Product Management in Practice

This is a book I read and then partially re-read this week, and I really enjoyed it. It was recommended by one of my colleagues, who's an absolutely brilliant Product Manger herself.

This is the first book in a long time that I made notes directly in AND also created note cards for. It's so good that I think it's going to be a book I re-read every year going forward.

It has great tips for how to be a good product manager, of course. But the aspects of the book that really hit home for me are when the author describes how he's messed up in the past, and not in that #humblebrag way that most people (including me) tend to frame past mistakes. This means I can really relate and understand better how, why, and when, I might make similar mistakes myself.

The chapter on managing senior stakeholders was particularly paradigm-shifting for me. I've always been a bit rebellious, with a self-righteous attitude towards my bosses. The author makes the point that senior folks will always win so it's better if they win with ideas we help them co-create. And this applies in a world when you're the "senior stakeholder" yourself since all of us ultimately answer to someone: a board of directors, an editor, fans, clients, co-founders, someone. So it's a great lesson to learn, combined with practical steps on how to get there, and not fall into potholes along the way.

Highly recommended for pretty much anyone working in the modern world, but an absolute must-read if you're in the tech space.

PodCon!

I just learned about something called PodCon this week!

How did I not know about this before?

I live and breathe podcasts.

They're my way to soak up a ton of interesting, entertaining, occasionally even useful information. I'm in awe of the way these artists are able to create pieces that can be so beautiful, thoughtful, touching, and thought-provoking.

I tend to change up my rotation every few months based on what I'm most interested in experiencing. Right now I always listen to ZigZag episodes within a few days of release. I'm also enjoying Radio Lab (a stalwart of the genre), Death, Sex & Money, This is Love, On Being, HanselMinutes (to help immerse me in the world of programming), The Knowledge Project, REWORK, and Akimbo (Seth Godin's foray into the podcasting world).

What are some of your favorite podcasts?
Drop me a line in the comments or tweet @marvokdolor 😎

JavaScript debugging

A lovely colleague took 5 mins to pair program with me earlier this week to show me some of  JavaScript's debugging tools, namely console.log()'s more robust cousins:

• console.info()
• console.debug()

As well as the debugger keyword. I learned more about both of these tools here and here and I'm starting to get more comfortable with them as I continue to tackle freeCodeCamp's JavaScript challenges. 

It's continuing to take me a while to get through each of these challenges, but it feels like I'm really understanding what I'm doing this time around.

Supporting Creators

I love me some FanFiction, particularly femslash and there are some fantastic authors out there. My favorite right now is yotoob over at Archive of Our Own. It’s kinda mind-boggling that there’s all this beautifully written work out that that’s completely free. Just amazing.

And to go along with that, I also love the app Ko-Fi that lets you “buy a coffee” for these folks offering their work for free on the web. It’s cheesy of me to say, but there’s something really cool about them offering up their talents as a gift to the community and folks having a way to show their appreciation in a tangible way.

Calling it a community might sound weird - we’re just a bunch of strangers on the internet right? And you’re probably right, but when I read through the comments and resonate with many of them it feels like I’m part of a group. And that feeling is an undoubtedly pleasant one. Shallow perhaps, but pleasant nonetheless.

Learning to Code Weekly Update 11/26/2018

I crossed the 100 days of coding milestone this past week!

I've also been letting myself struggle with code challenges a lot more, before taking a peak at the hints on freeCodeCamp. Last week I was at 3 of 22 challenges and right now I'm at 10, which is about 1 challenge solved a day...not bad at all, in fact faster than I thought. Most importantly, I'm developing a much more solid understanding of the material.

If I continue at this pace, I'll earn the JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures Certificate by the end of the year and will start off 2019 tackling the Front End Libraries challenges, something I've been looking forward to. I'm sorta hoping it'll allow me to fix small bugs at work, and develop a much more technically-grounded understanding of the products we're building.

Onward!

Welp

I've been blogging over at Tumblr off and on for years now. I started an experiment where I plan to post every day for a few months to see if it's as life-changing as Seth Godin keeps insisting it is. I've been using Tumblr to host this blog, but alas they've run into some trouble and I haven't been able to log on all day. I have a bunch of posts lined up to go and a bunch of drafts, so I hope I'll get back in eventually.

Even once I get back in, I'll want somewhere more reliable to host my blog, so I'm chewing on the best next move. People love Medium - but I don't quite understand their business model and, more importantly, I don't want to get trapped. Posthaven looks interesting - $5 a month seems like a reasonable fee for a place to host my blog that will hopefully be around for a while. Trying to figure out Jekyll could be a good weekend project.

But for now, I'll be here on Blogger. It's reliable, doesn't have a bunch of ads, and is simple to set up and maintain.

Thanks, as always, for reading.