Category: Technology

Full-time Freedom

“Freedom without responsibility is certainly tempting, but there are few people who will give you that gig and take care of you and take responsibility for your work as well.

Responsibility without freedom is stressful. There are plenty of jobs in this line of work, just as there are countless jobs where you have neither freedom nor responsibility. These are good jobs to walk away from.”

– Seth Godin on Freedom and Responsibility

“Contributing full time provides a ton of freedom to work and iterate on any aspect of the community you can dream up. Sounds good right? It is if you can sustain it.

Here’s the thing: burnout is a real struggle. And when you’re working on something full bore, 100 percent of the time, and you burn out, there aren’t a lot of good options to help combat that except to keep pressing on and try to get your groove back.”

– Drew Jaynes on contributing full-time to WordPress

When I joined the foundation I never thought I’d lose a super power – the ability to ignore things. 🙂 1

My Favorite Twitter Bot

Nearly a year ago I tweeted the following.

https://twitter.com/ckoerner/status/619594815508844544

It was always funny and frustrating to me when folks shared screenshots from their mobile phones with such low battery. For some reason the low battery bugged me. It’s like living on the edge, man!

So then today I get this reply.

https://twitter.com/rahatarmanahmed/status/694985894554501120

Rahat actually coded up the damn thing! And it works really well. Even better, the source code is up on Github under an MIT license.

I was curious if I was the first to think of it. I wasn’t, which is cool. It looks from my sleuthing that the first mention was back in 2013.

I love the Internet – and the people on it.

My Presentation from WordCamp KC is now Online

I had a great time at WordCamp KC last year2 and thought my presentation wasn’t too bad. Secret behind-the-scene info: I started getting really sick minutes after my talked ended. I even had to leave KC early and asked my wife to drive I felt so yucky. It was as though my body knew it had to keep itself together until I was done presenting, then – PARTY TIME IN SICK TOWN.

If you run a site managed by WordPress you’ll do yourself a lot of good if you keep it up-to-date. So, I hope my video helps a few people learn to stop worrying and love the update button.

The Hallowed Glow of Digital Distraction

The brain’s craving for novelty, constant stimulation and immediate gratification creates something called a “compulsion loop.” Like lab rats and drug addicts, we need more and more to get the same effect.

Endless access to new information also easily overloads our working memory. When we reach cognitive overload, our ability to transfer learning to long-term memory significantly deteriorates. It’s as if our brain has become a full cup of water and anything more poured into it starts to spill out.

I’ve known all of this for a long time. I started writing about it 20 years ago. I teach it to clients every day. I just never really believed it could become so true of me.

The first step in progress is acceptance. From Addicted to Distraction from the NY Times. 3

A New Adventure

I’m taking a position with the Wikimedia Foundation as a Community Liaison starting in late January. This is a big opportunity that will be both challenging and exciting.

I’m leaving Mercy after 4.5 years and have enjoyed my time working as an Enterprise Architect, Solution Architect, Business Architect, and Business Analyst.4 The people there have been nothing short of supportive and wonderful and I hope to stay in contact with many people who I call friends.

I’ve been involved in a tiny corner of the Wikimedia movement for a few years now and I’m excited to be able to spend more time on wiki stuff – especially when it comes to empowering people to share their experience and knowledge with nothing short of the whole world.

I also hope to work (on my own time) with the local community here in St. Louis and bring awareness to Wikimedia and the various projects we support. 5

As a liaison I’m assigned to a product team within the foundation. For me it’s the Discovery team – search, maps, and all the things that help contributors find things!

A big thanks to the folks in the MediaWiki Stakeholders’ Group for proving opportunities to learn more about the community. Thanks to the WMF for trusting and hiring me and for the individuals I interviewed with. They were honest in the details of the position and challenges in the work before us.

Thanks to those who offered to be a reference, you must have said something nice. 🙂

Most importantly, thank you to my wife Jackie and my family for making this decision with me. I’m glad we’re in this adventure together – wherever it may lead.