Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Aquila and if
you're interested in blogging knowledge, sharing and a little
bit of imposter syndrome than this episode is for you.
Joining me today is Andrew Duffy, he's a senior technical,
architect Xavier. Well sepia u.s. so is actually
calling in, and we had a lot of fun.
I'll put all his socials in the description below.
Check him out. And with that being said, enjoy
the episode. So I've been blogging since like
2000 for okay? So, yeah, almost 20 years now.
Yeah, and I started off on dot txt which was Scott water mask,
actually put that together and then that later rolled into
something that was hosted as weblog study asp.net.
Okay? And Kind of went from there and
because I was working at Microsoft because I'm just that
kind of person and that kind of personality.
I decided I wanted to write my own blog on a.net, CMS that I
could customize to my liking. Okay, and there's nothing wrong
with that per se. It's just that, the, the
downside and this is like I don't think this is specific to
dotnet. I don't think this is specific
to Orchard CMS, which was the the platform I chose.
But the downside to taking a CMS and customizing it by just going
in and changing up the code when its open source is that when you
own it, yep. Right?
That every time that an update comes out, you've got the risk
of something breaks, right? And you've got to go in and fix
it and it becomes a matter of like, okay, do I want to write
and maintain blog software and do I want to Blog exactly.
Hey, what do you want to do here?
And that's the reason that my blog is on WordPress now because
I'd rather blog. Now the sad thing is that I'm
not been very good about keeping that up to date of late because
blogging is also a lot of work. And sometimes, you know, you
make choices about priorities in your life and my priority of
late has been more family and like I'm going to I'm going to
have work, be work and there are things that I'll do in terms of
Of content creation? Yeah, but you know, I'm working
on trying to get a little more back into blogging because I
think I think blogging has come somewhat out of favor as a way
of Is way of sharing content. I think that at least, for me, I
can't speak for everybody else. But I've, well, I feel so I feel
like social media took away some of the impetus.
Okay? Right, so for me blogging was a
way for me to both Express my ideas.
Yeah, but also to share things that I had either recently done
that I thought were cool or interesting or that other people
could learn from or in some cases like this thing, really
tripped me up and I just fixed it.
So I'm going to write about that.
Yeah, and a good example of that is I have a post up on my blog
about, oh gosh, I think it's if it's virtualbox was like one Of
the virtual machines software and some setting that I needed
to change to get some specific scenario to work.
I don't even like remember the details of it myself, but it is
literally the most read and comment commented post on my
entire blog because that problem exists to this day and people
are still searching for it and finding my blog post and it's
still fixing the problem. Yeah, that makes a little bit
like how do you take this? Sing I just kind of threw out
there because well, I ran into this, maybe it'll help somebody
else. Yeah.
And a years later people are still finding it helpful.
It's like it's a it's super gratifying.
But be it's like why isn't it programming thing?
It's like it's like, I'm a programmer geek.
My hope my whole life has been teaching programmers and that's
not what I did in this past. But you know, that's neither
here. Nor there's it's just funny how
those things work out, but a lot of times like those things that
At you, that you would normally do like a short blog post.
You might just throw that out on social media.
Yeah, right. Like throw it a tweet that says,
hey if you run into this blooded it you know go to this link
right? Because and again I can't speak
for others but at least for me there's you know there's almost
like a biological impulses or brain and balls.
That's like you need to share this and if I can satisfy that
impulse In the moment with a tweet to takes 30 seconds.
Yeah, right. Even if it's not like I would
not say for a moment that a tweet is as good as or
equivalent to a blog post but it's a whole lot faster and
easier. I mean like back to the topic of
podcasting and such as that if you reduce the friction right,
are you going to go for the low-friction option or you're
going to go for the high friction option?
Exactly. All right, and I've got enough
blog posts that are in draft status that I started and
haven't finished that. I think the answer is pretty
clear for me, but I think if we talk about social media, I don't
know who has the same findability that blog posts have
which is why probably I think blog posts are still King,
right? I mean blog posts and I kind of
put newsletters under the same Avenue because I feel like
newsletters are up and coming. It is like a podcast.
Is it has a schedule and a certain Cadence to it.
You can have certain topics or certain themes within a certain
month and people get digested content frequently or semi
frequently depending on your Cadence and you can still find
them just as good as blog posts or now for those quick thoughts
for those quick learnings, and probably for some social media
followers, you have social media.
And I think those are more fast food related content.
They can still refer to the blog post.
For the newsletters but I think those are more so for outreach
for reaching the correct audience and then directing them
to where the source of information is at least, that's
where I see the value of social media when it comes to
knowledge. Sharing in that aspect, I don't
think it's a platform in and of its own.
I think it's more so an Avenue in an insight into where the
source actually is. Yeah, and I think 100%, I think
that you're absolutely right, that blogs, blogs haven't lost
their value and Terms of what they can do.
Yeah, I think that and I think that like the point of
findability is really key. Yeah.
Right. The fact that somebody is still
finding my blog post from years ago all this time.
Later. I think really highlights that
right. You tweet something and it
vanishes right unless of course it goes viral usually for all
the wrong reasons but then still have your wishes.
Yeah. Well then you wish it would
vanish, sooner sure. But that doesn't diminish, the
value of the of the blog post versus social media.
I think the point that I was kind of getting at is more that
when the impetus is, I need to share some knowledge and you can
kind of scratch that itch enough with social media, it can make
it harder to carve out the time and the effort to go deeper into
the block that the topic on the blog.
Exactly. And no, I mean that's that that
maybe more my personality Quirk and might not affect other
people, but I do, you know, I do see I think less kind of I don't
know. How do I want to scrub the so?
I have to kind of think this through from an Observer Bias
standpoint, right? That that there was a period of
time when I was deeply involved in the.net blogosphere.
Yeah, right. And so my experience at that
time was colored by the number of people that I was seeing
conferences talking to you regularly, Etc.
And so, my perception now is that there's less of a kind of
vibe. Current blog Community, but I'm
also not as deeply in the.net world.
As I was, I'm like, sucking is often.
So it could well, be that, that that my observations are colored
where I am in my in my particular content creation
mode. So not doing any just for me
blogging, and I still think it holds true because back then
exactly as you mentioned, when you've solved the problem, you
want to share that in a certain way.
And I still More long form content more.
So a blog posts than a tweet. For example, where LinkedIn post
is still the medium to do so because you want to explain your
contacts, your scenario. What you encountered, you want
to share some code maybe now. And then we give some examples
or share some drawings. I feel like the blog is still
the right Avenue for that. And then lately, one of my
colleagues was like, okay, I've always been a front-end
engineer. I was a designer by trade
initially and then I learned more front and concept and now
he's trying to pick up more back end.
Technologies. So then blogging for him is a
way to also structure his thoughts, and it helps him
throughout the Learning Journey, and he's hosting a small
articles of stuff that he's learned.
And it's, he says, it's for himself, obviously, but he also
wants to share his journey through out there and I thought
that was a really interesting Avenue.
If you want to pick up a new topic structure, your thoughts,
write them down and you can keep those notes for yourself, but we
can also do is publicize them and get feedback and maybe
people can help You and it can accelerate the process and it
can help others. I think that's a real neat
win-win that you can also do a vlog in.
Yeah. And, and the thing is that the
internet is a really big place. Yeah.
So any time you have a problem or any time you're learning
something, the chances are absolutely nonzero.
That there's going to be at least one other person out there
who, who is learning that thing or who has that problem.
And so, you know, I I am a huge advocate of doing that.
I think that writing down your thoughts like the two ways that
I think are our best to either learn or cement your learning.
Yeah. Are writing or teaching, right?
So, if and I mean writing is essentially a form of teaching.
But I think the getting in front of like, one of the things that
that I think really Kicked my career into high gear when I got
started and in the the IT world. I spent my first six years out
of college, after I graduate, I was a music and theater major.
Yeah and I was went to school a few hours south of Washington.
D.c. got graduated had no idea what I was going to do.
So I had some connections in the DC theater scene and I just got
work doing technical theater which I did for about six years.
Yeah. So fun, great parties does not
pay Squat. And as you can imagine
Washington DC is not a cheap place to live.
So making no money and living in Washington DC or not the not a
fantastic combination. I could just say the least.
So I ended up getting into software and one of the things
that really made it possible for me to make that transition
quickly was I got into A job where I was sitting with the top
two developers in the company. I was working for who were great
mentors and teachers, and one of them was also a big fan of user
groups, okay? And so, he started getting me
going to the local user group Community is in the DC area.
And before I knew it, I was actually speaking at user groups
because like, once you start learning things, you can share
them even if you don't know much And that's one of the things
that like, I would say, anybody who's watching this, who's
relatively new, don't think you don't have anything to teach or
share, right? Because it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you don't know a lot, you already know
something that somebody else doesn't write and you can share
that and teach it and ensuring that in teaching it you get to
meet people. You get to know people who, you
know, have different backgrounds than you do who Ooh, you know
who may know different Technologies, or who may have
different answers than you have? And those connections are great
on a personal level and they're also great.
In terms of, you know, pushing your career forward.
Yeah. Right.
You're pushing yourself in terms of growing, you know, in
presenting and kind of formulating your ideas through
presenting them and that's, you know, again that gets back to
the blogging aspect, right? Is Forcing yourself to formulate
your ideas in a way. That is consumable for someone
else. Yeah, is helpful in organizing
those ideas and and and effectively cementing them more
strongly in your brain. The other piece that I'm sure if
you've been blogging for any length of time, you've
encountered, this just always cracks me up, is anytime I'm
searching for something. And in the search results, one
of my blog post comes up and I'm like, You forgot that I actually
solve this before and blogged about it.
Nice little area. So I don't think many people
that's that. I've had it more than once a
real and it's a really it's like I thought that speaks to a level
of forgetfulness on my part, which is entirely possible.
But it's, it's, it's kind of a very surreal scenario to find
your own blog post when you're searching for a solution to
something. Oh yeah, yeah, I did run into
that before and and in this video I like that.
Get it. Hopefully it doesn't happen
twice with the exact same blog post that would be kind of sad,
I think. Yeah, I mean for my personal
experience. Like I'm, I've never actually
taken that step to write a blog post.
Like, I like writing technical documentation.
It's more. So for the context in the
organization or just for context For My Future Self or the people
that come after me, like I like writing those, but I've never
taken the time to dive into a topic and write a blog post
about a certain unknown. Thing or learning.
I've had like, I like more. So the Avenue of video content
creation or doing podcasts to share perspectives, or even
standing on stage, which is something I want to do.
More of for me, blogging is just not, I don't know.
Maybe it's just not my thing. I've just never done it and I
don't know exactly where that comes from.
I'm not a big reader people listening in that.
I have listened to a few episodes, might know that I'm
not a reader almost at all, so that might have something to do
with it. But I really admire people that
Do blog because obviously if I'm looking for something, I have a
certain problem and someone has solved it, I might pop into
their box. I am had colleagues who blog and
they're in the kind of same technology space that I am in.
And I've seen their blogs. I've come across their blogs on,
I'm searching searching for stuff.
So I do admire that she's never taken that step just realize
that, that's weird. No, I mean, I think there's
something to the to the idea that, you know, that people
have, you know, people are wired differently.
Yeah. Right.
And we, we also, I think we all definitely have our individual
communication Styles, and I think that, you know, it's it
seems perfectly natural to me that that people have preferred
ways of sharing knowledge. And there are some people who
aren't interested in Sharing knowledge and that's fine.
Like I I would I would definitely not want somebody to
come away from this podcast thinking, gosh, if I'm not
blogging or I'm not doing podcasting, or if I'm not doing
video, 10th. I'm doing something wrong.
Yeah, that because that's not at all the message.
Exactly. Yeah, I think that you know
again I think that folks like you folks like me, there's a
certain kind of built-in impetus.
Yeah, and I think about like one of my one of my hobbies is I
play Ultimate Frisbee, okay, which given that's also probably
is probably a little clear that I'm not the Youngest person in
the world but this is the one I picked up.
So it's a sport I picked up about seven or eight years ago,
when my oldest son, who is now 20 was in Middle School, okay?
And he wanted to go because we're the our youth minister at
church was running Ultimate Frisbee and one of his friends
was playing and he wanted to go for it.
Play with his friend. Yeah.
And I ended up loving it is a chaperone every Saturday at our
church and then I'm actually playing in three leagues right
now, which is kind of Of insane. Wow, that's a lot of things.
One of the things that I was talking with somebody last night
about, I had a, had a game, and one of the, I'm a captain on
this particularly again and one of the players on my team and
we're just in our second game. So I've haven't had a chance to
get to know everybody really. Well, just a very quiet person
and I just I said, I asked him. You know, how are you doing?
Is everything. Okay, yeah, you seem like you're
a fairly quiet, you know? He said I'm fine.
No. Everything's all right and I
said all right as you know I just kind of observed that like
I'm a verbal processor. So like as as we're going
through the game, I'm talking okay it's just like so for me
it's perfectly natural that the way that I would process, you
know, any technology technology stuff is you know make a video
or do a podcast or you know or blog.
Yeah I've written a number of books which again like for
people who are early in their career yes you should write a
book, be prepared. It's a painful process and I'm
not going to do that books. Books are somewhat like I would
I would describe them a little bit like the my theater days in
that you you're not going to like a technology book unless
it's an absolute break out or something like, you know, using
Windows like those books that that the average user would use.
But Programming books. You're not going to make Bank on
a programming book. No but it can be a career pivot.
So like for people who are inclined and have the discipline
to get through that process, you know, and it's it's effectively
how I got my foot in the door at Microsoft.
Okay. As I through again, the same guy
who got me involved in the user group Community.
Yeah, happen to know a book agent and I was I literally like
I asked him to you. You know, anybody who might know
somebody or right guy, I guess he put me in touch with the age
and I went to the agent said, do you know anybody who's working
on a book like one of the one of the old rocks books, where there
were twenty authors each doing one chapter as like?
I've learned enough that I could probably write a chapter about
something. Yeah.
Ryan. And which was which was pretty
arrogant of me at the time since it since I was still like within
the first couple of years of my of my.
But I was speaking at user groups.
I had actually I think I know if I had already started writing
some magazine At the time. But like, I was getting
connected into some of those publishing world's.
Yeah. And I thought, like, I chapter
is not chapters, not that bad, right?
It's it's, you know, 30, 40 pages all this morning.
I thought, okay? Yeah, yeah, it depends on the
book but like those rocks books were, you know?
I mean, they're like bricks, they're huge, but I thought, you
know, this is manageable and so reach out to this guy and he's
like, no, I don't have any projects going on but Why don't
we work on a proposal? Okay.
And so I thought well, nobody's going to ever.
Let me write a book but this could be an interesting exercise
to go through, right. I can learn a lot by writing a
book proposal. Yeah.
And there's no real danger because nobody's going to let
somebody like me who's this new in my career write a book.
Yeah and then it happened. Yeah I'm not going to I'm not
going to go into the longer tail, there was a fairly lengthy
process but at the end of that fairly lengthy process.
Microsoft press said, yes, let's Let's write this book and I was
like, what? Yeah, that was not supposed to
happen, that's not what. Now, I have to write a book
that's hilarious and it's funny because it's it's like that was
not that was not in the plan for me at all like writing a book,
but it ended up happening. And I you know, I'd love to say
it was a great book. It was decent book.
I-i'm happy with the long term and help help put a down
payment. Even on my house.
So that was that was gonna nice. Yeah.
But one of the things I did there is like You know, and
again like to kind of offer some advice to folks who may be
earlier in their career, be prepared to Leverage The
Experience and knowledge of other people, right?
So in that case, the book that I was writing was titled visual
Enterprise visual interactive, 6 Enterprise developers Workshop.
Okay. If there's a Microsoft press
title that ever was, that's yeah.
Like, that was really long. Yeah.
But the idea was that at the time, Time visual interactive,
which for those who may not, remember it or be familiar with,
it was kind of a visual way of building asp.net or a classic,
ASP applications, spree asp.net pre dotnet.
And the idea was it was it had kind of come into its own a
little bit. And so I was making the case
that it was a suitable tool for building Enterprise
applications. Yeah, and I wanted the book to
cover, not just the tool itself. But also various aspects of
Enterprise application development that were necessary.
So things like, you know, robust security queuing, you know,
transaction management, things like that.
And those things were definitely outside my wheelhouse at the
time. So I found four people at the
company. I worked for at the time who had
relevant expertise, okay? And I pulled them into write
chapters on those topics. Perfect.
And That ends up being a lot of work in a sense because unlike
the like, the Rocks books, it ended up being in some, in some
sense, a little bit like that, but the Rocks books were really
literally just at an author per chapter.
And they were very clear about that.
They had like The Brady Bunch picture, collage, on the front
of the the books. So in this case though,
Microsoft press wanted the book in one voice.
Yeah. Which meant I would get the
chapter from the read rights of the individual authors.
Kind of massage it into my voice.
Yeah, send it to Microsoft press.
They'd send me edits. I'd send it back to the author
and usually about three cycles of that per chapter.
Well, so it ends up being a lot of overhead, but it was
absolutely essential to be able to get the project done.
Yeah. Because I could not have done
those those chapters without the assistance, assistance of my
co-authors. And so since I mean, I'd like
that, like this started out as an opportunity actually or You
wanted something you didn't even get it, but you got the
opportunity to do something else.
And instead of being like, oh, this is not what I wanted you
were like, let's try this out, right?
Because a lot of things that'll come across your path are
actually learning Journeys. You just don't really realize it
and that spun into a whole other Avenue and albums on.
You have a book on your hands. Like I don't know how that
snowballed but it actually did and it happened and then you
have a box which is in yeah yeah and and And I don't, I don't
know whether it's possible to encourage people to embrace that
opportunity because I'd be a hypocrite to say that.
Because I don't think that that was necessarily the thought
process. I think it was.
I pushed a boulder downhill. Yeah.
And I was still holding on to the boulder as it rolled
downhill with me on it. Okay.
That makes sense. It's like funny and II.
Don't I don't think it ever occurred to me that I could say.
No. Hmm.
Right. I don't think it occurred to me
that once I had that, I had started that path.
Yeah, that it was an option to say, yeah, never mind.
I really don't want to do this. I'm scared, right?
And it was, and it was, it was scary.
I mean, and, you know, one of the things, you know, whether
it's blogging or writing books, that's that's often.
Tough is just like blank page syndrome.
Hmm, right, Anna? I get try, get trapped between
two extremes like I the blank page.
And room where you're staring at the, at the blog editor, you're
staring at, you know, word doc, that's got nothing in it and
like, where do I start right? And I've I am an indifferent
outliner because that's a way to describe it.
I will on occasion outline, you know talks or or you know
articles or blog post or things that I want to do to kind of get
Get my ideas organized. Yeah, that isn't necessarily my
natural way of doing things. I kind of naturally just flow
and then edit. Okay.
So for example, I'm in the midst of working on a Blog blog post
right now on. I had submitted a talk for a
conference that I was in titling, five ways home
automation makes me a better outsystems developer, right?
So outsystems, a little code platform that I work that I've
been working on for the past five years or so.
Look, I find that like low code and home automation have a lot
of similarities. I've recently gotten into doing
a lot of home automation with the open source home assistant
software. Okay.
Maybe I think about like a low code flow home.
Assistant has this concept of automations.
Yeah, the very similar concept, right?
You need to go through a bunch of steps to accomplish a give an
end and really it's about differences in terms of how you
represent those ideas. Is right?
You can represent that flow as code.
You can represent that code in Jama which is kind of home
assistance, one of home assistance representations of
how how an automation will happen.
You can represent it in a visual editor.
There are some people who use node-red with home assistant,
I've never quite gotten my head around node-red, but it's more
of a, it's even more visual, okay?
You know, in, on the out system side, a flow is literally, like,
Top to bottom visualization of logic.
Yeah right and when I first saw that it's like it totally
clicked with me. So I wanted to kind of think
through some of the ideas that that popped in my head, in terms
of similarities between these worlds and also encourage people
because you think about like developers often want to try out
new languages, right? As a way of keeping their chops,
like, okay, I want to try out rust or I want to try out golang
or, you know, like and they'll go through some tutorials or
they'll do like a 30 days of such-and-such sharam language
and taking on home automation. Purely for this, for the sense
of learning, is probably not something that anybody is saying
is going to do. Yeah, but like, if you're
somebody who already has some hue, light bulbs in your house
and you're using those and you like the idea of home
automation, I think some of the concepts really mirror well and
they're just some things from the standpoint of, you know,
troubleshooting. Okay, I'm learning a lot about
ux, for example, by doing home. Nation.
Because a key piece for family acceptance is dashboards right?
Okay. How am I representing the things
that my family wants to control or needs to control?
And some of that, right is actual literal, physical
switches just like you'd have if you had normal lights, right?
Because if you, if the dashboard goes down and you can't turn the
lights on and off, there's not a high acceptance factor in the
family, hey, that doesn't, that doesn't help a lot, but some of
the things that, that it opens up for me in terms of even UI
into an out systems application. Like, for example, We have a new
relatively new pet dog. Never had a family dog before.
But one of the things that we do is track when has she been fed
when it has she been out when his?
She had a walk, right? And we used to do that on a
paper log and we would have stacks of paper and we'd have to
remember to print the next set of logs.
Yeah, pretty wasteful. It's a little time consuming and
so trying to get my teenagers to do that consistently was
challenging. So what do I do as a geek?
I wrote an out systems application That exposed a rest
API that home assistant could call and a wired up literal
button just like this one that I used to control my office
lights. Okay.
So that each direction is a particular activity, you click
the button, it calls the rest API in the outsystems
application and then the outsystems application supplies,
a webpage that I can iframe into my dashboard and see exactly
what just last happened. And so if anybody in the family
is Is dealing with the dog, we don't have to ask.
When was Mike out last night? We can go and look at the log,
okay. This is when she was fed.
This is when you know, yadda yadda and understand all of
that. So it ends up being a good tool
for facilitating Communications but it's also an exploration in,
okay? How can I surface information in
a way? That is sufficiently dense,
right? So, I have an Amazon Fire tablet
because it was cheap and I just stripped all the Amazon stuff
out of it. Okay, made it a permanent
dashboard for the main for our kitchen, right?
The Hub of the Hub of the house and it's got all the main lights
that we use. It's got the thermostat, it's
got the camera feeds from our garage, you know, from her to
cameras in the house. And That's so it's basically
providing both information and control in a single screen so
nobody. Nobody other than me, has to
know how to navigate the different screens or dashboards
of Home assistant. We just leave that up and, you
know, my, my wife and one of my son's also has an app on their
phone that they can use to control various things.
But like, this is the primary interface for most of the things
that we use it just and I'd say like one of the one of the
biggest struggles that I found early on and this was pre home
assistance, we were still just doing Hugh stuff yeah which I
got into oddly enough, because I'm relatively cheap and so when
I saw they had a huge deal on like the hue, light bulb starter
kit, The Hub and three bulbs. At Costco, one of our us
retailer discount retailers, I mean, it was, I think it was
like, basic like half the price of normal resale, okay, and I
think I bought like three at a time, like, this is a
ridiculously cheap price. I've wanted to get into this.
So, I'm jumping in with both knees, but the, but the biggest
challenge that I found with that, was that when you're
dealing with smart bulbs like that, you can't turn a light.
Like, if you put a smart bulb into a standard table lamp, you
can't turn the lamp off. Off with the switch and
socializing that with the family members was the initial really
big challenge. Okay, once we got over that
hump, it wasn't too bad. It was, but then it was like,
you know, you have to go into the Hue app and whatnot.
And so I got some of the dimmer switches.
So that instead of having to go into the app, you just hit the
dimmer switch. Yeah, right.
And it would turn on at the last thing that you had that you had
it on good to go, you know, the main thing I wanted smart bulbs
for in. First place was at nighttime,
just turn everything off at bedtime and not worry about
whether somebody left the lights on her.
Yeah, that's it, which is probably a pretty common first
use case, but to get back to the blog post, like the thing about
the blog post is that I started off with, you know, five
headings like okay. What are the five ways that I
think? And and of course, you know
being yeah, I One of the kind of that clickbait, E5, you know,
five, something something doesn't have to be five.
Sure. But so, having committed myself
to five, I had to come up with five of them.
And so I did the headings first but as I start writing I
realize, wow, this is going to be a really really long blog
post and so I started thinking about okay, does it make sense
to do this? As one Long blog post are people
going to have the attention span to read through this probably
not. So now I'm just kind of trying
to Think through do I want to turn this into a series?
Yeah. Right.
Do I want to do five ways way one as its own blog post, right?
Or do I want to severely edit and like what's the absolute
Essence that I need to communicate for this particular
way, is there information that I've written here in my flow
that's extraneous or you know that doesn't really you know
that isn't really necessary and that editing process that's Yes,
that is one of the differences between blogging and writing for
like a book or a magazine or something like that.
Is that in the in those latter processes, you typically have an
external editor who's coming to help serve that role and in some
cases, they will aggravate you because they're imposing kind of
their view on what is extraneous versus essential.
And so, you know, there are times when you may have to push
back and say no, no, I really want this concept in there.
Yeah, it's nice. That you think that it's that
it's not essential, but no, I really wanted in there and then
those editors technical, as well, like taking goal-oriented.
So typically it so it probably varies.
I so I don't know what the state of the magazine world is and
more. I mean, I'm not even sure the
extent to which paper magazines for programmers is are really
think it's a big thing anymore. Yeah.
I think is more online and
online, my senses. There's Probably a little bit
lighter. Okay.
If any editing which is, I think, I mean, I think that's a
shame to an extent because I think that that relationship
between a writer and an editor can help can help develop ideas,
right? Because so form of co-creating.
Yeah, very much so, but but also, the other thing is that,
that having an editor as kind of a partial external brain, if
that makes sense. You know, having another
perspective on again, what is essential and what isn't?
It can be very hard to discard one's own ideas.
Yeah. Right.
It can be very hard to invalidate things that that
you've come up with and created. Yeah, you invested.
Yeah exactly. And so it's like, Yeah.
I think some of the you have an editor for your podcast and I
think that's awesome. Because again, it's like that
that second set of eyes that additional brain and not just
somebody who's outside of you but somebody who's also likely
done work with other creators. Yeah.
And so they may have seen things that were successful that you
haven't experienced, And be able to bring that perspective to
the, to the thing that you're creating and make it better, you
know, right. One of the things that was just
an absolute Revelation for me. I've done video stuff for a very
long time. I did dozens of videos on
Microsoft's Channel 9 over the years.
You know, everything from short tutorial Snippets to, you know,
video podcast type episode A lot of my bread and butter was basic
screencast stuff where it was, I wasn't even on camera.
It's just literally throw Visual Studio or whatever.
I'm developing up on the screen record, the screen record my
audio, you know, very rough edit and push publish, right?
Which has its place. And it's, you know, I mean that
the again like the the advantage of that is it's fairly low
friction, you know. It's so published Fluently.
Don't him polishing this, right? It's like I like polish, but if,
if I'm responsible for the Polish, it will likely be.
It would be less likely that I get more content out because the
Polish is not easy for me. Especially when I was at
outsystems, I've had the opportunity to work with the
video team there in particular, Miguel marks great video editor
and Motion Graphics designer and just really knew how to To bring
a level of Polish and organization to the content that
I was creating and okay, just took the content to an entirely
different level. Yeah, we just the right audio,
the right transitions, the right edits and cuts just made all the
difference. In terms of you have feeling
like, okay, I've created this screencast, right?
And I'm not like I'm not ashamed of my screen.
Cast, I don't but, but there weren't, they weren't anything
special, okay, and having a team of of editors and, and people to
kind of collaborate with and talk through what that content
could look like also kind of get creative about.
Hey, once I've once we've made the decision for me to be on
camera like a, I need a nicer camera.
So I have a nice digital SLR. I've got a teleprompter It
because I, you know, I will stumble if I don't, you know.
And and I found that like I used to do scripts where I would have
the script on screen in front of me and so I'm looking over here
instead of looking at the camera.
Yeah. Right.
And so, if I'm doing content where it's a tutorial and I'm
going to be on screen, I want to be looking at you.
The audience exotic-looking off here or just slightly off access
where it's like what are you looking at?
And why are your eyes and why? Are your eyes moving back and
forth in a really funny pattern. Yeah.
So it's like some of those little details, you know, they
don't seem like a lot individually know that they can
dip add up to a really polished product that that's more
pleasant for people to consume at least, I think so.
Yeah. And so having a team around you
and, you know, being open to that kind of collaboration as As
a writer as an author, I don't always love working with editors
because I don't always agree with the things that they
suggest. Yeah.
And there's and there's that there's that ego part that wants
to say know. I'm right.
Yeah. Right.
This is my right and you're wrong.
Exactly. And to the extent that you're
going to lay that aside and embrace that collaboration,
right? And embrace the possibility that
maybe you're not actually always.
He's right. Maybe you have a good idea that
can be even better if you Embrace what somebody else is
telling you about what you're doing, right?
It's you know jump back to Ultimate Frisbee for a bit like
one of the I was talking with some folks last night like my
son and I were in it in a team over the winter and I couldn't
tell you how many games we won our loss.
Yeah. I know we lost more games than
we won. There's a Fairly new team, but
we had three people on the team who had never played ultimate in
their life. I think one of them may have
never picked up a frisbee before in his life.
Yeah. And what they had going for them
was that they wanted to learn. They were willing to listen and
put what they heard into practice.
Yeah, they were coachable. And so I think, As content
creators as developers, as you know, whatever you're pursuing.
If you can bring that Spirit of coachability into it, you will
find people around you who will, Who will embrace the role of
helping you get better and being open to this idea of, you know,
of being coachable of listening of recognizing that you may not
know everything. I mean even if you've been
around the block, you know, opens things up so much more and
it also like it also makes it super Pleasant for the people
around you because like, these three players were just a joy to
be around because I could watch them both.
Get more skilled. Yeah, but also enjoy the game
more as they got more skilled and more confident and to watch
that transition. Seasons.
Like that was the highlight of that team for me not whether we
had a winning or losing record. Yeah, and I'm a very competitive
guy, I like to win. I hit.
It's like, I don't particularly like losing games, but the
takeaway for me of that whole season was here, are these three
guys who came in with with nothing and who embraced the
challenge of learning this game and gave me the gift.
And my son, the gift of Of being able to coach them and help
them. Learn something fun and new.
Yeah. Right.
And it's like I want to be really like I'm being very
careful about how I say that because I'm not the best player
in the world. I'm not the best coach in the
world. I really feel like that was a
gift that was given to me to be able to share that knowledge in
that way, right? They didn't get better because
I'm a great coach. They got better because they
were putting things into action. And listening and being open to
that coaching. Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
I think being coachable in general like, when you start
out, you start off like that because you don't know a lot,
right? So then you're like, okay, you
come in with a certain amount of eagerness and curiosity, ask a
lot of questions and you get fulfillment for knowing new
things or being able to do new things, right?
Gaining those skills and you get more confident.
Yeah, but I think when you lose that it's also a shame, right?
Because then you feel like, okay, maybe I've grown to a
certain point where I can't learn anymore.
I feel like the art is to never lose that.
It's always stay humble, right? Be confident in what you know,
but be open to feedback and knowledge of others because even
if they're wrong and you're right who cares, right?
It's a different perspective. And maybe I know that for in the
future or maybe you'll know what feedback to give or what advice
to give right? It's still a learning because I
feel like once you close yourself off to those
opportunities, you also, I'll lose a sense of fulfillment with
that and I like that. You said it's a gift towards you
as well. Right.
It's a gift. All around and the best wins are
the wind winds, which is exactly that case.
Yeah, yeah, I think I think one of the things I, so, I think
back to, like, the analogy of pushing, a boulder, down, the
hill, and yeah. Rolling down with it right with
the book. I think one of the things when I
was early in my career is, I didn't know what.
I didn't know. Right.
So there Is an aspect of fear and Terror of, oh, gosh.
I have to write a book and I know, I don't know enough.
Yeah. But at the same time, I don't
think I knew the scale of what I didn't know.
And so there was an openness and a willingness to embrace the
challenge because I didn't I didn't fully appreciate how you
know how big that golf was? Yeah, right.
And it turns out that I was able to bridge that golf right that I
had the capacity to learn as I went and put together enough
knowledge to be useful to someone.
Yeah right. And that I mean at the end of
the day that's what success looks like.
We're people able to learn from my book.
Yes. Was it the best book that
someone could have written on visual interactive sixes and
Enterprise development? No, right, like let's be real.
A guy who has less than five years in as a as a software
developer is not going to write the very best Enterprise
development book on internet sex but that's not going to happen
in any Universe. Was it good enough for people to
learn from? Yes.
Yeah. Was it the right decision for me
to write it? Yes, right.
Fast forward, 20 years. I know how much I don't know.
Hmm, and that causes hesitancy, okay?
And that gets back to exactly what you were talking about,
right? That that openness, that, that
willingness to embrace and learn, but it's also, it's not
just a, I know everything. And I have nothing left to
learn. There's also, the flip side of
it which is, I recognize, how much?
I don't know. Yeah, and that can be
paralyzing. and it's, it's really But why is the paralyzing
then? Because is it, it's you that's
making it paralyzing, right? Yeah.
Oh, absolutely. I mean it's an it's an internal
thing for sure, right? It's just that I think that it's
easy to, you know, and again, I should couch it as speaking for
myself, right. I think that younger Andrew
found it easier to jump in with both feet and do stuff.
Yeah. Because I didn't know how much I
didn't know. Okay, knowing how much, I don't
know. Feels like well I don't have the
authority to say that or I don't have the authority to to speak
into that, which is sort of absurd because I have 20 years
of experience, right? If you would think that, that 20
years of experience would would tell my ego.
Yes, you have all the authority. But there's like there's a
difference between being recognized as like I'm like,
people know that I know a lot about outsystems, people know
that I know a lot about dotnet, and that's like that's fine.
That's that's an external recognition that doesn't
necessarily conform to the internal experience of where my
head we get where my head is at. Yeah, I think that there's a
there's a definite positive aspect because if I'm If I'm a
little insecure occasionally hopefully that will keep me from
being arrogant. Yeah, exactly.
And I you know, I think that I think that it's healthy to
recognize that there's a lot that you don't know.
Yeah. I'm just calling calling out the
the potential paralysis because like I know a lot of, you know,
and there's a lot been a lot of discussion over the years about
impostor syndrome, right? And that's something that I have
constantly struggled with. With yeah, in part because I'm
not like I'm not a formally trained software developer.
I don't have a CS degree, right? I didn't go through that
particular path, you know why live to?
I've had a lot of training over the years, you know, I don't
have a lot of formal education in terms of software
development. I don't have a lot of formal
education in terms of electronics.
I just like I find stuff that I like, and I get into it.
I started learning it, right? It was nothing wrong with that.
Yeah. No, not not at all, but
Psychologically. I think that it it it opens up
the possibility of not feeling like you're like you're real,
you're not feeling like you. You ever quite can can consider
yourself authoritative in those areas, you know, because there's
always going to be a gap and, and Yeah again I'll relate it
back to Ultimate. I mean I spent Probably longer
than I should have feeling. Less than adequate as an
ultimate player because I am older.
I'm slower and a lot of the folks that I play with are in
their 20s and early 30s. Right?
Although there are even like, even on my team.
I've got a guy who's five years older than me.
Who's an absolute inspiration. Awesome buff is all hell.
And I just like, I just want to train with the dude because it's
like, dang, he's in good shape. But, you know, I made The
mistake of comparing myself to these people who had been
playing ultimate a lot longer than I had and who are younger
and more fit than I am and getting discouraged by that.
And then I realized like hold on, this is just not the right
perspective, right? I need to be comparing myself to
how I did last game. Exactly how I did last season
and when I look at it from that perspective it's like I can look
back and see the growth and recognize that you know, it's
like I'm doing better than Then I did, you know when I started
I'm doing better than I did last year.
Yeah, I'm having more fun, I'm more deeply involved.
I'm, you know, I'm helping organize a team, helping
organize a league, you know, and helping bring other people into
a sport that you know, that brings me and brings others, you
know, fun and joy, you know? So I don't have to be the best
for it to be valuable. Yeah.
You know, and I think that the same thing can kind of apply,
you know, in the in the tech world and in, you know, in being
a content creator is is to not worry about whether, you know
what everybody else knows. Yeah.
Because there's no, I think I think the flaw in imposter
syndrome is that is that we end up.
We look at other people who we admire or who we look up to and
we think well, they A know everything right?
Which is the first lie of imposter syndrome is they know
everything right. And I only know this tiny little
thing. Yeah.
Right and what we don't see is the vast number of things that
they don't know that we do exactly, right?
And that's why again, getting back to content creation, why?
Yeah, my personal take is anybody who wants to create
content, should create content. because you will always have
something that, you know, that somebody else doesn't and they
can learn from you. Exactly right.
Anybody out there. Who's feeling imposter syndrome
in any way, shape, or form. Let me say this very clearly,
you know, something that somebody else doesn't know.
And they don't know everything, I don't know everything.
Patrick doesn't know everything. Like we don't know everything.
There's lots and lots of stuff that we don't know and we still
need to learn or that we may never learn right at you know
the end of the day there's only so many things that you can you
know gain expertise in and it's okay to not know those things
that you don't care about that much.
Yeah, that's actually okay I was going to say because I feel like
if people are open with that and transparent, you can Be an
authority on everything. You can't know everything,
either, if something pops up and you honestly say, I actually
don't know this or maybe this is my perspective, but I'm not
quite sure. And who cares?
If you're right or wrong, right? That is not the essence here and
together, you'll figure it out because usually, you're not by
yourself anyway, but that allows people to be like, okay, they
don't know. I don't know, we'll figure it
out, right? You can have the confidence of
figuring it out, instead of relying on this kind of image of
someone, which is not true. That image that knows everything
because that's, I mean, you're never going to achieve that
yourself. Anyways, so then you're always
stuck with this feeling of not being adequate enough or not
holding yourself up to a certain bar that you've set for
yourself. But I feel like it's all.
It's all your inner perspective, right?
If you like, if you can, just let go of things being
transparent and honest about what, you know, and what you
don't know, still be humble about the things that, you know,
I think that shift in perspective and mindset is going
to bring you further. Then holding onto those feelings
of. I need to know everything and I
don't know. And I feel like I'm behind
because that's, that's not a good feeling to move from and to
learn from. Yeah, I think one of my favorite
takes on humility and I'm blanking on who they were, who
the original the originator of the quote is, but that humility
is not thinking of yourself, not thinking less of yourself, but
thinking of yourself less. And, and one of the Things.
That's kind of core to the conversation.
We're having is that a lot of this stuff is is based on being
inside your own head. Yeah, and one of the advantages
of, you know, Community involvement, whether that's
helping organize events, whether that's speaking at user groups
or things like that, one of the upsides of being involved in
communities like that is that it's other focused, right?
And that can help you get out of your head and not have it be so
much about. Am I A good enough, but I want
to help people. Yeah.
Right. If you're, if you're doing
things for the people out there, you've got less time and energy
to be up here in your head worrying about oh, am I good
enough? Am I a, you know who I know
enough to do this? It's like, no.
Don't worry about whether, you know enough, just go help
people. Yeah, let's go, share Go Topless
thing you can do. Yeah, exactly.
I like that. I'm gonna round it off here and
because I've been I've been hearing some drilling but I
don't think it's being picked up by the mic.
I hope it's hard. It a little bit, a couple of
times, but yeah, exactly. I'm gonna have to see how much
of that came through. Like it was first a long
stretch, it's the first time. This is like man makes a check
if there's going to be some drilling on the floor above us I
guess. But thank you so much for coming
on and sharing. I'm going to put all Andrews
socials in the description below.
Check him out. Let him know you came from our
show and with that being said, Thank you.
So, So much for coming on again, Andrew.
Thank you for having me. We'll see you on the next one.
Thanks for listening. So much for coming on again,
Andrew. Thank you for having me.
We'll see you on the next one. Thanks for listening.