Online technology communities: Making the most of the open source internet - Jeremy Keith

In this episode Andy Davis talks to Jeremy Keith, the Technical Lead and co-founder of the design agency Clearleft in Brighton. Jeremy has been writing on his personal site, adactio.com, for over fifteen years. He also written a number of books: DOM Scripting, Bulletproof Ajax, HTML5 For Web Designers, and most recently, Resilient Web Design which you can read for free online. He also created Huffduffer.com a site for creating your podcast of found sounds.

On the show they discuss throwing your ideas and projects out into online technology communities, using forums and tech sites to get feedback on your product and getting over the self-doubt you can have about your project. They also touch on Jeremy’s career as a writer and how writing books differs from creating podcasts and blogs.

Show Notes:

1.38 The open source nature of online technical communities.

7.44 Has the quality of open source software and information decreased due to the ability to share it so easily.

10.23 The positive effects of putting unfinished projects out to the tech community to get constructive feedback.

12.27 The pursuit of perfection never ends but we can switch our mindset to an agile way of thinking and constantly improve on our product.

13.26 You’ll always cause division when posting project on the internet but it’s a fantastic place to learn new skills.

18.27 How did you come about writing a book.

20.32 Comparing writing a book to blogs & podcasts.

22.06 How your motivations can help determine what medium will be most effective to share your views on.

23.22 What were your experiences when starting your own business.

28.38 Having the right approach to your business is essential to making your company succeed.

34.44 Staying on top of the tech marketplace and keeping an eye on what’s going on around you.

36.56 Technology advancing so quickly due to its sharing economy.