A Rather Peculiar Journey
Harry Roberts – Webstock ’16 – Wellington, NZ
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About Me
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About Me
Hi. I’m Harry.
I’m a Consultant Front-end Architect from the UK.
I travel the world helping teams write better quality UI code.
I didn’t realise this needed to be a non-technical talk…
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Crowdsourcing
a Talk
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Crowdsourcing a Talk
Work/Life Balance
Travel
Hobbies
Cocktails
The Development Community
Moths
Chumbawamba
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Please let me take
you on a rather
peculiar journey…
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Work/Life Balance
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Work/Life Balance
Everybody wants it.
But it’s really not that simple.
Especially when we’re connected all the time.
When most of your life is work, it’s even harder.
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The truth is,
I haven’t.
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Work/Life Balance
I don’t have any routines.
I don’t have any consistency.
I spend weeks at a time away from friends and family.
I seldom get weekends.
My schedule is offset from everyone else’s.
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I have a ‘bad
work/life balance’.
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But I kinda like that.
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Work Work
Life Life
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Work Work Work Work
Life Life Life
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Life and work,
not life vs. work.
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Work/Life Balance
My work and life constantly intermingle with each other.
I create life wherever my work is.
I’m an optimist—I look at things as positively as possible.
I see my life as a constant vacation punctuated with work that I love.
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Life When Traveling
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Life When Traveling
I’m grateful every day that I get to travel for work.
Especially in an industry that is design to avoid it.
But travel sucks.
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Being in new places
is amazing—getting
to them isn’t.
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Traveling For Work
Travel is expensive, inefficient, and seldom enjoyable.
It means huge stretches of time away from loved ones.
It puts immense strain on friend- and relationships.
But… it comes with the territory.
How can we make it suck less?
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Travel Pro-Tips
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Hobbies
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Hobbies
One of the key aspects to a good work/life balance.
The best hobbies contrast and complement your work.
Hobbies that don’t tie you to a location are very handy.
Hobbies are good for your outlook.
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“I stopped caring about programming
the moment I started getting paid to do it.”
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Give a s**t about
something that
doesn’t pay you.
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The Best Hobbies
Provide an escape.
A complete departure.
A chance to do something your work doesn’t provide.
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Find a hobby that
contrasts your work.
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Take your hobbies
with you.
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Adapting
I’ve had lots of hobbies of the years.
Some are just not at all suited to travel.
The best ones are ones that can be taken anywhere.
Even if you’re thousands of miles from home, it’s nice to have ‘your thing’.
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Cocktails
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Such a stark
contrast to
development.
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Cocktails
Steeped in hundreds of years of history.
No truly right or wrong way.
All about taste—very subjective.
Deals with actual, physical things.
A break from the fast pace.
A chance to indulge, to make, to craft…
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Code is not Craft
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— csswizardry.com/2013/11/the-problems-with-crafting-code
“Craft is, by its very nature, slow, meticulous,
bespoke, indulgent, self-serving, and inefficient.
Code should be none of these things.”
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Code is not Craft
‘Craft’ implies one-off, labour intensive.
Subtle imperfections.
I don’t want crafted code—I want engineered code!
Fast, testable, reproducable, consistent, unambiguous.
I have a hobby which is an escape from that.
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Making cocktails
gives me an excuse
to craft things.
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The Last Word
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— wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartreuse_(liqueur)
“The exact recipes for all forms of Chartreuse remain
trade secrets and are known at any given time only to
the two monks who prepare the herbal mixture.”
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1920
Invented at
Detroit Athletic Club
1951
Published in
Ted Saucier’s Bottoms Up!
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How cool is that?!
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But imagine if this
happened on
the Web.
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We often take the
availability and
openness of
information for granted.
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Cocktails are a time
for indulgence.
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The Web is a time
for responsibility.
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How did I even get
into cocktails?
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The Community
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The internet isn’t
about React, or Gulp,
or Sass—it’s about
the people.
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I rely on the
community for
so much more
than code.
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The development
community is
amazing…
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Embrace it.
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Meeting strangers
from the internet
is amazing*.
* Your mileage may vary. I accept no responsibility for any disasters.
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The internet is ‘what
we do’, but it means
so much more to so
many of us.
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Meeting People
If you’re going to a new place, try and meet strangers from there.
If you see someone new is visiting your city, be that stranger for them.
If you have to travel for work, this is almost mandatory—it keeps you sane.
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Moths
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+
=
GIBSON
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+
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SOME MOTH
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Shaken or Stirred?
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— Harry Craddock
“Shake the shaker as hard as you can.
Don’t just rock it—you are trying to wake it up,
not send it to sleep.”
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Shaken or Stirred?
Shake
Citrus or fruit juice
Eggs, milk, or cream
Stir
All translucent liquids
Alcohol-only cocktails
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Even the best
advice goes
out of date…
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Be prepared to
leave old ideas
behind.
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Chumbawamba
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Crowdsourcing a Talk
Work/Life Balance
Travel
Hobbies
Cocktails
The Development Community
Moths
Chumbawamba
DONE
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Takeaways
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Takeaways
Work/life balance is hard—just do your best.
Hobbies are super important—remove yourself from work.
Openness is what sets this industry apart—don’t take it for granted.
The web is more than just ones and zeroes—it’s about people.
Only shake drinks with juice or dairy in them—stir everything else.
Even the best advice has a time limit—know when to use new information.
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Thank You.
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Thank You.
People of Twitter.
Dunstan Bruce of Chumbawamba.
All of you, for indulging me.