💖 CSS, New Podcasts, New Year's Resolutions
Happy New Year, friend!
I hope that 2021 has welcomed you with all the warmth and kindness you deserve. When thinking about your plans for the next 12 months, please approach yourself with kindness -- try not to reduce yourself to numbers ("read X books", "create Y projects") but maybe think about who and how you want to be this time next year. I loved this episode of Hidden Brain about the science behind successful resolutions.
But I also love to hear about your new year's intentions, like in this tweet by Gabriel Hicks where he mentions both professional and warm, fuzzy, personal ones (he's new on Twitter, follow him!). Inspired, I added a mini-section to this edition with resources that may help you in your tech-related 2021 plans.
✨ Wholesome news
🔻 Global Diversity CFP Day - free tickets!
Are you a member of an underrepresented or marginalised group? Have you always wanted to become a tech conference speaker? Let 2021 be the year that you make that dream a reality!
Global Diversity CFP day is a yearly initiative of workshops and talks aimed at helping members of underrepresented or marginalised groups become speakers of tech conferences. I've heard only great things about the event and know a few folks who developed their talk idea during the event.
This year, the workshop will take place on Jan 23rd and it will be hosted online.
🔻Event: Understanding How AI Reads Your Technical Resume
Women Who Code NYC is hosting an event devoted to understanding how our tech resumes are evaluated by AI. The workshop is taking place on January 11, 2021 (Monday) at 6:30 pm, it is free and open to everyone (you need to become a member of their group on meetup).
🔻Event: A briefing with NYC Mayor's Office of the Chief Technology Officer
Beta NYC is hosting a meeting with Katherine Benjamin, Deputy CTO for Digital Services at the NYC Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, about how the city is becoming more user-centered, agile and open amid a global movement of digital government transformation. The meeting is taking place on January 13, 2021 (Wednesday) at 9:00am, it is free and open to everyone (you need to reserve a zoom ticket).
🔻 New Year, New Podcasts!
I loooove the New Year spirit when people embrace their dreams and take bold steps out of their comfort zone. Here are a few great folks who just started a new podcasts, in alphabetical order:
- Cat Out of the Bag by Cat, UX engineer/designer
platform for the marginalized: We hear about the vast experiences of people in tech and discuss how we can better handle the issues of racism, sexism, and bigotry in the industry.
- Single-threaded by Jenn Creighton, Senior Staff OSS Engineer at Apollo GraphQL
Each season, single-threaded tackles a new topic in software engineering. This first season, we're exploring feelings. Why do we like some technologies but dislike others? How do our emotions come into play with our career choices? These are some of the questions we'll be answering this season. Episodes are a mix of guest interviews and solo musings.
- Word Wrap by Claire, a senior front-end engineer, and Steph, SWE at Microsoft and educator
Claire and Steph talk about a bunch of things relating to being developers in the 21st century.
(from Sylwia: Claire and Steph discuss all hot technologies, including Eleventy, Tailwind, accessibility, etc.)
✨ New Year Resolutions Corner
🔻 If you are a person who likes to follow a guided tech challenge, here are some that I love:
- 100 days of Gatsby -- "If you're looking for a fun way to explore how to build blazing fast websites with Gatsby, our #100DaysOfGatsby challenge is for you! This 100 Days challenge kicks off on January 1st - the perfect way to jump start the new year learning some new skills with a Gatsby project."
- JavaScript30 -- a free thirty-day course in JavaScript created by Wes Bos
- 30 days of React -- a community-led walk-through the meanders of React
- 30 days of JavaScript -- same, but for JS
- Advent of Code -- although it's no longer Advent, this set of 21 code riddles is excellent just like the community around it
🔻 If you're currently looking for a dev job:
- check this thread on lovely non-evil workplaces by Jessica Rose
- every month, HackerNews hosts a thread of who's currently hiring
- definitely subscribe to DiversifyTech newsletter, the warmest newsletter for marginalized and underrepresented folks in tech there is, run by Veni Kunche
🔻 If you'd like to boost your online presence, here's a Twitter 101 guide by Josh W. Comeau
🔻 If you're looking to expand your tech horizons:
- take MIT’s Missing Semester free course on command line, version control, etc.
- take Harvard’s CS50 free intro to CS
- consider contributing to Open Source -- read this blog post by Kent C. Dodds
- learn proper markdown to step up your readme game
- learn how to use command line
- finally, learn git
✨ Dev Snacks
- I just got a strong dose of inspiration to power through the first week of January from these lovely projects by Lynn Fisher, the wonderful CSS wizard:
- a showcase of all David Rose's outfits for all the Schitt's Creek fans out there (!!!!!)
- these wholesome cards to send for remote team celebrations,
- this CSS-only collector's cabinet illustration, or
- her yearly portfolio refurbishment -- explore it in different browser dimensions!
- Are you getting stuck on how to style your website? Stephanie Eckles has been curating style stage where not only can you get inspiration for the UI but also explore the code behind it!
✨ All the Fluff
- Have you seen this magnificent shawl / weather data viz piece that Josie George has been knitting all throughout last year?
- Good news for indie publishers and book-loving devs: just a few days ago, lots of classics have entered public domain, including The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, or The Trial (in German) by Franz Kafka.
- Here's a CodelandConf video of Beth Haubert's talk on creating a melody meowificator that makes me laugh each time I watch it
- Huge shoutout to starblooze for her first Twitch stream, something she wanted to do over the past two years!