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    Why Your Contract Should Have a Project Kill Switch

    A lot happened between 2019 and 2021. I launched a new service that I originally called “Ship Your Podcast” – a done-for-you Podcasting service. I’ve since folded it under the Podcast Liftoff brand. But I also started doing a lot more video work…and that was the bell of the ball when I met with people at WordCamp US 2019.

    I signed on clients to both services. Contracts signed. Deposits deposited. Then the pandemic hit. Two clients completely disappeared. One seems to have completely moved on. The other came back 14 months later…

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    50K Downloads & More Coming to How I Built It

    Last summer I was at a crossroads with WP in One Month. In-person courses didn’t work, the webinars were running their course but that wasn’t a sustainable business model. I started having conversations with some great folks in the community – Matt Medeiros, Cory Miller, and Shawn Hesketh just to name a few. These conversations taught me a lot about what I should do, how I should position myself, and potential partnerships. If only they could tell me exactly how their built their business or product…

    Those conversations are what gave me the idea for the podcast. When I started How I Built It, it was going to be a way for me to funnel people to my online courses (the new direction for WP in One Month); something like, “You learned how X was built, now take my courses to build it yourself.” But a funny thing happened: the podcast became popular. More popular than I imagined in the first few month. I started getting sponsors and people were asking to come on the show. Last month, I hit 50K downloads in less than 9 months.

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    Announcing WP in One Month

    I’m passionate about is teaching. I speak at conferences, write tutorials and books, developed and teach courses. Last week, An Event Apart hosted a Front End Development Round Table and the question, “What makes a senior developer,” came up. The general feeling was someone who can do and teach makes a senior developer. This reinforced what I already thought: teaching is an incredibly important aspect of any job or community. That’s why I’m super excited to announce WP in One Month.

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  • Alex King’s Advice

    It’s been a few days since the news broke of Alex King’s far-too-soon passing. There has been an incredible outpouring from a community he affected in such a deep way. I decided to wait a few days to write my thoughts for a few reasons, the main one being I’m not really sure what I could say that hasn’t already been said. I spoke with Alex a couple of times, once while I was interviewing with Crowd Favorite. The other was at Pressnomics 2.

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    Why Pro Bono Work Hurts Everyone

    It’s something that has happened to everyone who’s a freelancer, or perhaps just everyone who runs a business. People will ask for things for free; I want to make it super clear now that I’m not saying never do pro bono work. I’ve done it. It just needs to be the right circumstances; asking a person you don’t know for free work is not only bad for the freelancer, it’s bad for your project in general.

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    Using Hackathons to Learn

    On Wednesday, June 18th, I will begin hosting weekly coding sessions (or short hackathons) in Downtown Scranton. You can read more about them here. There have been a lot questions on what to expect, what people should be doing, and how the sessions will be structured. It’s important to remember that these sessions will really be a way for programmers, designers, and other folks to get together and work on things they want to work on. However, that doesn’t mean that attendees can’t take the time to learn.

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  • Announcing the TIL Podcast

    til-webA while back, I bought the domain http://tilpodcast.co somewhat on a whim. I had just started listening to podcasts and felt this would be a good theme for one, whatever the that theme may be.  I thought of doing something tech or web development related, but those are a dime a dozen. So I still needed a solid idea for the podcast; then it came to me while talking with two sets of friends on two separate occasions.

    The first one was with my friend Nate, who had mentioned to me that he missed the “academic” conversations he’d have in college since getting a full time job; the more intellectual ones with discussion and debate. That planted the seed. The second one was with a group of friends while we were discussing some recent legislation- there was a lot of back and forth, fact checking, and opinion giving. That’s when the idea solidified. This would be a great idea for the podcast. I pitched the idea to my friends right there and they really liked the idea as well. So with that, the TIL Podcast is:

    A general knowledge podcast where a group of friends get together and discuss current events, news topics, and technology.

    The basic format is this: each week we will have a subject or two and discuss them for about 30-40 minutes (total). We’ll cover what the subject is and some issues surrounding it. We hope to cover a wide gamut of categories from news to tech to whatever seems interesting; we are also up for suggestions.

    We had our first recording earlier this week and it will go live on Sunday, December 1st. The topic is the Coin digital card.  We are all really excited about the podcast and we hope you like it! All of the podcasts, show notes, and more information are up at tilpodcast.co.

     

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    Google Web Toolkit

    gwt logo

    After I got back from Google I/O, I mentioned Google Web Toolkit was something they showed off that I was very impressed by. It allows you to build complete AJAX applications using Java. In one of my grad classes this semester, we had the opportunity to use Google Web Toolkit (GWT) on a semester long project. After using it I’ve come to the conclusion that is it great, but I’m not sure I would use it for a normal web design project.

    First, here is a sample GWT project I made called “The Decider.” It allows you to add items to a list and then the program will randomly select one for you. This is all done completely asynchronously. I was able to implement it completely in Java (which I think is easier than javascript) and then build the HTML around it using GWT’s ‘Widget’ classes. Again, you’re using Java to build the interface (without using Java Swing). This takes a little getting used to, but you can pick up pretty quickly after reading GWT’s documentation. A nice thing about the widgets is they all have their own CSS class assigned to them, and there are methods that allow you to add, remove, and override CSS classes. You can also build an HTML page with your own CSS id’s and dynamically add things to them with GWT.

    GWT is great is you’re unfamiliar with web design and you want to showcase some project your doing on the web. Google’s default styles look nice and you can really focus on the functionality, especially if the scope of the project didn’t include a web based implementation. It’s also good if you want to roll out a completely asynchronous UI relatively quickly. With The Decider, I didn’t have to worry about the advanced javascript stuff, using something like Dojo or JQuery, etc. I just wrote in Java, which I am pretty comfortable with. However, if from the outset you know you want to make a web app, I’d recommend doing it the traditional way. Writing your own HTML and CSS is semantically correct and less bloated than a GWT project. But of-course, I’m a web developer first, and I just have my feet wet with GWT. I’m willing to bet with a little extra time, due to the freedom you have with GWT you can make that lightweight, semantically correct (tableless!) interface you want with the power of Java behind it. And you can probably get rid of some of the bloat before deploying your app.

    All-in-all, GWT is really powerful and I think it will be a game changer. Next semester, another grad class I’m taking will be using it and I can’t wait to really get under the hood now that I have an understanding of how things work.