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. 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.