Detailed Notes
This is a short series from our discussion and presentation on ways to improve the Develpreneur site, podcast, and mentoring. We discuss upcoming changes and new suggestions.
Transcript Text
[Music] so where we're at is you know sitting here we've got two months left in 2021. uh amazingly enough yes we've made it through 2020 and almost through 2021 and it's getting to that time of year where you know you sort of look back at what have we done what do we want to do next year the developer newer world is a little different because at this point we've been doing i think we've been on this mentor schedule for two to three years maybe um a lot of what we've done is been has sort of settled in we haven't made any major changes in the last couple of years and that's sort of what i talk about is look at you know looking forward look at a little bit of what we've done but more like what do we want to do next what are some of the things we want to cover so yeah just sort of where we're at so developing yourself this has been around for solidly over five years um where we started the mentor classes about five years ago uh maybe five and a half and those have been running for quite a while we had blogs along the way we've done we've done countless tutorials the youtube channel is about two years old i think i started beginning of january last year so that's you know cranking along got a book that cranked out a couple years ago you know the podcast has been it's and it's just finished its 15th season um in over i think like 525 episodes or something like that so that's just been you know cranking along uh that being said we've got tons and tons of content uh we've been churning it out at a regular basis and there's no you know we've got all kinds of stuff we want to continue to cover so i think that's going to continue but it just seems like a good time to top stop take a breath look around see what we want to do and particularly since a lot of what we've done in the past has been more or less me and michael sitting down and talking through things and look at what we've done what we want to do and build it uh we want to make sure i want to make sure this time we had a little bit more of the community feedback uh and just thoughts and you know ideas and things like that of where we want to go next so generally speaking um the way developer newer is set up is that you know we want to just help people become better developers one of the things becoming much more prevalent is the whole remote work so people are not commuting as much which changes you know things like listening to a podcast while you're commuting back and forth to work you know you don't necessarily need to do that anymore you don't have that drive time but that doesn't mean that you wouldn't do it you know maybe while during your work day you may have and because of taking out that commute time now maybe you have some time where you're a little more freed up to do for example the video tutorials where you can actually sit down you can you know write some code you can do some stuff that's other than simply listening that you get from a podcast from a developer point of view we have uh at this point what you would consider established channels and expectations google knows that we we put content out to the developer nurse site every week have been for years uh we put stuff out to youtube every week and have for a couple of years um even like our vimeo channel doesn't get quite as regularly updated but it does get you know updates so we have places that we put data we have these channels where we've been feeding them we want to continue to feed them we have grown not like a ton but we are slowly growing we're seeing that there's more users and more followers and things like that the goal is really um is really it goes back to just finding ways for for not only not only our community but also just to help us become better how to become better developers what are the things that we need to do they're going to help us grow but in doing so sometimes you get self-focused a little bit you know what you're you know what your your path is what you need to worry about what's your technologies that you're sitting in and you may not be as aware of what else is going on in the world around you so you know we want to make sure that we're we're bringing as many voices as possible into the suggestion pool of you know where do we want to go what we want to do next so right now as we're wrapping up uh 2021 the podcast is on hiatus right now like i said just finished uh season 15. probably do another half dozen maybe a little bit more episodes before the end of the year typically going into thanksgiving and christmas weeks there's sort of like holiday year-end at you know specials or whatever that that get covered there may be one or two other little topics that get thrown in while essentially just sort of taking a break for a little bit here and then likely will start in uh in january start into season 16 uh whatever that happens to be uh this is season 15 is the first one that was uh full of interviews interviewed uh six seven different people wide range uh it was very it was fun to do it was entertaining it was educational wouldn't mind going back to that but it's a different animal to do to set up and do the the interviews it is some of the other things we do not to mention just the focus you know when you've got a topic and you sit down research it and present it and you can easily crank that out for 10 20 30 episodes if you've got interviews or interviewees then you know it they're going to go they're going to vary a little bit more on their their topic so we'll see where we want to go in there going forward but that's definitely one of the things that's uh you know throwing it gonna be thrown out to the crowd is what do we think about the podcast is there something that would make that better or or worse uh the mentor classes uh we do them twice a month for the most part we've been doing twice a month saturday hour and a half for a long time we did it two hours originally then we started to cut it back and we typically you know we hit between one and a half to two hours the format the the content all of that is up for discussion uh as as well as you know how do we want to do it we want them would it be better would it help to move to a different day a different time to change the the time that's included in it another thing is the books there's nothing there's nothing planned right now the monthly email that went out that was you know basically an extra blog article a month and sort of highlights of what's going on that just um i think it's sent out this week i think it's going out next week it's been on hiatus for about a year and a half mostly because i just i actually was i was doing all those and then got into the covent season and totally just lost those fell off of my to-do list stuff um so that's one of those i want to i want to kick back on uh blog articles are minimal outside of what we're pushing for the video tutorials and you know we may or may not go back to to adding blog content that's obviously or that's another thing that's you know it's up for discussion uh speaking those tutorials the currently the primary channel that we're using for our our video and tutorial focus is youtube we've got the developer in our channel there we turned something out we have we have published something every tuesday and thursday for uh nearly two years now it has covered uh some things that we had done in the past like the launch internet business but along the way we have added um a lot of the the mentor classes these series that we did on or sort of just wrapped up on react native that's in there those have gotten sliced and diced to about 15 to 20 minute episodes so we've got those we've got a long series on python and django we've got another long series on working towards python certification and then there's a there's numerous other topics along the way uh that we've covered in that in the last almost two years that's again something that's open for discussion whether we have some better ways maybe or different ways that we could we could produce that so i'm about to open this up for discussion here's some of the things that i'm i would like to get percolating in your your head before we as we get into this discussion is one first and foremost just staying with what we've got is there uh timing scheduling things like that that we that we should consider that may make it you know more useful to you more palatable you uh easier for you to consume uh and this could include things like maybe changing the like the uh the monthly newsletter that comes out you know change it to and maybe help to make it a weekly one with some little summary of like here's what we promoted you know published this week i know some places do that i think we have in the past as well for i know we have i just can't remember if we did it for developer new or not uh is there anything that it's just like nope there's no need for us to do that we might as well just stop putting effort into it are there any new goals or topics or services that you'd like to see from us um you know there are things that we haven't covered are is there some channel or form of content or something like that that we don't provide that would be more useful are there any what can we do you know are there any suggestions for how can we support the community provide tools provide ways to help them help themselves and of course just to reiterate are there any topics or focus that would you'd like us to do and that could be a language that we haven't covered it could be tools that we haven't talked about it could be career paths and theoretical stuff that we maybe haven't spent as much time on for example maybe you know object oriented theory or get more into patterns or any patterns and things like that which just a side note that is um the top topic that we've had is um if you go to like the top ten from the podcast that's the easiest one to see the top ten uh downloaded listen to podcasts uh like 80 of them had to do with patterns in any patterns now some of that may be because just they're very search friendly so you know if you're looking up the the flyweight pattern those are keywords it's easy to you know to search and find those uh but it could be other stuff it just seems like those are areas that make more sense from the developer north side but that's again it's it's up for discussion so i think i'm going to start with um let's start with this is i would sort of open it up throw it out to the floor and just you know based on these things see if there are there's suggestions some feedback want to hear from you what what are your thoughts on all this from probably from sort of from a testing perspective since i'm a test and most of you guys have now mainly from the development background like i would like to see more into uh let me see the database testing because i mean i came across that i know we test database but usually we've never talked about that in class maybe i'd like to see some of that and see you know what spin you as developers have any time it comes to database like i mean how do you test it before it comes let me say to a tester or something like that like okay uh which code like uh sql code pretty much a test i would know i mean not deep like the sql statements something like that i would like to see that maybe adding uh different databases that you come across and and we see how you deal with that that's a good good suggestion i'm taking notes along the way so important if i get a little quiet here but i don't think we've done it's a good area because i don't think we've ever really spent time i mean we've talked about databases here and there but we've never really actually like focused on and spent some time on database development so that actually that could we could have a definitely a small little series even working on that kind of stuff so that's good good suggestion then what else i can think of is like um i like you all developers like of course we deal with ideas like you prefer the kanban or you prefer going by the sprints you know well like to know um what you prefer you know like the way you you when you when you get these user stories do you prefer the sprint or you want to go the kanban way so something like that that's pretty much from me good good i just set the bar highest all right who else is going to jump in [Music] yeah i would love to see first thing first on those terms and schedules kind of looking through the list i love the bi-weekly um approach um we we moved it a couple of times i think it was on tuesday at one point in time and then we hit the saturday stride and it felt good to me um i wasn't able to attend sometimes but it felt like i was able to attend a lot more often on the saturday morning so um in terms of like topics or things that really kind of interest me you know i would love to understand um what you probably don't want to reveal the secret sauce to developer newer being a podcaster being a a youtuber you know and and things like that probably i think i may even recall some a series on something on that nature but you know just talking a little bit about that would be really cool to to dig into um i'm not sure if i'm going too fast but uh the uh the other thing that i had in mind uh was just some of the more um uh let's say uh application architectures uh was it um command query response segregates my responsibility segregate segregation back in for front end um you know all those particular patterns again i could be wrong but i don't recall um you know those application architectures i guess maybe api design architectures um going into those i'd love to see some of those it'd be really cool to see those goods those are all good solutions or suggestions as well yeah it's it's good to hear that uh because it has seemed to work and that's why we sort of stuck with the saturday morning's bi-weekly kind of schedule uh but i just want to make sure that that's that's everybody's still good with that you just you know everybody didn't just fall into a rut and say okay well we'll just deal with it um yeah we have touched on on some of the stuff in the past here and there about the you know the podcaster stuff and the youtube and things like that but um those are always good to come you know swing back around to just because they are they're other ways for us to grow and and sort of lack of better terms show off you know what we've learned uh as developers uh that's why we you know we all have always pushed that people at least have like a blog site or something to go out and just to do it to to have a channel for your content uh it it helps you think through stuff but it also is it's also a great resume thing it's it's amazing how many people are impressed that you you can put out a blog regularly or a podcast or or have a youtube channel or or anything like that and i guess there is some uh there is definitely some uh that it's well earned respect in a sense because it shows that you can say hey i'm going to do this i'm going to stick with it i'm going to yeah i'm going to drive myself to get that stuff done and the yeah the application architecture patterns that's a that's an excellent suggestion because i did go through uh in the podcast we did a we did a pattern season we did an anti-pattern season but really didn't talk about but they were more like software they're more software patterns and architecture patterns and that was one of the things i was trying to think of some ways that to continue exploring that pattern that world of patterns and uh application architecture is one that we haven't spent much time on but that's a that's an excellent suggestion uh because we could do that you know whether it's uh podcast episodes tutorials we can talk about that in the mentor class there's a lot of ways that we can build that in and uh and touch on that more much like david's suggestion about the kanban and sprints and some of the different ways to deal with agile we've we've touched on it in different ways um like the did a whole season on the actual manifesto from the podcast point of view but then taking that stuff forward uh particularly because the agile manifesto is 20 years old now uh taking it into you know modern development and some of the things we haven't talked about like um serverless computing commute computing and micro architectures and some of the micro services and things like that that are they're out there people are going to run into them and there are patterns now in a lot of those areas but we we've never really talked about them so that's another great bunch of suggestions you
Transcript Segments
[Music]
so where we're at is you know sitting
here we've got two months left in 2021.
uh amazingly enough yes we've made it
through 2020 and almost through 2021
and
it's getting to that time of year where
you know you sort of look back at what
have we done what do we want to do next
year
the developer newer world is a little
different
because at this point we've been doing
i think we've been on this mentor
schedule for
two
to three years maybe um
a lot of what we've done is been
has sort of settled in we haven't made
any major changes in the last couple of
years
and
that's sort of what i talk about is look
at you know looking forward look at a
little bit of what we've done but more
like
what do we want to do next what are some
of the things we want to cover
so
yeah just sort of where we're at
so developing yourself this has been
around for
solidly over five years um
where
we started the mentor classes about five
years ago uh maybe five and a half
and those have been running for quite a
while we had blogs along the way we've
done we've done countless tutorials the
youtube channel is about two years old i
think i started beginning of january
last year
so that's you know cranking along
got a book that cranked out a couple
years ago
you know the podcast has been it's and
it's just finished its 15th season
um
in over i think like 525 episodes or
something like that so that's just been
you know cranking along
uh that being said we've got tons and
tons of content
uh we've been churning it out at a
regular basis and there's no
you know we've got all kinds of stuff we
want to continue to cover so i think
that's going to continue
but it just seems like a good time to
top stop take a breath look around
see what we want to do and particularly
since a lot of what we've done in the
past has been
more or less me and michael sitting down
and talking through things and look at
what we've done what we want to do
and build it uh we want to make sure i
want to make sure this time we had a
little bit more
of the community feedback uh and just
thoughts and you know ideas and things
like that of where we want to go next
so
generally speaking
um
the way developer newer is set up is
that you know we want to just help
people become better developers one of
the things becoming much more prevalent
is the whole remote work so people are
not commuting as much which changes you
know things like
listening to a podcast while you're
commuting back and forth to work you
know you don't necessarily need to do
that anymore you don't have that drive
time but that doesn't mean that you
wouldn't do it you know maybe while
during your work day
you may have and because of
taking out that commute time
now maybe you have some time where
you're
a little more freed up to do for example
the video tutorials where you can
actually sit down you can you know write
some code you can do some stuff that's
other than simply listening
that you get from a podcast
from a developer point of view we have
uh at this point what you would consider
established channels and expectations
google knows that we we
put
content out to the developer nurse site
every week
have been for years uh we put stuff out
to youtube
every week and have for a couple of
years
um even like our vimeo channel doesn't
get quite as regularly updated but it
does get you know updates
so
we have
places that we put data we have these
channels where we've been feeding them
we want to continue to feed them
we have grown not like a ton but we are
slowly growing we're seeing that there's
more users and more followers and things
like that
the goal is really
um is really it goes back to just
finding ways for
for not only
not only our community but also just to
help us become better how to become
better developers what are the things
that we need to do
they're going to help us grow
but in doing so sometimes you get
self-focused a little bit you know what
you're you know what your
your path is what you need to worry
about what's your technologies that
you're sitting in
and you may not be as aware of what else
is going on in the world around you so
you know we want to make sure that we're
we're bringing as many voices as
possible into
the suggestion pool of you know where do
we want to go what we want to do next
so right now as we're wrapping up uh
2021
the podcast is on hiatus right now like
i said just finished uh season 15.
probably do another
half dozen
maybe a little bit more episodes before
the end of the year
typically going into thanksgiving and
christmas weeks
there's
sort of like holiday year-end at you
know specials or whatever that that get
covered there may be one or two other
little topics that get thrown in while
essentially just sort of taking a break
for a little bit here
and then likely will start in uh in
january start into season 16 uh whatever
that happens to be
uh this is
season 15 is the first one that was uh
full of interviews interviewed
uh six seven different people
wide range uh it was very
it was fun to do it was entertaining it
was
educational
wouldn't mind going back to that but
it's a different
animal to do
to set up and do the the interviews it
is some of the other things we do
not to mention just the focus you know
when you've got a topic
and you sit down research it and present
it and you can easily crank that out for
10 20 30 episodes
if you've got interviews or interviewees
then
you know it they're going to go they're
going to vary a little bit more on their
their topic so we'll see where we want
to go in there
going forward but that's definitely one
of the things that's uh
you know throwing it gonna be thrown out
to the crowd is
what do we think about the podcast is
there something that would make that
better or or worse
uh the mentor classes
uh we do them twice a month for the most
part we've been doing twice a month
saturday
hour and a half for
a long time we did it two hours
originally then we started to cut it
back
and we typically you know we hit between
one and a half to two hours
the format the the content all of that
is up for
discussion uh as as well as you know how
do we want to do it we want them would
it be better would it help to move to a
different day a different time to
change the the time that's included in
it
another thing is the books there's
nothing there's nothing planned right
now
the monthly email that went out that was
you know basically an extra blog article
a month and
sort of highlights of what's going on
that
just um
i think it's sent out this week i think
it's going out next week
it's been on hiatus for about a year and
a half mostly because i just
i actually was i was doing all those and
then got into the covent season and
totally
just lost those fell off of my to-do
list stuff
um
so that's one of those i want to i want
to kick back on uh blog articles are
minimal outside of
what we're pushing for the video
tutorials
and
you know we may or may not go back to to
adding blog content that's obviously or
that's another thing that's you know
it's up for discussion
uh speaking those tutorials
the currently the primary channel that
we're using for our
our video and tutorial focus is youtube
we've got the developer in our channel
there we turned something out
we have we have
published something every tuesday and
thursday for
uh nearly two years now
it has covered
uh some things that we had done in the
past like the launch internet business
but along the way we have added
um a lot of the the mentor classes these
series that we did on or sort of just
wrapped up on react native that's in
there
those have gotten sliced and diced to
about 15 to 20 minute episodes
so we've got those we've got a long
series on
python and django we've got another long
series on
working towards python certification
and then there's a there's numerous
other topics along the way
uh that we've covered in that in the
last almost two years
that's again something that's open
for discussion whether we
have some better ways maybe or different
ways that we could we could produce that
so i'm about to open this up for
discussion here's some of the things
that i'm i would like to get percolating
in your
your head before we as we get into this
discussion is one
first and foremost just staying with
what we've got is there
uh timing scheduling things like that
that we
that we should consider that may make it
you know more useful to you more
palatable you uh easier for you to
consume
uh and this could include things like
maybe changing the
like the uh the monthly newsletter that
comes out
you know change it to and maybe help to
make it a weekly one with some little
summary of like here's what we promoted
you know published this week i know some
places do that
i think we have in the past as well for
i know we have i just can't remember if
we did it for developer new or not
uh is there anything that it's just like
nope there's no need for us to do that
we might as well just stop putting
effort into it
are there any new goals or topics or
services that you'd like to see from us
um you know there are things that we
haven't covered
are is there some
channel or form of content or something
like that that we don't provide that
would be more useful
are there any
what can we do you know are there any
suggestions for how can we support the
community provide tools provide ways to
help them help themselves
and of course just to reiterate are
there any topics or focus that
would you'd like us to do and that could
be
a language that we haven't covered it
could be tools that we haven't talked
about it could be
career paths and
theoretical stuff that we maybe haven't
spent as much time on for example
maybe you know
object oriented theory
or
get more into patterns or any patterns
and things like that which just a side
note that is
um the top
topic that we've had
is um
if you go to like the top ten from the
podcast that's the easiest one to see
the top ten
uh downloaded listen to podcasts
uh like 80 of them had to do with
patterns in any patterns
now some of that may be because just
they're very search friendly so you know
if you're looking up the
the flyweight pattern
those are keywords it's easy to you know
to search and find those
uh but it could be other stuff it just
seems like those are
areas that make more sense from
the developer north side but
that's again
it's it's up for discussion
so i think i'm going to start with
um
let's start with this
is i would sort of open it up throw it
out to the floor
and just you know based on these things
see if there are there's suggestions
some feedback
want to hear from you what what are your
thoughts on all this
from probably from
sort of
from a testing perspective since i'm a
test and most of you guys have now
mainly from the development background
like i would like to see more into uh
let me see the database testing because
i mean i came across that
i know we test database but usually
we've never talked about that in class
maybe i'd like to see some of that and
see you know what spin you as developers
have any time it comes to database like
i mean
how do you test it before it comes let
me say to a tester or something like
that like okay
uh which code
like uh sql code pretty much
a test i would know i mean not deep
like the
sql statements something like that i
would like to see that
maybe adding uh different databases that
you come across and
and we see how you
deal with that
that's a good good suggestion i'm taking
notes along the way so
important if i get a little quiet here
but
i don't think we've done
it's a good area because i don't think
we've ever really spent time
i mean we've talked about databases here
and there but we've never really
actually like focused on and spent some
time on database development
so that actually
that could we could have a definitely a
small little series even working on that
kind of stuff so that's good good
suggestion
then what else i can think of is like um
i like you all developers like of course
we deal with ideas like you prefer
the kanban or you prefer going by the
sprints you know well like to know um
what you prefer you know like the way
you you when you when you get these user
stories do you prefer the sprint or you
want to go the kanban way so something
like that
that's pretty much from me
good good i just set the bar highest all
right who else is going to jump in
[Music]
yeah i would love to see
first thing first on those terms and
schedules kind of looking through the
list i love the
bi-weekly um approach um we we moved it
a couple of times i think it was on
tuesday at one point in time and then we
hit the saturday stride and it felt good
to me um i wasn't able to attend
sometimes but it felt like i was able to
attend a lot more often
on the saturday morning so
um
in terms of like
topics or
things that really kind of interest me
you know i would love to understand
um
what you probably don't want to reveal
the secret sauce to developer newer
being a podcaster being a a youtuber you
know and and things like that probably i
think i may even recall
some a series on something on that
nature but you know just talking a
little bit about that would be really
cool to to dig into
um
i'm not sure if i'm going too fast but
uh
the
uh the other thing that i had in mind uh
was just some of the more um
uh let's say
uh application architectures uh was it
um command query response segregates my
responsibility segregate segregation
back in for front end
um
you know all those particular patterns
again i could be wrong but i don't
recall um
you know those application architectures
i guess maybe api design architectures
um
going into those i'd love to see some of
those it'd be really cool to see
those goods those are all good solutions
or suggestions as well yeah it's it's
good to hear that
uh because it has seemed to work and
that's why we sort of stuck with the
saturday morning's bi-weekly kind of
schedule uh but i just want to make sure
that that's
that's everybody's still good with that
you just you know everybody didn't just
fall into a rut and say okay well we'll
just deal with it
um
yeah we have touched on on some of the
stuff in the past here and there about
the you know the podcaster stuff and the
youtube and things like that but
um
those are always good to come you know
swing back around to just because they
are
they're other ways for us to grow and
and sort of
lack of better terms show off you know
what we've learned
uh as developers uh that's why we you
know we all have always pushed that
people at least have like a blog site or
something to go out and just to do it to
to have a channel for your content uh it
it helps you think through stuff but it
also is it's also a great resume thing
it's it's amazing how many people are
impressed that you
you can put out a blog regularly or a
podcast or or have a
youtube channel or
or anything like that
and i guess there is some
uh there is definitely some uh that it's
well earned respect in a sense because
it shows that you can say hey i'm going
to do this i'm going to stick with it
i'm going to yeah i'm going to
drive myself to get that stuff done
and the yeah the application
architecture patterns that's a that's an
excellent suggestion because
i did go through
uh in the podcast we did a we did a
pattern season we did an anti-pattern
season but really didn't talk about but
they were more like software they're
more software patterns and architecture
patterns and that was one of the things
i was trying to think of some ways that
to continue
exploring that pattern that world of
patterns
and uh application architecture is one
that we haven't spent much time on but
that's a that's an excellent suggestion
uh because we could do that
you know whether it's uh podcast
episodes tutorials we can talk about
that in the mentor class there's a lot
of ways that we can build that in
and uh and touch on that more much like
david's suggestion about the kanban and
sprints and some of the different ways
to deal with agile we've we've touched
on it in different ways um
like the did a whole season on the
actual manifesto
from the podcast point of view but then
taking that stuff forward
uh particularly because the agile
manifesto is 20 years old now uh taking
it into you know modern development and
some of the things we haven't talked
about like
um
serverless computing commute computing
and micro architectures and some of the
micro services and things like that
that are
they're out there people are going to
run into them and there are patterns now
in a lot of those areas but we we've
never really talked about them so that's
another
great bunch of suggestions
you