1 Year of Steady Progress Is More Than I Expected
I never feel like I'm doing enough. But I looked at what I was doing a year ago and... it was kind of a shock how much changed. There's a lesson in here.
In November 2023, I launched 4 Web Devs 1 App Idea.. This was the first in a series that would lead to Web Dev Challenge.
Launching this show was an emotional journey that deserves its own post, but for now I want to celebrate something that I tend to forget: constant, gentle pressure gets us so much further than a single, heroic push ever could.
I knew where I wanted to go, but I started where I was
A large and consistent challenge for me whenever I have a new idea is that I can see further than I can throw. I have a vision of something amazing and perfect (and complicated and incredibly expensive) — and because I can imagine what my ideal version of The Big Idea™ is, I get frustrated when it's all too often out of my reach.
4 Web Devs, 1 App Idea was not my ideal version of The Big Idea™. But it was the version I could make at the time. And I knew that if I wanted to get closer to the ideal, I needed to prove that The Big Idea™ worked in the first place — so I scoped down and did what I could with the tools I had.
- I reached out to Eve, Scott, and Salma first because I knew they were comfortable recording themselves
- I asked everyone to work asynchronously to make it less complicated and demanding on everyone's schedule
- My editor and I worked to combine the asynchronous footage into something that felt as close as we could manage to the full group sharing in a room together
These choices kept production costs manageable, and allowed me to make the case to Clerk that trying a non-traditional approach to developer content was an acceptable risk. Their former head of devrel, Domitrius Clark, believed in the vision and got the rest of his team on board to sponsor four episodes — one of those "huge in retrospect" moments that has affected so much of what I've done professionally since.
Unfortunately, doing stuff is the only way we get better at stuff
When I published the episode on Novemer 16, I was proud of it — but I knew there were ways to improve.
In subsequent episodes, I tried new things, like recording everyone on a call instead of asynchronously. Each little improvement led to a slightly better end product that was a little bit closer to The Big Idea™.
I was iterating, like I always tell everyone else to do, and relearning the lesson that the best way to get really good at a thing is to consistently do the thing for a long time.
Between November 16, 2023 and March 13, 2024, I published six episodes of 4 Web Devs, 1 App Idea. Each one was a little better than the one before, and each time I looked for little ways to improve next time.
The success of the first version paved the way for the next
Even more than iterative improvement, shipping consistently helped me prove the value of the idea and my ability to deliver on it.
And that proof helped me make a compelling enough case to convince a partner to support the next iteration of this idea — another step closer to The Big Idea™.
In yet another confirmation that doing good work is a pie-eating contest where the prize for winning is more pie, less than five weeks after the episode went live, I was in conversations with DataStax about The Big Idea™, and by March 2024 we'd reached an agreement to create the first episode of Web Dev Challenge, an upgraded, in-person successor to 4 Web Devs, 1 App Idea.
We filmed the first episode in April. Web Dev Challenge officially went live on my birthday, June 26.
Since its initial launch, I've gone on to record 10 episodes for season 1 of Web Dev Challenge. I'm in talks for season 2. (If your company wants to get involved, I want to work with you!)
And I'm not done yet.
The Big Idea™ is still a few steps away
Nov 16, 2023 is when the first episode of 4 Web Devs, 1 App Idea went live — but this was a journey I started years earlier.
I am incredibly proud of how far things have come since that first episode dropped. But I'm still not where I want to be with it.
That being said, it's the best version it can be right now — and hopefully in another year I'll be able to share another update with even more progress.
I've got big ideas and I can't wait for you to see them.
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