Tag: selfdogfooding

I’ve been to a number of WordCamps over the past year, and invariably, in the registration process I’m asked for my Twitter handle and the majority of the time that Twitter handle is printed on my name tag.

Why are we doing this?! It’s not TwitterCamp. It’s a W-O-R-D-C-A-M-P!! Why can’t we ask for and put our own domain names (running WordPress, natch…) in our registration and on our name tags?! Let’s get with the program people… Twitter is nice, but obviously WordPress on a domain name we own and control is far better.

A common sticker-type name tag that is preprinted with the large text "Hello My URL is" with smaller text underneath that reads <a href=" "> and a blank space in the middle where someone has handwritten in pen "photomatt.net"
This is the sort of name tag I’d much rather support!

👓 Scripting News: August 17, 2017

Read Scripting News: August 17, 2017 by Dave Winer (Scripting News)
Another shift happened a few years ago, when I decided it was okay to develop just for myself, with no intention of ever releasing the stuff I was working on. That led to a new style of product, and a happier developer. I was always doing it for myself, and fooling myself into believing it was for other people. I'm no less a narcissist than anyone else. Once you own that, you get a lot more powerful, I have found.
A great advertisement for selfdogfooding.

The IndieWeb community has it nailed: #selfdogfood

Read The IndieWeb community has it nailed: #selfdogfood by Johannes Ernst (upon2020.com)

Endless meetings. Disagreements over gory details that may never even get implemented in the real world. Philosophical grandstanding. Paper standards. etc. etc. We’ve all been there, and it can be terminally annoying.

Which is why the Indie Web community is so refreshing. Other than that they are doing extremely useful work on re-decentralizing the internet :-)

Their #selfdogfood principle means that you have to have implemented yourself what you propose, and you must be running it on a daily basis for your own purposes. If that isn’t true, nobody is interested in what you have to say. Imagine!

One thing that always impressed me when I was working for BMW many eons ago, was that those BMW engineers definitely built their cars for themselves, and used them every day for their own lives, with a passion. Boy, would they come back to the office next morning and complain and insist that changes be made. It makes for better products. More intense, more honest, products.

#Selfdogfooding is like that. They build it, and they only build what they mean. It’s so refreshing. And some really cool stuff is coming out of it, like distributed blog comments, or checkins without Foursquare and the like. Their movement is growing, not surprisingly.