Chance the Developer Podcast

In this episode, I speak with Domitrius Clark about his experience supporting online communities in gaming to building a successful local community of web developers in his home town of Philadelphia. We discuss the benefits of having a strong local community, how to deal with the challenges and logistics of running meetups, and much more.

Topics:

• Domitrius’ career 
• The importance of boot camps.
• Why Domitrius started his own business.
• The successes of dev communities.
• Being cooperative and a good listener.
• Responding to hate
• One thing Domitrius has learned this week

Quotes:

“I took one of the three month immersive bootcamps. I came out of that and started moving onto actually creating a startup.”

"Not everyone has the luxury to feel safe or confident that [interactions at our meetup] might go well. Facilitating a place where they do feel safe at all moments, when people tell me how comfortable our environment is, how they feel like it's a safe space for them ... those are the interactions that stick with me."

“When you are a meetup organizer or any type of community organizer and you find yourself dealing with some type of hate, you have to just address it immediately…”

Resources:

• Learn more about Domitrius’ Meetup
• Follow Domitrius on Twitter
• “Intent does not erase impact.” -@TatianaTMac
• Look into Tatiana Mac’s Systems of Systems Presentation

Michelle Schulp is an independent UX designer and web developer based in Minneapolis. She is also a household name in the WordPress community, and she's given dozens of great talks on a wide range of topics at tech conferences over the years.

Traveling for conferences is not cheap, and preparing for talks takes a lot of time and energy that takes you off of paid work. In this episode, Michelle talks about why she makes speaking a priority and how she manages the demands of both public speaking and client work as an independent contractor.

Follow Michelle on Twitter

In this episode, I chat with Laurie Barth and dig in to her journey from working with abstract mathematical concepts to a career in software development. We discuss common misconceptions about math in code, embracing community, and a lot more.

Follow Laurie on Twitter

Matthew and Eamon, co-founders of Readybase, sit down to talk about what they've learned about working as contractors and what you can do to make working for yourself a success.

00:46: WHAT I’M WORKING ON THIS WEEK

0:30 - 3:30: What I’m working on currently — Digging into Laravel on Laracasts - definitely recommend those tutorials. Also…working on renovating my fixer-upper house.

Today we're talking about how to get better at thinking about accessibility, and some of the quick and easy ways you can make your websites more accessible for more people without spending a jillion extra hours of work.

2:00: Don’t let the details overwhelm you. WCAG standards are important but think about the small things you can change to do better.

7:05: Screenreaders! Try out some browser extensions that simulate the experience to get a high-level understanding of how some of them work and what your site’s UX is like for screenreader users. 

• Extensions for Chrome: ChromeVox and ReadAloud. 
• Extensions for Firefox: HaTeMiLe, Fangs Screen Reader Emulator and Claws

8:40

0:30 My guest today: web developer and ACTIVE CODING BOOTCAMP student, Laura Pinell. Talkin bout bootcamps and what you need to know if you’re thinking about starting down that path. Peep all of Laura's work at her GitHub and Instagram.

2:00 What I’m working on currently — still plugging away at the same project at work, but I JUST launched my podcast site — chancethedev.com — and am working on enhancing it and making changes to it as we speak. Just started building out a React frontend for it. Project will be in my Github for those who want to follow along.

3:35 #prettycool

3:40 Laura talks about what software bootcamp is like (and why her brain is fried)

4:45 Why bootcamp when you were already working as a web dev?

8:32 What personality types are well-suited for bootcamps, and why some people might NOT be the right fit. The key is passion and drive.

11:30 The most important thing Laura has learned so far at bootcamp — people skills. Coding is great, but you gotta work with the people. 

14:45 How Laura uses UX personas to target potential employers

16:30 How working another job before coding can actually help you be a better employee as a coder.

17:00 Remote work — sorry homies, you still have to work with people and hone those people skills.

18:40 Laura’s advice for people considering bootcamp? Understand that this is a BOOT CAMP. It’s fast, it’s hardcore, get ready and don’t complain about it. Dedicate yourself wholly for a few months and you’ll succeed.

21:20 This week I learned some cool command line stuff from Ahmad Awais, a Pakistan-based developer and AMAZING open-source software contributor. If you don’t follow him, DO IT NOW. Get all of his social links and peep his blog on his website

23:00 This week Ahmad taught me how to write a few basic helpful bash scripts to make my command life a little bit easier. Check out his posts on LinkedIn here, here and here. And check out my script to quickly CD into working WP theme directory here.

25:30 Next episode will be a mini-episode including a recorded talk I gave at a recent event on accessibility in web design. CAN’T WAIT.

Follow me on all the things @chancethedev. twitter.com/chancethedev instagram.com/chancethedev and chancethedev.com KTHX.

In this episode I talk to Phil Bennet, a 15-year veteran web dev, and Tristan Gordon, Phil's one-time understudy, who ended up teaching Phil how to build apps in Angular. 

1:00 What I’m working on currently — a YUGE website for a healthcare company at work. A website for this podcast at home (coming very soon!). A few throw-away React apps to test my chops.

3:12 #prettycool

3:25 CSS Grid. Like it. Learn it. Love it. CSSv4 will be here soon. A Complete Guide to Grid | CSS-Tricks

4:10 Introducing my guests — Tristan Gordon and Phil Bennet, Angular developers at BCI Nashville

6:40 Phil’s path to web dev’vin (spoiler alert, he played MMORG games and coded emails)’

8:40 Tristan’s path (Hack 7 started it all)

11:40 Tristan takes off the training wheels and goes hard into Angular

13:16 Student becomes teacher - Phil talks about what it’s like to have Tristan teach him new tricks deep into his career.

15:40 New tech? Nah dawg. Angular deep. 

20:10 What do you guys think about the growth of our industry? 

21:00 Unpaid ad for Twin Kegs, the best worst bar in Nashville, the source of Tristan’s inspiration.

23:20 Hi grandma!

23:22 Resources for new devs

25:30 What does it take to go to the next level? Tristan and Phil agree — time and hard work. One day at a time.

26:30 Phil says: know how to Google. 

27:25 The importance of having a mentor.

29:55 Closing thoughts, banter, Snarky Puppy, and Darkest Hour (not the movie)

31:30 PRETTY COOL STUFF: This week I try to learn the how and why of asynchronous JavaScript. Promises are pretty cool and really help in understanding the core concept. Learn how and why you use them if you haven’t already. Promise - JavaScript | MDN

Connect with Phil on LinkedIn

Connect with Tristan on LinkedIn

FOLLOW ME! On Twitter and Instagram @chancethedev. 

PHOTO CREDIT: The sexy silhouette of Phil that was used for approximately one-half of this episode's thumbnail before being heavily manipulated in Photoshop was taken skillfully and offered generously by the amazing, incredible, the one and only, Frank "wangsack from hamhole" Otero.

In my second episode I chat with the President of Nashville agency SnapShot Interactive, Mr. Ben Rigsby. Ben is my boss and has grown a two-man startup into a full-service team of 45 with offices in two cities (and a third coming in the next year!). Ben talks about his passion, what led him as an artist and developer to start his own business, and the variety of paths available to developers with an entrepreneurial itch. 

THIS WEEK I LEARNED: The Number. prototype.toLocaleString method takes a number and formats it to a specific "locale" -- great for turning data into formatted currency, percentages, and much more.

FOLLOW ME: @chancethedev on Twitter, @chancethedev on Instagram

Not a lot to say about the first episode, other than ... hi! I'm Chance, a junior web developer and extra junior podcaster. I truly don't know what I'm doing here, but my hope is to share what I've learned about this exciting and amazingly fun career of mine, and in the process I hope to learn a ton from you and the folks I encounter along the journey. If I ever hit 10 listeners, this will be the biggest success of my life.