The status report: at once humble, mundane, necessary, and misunderstood. Often seen as a trivial exercise undertaken by PMs primarily (I get the sentiment; I am a PM after all), it’s easy to gloss over if the contents are irrelevant to recipients, if they only rehash of information everyone on the list has, aren’t tied to objectives, or if they are poorly written. But what seems like a tedious communiqué that “nobody reads” can actually help teams increase substantially in the following ways. They: Save time recalling information: If your stakeholders are constantly reaching out to you for ..read more

Many years ago, I found myself on the floor of my friend’s apartment talking about a music release party I was planning. I was living out my dreams of moonlighting as a singer-songwriter. I had an accompanist (a guitarist) who I rehearsed with regularly and I asked a friend in Malaysia to make a super lo-fi music video which would be premiered at the party. I found a small event space in SoHo that even provided catering. It took a lot of planning and I was doing it all on my own. But a month or so out, I was still nervous about how it would turn out and it reflected in how I promoted the even ..read more

Last December, I read a book that completely shifted my approach to experiential learning this year: ,,The Memo,, by Minda Harts. It offers real career guidance to Black women and other women of color, who often find themselves navigating their careers (including workplace politics) without support. One section of the book, “A Winner Needs a Coach” struck a chord in me. Minda writes: “One untapped resource I discovered not being used by many women of color was career coaching. I wanted to understand why so many of us weren’t investing in ourselves this way, so I interviewed over one hundred w ..read more

There is no shortage of ways to be engaged in online developer communities. Many developer advocates keep profiles on multiple platforms in addition to their own personal site, and some will produce content for third-party publications, ranging from courses on egghead.io to articles on freeCodeCamp. While developer advocates do a great job of promoting their efforts on social media, these platforms pose limitations on how new visitors can find and discover what you're working on. When you post a tweet, for example, a small segment of your total audience will see it in real-time, and if you po ..read more

So you want to write a book? Or maybe you don't — but you've certainly seen more and more developers in the community publishing their own books, right? Since I published my first eBook last winter, I've seen the number of self-published books boom. Let's talk more about this format! Books are a great vehicle for diving deep on a topic and having a very clear outcome for the reader. You have to map out clearly where you're taking the reader and why, and you have to articulate what they'll be able to do or learn at the very end of it. Here are some tips I have for anyone who is thinking of wri ..read more

Content creation is an activity many software developers pursue. It takes numerous forms like writing blog posts and articles, producing newsletters, filming videos, live-streaming, and even creating small projects and products. If you’re a software developer on Twitter, you have undoubtedly been exposed to content created, edited, and published by other software developers. In addition to learning enough about the topic they’re creating content for, content creators have to learn about their selected medium, they have to edit/test/review their work, and they have to promote it to others. Whi ..read more

This time last year, I placed a bet on the idea that software developers wanted to write more content and become better bloggers. This idea is not new, it's not novel: software developers have been blogging as long as blogging has been around and the field has benefitted from developers who have generously shared their knowledge in the form of articles and blog posts. In less than one year, over 1,200 developers have purchased my eBooks on content creation and have started their own blogs, newsletters, podcasts, and screencasts. But while I've had the opportunity to see developers pour their ..read more

Earlier this week, someone posted the following tweet: “Over the last year or so, I’ve grown from 2k followers to over 10k followers by using the following complex mental model: Is it about SaaS/startups? Yes — tweet it. No — don’t tweet it.” The tweet sparked a conversation led by Amy Hoy about social media growth and personal branding, which you can find here. This tweet captures the essence of a phenomenon that you’ve probably observed on Twitter: the rise of formulaic, “personal brand only” tweets. You know this formula and may have even employed it in your own writing (I have!). It has r ..read more

How to link rot impacts content over time Earlier today I came across the below tweet on my timeline. A journalist reported having their work completely removed from the Reuters website and is unable to access their old articles. This happens a lot more often than we realize. It's happened to me, too! When many writers create content for external publications (including company blogs), the only artifact they keep is the URL to the article, and maybe an old draft. Over time, we link back to that article and reference it whenever someone wants to see a writing sample. But one day, we or someone ..read more

This weekend I asked Twitter, “,,What are some of your pet peeves when it comes to technical blog posts?” What I really wanted to know was, “What’s missing in technical blog posts?” I get asked what information technical blog posts should include and how should posts be structured. ,As a reader of technical content myself, I sometimes only realize what’s missing once I’m reading it. I wondered if others were able to identify pieces of information that they need in a blog and why. (I received 22 responses; thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts in the thread!) In this post, I will sha ..read more