Every day we see companies market to us with a specific brand voice, and we can recognize the differences from one brand to the next. But what about personal brands? You as a person are a brand - it’s how you portray yourself on the internet and how others perceive you. I’m a brand, Emma’s a brand, Ali’s a brand. We’re all our own unique representations of ourselves. This week we’re discussing what it means to have your own personal brand and everything you need to know about building and managing your brand.

1:43 - What is a personal brand?

8:21 - Why would you want to build a brand?

11:10 - What are the benefits of having a personal brand?

13:29 - Who in tech has done a really good job of branding themselves?

15:29 - How did we build our brands?

18:03 - What platforms can you use to build a brand?

22:55 - The downsides of social media branding.

28:32 - How to build an audience.

32:08 - What we’re excited about in 2020.

Design for Developers

One of the biggest things that developers struggle with is design. It’s easy to look at an application and know that it looks terrible, but hard to explain why.

This episode we’re joined by Steve Schoger, co-author of the hugely popular Refactoring UI. We’ll learn some design tips and dive into the story behind the book as well as his other projects Hero Patterns and Hero Icons.

Show notes

1:40 - Who are you? Tell us a bit more about your coding/design journey.

10:22 - What is your typical day-to-day?

15:40 - What are Hero Patterns and Hero Icons?

21:25 - What is Refactoring UI?

31:40 - What area of design do you think developers struggle the most with?

34:11 - What are the differences between UX design and visual design?

36:56 - Design tips for developers.

41:40 - Where to find Steve online.

Resources

• Refactoring UI
• Steve's Twitter
• Steve's Portfolio
• Steve's YouTube
• Adam Wathan's Twitter
• Adam Wathan's Portfolio
• Tailwind CSS
• Hero Patterns
• Hero Icons
• Refactoring UI Screencasts

Transcript

We provide transcripts for all of our episodes. You can find them here!

To kick off our new season and a new year, this week we’ll be discussing 20 tips to start off strong in 2020. From mentorship to debugging to strategizing your learning, we'll give you all the advice you need for starting the year off right!

0:32 - 1. Challenge yourself to do something new.

04:30 - 2. Do a little bit each day.

07:03 - 3. Track your wins.

09:30 - 4. Get comfortable with failure.

12:08 - 5. Don't compare yourself to others.

16:28 - 6. Find a community.

19:24 - 7. People can be assholes, that's on them not you.

21:50 - 8. Find a mentor.

25:05 - 9. Take time to learn keyboard shortcuts.

30:30 - 10. Create your toolbox.

34:45 - 11. Learn how to debug.

38:30 - 12. Figure out how to stay up to date.

40:37 - 13. Overcome shiny object syndrome.

44:14 - 14. Pick one skill at a time to work on and learn it until you feel comfortable.

46:50 - 15. Decide if you want to be vertical or horizontal in knowledge.

50:09 - 16. Identify your learning style.

52:18 - 17. Take breaks.

54:29 - 18. Prioritize your values.

57:48 - 19. Use your powers for good.

59:33 - 20. Don’t forget that working in this field is a massive privilege.

01:02:59 - Shoutouts of the week

Have you ever watched or attended a conference and been in awe of the speakers? How do they know so much information? How do they prepare a talk? How do they even get the courage to speak in the first place and what is that process like?

In this episode we’ll delve into all things conference talks. This is a very special episode because it’s our last episode this season. We’ve decided to release our podcast in seasons, which gives us more time to plan out our episodes and schedule guests ahead of time. We’ll be taking the month of December off and will be back with brand new episodes in January.

Show Notes

• Our speaking experience - 1:31
• What can I speak about? - 8:03
• What is a CFP? - 11:51
• Benefits of speaking - 17:22
• Drawback of speaking - 19:53
• Speaker fees - 24:19
• Preparing your talk - 32:19
• Speaking advice - 39:27
• How do I get started? - 46:04

For full show notes, visit our website

Today we’re talking about web performance. Did you know that 40% of users abandon sites that take more than 3s to load? Turns out making your sites fast is pretty important! In this episode we’ll talk about what web performance is, why we should care, and we’ll give you tips for optimizing performance and measuring it.

Show Notes

• What is web performance? - 1:18
• Why should I care about performance? - 3:48
• The cost of JavaScript - 6:59
• What should I be measuring? - 14:02
• Performance tools - 17:46
• Performance-improving methods - 19:40
• Progressive web apps - 26:49

For full show notes, check out our website.

How often have you encountered a problem and struggled to figure out where to start? Or maybe you aren’t super familiar with the browser tools available to debug your JavaScript code. So today we’ve brought on a special guest, Rebecca Hill, to help us learn about the world of debugging.

Show Notes

• Who are you? - 1:12
• How did you learn so much about debugging? - 2:00
• Basic debugging steps - 3:12
• Is debugging language agnostic? - 6:21
• Why don't we teach debugging? - 9:36
• Different types of debugging - 13:45
• Common debugging mistakes - 17:09
• Testing - 19:39
• Browser features for debugging - 20:50
• Tips for new developers - 22:40
• Which browser is best for debugging? - 24:55
• Where can you learn more? - 26:08

For full show notes, visit our website

In recent years, working remotely has become a more popular office perk not only among startups but enterprise businesses as well. Some companies even ONLY work remotely. In this week's episode, we'll discuss our experiences working remotely, the pros and cons from an employer and employee standpoint, and provide some advice on whether or not working remotely is a good fit for you.

Show Notes

• What does it mean to work remotely? - 1:36
• What is our experience working remotely? - 2:34
• Pros & cons - 7:08
• What makes a successful remote work experience? - 21:05
• Should you work remotely as your first job? - 27:11
• Personality traits for a healthy remote work experience - 31:35
• Tips for working remotely - 33:31

For full show notes, check out our website.

If you’ve ever seen Kelly’s Twitter account then you’ve probably heard of Shopify, an E-commerce platform that gives you everything you need to sell online. This week we’re talking to JML, CTO at Shopify, and we’re giving you all the details.

Show notes

Who are you and what is your role at Shopify? - 1:05
What does a typical day at Shopify look like? - 1:41
What was your path in tech? - 3:36
What is Shopify & e-commerce in general? - 7:44 What makes Shopify different from competitors? - 12:41
Why should developers pay attention to Shopify? - 13:42
What are your favorite things that have been built by Shopify? - 22:09 How has Shopify's design system, Polaris, changed development? - 24:28 What tech stack do you recommend focusing on for new Shopify developers? - 30:06
What does the day in the life of a Shopify developer look like? - 31:01

For full show notes and transcript, check out our website