Google Ads, Shopping \u0026 Social Ads strategy \u0026 execution

SCUBE Marketing

I love to learn; I love the idea of choosing a topic I don’t know, buying books, reading articles, and coding something to show myself I am able to master it. I have been fond of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin since 2014 when I wrote . One year ago, I had a chat with a friend who told me how speculation and trading were terrible things for humanity. I understood his point of view, but then, I asked myself how Bitcoin could have had success without speculation and trading? my first article in french That’s how I found my new objective: learn about trading, and that’s how I started my project, . I decided to build a framework, so I could learn everything from scratch (exchange connections, tickers, orders, trades...). Cassandre, a java trading bot framework What about success? Cassandre is my weekend project. During the week, I’m the of Scub, a french software company. Somehow, applying what I learned as an Entrepreneur, I realized that whether you develop a startup or an open-source project, and nobody uses it… you failed. CEO That’s how I found something else I could learn about: marketing of open source/weekend projects. And this is what this article is about. My marketing framework. My first decision: I decided that however much time I wound up spending on development, I would spend the same time on marketing. To grow my project, this is the simple framework I’m following: One week of coding. One week of: Improving the website. Writing & post content. Sending a newsletter. Sharing what I learned. Send direct messages to interesting people. Improving the website. To quote GitHub’s :  “Documentation is marketing. The best part is that documentation is linkable. It’s indexable. It’s tweetable”. Zach Holman For the documentation, after trying lots of solutions, my documentation is now in , published to GitHub pages, and I produce it with . Vuepress is easy to set up, uses simple md files, and extremely fast (it generates static files). my GitHub sources vuepress I always try to write documentation as if a total beginner was reading it, emphasizing quick start guides because I always tend to choose frameworks/tools that explain things very well. I also cover “other topics” that could be useful for “real life” use. For example, I recently wrote an article on deploying your Cassandre trading bot on qovery (a startup that offers free hosting). The advantage of this kind of content is that you can share it without shame as you really bring handy information to others (Reddit, Twitter, emailing…). The second point is that you never get a second chance to make a first impression; when someone arrives on your GitHub pages, he will take a look at your readme so take time to make it beautiful and valuable. Here is a , and here is . list of the beautiful readme mine The last thing you can do is to add GitHub buttons on your website to redirect people to GitHub: . https://buttons.github.io Writing & posting content. Tweeting is easy, but writing long-form content is challenging, and few people are good at it. I usually procrastinate a lot when it’s time to write. As I am not a marketing specialist, I use , this tool gives me ideas for new articles and improves my titles. Peppertype I won’t be long on how to write content as I’m not an expert on that topic, but I follow two rules from Paul Graham: . Write as you talk . Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over; cut out everything unnecessary Once written, it’s time to post on the Internet! But where? In my cases, this is my segmentation: Java (especially Spring boot) developers interested in trading. Open source enthusiasts. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Traders who want to automate their work. With this segmentation, this where I post: Java developers. https://www.reddit.com/r/java https://www.reddit.com/r/SpringBoot https://daily.dev https://dev.to Open source enthusiasts. (only if you have exciting content) https://news.ycombinator.com https://www.producthunt.com https://betapage.co https://betalist.com https://lobste.rs/ Cryptocurrency enthusiasts. https://www.producthunt.com https://betapage.co https://betalist.com Traders. https://www.reddit.com/r/cryptotrading https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrencyTrading https://www.reddit.com/r/kucoin https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase https://www.reddit.com/r/binance/ When the content is more general like with this article, I also post it on sites like . https://www.indiehackers.com One last thing, posting new articles is not the only way to promote your project/content; lots of things could happen in the comment section. For example, I received lots of new users/feedback thanks to comments like this . This seems to think the same way. one on Hackernews article If you can do it with your project, I would advise you to reply to questions on StackOverflow explaining how your open source project could help solve problems. Sending a newsletter. For articles & newsletters, I use , a good tool but it doesn’t support Java source highlight, which is quite annoying. Substack Sharing what I learned on Twitter. Of course, I learn lots of things, and from now on, I plan to share that knowledge on . I also started a that works quite well to create/animate a community. Cassandre’s Twitter account Discord channel Direct messages to interesting people. This is something I did not try yet! Have to learn about to do it well. Last word. I’m new to marketing for open source. Please, feel free to send me especially on direct messaging. your advice

Marketing Tips For Open-Source Projects

HackerNoon editorial team has launched to celebrate their achievements and share their struggles. We need more women in technology, and by sharing stories, we can encourage many girls to follow their dreams. this interview series with women in tech ! Share your story today Tell us about yourself! I am Preethika S Kalyanasundaram, a passionate product leader who thrives on shaping the enterprise customer experience landscape. With over a decade of expertise in AI-driven marketing and commerce cloud solutions, I excel at identifying innovative products that solve real-world problems and resonate with users. Throughout my career at industry leaders like Oracle and Salesforce, I have leveraged my deep knowledge to launch successful product solutions that drive business impact. I am particularly proud of my track record of inclusive product design that prioritizes diversity and user empathy. I hold a Master's degree in Computer Engineering with a Co-Major in Information Assurance from Iowa State University. Why did you choose this field in the first place? I chose this field because I'm passionate about using technology to positively impact people's lives. As a product leader, I get to immerse myself in understanding customer challenges and conceptualizing innovative solutions. What energizes me is bringing ideas to life. I get to wear multiple hats - empathizing with users, envisioning product roadmaps, guiding engineering teams through development, and driving successful launches. I love the collaborative nature of product development. Building outstanding experiences requires diversity of thought, skillsets, and backgrounds. I also enjoy mentoring teams and helping talented people grow. And I'm motivated every day by my mission - leveraging technology for good. My goal is that every product I launch creates connections, expands access, and helps users achieve their potential. For me, this field allows idealism and pragmatism to meet. It's thrilling and humbling to see creations that once existed only in my mind become reality. What tech are you most excited/passionate about right now and why? I am most excited about recent advancements in AI that can connect people in positive ways. For example, using AI to provide personalized and quality education at scale or empower those with disabilities to communicate more easily. The potential to drive human progress responsibly through inclusion and accessibility inspires me. What tech are you most worried about right now and why? I do have concerns about the risks of AI and other emerging technologies. While innovation presents opportunities, we must consider ethics and responsibility. AI bias remains problematic. And innovations like deepfakes can erode trust if misused. What are your hobbies and interests outside of tech? Outside of technology, I seek adventures that push me out of my comfort zone! Each year I try to have at least one new exhilarating experience. So far, I've gone skydiving, scuba diving, flown a plane, paddle boarded by glaciers, and even summited Mount Kilimanjaro! I love exploring the world and continuing my quest to try new activities. These thrilling hobbies may seem unexpected for an innovator. But the life lessons they've taught me - patience, empathy, resilience - have been invaluable. Early experiences volunteering and fostering dogs reinforced that purpose comes in many forms. My rescue dog opened my eyes to second chances. Each adventure strengthens my compassion and courage to take the road less traveled. While I'm deeply passionate about technology, I believe cultivating diverse interests makes me a more balanced leader. My desire to help others, push boundaries, and broaden perspectives guides me both in and outside of work. I'm excited to see what's next and bring those lessons along to empower my teams and users. The journey continues! Let's talk about breaking the glass ceiling. What were the biggest challenges you faced as a woman in tech, and how did you deal with them? Navigating tech as a woman has certainly presented unique hurdles. Early in my career, qualities like empathy and collaboration were sometimes viewed as weaknesses instead of strengths. However, I never let outdated perceptions hold me back. To break through the glass ceiling, I stayed laser-focused on outcomes and impact. I channeled my empathy into building products that truly resonate with users. And I leveraged collaboration to lead high-performing teams toward ambitious goals. Along the way, I built a reputation for translating vision into reality and consistently delivering results. The proof is in the pudding - my track record of successful innovations and product launches speaks for itself. My superpower is combining compassion with courage to drive positive change. I won't stop knocking down barriers until the playing field is level. While misconceptions still exist, progress happens through open dialogue. I aim to foster inclusion by mentoring other women and advocating for increased diversity. Any questionable misogynistic story/situation you faced/handled and you want to share with the HackerNoon Fam? Many women in tech experience subtle biases that create an uneven playing field. Here are some  questionable situations that I have faced as a woman in the tech industry: Being talked over or dismissed in meetings. Having ideas attributed to male colleagues. Receiving vague feedback Having qualifications doubted or needing to prove technical expertise more than men Being passed over for promotions and growth opportunities in favor of less experienced men What was the biggest setback/failure that you faced, and how did you manage it? A promising opportunity arose that would have allowed me to take on more responsibility and work on high-impact, strategic projects at my company. I was eager to step into a role where I could contribute new ideas and drive innovation. However, the opportunity was postponed. Despite this setback, I identified an area ripe for innovation in my current scope and implemented changes that gave us a competitive edge. What's your biggest achievement that you're really proud of? I'm extremely proud to have received a for an AI-driven innovation that transforms customer engagement strategies. The innovation utilizes a novel AI model to categorize customers into distinct personas based on their engagement patterns and behaviors. This granular personalization enables businesses to tailor the frequency and relevancy of their marketing communications for each individual user. The result is more meaningful connections between brands and consumers. Customers receive messages precisely when they are most receptive, leading to improved engagement and sales growth. patent Having this patent granted was a career highlight. It validates the creativity and business impact of my work. I'm passionate about leveraging AI to forge genuine human connections at scale. This innovation exemplifies how technology can be harnessed for good. In your opinion, why do we see this huge gender gap in the tech industry, and how can we reduce it? The gap stems from systemic barriers that have discouraged women from entering and advancing in tech for decades. Outdated biases, lack of visible role models, and non-inclusive cultures have long perpetuated the imbalance. Workplace policies like flexible schedules and equal family leave enable women to stay and thrive in tech. There is no quick fix. The burden cannot fall solely on women - men must use their influence as allies. Leaders should champion female voices and advocate for representation at all levels. The tech industry will only reach its full potential when it leverages all talent. Who is your tech idol? Why? As CEO, Satya Nadella has reinvigorated Microsoft's culture of innovation with a focus on empathy, growth, and openness. In his book 'Hit Refresh,’ he wrote, " " Empathy takes practice, muscle building, and calibration...Getting better at empathy makes me see more, feel more, care more. This mindset has transformed Microsoft into a major force in cloud and collaboration under Nadella's leadership. His partnership-driven approach and vision to empower developers have established him as an influential tech leader. Nadella's leadership style, guided by empathy, has made Microsoft more agile and customer-focused. Do you have any advice for aspiring girls who want to join the field? First and foremost - believe in yourself and your abilities. Have confidence in the unique talents and perspective you bring. Don't underestimate your worth or capabilities. Ask questions, collaborate, and learn all you can from mentors. Knowledge is power, so never stop pushing yourself to grow. Bring a curious, open mindset to absorb new skills. Finally, don't be intimidated by setbacks. Perseverance through challenges builds resilience. Progress happens with patience, passion, and grit. Stay focused on your vision and take it step-by-step. You have so much to offer to this field. Bring your authentic self, bold ideas, and compassion to drive innovation. The future is bright for women ready to shape it. Define your own path, and success will follow. You've got this!

Women in Tech: Preethika Kalyanasundaram on Leading with Empathy in Tech

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200 phụ nữ da đen trong công nghệ để theo dõi trên Twitter vào năm 2022

2022 年将在 Twitter 上关注 200 名科技黑人女性

Learning how to code is one of the most difficult and rewarding tasks you can do. While this journey may be a tough and long one, our 2020 Noonie Nominee can help you out. Cal Evans from United States Cal has been nominated in the He is an experienced engineer that gives talks at conferences all over the world. Let's learn more about him below! Software Development category. 1.  Which 2020 Noonie have you been nominated for? Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - LEARNING TO CODE 2. Tell us a bit about yourself. Many moons ago, at the tender age of 14, Cal touched his first computer. (We’re using the term “computer” loosely here, it was a TRS-80 Model 1) Since then his life has never been the same. He graduated from TRS-80s to Commodores and eventually to IBM PCs.For the past 15 years Cal has worked with PHP and MySQL on Linux, OSX, and Windows. He has built a variety of projects ranging in size from simple web pages to multi-million dollar web applications. When not banging his head on his monitor, attempting a blood sacrifice to get a particular piece of code working, he enjoys building and managing development teams using his widely imitated but never patented management style of “management by wandering around”. These days, when not working with PHP, Cal can be found working on a variety of projects like Day Camp 4 Developers. He gives motivational talks to developers around the world. If you happen to meet him at a conference, don’t be afraid to buy him a shot of Rum. Cal is based in West Palm Beach, FL, US where he is happily married to wife 1.36, the lovely and talented Kathy. Together they have 2 wonderful kids who were both smart enough not to pursue a job in IT. 3. Tell us about the things you make / write / manage / build. I train the next generation of developers. 4. What are you most excited about right now? Lando 5. What are you worried about right now? Not much 6. What's the most useful advice you've ever given somebody? Find a profession that you are good at and that makes you money. Follow your dreams as your hobby. 7. How has the pandemic changed your life and/or career? It kept me from Scuba Diving from March - May. 8. If we gave you $10 million to invest in one thing right now, where would you put it? Virgin Galactic, I think it's the next Tesla. 9. What's an opinion you have that most people don't agree with? MacDive (not MacDrive..MacDive) 10. Which apps can't you live without? MacDive (not MacDrive...MacDive) 11. What are you currently learning? Marketing Make somebody’s day and nominate them to be recognized in the internet’s most independent and community-driven awards: . NOONIES.TECH , don't forget to vote for Cal and help him become the: . Most importantly Hacker Noon Contributor of the Year - LEARNING TO CODE

"Virgin Galactic is the next Tesla" - Cal Evans, Noonie Nominee for Learning To Code

Our journey so far has comprised of one year in South East Asia, five months in Australia and New Zealand, two months in Berlin, two months in the UK, and one month in Eastern Europe. Now we’re working our way through South America, having explored Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia. At the time of writing we’re actually on a bus to Peru, trying to type while bouncing around on the terrible roads out here! A little history James and I are both web developers originally from the UK. We studied Computer Science at University and became friends whilst working for the UK Government. James was a graduate and I was completing a year of work experience that was part of my degree. We bonded over our love of craft beer, good food, and both had a little rebellious streak. When my year was up I went back to university to complete my studies, and in the meantime James ditched the secure 9–5 and excellent pension to take a job at a startup data science company. When I graduated, I was lucky to land a job back at the Government with an excellent starting salary and great benefits — boy were my parents proud. Though it turned out that was short lived, as I managed precisely 51 weeks before ditching the corporate life and seeking more adventure! We moved to Bristol together, a fantastic city we both really loved. I landed a job at a startup making dynamic ads for the sports betting industry. Joining the company meant that front-end team doubled in size — to two! I really enjoyed my time there. I was the first female developer and despite my concerns about lack of diversity and fitting in, I wasn’t treated any differently. Everyone was super friendly, inclusive, and good at their jobs. I learned quickly, and before long became an integral part of the team. Both the startups we worked for were growing rapidly. With that growth came more bureaucracy and structure, which was great for them, and not so great for us. We had itchy feet. We already knew we wanted to more. We’d fallen in love with it during a 3 week winter backpacking trip exploring Europe by train — despite freezing our butts off! All we knew is that we wanted our next trip to be somewhere warm and cheap. South East Asia was calling us! travel We had no idea how much this would cost. Research dictated that we’d need anything between €1.50 and €150 a day. We plucked €18,000 as our budget as a happy compromise, which would give us €1,500 a month (€50 a day) for a year. I’m the spreadsheet lover and spending tracker out of the two of us, so naturally I documented all of our incomings and outgoings and worked out that we should easily be able to save €1,500 a month. If we hit that goal we could leave at the end of the year! Closing down sale Saving went well. Before we had time to change our minds, December crept up and we needed to start selling all of our belongings. We didn’t want to pay for expensive storage and most of our furniture was second hand anyway so everything would be sold or given away. We only kept a few winter clothes and sentimental items which we were able to store with family. – My mum thought she was only keeping our junk for a year but now I’m sure she’s wondering if we’ll ever collect our stuff… thanks Mum! We raised some extra travel cash by selling a lot of things, but we also ended up giving a lot of stuff away. It’s incredible what people think they need just because it’s free. One lady turned up in a brand new Mercedes to collect all of our kitchen crockery and pans that didn’t sell. The boxes filled her car and when we asked what she would do with them, she said they’d go in the garage with “all of the other stuff to be sorted”. We were grateful to have them off our hands, but it would have been better if they went somewhere they were needed rather than to an old hoarder! Handing in my notice was something I was dreading. Just before the deed I found out that my team lead was also leaving to go travelling — a week before me! I felt awful for leaving them at a busy time, but thankfully I’d just hired an excellent developer to join the team and now he could be my replacement. My CEO took it really well, in fact he was more interested in where I was going to visit than the problems I was causing by leaving. In what seemed like no time at all, the 4th December 2016 was upon us. We were homeless, unemployed, exceptionally excited, and a little scared. Everything we owned and would need for the next year was on our backs. We were ready to leave our old lives behind and catch our flight to Bangkok! ( 2 years ago and looking about 5 years younger!) One giant leap From the moment we landed in Bangkok we fell in love with South East Asia. Everything about it was so completely different from anything we’d experienced before. The people, the weather, the culture, and of course the food. Two hours after the aircraft touched the tarmac we were in the heart of a loud, dirty, crazy city. We wasted no time drinking our and kicking off our love of street food with a Pad Thai cooked right before our eyes. first Chang – Nowadays, whenever taking flights around Asia we try to stop in Bangkok to spend a few days sat on plastic chairs sharing a large Chang with ice and watching the world go by. Despite how hectic the place is we both feel incredibly calm and at home there. Maybe it’s because we started our journey there, maybe it’s the price of the beer! Whatever the reason, strange as it sounds, I leave that place feeling refreshed and relaxed, and sometimes a bit hungover. Food and drink are two of the main reasons we travel. We love to explore countries with our taste buds. We often start each country by taking a cooking class to learn about the cuisine and what the local foods were to order and eat in the restaurants. I’ve actually written about our favourite classes we took in and . If we had to decide our all time favourite cuisine, it’d be a tough call but Vietnamese would win — we could both happily eat Pho noodle soup for breakfast every day for the rest of our lives! Laos Cambodia ( Day 1 in Bangkok) Our first launch In the run up to leaving we started working on a side project called with the intention of continuing and launching once we were by the beach. Both our startup employers in the UK expressed a need to share new releases with their customers easily and we thought we’d found the perfect solution to this. ReleasePage The project was sidelined as we spent the first few months drinking too much cheap beer and recklessly eating street food that yes, did come back to bite us! After a while we started to miss coding. We both missed making things, solving problems, and worried slightly about losing all of our brain cells to one too many Changs. So, we began working from little coffee shops and managed to finally finish ReleasePage. Shortly after, we from a kebab shop in Phnom Penh at midnight. Perhaps a strange choice of location but they had incredible hummus and great wifi. We’re not ashamed to admit that we’d eaten there three nights in a row! launched on Product Hunt At this time we were not very active on Twitter and we had built the product without much user feedback. This turned out to be a mistake. We also didn’t know about the best time to launch or how to build up pre-launch hype, but it still went ok. We stayed up until the early hours responding to comments, sharing on social media, and staring at the analytics — watching the “people live right now” number creep up was very exciting! We finished the day with a couple of hundred upvotes, a modest traffic spike, and a few Release Pages created, but sadly no paid subscriptions. After the launch we continued to work on ReleasePage part time for the next 6 months and tried our hand at marketing on Reddit, Hacker News, Twitter, and Facebook. When this didn’t work I compiled a list of startup companies that might benefit from ReleasePage in a big spreadsheet (remember I like spreadsheets!) and started emailing every one of them. I spent hours crafting emails for each company that would sound personal and genuine but my efforts yielded no results. Our final attempt at getting ReleasePage noticed was via press coverage. Noting our prior failings in marketing, we decided to pay a startup PR agency to help us. We used who guarantee press coverage and also had a promotion reducing their price — though we still paid about €250. In hindsight this was completely crazy but we after months of work were desperate to see this product succeed. Promotehour Unfortunately, after weeks of answering questions and filling out profiles about our startup they couldn’t find anyone who wanted to cover us. The worst part was that they suggested we go for the “women in tech sells” angle and make me the subject rather than the product. I’m a huge advocate for encouraging more women to get started in tech and having more products built by women, but I felt disappointed by them suggesting that if I shared the hardships of my journey it might sell my product. But I digress, this is perhaps a topic for another article. ( Coco is always working with us!) Lessons learned James and I are both developers, not marketers. We thought this might help as we wouldn’t be full of marketing talk, but obviously this meant we suck at selling ourselves and our products. Marketing is hard and it remains our biggest hurdle when we make products today. We implemented far too many features and spent too long polishing unimportant aspects of ReleasePage before launching. There is a chunk of complicated logic which manages what happens if a customer downgrades their subscription when they’d be over the new plan limit — completely pointless without any paying customers! We spent 6 months building it and didn’t have any users before we launched so we lacked vital feedback and validation. This lesson was the biggest one, and is why we’re now big supporters of and . building in the open the open startup movement Despite the failure of ReleasePage we still keep it running on a cheap server. We like using it and all of our products have Release Pages. Though if we’re being honest, then the real reason it’s still live, is that we hope the idea still might take off. It would also be heartbreaking to pull the plug on our first ever side project Founding a company on the road By July we were 6 months in and still loving the lifestyle. We knew already that we wanted to travel for longer. To make our dreams become reality we would need to earn some money. nomad By pure chance we found a work opportunity in Chiang Mai, well he found us. We were working in a cafe and a guy approached us asking if we were developers and if we’d like to do some work for him in the future. We exchanged emails and promptly forgot all about it (more on this later). If we wanted to take on freelance work we decided it would be a good idea to start an agency officially. This is when the idea for our company was born. Squarecat – The name and logo were inspired by a big yellow square cat plushie that I won in an arcade in Japan. His name is Colin and he is very dear to us. You may even have seen him at the bottom of our websites! ( The moment Colin was born) – He was too big to come travelling with us so he currently lives with James’ mum in the Isle of Man. Before we left James knew how sad I was to leave Colin and had a miniature version made. We named him Coco and he is our travel mascot. He always rides shotgun in my daypack with me. ( Coco with Colin and always in our backpack on the road) To start a company while travelling was not going to be an easy task. We knew we’d need a way to start and run our company fully remotely. We no longer had a permanent address which is the first thing you need to do almost anything business related. Estonian e-Residency Program James had been following something called the for a while and it seemed perfect. We wanted to keep ties to Europe and if approved, the digital identification would provide a way for us to run an Estonian company despite not living in Estonia. The identity card would allow us to digitally sign important documents — such as those required to incorporate, conduct our banking, do our taxes, and everything else we would need to do from wherever we may be in the world, assuming there is internet of course. Estonian e-residency program We also discovered , a company which would help us start our business and manage all of our accounting and compliance. We’d just need to upload invoices and expenses, and they would calculate our taxes on a monthly basis. They charge us nearly €100 a month but we absolutely could not live without them. LeapIN partnered with the Estonian e-residency Anyone can apply to the e-residency program for the cost of €100, and pick up their ID card from any Estonian embassy in the world! Unfortunately in our case, the only nearby embassy we could collect ours from was Singapore, which happened to also be the only one that needed for delivery. This didn’t fit with our schedule, and the only other option on this side of the world was Canberra, Australia. I guess we’d be heading down under! three months This part of the story ends here as we wouldn’t collect our cards for 5 more months. We prayed they would still be there when we finally got round to it and promptly forgot about them. Give us your money Squarecat Web Development became more than just an idea and shortly after launching our we landed our first freelance gig — from the man we met in Thailand! website We estimated the project would take 3 months and committed to working 4 days a week — we didn’t want to shock our systems too hard! Client work presented a new set of challenges; balancing work with travel, ensuring we would have stable internet, and locating suitable work environments. We also wanted to ensure we would have time to work on our own side projects while still remembering to take care of our own health and avoiding burnout. We started the project when we were in the Philippines. Surprisingly, the internet was pretty good. We even managed to work from a remote beach town which only had electricity for 5 hours a day using mobile data on local SIM cards! ( Working from one of our favourite places — Sabang, Palawan) Most of the challenges turned out to be very easy to manage. Internet in South East Asia is very good so we were able to work anywhere there was wifi and coffee. – We don’t usually feel the need to spend money on co-working spaces or specific working environments as we’re productive enough using cafes. We always prefer to stay in Airbnb’s so that we have a work space if required and it usually costs us less than 2 beds in a hostel. Our travel plans didn’t change because we needed to work — our travel style was already quite slow. We felt absolutely no need to keep up with the other (much younger) backpackers who hopped around all the tourist attractions in one day! We liked to spend a week or so in each place, get a feel for the culture, and eat everywhere we could. This gave us time to still enjoy travelling, see the sights, and crack out some code. Work smart, not hard On work days we developed a routine of having breakfast in one cafe and working there until lunch, changing location for lunch and working until late afternoon, and then finishing a few loose ends off with a beer. The only difficulty for us was that James and I have different work schedules. He works best in the morning and loses focus by the afternoon, whereas I have trouble being productive before midday and some of my best work is done late in the evening. I started trying to match his schedule by rising early together but it was silly. I would poke around the internet for a few hours until my brain switched on after lunch. I’d get in a few good hours but James would want to finish and go home when I was right in the productive zone. It was pointless to be sitting in a cafe trying to work when I knew I wasn’t going to get anything done, but it took a long time of this pattern before I listened to my body. Everyone knows the motto “work smart, not hard”. Eventually I gave in and was much happier and more productive for it. My routine changed; I stayed in bed two extra hours when James got up to work, we’d share a few hours working in a cafe for lunch, and when James finished I’d continue for a few more hours in the evening. It seems obvious now, but at the time I had this idea that we had to work at the same time and I felt guilty for staying asleep if James was working! I was beating myself up for not getting enough done, and if I hadn’t changed my mindset it definitely would have ended badly. This was affecting my physical and mental health and it’s important to remember that this can easily happen, regardless of lifestyle and location. Travel highlights We had an incredible year exploring so many stunning countries whilst also earning some money to continue for another year. Some of the highlights include: Visiting an elephant sanctuary in Chiang Mai Scootering around rural Laos Buying $250 motorbikes and riding them 2,500km across Vietnam Learning to scuba dive in Koh Tao Hiking a sulfur spewing volcano in Indonesia Diving with sharks and manta rays in the Philippines Spending Christmas on the beach in Australia. I started to fall behind writing articles about our travels so the last couple of highlights don’t have an article yet, sorry. I have of drafts and travel stories I want to write about. I’ll get round to finishing them all one day! a lot Check Out my Instagram story on this link: https://www.instagram.com/p/BdYwBZelmk_/?utm_source=ig_embed Avoiding travel fatigue It’s important that we don’t paint a picture of non-stop travel because that’s not how we did things. Constant travel is tiring. Forever unpacking and repacking our bags, finding accommodation, booking transport, haggling prices, and fending off street traders is hard work. We travelled slowly and stayed in several places for a week or two to recover our energy. Our focus for a place was rarely the main tourist attraction and if we didn’t manage to visit everything we were happy so long as we did manage to eat everything! When we finished motorbiking Vietnam we decided to take a little break. We loved Chiang Mai so we flew there, rented a nice apartment with a rooftop pool, and . This was where we did most of our work on ReleasePage. Chiang Mai has become a huge digital nomad hub in the last few years and although there’s some stigma attached to the place we loved it. However, we did stay away from the people trying to sell us courses on how to become digital nomads! planned to stay for 3 months After spending 2 months zooming around the Philippines near the end of the year, we fell victim to another bout of fatigue and decided to relax and work in Hanoi for a while. We ended up staying for two months (and ate Pho almost every day). There’s also some great craft beer and western style places to eat which we took full advantage of after so long eating just chicken and rice. We finished our first freelance project but winter was coming and it started to get cold. The air quality was terrible, too, so even a sunny day looked overcast. It was time to go back to the warmth. Next stop, Australia! This article is the first in a three-part series. The next will be linked here when published. Originally published at makermag.com on January 13, 2019.

Our Nomad Makers Origin Story

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently concluded that, at the current rate of human activity relating to global greenhouse gas emission pathways, we are facing a threat of a 1.5°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels. This may not sound like a large number, but the consequences are dire — think rising sea levels leading to flooding of lowland areas, degradation of tundras and rainforests, and increased CO₂ concentration in oceans leading to mass bleaching of coral reef ecosystems. That last one hits particularly close to home, being a scuba-diver myself. To combat this issue, many organisations have looked to technology — blockchain in particular. One such organisation is the Blockchain for Climate Foundation that serves to “put the Paris Agreement on the blockchain” and “catalyse climate action by connecting the national carbon accounts of the world.” Source: “Putting the Paris Agreement on the Blockchain” Of course, when it comes to utilising blockchain technology to reduce the impact of climate change, the irony isn’t lost to me — it’s no secret that many iterations of distributed ledger technology at work today are inherently energy-intensive. In fact, the entire premise of digital asset mining revolves around the deliberate expenditure of processing power. The orange areas show where global Bitcoin mining consumes more electricity than the entire country But is there a silver lining? In Building Block(chain)s for a Better Planet, a publication by the World Economic Forum and PWC, blockchain technology is identified as a key driver in what has been coined the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Along with other emergent technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is posited that blockchain technology will serve to “seismically affect economies, values, identities and possibilities for future generations” (4). The central premise of the PWC report revolves round the notion that, while currently in its infancy and thus still fundamentally inefficient, future implementations of blockchain technology could “dramatically improve operating efficiencies in some sectors while completely disrupting others” (13). As a firm believer in and user of blockchain technology, I concur with this sentiment, and have established some findings as to how exactly distributed ledger technology, in its current or future forms, can — pardon the melodramatic Grand Statement — save the planet: Decentralised Carbon Markets Carbon credits, or “tradable certificates or permits representing the right to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide,” were created with all the right intentions — to act as an incentive for businesses to implement carbon-friendly operational practices, with the ultimate goal of balancing the world’s carbon footprint. Even as the multi-billion dollar market it is today, it is rife with limitations caused by intermediaries. The Carbon Grid Protocol seeks to change this through their development of a “complementary protocol layer [that enables] blockchain networks and DApps to efficiently access carbon credits to offset their carbon footprint.” “Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions emit 60kg and 10kg of carbon dioxide respectively. This is compared to just 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide being emitted for each VISA transaction” Blockchain platforms could be harnessed to use cryptographic tokens with a tradable value to optimise existing market platforms for carbon (or other substances) and create new opportunities for carbon credit transactions. (PWC 7) Incentivised Prosumption The term “prosumption” is derived from the notion of something being produced by consumers. An hypothetical example of this would be the implementation of a solar-powered Bitcoin mining rig in which surplus rewards are used to purchase carbon credits. Within the context of blockchain technology, this can be linked to the micro-generation energy market. In a blockchain-powered prosumption system, it is posited that “smart meters could be used to account and register the micro-generated energy on a distributed ledger” (76). We can already see iterations of this taking place today, with one example being MIT startup SolarCoin. Can blockchain give power back to the grid? Distributed ledgers, in combination with smart-metering systems and next-generation batteries (to accumulate energy locally), have the potential to open the energy-market to prosumer production. (Government Office for Science 76) Sustainable Finance Legacy issuance, trading, clearing, and settlement processes of the traditional financial industry are highly inefficient, with high latency T+3 cycles being the norm for the last two decades. Today, organisations like Hashstacs Inc, with their Securities Trading Asset and Classification (STACS) Protocol, are primed to disrupt long-standing bastions of traditional finance. With their implementation of a hybrid ledger architecture consisting of a public/permissioned blockchain, STACS enables the complete tokenisation of capital markets for faster, cheaper, and more secure issuance, trading, clearing, and settlement of securities. And when it comes to the tokenisation of said capital markets, there are infinite possibilities beyond traditional financial securities — real estate, art, and even solar assets, can all easily be digitised. Imagine a world where you can seamlessly issue securities for the crowdfunding of solar energy, forest conservation, and water purification projects Looking ahead, blockchain could be a real game changer for “blended finance” investment in projects seeking to deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. (PWC 25) Closing Thoughts While blockchain technology still has a ways to go before it can realistically deliver its promises of creating a cleaner, more sustainable, and more harmonious planet, I believe we’re on the right track. Every nascent technology necessarily undergoes three main phases before it achieves mass adoption and scalability: R&D, where “incomes from inputs are negative and where the prospects of failure are high”
Ascension, where “out-of-pocket costs have been recovered and the technology begins to gather strength”
Maturity, where “gain is high and stable” and the markets achieve equilibrium Based on the current state of the blockchain industry, we’re right in the thick of the ascension phase, with many of the organisations identified above gaining serious traction towards Series B funding. If you’re as much a tech and blockchain geek as I am, you’ll no doubt be excited (and even hyped!) over what this space will have to offer us in the coming months, years, and beyond when it comes to saving the planet. Marcus Tan - Marketing and Business Development Director - Broctagon Fintech Group | LinkedIn_Join LinkedIn My daily work revolves around building distinctive, compelling, and transformative brands for finance and…_www.linkedin.com The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently concluded that, at the current rate of human activity relating to global greenhouse gas emission pathways, we are facing a threat of a 1.5°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels . This may not sound like a large number, but the consequences are dire — think rising sea levels leading to flooding of lowland areas, degradation of tundras and rainforests, and increased CO₂ concentration in oceans leading to mass bleaching of coral reef ecosystems. That last one hits particularly close to home, being a scuba-diver myself. 1.5°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels To combat this issue, many organisations have looked to technology — blockchain in particular. One such organisation is the Blockchain for Climate Foundation that serves to “put the Paris Agreement on the blockchain” and “catalyse climate action by connecting the national carbon accounts of the world.” Blockchain for Climate Foundation Source: “ Putting the Paris Agreement on the Blockchain ” Putting the Paris Agreement on the Blockchain Of course, when it comes to utilising blockchain technology to reduce the impact of climate change, the irony isn’t lost to me — it’s no secret that many iterations of distributed ledger technology at work today are inherently energy-intensive. In fact, the entire premise of digital asset mining revolves around the deliberate expenditure of processing power. The orange areas show where global Bitcoin mining consumes more electricity than the entire country consumes more electricity than the entire country But is there a silver lining? In Building Block(chain)s for a Better Planet , a publication by the World Economic Forum and PWC, blockchain technology is identified as a key driver in what has been coined the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Along with other emergent technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is posited that blockchain technology will serve to “seismically affect economies, values, identities and possibilities for future generations” (4). Building Block(chain)s for a Better Planet Building Block(chain)s for a Better Planet The central premise of the PWC report revolves round the notion that, while currently in its infancy and thus still fundamentally inefficient, future implementations of blockchain technology could “dramatically improve operating efficiencies in some sectors while completely disrupting others” (13). As a firm believer in and user of blockchain technology, I concur with this sentiment, and have established some findings as to how exactly distributed ledger technology, in its current or future forms, can — pardon the melodramatic Grand Statement — save the planet: Decentralised Carbon Markets Carbon credits, or “ tradable certificates or permits representing the right to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide,” were created with all the right intentions — to act as an incentive for businesses to implement carbon-friendly operational practices, with the ultimate goal of balancing the world’s carbon footprint. tradable certificates or permits Even as the multi-billion dollar market it is today, it is rife with limitations caused by intermediaries. The Carbon Grid Protocol seeks to change this through their development of a “complementary protocol layer [that enables] blockchain networks and DApps to efficiently access carbon credits to offset their carbon footprint.” Carbon Grid Protocol “Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions emit 60kg and 10kg of carbon dioxide respectively . This is compared to just 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide being emitted for each VISA transaction” 60kg and 10kg of carbon dioxide respectively Blockchain platforms could be harnessed to use cryptographic tokens with a tradable value to optimise existing market platforms for carbon (or other substances) and create new opportunities for carbon credit transactions. (PWC 7) Blockchain platforms could be harnessed to use cryptographic tokens with a tradable value to optimise existing market platforms for carbon (or other substances) and create new opportunities for carbon credit transactions. (PWC 7) Incentivised Prosumption The term “prosumption” is derived from the notion of something being produced by consumers. An hypothetical example of this would be the implementation of a solar-powered Bitcoin mining rig in which surplus rewards are used to purchase carbon credits. Within the context of blockchain technology, this can be linked to the micro-generation energy marke t. produced by consumers . produced by consumers micro-generation energy marke In a blockchain-powered prosumption system, it is posited that “smart meters could be used to account and register the micro-generated energy on a distributed ledger” (76). We can already see iterations of this taking place today, with one example being MIT startup SolarCoin . SolarCoin Can blockchain give power back to the grid? Can blockchain give power back to the grid? Distributed ledgers, in combination with smart-metering systems and next-generation batteries (to accumulate energy locally), have the potential to open the energy-market to prosumer production. (Government Office for Science 76) Distributed ledgers, in combination with smart-metering systems and next-generation batteries (to accumulate energy locally), have the potential to open the energy-market to prosumer production. (Government Office for Science 76) Sustainable Finance Legacy issuance, trading, clearing, and settlement processes of the traditional financial industry are highly inefficient, with high latency T+3 cycles being the norm for the last two decades. Today, organisations like Hashstacs Inc , with their Securities Trading Asset and Classification (STACS) Protocol , are primed to disrupt long-standing bastions of traditional finance. With their implementation of a hybrid ledger architecture consisting of a public/permissioned blockchain, STACS enables the complete tokenisation of capital markets for faster, cheaper, and more secure issuance, trading, clearing, and settlement of securities. Hashstacs Inc Securities Trading Asset and Classification (STACS) Protocol And when it comes to the tokenisation of said capital markets, there are infinite possibilities beyond traditional financial securities — real estate, art, and even solar assets , can all easily be digitised. solar assets Imagine a world where you can seamlessly issue securities for the crowdfunding of solar energy, forest conservation, and water purification projects Looking ahead, blockchain could be a real game changer for “blended finance” investment in projects seeking to deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. (PWC 25) Looking ahead, blockchain could be a real game changer for “blended finance” investment in projects seeking to deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. (PWC 25) Closing Thoughts While blockchain technology still has a ways to go before it can realistically deliver its promises of creating a cleaner, more sustainable, and more harmonious planet, I believe we’re on the right track. Every nascent technology necessarily undergoes three main phases before it achieves mass adoption and scalability: R&D, where “incomes from inputs are negative and where the prospects of failure are high” Ascension, where “out-of-pocket costs have been recovered and the technology begins to gather strength” Maturity, where “gain is high and stable” and the markets achieve equilibrium R&D , where “ incomes from inputs are negative and where the prospects of failure are high ” R&D incomes from inputs are negative and where the prospects of failure are high Ascension , where “out-of-pocket costs have been recovered and the technology begins to gather strength” Ascension Maturity , where “gain is high and stable” and the markets achieve equilibrium Maturity Based on the current state of the blockchain industry, we’re right in the thick of the ascension phase, with many of the organisations identified above gaining serious traction towards Series B funding. If you’re as much a tech and blockchain geek as I am, you’ll no doubt be excited (and even hyped!) over what this space will have to offer us in the coming months, years, and beyond when it comes to saving the planet. Marcus Tan - Marketing and Business Development Director - Broctagon Fintech Group | LinkedIn _Join LinkedIn My daily work revolves around building distinctive, compelling, and transformative brands for finance and…_www.linkedin.com Marcus Tan - Marketing and Business Development Director - Broctagon Fintech Group | LinkedIn Marcus Tan - Marketing and Business Development Director - Broctagon Fintech Group | LinkedIn _Join LinkedIn My daily work revolves around building distinctive, compelling, and transformative brands for finance and…_www.linkedin.com

Going Green: Can Blockchain Save the Planet?

This article is the second in a three part series. If you want to read the first one you can do here . Spending Christmas on the beach in Australia was the perfect way to celebrate surviving a year of together. traveling James’ childhood friend emigrated to Australia a few years ago and had been badgering us to visit ever since. We kept telling him it was too expensive, but since our Estonian e-residency cards were there we ended up with no choice but to hop on the cheapest flight we could find. I guess he was pretty happy that we’d finally made it halfway around the world as he surprised us at the airport! Living and working in a campervan We were unsure if we could afford to travel Australia and weren’t particularly interested in doing so if it was going to cost a fortune. The original plan was to spend a couple of weeks with our friend Dale, visit Canberra to collect our identity cards, and then leave. At some point in the first two weeks, the constant sunshine and beach life changed our minds and we decided to buy a campervan in which we would live and work while we travelled some of the East coast. I guess it was easy to fall in love with this lifestyle! Almost as soon as we decided this we were lucky enough to land our second freelance job. We were recommended as reputable developers by a mutual friend which resulted in a contract for three months work. This contract was another perfect fit for us; the client had an idea and wanted us to architect, , and build the product. Another job meant we would need to have power and internet available (despite still living like hippies)! design We found a van with solar power so we could charge our laptops (and a fridge to keep the beer cold) and solved the internet problem by splashing out on a SIM card with 40GB of data. Our first coffee in our home on wheels! We drove and worked our way from Sydney to Adelaide, back to Sydney, up to Brisbane, and back to Sydney again. The route was a little weird, but we didn’t want to drive all the way to Perth and our visa meant we could only stay for 3 months at a time. The wifi in Australia was not great. Outside of the big cities we struggled to find places to work but our SIM cards were fantastic. With the sun charging everything for us we were able to work from our van most days using our 4G. With the exception of the terrible wifi, the public services in Australia are incredible. Every beach and park has clean toilets and showers (some of them even have hot water but a cold shower is often welcome), BBQ’s, seating areas, and drinking water stations. I despise camping so I was surprised how much I loved living in a van — I think the facilities and weather were huge factors in this! Gotta work where you can We worked when and where we could, often sitting outside the van or using picnic tables at campsites. On long drives whoever wasn’t driving would usually try and get some work done, at least until our laptops overheated in the non air conditioned cab! Living and working in a car After 3 months our visa was up and we had to leave Australia. As we were so close to New Zealand we decided it would be the perfect time to visit. With our new found love for van life we hired a campervan. However, we didn’t have an equally amazing time… The internet was practically non-existent even with expensive local SIM cards we were without signal for days at a time. This was frustrating as we were trying to work, but luckily the project was coming to an end and we were able to put on the finishing touches without good wifi. Our van, (which was basically a family car with a mattress in the back) was one of the cheapest rentals we could find. Despite this it still put us way over budget — at the time of writing NZ is the most expensive country we’ve visited. Even though we were trying to save money our daily expenditure doubled our budget to €100 a day. A bit colder than we’d like | Queenstown was beautiful We really enjoyed visiting New Zealand and we did some amazing things; took our first helicopter ride to hike a glacier, white water rafted the highest waterfall, bathed in hot springs, and visited the wettest place on the planet. However, though the landscapes were absolutely breathtaking at every turn, we visited at the wrong time of year — it was cold and the days were short. Van life is no fun when you’re freezing, damp, and in the dark! First time in a helicopter! | First time hiking a glacier! Back to Europe Whilst we had been away our friends had been busy. We were invited to four weddings in the summer! I would never have missed my two best friends’ weddings, and luckily for us they were only a week apart (though unfortunately 850km apart too). We were also seriously starting to miss Europe after 18 months away and decided this was a perfect chance to spend the whole summer there. We spent one more month in Australia which we ended with a scuba diving liveaboard in Cairns on the Great Barrier Reef, and then started our journey back West. To round off our time in the east we spent a few last days in Bangkok, where it all began. It also meant we could avoid spending an entire 24 hours on a flight back from Sydney 😅 Berlin is one of our favourite European cities, and we have visited several times but only in winter — and Berlin winters are brutal! We wanted a travel break had some client work to finish off so we decided to spend a couple of months there. We spent a month in Neukölln and a month in Wedding — two of our favourite districts. For the first time working on the road we tried out a co-working space. It was a novelty for the first few days, but we found it too much like getting up and going to an office — we even brought our own lunch a couple of times! We confirmed our suspicions that we prefer a constant change of environment to stay productive. We have a couple of friends from the UK who live in Berlin and when we weren’t working we did a lot of eating and drinking! Berlin has a reputation for fantastic all night (or all weekend), parties, but there is also an incredible bar scene if you’re not a club person. I love the music in Berlin (mostly techno and deep house) but in our 2 months we only went to one club and I am still not sure if I felt cool for getting home at 10am, or like an idiot. Especially after suffering through the 3-day hangover. Park BBQs, lots of kicker, and touristing! Four weddings and no funerals Our journey back to the UK for the first time in 18 months was less than smooth. Our flight was delayed by long enough that when we landed in London the car rental shop was closed and we had to sleep on the floor of their office until they opened! It took us longer to get from Germany to the UK than our flight from Bangkok to Berlin. A typical Ryanair experience, but we just can’t resist the prices! Thankfully we had finished all our client work and were free for the summer. This was perfect because it required meticulous planning (obviously by me) to ensure we could see all of our family and friends and attend all the weddings without backtracking and covering the same ground. Finding the maker community Even travelling and working as a couple can be a lonely experience. Hostels always look so amazing with a beautiful pool and cheap bar etc, but they are almost always more expensive than an entire apartment on or a local hotel. Plus, when you have to work the next day you don’t want to sleep in a bunk bed and drink shots until 5am. Airbnb Sometimes it’s difficult to find people who share the same interests as us. We are never short of backpacker friends and drinking buddies but it’s rare to find long term travellers and fellow developers. James had seen a new community on Twitter called Makerlog. He wanted to be more accountable for development tasks and needed help seeing a product through to the end rather than continually jumping between new ideas. Makerlog looked like the perfect place to do this, so he joined the Slack and our journey into the maker community had begun! Lacking fellow female developer support and communication I joined a community on Telegram I had just discovered called Women Make. Both of us found everyone super friendly and supportive and we joked that we had our own groups of online friends now. Joining these groups made us both realise how much we relied solely on each other for emotional support, encouragement, and feedback. It was suddenly really obvious that if we could get some of that support elsewhere it would benefit our business, and potentially our relationship. Being held accountable and having friends ask how we were getting on was a big motivator for building our products. It was also great to be a part of such a diverse community of people, with experience in a wide range of topics, all helping each other. James already used Twitter but we both started to become more active. I thought there were some barriers — such as unwritten rules and expected etiquette, but I soon realised that I just needed to be myself. 24 hour startup challenge There was this crazy idea circulating Twitter called the 24 hour startup challenge. was the man behind it. After he decided to encourage some other makers to do the same thing. Pat Walls building and launching a product live on stream in 24 hours As something completely out of our comfort zones we immediately . Disclaimer, I took a LOT of encouragement and secretly hoped our internet would not be good enough for me to take part. signed up Committing to the 24 hour startup challenge was a really big deal for both of us. I regularly struggle with imposter syndrome. The idea that everyone would see how little I really know and how terrible I am at coding, live on stream, was my idea of hell. James was not as stressed as me, but as an introvert, he was concerned about how he would talk through his problems and explain what he was doing while streaming to keep it interesting for viewers. Most of the time I am an extrovert, so babbling about my code was one thing I was not worried about! Our biggest challenge for the streaming was finding a good enough internet connection. We would be taking part from Salta, Argentina. We had been staying in a shared house but thought it would be best to have our own apartment and internet connection. I booked an Airbnb but I failed to notice that the property didn’t list wifi as one of the facilities… The day before the stream we went to our new place for all of 30 minutes before realising there was no wifi. Panicking about not being able to participate we spoke to our previous host and luckily we were able stay there another couple of nights. The accommodation shenanigans meant we had wasted a good chunk of our day for preparation and I was even more stressed. Stream day was incredible. There was no reason for weeks of nerves as it wasn’t at all scary and was actually really fun! With a couple of hundred other people taking part I wasn’t sure if we would get any viewers but the audience was super supportive. It was incredible to have people watch us build our product and provide help and encouragement. I am a developer who needs to talk through code problems, often known as “rubber duck debugging”, which is often frustrating for James when he’s trying to focus. Coding on stream was a perfect solution as the audience (or just the camera) made excellent rubber ducks! Our internet was not stable enough to support us two streams so we used just one laptop and sat next to each other so any viewers would be able to hear us both. We also switched laptops a few times so everyone would get to chance to see each of our faces! We managed about 18 hours of coding before our eyes started giving up on us and we crashed. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to finish or launch our startup, our idea was incredibly ambitious to build in 24 hours, but we were very happy with the results! Imposter syndrome Taking part in that challenge was so far out of my comfort zone it could have been on another planet. I attempted to lower my stress levels by preparing as much as I could (as much as was allowed in the rules). I researched the tools we would be using, estimated the core tasks, and planned what we would be doing each hour. In the first few hours the app took shape relatively quickly which helped push the imposter syndrome out of the way as I was able to see results. This is a theme I see in my everyday coding — if I am unable to complete a task within my time estimate then this is when the doubt about my abilities starts creeping in. I am attempting to solve this by measuring how much I get done in a larger period of time, such as a week, rather than agonising over a 2 hour task taking 4 hours — I’ll let you know how this goes! James managed to talk a lot more than he expected while coding, but this contributed a lot to his tiredness and fatigue. If there was a particularly difficult problem he did tend to go quiet for an hour or so while he worked through it. I don’t think this is necessarily an introvert issue, but something which would become easier to do with more live streaming practice. Self-improvement cannot be made without action. A lot has changed in a year and I am continuously working on pushing myself out of my comfort zone every day. Currently, I am trying to say yes to podcasts and interviews, because “doing it live” is something which scares me. Participating in the 24 hour startup challenge would not have happened if we hadn’t found the maker community. We are incredibly thankful to have discovered a group of such friendly, supportive, and wonderful friends all around the world. Making our first $5 After the failure of our first startup, we had been sustaining our travels with client work but we hadn’t given up making stuff! We launched our first native Mac app — a menu bar app to get notifications when your websites go down. People bought it! When we made that first $5 it was such an incredible feeling. We felt like we were finally on the right path. UptimeBar UptimeBar wasn’t super successful but we made a couple of hundred dollars and learned a lot of important lessons; build products which solve your own problems, build and ship an MVP for validation, and be open. This was the first of our products to be an open startup with a super basic and we got a lot of positive feedback about sharing these stats. open page This small success gave us the motivation to keep on building and we decided we wanted to be even more open and share more stats than just revenue (if we had any!) for our next startup. A possible winner Sticking to solving our own problems our next project was — a service to easily unsubscribe from spam emails with a focus on privacy. We were both spending so much time sorting through our emails we went searching for a service which would help us find and unsubscribe from ones we didn’t want. Leave Me Alone We found a few which would help us for free, but a closer look revealed that they didn’t charge for their service because they were selling all of your data for marketing. Faced with the dilemma of a messy inbox or all of our data being exploited, we decided to build our own solution, and Leave Me Alone was born! We took a new approach to building this startup by and were delighted to start seeing some success. We released to beta users first, who gave us lots of great feedback and within a few iterations, we had something ready for the wild. being completely open Just before Christmas we soft launched Leave Me Alone on social media and to the maker community. The feedback was incredibly positive. It had taken us nearly 2 years but we hoped we had finally built something that people wanted and were willing to pay for. Side project side projects With a long stay booked in Cusco for Christmas and New Year we had a bunch of free time. James built — an unobtrusive ad network for makers. There were discussions in the maker community about wanting to monetise their products with advertising, but not wanting to show visitors irrelevant or ugly ads served from big bad corporations. MakerAds MakerAds is a network of adverts by makers, and free for makers. James offers sponsored ad spots and plans to add categories in the future to allow sites to further specify what type of advert they want to show. Inspired by a I built my first Chrome extension — to fix accidental clicks on #hashtags in the Twitter search results. I had a great evening learning something new and I even added support for Firefox! Tweet from Ben Tossell Twitter Search Fixer Sadly Twitter recently updated their web app and my extension no longer works on the new version. They are slowly inviting people to try it but neither of us have been able to yet so I can’t fix it. Twitter Search Fixer is completely free and so if you have the new Twitter and want to help out please feel free! open source A new client for the New Year We were starting to run low on money. When we flew to South America in October we agreed that if we dipped below €5,000 without having client work we would fly have to back to Europe and contract or find a job. Obviously, we didn’t want to do this but historically neither of us has had much success finding work on freelance websites such as Freelancer and Upwork. Applying is a big time investment and the competition for job postings is too high and the quality of clients is too low. We looked for better places to find work and found . The quality of developers and clients is much higher. The platform is built by two nomads Emma and Philip who encountered the same problems as us when they were trying to find work while travelling. We love their approach of getting to know their customers and they have reached out to us several times for feedback or to recommend jobs specific to our skills. Moonlight It was a dream to apply to jobs with proper specifications and upfront expectations. It wasn’t long before we found a great client and project which set us up with 3 months work and meant we could keep travelling for a while longer yet — phew! After spending Christmas in the cold and at altitude we were in desperate need of sun, sea, and sand… Onwards to the equator! Merry Christmas… and a Happy New year from Cusco! Our 2018 in review Disclaimer: Some of the links are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, I might earn commission if you click through and signup or make a purchase. This article is the second in a three part series. Find the first one . The final part will be linked here when published. here Originally published at makermag.com on February 19, 2019.

A Couple of Nomad Makers: finding friends and side project profits

Why performance marketing isn’t enough I recently spoke to a really smart group of performance marketers about the importance of brand marketing. This was a very analytical group, so I decided to attempt to reduce the fluffy reputation of brand marketing by talking about neuroscience and how the brain works when it comes to decision making. I started by showing the group a slide with the following logo pairings on them. As we went through each pairing one by one, I asked them to , and I’d like you to do this too. Quickly. Don’t think about why, just choose one for each. choose one (No more comments on this for now — we’ll come back to this later) tells us that consumers are rational agents who make choices after considering all the available information, costs, benefits and event probabilities, using the rational part of the brain (the Neocortex). Rational choice theory Sure. Your Starbucks coffee, trip to Bali, Chanel bag — all very rational right? Of course not, we all know this. Every one of us can think of times when we have bought items we didn’t choose rationally, and this happens every day. While some consumers are more disciplined than others with their planning, even the most rational of us do this all the time. Where it gets interesting is understanding (last minute or otherwise). When I grab the ice cream at the grocery store, why do I choose Ben and Jerry’s over Haagen Dasz? I might tell myself it’s the specific flavour or the price or the packaging, or post-rationalise it in my brain in one of a million other ways. But for some reason, I instantly go for one over the other. This is . Brand salience is that trigger in your brain that, when the moment comes to buy, says, choose that one. why we decide to choose our chosen brands at the point of purchase brand salience also known as , is the newer field that believes . According to Harvard Business School professor : Neuromarketing , consumer neuroscience consumer decisions are actually made in the older or more unconscious parts of the brain Uma R. Karmarkar “People are fairly good at expressing what they want, what they like, or even how much they will pay for an item. But , or how and when it is influenced by factors like store displays or brands. [Neuroscience] can help us understand those hidden elements of the decision process.” they aren’t very good at accessing where that value comes from Big caveat: I am not a neuroscientist. While many neuroscientists believe in this, some don’t! You’ll need to make your own mind and decide for yourself. In order for any of this to make sense, you’ll need a quick overview of the brain. This is based on neuroscientist Paul MacLean’s . Triune Brain Theory According to this theory, the brain is comprised of 3 parts: the Reptilian Brain, the Limbic Brain, and the Neocortex. The Reptilian Brain Credit: Conscious Discipline Brain State Model The Reptilian Brain is also known as the Old Brain, the Lizard Brain, or the R-Complex. As you can probably guess, this is the oldest part of our brain and goes back a long time! It first appeared in fish around . 500 million years ago The Reptilian Brain includes the brainstem and cerebellum and it controls the body’s core functions like heart rate and breathing. It drives like survival instinct, direct-stimulus response, fight-or-flight, competition and aggression. It gave our ancestors the skills they needed to survive. Basically, this part of your brain is all about impulse and instinct since these were critical for survival. primal behaviours The checkout at the grocery store has thrived based on instinct and impulse buys. Ecommerce retailers now replicate this online at the end of your purchase journey. It works very well for low-ticket items, but there are also many ways of experimenting with calls to action for higher ticket items that appeal to the same part of the brain. It’s the reason why the real estate agent tells you there’s another buyer who is very interested too. Or the online retailer that tells you there’s only one item left so you should buy it before it’s gone. All of these tactics that push urgency appeal to our Reptilian Brains. The Limbic Brain Credit: Conscious Discipline Brain State Model Also known as the Limbic System or the Mammal Brain, this part of the brain evolved next, after the Reptilian Brain. Of course “next” in this context was significantly later in our biological evolution by around . 250 million years This part of the brain includes the hippocampus, amygdala and hypothalamus. This is where come from. If the characters from really were living inside your head, their headquarters would firmly be planted in the Limbic Brain. emotions Inside Out Credit: Disney/Pixar This part of your brain is responsible for feelings, memories, value judgments, trust, loyalty, hopes and dreams. Your Limbic Brain a romcom. It generates and regulates the flow of chemicals and chemical reactions that create emotions. That you get when you buy a lottery ticket and think about what you’d do if you win? That’s got the Limbic Brain written all over it. loves dopamine shot The Limbic Brain has no capacity for language. So if you post-rationalise an emotive decision made ( ) you’re doing it in your Neocortex, which we’re about to discuss. With no language capacity in the Limbic Brain (or the Reptilian Brain for the record), you’re making decisions based on gut feelings, not rational logic. The Limbic Brain is the part of you that drives you to innovate and try new things. It’s not actually logical to do either, but this part of your brain understands that the upside of how it could make you feel makes it worth it. well actually it was the right thing to do because… The Limbic Brain is the reason you buy a plane ticket to an exotic destination on the other side of the world. It’s why you pay for skydiving in Interlaken and scuba diving in Great Barrier Reef. It’s why you buy the really beautiful but expensive trench coat from the luxury brand instead of the cheap one from the mall. It’s why you leave your stable job to go back to school for a career change. That’s me in blue the moment before I jumped out of a plane in Interlaken / Credit: My Limbic Brain None of these are rational decisions, but you do them because with high risk comes high reward. Your Limbic Brain has taught you this. The Neocortex Credit: Conscious Discipline Brain State Model The Neocortex is also called the Cerebral Cortex, the Human Brain or the New Brain. It was the to evolve. The Neocortex performs like cognition, sensory perception, language, abstract thought, imagination and consciousness. This includes logic, reason, science, art, music and creativity. last part of the brain higher-order brain functions Unlike the older parts of the brain, the Neocortex likes to compare and contrast and think metaphorically. It’s split into two hemispheres: Left brain: analytical, logical Right brain: creative, intuitive The Neocortex uses tangible factors and language to rationalise what we can’t rationalise in the other parts of the brain. So if I choose Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, my Neocortex might tell me that it’s because I align with their values or because Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough just tastes so good. But the decision was already made, this rationalisation has come after. The same goes for the exercise you did with the various brand logos at the beginning of this article. Something in your gut made you choose one over the other — the Neocortex just made it make sense to you. As crazy as it may seem, the (which is the rational, reasonable part of your brain, a part of the Neocortex) is responsible for only 5% of the decision making process. Performance marketing lives here. In reality, the vast majority of consumer decision making comes from the Limbic Brain and Reptilian Brains. prefrontal cortex “We have gut reactions in three seconds or less. In fact, . Quick emotional processing also happens with cascading impact. Our emotional reaction to a stimulus resounds more loudly in our brain than does our rational response, triggering the action to follow.” Dan Hill, author of Emotionomics: Leveraging Emotions for Business Success said, emotions process sensory input in only one-fifth the time our conscious, cognitive brain takes to assimilate that same input Credit: Conscious Discipline Brain State Model How you can make the most of the brain for the entire consumer journey By now I’m hoping you’ve thought about how this impacts your own consumer behaviour. Think about where you believe you sit on the spectrum of being a rational or emotional consumer (and realistically, this will vary dramatically in individuals based on product category and time in their life). You probably had a different approach to shopping when you were aged 10 vs 20 vs 30. So what does this mean to you as a marketer? There are many definitions for what a brand is, but my favourite is that . I’ve chosen the word ‘people’ intentionally, not ‘customers’ or ‘consumers’. Relationships with brands are based on a collection of exposures and experiences and associated feelings for . Those feelings get stored in your Limbic Brain to give the Reptilian Brain the inputs it needs to make the final call. The rational components of those experiences live in the Neocortex, so they’re ready to rationalise your decisions when the Reptilian Brain tells it that it’s time. brand is the unique story people recall when they think of you people Here are a few specific ways you can target the decision making part of your customers’ brains: : The Reptilian Brain is very self centric (considering it had to primarily focus on not dying, I think that’s fair). So you need to sell benefits, not features. It’s very easy for businesses to be internally rather than externally focused, so watch out for this at every touchpoint. Consider your wording carefully: it’s not about what the company provides, it’s what the customer will get. Make sure it’s clear why what you’re selling is valuable to the customer. Be customer centric : The human brain post-rationalises decisions but really, these decisions are made based on feelings and gut instinct. Yes, you’re selling a product or a service. But what are you selling? Happiness? Time? Control? Freedom? Once you know what you’re actually selling, communicating it becomes a lot easier. Think about what you’re really selling really : According to , the brain craves contrast in order to to make a decision. Make it easy for the consumer to understand the difference between products or services (don’t make them work for it). Show why it’s better Harvard Business Review : Remember that the Reptilian and Limbic Brains have no capacity for language. Therefore, according to author , they scan for what is concrete and recognisable. They don’t want to have to think, so make it easy for them by using familiar concepts and imagery to get your point across. Did you know that the for why someone chooses to click on a search result when looking for products is because they have heard of the brand before? Creating this familiarity beforehand is critical in order to get the most out of your performance marketing. Use what’s familiar Christophe Morin number one factor : Further to the last point, consistency is one of the most important factors in creating strong brands. Your team needs a deep understanding that while they may be seeing key messages again and again, the consumer will only be exposed to them a fraction of the time. When your team starts to think that it’s getting boring, that’s when it’s working! Be consistent : The brain likes and tends to overlook what’s in between. Key messages need to be at the beginning (primacy) and the end (recency) in order for you to have your best shot at successfully landing your point. Focus on the beginning and the end beginnings and endings : The Reptilian Brain responds to visuals much faster than words. First impressions will be based on visual stimuli. According to the book , after 72 hours, only 10% of people can remember information delivered in words versus 65% who can remember it if a visual is added. Make sure you put a considerable amount of time / money / effort into strong design, consistency and guardianship for your visual identity because it makes all the difference for your brand. The strongest, most memorable and iconic brands transcend language and geography to appeal to the most primal part of brains around the world. Use strong visuals Brain Rules : Emotions create electrochemical responses in the brain that impact the way we process information. As emotionally persuaded beings, it’s in the interest of companies to leverage our human nature for decision making. . This is often the area that gives them the opportunity to emotionally connect with their audiences. That being said, this only really works over the long-term if it’s genuine. Companies need to be willing to stick with their values through ups and downs, regardless if it’s trendy or not. If a company really cares about something that matters to its customers, it can use this emotional connection to drive long-term loyalty. The most to drive purchase behaviour are love, pride, fear, guilt and greed. To increase , move from rational to emotional language including storytelling, metaphors, empathetic wording, endorsements and social proof. Go heavy on emotions One of the most important components of strong brands is that they stand for something and stick to it motivating emotions positive brand recall . The truth is that if you’re an early stage startup, you, like the performance marketers I mentioned at the beginning of this article, will probably want to focus more on the end of the funnel and the prefrontal cortex that accounts for only 5% of the decision making process. You’ll do this because it’s the quickest and easiest way to gain a large enough initial audience to develop your product market fit. As you grow from startup to scale-up, this is when you can start experimenting with how you appeal to different parts of the brain throughout the consumer journey. Finally, as you move from scale-up to hypergrowth, differentiation and brand building will become your core focus. This is where . How you take advantage of the different components of the brain will vary depending on your company’s stage and what level of resources you’re willing to invest understanding how decisions are made cannot be ignored The primary point of building brand is to build brand salience — to . If you only focus on the Neocortex and end-of-the-funnel activities, you’ll only attain a fraction of the positive decisions you’re looking for. be the brand a consumer chooses when the time comes to buy Update: After writing this, I was approached to write a much more in-depth report on Consumer Neuroscience and Digital Marketing for Econsultancy. I worked with neuroscientists and leading global experts to go into much greater detail on how consumer neuroscience can be applied by digital marketers. ! Take a look

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