Read & Listen log - February/March 2021

published 4.4.2021

log

A log of articles, blog posts, and podcasts, that I've read and listened to in recent months.

Articles

I read more of ruby and rails docs, and some electronics refreshers related to microcontrollers.

Videos

Mostly various ruby/rails videos (continued from February) and a lot of electronics. Thinking about new projects utilizing microcontrollers, for house and for a kid.

Podcasts

I liked the following podcast most:

What I didn't enjoy as much as I expected:

The Rework Podcast - Shape Up With Clients

Since releasing Shape Up, the book by Basecamp’s Ryan Singer about our approach to product development, we’ve heard from other companies who’ve also adopted this methodology. David Nichols is the co-founder and CEO of Loupe, a company that helps design machines for clients in sectors from aerospace to packaging. He comes on Rework to talk about using Shape Up principles with clients who come from a world of complex contracts and project overruns.

The SaaS Podcast: Ep. 251 - A Guide to Product Led Growth for SaaS Founders – with Wes Bush

Wes Bush is the founder of Product Led Institute and author of the book Product Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself'. Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a term coined by the VC firm Openview Venture Partners and is a growth-model that relies on the product as the main vehicle to acquire, activate, and retain customers.

In this interview, you'll learn about the 3 tidal waves or trends that are forcing more and more SaaS companies to focus on product-led growth as the main growth driver. You'll learn the differences between a sales-led' approach and a product-led' approach and we'll help you understand which one is right for your SaaS company. We talk about the pros and cons of using free trials versus a freemium model, and you'll learn how to pick the right one for your go-to-market strategy.

And we'll teach you the MOAT framework, which will help you figure out the right marketing strategy, understand if you're in a red or blue ocean business, determine if a top-down or bottom acquisition strategy is right for you and how you can help showcase value to new users and customers as fast as possible. You'll also learn about the Bowling Alley framework and how it can help you improve your onboarding process.

Go Time Podcast: Ep. 134 - Beginnings

Mat Ryer talks to a new full-time Go programmer, an intern at Google, and a high-school programmer about the tech world from their perspective. Featuring Aditya Prerepa, Benjamin Bryant, and Shaquille Que.

The Art of Product Podcast: Ep. 122 - SaaS Sales with Matt Wensing

Even if a product, such as Tuple, is good and people don’t need to be convinced to buy it, there’s still plenty of work to be done. It involves communication, coordination, and collaboration. Ben’s perfect sales pitch and ultimate goal: Sell once, revenue forever.

Ben picks his guest co-host’s brain about big deals with major companies. Luckily, Matt Wensing is willing to share his enterprise sales experience, including setting price points, hiring salespeople, and developing documentation. Matt is the founder and CEO of Summit, Out of Beta podcast host, and Riskpulse founder.

The Art of Product Podcast: Ep. 114 - Building Today For Tomorrow's Growth

Ben describes how a recent Tuple tweet led to thousands of impressions and mentions, as well as possibly increased free trial sign-ups. Ben is experiencing the enterprise sales process where he could make a good deal of money from a large company, if he chooses to meet its numerous demands. Also, Tuple is making progress with scaling challenges by addressing related Heroku and Ruby issues. Tuple’s smallness is a strength!

Derrick’s been working on API design for StaticKit’s payments plug-in, especially to handle European customer authentication regulations that Stripe is moving toward. However, complex and flexible API design can’t be rushed to meet requirements. Derrick hopes to move StaticKit’s interface to his Next.js application. Constantly learning new technologies is critical to know his customer base. So, Derrick was pleased to be invited to present at ZEIT’s Backendless Conf.

Ruby Rogues: Ep. 469 - Refactoring with James Dabbs

In this episode of Ruby Rogues, we talk to James Dabbs as we explore a number of subjects and topics around refactoring.

Making UX Work with Joe Natoli: Ep. 14 - Russ Troester: inspiration, encouragement + resilienc‪e‬

Russ Troester is still very new to UX, but he's definitely in the right place because, in his own words, he has a passion for “helping to make things suck less.” He especially enjoys the research-related portions of the UX design process.

CzechMate: S2E5 - Paradox of globalization

CzechMate: S2E2 - Rest

Rest - a Global Halt and suspension of material world

DevOps 057: Operations Anti-Patterns, DevOps Solutions with Jeffrey Smith

Jeff Smith's book is full of practical ways to implement good DevOps practices within our teams, especially in the case where one might not have the flexibility to make sweeping organizational changes. He shares his wisdom and experience regarding building DevOps organizations and instilling culture into our teams.

Adventures in DevOps: Ep. 16 - Kubernetes as Infrastructure Abstraction with Oleg Chunikin

In this episode of Adventures in DevOps the panel interviews Oleg Chuninkin, CTO of Kublr. Oleg starts by explains what Kublr is all about and how he got the idea of using Kubernetes as an infrastructure abstraction. He and the Kublr team were trying to decide the most productive way to think of Kubernetes.

Oleg advocates for using Kubernetes locally and shares how you can then orchestrate your architecture so you can see what it will do in productions. Charles breaks down a few of the ideas Oleg shares. Oleg explains how the portability of Kubernetes can be used and shares recommendations with the panel on how to run a Kubernetes in a lightweight way.

The panel asks Oleg about the pressure for a cloud independent service and how these effects application requirements. Oleg shares some resources in answer. Moving on the panel considers Olegs comment about the layered architectural approach. Oleg outlines the layered architectural approach and explains what he means by layered. He explains the benefits of this approach.