Google Developer Expert Phil Nash is Nominated for Ruby on Rails "Thinker of the Year"

Among the 2,000+ deserving humans nominated across 5 categories for over 200 award titles in this year's Noonies, we discovered Phil Nash from the United states.

Phil has been nominated for a 2020 Noonie in the Software Development category. Phil is a Google Developer Expert and is currently building open source tools to help other developers. Let's learn more about him below!

1. Which 2020 Noonie have you been nominated for?

Ruby on Rails Thinker of the Year

2. Tell us a bit about yourself.

I'm a developer evangelist for Twilio and a Google Developer Expert, living in Melbourne, Australia. I spend time building tools and example projects, often live streamed on Twitch. I enjoy speaking at meetups and conferences, in real life and virtually.

3. Tell us about the things you make / write / manage / build.

I love building open source tools that help other developers and writing tutorials that teach developers how things work. My main work right now is going into the Twilio Serverless Toolkit (https://github.com/twilio-labs/serverless-toolkit) which lets people develop and deploy to Twilio's serverless infrastructure. But I also maintain a bunch of Ruby gems (https://rubygems.org/profiles/philnash).

4. What are you most excited about right now?

I'm excited about live coding on Twitch. It's been a great way for me to react to the pandemic as I would normally be traveling to conferences and meetups and now can't do much outside of the house. So Twitch has allowed me to concentrate on code while also interacting with other developers from all over the world who I get to show things and also learn from.

5. What are you worried about right now?

I think, like everyone else in the world, I'm worried about the current and future impacts of the pandemic. While I don't think things will ever go back to the exact same as they were before (some people love working from home too much for that to happen) the amount of time we have to live under the current set of restrictions and the changes once we move beyond those are what worry me. I think I'm in a very lucky position, but many people haven't been so lucky and I worry what the future holds for all of us.

6. How has the pandemic changed your life and/or career?

As a developer evangelist I would normally be out meeting people at meetups, conferences and hackathons every week. And now I'm not really leaving the house. I thought I might find myself writing more content, but things turned to video instead and I have been enjoying coding on Twitch instead.

7. If we gave you $10 million to invest in one thing right now, where would you put it?

I am not an investor and I have no idea! You can still give me $10 million if you want though, I promise to enjoy it!

8. What or Who are you keeping an eye on in 2020?

The evolution of marketing, especially how social media is changing. It’s been interesting how companies are re-evaluating marketing and their audience. I’m working now on a new article about the decline of influencers.

9. Which apps can't you live without?

Slite, Slack, Linear, Podz

10. What are you currently learning?

I’m learning Italian and been brushing up on my French. Like a lot of people, I also have learned how to use Zoom, how to entertain myself and even had a “Zoom party of one” dinner party in my apartment.

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Don't forget to vote for Phil for Ruby on Rails Thinker of the Year!