowly get you comfortable. Maybe send a tweet through Twitter. Being visible and contribute to slowly put yourself out there. Do whatever you feel comfortable with and challenge yourself just to TRY. Most people aren’t trying. 37:45 – Chuck: Sometimes that direct approach is or isn’t there. You can strike up a conversation about code and then it can go from there. It can happen in stages.  38:37 – If our experiences don’t align then that’s okay. Really try. Make sure you put in more effort than the people that are applying just via their website. Do more than just the 39:17 – Chuck: The more personal you can make it the better chance you have of getting hired. 40:00 – Picks! 40:04 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! Links: Kendo UI Ruby on Rails Angular Redux Meetup Get A Coder Job Charles Max Wood’s Twitter Nader Dabit’s Twitter GitHub – MDX-DECK Jasper DocZ Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Fresh Books Kendo UI Picks: Charles The Great British Baking Show Get A Coder Job Nader WatermelonDB Lucas GitHub – MDX-DECK Justin DocZ Jasper

Panel: Charles Max Wood (DevChat T.V.) Nader Dabit Justin Bennett Lucas Reis In this episode, the panel talks amongst themselves about: What is THE dream job? How do you define YOUR dream job? And how do you GET your dream job? Check out today’s episode to find out more! Show Topics: 1:02 – What does a dream job even mean? 1:08 – Nader: It means that you wake-up and you are excited to go to work instead of dreading it. 1:34 – Lucas: Dream jobs I think change depending on your life’s moments. It changes from person-to-person and from time-to-time. After some months there you are feeling like you are always growing as a person and as a professional. 2:24 – Chuck. 2:38 – Justin: My idea is that it has some impact on the people in your world. What is my impact on the world – what is my footprint – what am I doing? My last job was advertisement, and my job was to drive eyeballs to ads. That wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore. 3:49 – Charles: What do I want to do with DevChat? It’s not always fun, and why am I doing this. For me it’s personal freedom and an impact within the world. What are your big three that will make a big difference to you? There are all sorts of reasons, but once you know that then it’s easier. When my resume comes across their desk it comes with an endorsement. If you don’t have anything else to sell them, especially if you are a new developer. The last few jobs you’ve gotten how did you find them? 6:25 – Nader. 6:52 – Panelists: Recruiters. I used that to build myself up. Then I got into: Where DO I want to work? I will check Twitter, GitHub, Hacker News, and I keep my eyes open. At Artsy we try to build on those relationships. We are hiring! 8:31 – Chuck: I think most companies are like that – they will hire the people that they know. Doing the research, figuring out what company you want 9:10 – Panelists: Don’t be afraid to meet-up with people and ask them questions. You aren’t just trying to leech off of them and figure out what YOU can contribute back. 9:47 – Chuck: Even if you are trying to network with people to get a job – make sure you don’t look like you are trying to leech off of them. 10:20 – Lucas: When I moved to the U.S. about a year ago... A question I asked myself: Where will I contribute well? There are some markets that I am not interested in and there are some that I am interested in – that’s where I want to go. I like helping people with their health. Their website (company I am working for) is very eCommerce like. I know I can contribute, and it’s a mission that I am all about. Where do MY skillsets help? For junior levels time is on your side – contribute your time. You can help them with When you are young you have time. Everyone can follow their skillset. Try to find the places where you want and where do you want to contribute. 13:06 – Chuck. 13:20 – Even senior engineers we undervalue ourselves – it’s easy to do. When friends are trying to break into the industry I tell them to track their projects. 14:26 – Chuck: It shows the eagerness to learn and be willing to learn and contribute. On GitHub – be consistent with your contributions; it shows initiative. 15:33 – Nader, how did you get your job? 15:40 – Nader: Developer Advocate is the job I have now. Nader talks about how he got his current job. The main thing that I would recommend is to learn in public. Even if it’s not that impressive – overtime you will standout. It’s all about standing out, because you don’t want to sell yourself. 17:52 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 30-day trial. 18:58 – Chuck. 19:20 – Lucas: I am doing a lot of interviews now – a lot of times we want to hire people but we can’t for a certain skillset. One interesting thing is that even though you have an initial “no,” we could use that person later. 20:04 – Chuck: If it comes down to a good relationship then you can make that work to your advantage. People should be following-up to see if HR is reposting the job. Give them a lot of reasons to hire you! 22:30 – Panelist: If you aren’t excited to work there then it’s really telling. Searching for any opportunity just to grow is okay but it will be telling to your possible future employers. 23:40 – Chuck: Nader talked about standing out, and here you are talking about the same thing. Nobody goes to this level of effort to get a job at a company. 24:13 – Lucas: Do you think this applies to the big companies like Facebook or Google? 24:28 – Nader: I think these same principles do apply. When you start thinking about these big companies as actual people – then you have a better shot of getting hired. Go through Meetups and finding people who work there. Building relationships is what it’s about. 25:40 – Chuck: Companies are made-up of people – that’s it. Sometimes the company will go to bat for you and try to convince HR that you could be the right person. Give them reasons to hire you – sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. 27:03 – Lucas: Sometimes you THINK you want to work for a company, but how do I gather that this is the correct decision. In the middle of the interview – I realized that this wasn’t the right place for me. How do I got about that? 27:50 – Chuck: I lay out the TOP Three in my eBook. The best place to find out this information is finding out through past or current employees through X company. A lot of information, too, you can get through GlassDoor. You can do a people search through LinkedIn. Have that conversation with them over lunch and ask them those questions and find out. 31:48 – Justin: As you are reaching out to these people, keep them in mind as a possible mentor. Someone who you can learn from and that they can possibly mentor you. I think that can be undervalued. Really focus on “is this someone I could build a relationship with to help me with my career.” The relationship is a give and take – you don’t want that to show through. You should be interested in the person and helping them in some way, too. 33:11 – Chuck: I agree. Chuck talks about mentor / advisor relationship some more. 34:00 – Lucas asks Chuck some questions. Lucas: Some people have a difficult time reaching out – what are some great tips for this? 34:31 – Chuck: Everyone is different. For me, I have to put out a certain number. You have to be willing to go out and do it. If you can’t work with people, then sorry tough luck. Nowadays you will be working with a team of other programmers. Relationships are all about give-and-take; like my wife and me. 36:17 – If you aren’t comfortable in social situations there are things to slowly get you comfortable. Maybe send a tweet through Twitter. Being visible and contribute to slowly put yourself out there. Do whatever you feel comfortable with and challenge yourself just to TRY. Most people aren’t trying. 37:45 – Chuck: Sometimes that direct approach is or isn’t there. You can strike up a conversation about code and then it can go from there. It can happen in stages.  38:37 – If our experiences don’t align then that’s okay. Really try. Make sure you put in more effort than the people that are applying just via their website. Do more than just the 39:17 – Chuck: The more personal you can make it the better chance you have of getting hired. 40:00 – Picks! 40:04 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! Links: Kendo UI Ruby on Rails Angular Redux Meetup Get A Coder Job Charles Max Wood’s Twitter Nader Dabit’s Twitter GitHub – MDX-DECK Jasper DocZ Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Fresh Books Kendo UI Picks: Charles The Great British Baking Show Get A Coder Job Nader WatermelonDB Lucas GitHub – MDX-DECK Justin DocZ Jasper

Brad fields many interesting and unusual questions in today's podcast. Question from Charles: What entails maximum sustained power training? How often should a person do this?  [00:01:27] Brad warns about the danger of road cycling. [00:12:11]  Brad explains workouts done properly. [00:18:08]  David Lapp asks: How do you get rid of the bad habit of chronic training patterns?  [00:23:13]  What is the argument against consistency? [00:29:04]  Brad gives the secret password for a discount on the Primal Endurance course. [00:34:01]  Todd asks: If one takes a long walk or a hike at a brisk pace,  is it possible to still trigger the flight or fight response in the body? [00:35:36]  Travis asks about his frustration of trying to adjust to the MAF training. [00:41:15]  The cutoff point for 50-50 (50 percent aerobic and 50 percent anaerobic) is a race that lasts 1 minute and 25 seconds.   QUOTES: “A little goes a long way. Make sure you get rest.”   “Of all the dangerous things you may do in your life remember that road cycling is the number one most dangerous thing you can do.  Be careful out there!!”   “The cutoff point for 50-50 (50 percent aerobic contribution and 50 percent anaerobic contribution) is a race that lasts 1 minute and 25 seconds.”   LINKS: Jacques Devore Sirens and Titans VersaClimber Dave Zabriski The Forward (Lance Armstrong) Hex Bar Whole Doods Spiderman Push Ups Brad Kearns Morning Routine Brave Athlete: Calm the F*** Down Nourish Balance Thrive Kelly Starrett Primal Blueprint  

Are you sick of productivity apps and social platforms that hijack your time? What happens when a platform encourages creativity rather than distracting us? How can you raise capital from users rather than ads? by Chris Sherron Less machine learning, less algorithms, less likes: This week Paul Ford and Rich Ziade meet with Charles Broskoski, founder of Are.na, to discuss how his platform moves away from the like-based models of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We talk about how pattern recognition drives our creativity, discuss the difficulty of building a community that people are willing to pay for, and complain about Pinterest. Rich also discovers what an Art Prof is! [Soundcloud] ►iTunes/►SoundCloud/►Overcast/►Stitcher/►MP3 /►RSS 2:35 — Charles: “The main thing that you’re doing [with Are.na] is making collections of resources… You can throw anything in there and the point is that you’re thinking of things you’re consuming over a long period of time. It’s about doing this research and thinking about it as you’re doing things.” 4:15 — Paul: “It’s the overall platform of Pinterest that’s okay, and the membership is very very excited, but it just breaks the web. You hit Google images and you go into Pinterest.” 4:40 — Paul: “Compared to Pinterest, Are.na users tend to have intent when they link things together. Pinterest, on the other hand, is watching people and making these connections for them.” 9:30 — Charles: “I think what was appealing about Del.icio.us is that it didn’t orbit around likes and hearts and whatnot. The thinking was that you use it for your own selfish needs and the sort of by-product of that was something really great for everybody else.” 9:45 — Rich: “There was more of a culture around thinking and deep thought, about being more inquisitive and curious and less about performing a personality online.” 11:00 — Rich: “This is success now on the Internet. Build the tool that lets you ‘heart’ pictures and sounds… It’s born out of Twitter and Facebook and the like.” 17:40 — Paul: “So you’ve got this very abstract set of things. This has actually been one of the challenges of hypertext and the web in general, it’s that most websites end up looking like something that was there before. Newspaper websites look like newspapers. Youtube is about video of a certain aspect ratio that looks like TV… The thing that you’re doing here, the thing that you’re describing — which I think both Rich and I have found really hard to get across to people — is that here are abstract nodes that connect to other abstract nodes about concepts and they can be remixed. I’ve seen a lot of experiments along this line and I think that this one is really interesting in that forty thousand people doing abstract hypertext stuff is really a lot.” 23:00 — Charles: “We’re doing an equity crowdfunding campaign right now, and that was a sort of scary proposition… The scary part with a community like ours is that they’re very critical, they know what’s going on, and they’re very sensitive to changes — but it’s going a lot better than we ever expected.” 23:45 — Paul: “The mental model of what success is has to be changed to accommodate the spaces like this that people really want and will pay for and will be a good business.” 24:10 — Charles: “I’m also very optimistic that people are getting smarter — and I know this is a minority opinion — but people’s ability to pattern recognize different things that are happening in the world, that ability gets strengthened over time and there’s nowhere to put that.” 24:50 — Charles: “We just might as well not do it if we’re gonna do ads. It sets up a weird dynamic because your customer is not the user, your customer is the advertiser. Your motivation then is to serve the advertiser and not the user. We’re just trying to make a good enough product that people will pay for it. The type of people we’re after are knowledge workers, people who are working in creative professions. This is the tool that helps your thinking on an every-day basis.” 26:50 — Charles: “[What stops people from standing up Are.na] is that it’s really hard to build a community. The community building is a fuzzy activity — it’s inviting people, it’s talking to people. It’s not the same kind of productivity that you’re doing when you’re writing code.” A full transcript of this episode is available. LINKS Are.na Yahoo.icio.us? — Yahoo Acquires Del.icio.us Basecamp Project Management This Is What A Designer-Led Social Network Looks Like Pinterest Should Die Are.na Crowdfunding — Republic Track Changes is the weekly technology and culture podcast from Postlight, hosted by Paul Ford and Rich Ziade. Production, show notes and transcripts by EDITAUDIO. Podcast logo and design by Will Denton of Postlight

0:15 We’re Live. John is back and exhaust from all the traveling. John mentions that he did not miss a workout during the whole trip. John says he did gain about 20lbs, but has force himself to get through the grind. John describes how people get into depression or gain momentum into positivity.  8:00 Chuck compares he recents trails to what Johns was just talking about. Chuck also talks about the book You Are The Placebo. Chuck says looking over the abyss and considering the walk back is freaking hard.  11:00 John says you might as well try to charge up the hill, and build a new city. Chuck compares his finances  to last year, and is looking for a way forward, rather it is in finances or podcast production. Chuck says this is about just breaking even and moving forward.  15:00 Josh suggests looking into the profitability. John talks about the same ideas relayed in the current book Chuck has been reading, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind… and others. John talks about how the little league is these to beat you up to get to the big leagues.  22:00 Johns says the struggle is figuring out all the wrong ways of doing things, but leads to the well oiled machine that works every time. Josh says this maybe cheaper in the long run and less headaches.  25:00 Chuck talks about the new project manager he hired and the new processes to help all the different events and weekly tasks from week to week. Chuck talks about maybe moving things to Jira as he starts building new processes.  29:00 Chuck talks about his new project manager, where he is from, and his new tasks. Josh mentions that they may want to hire a project manager to handle task in Simple Programmer. But John talks about the different situations where it could work.  33:00 John says this position may be a intern type job, and grow it into a position with a bigger capacity, but, possibly someone with an entrepreneurial mindset. John says if something like this was available in his mid twenties, he would have certainly done it. This would have help gain traction into entrepreneurship.  37:00 John talks about interviewing James Damore, and the different things that happen with  this tech firing situation. John talks about historical events that led to huge changes we see in situations like James Damore’s.  45:00 The EntreProgarmmers give their thoughts on companies having the right to fire as they see fit. The EntreProgrammers speak on topics about  discriminations such as race and levels of intelligence from race to race. John compares this ideas to the breeding of dogs… and thing humans have done in the past. 57:00 The EntreProgrammers ask questions like, What makes a good coder? Male or Female? Do some people have advantages or do we need to just work harder to get somewhere if life?  Thoughts of the Week John - Fight from a position of strength  Charles - What are you going to do?  Josh -  Someone in business always has the upper hand.. It’s your job to be that person.

I talked with Charles Fitzgerald about his Shopify store, The Kewl Shop, and came away with loads of actionable insight. Started in late 2012, The Kewl Shop have quickly grown to become one of the top 150K web sites in the world. Founded by Charles, their focus has narrowed into the supply of top quality bandage dresses, shoes and leggings– areas of immense competition in the online world. So how do they stay ahead of their competition in an a fiercely competitive niche? Listen and find out. :) And, as always, if you'd like more free actionable advice, sign up for our Free 5-Day Crash Course on Conversion Rate Optimization. PS: Be sure to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and write a review. iTunes is all about reviews! Transcript Kurt: Hey, welcome to the fourth episode of the unofficial Shopify podcast. I'm your host Kurt Elster and joining me today is Charles Fitz from the Kewl Shop. Charles, where are you at right now? Charles: I'm in Bangkok, Kurt. It's late at night. It's about 9:35 pm. Asia exhaustively a beautiful place to be. Kurt: How did you find yourself in Bangkok? Charles: It's a bit of a long story. My background is finance. I spent of my work and life in London, some of it in New York as well and ended up working for a big investment bank in Singapore. I've been in Asia for about four or five years now. Touched on Shopify about two years ago, in fact, as a bit of a sideline and now it's developed into a bit more of a full-time role. Kurt: That's interesting. I think a lot of people do that really. They have something that maybe it starts as a side gig or even a hobby and there's a point where they say, "Okay, I got to jump into this full-time," either for their sanity or for their income, one of the two. Charles: Probably both. Kurt: Yeah. For me it was that way anyway. You've got the Kewl Shop, and that's K-E-W-Lshop.com. Not kewlshop.com, we'll link to that in the show notes. What do you sell? Charles: We sell women's clothing, 18 to 25, 35-year old women's clothing, mainly dresses and particularly a type of dress called the bandage dress which is a form hugging dress for girls and we sell matching shoes that goes with those and a few other ranges. We started out with a pretty broad range of items but over the year or so we've whittled that down to a lot fewer. We just find it more manageable to work with a fewer amounts of product and therefore we've ended up with these dresses and with the leggings and the shoes. Kurt: That's interesting. You've backed into your niche. How did you get into that niche? Charles: I think what happened was I did a lot of reading up on this before I started. Everything you read is all about niche, find the niche, find the right one. Sometimes that's very, very difficult to do. I played around a lot. I opened the Shopify store and I put in a very, very broad range of [inaudible 00:02:46] on the store really just to understand what might happen. As I became better and better I realized how difficult it was to manage such a broad range of product and how complex it was to get the SEO working for those to get to the quality of the product on the website with such a broad range of products and simply went to the one that started selling the best. We ended up with what is three ranges of products and they all sell reasonably well now. We did waste a lot of time at the beginning with such a broad range. I guess that's the advice about going for a niche is a strong advice. I think the difficulty is finding your niche and perhaps starting off broad and whittling yourself down to something more targeted as a way to do it. Kurt: That's a great idea. It's great advice I tell to people all the time. I've got freelancers who come to me and Shopify store owners and I tell them, "Pigeonhole yourself. It's not a bad thing. It's not as though you can't revise and change and pivot." You've been around two years, you tried different niches. How did you promote the Kewl Shop? Charles: We worked backwards on this. We started the shop, we put a whole other stuff on it, we observed and not much happened. Then we thought the right thing to do would be to go and get a couple of sales and how do we generate visitors to the website. We do all the classic things like starting Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and that slowly started building up visitors to the website but we weren't really converting that much at all. Google AdWords was the next arrow in our arsenal and we started to get more and more visitors that way, albeit a little bit expensive. When you get your first sale then suddenly you realize what's involved in getting more. That's when we started whittling down the products. Improving the product descriptions, making the sizes unique as we could possibly make it, started to identify our competitors, have a look at what they were doing, bench-marked ourselves against best practice and just moved forward on every facet that we could. It's a long tedious process but it's very, very rewarding when you start seeing the sales come through. Kurt: If you were to start over, what would be the one promotional tactic you'll start it with to get those first sales? Charles: I think what I would do is I wouldn't want to waste my time populating a Shopify store with a broad range of products. I think I would do a lot more research on my actual product, make sure that I understood it very well and when I put it on to my store make sure that it was the best possible presentation that I could give it. I think a trap that I fell into right in the beginning was sourcing product and copying the manufacturer's product description into the store. Really it doesn't get you anywhere because you're no different to many other people selling the same product. Investing in your product description and your products, making your content as unique as possible I think gives you the best outcome in whatever you do and whatever tack you want to follow from a visitor perspective. I think I would do that. I think would be a little bit more careful about the product, make sure that I understood the product very well and that I could write about it, talk about it and then present it in detailed effect and unique way on my shop. Kurt: Talk about unique and effective. I was clicking through your shop and immediately I saw it's definitely for younger women. It's nighttime stuff, it's club wear so I started shopping for my girlfriend naturally. I saw right away you had photos of Kim Kardashian and saying, "This dress was inspired by Kim Kardashian." I thought that was incredibly clever. You're borrowing someone else's brand and audience in a completely legitimate way. Charles: That's correct. I think of the things many people get scared of is linking out. One thing we've learned to do, and that's helped us a lot, is to link out to other websites. When we do the Kim Kardashian thing we're linked to Kim's official website or we'll link to other articles on Kim and often we get responses as a result of that. Clearly we haven't got one from Kim Kardashian herself. If you look at our products you'll find almost every single product has a history and a little inspiration piece against it and in that we've linked out to relevant support. For instance, if we put our own design on the website we've got a little blurb about how the dress was designed. We've got some images of the model wearing the dress. Anything to give the product complete uniqueness and to prove that you own it and it's yours and you have some authority on it. Kurt: You tell a story when you tell the inspiration about the product and I felt that was hugely powerful. It went beyond the traditional Amazon description of things where it's like here's what it's made of and here's how it fits and that's it. Charles: The issue we have in e-commerce is it can be very boring. This is the size, this is the color, this is the [inaudible 00:08:32] and this is the price. We've got to go beyond that. I think we all can go beyond that if we understand our product well and we thing a little bit more [likefully 00:08:42] how to present it. If you look at your competitors and you look at what other people are doing, if you do this from the beginning, you'll be streets and streets ahead of everyone else. Very few e-commerce sites have the sale product descriptions. Kurt: Tell me about how important is it to consider your competitors. I know a lot of my clients sometimes will get obsessed. They pick a competitor that they see as the most successful in that niche and they don't necessarily know if they are or not, but then they get really obsessed with just copying them. I tell them, "Success is more than copying and pasting what your competitors are doing." Charles: I think it's important to understand your competitors, what are they doing, perhaps what competitive advantages they've gone, but you also need to realize that they're probably just as lost as you are. They always are trying things out. No one really understands how to rank in Google. We all have broad guidelines and brief understandings. I think what you don't want to do is you don't want to end up looking like your competitor. You want to end up being unique. You want people to come to you not because you are like someone else but because you are yourself and you're unique and you're an authority in what you're selling. That's what I would concentrate on. Kurt: That's excellent advice. I'm looking at that carousel go by in your page in the background and you've got these absolutely wonderful photos. Where did they come from? Charles: They were all model images. This is a very big hurdle for many of us to cross. When we started we were using dresses that were factually copies of dresses worn by Kim Kardashian for instance. We had images of Kim on the website and we had images of our own celebrities. They weren't unique. At some point, we made the decision to have our own images. I think that was really the turning point in the shop. Being able to use our own images. When you have your own images it's very powerful and you can use them in social media. You get a whole lot of background and a whole lot beyond the scenes and that comes with those images as well because clearly you've been attending model shoots, you've been observing. You get a massive amount of information just by having your own images and of course you got something very powerful to use. Kurt: A picture is worth a thousand words. In the case of e-commerce it's also worth a huge boost in your conversion rate. Charles: It absolutely is. I remember feeling quite worried about the fact that we were going to take an image of Kim off the website and replace with an image of our own model. In fact, what it's done is it's done completely the opposite. It's been a major boost to our conversion rates and to our sales mainly because people see the shop as ours now and not someone else's. Kurt: The model and the pictures are beautiful and perfect. The model looks great in the clothes. The photo's clearly professional. What's the first step? I think this is a problem for a lot of people is they say, "No, I need pro photos." How do you go about finding a photographer and a model? How does that process work? Charles: We made a couple of mistakes. Initially, we went to an agent and we got royally ripped off. We got charged for studios, we got charged for models, we got charged for Photoshopping the images afterwards and then we just took it in to our own ends. We contacted our model ourselves. We went through her agency. We contacted the studio ourselves and we booked it all up, hired the photographer and we did it. Now we got very proficient. We're on our sixth or seventh shoot and we pump out 50, 60, 70 dresses in a day. Half the cost of the first set. I guess we all make mistakes and we will have to learn from those. Kurt: That's great advise right there. Earlier you had mentioned best practices, finding those out on your own and following those best practices, especially in regards to advertising and getting traffic to convert. What are a few of those that you found? Charles: I think you need to read a lot. In this industry you do need to be a jack of all trades. In order to understand the best practices you have to have an opinion of what there might be. When you talk SEO there's so many versions of what is good and what is bad. In the end you need to be able to decide what is right for you and what is right for the website and not necessarily believe what an SEO is going to tell you. Many of them, in fact, can get you into a lot of trouble. On these best practices I think you need to read. You need to read what makes a good conversion rate, what are some of the things that will improve your conversion rate, how to gain social followers that are unique and useful on Facebook, et cetera, and then put those things into practice. Kurt: How important do you think social media has been for your business? Charles: I think it's been mixed. We have about 30,000 followers on Facebook. When we do a post we don't get a massive amount of ... I can't think of the term right now. We don't get ... Kurt: Engagement? Charles: We don't get many views on that post. This is Facebook and their algorithm. Kurt: Right. EdgeRank, that awful thing they did to us. Charles: Absolutely. We have 30,000 followers. We do a post. If we don't boost this maybe about 1,500 people see it. Kurt: They drew everybody in with what felt like a free advertising system and they said, "Oh sorry guys. It's going to get worse overtime unless you pay for it." On our consultancy page we have 2,000 followers and we post using this wonderful tool called Edgar multiple times a day. Any one post will get 20 views out of 2,000. It's awful. Charles: It's quite hard to understand exactly what's happening on Facebook because when I look at visitors from Facebook they are actually substantial. We are getting a number of visitors to the website from Facebook, but when you look at our Facebook page it's hard to understand why that might happen, but we do. The conversion rate on Facebook visitors is not tremendously good though. I think that is an industry issue. When people come to a website from Facebook, they probably going there out of interest and they're not looking to necessarily purchase unlike Google AdWords where an individual on Google is actively looking to purchase. On Facebook I don't think they are. Kurt: I've noticed that too. The AdWords customers those are wallet-out, ready-to-buy-people. They know what they're getting when they click a product on Google versus Facebook as if you got people who are bored at work. Charles: Absolutely. I think you're right, Kurt. For AdWords our conversion rate is almost three or four times what it is on Facebook. That's the assessment is exactly what you were saying. Kurt: AdWords is expensive but it is a great way especially if you really focus it down to drive traffic that converts well. Shopify gives everybody 100 bucks to try it. I tell everyone with a new store trying AdWords. Where do you source your product from? Do you have it manufactured? Charles: Yeah. We have it manufactured. We have a few factories in China that make the product for us then we will hold it there. We have a warehouse in Texas as well and we will ship some of it over to Texas. We carry a huge amount of stuff just because it's a lot easier. One of the things we haven't touched on is customer service. What we do try and do is ship an order within three to four days of getting it. Therefore, we do carry a little bit of stump to ensure that we can do that. We find that has a massive impact on customer retention and then coming back just being able to get them their product very, very quickly and in the best possible quality that we can get them. That's why we carry some stock. We have it all manufactured in China and we ship it over to our warehouse in Texas and then to our customers in the US. Kurt: Do you use a drop shipping service to handle that?w Charles: We did at the beginning but we now have a DHL agent and we have an office in China as well. We've got people on the floor over that who access all the factory, pull out the stock that we're looking for, check it for quality, put our labels in it for instance and then we send it off. Everything that goes to the customer is packaged up and checked before it goes. Drop ship is useful. We started off drop shipping but very difficult to control quality and the customer service aspect of things. I do like drop shipping and I think it definitely does have a place, but it's very hard to scale up offer a drop shipping base. Ultimately, you have to invest in your own product. Have them in your warehouse, check them and send them off yourself like having your own images, I guess. Kurt: That's true. The more control you have over it obviously that's always going to boost your own confidence in the process and you have so much control over that process you can really fine tune it. That's interesting. Most people they're shipping the stuff out of their basement themselves and then they go to drop shipping. It sounds like you went the other way around. You went from drop shipping to running your own warehouse. Charles: I think it depends what your definition of drop shipping is. If you're using someone else's product and you're drop shipping that then that is a very difficult business to scale up. Ultimately, if you're manufacturing your own you can give to a shipper or you can give to a fulfillment facilitator and ask them to ship it for you. I'm not really sure, Kurt. Kurt: That's okay. Charles: I think being able to hold and fill your stock is important and sent that out to customers here. Kurt: You ship internationally, worldwide shipping. Does that add any complexity or create any problems for you? Charles: What you can do is you can make it look good on your website. We've got free shipping worldwide all over our website and we do ship internationally. The reality is that we only market into the US and Canada so 95% of what we do is into the US therefore we can price and anticipate most of our packaging going off there. We do get the odd orders to the UK or Australia or even into Africa and that's fine. We can cater for those and we can manage that, but we do know that 95% of our stuff is going to go into the US. Kurt: Essentially, you give people the option to ship it worldwide but you intentionally market to really North America to control that shipping cost. You've been playing around that. Charles: Yes. Everything is priced into the US. If you're a customer sitting in the US and you buy dress of us, you're getting a properly priced dress. In you're in Australia or if in you're Singapore and you're buying a dress of us, you might be getting a slightly more expensive dress because it's cheaper for us to ship to Singapore out of our China offices than it might be to the US. You need to make a decision. If you're going to offer it worldwide free shipping you need to understand how the mass is going to work there and where you're going to focus those cost because you can't offer it and price for your worst possible delivery because then you're going to out-price the consumers you want to go after. It's just a strategic decision really what you offer on your website and I think free shipping is very powerful. Kurt: Yeah for sure. I've seen just offering free shipping, ideally if you can offer free shipping in everything that really eliminates a barrier to entry that people have. If you say free shipping on orders over X amount I think is the bare minimum. Everybody has to have that now. Charles: I agree with that. Kurt: I noticed you've got this live chat tool, this customer's bar tool on the website. I've had a lot of people ask me, they say, "Should I do that? Is it worthwhile?" Talk to me about that. Do you think that helps conversions? Do you think it's valuable? Charles: I think it's a massive boost to conversions. We've done some analysis around how many people that we engage on live chat actually converts and it's around about 80%. If someone engages with us we convert them with those individuals about 80% of the time. We've taken it one step further. We've put some triggers on to the live chat now. The customers on the side for longer than three minutes then they get an automatic message from us saying, "Hi. It's Helen, your customer service. Anything we can help you with?" We look to engage them. We know once we've engaged them we have a very high conversion rates with those individuals. We've taken it one step further. We're not waiting for them to contact us. We're actually out reaching to them and trying to engage in conversation with the visitors on the side. I think that's probably what would happen if you were in a live store. If you were browsing a physical store a shop assistant might walk over to you and say, "Can I help?" That's really what we're doing. Kurt: I have one final question for you. What do you wish you knew when you started? One thing. If you could go back and tell yourself one thing, what would it be? Charles: I think I would focus more on getting free visitors. I think the real power in what we do is the organic visitors that we get. It's very difficult to run a business of AdWords or of paid visitors. You need to get these free visitors to your site and you need to get a lot of that. I would have started focusing on that a lot sooner than I have with the shop. I spend a lot of time talking about the product descriptions, making them unique. We've only started doing that about three or four months ago and simply making those changes on-site has boosted our organic and free visitors. That's the key to all of e-commerce is to get the free visitors. Kurt: You're absolutely right. The organic traffic is the holy grail of e-commerce traffic. It sounds like the success, the bare minimum to get that organic traffic is having professional, well, unique, compelling, professionally copy written product descriptions and professional photos to go along with it to really own the product. Charles: I think that's right. If you're presenting an on-site experience and is unique and authorative and that is yours, then one's going to follow all the links and all the interest from outside that you're going to need as well to boost those rankings. This stuff is in your control. It's how you present the website. Therefore, you need to pull out all stomps to present something that is unique and exciting and user-friendly and people want to come back to all the time. Hopefully, off the back of that and maybe with a little pushing you can start encouraging links into your website. The combination of those two will boost your rankings and get you your organic visitors. Kurt: Absolutely true. Thank you Charles. This has been easily one of the most valuable podcast interviews we've done. If people can connect the dots in the tips you've given them then they'll really be able to move the needle on the revenue. Charles: Well, thank you very much for the opportunity Kurt. I appreciate it. Kurt: Thank you for joining us.