Projects

Since coding is in the title of this site and my trip across the country, what will I be programming? Part of my excitement with the trip is having focused, dedicated blocks of time to sit in coffee shops or restaurants and work on projects I'm passionate about launching. While my development projects often shift every six months to a year, I'm sure I'll be working on some of all of the projects listed below in some capacity.

1. ProofDriven

In January 2012, I launched a web application where developers can go to create custom financial reports to show that technology upgrades are important investments for companies to make. The first design was... awful. But, I launched! The new design is way better, despite the fact that I designed it all myself instead of using a template. I give credit for the aesthetic improvement to Bootstrapping Design and several design books I read between the launches.

I plan to improve the way the site works and add new financial reports that show how new specific technologies and processes provide a positive return on investment. In addition, I will write blog posts on how developers can encourage technical improvements in their work environments even when their organization is technologically risk-adverse. Sure, it's not the sexiest stuff, but it's important for helping drive improvements in the way thousands of organizations across the country work.

2. My "Idea-Launch-Marketing-Iterate" Personal Project

I've found I unfortunately write a lot of boilerplate code and spend time figuring some of the same things out each time I launch a personal project. I'm trying to automate some of those boilerplate pieces with a centralized web application that allows me to come up with ideas, launch and automatically scale them with Linode/AWS/Heroku, then market the app, collect and show metrics with statsd and Graphite, then iterate on promising ideas. This project is still coming together but so far I like how it's going and its potential.

3. Excella Connect - Contact Management and Data Analysis for Excella

I recently created a web application for Excella Consulting to better understand our connections to different companies and industries. At first I used LinkedIn data, but unfortunately LinkedIn imposes archaic and shortsighted restrictions on the terms of use for their API. LinkedIn just doesn't get how APIs should work to make them useful to third parties. Someone is going to eventually disrupt their business by getting things right.

In the meantime, if the forthcoming pilot initiative within Excella is successful, I'll probably spend time developing functionality for the product that will allow visualizations and data access to other internal applications.

4. Potential Client Web Apps I Can Develop Remotely

If a new or existing client is looking for someone to develop a Python/Django app, I'd consider spending up to 20 hours a week working on it.

As I mentioned above, it's likely these projects will change and new ones will get added, but right now that's what I think of with the "Coding" part of Coding Across America.