You have a crazy story, Sam. Episode one kind of opened it up, or part one. Part two talked a little bit about the product, what you were building at that time, and at that time you were knee-deep in open source in Cheddar, which you’re still knee-deep in open source and whatnot, but you’ve since sold Cheddar. We talked a bit about some of your past story where you were engaged, things happened You talked personally about your life, and a lot of people who follow you really took to part one and part two, and then obviously part three followed up with you doing Seesaw, and being VP of product – or was it VP of engineering?

• Drew Wilson On Twitter: @flyosity I Feel The Opposite For Macbook Pro
• Drew Wilson On Twitter: @flyosity I Feel The Opposite For Macbook

I think it’s a big thing for my personal motivation. I say a lot of what I’m working on and things I’m doing; if I don’t mention anything for a while – I feel like someone somewhere might care and be like “I wonder why he hasn’t shared anything in a while.” I know there’s probably no one that’s following me that closely, like “Oh, he hasn’t open-sourced in like three days What’s he doing?” But I don’t know, it’s kind of like – people notice what I’m doing, and it keeps me accountable to my own standards, that it’s more public. I have my fat.soff.es, it’s like my weight graph from my Fitbit scale. It’s great, yeah. It’s just kind of like – this is her first week back at work. The honeymoon is over and we’re kind of like getting into the rhythm of things.

But yeah, it’s been great. We took a road trip from Kentucky to San Francisco, and along the way stopped at a bunch of places I’ve lived, to see some friends and show her around places I’ve been It was a really good time, and now we’re – I walked her to work on her first day; it’s just like ten minutes from our apartment.

Drew Wilson On Twitter: @flyosity I Feel The Opposite For Macbook Pro

It’s a big adjustment for both of us, but it’s been really great. Yeah, so my best friend in high school, who actually I made my first product I sold online with, which is Countdown Maker, it was a Mac app Anyway, he is now married to her sister, and at the time they were dating, in high school, obviously. So I’d go and hang out with him, because he was in college, in Lexington, so he’d come back for the weekends and wanna hang out with his girlfriend and hang out with me, so we just hung out together at her house. And Ellen was there, so we got to know each other for years and years and years, because like, at Christmas time or whenever we were back in Louisville, we’d all hang out. We had kind of like dated a little several years ago and it didn’t really work out, because I had just moved to Oklahoma, and not being in the same city is pretty tough.

So we reconnected when I was back; my mom was moving back to Louisville briefly, so I helped her move. While I was there for that, Ellen and I hung out briefly. We started talking on the phone a lot, because I was back in San Francisco, and it was like “Well, I’d really like to date you” and she was like “Yeah, I’d like to date you too.” It was like “Well, this won’t work if we’re not in the same city, so one of us should move.” I was like “Okay, well I’m only gonna move if I’m gonna marry you, kind of serious”, and she’s like “Yeah, I’m that serious too”, and I was like “Cool.” She came out to visit a couple times, and then I went back to Louisville and proposed, and then moved. So we kind of decided on a phone call like “Cool, we’re gonna get married and this is gonna be awesome.”. Because we had known each other for so long, and we were like, “Okay, cool.” So we went on two official dates before we actually got engaged. So yeah, it was pretty crazy.

I moved to Louisville I had only been at my new apartment for like three months or something, so that was pretty painful, but I ended up getting rid of it. We hung out in Louisville, and my mom actually ended up moving away from Louisville, so I ended up taking over her apartment, the one I helped her move into when I reconnected with Ellen.

It was kind of funny. Then after the wedding, a couple weeks ago, we packed up all our stuff and moved out here. It’s been wild. There’s a couple things that you’ve said in there that we can key off of. I’ll make a couple points, and we can go whichever direction you’d like to One, it seems like you’ve become a professional stuff seller. Two, you’re not bashful about making decisions quickly, but being stern with that decision.

For example, you knew Ellen for a while - you just told the story and all that - but at the same time you quickly came to a conclusion that this was the next step for you and it was the best course of action. And ever her, too - following suit, to say basically yes over the phone. Yeah, so stuff is just stuff; none of it is that special.

I don’t really have too many sentimental things. I mean, that stuff I usually have hung on to, or at least some of it But most of it, like a couch or a TV or whatever - who cares? I’ll just get a new one if I really need a new one. But a lot of the time it’s like “I don’t need one, so whatever.” I had a couch I really liked, and Ellen didn’t really like it that much, so I was like “Oh, whatever. We’ll just get a new one.” I don’t really – you know, and right now we don’t have a couch, because we haven’t Like, it’s not here yet, because we’ve paid for it and it’s gonna take forever to get here. And it’s fine; we can survive without a couch, it’s not a big deal.

I don’t know. I mean, especially when I was trying to do Nothing Magical or Cheddar or whatever, and I sold all my stuff to have a little extra money and focus, it was really cool, and then later I decided I actually really wanted a couch, so I went and bought a couch So it’s whatever. I don’t know, it’s not a big deal to buy and sell stuff To me.

I don’t know. Yeah, and what I enjoy most is making things Obviously, outside of being with people I love. So it’s like, I don’t need a bunch of stuff – I mean, I’m not gonna sit in my apartment and watch TV; that’s not something I do very often. I’m totally happy sitting on the floor and making something on my computer, than having a bunch of stuff in my apartment. So on both levels, there’s really no reason for me to be attached to things. Granted, I really enjoy a nice thing, so I guess it’s kind of why I go in cycles of not having stuff, because I don’t need it, and then like “Well, I actually enjoy stuff, so maybe I’ll get some more.” I’ve come in and out of that a couple times. And I guess as far as making decisions, I’m usually like – I’ll think about it, and I remember - this is kind of funny - I used to get in trouble when I was a little kid, because my mom would be like “Tell me something” and I’d be like “No.” Or like I’d give an answer real quick, and she’d be like “You didn’t even think about it”, and I was like “No, I totally did.

Like, here are the reasons Here’s point a, b and c on why this is the answer.” She was like, “Oh, you need to communicate that you’ve thought through these things, instead of just give your answer.” I was like, “Okay, well Doesn’t everyone think this quickly?” I don’t really think it’s odd, because how I’ve always done things. That caused problems in my earlier – like when I was 18 and I had my first programming job. People would propose something, and I’d just be like “No, it’s dumb.” They were like “Why? You didn’t even think about it.”. Yeah, totally. I was like “Here are the reasons why your idea is stupid.” So I don’t know, I guess I think things through pretty quickly; I don’t know if it’s different than how everyone else does Apparently, I don’t know.

But yeah, I mean, I’ll just evaluate the options, and land on a decision, and “Cool, that’s what I’m gonna do.” Rarely do I second-guess a decision I made. I mean, occasionally – I guess this has pros and cons, but I’m totally open to admit when I’m wrong. Usually, I’ll just kind of evaluate the situation, pick something and do it. There’s no sense in being kind of like “Well, I’m gonna think about this for a month, and then not be real confident in my decision.” I’m just like “I’m gonna do it.”.

I mean, just because this is the fourth time you’ve been on the show and listeners can literally go back and listen to part one, two and three and then now four, they can see how your quick decision-making has changed and impacted your life; they can see that through the story you’ve told about your life and what you’ve been doing, everything from Cheddar to Nothing Magical to open-sourcing things, to moving back and forth, selling stuff, getting married You know, all these different things are effects or evidence of the impact of you doing that. Yeah, I guess the only – occasionally, when I think about the past couple years and what I’m doing now, I’ll think about Like, the offer at GitHub comes up a lot; I’m just like “I wonder if I should have done that”, occasionally. And then I’m always like, “You know what, I’m really happy doing what I’m doing.” Historically, I’m not good at working for someone else, or I don’t enjoy it long-term. I’d rather be making my own things. I don’t know, I’m really happy with the decisions I’ve made and where I am. Life is really good. I mean, realistically, probably not.

And then they’d probably be like “Well, we’re not really looking for someone that’s just gonna be here a year.” I was like “No, I know.” I mean, if it was something I really wanted to do and changed my outlook on things, it could probably work out, but It’s not something I’m interested in. I mean, they’re amazing people and an amazing place to work; if I had a different mindset, I would absolutely love to work there, but I don’t think it’s something I’ll do anytime soon, or ever. I don’t know. If I’m starting my own thing again, which I guess we can get to - you know, there’s investors and such out here. And not that I’m really looking for investment, but I heard one of my friends explain it this way - he was like, there’s definitely investors in Texas and Kentucky and other places I’ve lived, but they don’t really understand technology, like apps and whatnot So they’re like “I don’t know about this.

I have invested in oil, and that’s made me money”, or horses, or whatever that Kentucky has. Out here, everyone kind of like gets it, and it’s not from like just investors, it’s kind of like everyone. I feel like the things I do are more appreciated, which feels good. Obviously, the weather is spectacular all the time. If you want winter, you can drive three hours to Tahoe and go snowboarding if you want; the beach - you can drive South a couple hours and go surfing That’s really awesome.

It’s always perpetually spring, and then you can choose a different season to go to temporarily, if you’d like. I have a lot of friends here I don’t know, it’s really good.

It’s nice being around many people, versus like, the only person that’s doing anything remotely what I’m doing. I know two other developers in Kentucky; both are amazing guys, but it’s kind of depressing to be so alone professionally. I don’t know.

What about the – one common thing that comes up with moving to San Francisco, Silicon Valley, that area of the world is 1) cost of living, 2) traffic, and just the saturation of the job market, and I guess it depends on your perspective In your case, you’re building something for yourself, or your own thing, so it’s a little different because you’re not trying to get hired. But what do you have to say about the cost of living, traffic and the saturation level of – I guess the opposite side of what you were just talking about?

So it’s been kind of a nice break Yeah, it was crazy. I was crossing an intersection, and I looked, and I saw the car, but the light was red for them, so I was like “Oh, it’s fine. I will just go, because they have a red light”, and they just totally ran the light and hit unintelligible I did a full flip, and it dented my frame It was really crazy.

My bike was really jacked up; it was like $200 to fix. And it was crazy, because I was on the phone with Ellen at the time, with my earbuds. She was always like “You weren’t paying attention” and I was like “No, they ran the light. It totally wasn’t my fault.”. My knee was kind of bloody, but besides that I kind of like t-bowed, that’s how I landed, one knee down. I guess it’s the best exp– you can see what I’m saying. It was crazy, because I didn’t wear my It was the first day back from proposing, and I was coming back for a couple weeks and then moving back to San Francisco after that Or to Louisville.

So I forgot my helmet, because I put it away and I hadn’t been back for a while. I always wear my helmet, but I had forgotten it So I did a full flip, like a barrel, I guess; not head over heels, but sideways. And I landed on my knee, which was crazy People on the side came over and were like “That was incredible!

Are you okay?” I was like, “Yeah”, which was amazi– you know, had I hit my probably would have been hurt pretty badly, because they were going pretty fast. So I was really thankful. So obviously, cost of living, we’ve just talked about that; traffic is a non-issue for you because you bike everywhere I guess if you are hired somewhere and you do have to travel, what’s the likelihood that if you live and work in the city – what is the cost of living versus having to go places cost? Not so much rough, actual numbers, but You said before - just to kind of give you some perspective of my question - you couldn’t imagine making less than six figures, which I would think that that would be the case for sure, living out there; it’s like minimum wage is six figures, you know? Ellen uses it for work, because with her job she travels a little bit. She’s an auditor, so she goes and drives to the company’s office and audits them for a couple weeks, and then whatever. Usually it’s not in the city, so she’ll have to drive.

But if it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t have a car Because as a software engineer, you’re like unintelligible from your apartment to work; you don’t really need to drive anywhere, unless you wanna go to Tahoe, or something. And obviously, I work from home now, since I’m a contractor, so it doesn’t – I never really drive. I had lunch with a friend in Cupertino today, otherwise I wouldn’t have driven at all this week, so. Yeah Well, let’s talk about some different stuff. We talked about your trip back to San Francisco and how you’re excited about that and the opportunities there. I think to kind of summarize that point and move on would be that there’s a high cost of living, but the access to the things that revolve around the kind of lifestyle you wanna live, build the kind of things you wanna build are more accessible and closer to reach in that area of the world, versus Kentucky, maybe even Houston, Texas, where I’m at.

Yeah, I think I mentioned this a little in part one - maybe not, but I had kind of always wanted to try it, and heard that this was – you know, I’d just see people, like, this is how everyone is as far as like, you know, people that work at Twitter, or GitHub, or whatever I could only imagine knowing someone that works at any of those companies I’m a fan of, and I was just like, “Well, I’m just gonna do it, you know? I’m just gonna find a job and I’m gonna do it.” And in like less than a week of job searching I had an offer, with a moving bonus, and I moved out here and did it. At the time I was fairly unknown, hadn’t really done anything notable except Bible, my first app. If it’s something you wanna do, just do it. It’s way easier than I think people think it is Because everyone was hiring. If you’re a software engineer or a designer, you can for sure get a job out here.

There’s tons of startups and they’re all hiring, and it’s like, well, if they fail, whatever; you’ll just go get another job, because everyone’s still hiring. No, it’s totally real. I might be over-committed, we’ll see. I’m kind of behind for this week already, but Yeah, I’m doing – I have a couple longer-term or bigger contracts right now that I’m working on, and because of my rate, I’ll be able to take some time off once I finish my current commitments, and work on whatever products I wanna work on.

I have a couple in mind I’m really excited about. So I’m kind of just doing this to build up some buffer and some savings, and emergency fund and what not for my wife and I, and once we kind of have a big enough buffer, I’ll just take some time off and work on a product. If it doesn’t take off, I’ll just do more contract work. I’ve found the solution to making me happy while doing contract work – because in the past I’ve really not enjoyed it Now that I’ve kind of figured it out, I’m enjoying it a lot, so it’s good.

So I’m making a library that – I don’t have to really work on the application. They’re integrating some of my technology into their app, to save time and stuff. Then I’m working on an app with Drew Wilson called Footage It’s a video editor for Mac; I’m making their full effects engine for doing video effects.

So two things that are kind of like my own project, and I don’t have to work with anyone else, which is kind of nice So I kind of just do my thing and hand it off, and everyone’s happy. I’m enjoying it a lot. Those are two people I really enjoy working with, as far as like on a project basis - with Drew, and then my friends over at Over. It’s been really good. It’s kind of a funny story I had overheard Drew – like, we both spoke at a conference in Miami, and I’d overheard him on a call with Josh Long They were talking about Execute, and were like “Oh, we should make a blog for this.” So I’m just typing on my computer and I just overhear Drew, because we’re in this small room And he’s like “Yeah, I wish there was something better Everything’s kind of too complicated, and nothing really looks nice.

Tumblr takes forever to make pretty We just need to make a simple blogging thing. Whatever, we’ll just figure something out.” I was like, “Man, that’s a good idea. I should make this”, thinking to myself, just totally overhearing Drew. And then kind of separately later I was wanting to work on a markdown editor, because I was kind of frustrated with unintelligible and wanted to do some crazy thing. So I started working on a Mac app and tweeted some screenshots, and then Drew DM’ed me, he was like “Dude, we should make a blogging app, and there could be a Mac app for it.” I was like, “Yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about, because I overheard your conversation in Miami.” laughter So we kind of got excited about it and talked on Skype for a couple hours, and like, okay, I went and built it. He’s funny, he always fun expressions.

laughs So yeah, it’s been really good. We’ve taken it – I mean, we had kind of both had different things in mind when we started, and to kind of come together with a combination of ideas And it’s turned out much better I think than if either of us had done it on their own. It’s really good. We have – our iOS update is coming out really soon, for iOS 7; that’s really exciting, and working on the Mac app as well, though slower Mac development is the worst. Anyway, it’s a really fun side-project; tons of people use it, which is kind of crazy, because we don’t really promote it that much. There’s a lot of people using it, so it’s pretty cool.

Yeah, a published user is a metric we track a lot. So we have a couple – we have one paid add-on right now; we’re adding a couple more really soon. So it’s kind of like “Pay if you want to. You don’t have to.” It’ll always be free forever, but there’s add-ons, and we’re hoping to do pretty well with all the add-ons once we get a little more situated.

The only one we have right now is custom domain. You can have SamSoffes.com instead of Sam.roon.io.

But I keep the Roon one to kind of promote it a little. What’s the plan there? You mentioned some numbers there in terms of how many you have, and some lightweight paid features, and potentially – you’d mentioned somewhere down the road a Mac app, an iOS app and whatnot What is the plan with this?

Because if you look at the design, maybe the listeners that know Roon and know you and know Drew and what you guys have built - it’s in the same camp as something like Medium, so how do you guys see what you’re building versus what they’re building and what the plan might be in comparison to what they’re doing? Yeah, so Leah Culver wrote a blog post recently - I think it was her, or maybe someone else But it was “Medium is not your blog, it’s a place to share your writing”, which I think is pretty interesting. We had kind of like thought of it in a similar way Because Medium owns all of your stuff, and it’s this curated thing of pretty good writing, and we wanted to make more like a blog that anyone can use, that’s less closed off, or whatever. So that’s why we give you subdomains, instead of this crazy URL. And then we have – from the very beginning we added you can download an archive, like this file of everything you’ve ever written, all the images you’ve uploaded Like, “Here’s where all of your stuff is, in markdown.

Take it and do whatever you want with it.” That was important to us, to kind of like “This is more like yours and you can kind of do what you want with it” and less of this closed off thing. There’s definitely competition in the writing space now that wasn’t there that long ago, and we actually started working on Roon before Medium started sending out a bunch of invites. We were kind of like “Oh, I guess they’re around now”.

That’s not really our goal. The way Drew and I think about building things, it’s more like we’re gonna build something we wanna use, and we’re gonna enjoy working on it, and if it makes a bunch of money, then that’s awesome. If not, it’s like whatever. I mean, I’d hope to break even on server costs with add-ons, and we’re close(ish). If it can pay for itself and just run, I’ll be totally happy.

And if it makes us a billion dollars, I’ll also be totally happy. We’re not looking to sell it and the whole point of it isn’t to get acquired, it’s just to make something that people want. I used to say – maybe I still have it somewhere, but it was like “I make products people want to use” was like my bio for a bit, but I thought it sounded too pretentious But that’s kind of the goal, to make something people want, it’s not to get acquired, or whatever. Well, I think Roon is pretty neat. I think you guys did a great job, and especially since you already had a lot of the – I know you did a bunch of crazy stuff with markdown parsing and what not with Cheddar, so to translate that into what is now Roon and all the Because the way I see you, at least, is like you move on to things that you’ve built on what you’ve done previously. So every new step for you is building on what you’ve done before.

You climb stairs, versus kind of going down this plateaued path; your next thing is building on what you’ve done before. Yeah, especially on iOS. I think that’s part of the reason I have so many open source projects, because it’s like every time I come up to a problem, I’ll solve it and make a thing for it, and I can use it in the next app. Seesaw has a ton – most of the libraries we were using were all written by me, because it’s problems I’ve solved in the past and this is how I do things And I’m gonna do it again, because there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel every time.

Actually, the markdown stuff in Roon has nothing to do with the Cheddar, it’s completely different, actually. But it’s still the same kind of idea. I actually invented two new markdown things and the GitHub folks merged it in. Drew added this little blur around it, or like an outer glow or whatever; it looks really nice.

But yeah, it’s totally like “Yay, now I can –” because I was really unhappy that I can’t use the highlight, because that’s totally my thing And it’s really cool now to see other people on Roon blogging and using the highlight. I was like “This is amazing!

This is how I wanna read things. I just wanna read the highlighted parts if I don’t really care that much.” Actually, someone ported that stuff to like a Javascript one, or People like the new stuff we added, so it’s pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely. So I knew that I wanted to leave to work on my own thing, because I was not super excited about what we were working on anymore. And I didn’t want them to give me three weeks off and pay for my move and then quit in a couple months, because that’s just unfair to them, because that’s a ton of money. So I was like “You know what, guys?

Here’s the deal - I can stay some more, but I’m gonna take three weeks off for my honeymoon, or we can do this now.” Obviously, it would be easier for me if we didn’t do it, so I could continue to get paid, but if that’s what you guys wanna do, that’s fine. I wanna do what’s right with you guys.

They were like “We can just, you know – at the end of the week be done.” I was like “Cool. It works for me.” So yeah, we worked on Everlapse There’s a new update coming out really soon that’s all iOS 7; actually Drew designed a good part of it, which was kind of fun. We brought him on as a contractor. So it was a really good experience, and obviously Drew and I don’t work on it anymore; they’ve kind of took it over and made it their own. It was really fun to work there and everyone was really awesome, but I kind of like – we were making something that I wasn’t that excited about. I don’t really need another social network, and that’s kind of what they wanted to make, social networks.

I was like “I’m more excited about making tools that people want, than a new way for people to connect with each other.” I mean, there’s obviously people that want that and enjoy that, but that’s not personally what I’m into So it was just hard for me to stay motivated on stuff that I probably won’t really use. I’d already kind of had some – I was talking with the Over guys a little bit and they really wanted to hire me, and it was like “Well, we can do some contract stuff if you want.” They were like, “Okay, yeah. Let’s do that.” The timing worked out perfectly, to just leave Seesaw and start on the contract with Over. Financially that helped me bridge the gap and make the transition. It’s been really good. Sometimes the transition is a little painful, from getting a paycheck to not getting a paycheck, but it wasn’t too bad.

So I have a 50-hour/month contract with Over right now. We have the end of October already locked up, so it’s like another month after this month. And it’s great, I really enjoy working with them and I’m fine to continue doing that. That’ll kind of pay the bills, and doing this project on Footage with Drew is gonna build up some buffer. I can of plan to just kind of back off how much work I’m doing, because right now I’m working a lot to kind of just build up some buffer.

So I plan to back off, and I’ll probably still continue to work for Over for the foreseeable future, and work on some products I have in mind that I’m really excited to work on. That’s what I really enjoy doing, it’s making new things And to work on Roon, and whatever else. But I have a physical product in mind that I’m really excited about. I’m really bad at hardware, so I’ll probably take forever to make that, but that’s kind of what’s at the top of my list right now.

It’s hilarious Apple didn’t’ introduce one yesterday, on the new iPhone event I was really nervous, like if Apple introduces one, I probably won’t make it anymore, because it’ll be awesome. But they didn’t announce one. So I won’t really say what makes mine special, because I feel like that would give away too much, but it should be really cool.

I have a couple friends that are designers that are excited to work on it. Everyone I tell about it is just really excited, when I tell them the specifics So it’s been really encouraging, because it was kind of just like “Oh, maybe I’ll work on this”, and everyone I tell is like “You have to make this!” It’ll probably take a really long time. Once I get a prototype, I’ll maybe Kickstart it, or something, but But yeah, it should be good. I’m just excited, because I’m totally in over my head; I don’t know hardware at all, so it’s fun to learn something totally new, so I’m enjoying it a lot. Yeah, I mean I can make iPhone apps for the rest of my life, or however long iPhone’s around, but that’s not fun; I know how to make an iPhone app, and – like I said, I kind of use the same things every time. All of the hard problems are – I mean, not all, but a lot of the hard things are solved, because this is how I do it, and I’ll just do it the same in every app, and it has lost its excitement.

I remember one of my first contract things when I was 16 or something, someone hired me to make a YouTube rip-off, and I knew nothing about video encoding and servers and stuff. I was like “Cool, yeah, I can totally make this for you.” They were like, “Okay.” I had no idea.

I mean, I try to make a smartwatch and like totally fail and waste a couple thousand dollars on parts Like, whatever. That’s not the end of the world. That’s how I look at most things, it’s like “What’s the worst that could happen?” I mean, I guess now that I have a wife to support, I can’t be as risky financially, which is totally fine. I’m not angry about it, or anything.

It’s just probably healthy to not lose every penny on some idea and have to work back from nothing Which is kind of fun, by the way, but anyway. But not, it’s good I’m finding other ways to take risks and learn things, while still being safe and responsible. It’s a really exciting time. I’ll work on this watch thing, and if it doesn’t work out, then whatever, I’ll make something else. Maybe I’ll work on that quantified self thing that we mentioned earlier. I don’t know. That’s definitely a neat idea.

I think that a lot of people are approaching that market, and probably 90% of them don’t have quite the understanding you do of technology or how to actually execute and build something. I don’t really like Nike things, but There’s a million reasons to not do something, but who cares? When I was in Texas, I was like “Man, it’d be cool to move to San Francisco. You know what, I’m just gonna do it.” Two weeks later I’m moving to San Francisco. And not to say you have to make all your decisions super rationally, but I think what there is to lose is a lot less than people think about I mean, the risks of doing something that could have a huge benefit are less than people think about I don’t know. If you wanna get into open source or development or whatever, just do it.

Just go and do it. Even if it’s not the best way to get started, you’re starting, and that’s better than not starting.

That’s how I learn anything, really Like, “Okay, I wanna make a smartwatch.” Well, crap. I need to find a bunch of electronic components and connect them So what components do I need? Okay, I’m gonna search around for which processor I should get. And I probably won’t even ship with this one, but at least it’s something to learn; I’m gonna go learn something. Anyway Just do it. Another question we came up with on this show which I think is kind of fitting for you - I’m totally not sure who you’re gonna say and hopefully I don’t catch you completely off-guard and you’ve gotta think about it for too long If you do, then we’ll give you a minute and we can enter a different question, but we’ve got two more questions.

First one is founder hero So one thing I think is kind of neat on this show is that we have some neat people come on and talk about their life; every Founders Talk is a little different, and I think yours have been the most different than we’ve had on the show, but Who’s a founder out there that you totally look up to? It could be somebody that’s helped you along the way, it could be somebody you’ve never met - I have no idea But who’s a founder hero to you? I really look up to Drew Wilson, and I work with him on a lot of projects now, so I got to know him pretty well.

The other night he made Namebox in like two nights. It was just crazy. He had an idea and just executed it, and unintelligible and put it out there. That’s so inspiring, because you can totally just get in the – because you know, we’re working on Roon and stuff together, and he’s like “You know what, I just really wanna ship something big, and we’re not really in a spot to do that right now on Roon, because we’re working on other things, and that’s fine, so I’m just gonna go make something big and launch it” I love that “I’m just gonna go do it.” There’s no reason not to. I think that’s really great. Yeah, I thought I might try it out, especially since it’s something I’m so terrible at It’s gonna take a super long time to show anything, like “Here’s a circuit board that can put a dot on the screen!” A month later, well, that’s still all I have to show, just because it’s gonna be such a slow and boring process Because for a while - I joke with my wife that like, it’s gonna be a messenger bag watch; I’ll have to wear this bag with an extension cord, to like have this thing on your wrist, because it’s gonna be so much electronics I’ll have to work on making it smaller once I get it working. I kind of thought, like, until it gets at least to like – it can at least fit on my wrist and tell me the time, I probably wouldn’t talk about it a whole lot.

I don’t know, maybe I’ll change my mind. For 7, and iPhone 5 support, and iPad. A bunch of people really like it, which is great; I don’t have any stocks anymore, because I sold them all, because I went broke, so I don’t really care about it that much.

But people really love it, so maybe I’ll work on it. Yeah, it’s pretty much just like, I’m enjoying contracting, and when I get a big enough offer I’ll sit down and pick something to work on, and work on it. Right now I’m most excited about the watch, just because I don’t know anything about it. Maybe I’ll be more public about it, so I don’t get frustrated and give up Because I feel like if I tweet about it, then I can’t really give up, so maybe I’ll be public about it. Well, it’s certainly been a long road for us. It’s definitely been fun having you back on the show.

Packard bell easynote mz35 drivers for mac. I’m happy for you and Ellen, I’m happy for your new chapter in life, and definitely thanks for making the time to come on this show.

Some projects choose to use Gratipay. If you take a look at Gratipay's website their goal is to provide voluntary payments (and eventually a payroll system) to contributors for open work. Any team/project can apply to join Gratipay, but the main stipulation is that 'public issue tracker with documentation for self-onboarding, and be willing to use our payroll feature.' Once payroll rolls out contributors set their own compensation. Some more information on that can be found here: Previously Gratipay was Gittip, and worked much like Patreon - essentially a donation or tip system.

There's still some work to be done, but I've been following this project for awhile. I've been working full time now on other stuff, but I keep up with their updates, and Chad (founder) is a great dude. I'm not a contributor but I've worked with core contributors to major projects. This is usually how I see things go down: 1) You work on an open source project and an altruistic company hires you to keep working on it. This is ideal, and I've only ever seen it once (Sendmail hired a couple of core contributors to keep making Sendmail awesome back in the 90s). 2) You work on an open source project, people see the work because they use the project, and then offer you a job to keep working on the project, but slowly over time you are working less on things that are great for the community and more on things that are great for your company.

I've seen this a lot. 3) You get hired by a company that uses a big project, and they ask you to start making modifications that are useful for the company. It turns out what you did was useful for everyone so you contribute it back. Sometimes it turns out to be a huge win and so you keep working on it. I saw this with Cassandra and some of the folks at Netflix. 4) You create a cool project and your company lets you open source it. It becomes well known and then other companies want to hire you for either 1, 2 or 3.

I saw this a couple times were people left Netflix to go to Facebook or Google to continue work on an OSS project. If you work on Chromium or Firefox, you'll pretty much be limited to Google or the Mozilla foundation (with some exceptions). So if you want to do it to learn some great code but don't have a particular project that you love, I'd suggest one of the more infrastructure projects that are widely deployed if you want to increase potential job prospects. In summary: There are lots of ways to get paid to write OSS, but you may not like them all. Content, content, content and then presentation.

You need to think of yourself as the product and work out what's the best way to describe and package the skills and experiences that you have already acquired and how they can be applied to whatever your target companies are looking for. Also think about whether you are using your portfolio site for lead generation or lead qualification. Lead generation means that you'll have recruiters finding your portfolio off the back of your SEO and they contact you. Whereas lead qualification means you are selling your self to a hiring manager/expert after they've read your resume and decided that they want to check your credibility before interviewing. I feel like a lot of people in this thread show very flashy websites.

But honestly, if your work is decent, some people will notice regardless of how you present it. Since you ask this question, I doubt you'd make your website total crap. Most of the time more people e.g.: watch my github page: page than my real website since its harder to find you on a separate website. This is unless you market it. To summarise: enter the and see how good the content is and how you're ok with no form too, if content is outstanding. I've been running my personal projects website ( ) for just over 2 years and I get a job offer almost every week (not just the typical spamming recruiters, but startup owners who said they liked my work).

I'm also pretty certain I got my current job due to the fact I could impress my interviewers with my open source code. My design isn't great but what counts is the amount of material that is out there and how good it is. I'm not looking for design jobs, so my lack of design skills doesn't matter.

I am a graduate student with similar goals (though already have a job) Here is my site: I optimized it for following: 0. Responsive 1. Easy to understand layout 2.

Images to highlight projects 3. A professional picture. Contact & email information. Don't bother fighting email collecting bots, they already have billions of them due to breaches and most likely yours if it appears on Have I Been Pwned.

Rather I recommend optimizing on usability and making it easier for human reader to send you an email. Note: The design looks slightly different on desktop and mobile. On desktop it loads institution logos and uses a two columns or efficient use of the space. Going by what I do, the answer to your question is a bit problematic. I don't work on projects for others, I work on them for myself, and merely like showing them to others, so I'm bad at keeping a list of everything in one place and up-to-date. That said, I did try to create a single page of some of my projects so people can look at them more easily: The other day I also decided to give my resume some love, so I created a single page with side-projects I believe to be worthy of mention: Maybe those two will give you some idea. I've scrolled through some of the other responses in this thread, but I'm not sure I like the project sites that are tech demos themselves.

They seem to conflate 'optimizing the listing of projects' with 'optimizing showing a project'. Most of the linked sites are great tech demos, but very bad at getting me to click on the actual posts themselves. Then again, maybe mine is worse.

Sara Soueidan's is pretty great -especially the speaking section. She's amazing generally though, so it's quite a high bar! I had some good feedback on mine as well -and I'm pretty happy with it (love to hear what other people think too though). After the intro though, it's more about highlighting recent specific projects and talks and articles, rather than acting as a full CV. Sounds like that might be what you're going for? If I were you, I'd keep it simple. Go for a short simple intro that highlights what you're about, a two or three sentence summary of what you've done and what you're good at, and then keep the body as something that gives more of a feel of what you're about and up to right now.

Links to blog articles, things you're tweeting about etc. You can provide an actual CV for people who want to dig into the details of your list of achievements and research in more detail, but if this is the first place people hear about you and it's your personal site, then a sense of personality and active things going on is more important imo. This is a site I built for myself, friends, and the public; however, I haven't promoted it much. Trying to get more users, but it's been under construction for a while. Nothing fancy, but I wanted to build something that was free for users. Also to the poster: side projects are great, showing off your pet project is awesome, but I can say that a lot of employers don't even care to look at them.

I cannot speak for ALL employers, but a lot of the time interviewers and employers don't have the time to poke around in your side projects - they're very busy too. It's kind of a shame. Something useful, indeed.

Perhaps a teaching-focused site that explicates all the tips and tricks you've gleaned about atomic microscopy. Maybe featuring a WebGL microscope simulator. And extensive Youtube tutorials for beginners.

Drew Wilson On Twitter: @flyosity I Feel The Opposite For Macbook

Or a data bank. Resources that would appeal to researchers rather than students. Modelled after something like the Electron Microscopy Data Bank: Your goal is simply to convey that when it comes to this particular characterization technique, you're the world's #1 expert.

Not so different than the inbound-style, content-rich influencer marketing all of us are seeking to master here;) Good luck! You may want to consider starting a technical blog.

As long as you are okay with doing some work to get some good content on there. I would suggest finding a niche that you like and create an entire blog about it.

If you put it right on your resume, they will see you as an expert in the topic. I have a blog just on the topic of SQL Server. Potential employers that use that technology always seem to see that as a good sign that I understand the technology.

Furthermore, if you do a technical blog. You are learning more about the topic. Which is an added benefit.