Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Personal Growth in Business and Development
Search
Tom McFarlin
April 24, 2016
Business
0
360
Personal Growth in Business and Development
Running a Business and Keeping up With Changing Technology
Tom McFarlin
April 24, 2016
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Tom McFarlin
See All by Tom McFarlin
A Case For Builing Web Applications in WordPress
tommcfarlin
0
24
Namespaces and Autoloading: Improving WordPress Plugin Architecture
tommcfarlin
4
720
Pressware, Publishing, and Passion
tommcfarlin
0
270
The Truth About The Environment
tommcfarlin
0
1k
Other Decks in Business
See All in Business
ヘルスベイシス_会社説明資料_v3.4
yasudashoyo
1
63k
家族アルバム みてね 事業紹介 / Our Business
familyalbum
6
46k
プラスディーアンドシー合同会社 FACTBOOK _ver1.51_20250801
plusdc
PRO
1
200
20250816 「アジャイル」って?~"Do Agile"から"Be Agile"へ~
east_takumi
0
3.1k
エンジニア採用を引き継いだあなたへ〜EMが採用に向き合うとき、まず知っておきたいこと〜
kkun_22
PRO
1
560
250830 RubyKaigi 2025 follow up 株式会社iCAREスポンサーLT「健康診断 follow up」
msykd
PRO
1
210
「みんな、笑顔になぁれ」を実現する 職種混合開発組織の目標設定・評価の改善事例
daitasu
0
250
バイブコーディング入門:ビジネスを加速させる迅速なプロトタイピング術
ncdc
0
170
株式会社 PM Agent 採用資料
kiichitakeda
0
300
【Progmat】Monthly-ST-Market-Report-2025-Aug.
progmat
0
980
Cloudbase Recruiting Deck / 採用資料
cloudbaseinc
0
280
“成果”を出すためのプレゼン準備 プレゼン資料作成の前にやること
bunnchinn3
1
130
Featured
See All Featured
Testing 201, or: Great Expectations
jmmastey
45
7.7k
Put a Button on it: Removing Barriers to Going Fast.
kastner
60
4k
CoffeeScript is Beautiful & I Never Want to Write Plain JavaScript Again
sstephenson
162
15k
Dealing with People You Can't Stand - Big Design 2015
cassininazir
367
27k
Gamification - CAS2011
davidbonilla
81
5.4k
Fight the Zombie Pattern Library - RWD Summit 2016
marcelosomers
234
17k
GitHub's CSS Performance
jonrohan
1032
460k
Rails Girls Zürich Keynote
gr2m
95
14k
Side Projects
sachag
455
43k
The World Runs on Bad Software
bkeepers
PRO
70
11k
Building a Modern Day E-commerce SEO Strategy
aleyda
43
7.6k
Refactoring Trust on Your Teams (GOTO; Chicago 2020)
rmw
35
3.1k
Transcript
Personal Growth Running a Business and Keeping up With Changing
Technology
• 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
A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices Starting Up A
few questions for all of you.
1. How many of you manage developers? 2. How many
of you are developers who answer to others? I want to know…
Two Stories Leading to a Single Point
A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices Don’t Stop Believin’
My Journey in Rock and Roll
A Little Bit of Country • Raised listening to country
music. • Not into most modern musicians. • Taught an appreciation for good songwriting.
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.
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.
An Insatiable Curiosity • Progressions, Scales, Theory • Interests soared
into blues, folk, and classical. • I began digging into deep tracks of well-known artists.
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.
If I didn’t know a song, I could learn it.
The more principles I knew, the easier it was to learn new material.
A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices What’s My Age
Again? I Blinked and It All Changed
Our First Computer • The Apple IIe • Too young,
but video games! • Atari, Nintendo, and so on. • These systems were computers.
Our First PC • 8 years old, Windows 3.1 •
Doom, Wolfenstein • Prodigy, America Online • And the slippery slope
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
An Expensive Hobby • I took them apart • I
rebuilt them • Atari, Nintendo, and so on. • These systems were computers.
Into Computer Science • Studied Computer Science • Loved what
I was learning • How do I keep up with this? • FOMO? FONHAJ!
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.
A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices All Together Now
Where The Stories Converge
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.
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.
Running a Business • Our technology helps drive our business.
• We should elegantly solve problems. • This helps us; This helps our users.
Experience and Awareness
Keeping up with Technology 1. Principles and foundations over technology.
Keeping up with Technology 1. Principles and foundations over technology.
2. Go deep rather than wide.
Keeping up with Technology 1. Principles and foundations over technology.
2. Go deep rather than wide. 3. Stay aware of what’s out there.
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.
A Primer for Professional WordPress Development Practices Thank You! Comments,
Questions, or Confusion?