Personal Growth in Business and Development

Running a Business and Keeping up With Changing Technology

Transcript

1. Personal Growth Running a Business and Keeping up With Changing Technology
2. • 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
3. A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices Starting Up A few questions for all of you.
4. 1. How many of you manage developers? 2. How many of you are developers who answer to others? I want to know…
5. Two Stories Leading to a Single Point
6. A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices Don’t Stop Believin’ My Journey in Rock and Roll
7. A Little Bit of Country • Raised listening to country music. • Not into most modern musicians. • Taught an appreciation for good songwriting.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. An Insatiable Curiosity • Progressions, Scales, Theory • Interests soared into blues, folk, and classical. • I began digging into deep tracks of well-known artists.
11. 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.
12. If I didn’t know a song, I could learn it. The more principles I knew, the easier it was to learn new material.
13. A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices What’s My Age Again? I Blinked and It All Changed
14. Our First Computer • The Apple IIe • Too young, but video games! • Atari, Nintendo, and so on. • These systems were computers.
15. Our First PC • 8 years old, Windows 3.1 • Doom, Wolfenstein • Prodigy, America Online • And the slippery slope
16. 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
17. An Expensive Hobby • I took them apart • I rebuilt them • Atari, Nintendo, and so on. • These systems were computers.
18. Into Computer Science • Studied Computer Science • Loved what I was learning • How do I keep up with this? • FOMO? FONHAJ!
19. 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.
20. A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices All Together Now Where The Stories Converge
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. Running a Business • Our technology helps drive our business. • We should elegantly solve problems. • This helps us; This helps our users.
24. Experience and Awareness
25. Keeping up with Technology 1. Principles and foundations over technology.
26. Keeping up with Technology 1. Principles and foundations over technology. 2. Go deep rather than wide.
27. Keeping up with Technology 1. Principles and foundations over technology. 2. Go deep rather than wide. 3. Stay aware of what’s out there.
28. 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.
29. A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices Thank You! Comments, Questions, or Confusion?