Hacking Øredev’s after hours: Sharing our Coder Privilege (video, slides, talking points)

The original plan at the first evening of this year’s Øredev was for me to interview Peter Sunde about the history of Pirate Bay as covered in his SmashingConf Barcelona “Technology Is Neither Good Nor Bad — You Are” talk.

As Peter couldn’t come and the massive news of the US or the voting system choosing Donald Trump as the president I quickly changed my plans. Instead, I wrote a talk explaining the very random way I got to become a professional developer and that it is our duty as privileged people now to share our knowledge with those not as lucky.

After the talk I invited a very distraught Rob Conery, author of The Imposter’s Handbook to help share some cheerful and amusing anectodes in his history. We ended up with some actionable ideas how to learn more and not listen to the inner voice that keeps telling us we’re not good enough.

Here’s the video of the hour of information on Vimeo:

The slides of the talk are on Slideshare.

Here are some of the points of the slides:

Things I learned

• Nothing can hold you back when you are good at analysing and repeating
• Everything you see on screen came from somewhere – it is never set in stone
• It is much more fun to explore and tweak than to get something handed to you
• Working in a limited/unknown environment is a wonderful challenge
• You don’t need to feel limited by the environment you target – you can use whatever you want to create for it
• The more people do this, the more best practices can be shared.

Hello View Source

• A big part of my success on the web was using view source and reverse engineering
• We all did, don’t let people tell you otherwise
• The lack of distance between creation and consumption was really down my alley…
• These days, developer tools have replaced view source
• We have incredible insight into what our code does in the browser
• Of course, not everybody is ready for this…

Here is where we come in.

• We are at the forefront of online media
• We are creators and makers – not consumers
• We have the privilege of open tools, an open platform and openly available documentation.

Getting started has never been easier…

• Using GitHub, you can host your code, collaborate, execute your projects, write collaborative documentation and books…
• Using social media we can promote these products, share knowledge and invite people to learn…

You’re building on existing solutions…

• You don’t need to start from scratch – you can contribute to thousands of existing projects – many aimed to teach people how to become a web maker.
• You don’t even need to code. You can help with UX, or document, or herd communities.

One main thing i learned in my whole career…

• You learn best by teaching
• Sharing and making people grow with you is the best feeling ever
• If you feel down and “not good enough”, create something – anything!

Use your frustration, your anger and your deviousness for good…

• What we need more than ever right now is education
• Traditional education is encumbered by privilege and costs
• We’ve been lucky – it is time we give back

The web is the most versatile and non-elite platform. Go and make your mark!