Pursuit Podcast

What if the way we build software could be more focused on human needs? What if the way we build and run teams could be more sustainable and healthy? These are the questions April Wensel sought to answer in founding Compassionate Coding. She joins us to look at how tech could better to work to serve humans in an outside the industry.

Dame Products set out to rethink how technology could enable sexual experiences in accessible, meaningful ways. The brainchild of a clinical psychologist and a mechanical engineer, Dame's offerings are wearable sextech built and tested in data driven, iterative ways. Co-founder and CTO Janet Liberman joins us to talk about their journey.

Stem cell scientist Rachel "Konichiwakitty" Wong has a high tech, high fashion hobby. In this episode she'll take us through her passion for building her own fashionable wearable technology and helps walk us through how we might be able to take our first steps building our own wearable projects.

We've had a lot of guests on to look at different aspects of learning to code, or learning new technical skills. But what happens when it's time to use these skills to get your first tech job? Software engineer Linh Nguyen My joins us to talk about selling your skills, the job hunt and keeping up hope.

In the rush to learn the technical skills needed to get into work, many of us skip the deeper understanding of what makes our work possible. Vaidehi Joshi is the founder of BaseCS, a collection of podcasts, writing and videos aimed to teach you what you fear you should already have known about computers and computer science.

This week's episode features Jenn Schiffer talking about the aesthetics and creative community of the Glitch platform. This online platform allows code newbies and experts to remix and share their web and node.js projects and invites meaningful community collaboration. Learn more about the value of creativity in tech education and exploration.

The Guild of Makers came out of an idea: what if there was a way for makers of all manner of physical objects could come together, share knowledge and professionalize their work building beautiful, useful, sometimes strange things. Lucy Rogers joins us to talk about the Guild of Makers as well as a look at some of her work as a host of Robot Wars.

For folks looking to enter the tech industry, learning to code is often presented as the one sure fire route in. But what happens when learning to code doesn't work out? We're joined by tech journalist and accessibility technology specialist Kit Englard to talk about her experiences. As a Deaflblind student Kit found materials and working practices in physics and programming poorly adapted for her needs. She went on to carve out her own space in the tech industry.

This episode is part of a cross over special with the Hanselminutes podcast. Scott Hanselman and Jessica Rose air some of the worst advice listeners have sent in and talk about bad advice in technology. To listen to the first half of this podcast, visit hanselminutes.com

For people learning to code, feeling alone on their learning journey can be one of the biggest challenges. Join Saron Yitbarek, the founder of the CodeNewbies community to learn about how emerging developers are getting together to support each other on their journey. Learn more about CodeNewbies, learning to code and creating your own supportive communities.