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The Importance of Community

I was listening to Taylor Dessyn’s Guidance Counselor 2.0 and he was talking to Clark Sell about a bunch of things, including the importance of community and getting involved. And it spurred in me some thoughts.

Wednesday, May 28, 2025 | 7 minutes Read
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Contributing to the Community

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve taken the opportunity to participate in a number of “coffee chats” with some who are just getting started in the developer community. They come from all over the place: Ohio, North Carolina, Nigeria, Panama, South Africa, India. But they all share a common desire to join the developer community. I’m grateful to be a tiny part of their learning process and I wanted to share just a little bit about my experiences so far.

Tuesday, March 15, 2022 | 7 minutes Read
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Devs: Are you giving back, or only taking?

A couple of weeks ago I attended my favorite annual developers’ conference: Stir Trek. The reasons I like Stir Trek are many. It’s a fantastically run conference. It’s entirely a volunteer, non-profit effort. Over its history I have only missed two Stir Trek events. This year, as the time for Stir Trek registration approached, I made a decision. I was going to attend, as usual. This time I intended to do something more. The dev community has been good time. I thought it time to give back more.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018 | 7 minutes Read
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Mentoring Junior Developers

One of the biggest struggles of the development community is the mentoring, encouragement and development of entry-level and junior developers. A couple of years ago when I was adding people to my team, two of those I hired were women essentially right out of college. I found myself faced with a struggle that many dev managers and leads have faced over the years: How do I encourage, train and develop junior developers? I certainly didn’t want either of them to go through the same struggles I went through. When I was hired out of college, I had both advantages and disadvantages. I was a career changer in my mid-30’s. I had worked for more than a decade in various jobs, so the work mindset was not new to me.

Friday, December 8, 2017 | 15 minutes Read