Frank Morgan on Writing, Hospitality, and Web3

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests.

>>> print("Hello world!") I’m Frank, a tech writer at Cloudbeds.com. Cloudbeds is a hospitality XaaS platform that was born about a decade ago. A small group of travel addicts in Brazil said “hey, let’s build something to help our coolest, favoritest, indiest hotels stay in business.” Now Cloudbeds is worldwide. Our platform can run any size of lodging business, anywhere. Hospitality tech is hot hot hot right now.

Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about?

The collapse of FTX is an ongoing threat to NFT marketplaces and blockchain games. There’s more going on here than just a crazy year for crypto. Powerful forces in the U.S. government are closing in on digital assets of any and all kinds. They’re looking for new ways to tax and regulate, and FTX has given them plenty of talking points. Nothing is guaranteed to escape the watchful eye in Washington B.D. (Barad-dûr) - not even an Axie skin. But #TheSandbox is going to come out of the current crypto climate with even bigger market share. They’re poised to move into the space left by Solana, defunct FTX partnerships, and anything ever built on FTT.

Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about?

Okay: people have been writing about “post-agile” practically as long as they’ve been writing about Agile. And I didn’t exactly coin “dev3.” But it’s not just hype.

Web3 is happening where you DON'T see it. That’s why it’s web3. Do you have any idea how OLD mainstream dev rituals are?? The Agile Manifesto has reached legal drinking age. Scrum is older than Resident Evil 1. Right now a lot of big tech monoliths risk getting the rug pulled out from under them by truly agile squads. Next Gen isn't about silos, storypoints and standups. It's about ownership at all levels of dev.

Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?)

I just wake up scared every morning. I run on black coffee and an impending sense of doom.

Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing?

Just staring at that white screen of death and wondering “can I really pull this off again?” Getting paid to be creative is so cool; still I don’t know how many days I’ve said “I wish I could go back to data entry.” James Altucher is a human trigger warning, I grant you, but he said something that stuck with me: write down ten bad ideas every day. At the end of the year you might have 3,650 bad ideas - and one good one. One good idea is all it takes to change the world. Altucher’s body of work contains many, many bad ideas, but his success is inarguable.

What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career?

I don’t subscribe to achievement in the mainstream sense. There are no differences of scale. Whether it’s a spinner, a tweet, or a 3,000-page treatise on the fall of Rome, creators must work to bring the divine fire to mortals. We will all fail. But that’s our quest. I’ve written maybe six sentences I’m truly proud of; I hope to achieve a seventh.

Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice?

Bored Panda. And I’m gonna level with you: I read nothing of substance outside my job. Nothing.

Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it?

I compose horrible alt-country music on GarageBand. I self-published an equally horrible historical fantasy novel. But it outsold both of Andrew Cuomo’s books combined, and no publisher ever had to take a five million dollar bath on it. I often have to go running three times a day because I can’t sit still. My psychiatrist says the medical term for my condition is “nuts.”

What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next?

Wow… got any requests? I write, conservatively, anything. Maybe a sonnet? Iambic pentameter only, please.

What’s your opinion on HackerNoon as a platform for writers?

I lovelovelovelovelovelovelove you guys. Wow! What an incredible service - to us, to the culture. This is the Tik Tok era, and you folks are on the right side of history. We don’t have to beg trad gatekeepers to get our work out there any more.

Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words?

Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know…