The One-Woman Dev Team Diaries #206
Brief thoughts on Amsterdam, V1 of Favorites, more automation, and an upcoming Ask Me Anything series of vids.
Amster-damn!
I spent Monday to Wednesday of last week in Amsterdam. It was my first time in the city and boy did I love it! 😍
What I particularly enjoyed was the chill vibe and how walkable it was.
Thank you to everyone who sent me recommendations for what to do. I’ve replied to you all, but I will follow up again shortly if I did make it to one of your suggestions.
An unexpected highlight was a planned coffee meet-up with industry friend, Joe Masilotti, which was disrupted by his jet lag, and ended up turning into a bookshop-hopping experience. He bought Station Eleven at my recommendation for his plane ride home and he bought me Tender Is the Flesh, which I read most of on the Eurostar home (and have since finished. I really liked it!).
Unrelated, I was featured in his keynote at a Rails conference happening in the city just after I left. I knew I’d be featured as he had emailed me weeks prior to double-check his facts, but I was delighted to be sent this photo by Andy:
Since Last Time…
Every time I go away, I always have these lofty goals about all the dev work I’m gonna do and it never happens. I never learn. That’s okay.
I did manage to do a few things in the last couple of weeks though:
I finally finished V1 of the Favorites feature: Search, sort, filtering, and more!
Don’t ask me about this book.
I haven’t actually read it.Performance Power Hour has been going strong. We made some queries faster, improved the performance of reading challenge prompt pages, and started working on the lag issue when scrolling through long lists.
I automated a Giveaways export task to help Rob automate the For You recommendations. All part of the whole platform eventually running itself.
We decided to shut down our automatic book importer. It failed a lot of the time and was a pain to maintain. Instead, we need to move towards a feed that publishers can push data to. (If you’re such a publisher, hit “Reply” so we can discuss your requirements.)
AMA
On Friday, we filmed an Ask Me Anything interview, based off of questions submitted via my Instagram Stories.
Jacinda has already put together the edit, and we’re going to be releasing the videos on a per question basis over the coming weeks.
The intro video has just dropped:
Subscribe to my YouTube channel to follow along!
Premium Only Block
I’ve just noticed that for my premium subscribers I can include a segment of my newsletter that only they have access to! 👀
Paid subscribers, if I started doing this, what would you like to see here?
(I’m still considering starting a paid subscribers-only forum space, but that’ll probably only come in 2026 at this point.)
Free Book Shopping
This post on Threads tickled me:
Succession
After two years, a couple friends and I have finally finished watching the brilliant show that is Succession.
Feel free to email me with any/all of your thoughts on it!
What I'm reading
A recommendation from my number one bookfluencer, Traci Thomas: Between Two Kingdoms, by Suleika Jaouad.
P.S. You can now email me your thoughts about Conclave, the book and/or the film!
Have a great week,
Nadia