Thread by @polotek

This went pretty well. Thanks again to everyone who participated. Also huge thanks to @wwitzel3 who volunteered to take notes. I'm working with them to curate a bit, and then we'll share.

Let's do a quick debrief again.

https://twitter.com/polotek/status/1353451716893544448?s=20

Similarly to last time, we talked about for about an hour and 45 minutes before officially closing out the discussion. I didn't track how big the room got, but bigger than last time. Maybe 40+ people at the largest? Good crowd.

It felt a little tougher to moderate the room and rotate participants through. I think that's largely because I was doing it on my own this time. Some folks ended up waiting for quite a while before getting to share. I don't love that, and I think it's a common problem on CH.

Talking about the concept of state management was a good idea. It allowed us to talk about the problems we all need to solve, rather than some people being unable to follow because they may not be aware of a particular tool.

As a secondary goal, I'm interested in what it looks like to help people build strong mental models of what we do and how it works. I believe getting that understanding is so much more valuable than learning a tool. Especially since we have to learn new ones all the time.

What was really great is that we also started to get into team dynamics at work. e.g. "i have to work with this API from another team that is awkward and sends too much data". People were animated about sharing that experience. And it was interesting to see common themes.

I'd love to get into team dynamics more. It's tough to do while remaining respectful and constructive. But I think it would be hugely valuable for people to have a space to talk through those kinds of struggles.

Another good discussion point was how to choose the right technologies, and whether they will have longevity. For example, REST apis vs GraphQL comes up a lot. As time stretches on, nobody remains happy with the choices that were made.

Just to round things out, I think maybe I talked a little too much this time around. I try to throw it to other people often. But I have a lot of thoughts to share and I can take up a lot of space. I have to work hard to be mindful.

I'm still pretty unhappy with how hard it is to get people into Clubhouse. And I don't think the platform will make that easier in the near future. I'll probably to explore other platforms if I keep doing this.

Anyway, that's all. Thanks again for going this experiment with me.