My session was part of Austin Forum on Technology and Society’s third annual AI April, a month of presentations, events, and podcasts dedicated to AI capabilities, applications, future impacts, challenges, and more.
Here are links to the video and supplementary material for the presentation:
Notes from my new work notebook. Tap to view at full size.
To me, it always felt that I learned better and retained more if I took notes by hand rather than typing them in, and there’s research that backs up my hunch!
More notes from my new notebook. Tap to view at full size.
The gist of the Scientific American article:
Taking notes by hand versus typing results in more electrical activity across many interconnecting brain regions that handle things like:
movement
vision
sensory processing
memory
It’s slower than typing, which means you have to pick and choose what you record, forcing you to:
prioritize the information you’re presented with
figure out what the main points are
relate what you’re writing notes about to what you’ve learned before
…and that means you’re more likely to stay engaged and grasp new concepts better
Writing by hand means that your motor and memory systems have to work together, which improves your memory of what you’re writing notes about
My new notebook and many colored pens. Tap to view at full size.
As Unified API’s newest member and Supreme Developer Advocate, I have a lot of work ahead of me — and a lot of note-taking. So I customized a notebook from a Scrum software vendor (I can’t even remember when I got it) with Unified’s octopus logo (see the photo above) and have been taking furious notes. As a result, I’m retaining what I’m learning, which is very, very important at this very early stage in the game.
If you’re learning something new, trying breaking away from the computer as a note-taking device, get a paper notebook, and try writing notes by hand! You may be pleasantly surprised.
And hey, I work for a company with an octopus mascot! I knew that office art would come in handy.
Long story short: I’m joining Unified API — or “Unified” for short, online at unified.to —as their Supreme Leader of All Things Developer Relations. That’s not my official title, but it’s the most accurate description of my role.
Unified’s product, like the best startup products, is something its founders needed but couldn’t find, so they made it: a unified API.
It’s a way to call all a whole lot of SaaS APIs from all sorts of categories — HR, ATS, CRM, marketing, authentication — from a single API.
If you’re going to join a startup, you had better believe in the founders, and I believe in Unified’s founders, CEO Roy Pereira and CTO Alexey Adamsky. I know them from when I live in Toronto — Roy from Toronto’s strong startup scene and its then-monthly DemoCamp gatherings…
…and Alexey, who developed one of the apps that I regularly showcased when I was Microsoft Canada’s breadth developer advocate for Windows Phone 7:
I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting and being vetted by Unified’s Head of Marketing, Kailah Bharath and Head of Sales Michelle Tomicic:
And yes, with the addition of Yours Truly, that’s the entire company. I’m back in startup mode!
The Pragmatic Engineer’s chart comparing working at a startup vs. working in big tech. Tap to view the source.
It’s going to be an interesting change of pace, moving from a big tech company to a small and scrappy startup, but part of the allure is the adventure. As Gergely “Pragmatic Engineer” Orosz puts it, the good part about startups is that they’re are amazing places to learn in, and you can make a large impact and directly influence the company.
Of course, adventure doesn’t come without a “risk tax.” Being in a startup can be unsettling: there’s less financial stability, you can’t “coast,” and you’re always looking over your shoulder for the ever-present spectre of potential failure. But I prefer to live by this Venn diagram:
Unified is based in Toronto, but I will remain based here in “The Other Bay Area,” Tampa Bay, operating from my home office, pictured below…
My home office, where the developer relations magic happens!
I’m going to spend a lot of time going over Unified’s documentation, SDKs, blog, white papers, dashboard, and every other part of the developer experience and do what I can to make a great developer tool even better!
I’m looking forward to the adventure with Unified!
One of the upsides of being laid off is that you get a couple extra hours a day — and only a couple, because getting a new job is your new job — to pick up some things that have fallen by the wayside. For me, one of those things was playing around with electronics and IoT (Internet of Things) devices, and I’d been waiting for a chance to pull out my “IoT box,” pictured above.
Clockwise from the top:
Pimoroni Badger 2040W: It’s an ID badge that’s also a wearable computer with Wifi and buttons, so it’s interacive as well! It has an E Ink screen, so the display can still show text and graphics, even with the power cut off.
Elegoo 37 sensor module kit: Lots of blinking lights, speakers, buzzer, laser emitter, keypad, temperature sensor, humidity sensor, light sensors, sound sensor, infrared motion sensor, magnetic spring sensor, and more.
There are big payoffs to being able to tinker with and fix physical things: it helps build a “can do” mindset that will serve you well, especially during a long post-layoff job search during a time when the jobs market is tough. It’ll take you far in work, life, and play.
I’ll write more about my IoT/electronics projects as I complete them.
One of our emergency battery-powered lights had a relatively simple defect that could be fixed with a relatively simple repair. Luckily, I had my soldering iron handy…
There are two main reasons why I’m relying on connections and referrals to land my next job:
With one notable exception*, every job I’ve ever had came via a connection or referral, and
Applying “cold” means filling out asinine applications like the one pictured above — and hoping to get noticed among the hundreds of others filling out the same form.
At the very least, they could’ve posed the question in a cool way…
🚨 Content warning: Samuel L. Mother-effing Jackson!
The “years of experience” field for English is probably the result of the application form software or the person who set up the form. They probably wanted a fluent English speaker and entered “English” into the “required skills” section. The software simply asks for years of experience for any required skill.
It should be noted that if your primary language is English, filling out the “years of experience” field for it gives away your age.
✳️ That exception? Auth0, which was later acquired by Okta. I saw the job on LinkedIn and filled out the application form.
I was sorting out some of the stuff in my office near the desk when I saw the scene pictured above and thought to myself, “this would tell an interesting story.”
Going counterclockwise from near the top left, the items are:
1000 won note from South Korea from my stash of travel currency that I was organizing
Adafruit PyGamer handheld game console, which is also programmable in CircuitPython, as well as Arduino’s C-like language and the languages supported by MakeCode Arcade.
The keyboard and Storyteller Tactics were prizes I won in the “Tracy’s Treasure Chest” raffle at last Friday’s Spring Tech Fest, a.k.a. Tracy Ingram’s 50th birthday party.
The raffle was unusual in that a winning ticket wasn’t for a specific prize. Instead, a winning ticket would allow you to enter a prize room containing over a hundred items, where you could choose what you won. You could buy multiple tickets, and you could win multiple times.
Proceeds from the raffle are going to girls’ STEM education in local high schools, so Anitra and I bought ten tickets and won three times (she got a Kemove K68 keyboard). I think we did all right!
