Attended remotely 2026-06-17 as part of an alumni re-visit to RC.
Prompt 1: Imagine you have two years, expense-paid, to use as you choose, and that in your first year, you've traveled and reconnected with people. What do you choose to do with your second year?
* Reconnect with RailsBridge / BridgeFoundry learning communities. As someone whose career definition comes from being part of, and feeling welcome in a number of peer learning communities, including Silicon Valley Patterns and Recurse Center, I want to be welcoming to people learning and confirming their identities as technically grounded and adept. * Building a personal pattern of learning and practice that's anchored in _returning to intention._ I am not great at being my own cheerleader or partner in this; I'm easily discouraged. What habits would allow me to, in the phrase of Michael D. Hill, "Take Many More Much Smaller Steps". * Many Much More Smaller Steps: thinking of the Thingiverse set of mini-apps and libraries as a model. Where can I find a similar practice, or make use of these? Is there a digital making community of practice that feels at home for me? How would I find it? What questions would I need to ask to find it? * Answer to the before MMMSS digital community: Find A Thing. Do It Out Loud. Listen. 1. Peer learning 2. Technical mentoring? 3. Building to have a feel for things and to find people with common interests.
Prompt 2: What are you proud of in your professional life so far?
* Building developer and developer-test tools to make the work and life of software development less toilsome and closer to the essence of the work. For example: J2C, Java to C# translator for shipping dual source. I was proud of delivering it for the positive effect, and I was rewarded by using incremental and test-driven methods, with frequent releases and reflection. * For another example of the same sort: the application clock wrapper at Google Checkout, where I was able to improve the work experience of software developers by making it easier to do time-based scenarios, and extending it to the QA team's scenario console at the request of other team members. This was a case of working across roles, bringing common benefits of the tool to the broader team. At the same team, I built a test grid. * A minor but consonant example was the common web error library at Disney. * A minor but consonant example was the hack for registration.
Prompt 3: What has been hard in your career? Was it good for growth? Not so much?
* I really feel trapped by the lack of software openings that aren't just "be a hero coder". When I've been unable to create the circumstances that make me productive and engaged, I tend to get less productive and more discouraged. * I could use more exercise in all of the following: * Being less mood-driven. * Recovering to productive intention. * Productively negotiating duties. * Pro-actively asking for what I need. * But all the above are coping strategies for not being able to find positions with mutually supportive teams, and with good working principles; coping strategies for a world of work that's a bad match, and won't meet me halfway. * On the other hand, the coping strategies will help regardless of their pain relief / survival value; they're somewhat general even in a good circumstance, and can help with maintaining morale and continuity.
Prompt 3: Looking ahead, what would you anticipate in five years?