| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 5 MIN | 🏆 Learning Objectives |
| 20 MIN | 📚 Friendster: What Happened? |
| 45 MIN | 🔥 MakeVoiP |
| 10 MIN | 🛏️ BREAK |
| 10 MIN | 👀 Let's Look at Some Staff Posts |
| 60 MIN | 🚜 Blog Workshop |
| - MIN | 💪 Q&A + Wrap Up |
By the end of this class, you should be able to...
- Identify and communicate improvements for a project/product
- Write compelling short-form blog posts
Why should we learn this?
- Most things we make should fill a need--whether it be personal or professional!
- Reflection and dissemination of knowledge play critical roles in growth. If you don't learn from your mistakes, you'll make them again! Think about all the times you've found the answer you're looking for to on a project in StackOverflow or a Medium post!
Let's do a retrospective on the progenator to modern social media, Friendster.
Break into groups and read the following two articles:
What common points can you identify between the founder's perspective of Friendster's failure and Wired's review?
Was the failure of Friendster a result of mismanagement or a case study for a product that failed to build relationships between users?
Most importantly, do these two articles provide an insight on what assumptions Jonathan Abrams could have checked to prevent failure?
You are forming a crack team of software engineering and management experts that aim to maximize the potential of communication technologies.
The first two leads have come in:
- Zoom, a leading telecommunications platform used by businesses world wide
- Discord, an innovative communication platform with an emphasis on building communities
Start by reviewing the mission statements for the two companies and getting a feel for the company's nuances:
Some top-level executives have scheduled 30 minutes for a presentation from your consultation start up. If they like what they see, they are in position to employ change by hiring you and your team!
A presentation will be made to everyone, introducing each recommendation, and a feedback form will also be sent in the organization's #general channel.
That means all eyes are on you!
This is an opportunity to identify and solve a unique problem, and maybe even earn the respect of the entire organization.
Word-of-mouth spreads fast so this can lead to big name cliente down the line too.
Reflect upon the questions below, and brainstorm ideas that fit this scenario.
- What do you wish was easier?
- What utility, API, or library could have the most impact on your day to day life?
- What can I automate that would make myself and others more productive?
- How could you make your colleagues' day more fun, interesting, or relevant?
Have somebody in your group create a blank Google Document and get to work on a proposal! The proposal should include the following:
- Features and product change recommendations
- Major pain points in the service/application
- UX improvements
- and any additional ideas you have...
Each person should turn in the proposal document's share link in the MakeVoip Gradescope assignment.
Blogs have become an ambiguous medium. Typically, they serve one of two major purposes these days:
- Providing an avenue of self-reflection and instructions for readers
- Generating heat behind your work and building publicity for your team/product
Let's take a look at a pair of respective examples:
- Dan Morse has some great introspective/informative Medium posts to check out
- Jay Lowe was recently featured in a data science blog and the LA Tribunal.
Good engineers review code, but they also review themselves.
Blogs provide the oppurtunity for on-brand self-reflection (a win-win)!
Open up your sharable document editor of choice (Google Docs is an easy choice).
Consider the following two prompts:
- Reflect on the ramifications of creating the portfolio project used in the portfolio audit. How has having to improve it made you wish you approached initial project scoping? Has it changed your understanding of what makes a good project and how will your next project improve because of it?
- What motivations have you developed learning about iterative project improvements and how will you implement that into your future projects?
Feel free to use only some of the prompt or both in your writing.
Take a moment to consider if the work you endeavored on has enough emotional substance behind it. If you feel detached from your work, or the project doesn't connect with a greater purpose in your life, consider the ramifications of that feeling and how you want to proceed with future work.
Once you've decided on what to write, create a google doc that responds to the following points in some way:
- What challenge were you facing that caused you to create this project? It could be an assignment from class, but could it be more?
- How did you identify the technologies (frameworks, optimizations, etc.) that could be used to resolve this challenge?
- Did the challenge get overcome, why or why not?
- What important engineering or life lessons did you learn along the way?
- Whats the number one thing you want readers taking away from this article?
Here's a loose technical example:
- My application wasn't capable of sustaining high influxes of users during peak traffic hours
- I reviewed the highest rated backend services that specialized in this type of issue
- After considering the tradeoffs of each framework/service, I implemented XXX by doing YYY (with code snippets)
- I realized that I can implement scalable practices earlier in development using this technology/trick
- After going through this pain, I hope others can avoid my mistake by developing better foresight and building products according to use estimations
What to turn in:
- create a document with a sharable link (a new google doc, a link to a post you made in your production blog, etc.)
- write at least 100 to 300 words (more is great!)
-
- This can be in a paragraph format or bullet point list that follows the examples if that's easier for you. The ultimate goal is for you to do some reflection, understand the value in creating short form articles, and ideally identify a way for this to integrate into your day-to-day workflow so you continue practicing it.
Turn in a share link to the Blog Workshop assignment on Gradescope.
- Can we form accountability groups to keep the momentum going with our writing?
- How can we leverage our portfolios and personal websites to make blogs a component of our job readiness application?