Some months ago, we decided I would be the one to take Kyle’s computer and put it to use. Today felt like the day I could remove the PC without doing further damage to my soul.

Offering community managers a forum to build a community is like giving a project manager a kanban board. Yes, they can make it work. But is there really a “kanban market”?

What is software development really if not a sprawling, borderless puzzle for which the lid with the big picture on it is long gone? To me, it seems obvious that the biggest hurdle to team-based software development is how difficult it is to communicate well.

Most substantive community work is about consensus seeking, and software is naturally very bad at this. How do you put humans at the center of community software? Don’t build better algorithms, build better workflows.

The greatest sin of any developer is thinking they are cleverer than the users of what they build. “I can guess what you want.” In truth, guessing what someone wants is far easier than helping them achieve what they actually want.

Platforms exist to remove interaction barriers between users. The folly of platforms is believing they can entirely rely on algorithms to control & shape human interaction.

It’s very easy for me, now, to cite how ADHD affects me daily. I hope me sharing this helps folks identify similar traits in themselves or others they care about.

Last week I spent a full day refactoring something and my brain went to that mythical “zone” for the first time in a long while. I was burning again with confidence I’d forgotten.

With only a week left until my new job begins, I’ve begun tidying my office and virtual desktop for a new day-to-day pattern.

When’s the last time you heard anyone talk about the “social graph”? It turns out it was all just another way to sell ads and nothing more.

Designing software that doesn’t account for human mental models is unethical. It gaslights people into thinking they’re incapable, and the domino effects of that are incalculable.

The most dangerous idea on the web is that it’s for search engines.

Maybe it’s just a story I’m making up, but this Web doesn’t feel like the dream we were all working toward. What are we doing here, anyway?