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Personal Growth
Running a Business and Keeping up With Changing Technology
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• I’m Tom (nice to meet you!)
• I’m self-employed and blog daily
• Married for eight years
• Two beautiful daughters
• Two crazy terrier mutts
Hey, What’s Up?
@tommcfarlin | https://tommcfarlin.com | http://pressware.co | https://presswareplugins.com
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A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices
Starting Up
A few questions for all of you.
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1. How many of you manage developers?
2. How many of you are developers who answer to
others?
I want to know…
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Two Stories
Leading to a Single Point
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A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices
Don’t Stop Believin’
My Journey in Rock and Roll
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A Little Bit of Country
• Raised listening to country
music.
• Not into most modern
musicians.
• Taught an appreciation for
good songwriting.
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A Lot of Rock & Roll
• Metallica inspired me to want
to play the guitar.
• The Eagles, et al. made me
want to expand my skill set.
• Like hearing the guitar for the
first time.
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Then 90’s Top 40
• I began lessons.
• I learned a lot of 90’s Top 40
alternative rock.
• This was a far cry from what I
thought I was going to be
learning.
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An Insatiable Curiosity
• Progressions, Scales, Theory
• Interests soared into blues,
folk, and classical.
• I began digging into deep
tracks of well-known artists.
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Writing Original Tunes
• Played with other bands.
• I began writing and tracking
tunes with my brother.
• I was convinced that I was
going to pursue music for a
career.
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If I didn’t know a song, I could learn it.
The more principles I knew, the easier it was to learn new material.
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A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices
What’s My Age Again?
I Blinked and It All Changed
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Our First Computer
• The Apple IIe
• Too young, but video games!
• Atari, Nintendo, and so on.
• These systems were
computers.
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Our First PC
• 8 years old, Windows 3.1
• Doom, Wolfenstein
• Prodigy, America Online
• And the slippery slope
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How Am I Seeing This?
• How does this machine work?
• AOL Forums
• Visual Basic 3.0
• Proggies
• IRC Channels
• Linux, C, …, etc.
• Costing my parents money
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An Expensive Hobby
• I took them apart
• I rebuilt them
• Atari, Nintendo, and so on.
• These systems were
computers.
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Into Computer Science
• Studied Computer Science
• Loved what I was learning
• How do I keep up with this?
• FOMO? FONHAJ!
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My First Job
• A number of internships
• Software Engineer for a large
jobs-based Internet company.
• Loved what I was doing
• Ultimately wanted to pursue
self-employment.
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A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices
All Together Now
Where The Stories Converge
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Remember This?
The more principles I knew, the easier it was to learn new material.
If I didn’t know a song, I could learn it.
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Remember This.
The more principles I know, the easier it is to learn new material.
If I don’t know a technology, I can learn it.
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Running a Business
• Our technology helps drive our business.
• We should elegantly solve problems.
• This helps us; This helps our users.
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Experience
and
Awareness
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Keeping up with Technology
1. Principles and foundations over technology.
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Keeping up with Technology
1. Principles and foundations over technology.
2. Go deep rather than wide.
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Keeping up with Technology
1. Principles and foundations over technology.
2. Go deep rather than wide.
3. Stay aware of what’s out there.
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Keeping up with Technology
1. Principles and foundations over technology.
2. Go deep rather than wide.
3. Stay aware of what’s out there.
4. Connect with those who know more.
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A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices
Thank You!
Comments, Questions, or Confusion?