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Send a text or comment!MY NEW NORM Podcast- S5 E7Guest: DAVID TUCKEREpisode: DIGITAL PARENTINGYou can now LISTEN or WATCH episodes!-Audio link:mynewnorm.buzzsprout.comAll major podcast platforms.-Video link:YouTube- @mynewnormSHOW NOTES:In this episode we will hear from David Tucker. David is a Software Consultant and a gifted communicator. Recently, David founded Digital Parenting, a resource to help guide families through the digital world around them.As a successful technology author and software consultant, David Tucker is immersed in the world of technology. As a husband and father of three, however, he sees the confusion and pain it's causing families—problems that can be avoided with the right guidance. DigitalParenting.com came about as a calling to make effective guidance totally accessible.The idea is simple: equip families with the tools and understanding they need to flourish.DigitalParenting.com uses a research-based framework to overcome the daily threats posed by technology. Equipping parents in 7 steps DigitalParenting.com uses a research-based framework to overcome the daily threats posed by technology.Discover the 7 essentials for building the tech-savvy family:1. Regulating screen time2. Avoiding inappropriate content3. Safeguarding mental health4. Defending against predators5. Respecting yourself, respecting others6. Maintaining privacy7. Consuming criticallySHOW RESOURCES:-Troomi (phone) - https://troomi.com/-Bark (parental controls and a phone) - https://www.bark.us/-Light Phone (purposefully simple phone) - https://www.thelightphone.com/-Covenant Eyes (accountability software) - https://www.covenanteyes.com/Thank you for your interest and support!FOLLOW / WATCH or LISTEN / SHARE!BEARANOOGA PRODUCTIONSMY NEW NORM Podcast / Barry Scott Young- hostmynewnorm@email.commynewnorm.buzzsprout.com/ / Find us on all major podcast platforms!

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Sara is a team lead at thoughtbot. She talks about her experience as a professor at Kanazawa Technical College, giant LAN parties in Rochester, transitioning from Java to Ruby, shining a light on maintainers, and her closing thoughts on RubyConf. Recorded at RubyConf 2023 in San Diego. -- A few topics covered: Being an Assistant Arofessor in Kanazawa Teaching naming, formatting, and style Differences between students in Japan vs US Technical terms and programming resources in Japanese LAN parties at Rochester Transitioning from Java to Ruby Consulting The forgotten maintainer RubyConf Other links Sara's mastodon thoughtbot This Week in Open Source testdouble Ruby Central Scholars and Guides Program City Museum Japan International College of Technology Kanazawa RubyKaigi Applying mruby to World-first Small SAR Satellite (Japanese lightning talk) (mruby in space) Rochester Rochester Institute of Technology Electronic Gaming Society Tora-con Strong National Museum of Play Transcript You can help correct transcripts on GitHub. [00:00:00] Jeremy: I'm here at RubyConf, San Diego, with Sara Jackson, thank you for joining me today. [00:00:05] Sara: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. [00:00:07] Jeremy: Sara right now you're working at, ThoughtBot, as a, as a Ruby developer, is that right? [00:00:12] Sara: Yes, that is correct. Teaching in Japan [00:00:14] Jeremy: But I think before we kind of talk about that, I mean, we're at a Ruby conference, but something that I, I saw, on your LinkedIn that I thought was really interesting was that you were teaching, I think, programming in. Kanazawa, for a couple years. [00:00:26] Sara: Yeah, that's right. So for those that don't know, Kanazawa is a city on the west coast of Japan. If you draw kind of a horizontal line across Japan from Tokyo, it's, it's pretty much right there on the west coast. I was an associate professor in the Global Information and Management major, which is basically computer science or software development. (laughs) Yep. [00:00:55] Jeremy: Couldn't tell from the title. [00:00:56] Sara: You couldn't. No.. so there I was teaching classes for a bunch of different languages and concepts from Java to Python to Unix and Bash scripting, just kind of all over. [00:01:16] Jeremy: And did you plan the curriculum yourself, or did they have anything for you? [00:01:21] Sara: It depended on the class that I was teaching. So some of them, I was the head teacher. In that case, I would be planning the class myself, the... lectures the assignments and grading them, et cetera. if I was assisting on a class, then usually it would, I would be doing grading and then helping in the class. Most of the classes were, uh, started with a lecture and then. Followed up with a lab immediately after, in person. [00:01:54] Jeremy: And I think you went to, is it University of Rochester? [00:01:58] Sara: Uh, close. Uh, Rochester Institute of Technology. So, same city. Yeah. [00:02:03] Jeremy: And so, you were studying computer science there, is that right? [00:02:07] Sara: I, I studied computer science there, but I got a minor in Japanese language. and that's how, that's kind of my origin story of then teaching in Kanazawa. Because Rochester is actually the sister city with Kanazawa. And RIT has a study abroad program for Japanese learning students to go study at KIT, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, in Kanazawa, do a six week kind of immersive program. And KIT just so happens to be under the same board as the school that I went to teach at. [00:02:46] Jeremy: it's great that you can make that connection and get that opportunity, yeah. [00:02:49] Sara: Absolutely. Networking! [00:02:52] Jeremy: And so, like, as a student in Rochester, you got to see how, I suppose, computer science education was there. How did that compare when you went over to Kanazawa? [00:03:02] Sara: I had a lot of freedom with my curriculum, so I was able to actually lean on some of the things that I learned, some of the, the way that the courses were structured that I took, I remember as a freshman in 2006, one of the first courses that we took, involved, learning Unix, learning the command line, things like that. I was able to look up some of the assignments and some of the information from that course that I took to inform then my curriculum for my course, [00:03:36] Jeremy: That's awesome. Yeah. and I guess you probably also remember how you felt as a student, so you know like what worked and maybe what didn't. [00:03:43] Sara: Absolutely. And I was able to lean on that experience as well as knowing. What's important and what, as a student, I didn't think was important. Naming, formatting, and style [00:03:56] Jeremy: So what were some examples of things that were important and some that weren't? [00:04:01] Sara: Mm hmm. For Java in particular, you don't need any white space between any of your characters, but formatting and following the general Guidelines of style makes your code so much easier to read. It's one of those things that you kind of have to drill into your head through muscle memory. And I also tried to pass that on to my students, in their assignments that it's. It's not just to make it look pretty. It's not just because I'm a mean teacher. It is truly valuable for future developers that will end up reading your code. [00:04:39] Jeremy: Yeah, I remember when I went through school. The intro professor, they would actually, they would print out our code and they would mark it up with red pen, basically like a writing assignment and it would be like a bad variable name and like, white space shouldn't be here, stuff like that. And, it seems kind of funny now, but, it actually makes it makes a lot of sense. [00:04:59] Sara: I did that. [00:04:59] Jeremy: Oh, nice. [00:05:00] Sara: I did that for my students. They were not happy about it. (laughs) [00:05:04] Jeremy: Yeah, at that time they're like, why are you like being so picky, right? [00:05:08] Sara: Exactly. But I, I think back to my student, my experience as a student. in some of the classes I've taken, not even necessarily computer related, the teachers that were the sticklers, those lessons stuck the most for me. I hated it at the time. I learned a lot. [00:05:26] Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. so I guess that's an example of things that, that, that matter. The, the aesthetics or the visual part for understanding. What are some things that they were teaching that you thought like, Oh, maybe this isn't so important. [00:05:40] Sara: Hmm. Pause for effect. (laughs) So I think that there wasn't necessarily Any particular class or topic that I didn't feel was as valuable, but there was some things that I thought were valuable that weren't emphasized very well. One of the things that I feel very strongly about, and I'm sure those of you out there can agree. in RubyWorld, that naming is important. The naming of your variables is valuable. It's useful to have something that's understood. and there were some other teachers that I worked with that didn't care so much in their assignments. And maybe the labs that they assigned had less than useful names for things. And that was kind of a disappointment for me. [00:06:34] Jeremy: Yeah, because I think it's maybe hard to teach, a student because a lot of times you are writing these short term assignments and you have it pass the test or do the thing and then you never look at it again. [00:06:49] Sara: Exactly. [00:06:50] Jeremy: So you don't, you don't feel that pain. Yeah, [00:06:53] Sara: Mm hmm. But it's like when you're learning a new spoken language, getting the foundations correct is super valuable. [00:07:05] Jeremy: Absolutely. Yeah. And so I guess when you were teaching in Kanazawa, was there anything you did in particular to emphasize, you know, these names really matter because otherwise you or other people are not going to understand what you were trying to do here? [00:07:22] Sara: Mm hmm. When I would walk around class during labs, kind of peek over the shoulders of my students, look at what they're doing, it's... Easy to maybe point out at something and be like, well, what is this? I can't tell what this is doing. Can you tell me what this does? Well, maybe that's a better name because somebody else who was looking at this, they won't know, I don't know, you know, it's in your head, but you will not always be working solo. my school, a big portion of the students went on to get technical jobs from after right after graduating. it was when you graduated from the school that I was teaching at, KTC, it was the equivalent of an associate's degree. Maybe 50 percent went off to a tech job. Maybe 50 percent went on to a four year university. And, and so as students, it hadn't. Connected with them always yet that oh, this isn't just about the assignment. This is also about learning how to interact with my co workers in the future. Differences between students [00:08:38] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I think It's hard, but, group projects are kind of always, uh, that's kind of where you get to work with other people and, read other people's code, but there's always that potential imbalance of where one person is like, uh, I know how to do this. I'll just do it. Right? So I'm not really sure how to solve that problem. Yeah. [00:09:00] Sara: Mm hmm. That's something that I think probably happens to some degree everywhere, but man, Japan really has groups, group work down. They, that's a super generalization. For my students though, when you would put them in a group, they were, they were usually really organized about who was going to do what and, kept on each other about doing things maybe there were some students that were a little bit more slackers, but it was certainly not the kind of polarized dichotomy you would usually see in an American classroom. [00:09:39] Jeremy: Yeah. I've been on both sides. I've been the person who did the work and the slacker. [00:09:44] Sara: Same. [00:09:46] Jeremy: And, uh, I feel bad about it now, but, uh, [00:09:50] Sara: We did what we had to do. [00:09:52] Jeremy: We all got the degree, so we're good. that is interesting, though. I mean, was there anything else, like, culturally different, you felt, from, you know, the Japanese university? [00:10:04] Sara: Yes. Absolutely. A lot of things. In American university, it's kind of the first time in a young person's life, usually, where they have the freedom to choose what they learn, choose where they live, what they're interested in. And so there's usually a lot of investment in your study and being there, being present, paying attention to the lecture. This is not to say that Japanese college students were the opposite. But the cultural feeling is college is your last time to have fun before you enter the real world of jobs and working too many hours. And so the emphasis on paying Super attention or, being perfect in your assignments. There was, there was a scale. There were some students that were 100 percent there. And then there were some students that were like, I'm here to get a degree and maybe I'm going to sleep in class a little bit. (laughs) That is another major difference, cultural aspect. In America, if you fall asleep in a meeting, you fall asleep in class, super rude. Don't do it. In Japan, if you take a nap at work, you take a nap in class, not rude. It's actually viewed as a sign of you are working really hard. You're usually working maybe late into the night. You're not getting enough sleep. So the fact that you need to take maybe a nap here or two here or there throughout the day means that you have put dedication in. [00:11:50] Jeremy: Even if the reason you're asleep is because you were playing games late at night. [00:11:54] Sara: Yep. [00:11:55] Jeremy: But they don't know that. [00:11:56] Sara: Yeah. But it's usually the case for my students. [00:11:59] Jeremy: Okay. I'm glad they were having fun at least [00:12:02] Sara: Me too. Why she moved back [00:12:04] Jeremy: That sounds like a really interesting experience. You did it for about two years? Three years. [00:12:12] Sara: So I had a three year contract with an option to extend up to five, although I did have a There were other teachers in my same situation who were actually there for like 10 years, so it was flexible. [00:12:27] Jeremy: Yeah. So I guess when you made the decision to, to leave, what was sort of your, your thinking there? [00:12:35] Sara: My fiance was in America [00:12:37] Jeremy: Good. [00:12:37] Sara: he didn't want to move to Japan [00:12:39] Jeremy: Good, reason. [00:12:39] Sara: Yeah, he was waiting three years patiently for me. [00:12:44] Jeremy: Okay. Okay. my heart goes out there . He waited patiently. [00:12:49] Sara: We saw each other. We, we were very lucky enough to see each other every three or four months in person. Either I would visit America or he would come visit me in Kanazawa. [00:12:59] Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. You, you couldn't convince him to, to fall in love with the country. [00:13:03] Sara: I'm getting there [00:13:04] Jeremy: Oh, you're getting Oh, [00:13:05] Sara: it's, We're making, we're making way. [00:13:07] Jeremy: Good, that's good. So are you taking like, like yearly trips or something, or? [00:13:11] Sara: That was, that was always my intention when I moved back so I moved back in the Spring of 2018 to America and I did visit. In 2019, the following year, so I could attend the graduation ceremony for the last group of students that I taught. [00:13:26] Jeremy: That's so sweet. [00:13:27] Sara: And then I had plans to go in 2020. We know what happened in 2020 [00:13:32] Jeremy: Yeah. [00:13:33] Sara: The country did not open to tourism again until the fall of 2022. But I did just make a trip last month. [00:13:40] Jeremy: Nice [00:13:40] Sara: To see some really good friends for the first time in four years. [00:13:43] Jeremy: Amazing, yeah. Where did you go? [00:13:46] Sara: I did a few days in Tokyo. I did a few days in Niigata cause I was with a friend who studied abroad there. And then a few days in Kanazawa. [00:13:56] Jeremy: That's really cool, yeah. yeah, I had a friend who lived there, but they were teaching English, yeah. And, I always have a really good time when I'm out there, yeah. [00:14:08] Sara: Absolutely. If anyone out there visiting wants to go to Japan, this is your push. Go do it. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I will help you plan. [00:14:17] Jeremy: Nice, nice. Um, yeah, I, I, I would say the same. Like, definitely, if you're thinking about it, go. And, uh, sounds like Sara will hook you up. [00:14:28] Sara: Yep, I'm your travel guide. Technical terms in Japanese [00:14:31] Jeremy: So you, you studied, uh, you, you said you had a minor in Japanese? Yeah. So, so when you were teaching there, were you teaching classes in English or was it in Japanese? [00:14:42] Sara: It was a mix. Uh, when I was hired, the job description was no Japanese needed. It was a very, like, Global, international style college, so there was a huge emphasis on learning English. They wanted us to teach only in English. My thought was, it's hard enough learning computer science in your native language, let alone a foreign language, so my lectures were in English, but I would assist the labs in japanese [00:15:14] Jeremy: Oh, nice. Okay. And then, so you were basically fluent then at the time. Middle. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, well, I think if you're able to, to help people, you know, in labs and stuff, and it's a technical topic, right? So that's gotta be kind of a, an interesting challenge [00:15:34] Sara: I did learn a lot of new computer vocabulary. Yes. [00:15:39] Jeremy: So the words are, like, a lot of them are not the same? Or, you know, for, for specifically related to programming, I guess. [00:15:46] Sara: Hmm. Yeah, there are Japanese specific words. There's a lot of loan words that we use. We. Excuse me. There's a lot of loan words that Japanese uses for computer terms, but there's plenty that are just in Japanese. For example, uh, an array is hairetsu. [00:16:08] Jeremy: Okay. [00:16:08] Sara: And like a screen or the display that your monitor is a gamen, but a keyboard would be keyboard... Kībōdo, probably. [00:16:20] Jeremy: Yeah. So just, uh, so that, they use that as a loan word, I guess. But I'm not sure why not the other two. [00:16:27] Sara: Yeah, it's a mystery. [00:16:29] Jeremy: So it's just, it's just a total mix. Yeah. I'm just picturing you thinking like, okay, is it the English word or is it the Japanese word? You know, like each time you're thinking of a technical term. Yeah. [00:16:39] Sara: Mm hmm. I mostly, I, I I went to the internet. I searched for Japanese computer term dictionary website, and kind of just studied the terms. I also paid a lot of attention to the Japanese professors when they were teaching, what words they were using. Tried to integrate. Also, I was able to lean on my study abroad, because it was a technical Japanese, like there were classes that we took that was on technical Japanese. Computer usage, and also eco technology, like green technology. So I had learned a bunch of them previously. [00:17:16] Jeremy: Mm. So was that for like a summer or a year or something [00:17:20] Sara: It was six weeks [00:17:21] Jeremy: Six weeks. [00:17:21] Sara: During the summer, [00:17:22] Jeremy: Got it. So that's okay. So like, yeah, that must have been an experience like going to, I'm assuming that's the first time you had been [00:17:30] Sara: It was actually the second time [00:17:31] Jeremy: The second [00:17:32] Sara: Yeah. That was in 2010 that I studied abroad. [00:17:35] Jeremy: And then the classes, they were in Japanese or? Yeah. Yeah. That's, uh, that's, that's full immersion right there. [00:17:42] Sara: It was, it was very funny in the, in the very first lesson of kind of just the general language course, there was a student that was asking, I, how do I say this? I don't know this. And she was like, Nihongo de. [00:17:55] Jeremy: Oh (laughs) ! [00:17:56] Sara: You must, must ask your question only in [00:17:59] Jeremy: Yeah, Programming resources in Japanesez [00:17:59] Jeremy: yeah. yeah. That's awesome. So, so it's like, I guess the, the professors, they spoke English, but they were really, really pushing you, like, speak Japanese. Yeah, that's awesome. and maybe this is my bias because I'm an English native, but when you look up. Resources, like you look up blog posts and Stack Overflow and all this stuff. It's all in English, right? So I'm wondering for your, your students, when, when they would search, like, I got this error, you know, what do I do about it? Are they looking at the English pages or are they, you know, you know what I mean? [00:18:31] Sara: There are Japanese resources that they would use. They love Guguru (Google) sensei. [00:18:36] Jeremy: Ah okay. Okay. [00:18:38] Sara: Um, but yeah, there are plenty of Japanese language stack overflow equivalents. I'm not sure if they have stack overflow specifically in Japanese. But there are sites like that, that they, that they used. Some of the more invested students would also use English resources, but that was a minority. [00:19:00] Jeremy: Interesting. So there's a, there's a big enough community, I suppose, of people posting and answering questions and stuff where it's, you don't feel like, there aren't people doing the same thing as you out there. [00:19:14] Sara: Absolutely. Yeah. There's, a large world of software development in Japan, that we don't get to hear. There are questions and answers over here because of that language barrier. [00:19:26] Jeremy: Yeah. I would be, like, kind of curious to, to see, the, the languages and the types of problems they have, if they were similar or if it's, like, I don't know, just different. [00:19:38] Sara: Yeah, now I'm interested in that too, and I bet you there is a lot of research that we could do on Ruby, since Ruby is Japanese. [00:19:51] Jeremy: Right. cause something I've, I've often heard is that, when somebody says they're working with Ruby, Here in, um, the United States, a lot of times people assume it's like, Oh, you're doing a Rails app, [00:20:02] Sara: Mm hmm. [00:20:03] Jeremy: Almost, almost everybody who's using Ruby, not everyone, but you know, the majority I think are using it because of Rails. And I've heard that in Japan, there's actually a lot more usage that's, that's not tied to Rails. [00:20:16] Sara: I've also heard that, and I get the sense of that from RubyKaigi as well. Which I have never been lucky enough to attend. But, yeah, the talks that come out of RubyKaigi, very technical, low to the metal of Ruby, because there's that community that's using it for things other than Rails, other than web apps. [00:20:36] Jeremy: Yeah, I think, one of the ones, I don't know if it was a talk or not, but, somebody was saying that there is Ruby in space. [00:20:42] Sara: That's awesome. Ruby's everywhere. LAN parties in college [00:20:44] Jeremy: So yeah, I guess like another thing I saw, during your time at Rochester is you were, involved with like, there's like a gaming club I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your experience with that. [00:20:55] Sara: Absolutely, I can. So, at RIT, I was an executive board member for three or four years at the Electronic Gaming Society. EGS for short, uh, we hosted weekly console game nights in, the student alumni union area, where there's open space, kind of like a cafeteria. We also hosted quarterly land parties, and we would actually get people from out of state sometimes who weren't even students to come. Uh, and we would usually host the bigger ones in the field house, which is also where concerts are held. And we would hold the smaller ones in conference rooms. I think when I started in 2006, the, the, the LANs were pretty small, maybe like 50, 50 people bring your, your, your huge CRT monitor tower in. [00:21:57] Jeremy: Oh yeah, [00:21:57] Sara: In And then by the time I left in 2012. we were over 300 people for a weekend LAN party, um, and we were actually drawing more power than concerts do. [00:22:13] Jeremy: Incredible. what were, what were people playing at the time? Like when they would the LANs like, [00:22:18] Sara: Yep. Fortnite, early League of Legends, Call of Duty. Battlegrounds. And then also just like fun indie games like Armagedtron, which is kind of like a racing game in the style of [00:22:37] Jeremy: okay. Oh, okay, [00:22:39] Sara: Um, any, there are some like fun browser games where you could just mess with each other. Jackbox. Yeah. [00:22:49] Jeremy: Yeah, it's, it's interesting that, you know, you're talking about stuff like Fortnite and, um, what is it? Battlegrounds is [00:22:55] Sara: not Fortnite. Team Fortress. [00:22:58] Jeremy: Oh Team Fortress! [00:22:59] Sara: Sorry. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I got my, my names mixed up. Fortnite, I think, did not exist at the time, but Team Fortress was big. [00:23:11] Jeremy: Yeah. that's really cool that you're able to get such a big group there. is there something about Rochester, I guess, that that was able to bring together this many people for like these big LAN events? Because I'm... I mean, I'm not sure how it is elsewhere, but I feel like that's probably not what was happening elsewhere in the country. [00:23:31] Sara: Yeah, I mean, if you've ever been to, um, DreamHack, that's, that's a huge LAN party and game convention, that's fun. so... EGS started in the early 2000s, even before I joined, and was just a committed group of people. RIT was a very largely technical school. The majority of students were there for math, science, engineering, or they were in the computer college, [00:24:01] Jeremy: Oh, okay. [00:24:01] Sara: GCIS, G C C I S, the Gossano College of Computing and Information Sciences. So there was a lot of us there. [00:24:10] Jeremy: That does make sense. I mean, it's, it's sort of this, this bias that when there's people doing, uh, technical stuff like software, um, you know, and just IT, [00:24:21] Sara: Mm hmm. [00:24:23] Jeremy: there's kind of this assumption that's like, oh, maybe they play games. And it seems like that was accurate [00:24:27] Sara: It was absolutely accurate. And there were plenty of people that came from different majors. but when I started, there were 17, 000 students and so that's a lot of students and obviously not everyone came to our weekly meetings, but we had enough dedicated people that were on the eboard driving, You know, marketing and advertising for, for our events and things like that, that we were able to get, the good community going. I, I wasn't part of it, but the anime club at RIT is also huge. They run a convention every year that is huge, ToraCon, um. And I think it's just kind of the confluence of there being a lot of geeks and nerds on campus and Rochester is a college town. There's maybe like 10 other universities in [00:25:17] Jeremy: Well, sounds like it was a good time. [00:25:19] Sara: Absolutely would recommend. Strong Museum of Play [00:25:22] Jeremy: I've never, I've never been, but the one thing I have heard about Rochester is there's the, the Strong Museum of Play. [00:25:29] Sara: Yeah, that place is so much fun, even as an adult. It's kind of like, um, the, the Children's Museum in Indiana for, for those that might know that. it just has all the historical toys and pop culture and interactive exhibits. It's so fun. [00:25:48] Jeremy: it's not quite the same, but it, when you were mentioning the Children's Museum in, um, I think it's in St. Louis, there's, uh, it's called the City Museum and it's like a, it's like a giant playground, you know, indoors, outdoors, and it's not just for kids, right? And actually some of this stuff seems like kind of sketch in terms of like, you could kind of hurt yourself, you know, climbing [00:26:10] Sara: When was this made? [00:26:12] Jeremy: I'm not sure, but, uh, [00:26:14] Sara: before regulations maybe. ha. [00:26:16] Jeremy: Yeah. It's, uh, but it's really cool. So at the, at the Museum of Play, though, is it, There's like a video game component, right? But then there's also, like, other types of things, [00:26:26] Sara: Yeah, they have, like, a whole section of the museum that's really, really old toys on display, like, 1900s, 1800s. Um, they have a whole Sesame Street section, and other things like that. Yeah. From Java to Ruby [00:26:42] Jeremy: Check it out if you're in Rochester. maybe now we could talk a little bit about, so like now you're working at Thoughtbot as a Ruby developer. but before we started recording, you were telling me that you started, working with Java. And there was like a, a long path I suppose, you know, changing languages. So maybe you can talk a little bit about your experience there. [00:27:06] Sara: Yeah. for other folks who have switched languages, this might be a familiar story for you, where once you get a job in one technology or one stack, one language, you kind of get typecast after a while. Your next job is probably going to be in the same language, same stack. Companies, they hire based on technology and So, it might be hard, even if you've been playing around with Ruby in your free time, to break, make that barrier jump from one language to another, one stack to another. I mean, these technologies, they can take a little while to ramp up on. They can be a little bit different, especially if you're going from a non object oriented language to an object oriented, don't. Lose hope. (laughs) If you have an interest in Ruby and you're not a Rubyist right now, there's a good company for you that will give you a chance. That's the key that I learned, is as a software developer, the skills that you have that are the most important are not the language that you know. It's the type of thinking that you do, the problem solving, communication, documentation, knowledge sharing, Supporting each other, and as Saron the keynote speaker on Wednesday said, the, the word is love. [00:28:35] Jeremy: [00:28:35] Sara: So when I was job hunting, it was really valuable for me to include those important aspects in my skill, in my resume, in my CV, in my interviews, that like, I'm newer to this language because I had learned it at a rudimentary level before. Never worked in it really professionally for a long time. Um, when I was applying, it was like, look, I'm good at ramping up in technologies. I have been doing software for a long time, and I'm very comfortable with the idea of planning, documenting, problem solving. Give me a chance, please. I was lucky enough to find my place at a company that would give me a chance. Test Double hired me in 2019 as a remote. Software Consultant, and it changed my life. [00:29:34] Jeremy: What, what was it about, Ruby that I'm assuming that this is something that you maybe did in your spare time where you were playing with Ruby or? [00:29:43] Sara: I am one of those people that don't really code in their spare time, which I think is valuable for people to say. The image of a software developer being, well, if you're not coding in your spare time, then you're not passionate about it. That's a myth. That's not true. Some of us, we have other hobbies. I have lots of hobbies. Coding is not the one that I carry outside of the workplace, usually, but, I worked at a company called Constant Contact in 2014 and 2015. And while I was there, I was able to learn Ruby on Rails. [00:30:23] Jeremy: Oh, okay. So that was sort of, I guess, your experience there, on the job. I guess you enjoyed something about the language or something about Rails and then that's what made you decide, like, I would really love to, to... do more of this [00:30:38] Sara: Absolutely. It was amazing. It's such a fun language. The first time I heard about it was in college, maybe 2008 or 2009. And I remember learning, this looks like such a fun language. This looks like it would be so interesting to learn. And I didn't think about it again until 2014. And then I was programming in it. Coming from a Java mindset and it blew my mind, the Rails magic also, I was like, what is happening? This is so cool. Because of my typecasting sort of situation of Java, I wasn't able to get back to it until 2019. And I don't want to leave. I'm so happy. I love the language. I love the community. It's fun. [00:31:32] Jeremy: I can totally see that. I mean, when I first tried out Rails, yeah, it, like, you mentioned the magic, and I know some people are like, ah, I don't like the magic, but when, I think, once I saw what you could do, And how, sort of, little you needed to write, and the fact that so many projects kind of look the same. Um, yeah, that really clicked for me, and I really appreciated that. think that and the Rails console. I think the console is amazing. [00:32:05] Sara: Being able to just check real quick. Hmm, I wonder if this will work. Wait, no, I can check right now. I [00:32:12] Jeremy: And I think that's an important point you brought up too, about, like, not... the, the stereotype and I, I kind of, you know, showed it here where I assumed like, Oh, you were doing Java and then you moved to Ruby. It must've been because you were doing Ruby on the side and thought like, Oh, this is cool. I want to do it for my job. but I, I thought that's really cool that you were able to, not only that you, you don't do the programming stuff outside of work, but that you were able to, to find an opportunity where you could try something different, you know, in your job where you're still being paid. And I wonder, was there any, was there any specific intention behind, like, when you took that job, it was so that I can try something different, or did it just kind of happen? I'm curious what your... The appeal of consulting [00:32:58] Sara: I was wanting to try something different. I also really wanted to get into consulting. [00:33:04] Jeremy: Hmm. [00:33:05] Sara: I have ADHD. And working at a product company long term, I think, was never really going to work out for me. another thing you might notice in my LinkedIn is that a lot of my stays at companies have been relatively short. Because, I don't know, I, my brain gets bored. The consultancy environment is... Perfect. You can go to different clients, different engagements, meet new people, learn a different stack, learn how other people are doing things, help them be better, and maybe every two weeks, two months, three months, six months, a year, change and do it all over again. For some people, that sounds awful. For me, it's perfect. [00:33:51] Jeremy: Yeah, I hadn't thought about that with, with consulting. cause I, I suppose, so you said it's, it's usually about half a year between projects or is It [00:34:01] Sara: varies [00:34:01] Jeremy: It varies widely. [00:34:02] Sara: Widely. I think we try to hit the sweet spot of 3-6 months. For an individual working on a project, the actual contract engagement might be longer than that, but, yeah. Maintainers don't get enough credit [00:34:13] Jeremy: Yeah. And, and your point about how some people, they like to jump on different things and some people like to, to stick to the same thing. I mean, that, that makes a lot of, sense in terms of, I think maintaining software and like building new software. It's, they're both development, [00:34:32] Sara: Mm hmm. [00:34:32] Jeremy: they're very different. Right. [00:34:35] Sara: It's so funny that you bring that up because I highly gravitate towards maintaining over making. I love going to different projects, but I have very little interest in Greenfield, very little interest in making something new. I want to get into the weeds, into 10 years that nobody wants to deal with because the weeds are so high and there's dragons in there. I want to cut it away. I want to add documentation. I want to make it better. It's so important for us to maintain our software. It doesn't get nearly enough credit. The people that work on open source, the people that are doing maintenance work on, on apps internally, externally, Upgrades, making sure dependencies are all good and safe and secure. love that stuff. [00:35:29] Jeremy: That's awesome. We, we need more of you. (laughs) [00:35:31] Sara: There's plenty of us out there, but we don't get the credit (laughs) [00:35:34] Jeremy: Yeah, because it's like with maintenance, well, I would say probably both in companies and in open source when everything is working. Then Nobody nobody knows. Nobody says anything. They're just like, Oh, that's great. It's working. And then if it breaks, then everyone's upset. [00:35:51] Sara: Exactly. [00:35:53] Jeremy: And so like, yeah, you're just there to get yelled at when something goes wrong. But when everything's going good, it's like, [00:35:59] Sara: A job well done is, I was never here. [00:36:02] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how. To, you know, to fix that, I mean, when you think about open source maintainers, right, like a big thing is, is, is burnout, right? Where you are keeping the internet and all of our applications running and, you know, what you get for it is people yelling at you and the issues, right? [00:36:23] Sara: Yeah, it's hard. And I think I actually. Submitted a talk to RubyConf this year about this topic. It didn't get picked. That's okay. Um, we all make mistakes. I'm going to try to give it somewhere in the future, but I think one of the important things that we as an industry should strive for is giving glory. Giving support and kudos to maintenance work. I've been trying to do that. slash I have been doing that at ThoughtBot by, at some cadence. I have been putting out a blog post to the ThoughtBot blog called. This week in open source, the time period that is covered might be a week or longer in those posts. I give a summary of all of the commits that have been made to our open source projects. And the people that made those contributions with highlighting to new version releases, including patch level. And I do this. The time I, I, I took up the torch of doing this from a co worker, Mike Burns, who used to do it 10 years ago. I do this so that people can get acknowledgement for the work they do, even if it's fixing a broken link, even if it's updating some words that maybe don't make sense. All of it is valuable. [00:37:54] Jeremy: Definitely. Yeah. I mean, I, I think that, um, yeah, what's visible to people is when there's a new feature or an API change and Yeah, it's just, uh, people don't, I think a lot of people don't realize, like, how much work goes into just keeping everything running. [00:38:14] Sara: Mm hmm. Especially in the world of open source and Ruby on Rails, all the gems, there's so many different things coming out, things that suddenly this is not compatible. Suddenly you need to change something in your code because a dependency, however many steps apart has changed and it's hard work. The people that do those things are amazing. [00:38:41] Jeremy: So if anybody listening does that work, we, we appreciate you. [00:38:45] Sara: We salute you. Thank you. And if you're interested in contributing to ThoughtBot open source, we have lots of repos. There's one out there for you. Thoughts on RubyConf [00:38:54] Jeremy: You've been doing programming for quite a while, and, you're here at, at RubyConf. I wonder what kind of brings you to these, these conferences? Like, what do you get out of them? Um, I guess, how was this one? That sort of thing. [00:39:09] Sara: Well, first, this one was sick. This one was awesome. Uh, Ruby central pulled out all the stops and that DJ on Monday. In the event, in the exhibit hall. Wow. Amazing. So he told me that he was going to put his set up on Spotify, on Weedmaps Spotify, so go check it out. Anyway, I come to these conferences for people. I just love connecting with people. Those listening might notice that I'm an extrovert. I work remotely. A lot of us work remotely these days. this is an opportunity to see some of my coworkers. There's seven of us here. It's an opportunity to see people I only see at conferences, of which there are a lot. It's a chance to connect with people I've only met on Mastodon, or LinkedIn, or Stack Overflow. It's a chance to meet wonderful podcasters who are putting out great content, keeping our community alive. That's, that's the key for me. And the talks are wonderful, but honestly, they're just a side effect for me. They just come as a result of being here. [00:40:16] Jeremy: Yeah, it's kind of a unique opportunity, you know, to have so many of your, your colleagues and to just all be in the same place. And you know that anybody you talk to here, like if you talk about Ruby or software, they're not going to look at you and go like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like everybody here has at least that in common. So it's, yeah, it's a really cool experience to, to be able to chat with anybody. And it's like, You're all on the same page, [00:40:42] Sara: Mm hmm. We're all in this boat together. [00:40:45] Jeremy: Yup, that we got to keep, got to keep afloat according to matz [00:40:49] Sara: Gotta keep it afloat, yeah. [00:40:51] Jeremy: Though I was like, I was pretty impressed by like during his, his keynote and he had asked, you know, how many of you here, it's your first RubyConf and it felt like it was over half the room. [00:41:04] Sara: Yeah, I got the same sense. I was very glad to see that, very impressed. My first RubyConf was and it was the same sort of showing of [00:41:14] Jeremy: Nice, yeah. Yeah, actually, that was my first one, too. [00:41:17] Sara: Nice! [00:41:19] Jeremy: Uh, that was Nashville, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, yeah, it's really interesting to see because, the meme online is probably like, Ah, Ruby is dead, or Rails is dead. But like you come to these conferences and yeah, there's, there's so many new people. There's like new people that are learning it and experiencing it and, you know, enjoying it the same way we are. So I, I really hope that the, the community can really, yeah, keep this going. [00:41:49] Sara: Continue, continue to grow and share. I love that we had first timer buttons, buttons where people could self identify as this is my first RubyConf and, and then that opens a conversation immediately. It's like, how are you liking it? What was your favorite talk? [00:42:08] Jeremy: Yeah, that's awesome. okay, I think that's probably a good place to start wrapping it. But is there anything else you wanted to mention or thought we should have talked about? [00:42:18] Sara: Can I do a plug for thoughtbot? [00:42:20] Jeremy: yeah, go for it. [00:42:21] Sara: Alright. For those of you out there that might not know what ThoughtBot does, we are a full software lifecycle or company lifecycle consultancy, so we do everything from market fit and rapid prototyping to MVPs to helping with developed companies, developed teams, maybe do a little bit of a Boost when you have a deadline or doing some tech debt. Pay down. We also have a DevOps team, so if you have an idea or a company or a team, you want a little bit of support, we have been around for 20 years. We are here for you. Reach out to us at thoughtbot.com. [00:43:02] Jeremy: I guess the thing about Thoughtbot is that, within the Ruby community specifically, they've been so involved with sponsorships and, and podcasts. And so, uh, when you hear about consultancies, a lot of times it's kind of like, well, I don't know, are they like any good? Do they know what they're doing? But I, I feel like, ThoughtBot has had enough, like enough of a public record. I feel It's like, okay, if you, if you hire them, um, you should be in good hands. [00:43:30] Sara: Yeah. If you have any questions about our abilities, read the blog. [00:43:35] Jeremy: It is a good blog. Sometimes when I'm, uh, searching for how to do something in Rails, it'll pop up, [00:43:40] Sara: Mm hmm. Me too. Every question I ask, one of the first results is our own blog. I'm like, oh yeah, that makes sense. [00:43:47] Jeremy: Probably the peak is if you've written the blog. [00:43:50] Sara: That has happened to my coworkers They're like, wait, I wrote a blog about this nine years ago. [00:43:55] Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. So maybe, maybe that'll happen to you soon. I, I know definitely people who do, um, Stack Overflow. And it's like, Oh, I like, this is a good answer. Oh, I wrote this. (laughs) yeah. Well, Sara, thank you so much for, for chatting with me today. [00:44:13] Sara: Absolutely, Jeremy. Thank you so much for having me. I was really glad to chat today.

This week, the Elixir Wizards are joined by Yohana Tesfazgi and Wes Bos to compare notes on the experience of learning Elixir vs. JavaScript as your first programming language. Yohana recently completed an Elixir apprenticeship, and Wes Bos is a renowned JavaScript educator with popular courses for beginner software developers. They discuss a variety of media and resources and how people with different learning styles benefit from video courses, articles, or more hands-on projects. They also discuss the current atmosphere for those looking to transition into an engineering career and how to stick out among the crowd when new to the scene. Topics Discussed in this Episode Pros and cons of learning Elixir as your first programming language Materials and resources for beginners to JavaScript and Elixir Projects and methods for learning Elixir with no prior knowledge Recommendations for sharpening and showcasing skills How to become a standout candidate for potential employers Soft skills like communication translate well from other careers to programming work Learning subsequent languages becomes more intuitive once you learn your first How to decide which library to use for a project How to build an online presence and why it's important Open-source contributions are a way to learn from the community Ship early and often, just deploying a default Phoenix app teaches deployment skills Attend local meetups and conferences for mentoring and potential job opportunities Links Mentioned https://syntax.fm/ https://fly.io/ https://elixirschool.com/en Syntax.fm: Supper Club × How To Get Your First Dev Job With Stuart Bloxham (https://syntax.fm/show/667/supper-club-how-to-get-your-first-dev-job-with-stuart-bloxham) Quinnwilton.com (https://quinnwilton.com/) https://github.com/pallets/flask https://wesbos.com/courses https://beginnerjavascript.com/ Free course: https://javascript30.com/ https://pragmaticstudio.com/ https://elixircasts.io/ https://grox.io/ LiveView Mastery YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7T19hPLqQ-Od3Rb3T2OX1g) Contact Yohana: yytesfazgi@gmail.com

August Greetings Glocal Citizens! Kicking off my favorite month of the year (it's my birthday month) is a Ghanaian Brit by way of the Netherlands, Kojo North. A proud Ghanaian, Kojo has built a successful career consulting software companies while dividing his time between London, Amsterdam, and Kumasi. With a keen interest in supporting Ghanaian software startups, he invests in and advises startups focused on driving digital transformation within the lodging and restaurant industries. Believing in technology's power to solve real-world challenges, Kojo employs this approach across the board with his projects. Kojo's ambitions stretch beyond the realm of software and in 2021, he embarked on a transformative project to redefine student accommodation in Ghana. His vision includes not just the Resurrection Student Hostel but a complete ecosystem with a restaurant and a remote-first office creating opportunities for graduates to work for European-based companies without leaving home. A trained pianist, Kojo has a love for all arts, particularly painting. As his investment portfolio in Ghana expands, he plans to exhibit various African artworks in the Resurrection restaurant, creating an inspiring atmosphere for diners and workers. Kojo shares his journey on his YouTube channel hoping to encourage other diasporans to join him in exploring their roots and contributing to their homeland's growth, making strides in the digital landscape, championing art, and share in his unique journey with the world. Where to find Kojo? On Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/kojonorth/?hl=en) On YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@KojoNorth/featured") Who's Kojo watching? Zora Opoku (https://www.zohraopoku.com) Bob Pixel (https://www.instagram.com/bobpixel/?hl=en) Paa Joe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paa_Joe) Other topics of interest: About the Ashanti (https://www.africancraftsmarket.com/african-tribes/ashanti-people.html) About the Ewe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewe_people) About Ijburg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IJburg) About Osu, Accra (https://www.grin.com/document/889371) Shepherd's Bush, London (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherd%27s_Bush) Notting Hill Carnival (https://nhcarnival.org) Brexit (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32810887) Accra Art Week (https://www.facebook.com/accraartweek/) Remotely Works (https://www.remotely.works/companies) What is a Tro tro? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tro_tro) Ghana National Service (https://www.nss.gov.gh/about) KNUST - Tech (https://www.knust.edu.gh) Special Guest: Kojo North.

Crystal's shares her transformation from being a certified fitness trainer to becoming a highly sought-after consultant. Throughout her career, Crystal has gained invaluable experience in various sports and coaching different teams, making her a true authority in her field.In this episode, Crystal dives deep into the realm of retention strategies, shedding light on the significance of keeping your customer base engaged. She emphasizes the importance of a compelling intro offer and the power of having one great thing to sell. Crystal also reveals her secret weapon:  understanding the goals of your customers and building automated systems around them to  deliver tailored messages that resonate and drive results.Crystal delves into the personal touch, stressing the importance of personal phone calls and the concierge experience when nurturing your customers. By identifying their objectives, Crystal reveals how recommending the right classes and instructors can play a pivotal role in helping them achieve their yoga goals.Crystal shares a brilliant guerrilla marketing strategy to attract customers to their yoga  studios. Additionally, she opens up about the importance of building relationships with like-minded businesses and giving back to the community.If you're looking to gain valuable insights into retention strategies and learn how to keep your customers engaged though automations and personal touchpoint, then you're in for a treat with this  episode of Yoga Biz Camp!CRYSTAL ZAKULUZNY:Located in Canada, Crystal Zakaluzny is a Mindbody Certified Business & Software Consultant with many years of hands on experience in the fitness industry.  Crystal owned a fitness training centre for over six years specializing in personal training, yoga and pilates.  Through the business consultant certification and using Mindbody for her own business Crystal is very familiar with the reports and daily operations needed to optimize the Mindbody program for any fitness or wellness business.  Crystal integrates her mentoring and leadership practices to foster growth in your team, your business and in you, the owner.  She will work with you to achieve a level of financial organization that will create opportunities for your business to expand, grow and prosper.Crystals WebsiteConnect with Crystal on LinkedinSoftware Mentioned in this episode:MindbodyMindbody One CommunityFitdegreeLoopsparkBrandbotTypesyMICHAEL JAY YOGA & CONSULTINGMichael Jay is a yoga studio business consultant and podcast host with a background in marketing and over 13 years of experience owning a successful yoga studio. As a certified business consultant, Michael specializes in helping businesses open, purchase, and grow profitable and sellable yoga studios. Whether you are just starting out or looking to take your business to the next level, Michael can help you navigate the challenges and opportunities of the yoga industry. Michael is committed to helping businesses build productive yoga commuBOOK A FREE STRATEGY SESSION WITH MEwww.YogaBizCamp.com Instagram @yogabizchampMichael's software resources

When you design and build a web application for scale, you need to make a lot of decisions and small details can add up to create massive impact. So when you build a web application how do you know what framework to use, which cloud provider to choose or database solution to use? Relational, Document, Graph? You may also need users to login to your site but how do you authenticate them? Do you use sessions, JWTs, or third party authentication? How do you scale and support millions of users?  We are joined today by an engineer whose passion it is to solve these exact questions and come up with solutions for designing scalable software systems. Our guest today loves tinkering and building products from scratch. Growing up he was fascinated with Leonardo DaVinci and the machines he built, watching many history episodes on the topic. His love for software started over 10 years back when he took a web dev course on HTML, CSS and VB script where he built a website that helped others create websites, it was a “create your own website” type website. He went on to earn his degree in computer science from University of Pune in India. He started off as a UX engineer, after which he switched to exploring the Data Science domain for a brief period and slowly migrated to designing scalable systems for startups and other companies. Currently he is working as a Software Consultant at a company named Sahaj.ai When our guest  is not designing software or architecting solutions he is traveling, reading, watching movies, playing soccer and cooking. He is a big foodie and his favorite meal to make is Biriyani (a rice dish). In his words he was born a nomad and wants to explore the world. Connect with Denny: Twitter LinkedIn Denny's Newsletter Show notes and helpful resources: Obsidian note taking software for productivity - the 2nd person to call this out, so take a look! Quote from Steve Jobs - “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards…” Jugaad - Innovative fix or hack Netflix and Chaos Engineering Open source libraries for Chaos Engineering Denny's article: A Commentary on Authentication Methods Denny's article: Sql, NoSql, Graph: A Commentary on Databases Denny's article: Twitter's Tough Architectural Decision Yagni principle - You aren't gonna need it No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

Robert Bell is a Tech Lead, Software Consultant, and Developer at Atomic Object, a software design and development consultancy. As an innovative software developer, he has the capacity to recognize client issues and generate solutions in a quick-paced, intricate, and dynamic setting. Before Atomic Object, Robert was a control and robotics engineer in the automotive industry, where he received the 2011 Heinz Dürr Innovation Award — a prize given by the Dürr AG with over 50 submissions from people in four different continents.  In this episode… The workforce is facing a dynamic shift. With the decline of boomers and Generation X, millennials will soon take over leadership roles. As a CEO, how can you ensure that you have talented millennials occupying crucial roles in your company? Millennials are known for their ambition. They want to make a difference, but at the same time, they value autonomy and work-life balance. This group is socially conscious and would easily leave a job that does not align with their values. To attract these employees, Jim Schleckser and Robert Bell suggest establishing yourself as a reputable organization to positively impact employees. By aligning your company's standards with millennials' demands, you can retain millennial employees and bring value to your business.  In this episode of The Lazy CEO Podcast, Jim Schleckser sits down with Robert Bell, the Tech Lead, Software Consultant, and Developer at Atomic Object. Together, they talk about the characteristics that make the millennial workforce unique and how to attract this group of employees. They also share the positive attributes of millennials in the workforce, the importance of people-first culture for millennials, and these employees' biggest motivators.

सुनिए साकेत मित्तल के जीवन की प्रेरक कहानी। साकेत एक सॉफ्टवेयर कंसलटेंट है और इस क्षेत्र में अपने बीस सालों के व्यापक अनुभव के साथ ये आगे बढ़ रहे है। इसके साथही ये एक डायरेक्ट सेलिंग इंडस्ट्री से भी जुड़े है। जी हाँ ये एमवे में बतौर न्यूट्रिशनिस्ट और डायरेक्ट सेल्स मार्केटर के रूप में कार्यरत है। आपको बतादें पिंकसिटी, जयपुर में जन्मे साकेत ने अपनी स्कूली शिक्षा यही से पूरी की। फिर अपनी इंजीनियरिंग की पढ़ाई पूरी करने के बाद इन्होंने बतौर इंजीनियर अपना सफर शुरू किया। इसके साथही कुछ अतिरिक्त आय अर्जित करने के इरादे से इन्होंने अपनी पत्नी के साथ मिलकर हेल्थ एंड वेलनेस इंडस्ट्री को ज्वाइन किया। समय के साथ ये अपने अनुभव के आधार पर इस क्षेत्र में और अधिक सीखते गए। काम के दौरान ही कई प्रोत्साहन पुरुस्कार भी मिले। जिनसे इन्हें इसी तरह सही दिशा मेहनत करते हुए आगे बढ़ने का हौसला और हिम्मत मिली। इसी हौसले के साथ आगे बढ़ते हुए इन्होंने इस फील्ड में आज अपनी एक अलग पहचान बना ली है। पूरी कहानी पढ़ें https://stories.workmob.com/saket-mittal-health-wellness-fitness वर्कमोब द्वारा #मेरीकहानी कार्यक्रम के माध्यम से एक नयी पहल शुरू की गयी है जिसके ज़रिये हर कोई छोटे बड़े बिज़नेस ओनर्स अपनी प्रेरक कहानियों को यहाँ सभी के साथ साझा कर सकते है। क्योंकि हर शख्स की कहानी में है वो बात जो जीवन को बदलकर एक नयी दिशा दिखाएगी, और ज़िन्दगी में ले आएगी आशा की एक नयी चमकती किरण। #बनाओअपनीपहचान #प्रेरककहानियाँ #साकेतमित्तल #सॉफ्टवेयरकंसलटेंट #डायरेक्टसेलिंग #इंडस्ट्री #एमवे #न्यूट्रिशनिस्ट #मार्केटर #इंजीनियर #हेल्थएंडवेलनेस जानिए वर्कमोब के बारे में: जुड़िये वर्कमोब पर अपनी कहानी साझा करने और प्रेरणादायक कहानियाँ देखने के लिए। ये एक ऐसा मंच है जहां आप पेशेवरों, लघु व्यापारियों, उद्यमियों और सामाजिक कार्यकर्ताओं की वीडियो कहानियां देख सकते हैं और दूसरों को प्रेरित करने के लिए अपनी व्यक्तिगत और व्यावसायिक कहानी सभी के साथ साझा कर सकते हैं। आपकी कहानी में लोगों को आशा देने, प्रेरणा देने और दूसरों का जीवन बदलने में मदद करने की एक अद्भुत क्षमता है। यह 100% मुफ़्त है। इस लिंक पर क्लिक करें और देखें प्रेरक कहानियां https://stories.workmob.com/ हमारे ऐप्प को डाउनलोड करें: Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.workmob iOS: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/workmob/id901802570

This episode is sponsored by Tonic.ai – where your data is modeled from your production data to help you tell an identical story in your testing environments.[00:01 - 07:22] Opening Segment Need to generate fake data that looks, acts, and behaves like production data for your test environments? Check out Tonic.ai!Head over to https://www.tonic.ai/ and sign up today for a free two weeks trial sandbox!From full-time employment to consultancyOn why he calls his business the banana stand“There's always money in the banana stand.”[07:23 - 21:54] Doing His Own Thing and Gaining IndependenceAvdi on the difference between consultancy versus the banana stand modelWriting his e-book and getting into screencastsHow he managed a startup business, consultancy, and being a new father at onceThe reason behind the rebrand: From RubyTapas to Graceful.DevWhy Avdi is done subscribing to the corporate cultureThe unconscious bias in recruitment[21:55 - 31:42] Building on WordPressWhy Avdi chose WordPress as the platform for his businessWhat are the advantages over the other platforms?WordPress plugins: What you need to knowKeeping track of the changes and updates on the platform[31:43 - 41:46] Closing SegmentWhat's next for AvdiHis advice on delegating and building your email listFinal wordsTweetable Quotes“There's always the risk. There are no guarantees in this industry. There are no  guaranteed retirement plans.” - Avdi Grimm“I think a lot of people in software are completely focused on either financial scaling or on like user scaling. The kind of scaling you need to plan for is devolving stuff from yourself, removing yourself as a bottleneck” - Avdi Grimm“Anything that I'm thinking of delegating or automating, always do it manually first, and do it manually for a while first and get a really good idea of what it is that I'm either delegating or automating.” - Avdi GrimmResources Mentionedhttps://www.tonic.ai/ - Sign up now for a two-week free trial!Exceptional Ruby by Avdi Grimm - Get a copy of Avdi's e-book at https://store.avdi.codes/l/NWtnkWordPressConvertKitLearnDashMemberPressWooCommerceConnect with Avdi on his site and on Graceful.Dev! Follow him on LinkedIn, too!Let's Connect! You can connect with me, Dr.  McKayla on Instagram, Twitter and Youtube to look into engineering software, and learn from experienced developers and thought leaders from around the world about how they develop software!LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who wants to know more about the engineering software world. Your ratings and reviews help get the podcast in front of new listeners. _______Transcription[00:00:00] Dr. McKayla: Hello, and welcome to the Software Engineering Unlocked podcast. I'm your host, Dr. McKayla and today after pleasure to talk to Avdi Grimm. But before I start, let me introduce you to an amazing startup that's sponsoring today's episode, Tonic.ai, the fake data company. So what does Tonic.ai do? I'm sure you know how complex and cumbersome it is to create quality test data.[00:00:27] Dr. McKayla: It's a never-ending chore that eats into valuable engineering resources. Random data doesn't do it and production data is neither safe nor legal for developers to use. What if you could mimic your entire production database to create a realistic dataset with zero sensitive data? That sounds amazing, right? Tonic.ai does exactly that. [00:00:50] Dr. McKayla: With Tonic.ai, you can generate fake data that looks, acts, and behaves like production data because it's made from production. Yet, Tonic.ai guarantees privacy so your data sets are safe to share with developers, QA, data scientists, heck, even distributed teams around the world. Visit Tonic.ai to sign up today or click the link in the show notes to get a free two weeks trial sandbox.[00:01:14] Dr. McKayla: But now back to Avdi. Avdi has been a developer for over 20 years and runs, similar to me, a training and consulting business. The main difference is that he has been doing this already for over 10 years. So I'm super thrilled to pick his brain today around everything business-related. He's also a consulting pair-programmer and the author of several popular Ruby programming books and has several courses on this subject on his website, Graceful.Dev, formerly RubyTapas.com. So I'm super thrilled that he's here with me today. Avdi, welcome to my show. I'm very excited. [00:01:51] Avdi Grimm: Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. [00:01:53] Dr. McKayla: Yeah, I'm super excited. So I've been following your journey on Twitter and so on for quite some time. Very inspirational as well. And I have a lot of questions around how you run your business and why you're running the business and what we can learn from you, right, a seasoned entrepreneur and self-employed person to also maybe get a little bit more independence in our life, right? So this is probably the main goal for myself, for everything that I do is flexibility and independence. So why are you running your own business and how does this come about? Why are you not a software developer in a company somewhere?[00:02:32] Avdi Grimm: Right, yeah. I mean, to some degree, I feel like it's almost an inevitable career arc for somebody in software. You know, I know people who have avoided it, but a lot of the people that I kind of looked up to over the years went through, you know, they went through the full-time employment phase and then they gradually kind of moved out to becoming consultants and having various other side businesses.[00:02:55] Avdi Grimm: And, you know, come to think of it, I never really thought about this much before. I had the example of my dad who worked in software and hardware design, and he was an independent consultant I was growing up. So that was kind of normalized to me to, like, have your own thing [00:03:08] Dr. McKayla: Yeah, for me was quite different. Yeah. [00:03:11] Avdi Grimm: I think that I, I saw that on the horizon maybe from earlier than some people do, just because it was, it was normalized for me, you know? And it just seemed like that's what a lot of my heroes did in the industry was eventually they became consultants. [00:03:26] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. Yeah, it's good if you have like role models. For me, it was quite the difference. I always saw it that I will work at the company for a really long time and, you know, climb the career ladder somewhere. Actually, I started a family that I saw, oh, this is not working out as I expected. And as I would like it to work out, right? And so this was a little bit why I changed the thing. So you call it a banana stand. You don't call it like an enterprise or something. Why do you call it the banana stand? And what's your philosophy for your business? How do you run it? [00:04:00] Avdi Grimm: So, yeah., I've started using the term banana stand recently, especially as I've been kind of reflecting back on, you know, over a decade of doing this and, like, my style of, of running the business and writing a little bit more about that. So the, the term banana stand, it comes from, the show Arrested Development in which one of the characters says to another, this character is trying to save the family business and his dad who is in prison keeps telling him there's always money in the banana stand, which he completely misinterprets the message and winds up, burning down a banana stand that's full of literal money in the walls. I apologize if I've spoiled the show for you, but it's been out for a while. But you know, like, that phrase stuck with me. There's always money in the banana stand and that's kind of the way that I look at it.[00:04:48] Avdi Grimm: So there's kind of two sides to this, this independent business for me. There's the consulting side. And then there's the product side, product being kind of a broad term for selling books, selling courses, selling workshops. It's kind of a loose definition of product, but it's definitely distinct from the consulting side of my business, which is more like, you know, hourly consulting on people's projects.[00:05:12] Avdi Grimm: And I definitely look at the product side as a banana stand as like something that I kind of run casually, even if I'm putting most of my time into it now. I still run it kind of like lazily and you know, and it's my own banana stand to putter around in. I'm not, like, beholden to any, like, schedules and I'm not on any kind of like track of, I have to, you know, make this much money.[00:05:35] Avdi Grimm: I have to, like, make sure that my VCs get a payoff and stuff like that. It's just kind of like, you know, I get the putter around in the banana stand and work on whatever I feel like. And, you know, that phrase there's always money in the banana stand is kind of like that has informed the way I think about employment a lot, because, for me, if I'm in between jobs, I used to think of it as in between jobs, I don't think of it that way anymore, but if I'm in between jobs, quote, unquote, that's not like a time to panic and, you know, and, like, do all the interviews and freak out about how I'm unemployed. That's time to just focus on the banana stand.[00:06:12] Avdi Grimm: And until something comes along, that makes sense. And I think that's been helpful to have that. And, yeah, that side of my business, really like, so we talked about consulting, but that side really came from early on, getting into e-book sales, which we can talk about how that story went if you want. [00:06:28] Dr. McKayla: So if I understand that you would say there's the consulting, which is, you know, it's something that you have continuously to invest in and also make some contracts around that.[00:06:37] Dr. McKayla: I'm also doing some consulting, which means like now I'm dedicating, let's say 30 hours for this project for three months, right? And so you are more or less sold out for that time? [00:06:48] Avdi Grimm: It's kind of like a real job.[00:06:49] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. It's like a real job, only that you have all the risks as well, which is even worse.[00:06:58] Avdi Grimm: But there's a lot more, even there there's a lot more independence. And honestly, you know, one of the things that I value on the consulting side is that, I mean, yeah, you have the risk, but there's always the risk. There are no guarantees in this industry. There are no guaranteed retirement plans.[00:07:13] Avdi Grimm: And what I don't have to do is I don't have to buy into a lot of corporate mission and values BS that I don't believe in. [00:07:22] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. So you have your consultancy and then in between those consultancy gigs, right, when there are no consultancy gigs, you're not freaking out, you're working on your banana stand and you grow that, right? And the good thing it's about the products and, you know, this mindset, I think, is that even a little bit of work on them pays off, right? So it's a little bit like an investment. So you create another free course, maybe, and you have like a, you know, a good lead magnet, have people that are interested in your work.[00:07:53] Dr. McKayla: Then you create a paid course when you have time and so on. And it stays, right? It's something that's there for longer, whereby the consulting, it comes, it brings normally quite good money, from my experience, right? In a very short amount of time, but then it goes away as well. While the banana stand, maybe it's a little bit, it's not this boom, now we have like all this money. But it's also not going away, right? Yeah, exactly. It's a snowball. It's a flywheel somehow, right? Yeah. [00:08:20] Avdi Grimm: Yeah. I mean, you know, a consulting gig is one big blizzard that, you know, that melts the next week and a banana stand is a snowball that you just kind of gradually roll over the years.[00:08:32] Dr. McKayla: And so how long did it take for you to have this banana stand where you could say, well, I have some predictable income that, you know, makes me sleep at night? . [00:08:43] Avdi Grimm: So actually I think, you know, my trajectory there probably was a little different from a lot of people's. I kind of, you know, I put along having the book, the e-book business on the side for a few years, and that really just fell out of speaking.[00:08:58] Avdi Grimm: It happened because I was giving talks at software conferences. And I was pouring a ton of time and energy into researching these talks. And I was like, you know, I wonder if there's a way to kind of recoup. You know, I have all this material that I put together. I can't fit it all into a talk.[00:09:14] Avdi Grimm: And I wonder if there's a way to like recoup the energy that I've been putting into this. And that was really the origin of the first book, which was Exceptional Ruby, which is about error handling and failure management and I made a book out of like the, all the extra material that I put together for that.[00:09:29] Avdi Grimm: And that was that kind of launched things. And so that was kind of a side business. It was a nice little side business for a couple of years. And then what changed was I decided to get into screencasting. I've been doing the books, I've been doing some podcasting and this was around, you know, this was like 20, maybe 2010, 2011, 2012.[00:09:52] Avdi Grimm: A lot of programming screencasts started taking off. And I decided to get into that business. And I had a vision of like, what if we did that only much shorter and more focused? And, you know, just do like five minutes or less. You know, get one idea across at a time. And so, unlike most banana stand efforts, that was really like a do or die, not do or die.[00:10:13] Avdi Grimm: I don't like that terminology that was a go big or go home. That's the phrase I'm looking for, go big or go home because I knew how much energy went into video production and it is a lot. And so it was like, okay, this is a project that I'm going to test the waters. If it does well, I'm going to try, you know, the only way this works is if I can make it into my full-time job, otherwise I'll just stop. And yeah, I got really lucky. I was coming in at a good time. People really liked the format. And so within, I think around a year or two, I was able to say, I don't actually need other jobs right now with the RubyTapas screencasts. [00:10:49] Dr. McKayla: Oh, yeah. That's nice. [00:10:51] Avdi Grimm: Yeah. So that was, that was kind of like line goes up. That was less, you know, slowly rolling snowball.[00:10:56] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. And how much time did you spend in this line goes up phase? You know, because somehow when you're focusing on something, like doing the screencasts, you're not having an income, right? And then if you go to consulting, you don't have the time. So you have to switch between those boats of not having time or not having money. So how did you handle that at that time? [00:11:17] Avdi Grimm: I didn't sleep. I had at least one new baby at the time, too. And, like, I was working consulting gigs. I don't know. It's kind of a blur at this point. I don't think that I could do that kind of thing again, unless it was a great need. 'Cause I was also, at that point at the beginning, I was producing three episodes a week. [00:11:41] Dr. McKayla: Wow. Yeah, that's a lot. [00:11:43] Avdi Grimm: Yeah. I was doing a lot at once and it was kind of nuts. [00:11:46] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. And I actually really liked, with the whole style also, when I look through your blog posts and everything, right, you have your own style. You didn't call it like Professional Ruby screencast, you call it RubyTapas, right? And the tapas probably transport the message of it's small pieces of very digestible, tasty things, right? [00:12:09] Avdi Grimm: And I feel like some of that probably also fell out of just like the Ruby, like, the community has always been super whimsical and kind of silly. And so, you know, I can't take full credit for that approach. [00:12:22] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. But recently, I don't know exactly when, but you rebranded your whole RubyTapas into Graceful.Dev, why is that? For me, it seems like it's now broader and there can be more happening, but what's your strategic vision behind, you know, going from RubyTapas to...[00:12:40] Avdi Grimm: I do not do strategic visions. I used to, but, man, I avoid strategy as much as possible now. I mean, that's okay. That's not true. I do a little, I do a little. But I try not... [00:12:54] Dr. McKayla: You definitely have some reasoning behind it, right? [00:12:56] Avdi Grimm: I try not to have five-year goals. Let's put it that way. I don't do goals. There's definitely some reasoning there. There's a direction there. I mean, the direction was one that I've honestly had in the back of my mind for a really long time. A lot of people don't know that, like, the same day in, like, 2011 or whenever it was that I registered RubyTapas.com and associated addresses. I also registered CodeTapas.com.[00:13:20] Dr. McKayla: Okay.[00:13:21] Avdi Grimm: So like, you know, I never wanted to completely limit myself to Ruby, strictly Ruby content. You know, I've worked in, God, like a dozen languages over the course of my career. And Ruby was just an area that I wound up focusing on a lot and wound up making a lot of money in. And enjoying, I really, really enjoy the language still and the community as well.[00:13:42] Avdi Grimm: But I always had in the back of my mind, you know, that I would expand, but, you know, I didn't wound up not using as you'll notice. I wound up not using CodeTapas as the branding 'cause I was really, like, moving in a different direction, broadening not just in, like, in the technologies that I want to cover, but also I just spend a lot more of my time thinking about broader topics like, the sustainability of the development that we do and systems thinking, understanding the systems in which we work and the systems that cause the work that we have to exist. And yeah, so just, for a lot of reasons, it made more sense to me. And in some of my talks, I've been really focusing on the concept of grace.[00:14:21] Avdi Grimm: So it just made more sense to me to move in that, that branding direction. And then recently I had the opportunity to finally, like, do a lot of the heavy lifting of moving content over. And so I took that. [00:14:33] Dr. McKayla: Where did this opportunity come from? [00:14:35] Avdi Grimm: Well, so I had a point a few years back where I was like, okay, you know what? I've been sort of off on my own, doing my own thing for a long time. I would like to get back into, like, the hustle and bustle of being part of a big team that's making something real in the world. And I spent, I don't know, a year or so interviewing pretty seriously at a bunch of different places. And that did not go as expected.[00:15:00] Avdi Grimm: And I finally decided that I, wasn't going to focus on that anymore after all. And I was just going to get back to the banana stand 'cause there's always money in the banana stand. And that has been actually an immensely satisfying experience, kind of coming back to it with a fresh, fresh, like maybe this is my calling perspective.[00:15:18] Dr. McKayla: Yeah, I actually followed this journey a little bit on your Twitter, you were sharing it with us and also the hassle of the whole, you know, getting naked in front of strangers, you know, and really selling yourself. And I mean, you have been in the industry for so long, you have shared your learning.[00:15:38] Dr. McKayla: You know, you have some portfolio online. It's not like somebody comes and has no idea about you, but still, it felt like at least what I got out of the tweets, right. What I read into them was that every interview was a little bit, it wasn't really like keeping your dignity, right? So you had really to get naked in front of them to do all these silly things.[00:16:03] Avdi Grimm: You know, I wouldn't, I actually, I would argue that it's not, it wasn't really about being naked. It wasn't really being, about being transparent. It was about people wanting you to do a very special dance for them that strokes their ego and me being at a point in my career and life where I'm just like, I'm not going to do that. Why would I do that? Looking back I got some actually really nice offers from some, you know, well, large companies anyway, but in the end I was not comfortable taking any of them. And in part, because of what I saw during the interview process.[00:16:39] Dr. McKayla: Okay, what did you see? [00:16:41] Avdi Grimm: Well, you know, so actually, let me tell you about something I just heard recently from a friend of mine, because I hear the same story over and over again. Like my story, what I've realized is my story is not at all unique. So just the other day I heard the story again of like, basically, you know, an extremely senior well-respected brilliant engineer gets asked by a friend that works at a FAANG, you know, works at one of these giant unicorn Silicon valley darlings, gets asked to come interview there. It's like, we'd love, you know, I'd love to work with you here, which is basically what happened to me, a number of different places. And, you know, so they kind of go into the interview silo and then they go through this process where in, you know, in this particular case, like they got interviewed by someone who was totally unrelated to the group that wanted to hire them because this is the way the process works. You know, we don't want bias in the system. There's a lot in these processes that are supposedly about eliminating bias, it's actually creating it.[00:17:42] Avdi Grimm: We can talk about that more in a minute, but, you know, was interviewed by someone totally unrelated to that team. And basically, they were like, you know, show that, you know, by heart, my favorite algorithm,[00:17:55] Avdi Grimm: I happen to have a favorite algorithm. You're going to show me that you can, you can identify that I'm thinking of this algorithm and then you can write it by heart. And like that wasn't an algorithm that this engineer had used before. And so it wasn't one they thought of, you know, I've got a lot of stuff in my background where it's like, I know of algorithms that probably most engineers haven't heard of because they happen to be useful for networking middlewares and I hear this all the time.[00:18:18] Avdi Grimm: Anyway, they got flunked out because they couldn't, you know, reproduce somebody's favorite algorithm from, by heart. And this is somebody with, like, close to my level of experience. It's nuts. And I keep hearing this. It's actually, you know, I've heard this from a lot of people, with my, lot of friends of mine, with my level of experience in the industry, that these systems, they're really tuned to find people that are exactly like the people who designed the system in as many ways as possible. [00:18:47] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. [00:18:48] Avdi Grimm: Like, for me, I don't care. I am a white guy with plenty of opportunities and a banana stand. You know, I can fall out of a process like that and be fine. But what I'm seeing is that these processes are also, I mean, they're very gatekeep-y and they're very clicky. They're very in-crowd, they're very, very, like, we are expecting people that sort of show the secret insignia of a very select group of Silicon Valley insiders, basically. [00:19:18] Dr. McKayla: I think one of the problems is also that they often require a tremendous amount of preparation, right? And if you think you are an experienced engineer, maybe at that point, you have a family, for example, around, right.[00:19:33] Dr. McKayla: And some other commitments, it gets really hard to study some, you know, lead code examples, just to be as fast as, you know, somebody else, right? And I think this is also something that I criticize a lot when I'm thinking, and then you don't even need that, you know, you don't need that knowledge. You could really solve real-world problems.[00:19:51] Dr. McKayla: You have some experience and background, right, that you have worked on. And it's probably also super challenging. So looking really at what that person has already achieved in the last, let's say 15 years would be, you know, and then really let them explain that in-depth, which shows that they probably can learn, you know, whatever problem or solve whatever problem you throw at them. It would be a much better way than, you know, getting back to bubble sort and, you know, and linked list or something, right?[00:20:19] Avdi Grimm: And this, this is a big part of where the bias is in the system, and this is why I get sort of morally outraged by it, you know? I don't do well in these, you know, I might not do well in these because I'm at a point where I just can't be arsed to do that much homework of like learning somebody's arbitrary favorite algorithm.[00:20:36] Avdi Grimm: But what they're implicitly biasing towards is the sort of stereotypical young white dude that has all the time in the world and doesn't have a family to support and doesn't have any disabilities. And, you know, I could list off a lot of, you know, a whole lot of privileges there that go into that sort of their really looking for that person who has nothing else going on in their life.[00:20:59] Dr. McKayla: Exactly. [00:21:00] Avdi Grimm: You know, so that they can then like induct them into the cult of your passion is your software career. And that bugs the heck out of me, you know, and I see this really like, you know, who is really hurting is people that come from backgrounds that aren't like mine and have other stuff. They have people that they're taking care of. They have kids, they have elderly parents, they have families that they're sending money to, and they can't afford a, you know, a break in their income while they spend six months, you know, doing nothing but the interview game. You know, there are so many things, and the people that are, you know, so many minorities in this country already have, in the world or, you know, minoritized people, I shouldn't say have so many other calls on their time because of the way society is already stacked against them. That it makes it impossible to jump through these. [00:21:48] Dr. McKayla: Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. Yeah. [00:21:51] Avdi Grimm: Sorry, I get worked up.[00:21:53] Dr. McKayla: No, I want to come back a little bit to your banana stand again because this is the way out for, for you. And it's a little bit the way out for me as well, right? So with Graceful.Dev, I don't know if you had that before. You had RubyTapas and you had like the courses, but Graceful.Dev is now a full-fledged membership site, right? So you have different courses and you build it on top of WordPress. Why did you go this route? I mean, you could have like your courses on some third-party platform, right? From, I don't know, Teachable or whatnot, you know, many, many different PODR and so on. But you host it yourself and then you have the membership site as well. And you do that. Why does choice, like, I'm also thinking about right now, awesomecodereviews.Com for example, runs on, I switched from WordPress to Gatsby. So it's a static side and I'm thinking on how to give it a membership capabilities.[00:22:49] Dr. McKayla: And I looked at SurplusCI and so on, but why did you go for WordPress? And are you happy with it? And what's the philosophy behind it? What do people get from this membership? What do you want to build? Probably there's a community behind, right? And some, some visions that you have for that.[00:23:06] Avdi Grimm: This is an opinion I've kind of come to over years of using many different systems. And there's continuum here because you know, a lot of people running, particularly running education sites for developers have rolled their own system from scratch. They've built their own servers or their own applications.[00:23:26] Avdi Grimm: And so, you know, there's that continuum all the way from roll your own to, you know, use a completely hosted service, like Podia, Thinkific, whatever, you know, and I've, I've tried a lot of these different things. I started Ruby topis out on somebody else's platform.[00:23:39] Avdi Grimm: And it was super limiting. You know, there would be things that people were asking for for years and they just, that feature wasn't a priority for the platform because you're competing, you know, you're competing with all the other people who use the platform. And for, you know, whose feature is most important.[00:23:54] Avdi Grimm: So it was very limiting to use a hosted platform, and I've periodically I try them again and they're always, there's always like something pretty early on, it's like, wow, I really need this feature. And I don't have it. But I've also toyed with building my own. I did that for a few years and you know, what I realized was, if I did that, my show was going to become about building an app to support the show, because that's what I was going to be spending all my time on, because it's a lot of work to build.[00:24:23] Dr. McKayla: It's a lot of work, yeah. [00:24:25] Avdi Grimm: People don't realize, you know, how many features are expected in an application that sells content and serves content and keeps track of people's progress in the content, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.[00:24:38] Avdi Grimm: And yeah, I just, that was not the show that I wanted to be doing was, you know, I didn't want to be like here's videos about how to build a place that hosts these videos. So WordPress has turned out to be a really happy medium kind of between those two extremes. WordPress is just incredibly mature software.[00:24:56] Avdi Grimm: There's a lot of people in, particularly, the developer world that are kind of biased against WordPress and sadly against like the PHP ecosystem entirely, which I think is really undeserved. There's a lot of really, really good people working in this space. And the ecosystem is just amazing because you can kind of build anything you want and you can get as little or as much support as you want.[00:25:20] Avdi Grimm: You know, it's easy enough to build your own plugins for WordPress to just do a little tweak here, a little tweak there. You know, the architecture of it really supports the idea of exposing everything it does as hooks. And then you can hook your own stuff into those hooks, which is why it has this great plugin ecosystem.[00:25:36] Avdi Grimm: But one of the really cool things about the plugin ecosystem around WordPress is A, there is a plugin for everything, like, anything you might want to do. Somebody has got a plugin for it. And B, usually they have, like, a premium version, which comes with support. And I have had the best experience with premium plugins for WordPress.[00:25:55] Avdi Grimm: Like, you know, people just like being very responsive to the people that are giving them money and coming back and, you know, with bug fixes or like going into the, you know, going into your site and making, figuring out why it's not working. And so it's like, it's one of the rare places I've seen that people are putting out a ton of open-source software, but also getting paid for their work.[00:26:16] Avdi Grimm: Because all these plugins, like the base version at least, is always open source. And then basically you're paying them for maybe some premium features, but mainly for a support contract and, you know, and so people are making their living, creating open-source software. And I think that's pretty cool. And it's also, it also has done really well for my business. [00:26:32] Dr. McKayla: Yeah, and it's true. And so when I'm thinking about your course software, did you get a plugin for that? Or did you have to write it yourself or do you have like a plugin and then extend that on your own? How does that work? You're hosting your videos, but then they're also like, you know, questionnaires, for example, some quizzes, you know, as you said, you see that people, you know, it somehow tracks the progress of the people. It has to know that you're a member that can access that course, the other course. All of that functionality, does it come out of the box with some plugins for WordPress? Or did you have to implement that yourself or was it a mixture that you're actually getting a plugin and then you can, you know, enhance that with your own code?[00:27:15] Avdi Grimm: Great question. So, there are two to three categories of plugins that go into a site like this. I mean, my website has a lot more plugins than that, but there's sort of maybe three basic pieces. And one is  learning management system LMS, otherwise known as courseware. So that's a category of plugins I could probably reel off maybe six of them off the top of my head, I'm personally using LearnDash, which is one of the older ones and one of the more, probably the most popular one in WordPress right now. And it's very mature. It's a little clunky for me sometimes because it's really targeting in many ways, it's targeting like serious learning institutions where they have like accreditation concerns and certificates.[00:27:59] Avdi Grimm: And like, you can't take this course until you take this other course, lot of stuff that I don't care about. On the flip side, it's very mature. They handle all the things that I might want to put into it. They just also, also a lot of stuff that I don't care about. And then, so you've got, like, there's learning management, that's one. There's membership, which is like another whole category of plugins, which are generally focused around, given this account, what material does this person have access to? And that includes courses, like what courses does this person have access to. [00:28:28] Dr. McKayla: So they work nice together, LearnDash and the membership thing. [00:28:30] Avdi Grimm: Yeah, so generally what you see, so I'm using LearnDash on the LMS side, I'm currently using MemberPress, which is one of the more popular membership management plugins.[00:28:39] Avdi Grimm: Generally these plugins, they work hard to work with each other, you know, different teams usually, but they work hard to work with each other because that's where a lot of the value comes from. And so they have explicit support for each other. And then the third piece often is like your e-commerce, how you sell the thing.[00:28:56] Avdi Grimm: And that is often a separate plugin as well. Like in the WordPress ecosystem, it's usually WooCommerce. Sometimes it's EDD, Easy Digital Downloads. Now I've reeled these off like they are distinctly separate categories, but actually almost everyone in each of these spaces will happily give you like all of the above kind of in one.[00:29:18] Avdi Grimm: Because they all kind of, they'd grow, all gradually expand out to include each other's features. So like LearnDash, you can do a pretty basic membership management using the groups that are built into LearnDash. You can sell courses directly. Like they have Stripe integration and stuff directly from LearnDash if you want to, it's kind of basic, but it's totally there.[00:29:36] Avdi Grimm: MemberPress recently introduced their own courseware plugin for MemberPress. You can just like stick with that company if you want, as long as you're okay with like a more basic courseware offering. They also have the storefront part built in if you want to use it. So there's a lot of blur between these plugins as well.[00:29:54] Avdi Grimm: Yeah. [00:29:55] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. Okay, cool. And so are you then enhancing that, is that possible, especially if you have like the paid version, could you just write that? And then how do you keep track of your own changes and new updates that are coming from the team? How do you integrate those things? [00:30:09] Avdi Grimm: So one of the marks of a good industrial strength WordPress plugin is that they have well-defined hooks. You know, I was talking about like, WordPress is built on the concept of hooks. They have well-defined hooks that are documented. And so, like the ones that I work with do, they have good documentation sites and they have all these hooks that you can like, here's how you change this, you know, here's how you hook your own thing into this particular part of the interface or this particular process.[00:30:36] Avdi Grimm: And then, so what I have is what they call a site-specific plugin that I keep under version control, and I have a deployment system for that pushes it out to my way. And my site-specific plugin, basically just very selectively has a few, there's a few hooks where I want to customize something in one of those other plugins.[00:30:54] Avdi Grimm: And it just like hooks its own handler into just the, like the very specific hook that is one tiny piece that I care about changing. It's very small. The site-specific plugin is very small. I try to keep it very small and very focused. [00:31:07] Dr. McKayla: Okay. But so it has a valid defined API or hooks that you can really enhance. You're not going in and hacking in their, in their code base, right? So you're on the outside, whatever they allow you to change. [00:31:18] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. And if you're going to really get into this ecosystem, that's one of the things you want to keep your eye out for is like, does it seem like these people are really supporting that kind of external hooks?[00:31:28] Dr. McKayla: Yeah, it sounds very interesting. And I know quite a couple of people that are running WordPress websites and have a lot of, you know, like you said, WooCommerce, or like a membership sites and they're very, very happy with it. Maybe my last question for you is around, you said you are not going to plan for five years and so on, right? But I think everybody has some, some vision you know, some, some reasons why you'd be doing things like transitioning from RubyTapas to Graceful.Dev, right? What do you see yourself, do you want to do, is there a possibility that Graceful.Dev is really your full time thing and that you're not doing any consulting or do you want to keep doing consulting on the side? Or, you know, where are you heading towards, what's your ideal case?[00:32:16] Avdi Grimm: I wish I had a good answer for you. You know, I want to keep being able to do what feels right at the time, which is kind of what I'm doing right now. You know, Graceful.Dev is supporting me pretty decently along, you know, that alongside of my other, you know, other products and things. You know, I take consulting gigs as they look interesting.[00:32:35] Dr. McKayla: Yeah, and are you a solopreneur or do you have, like, a team that really helps you? [00:32:39] Avdi Grimm: Oh yeah. Good question. I don't have any full-time employees for years and years. I've employed people very part-time here and there, only ever like a handful only ever like maybe three to five at most, at any given time. Actually five is probably more than I have, but like I have somebody that's I've worked with for a long time, that handles kind of first line of support.[00:32:59] Avdi Grimm: So support emails first go to them and then they escalate them to me. I have somebody I'm working with now who's doing a lot of, like, helping me with content, like doing video editing or fixing up blog posts that have become, like their formatting has gone wonky or is out of date or something like that. Yeah. So I have a few people that just like very part-time helpers.[00:33:21] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. I'm currently right now in this position of getting people and I find it really difficult finding the right people because, you know, if you're already in this, okay, I need help now. I don't know how you overcame that stuff, but for me, it's like, I need help now, and I can't grow, you know, without this help. But I also can't really make the time to find the right people and to teach them and do onboarding. [00:33:44] Avdi Grimm: And that is, that is the classic catch-22. And there's no easy way out of it. You know, the point where you absolutely don't have, like, you don't have the overhead space to train somebody, but you need to train somebody in order to get the overhead space.[00:34:00] Avdi Grimm: Yeah, I wish I had an easy answer for that one, like that parts of slog. And eventually you kind of pull your head above it, but it's hard because, yeah, like the effort involved in like getting through that catch-22 is exhausting. I will say this about it. And, and this has informed my work for a long time.[00:34:20] Avdi Grimm: This is the most important kind of scaling to plan for. I think a lot of people in software are completely focused on either financial scaling or on like user scaling, you know, the, your user base scaling up like our, will our code base support unicorn scale. That is by far like the least common form of scaling that you have to support.[00:34:42] Avdi Grimm: The kind of scaling you need to plan for is devolving stuff from yourself. Taking, removing yourself as a bottleneck. That is the most urgent and immediate form of scaling that you're going to face. And so one of the reasons, I have a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons that I use WordPress is because it is the dominant player.[00:35:02] Avdi Grimm: Like, it powers like half the web now, and there is this huge ecosystem. And if I need somebody to do like copy editing, I don't need to teach them how to use GitHub and like commit things, you know, I don't need to find a copy editor, but then teach them how to use my special, precious bespoke system.[00:35:20] Avdi Grimm: They know how to use WordPress, whoever they are, they know how to use WordPress. And you know, if I need to get somebody, you know, if I want some help with my site because I don't have time to diagnose one particular bug, it's really easy to find WordPress consultants, and there's just so many things there where it's easy to find people that can do the thing that you need help with.[00:35:44] Avdi Grimm: And that's just as a general kind of policy. That's one of my biggest considerations when choosing anything is not, you know, not is this going to scale up, but can I scale it away from me? Can, you know, can I remove myself as the bottleneck for this in the future? [00:36:00] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. Yeah. That's such a good mindset. And I'm currently learning a lot with it and you know, it takes much more time and much more energy than I thought, but I also see that, you know, if you have already one person, right, so finding this one person, it means that you have to work with six different people. And then you realize, oh, it's, you know, it's, it's making more trouble that what I'm getting out of.[00:36:23] Avdi Grimm: Yeah. And I should say here, like, use my bad example for learning. I hit a crash at one point where I really wasn't like I was, my outgo was bigger than my income. And a big piece of that was that I had, I had tried to devolve too much of myself. You know, I tried to become too big and pay too many people to do too many different things.[00:36:45] Avdi Grimm: And the funny thing about what was happening there was that I was still swamped. I still had too little time. And it was because I had basically, you know, installed myself as a manager and I was spending all of my time helping people get unstuck and managing things. And so, yeah, it's really easy, like once you, once you kind of start going down that delegation road, it's really easy to go too far. [00:37:10] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think one step at a time and keeping the focus like I really would like to create more content, have more of this really quality time doing what I love to do like teaching, thinking about content, writing blog posts, right?[00:37:25] Dr. McKayla: This is really what gives me energy and less about the administrative stuff. But then, as you say, I have to be real careful not to get people adding to my administrative stuff. So, yeah. But yeah, very, very good.[00:37:38] Avdi Grimm: I think it's important to always know that like you can do the thing. One of my personal policies is like, anything that I'm thinking of delegating or automating, always do it manually first and do it manually for a while first and get a really good idea of what it is that I'm either delegating or automating.[00:37:55] Avdi Grimm: And usually what I discover is that I can automate less of it than I was planning. And it's enough. Or I can delegate less of it than I was planning and it's enough, but yeah, as it's always very tempting to be like, man, there's this one aspect of my business. I just don't want to think about at all. And so I want to delegate, delegate that part of it.[00:38:13] Avdi Grimm: And I think that's really dangerous though, that leads down that road of like now I'm just jammed up managing everyone and paying too much, you know, not balancing my books. [00:38:22] Dr. McKayla: Yeah. I think that's true. [00:38:25] Dr. McKayla: Do the thing the hard way for a while, figure out the smallest piece of it that you can automate or delegate.[00:38:31] Dr. McKayla: Yeah, cool. So Avdi, thank you so much for sharing all your insights. Is there something like, if there are developers out there that think, oh, I would like to have some side hustle, you know, get a little bit more independence or maybe even go full in, what do you think what is a, is a good strategy nowadays?[00:38:50] Dr. McKayla: You know, when there are already so many, screencasts, when they're already, you know, so many other things, so many blog posts, so many podcasts and so on. What do you think? How should people start doing it? Is a blog still a good first outlet? [00:39:04] Avdi Grimm: There's no going wrong with blogging. Honestly, like, it really doesn't matter like what your plan is. Get good at writing about things. Like, practice writing. It's just that I feel like that skill has informed, has improved so many other aspects of my business and of my career. I mean, writing about what you learn is such great practice for even if you just stay a regular developer, you're going to be a better developer because you are better at explaining and documenting your work to other developers. And so like, yeah, there's just no downside to getting in the habit of writing all the time about the work that you're doing. [00:39:46] Dr. McKayla: Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, I think so too. I think that's a such a good advice. There's I think there's so many positive things that can come, be that job opportunities or maybe you have to jump on, you know, you get better as, as you said, in your communication skills, better at communicating with your colleagues and so on. So yeah, I think this is a great, this is really a great insight. Thank you so much, Avdi. [00:40:09] Avdi Grimm: Oh, I have one other thing on that, on that note that I should include. Start building your, your mailing list now. [00:40:16] Dr. McKayla: Mailing list, yeah. Good idea. Independent mailing list, I would say.[00:40:20] Avdi Grimm: You know, do that blog thing and then slap, you know, go with ConvertKit or something and slap a mailing list, subscribe on that thing, and just start collecting that snowball now, because that, it takes a long time, but oh my gosh, the opportunities that come out of having a good mailing list. There's nothing else like it.[00:40:38] Dr. McKayla: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I think that's a great add, great addition to what you said before. So Avdi, thank you so much for taking the time and talking with me and sharing everything with my listeners and yeah, have a good day.[00:40:53] Avdi Grimm: Thank you so much for this. I really enjoyed it. [00:40:55] Dr. McKayla: I enjoyed it too. Thank you so much. Bye bye. [00:40:58] Dr. McKayla: This was another episode of the Software Engineering Unlocked podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please help me spread the word about the podcast, send the episode to a friend via email, Twitter, LinkedIn, well, whatever messaging system you use. Or give it a positive review on your favorite podcasting platforms such as Spotify or iTunes. This would mean really a lot to me. So thank you for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and I will talk to you in two weeks. Bye.

The Transformation Ground Control podcast covers a number of topics important to digital and business transformation. This episode covers the following topics and interviews: Hot Topics: Bot Shopping and Baby Formula Shortages, How Instant Payouts Can Drive Attrition, Supply Chain Fixer Software, Netflix Company Culture, Data Fabrics and Their Role in Data Management (Eric and Kyler) Consultant Panel Hot Seat (Third Stage Consultants) Digital Transformation and Employee Burnout (Bree Pedersen, Licensed Therapist and Kyler Cheatham, Third Stage Consulting) We also cover a number of other relevant topics related to digital and business transformation throughout the show. This weekly podcast series premiers live on YouTube every Wednesday at 8am NYC time / 1pm London / 9pm Hong Kong. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Pandora, or your favorite podcast platform. WATCH MORE EPISODES HERE: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyI-oIQSgI2DGXQKvUz-farHwls_B3G3i —————————————————————— DOWNLOAD MORE RESOURCES BELOW: —————————————————————— 2021 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION REPORT: http://resource.thirdstage-consulting.com/2021-digital-transformation-report   TOP 10 ERP SYSTEMS RANKING: https://www.thirdstage-consulting.com/the-top-10-erp-systems-for-2020/   TOP 10 ERP SYSTEMS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES: https://www.thirdstage-consulting.com/top-erp-systems-for-small-businesses/   TOP 10 CRM SYSTEMS: https://www.thirdstage-consulting.com/top-10-crm-systems-for-digital-transformations   GUIDE TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT: http://resource.thirdstage-consulting.com/the-definitive-guide-to-erp-hcm-organizational-change-management   20 LESSONS FROM 1,000 ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS: https://resource.thirdstage-consulting.com/lessons-from-1000-erp-implementations-ebook   ———————————————————— CONNECT WITH ME: ———————————————————— LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickimberling/ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/erickimberling/ TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@erickimberling0 TWITTER: https://twitter.com/erickimberling CLUBHOUSE: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@erickimberling THIRD STAGE LINKEDIN PAGE: https://www.linkedin.com/company/third-stage-consulting-group/ CONTACT ME TO BRAINSTORM IDEAS FOR YOUR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: eric.kimberling@thirdstage-consulting.com   ———————————————————— MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE: ———————————————————— Get I'm Ready by The Eiffels here https://t.lickd.co/geq6gnjo3Y8 License ID: 1XWoZw78n75     Get You Worry Me by Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats here https://t.lickd.co/XzBW917yD6r License ID: Jlb62gvyqAo   Get International Space Station by British Sea Power here https://t.lickd.co/5rM5pxr8zjn License ID: 8wqy8ZaVvlx   Get Epic by Faith No More here https://t.lickd.co/zG5VzByg51a License ID: qNwxa4WEjWM   Get Can I Play With Madness (1998 - Remaster) by Iron Maiden here https://t.lickd.co/rPYy0OeVxlk License ID: bGQkLOwdyM6   Get Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood here https://t.lickd.co/86xKJAXy5n0 License ID: z73xkXLApVg   Get Bad To The Bone by George Thorogood & The Destroyers here https://t.lickd.co/Ooy7kBDQy97 License ID: 6LywrK9PGn9   Get Back on the Chain Gang by Pretenders here https://lickd.lnk.to/H2t9DXID!Eric%20Kimberling%20-%20Digital%20Transformation License ID: ajPdpWg8Bn9 Get this and other songs for your next YouTube video at https://lickd.co      

On this episode of the Talking Serverless Podcast Ryan Jones is joined by the always lovely Igor Soroka. Igor is a highly motivated, self-driven, and confident IT professional who actively participates in hackathons, meetups, and conferences—which has earned him the title of AWS Community Builder. For work, Igor does Software Consulting at Soroka Tech, focusing on Digital Transformations, where he gives hands-on technical consulting on AWS migrations, the building of DevOps practices, and the adoption of serverless technologies. For more content with both Igor and Ryan, check out this episode of the Serverless Panel HERE Find Igor on Twitter: @Grenguar Follow his Blog: https://tap.link/grenguar --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/talking-serverless/message

"Find a job or passion that challenges you and really work at it, push yourself a little bit in it, go outside your comfort zone" Meet Marie! Marie is a Software Consultant and shares the ins and outs of what she does everyday, but also what characteristics make up a great Software Consultant. If you're someone who likes solving problems and being okay with learning as you go, then this episode is for you! Marie graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Business Administration but also has a unique background as a camp counselor! She talks about the invaluable skills you can learn from caring for other people's kids. Want to thank Marie for sharing on the podcast? Send her a note on LinkedIn here!

Gli MSP sono spesso frutto di un'evoluzione: due tecnici, qualche file e un gestionale possono gestire i primi clienti. Poi il business si allarga e non si riesce più a star dietro a tutto. Per fortuna c'è HaloPSA, una soluzione che integra service desk, CRM, gestione contratti, progetti, reportistica e dispone di un portale utente. Ne parliamo con Gianmarco Rubino, Software Consultant per HaloPSA, e con Claudio Panerai, responsabile del portfolio prodotti di Achab, per la rubrica “SpuntIT”. Tutti i dettagli sul sito di RadioAchab.

On this episode of DevTalk I speak to Tobias Hoppenthaler about being a software consultant.

Today, in the Invent Like An Owner Podcast, Dave speaks with Eric Benson to discuss his myriad early software engineering projects at a time when Amazon was rapidly growing as a company. He implemented Book Matcher (which didn't last long) and the Similarities feature, and later built the original version of Weblabs that helped test which Amazon features were optimal. Eric also mentored many of the new software engineers, and later worked to port Amazon from Digital Unix to Linux (along with Bob Vadnais, and others).Eric Benson joined Amazon in 1996 as the 5th software engineer. He is currently a Software Consultant at United States Digital Service (USDS), a government agency composed of a group of technologists from diverse backgrounds working across the federal government to transform critical services for the people. Episode Resources: Eric Benson's LinkedIn and Twitter Find Dave on LinkedIn and Twitter What to Listen For: 00:00 Intro 02:39 Amazon's multi-day outage in 1997 05:15 Back then there was no backup server, just one customer database 07:09 Joining Amazon in 1996 10:00 Improving the website software was one of the first tasks 12:52 Book Matcher: people get recommendations after posting a rating 15:36 Developing the Similarities feature 24:10 Instant Recommendations    25:31 Promoting unusual items to show up in recommendations 27:00 Building v1 of Weblabs 34:16 People get burned out when there's too much information 37:34 CatSubst is putting marks in the HTML file to notify the software it serves 39:44 Experimenting between showing 3 and 5 similar items 41:09 Is every new feature slowing down the site? 42:54 The biggest problem with CatSubst 45:11 The hardware cost per unit was very high 49:21 Hardships of the engineering team while using Linux 53:27 Rufus the Dog and several site launches 57:26 Helping new engineers with language and coding 01:01:13 Software engineering at Amazon was too advanced for packaged software solutions from 3rd parties 01:04:05 From a small business to becoming a huge company

Heeft u als consultant ooit de vraag gesteld aan uw klant, waar hij over drie jaar wil staan met zijn bedrijf? Tijdens deze sessie willen wij u laten ervaren wat het effect is op deze vraag. En hoe u uw klant hierbij kunt helpen doormiddel van het vertalen van zijn data naar bruikbare inzichten. Klaas Mollema – HIllstar

Let's meet Duane Richards, Point of Rental's new Software Consultant!

Today we are discussing the power of movement. Now, what is that exactly? Can movement actually hold a sense of power? We all need something to make things go better for us and today we are discussing that need for movement with Shon Wilbon. Shon is a Software Consultant, Pole Dancing instructor, and the founder of the facebook group The Dating Girl Chronicles. Affirmations from the Episode 8: I am creative I am beautiful I am confident Let us know in the comments how the show is impacting and change your life. Don't forget to join us on January 22nd for Purpose Mapping: https://fb.me/e/2bcNBk9zx Join the group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/YourShotofGoodness Interested in being a guest or have topics you want us to cover message us here: Mashia@herfoundership.com How to link up with Shon: Revolve Studios The Dating Girl Chronicles --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/your-shot-of-goodness/support

In the Presales Edition of The 33 CXOs we explore the crucial role of the presales organisation in what is regarded as the greatest success story in software sales.  When John McMahon took over as the Head of Sales within BladeLogic, he had a clear vision to create a sales and presales organisation that was in complete unison. What transpired became a sales rhythm which remains the golden standard for best practice within the most successful technology companies in the world.  The effects of a value-driven, technical sales function transcended the boundaries of presales. The playbook has helped trailblaze best practice within Customer Success, Value Engineering, Professional Services and even Product Management.  We uncover the stories and playbooks of the most talented technical sales leaders in the industry who are driving the technology companies of the future.  Episode 10 features Tim Fessenden, President at Propertybase. Tim has over 20 years of SaaS and enterprise software experience and a proven track record of effective leadership at fast-moving, global SaaS-based software companies. Prior to joining Propertybase, Tim was Vice President of Products at Yottaa, a SaaS-eCommerce acceleration platform, and previously held senior positions including General Manager at BMC Software, and Director of Sales Engineering & Product Management at BladeLogic. Tim originally joined the founders of BladeLogic in 2001 to grow a services practice but quickly transitioned to become a key player in the development of their initial product and customer base. His professional achievements and career progression have led him to become the versatile leader that he is today, driving the next stage of development at the world's leading real estate software platform.   “I never thought of myself as a technologist. I thought of myself as an intelligent businessperson looking at large macroeconomic shifts and figuring out who were going to be the winners and who were going to be the losers. I saw technology as a clear tailwind in the market, so I said, how do I get there? I never had any training in technology, I just identified that that was the place I wanted to live and breathe.”  With an innate ability to look at situations through a macroscopic lens, as well always engaging with the customer experience, Tim was already practicing some of the key principles of John Kaplan's value framework even before being introduced to a physical playbook.  Therefore, when the extensive training and methodologies were implemented at BladeLogic, Tim naturally stepped into a leadership position. Owning the roadmap and being able to communicate the WHY behind what was being built allowed Tim to train, enable and strategically position sales engineers to execute the product strategy and generate revenue faster than ever before. He understood the importance of technical depth through the sales process and became a translation engine, bridging communication gaps between all functions and building the foundations for his future career.   “A lot of people have a myopic view of just the part that impacts them, but we all know that it's a continuum - if you push in one area, it's going to pop in the other. It's all interconnected. A discussion around pain ultimately needs to translate to something actionable on the back end and vice versa, if something is innovative on the backend, you need to make sure that that message gets out on the front end. That translation engine is the number one thing I hang my hat on and the most important thing that's attributed to my success.”  In this vodcast you will discover:  Building BladeLogic from the ground up – Tim's experiences in the early days of product development  The key personality traits that enable transition from presales into management and leadership   The transformative effect of the playbook and how this propelled Tim's career into leadership  How to scale an organisation by leading with the WHY  Fluent in the language of value, Tim Fessenden is a strategic leader who knows from experience what it takes to build a sales machine to grow revenue. With a mindset attuned to innovation, Tim has learnt the value of customer engagement and his playbook reflects his primary focus on the WHY - what are we doing here and why will people buy? We discuss his journey through the ranks from Software Consultant to President at Propertybase and find out which area of innovation he thinks will have the biggest impact on business over the next decade. A wide-ranging discussion steeped in valuable advice, this episode is essential listening for those with an interest in sales strategy, as well as anyone with a passion for the technology space.   

Today we have with us Priyaram Bindiganavile, who is the founder and Chief Market Strategist of SRIMANTHA! He has been a successful trader with a rich experience of 10 years and a Trainer in the areas of technical analysis, trading psychology, personal motivation and risk management. He is an engineer by qualification and was a Software Engineer and currently a Software Consultant(15 years of Corporate Experience) He was also a National Level Basketball player and is an ardent traveler and Adventure sports/Wildlife enthusiast He is currently living in Bangalore with his family. I have been through his course and I am so elated to share his motivating story with you all and through my Podcast I want him to spread the awareness and also to share the importance of being financially independent with you all. "Our Vision is to impart Financial Education to children, Offer Stock Market as a career opportunity to youngsters and make people Rich by making them understand secrets of the Rich. Offer this knowledge at a very affordable cost or free and in understandable language and way." Highlights of the Talk: Anyone above 18 years of age can do Stock Trading All one needs is a Laptop/Desktop/Mobile Phone and Internet Connection to get started One can start with any budget and at anytime Stock Trading can be a Career Importance of Meditation in Stock Trading Well-being and Productivity Priyaram Bindiganavile can be reached out at iamsrimantha@gmail.com 1. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/IAmSrimantha 2. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/iamsrimantha/ 3. Website - https://srimantha.in/Home/ You can follow me on on the below handles: Pinterest- https://in.pinterest.com/ShwethaCKrish/ Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/shwethackrish/ LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/shwethakrish/ YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq4UdnW6j1PCI4SYzbAmAGQ Website- https://shwethakrish.com

Jarek Wojciechowsk is a Software Consultant & Developer at Atomic Object. Jarek studied computer science at Oakland University, and during his college years he founded the GrizzHacks hackathon with his classmates. Jarek also worked as a coach for Major League Hacking where he helped out at collegiate hackathons across North America. And shortly after graduating, he found himself at Atomic Object, where he works in small team of developers and designers to build custom software for a wide variety of clients. In this episode, Jarek talks with us about his time at Oakland University, life working as a software consultant, and generative art. Shownotes: Connect with Jarek on Twitter (https://twitter.com/wojonatior) and Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/wojonatior) Learn about Generative Art here (https://generativeartistry.com/) and read Jarek’s blog post on it here (https://spin.atomicobject.com/2019/07/20/generative-art-software-dev/)

Welcome to the very first episode of Game On! Success After Sports!In this podcast, Robert Woods of MindOverProcess sits down with former NFL linebacker, Software Consultant and Author Maurice Simpkins. Maurice talks to us about his background growing up from an 11 year old grave digger in South Carolina with his grandfather, to a decorated college athlete and NFL linebacker, all while feeding his fire for technology. Hear the techniques Maurice learned in athletics that helped him translate success from the field to the office.For more information on Maurice and how he can help you and your company with your data strategy, please visit www.amsaconnect.com.

In this episode, we dig into what its like working as a software consultant and programmer while traveling abroad and how to get into it yourself. I met Tanner down in Panama, where he was surfing and working location-independent. He works for a software consulting company based on the US west coast for the last 10 years but has never been to the office. If you're exploring digital nomad job options, software consulting and programming is definitely one worth considering. During our conversation, we discuss the most valuable education for the industry, how to build your resume when you're just starting out, the differences between consulting/programming work compared with other location-independent tech gigs, tips for working while traveling, job hunting advice, how to leverage high income and low expense locations to maximize lifestyle, and a lot more. Customize the information you hear about:vagabondwork.com/customExplore Lifestyle Jobs/BusinessesExplore Vans/Campers/BusesIf you'd like to support Vagabond Work at no cost to yourself, use my affiliate link whenever you shop Amazon. I'll get a small commission on the total order price, out of Amazon's pocket, not yours.Support the show (http://vagabondwork.com/custom)

In this episode Swathi Poddar and I are talking about a thing we used to fight about: Should we or Shouldn't we allow frontend and backend specific user stories? Surely, stories should describe features, something that delivers value? But what, if there was a public API? And if it turns out that API also fed a GUI frontend? And what if your team simply demanded it as it made their lives easier? Show Notes Link to illustration which provides context for this episode: https://burnupmedia.com/2019/05/15/ep15-assigning-teams-to-features-or-services/ Sam Newman's book Building Microservices we mention (again) in this epiode: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22512931-building-microservices Expanded show notes and leave questions or comments for this episode at: https://burnupmedia.com/2019/05/28/ep15-should-we-allow-fe-and-be-stories/ Our guest in this episode is Swathi Poddar, Business Analyst, Product Owner and Software Consultant. She can be ‘found' and contacted here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swathi-poddar/ – More information at https://www.theburnup.com This podcast produced by Burn Up Media Ltd under under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Further Information at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

In this episode Swathi Poddar and I are talking about a topic very close to our heart: how do we best assign work to our teams? Do we have clear ownership of features or services, and if so, what do we do with the ‘shared' service we'll invariably encounter? Are such services commonly owned, can anyone mess with them, or are we keeping them under tight guard, and we ask: ‘Who owns the frontend?' Expect an interesting, possibly controversial discussion... For context please view these charts and illustrations while listening to this episode: https://burnupmedia.com/2019/05/13/ep14-assigning-teams-to-features-or-services/ Books we touch on in this episode, and which are highly recommended to ready are Sam Newman's Building Microservices https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22512931-building-microservices Eric Evan's Domain Driven Design https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/179143.Domain_Driven_Design Expanded show notes and leave questions or comments for this episode at: https://burnupmedia.com/2019/05/13/ep14-assigning-teams-to-features-or-services/ Our guest in this episode is Swathi Poddar, Business Analyst, Product Owner and Software Consultant. She can be ‘found' and contacted here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swathi-poddar/ – More information at https://www.theburnup.com This podcast produced by Burn Up Media Ltd under under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Further Information at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan The Freelancer's Show Podcast My JavaScript Story Podcast CacheFly Host: Aaron Frost Joined By Special Guest: Tomas Trajan Episode Summary Tomas Trajan joins Aaron Frost to talk about his journey as a developer consultant. Tomas is a Software Consultant and a Google Developer Expert for Angular based out of Zürich, Switzerland. Tomas and Aaron mention that they are both drop-outs from college and share different sources of self-learning. They both agree they did not learn programming in school. Tomas shares some of the more interesting jobs he did such as selling websites door to door to local businesses. Aaron shares similar stories from his own friends circle. Tomas tells some of the more funny and stressful experiences he had while selling websites. Tomas took a year off traveling with his girlfriend where they traveled without much planning visiting many countries in South East Asia. He talks about some of the funnier instances they had during these travels. Aaron then asks Tomas about some of the challenges he faced when he was learning Angular especially when he was learning Observables. Links AiA 233: Getting Serious with Schematics with Tomas Trajan Tomas LinkedIn Tomas Twitter Angular Zürich https://github.com/tomastrajan/angular-ngrx-material-starter Picks Aaron Frost: People who help their customers get off Internet Explorer Custom Slugbug Car Game - The Game Tomas Trajan: NgRx 8 Angular Elements

Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan The Freelancer's Show Podcast My JavaScript Story Podcast CacheFly Host: Aaron Frost Joined By Special Guest: Tomas Trajan Episode Summary Tomas Trajan joins Aaron Frost to talk about his journey as a developer consultant. Tomas is a Software Consultant and a Google Developer Expert for Angular based out of Zürich, Switzerland. Tomas and Aaron mention that they are both drop-outs from college and share different sources of self-learning. They both agree they did not learn programming in school. Tomas shares some of the more interesting jobs he did such as selling websites door to door to local businesses. Aaron shares similar stories from his own friends circle. Tomas tells some of the more funny and stressful experiences he had while selling websites. Tomas took a year off traveling with his girlfriend where they traveled without much planning visiting many countries in South East Asia. He talks about some of the funnier instances they had during these travels. Aaron then asks Tomas about some of the challenges he faced when he was learning Angular especially when he was learning Observables. Links AiA 233: Getting Serious with Schematics with Tomas Trajan Tomas LinkedIn Tomas Twitter Angular Zürich https://github.com/tomastrajan/angular-ngrx-material-starter Picks Aaron Frost: People who help their customers get off Internet Explorer Custom Slugbug Car Game - The Game Tomas Trajan: NgRx 8 Angular Elements

Sponsors Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan The Freelancer's Show Podcast My JavaScript Story Podcast CacheFly Host: Aaron Frost Joined By Special Guest: Tomas Trajan Episode Summary Tomas Trajan joins Aaron Frost to talk about his journey as a developer consultant. Tomas is a Software Consultant and a Google Developer Expert for Angular based out of Zürich, Switzerland. Tomas and Aaron mention that they are both drop-outs from college and share different sources of self-learning. They both agree they did not learn programming in school. Tomas shares some of the more interesting jobs he did such as selling websites door to door to local businesses. Aaron shares similar stories from his own friends circle. Tomas tells some of the more funny and stressful experiences he had while selling websites. Tomas took a year off traveling with his girlfriend where they traveled without much planning visiting many countries in South East Asia. He talks about some of the funnier instances they had during these travels. Aaron then asks Tomas about some of the challenges he faced when he was learning Angular especially when he was learning Observables. Links AiA 233: Getting Serious with Schematics with Tomas Trajan Tomas LinkedIn Tomas Twitter Angular Zürich https://github.com/tomastrajan/angular-ngrx-material-starter Picks Aaron Frost: People who help their customers get off Internet Explorer Custom Slugbug Car Game - The Game Tomas Trajan: NgRx 8 Angular Elements

In this Episode we have invited our colleague Swathi Poddar to discuss why the Business Analyst and Product Owner are such important roles for every successful delivery team. Successful projects are based on a clear understanding of the domain, specifically goals and needs, and how to best satisfy these with a solution within the given constraints (time, money, regulatory, etc). With the Product Owner hat on, we take care of the up-front bit, i.e. the focusing on strategic fit, while with the business analyst hat on, we focus more on the nitty gritty details of the solutions. But really, both roles are just a different focus the same spectrum. In practice they can be taken on by the same or different individuals. Ultimately both roles are about ‘making sense' of a problem domain, enabling teams to articulate complexity, explore items under discussion and converge towards a clear and valuable outcome. As with most roles in the ‘21st century', knowledge of tools and techniques (how to do things) are being downgraded to hygiene factors, while approach and mindset (how to go about things, specifically communication and collaboration) become factors of excellence. Consequently the business analyst and product owner are key roles for any well run project. Swathi Poddar is a Business Analyst, Product Owner and Software Consultant. She has worked and studied in the UK, US and currently works out of Pune and Banglore, India. Show Notes Further thoughts on the topic can be found at our blog: The Business Analyst Role ‘analysed': https://thedigitalbusinessanalyst.co.uk/how-to-become-a-business-analyst-1-mindset-vs-skills-435ef3bf1c5a Successfully interviewing as Business Analyst or Product Owner: https://thedigitalbusinessanalyst.co.uk/product-owner-interview-guide-d504ad1de1e2 BA Career survey: https://thedigitalbusinessanalyst.co.uk/business-analysts-how-did-you-get-into-your-role-cea4b64b8017 Our guest in this episode is Swathi Poddar, Business Analyst, Product Owner and Software Consultant. She can be ‘found' and contacted here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swathi-poddar/ – More information at https://www.theburnup.com This podcast produced by Burn Up Media Ltd under under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Further Information at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Executive Search Firm Pipeline Search Solutions is currently seeking a Software Full Stack Consultant in Portland, Oregaon with Javascript, CSS, HTML and NoSQL experience. To learn more visit www.pipelinesearchsolutions.wordpress.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/my-career-fit-podcast/message

Scott Nimrod is an experienced Software Consultant based out of Miami who specializes in Test Automation, WPF, Functional Programming, and a variety of other technologies.  In this interview, Scott and I discuss the balance between strengthening your reputation through your personal brand as a developer, and the teamwork necessary to be successful in your career.  We also touch on concepts in the interview with Woody Zuill about mob programming and the "noestimates" movement.  Scott also runs a YouTube channel with great interviews and live programming exercises.  You can also watch this episode on YouTube.  Related resources: Woody Zuill on Mob Programming and Influencing Change How Agile Teams Grow Toxic! Ep. 4 Commitments Scott Nimrod on Consulting and Software Craftsmanship How to Disagree With Your Manager Respectfully How Agile Teams Grow Toxic! Ep. 3 Forecasting   Visit me at JaymeEdwards.com Find me on Facebook at JaymeEdwardsMedia Find me on Twitter as @jaymeedwards

We've all been in situations where suppliers and clients alike were extolling the benefits of nearshoring, offshoring or other forms of cross-location working. And indeed there are very good reasons on why we may want to consider such resourcing strategies, but more often than not we find that making this work in practice and realising the benefits without introducing too much pain is harder than anticipated. Today, we are in Bangalore and have invited our colleague Swathi Poddar to talk offshoring and distributed teams with us. Swathi Poddar is a Business Analyst, Product Owner and Software Consultant. She has worked and studied in the UK, US and currently works out of Pune and Banglore, India. Show Notes All three of us agree: colocated teams are easiest. But not always feasible. Globalisation and distributed teams are here to stay. Be this for cost efficiencies, scale or multi-region support. So get used to it. Here is how to make them work: Hire skilled talent  Put conscious effort into forming and supporting distributed teams Align all stakeholders Over communicate To make this really work, you need to put the effort in. And be under no illusion, distributed teams come at a cost. If you get it wrong, you will suffer all sorts of problems from inefficiencies to quality issues. If you get it right, it will make your delivery faster and better. Further thoughts on the topic of Distributed teams can be found at our blog: https://thedigitalbusinessanalyst.co.uk/on-working-with-distributed-teams-475b12be4d3 Our guest in this episode is Swathi Poddar, Business Analyst, Product Owner and Software Consultant. She can be ‘found' and contacted here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swathi-poddar/ – More information at https://www.theburnup.com This podcast produced by Burn Up Media Ltd under under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Further Information at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Developer Hiring TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email workshops@tablexi.com or find us at http://tablexi.com.workshops Today on the show, we're talking about hiring with Jennifer Tu and Zee Spencer of Cohere, Thayer Prime of Team Prime, and software consultant Matt Patterson. We talk about the entire developer hiring process from how to advertise your company to potential candidates, through coding tests and interviews, and all the way to the final decision process. It's a great conversation with a lot of different perspectives and a lot of good advice. We’d like to hear from you. What do you look for when hiring developers? Let us know at http://techdoneright.io/56 or on Twitter at @tech_done_right Guests Jennifer Tu (https://twitter.com/jtu): Cofounder of Cohere (http://wecohere.com). Zee Spencer (https://twitter.com/zspencer): Cofounder of Cohere (http://wecohere.com). Thayer Prime (https://twitter.com/Thayer): Founder of Team Prime (https://team-prime.com/). Matt Patterson (https://twitter.com/fidothe): Software Consultant. Notes 02:55 - Common Mistakes When Hiring Developers 05:17 - Effective Hiring Procedures and Interview Processes 10:31 - Getting Your Company’s Name Out There 15:30 - Recruitment, Onboarding, and Reviews 18:52 - Sending Take-Home Exercises and the Problems They Present; Pre-Hire Pairing 30:33 - Good and Bad Uses of Interview Time 33:11 - Developing Interview Question and Using Standardization to Remove Biases 35:34 - Making Yes/No Decisions Related Episodes Apprenticeship with Megan Tiu, Kara Carrell, and Alyssa Ramsey (https://www.techdoneright.io/41) Diversity and Inclusion at Small Companies with Meara Charnetzki, Michael Donnelly, and Elena Valentine (https://www.techdoneright.io/40) Live Panel: Hiring Developers in (and out of) Health Care (https://www.techdoneright.io/23) Developer Bootcamps and Computing Education with Jeff Casimir and Mark Guzdial (https://www.techdoneright.io/20) Special Guests: Jennifer Tu, Matt Patterson, Thayer Prime, and Zee Spencer.

Vikram and Faizaan are joined by Ben DiFrancesco of Scopelift, a software consultancy based in Philly. They talk about the Elixir programming language, how he finds clients and what software is like at bigger vs smaller companies. They also discuss the current state of crypto with the early internet, get Ben’s thoughts on the current scaling debate for smart contract platforms, and how big companies might benefit from wide crypto adoption. This was a great mix of topics and if you have any interest in software development or crypto. Topics: Ben DiFrancesco's background The difference between a huge software company versus a small one Things he learned as a consultant How they met How he came up with daily crypto report The idea behind the product Additional features he's currently working on His personal opinion on Crypto World How he got involved in the crypto market Why he finds bitcoin fascinating His thoughts on the blockchain ecosystem Where he sees things heading in 3 to 5 years Component of coin recap: Elixir Their take on Elixir compared to Ruby and Rose's ecosystem Elixir's use cases in crypto On Scopelift and how he manages it His duties as a consultant How he started How he looks for clients His plans for Build Blockchain Tech Links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bendifrancesco?lang=en Scopelift: https://www.scopelift.co/ Daily Newsletter: https://coinrecap.io/ Build Blockchain Tech: https://www.buildblockchain.tech/ E-mail: ben@scopelift.co QuantLayer: https://twitter.com/quantlayer E-mail: vikram@quantlayer.com

Scott Nimrod is an experienced Software Consultant based out of Miami who specializes in Test Automation, WPF, Functional Programming, and a variety of other technologies. Scott was an early subscriber to my channel and has given me a lot of great advice and support since I started out on YouTube in 2017! In this interview, Scott and I discuss the dynamics between consultants and hiring managers, career growth, testing, and the direction of the software industry. Scott also runs a YouTube channel here with great interviews and live coding exercises. You can also watch this episode on YouTube.  Related resources: Scott Nimrod's YouTube Channel   Visit me at JaymeEdwards.com Find me on Facebook at JaymeEdwardsMedia Find me on Twitter as @jaymeedwards

Today we are going to be talking about semantic versioning. When you should do it, when you shouldn't do it, and what the heck it is? Joining us on this episode is special guest, Kevin Thomas. Kevin is a Software Consultant at Stride Consulting. Semantic Versioning is a more rigorous system where the first number is the big breaking changes, ideally. The second version is when you add new features, and the third one is like small patches, and sometimes there's a fourth one just for security fixes.

On this Episode of The Beautiful Butterfly Radio Show we Welcome Special Guest Author, Speaker & Consultant Tammy Carpenter. Meet Out Guest: As an advocate of love and life, Tammy Carpenter firmly believes that love covers a multitude of sin and that we are to have an abundant life as God has promised. While she enjoys her career as a Software Consultant, Tammy’s passion is to see young women live the full, abundant life that God has purposed for them. Tammy merged her passion for helping young adult women with lessons from her life and personal experiences and founded enLife in 2013. enLife is a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization with a focus on building and impacting the lives of young adult women. enLife offers programs and resources to help young women succeed through life transitions. Tammy proudly serves as the Executive Director of enLife and has the pleasure of mentoring and encouraging many young women. Tammy is a native of and resides in Greenville, South Carolina. For over 20 years, Tammy has served in various capacities in ministry including Youth/Young Adult Ministry, Women’s Ministry and Administration. She is a member of Changing Your Mind Ministries (CYMM) in Greenville, SC under the leadership of Pastor Wendell & Lady Nita Jones. Tammy was recently licensed as a Minister at CYMM and serves on their Ministerial Staff.

    Your browser does not support the audio element. Anthony F. Sanchez received his BSc. in Computer Information Systems from Western Governors University of Salt Lake City, UT. In addition to being a Software Consultant for the State of California through his own company, Anthony has been employed for 16 years as a Software […]

@TheHCMGuy -- LINKEDIN -- HiveTech  As CEO of Hive Tech HR, a Massachusetts-based consultancy, I lead a team that is helping our clients figure out their Human Capital Management (HCM) strategies. If the need arises, we can then help them find and/or implement their HCM software.  

When Douglass Turner contacted me via Twitter and said he had a story to tell, I was intrigued. But it wasn't until we sat down and started recording that I really see what he meant. From growing up in NYC surrounded by poets and writers to working at Apple in the 80s and 90s to spending years in Reykjavik, Iceland...Douglass Turner has lived. Our discussion covered all of this and a lot more, including his thoughts on the ubiquity of software in today's world, the work he's doing now with his company Elastic Image Software, and his thoughts on diversity in technology. It's a pretty fascinating conversation from a very fascinating person! Douglass Turner on Twitter Douglass Turner's Email Call Douglass Turner SPECIAL OFFER! Use discount code revisionpath and save 20% off any purchase at Creative Market! goo.gl/kMM0M7 We're on iTunes and Stitcher as well! Visit revisionpath.com/iTunes or revisionpath.com/stitcher, subscribe, and leave us a 5-star rating and a review! Thanks so much to all of you who have already rated and reviewed us! Help support Revision Path by becoming a patron! Check us out at patreon.com/revisionpath. Pledge levels start at just $1/month.

Success Edge Community, you will have the enjoyment of meeting Amos Johnson Jr. He is the podcast host of the Church for Entrepreneurs and God Idea Lab. You will hear him describe his journey as an business owner and the realization that he had about owning his own business. You will be impacted from this interview.

Anthony Sanchez and Mike Harrishttp://archive.org/download/ProjectCamelot/Project-Camelot-32k-013013_Mike_Harris_and_Anthony_Sanchez.mp3Anthony F. Sanchez received his BSc. in Computer Information Systems from Western Governors University of Salt Lake City, UT. In addition to being a Software Consultant for the State of California through his own company, Anthony has been employed for 16 years as a Software Engineer working for 3Com, Intel, Acer, Netscape Communications, and Hewlett Packard performing high level software development supporting scientific engineering and business intelligence projects.He became interested in UFOs back in 1989, at the time Area 51 surfaced as a public phenomenon. Since 2000 he has researched the subject matter thoroughly employing various scientific methods and hands on approaches, thus compiling over 20 years worth of UFO related research data.For the purposes of augmenting his knowledge on Human Origins, Anthony has also studied in detail, ancient Hebrew religious texts such as the Old Testament Bible, and gospels from the the Dead Sea Scrolls such as the 'book of Giants', and 'book of Enoch'. He has also studied famous Sumerian-Babylonian translations such as the Enuma Elish, and the Atra-Hasis as well as numerous Akkadian Mesopotamian cylinder seals and Akkadian cuneiform inscriptions.http://ufohighway.com/anthony_sanchez.htmlMike Harris spent 20 years in China and Russia and the Far East working on mergers acquisitions, specializing in technology development and transfers. He has managed projects as simple as power plants and as complex as the Pershing 2 missile. He is currently with Swiss based Adamus group, and serves on project team for the next generation $1.6 trillion dollar hyper collider. Mike is a lifelong Republican, and former candidate for governor of AZ, Mike also served as Republican Party Finance Chairman. Mike Supported Ron Paul for the 2012 primary campaign.http://www.renseradio.com/hosts.htm

The UFO Highway Book by Anthony F. Sanchez Software engineer and UFO researcher, Anthony F. Sanchez, discusses how the military industrial complex is related to the Greys and UFOs. Anthony is the first Investigative Researhcer to 'ever' find U.S. Government Property atop the Archuleta Mesa (Dulce, NM), on what is soveriegn land belonging to the Jicarilla Apache nation, not the U.S. Government or Military. This is a clear indication that something is happening in Dulce.” AUTHOR BIO Anthony F. Sanchez received his BSc. in Computer Information Systems from Western Governors University of Salt Lake City, UT. In addition to being a Software Consultant for the State of California through his own company, Anthony has been employed for 16 years as a Software Engineer working for 3Com, Intel, Acer, Netscape Communications, and Hewlett Packard performing high level software development supporting scientific engineering and business intelligence projects. He became interested in UFOs back in 1989, at the time Area 51 surfaced as a public phenomenon. Since 2000 he has researched the subject matter thoroughly employing various scientific methods and hands on approaches, thus compiling over 20 years worth of UFO related research data. For the purposes of augmenting his knowledge on Human Origins, Anthony has also studied in detail, ancient Hebrew religious texts such as the Old Testament Bible, and gospels from the the Dead Sea Scrolls such as the 'book of Giants', and 'book of Enoch'. He has also studied famous Sumerian-Babylonian translations such as the Enuma Elish, and the Atra-Hasis as well as numerous Akkadian Mesopotamian cylinder seals and Akkadian cuneiform inscriptions.

  Bonnie Karpay is known as The Search Engine for Entrepreneurs™, because she can “S.E.E.” what entrepreneurs need next for their business success and connect them to it.  She uses this powerful talent for Connection every day in her role as President of CEO Space Houston. Bonnie works directly with businesses from Houston and across the globe, sharing her training, experience and extensive network of contacts to their benefit. Prior to becoming President of CEO Space Houston, Bonnie Karpay held a number of positions across a diverse range of careers, including:  Office Manager, Marketing, Outside Sales, Financial Advisor, Trust Officer, CPA (auditor), Software Consultant, and Personal Life Coach.  At first glance, it would appear that she just couldn't hold a job.  In hindsight, she recognized that the ongoing job dissatisfaction was her “Inner Entrepreneur” screaming for attention.  This was her necessary path in order to accumulate the skill sets needed to properly serve her clients, which she does with pleasure on a daily basis. Bonnie holds a B.S. in Psychology from Tulane University and also a B.S. in Accounting from University of South Florida.  She raised her son in Houston, TX where she currently resides.