DEV Community: Ben Patton

Migrating from Heroku to Render

Ben Patton — Fri, 06 May 2022 20:45:24 +0000

From time to time, there are words or phrases that I hear repeated enough to the point where I eventually think, “Hmm, I should check this out.” Render was one of those words.

On Twitter, I have seen various conversations where people want to migrate from Heroku to another service. Some of the issues people have raised include:

Cost
Lack of options for persistent storage
Not ideal for hosting static sites
A slowdown in recent product development

In some of those conversations, I have seen the question pop up, “What about Render?”

So, what about Render? How hard is it to make the move from Heroku to Render? I wanted to find out. I started with a simple web application that I had deployed to Heroku, and I went through the process of migrating it to Render. All in all, it took me about 10 minutes. In this post, I’m going to walk through the steps that I took.

All you need to get started is a GitHub account.

A brief overview of my Node.js application

Currently I have a simple Node.js application running on Heroku. I also have Heroku Postgres and Heroku Redis installed as add-ons for this application.

The app is simple. When I send a GET request to /countries, I get a response body that 1) tells me the source of the data (database or cache) and 2) gives me a listing of countries.

There is also an endpoint (/clear_cache) that I can hit with a POST request to clear the Redis cache.

Step 1: Setting up our application in Render

First, go to render.com and either log in or sign up with GitHub. Once you’re logged in, click on the New button in the top bar next to your Account Avatar. Then, choose Web Service.

Next, select the GitHub repository that you want to deploy. Provide a name for your application and give it the appropriate startup commands. For this demo—since this is a Node.js project—my application is set to run npm install and npm start.

Choose the free plan here, too. For now, this is sufficient for our demo needs. You can always upgrade your plan as your app scales up.

Step 2: Setting up Postgres on Render

Setting up Postgres on Render is simple. Again, in the top menu bar, all you have to do is click on New and then PostgreSQL.

Next, provide a name for your Postgres database. For this demo, I kept the remaining defaults, and I went with the free plan.

Then, click on Create Database.

You’ll see a Configuring Environment Variables step below, but we’ll come back to that in a little bit. For now, we’ll move on to setting up Redis.

Step 3: Setting up Redis on Render

Redis is a fast and flexible key-value store that we’ll use for caching in our demo app. Constantly querying a database can get expensive, especially as your application scales. When subsequent queries return the same result, it makes sense to cache those results to prevent unnecessary hits to the database. Redis lets us do this.

Until recently, Render didn’t offer a managed Redis service. You had to host Redis yourself somewhere else. But good news! After several months of early access availability only, Render recently released its managed Redis service, which includes a free tier!

So, just like before, click on New and select Redis from the dropdown. Be sure to name your Redis instance, choose the free plan, and then click on Create Redis.

Now that Redis and Postgres are both set up, we can move on to setting up our environment variables.

Step 4: Configuring environment variables

Our web application relies on certain environment variables. In particular, we wanted the flexibility to specify our Postgres database location and Redis location on the fly rather than hardwire those locations into the code. Let’s walk through how to specify those environment variables in Render.

Go to your Dashboard and click on the Web Service you created in step one.

Click on Environment in the sub-navigation menu on the page.

Now, you can either select to create individual environment variables that are attached to the web service, or you can create an Environment Group and attach it to your web service. Either approach could work fine for our application.

We need to create three environment variables:

DATABASE_URL: Set this to the Internal Connection String value from the configuration page for the Postgres instance you set up in Step 2.

REDIS_URL: Set this to the Internal Connection String value from the configuration page for the Redis instance you set up in Step 3.

NODE_ENV: Set this to production.

The environment variables for your Web Service should look similar to the following:

Testing Our App

With our environment variables set, we can test our app. I used curl commands to send requests to my Render application.

First, we send a GET request to https://redis-postgres-demo.onrender.com/countries. In my terminal window, the command looks like this:

curl -X GET https://redis-postgres-demo.onrender.com/countries

Here’s the response I received:

The source describes where we are getting data from, and data is simply all of the countries. We can see from the above response that—for this first request—the source of the data is the database.

Next, we send a second GET request to the same endpoint. The response is as follows:

As expected, the source of the data for this second request is the Redis cache and not the database.

Next, we send a POST request to clear the cache:

curl -X POST https://redis-postgres-demo.onrender.com/clear_cache

After clearing the cache, we send another GET request to retrieve our list of countries. As expected, since there is no cache to draw from, the source for the data returned is the database.

And with that, our little app has been seamlessly migrated to Render. Render makes setting up Postgres and Redis a breeze!

Conclusion

In summary, we had an app running on Heroku that used Postgres and Redis. By simply connecting our GitHub account to Render, we were able to use Render to:

Deploy our Web Service
Set up Postgres and Redis
Set up environment variables to point our Web Service to our Postgres database and Redis instance.

We did all this with a few clicks, in about the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee.

So, let’s go back to the original question. If you’re looking to migrate away from Heroku, you might be asking, “What about Render?” I’d say it’s definitely worth considering.

Here is a video that walks through my entire process:
https://youtu.be/dambnfHv6fU

Work, Thanos, and Philly Cheesesteaks

Ben Patton — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 13:42:27 +0000

Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash

How food, Marvel, and conversations on work is helping me find more value in the workplace

I have written a decent amount on varying thoughts of being great at work. The assessment I wrote about, The Working Genius, has helped me think through a lot of things related to work and why work tends to be so incredibly frustrating to me.

But with all of the things I have written, lest any of you should think I am a guru on work, I still walked in and sat down and felt frustrated everyday. I can see how and where things need to be better. I think they must be better at some point. But this thought was trapping me because they are not going to get better immediately. Change does not work that way and if it does, we all tend to rage against.

So what I was really wrestling with was the knowledge that ‘even if this thing is fixed, there will be a new problem tomorrow that I am focusing on.’

So how do I work at a place where I see change needs to happen, knowing that I still have to contribute, and not become another ‘cog-in-the-wheel’ so to speak? This was difficult for me to think through because in my mind if I do my work I will have more work added to me leading to me just ‘falling in line’ with the established order and giving up on the things that I think are truly important for us.

A Bit of Clarity

I was talking with my wife as we were heading out of town. She asked this simple question, “But how can you try to make change if you have not worked with the team on the problem and have that credibility?” She is very wise. The reason I know she is wise is because it made me uncomfortable. I did not like that question because I immediately believed that she was saying, ‘can you not just do your job?’

How wrong I was. Let me say it again, I was SO WRONG!

What was frustrating? I knew she was right. She asked a probing question and I knew she was right. If I don’t work with the team and know the pain ‘with them’ I am simply complaining. Now, I know she was not telling me to ‘just do your job.’ But what I do know is that if I do the job for a time, I will have more ability to work towards change rather than just being a voice that says, ‘this is a problem and needs to change’, even if I was providing solutions.

Cue the space stone opening a portal and Thanos walking through.

Time

Now, this metaphor may have been better if I referenced Gollum’s riddle on time, but I like Josh Brolin’s voice better.

There is a scene where Thanos is talking about destiny,

I know what it’s like to lose. To feel so desperately that you’re right, yet to fail nonetheless. Dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives.

I was doing some hard thinking and realized that this problem can either eat me or I can submit to it and then work from within to fix the problem.

But both will take time.

Time feels like an enemy. But it can be a friend. Dread from it. Run from it. It still arrives, or should I say, comes and goes. Mountains rise and are ground to dust. Years pass like the wind. For those in web development, new frameworks rise each morning and go to rest each night. I think you get the point.

It occurred to me that the more I agonized over what I perceived the problem to be, the more I agonized. Like ‘the power of the sun in the palm’ of Doctor Octopus’s hand from Spiderman 2 (forgive me for that reference), I cannot manage the problems of work because there will always be a flare up.

It feels like losing. Oh man, it feels like I have lost big. But the really funny thing is I feel a lot freer right now to get good at things and then begin making change from inside. If you’ll permit me one more movie reference, it is like taking the red pill. I know, I know I will lose some of the glamorized view of what ‘I want to do.’ But now I get to actually see the and be in the mess of everything and work towards change. Call me NEO.

Food

One thing that helped me in this was when I was having another one of these ‘everything needs to change’ conversations with another employee/friend. We had this really long discussion on some of these things that needed to change and I was getting fired up internally (I worked remote that day and wasn’t having this conversation in person). I went in the next day and had a long conversation with him. The conversation was fine. But we went to a new Sandwich shop in our area for lunch. We bonded over Philly Cheesesteaks. The owner of this new shop gave us complimentary food for being new. He was from Philly so he yelled at some people in the parking lot being ridiculous with their parking jobs.

The point is, there was an element to getting lunch that kinda made the problems less !important and gave me clarity that I am in this with others.

Career Goals

I could spend days and weeks speculating on how we got here as a culture but it is wildly insane to me, as I reflect, that career has lost its meaning. Let me ridicule myself.

I say I want a ‘career’ in web development. But what most of us tend to mean is that I want to work in a career where I can retire when I am 34 years old. It is so silly to me that people ask if they are too old to change careers between the ages of 25–30. We have done a poor job as a sub-culture of emphasizing the importance of longevity.

But I do this as well, all 👏 the 👏 time! How? I want to be in the Developer Relations business. But I am a year into my coding career. That is not a problem. The problem is that I think I should be moving that way now, within a year. There are things I can do now to have a path towards that career. But everyone I have read about who is in DevRel spent between 3–7 years in the field before moving that direction or getting their first job in DevRel.

So remember, time will pass. Be okay with it passing. Choose things that you can do today to build future success(es) but don’t fall prey to believing that if things are not where you want them tomorrow that all is lost.

If you are in web development, you know that things change fast, so find ways to be good at things that last.

And most of all, give your time to the more !important things. Make friends. Eat good food with people you love. Use your platform for building others up. Educate. Encourage. It is too easy to get lost in ‘wanting to succeed.’

Remix: Learning Enhanced

Ben Patton — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 00:30:57 +0000

Photo by Ashin K Suresh on Unsplash

Hidden Benefits of Using Remix

I have been wrestling a lot lately with a dilemma that I think most all web developers find themselves in at some point or another. Here it is:

I work on legacy code at work 👉 I want to use updated code and frameworks 👉 To do so I have to do this outside of work 👉 Doing so outside of work takes away from family time 👉 and on, and on, and on…

Now, admittedly, none of this solves the problem of working on legacy code at work and not being able to use updated frameworks and so on. But I have been agonizing to find a way to do something at work that I can get good at and this just so happens to be Javascript.

So where does Remix come in? One problem I face with other frameworks I have used is having to learn some different syntax or that frameworks way of ‘doing things’. Remix does sit on top of React but, as I have said before, the amount of React that you have to know to use Remix is very minimal.

A Remix Secret

If you have watched Remix demo’s from the Remix team, you will get to a point in the demoes about half way to three quarters through where they drop the secret:

Your app can run with no Javascript in the browser.

So what does this mean for you. Honestly, you could research this question for a while because there are many benefits to no Javascript in the browser. But oddly enough, here is one benefit that I have recently discovered that ties into the whole work problem I mentioned above.

Having apps that can run without Javascript actually gives you time to learn and write better javascript.

Fuuuu-siioooon Ha!

Ok, I just came up with a goofy subheading. If you are a Dragon Ball Z fan, you know the reference.

The goal, and why I said fusion, was that I find something that I can get good on at work but also implement in project outside of work. So the learning I am doing on the job for the job, also carries over to off the job. Remix makes it incredibly easy and speedy to build applications. I want to get better at Javascript.

One of the nice things is that even if I take time away from actually building apps with Remix, it is built off of the Web Fundamentals. So, I get to spend time learning Javascript with the knowledge that whenever I build an app with Remix, I am using web fundamentals.

In this sense I believe I am getting to contribute actively and significantly at work because we have incredibly large Javascript files. I also know that when I build stuff outside of work with Remix, or other Javascript frameworks, I will be better.

Remix’s opinions about building and using Web Fundamentals allows me to spend more time learning things important to me.

Remix for Beginners

Ben Patton — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 14:35:28 +0000

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Why I Love Remix for Those Learning to Code

First, Remix vs ……

One of the things I have noticed is that there is a lot of comparison between Remix and Nextjs. There are also a few haters on Remix because they hate React and don’t think anything remotely related to React could be good/enjoyable.

For context, I got labeled as having Stockholm Syndrome for React because I was invested in Remix before it was open source. Like, can we not be interested in things anymore 🤷‍♂️

In one sense comparisons are natural. It is how we understand a new thing or just a thing in general. We try to match it up to something else. This is why Remix is compared to Svelte and Next. All of them are great. The Remix team would tell you that.

I don’t think comparison from a ‘what does this framework do that this other framework does not do’ is the fairest way to examine. I think philosophies are far more valuable. So I will start with that philosophy, share what Remix does, and then bookend with my thoughts on Remix for those beginning to learn web development.

Quick note: I am sharing as someone who has only been in this industry a little over a year. I believe that Remix is a good choice for anyone beyond the beginner level as well. My perspective on this is that I just learned to code and my mindset is very much set towards helping those entering this field learn in the best way.

Remix for Beginners

This will just be a list of things I like and appreciate.

Let me start with a quote from Remix’s documentation on their philosophy for and why Remix.

If you get good at Remix, you will accidentally get good at web development in general.

If you are just beginning because Remix is built on Web fundamentals/standards/best practices, Remix will help you get good as you build. The educator heart and spirit of Ryan, Michael, and their team is why using Remix will get you where you want to go. This is the most important reason, in my opinion, Remix is optimal for beginners.

‘loader’ functions — If you are fetching anything, use a loader. The name is intuitive. For a beginner, you can easily discern that if I need to ‘load’ some data, use a loader.
‘action’ functions — If you need to add, update, or delete some data, you need to ‘act’ on the data. For a beginner, you can easily discern that if I need to do something with data, it is an action.
Routes — This could be a long post on its own. But each file in your routes folder, is a route. You can nest routes based off of parent routes. For instance, say you have a ‘About’ page for your company. You might want a ‘team’ members nested page. In that page you might want a nested individual member page. Things like that. You can do all of this by creating an about.js file and then an about folder with the different nested pages inside that folder.
Layouts — Much like the routes, because layouts and routes tend to go together, you can have nested layouts.
React Simplified — the only thing you really need to know about React is how to write html from a function. This is really simple. This is called jsx, but within Remix, it is basically html. You can still get all the goodies of props, state, and passing data into the html, but simply put, just know how to write html within a function and you are good to go. Below is an example.

export default function Page() {
   return (

     <div>
       Some page content here
     </div>

  )
}

Meta tags — This is kind of a small thing, but I never cared to write meta tags because it seemed kind of convoluted for me. But writing a function that returns those things is really straightforward.
Styling — For a beginner, most likely they are learning traditional CSS or potentially tailwind. Remix handles styles a little differently by making each pages CSS its own unique url. The hidden benefit of this to a beginner is that you will not have the frustration of styles mixing and changing things on other pages. If you have ever had two different html files with different CSS but named some class the same or had different styles for the same elements, you have probably run into a CSS issue. No more!

I want beginners who are already on a really difficult path of changing careers and taking that risk to be able to choose things that ‘work for them’ by teaching them not only the skills that will help them get a job, but also the standards behind what they are learning and working towards.

I like Remix for beginners because they will learn skills and be able to get a job. But more than that I like that it is built from educators. I like that you get good at things you didn’t expect because when you move into a career, if you have that foundational web development knowledge, not just skills, you can really go anywhere.

Thanks Remix Team!

Remix Run: Making React Simple

Ben Patton — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 22:18:00 +0000

Photo by Daniel Eliashevskyi on Unsplash

As I mentioned yesterday, one of the hard parts about learning to code is that as you are learning it seems you have to learn more and more complex things. Now, this is not inherently a bad thing. The more specialized at something the more you are the go to person for that thing. That means you can move up in your career quicker.

But many start their journey learning to code by being overwhelmed with the amount of complexity that gets added over time.

So React is awesome. It solves a bunch of UI problems but there are so many things about React that make it difficult to use. Common things are how to manage state as well as using useEffect hooks.

So it is not that React is not good. It is very good. It is just that it becomes a lot to manage really quick. I would consider myself a React developer.

Enter Remix

One of the things that I noticed really quickly was that although Remix is a Web Framework that sits on top of React, the amount of traditional React that you have to use is very little. I am still learning what all Remix does for me as a React developer but I know that I can save the useState, useEffect, and useRef’s for instances in which they are really needed.

Also, because of server side rendering, Remix doesn’t need anything convoluted like Redux. I tried once with Redux and immediately quit because the amount of complexity that needed to be injected into my app was ridiculous.

Learning React

I do think that it is worth still learning React the traditional way because the more complex the app gets the more you will need things that React offers. Much like with Svelte you don’t really have to use Svelte stores to start but once things get more and more complex, taking advantage of those features makes more sense.

So I still think there is some need to learn React the traditional way. I do think however, that it can be less time spent on learning the ins and outs of React and the learner can jump to Remix and start to learn that framework.

As for getting a job, knowing React is still more important than knowing Remix. But!, I truly believe that Remix will have a very significant impact on the developer community, predominantly within the freelance and startup communities first and once larger companies that are migrating to React they will be able to incrementally adopt Remix.

I look forward to diving deep into Remix over the next few months. It was just Open Sourced and launch V1 on Monday, November 22nd.

My hope in looking into Svelte and SvelteKit as well as React and Remix is that there would be two really good paths for those changing careers and looking for their first Junior Developer role.

Svelte & SvelteKit along with React and Remix will teach best practices from a Web Development standpoint. There is a lot available too and for both of these.

I look forward to using hyper.io along with these to teach software architecture alongside web standards.

Such an exciting time in web development. 🎉🚀✨

Learnings from Planning a SvelteKit Course

Ben Patton — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 17:21:43 +0000

Photo by Arnold Francisca on Unsplash

I am building a SvelteKit Course and I want to document what I am building here. It will be simple. It is a simple Markdown blog using MDsvex, tailwind, and Daisy UI.

Goals for this course are to give a brief overview of how to get started with SvelteKit and some of SvelteKit’s features. I have had to recon with the fact that there will always, always , be more to teach. So this course will be simple. Much simpler then I would like for it to be. But it will be a great starting point for those who are at my level, right below me, or want a really simple start to Svelte and SvelteKit.

But I want to start by addressing the pain that SvelteKit is solving.

Pain in Web Development

Now to start, I think it is important to say how awesome web development is. It is one of if not the easiest professions to change careers into because all the knowledge to learn the skills are available for free. It is work but within 6–12months anyone can learn the skills and get a job making decent money in the United States.

Often times the learning starts off with a lot of enthusiasm. I remember when I was learning html, css, and javascript at my bootcamp. I was in love with what I was doing. While we were learning these things we were also looking forward to the day that we learned React.

Again, clarity is needed. I love React. I will write another blog post soon on remix.run. Remix is a web framework that sits on top of react and makes react development unfathomably easier. But again, more on that at another time.

When learning to code, html, css, and javascript are relatively simple to learn to be able to build a website. The excitement is real because you are actually putting something into the world. At some point you will levelup from html, css, and javascript to a framework.

Side note: I think we should do a better job of explaining, ‘why frameworks’.

But one thing that also happens, is as soon as you start to use a framework, there are a ton of other things you have to figure out and learn, about the framework. The typically feeling for me with this was that I always felt like I was adding a step of complexity.

Svelte: Removing Complexity

If I had been around the web development space long enough, I think React would have been a bigger deal to me. I know for those who have come before me and using all the various frameworks, React made some things really easy. But for new beginners, React becomes pretty complex.

Enter Svelte.

To quote a mentor:

Svelte is like glorified html

What does that mean? Instead of having 3 separate places you are working in code (the html file, the css file, and the javascript file), you have one component that houses your html, css, and javascript.

What is a component? Think of it like a lego. You can make individual components that do one thing, like a single lego block. But you can then compose components together to make larger components like a navbar, a layout, etc.

The bar to entry level for Svelte is very low. I believe Svelte is the best step for a developer after learning html, css, and javascript. Added to this is that Svelte now has SvelteKit, a framework on top of the Svelte to handle things like routing and a host of other necessities.

Developing Developers

Ben Patton — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 22:23:04 +0000

Photo by Geeky Shots on Unsplash

I had very inspiring call today.

Over the past month and a half I have been helping do some community management for hyper.io. One of the things that I naturally fall into is that I want to do things right. I don’t mean this in the simple way of I want to ‘do the right thing’. I mean this in that I want to do what the person wants me to do so that I know I am doing the right thing by them.

In my experience, it is very rare that someone can actually help me get through that desire because often times people revert to giving me tasks. I don’t really care about task management. I care about providing value through possibility and enabling others to succeed. Some people provide value by being task oriented and that is great. Nothing would get done if they did not exist.

But today in my call I was given mission.

At hyper we are ultimately concerned with building better developers. hyper is a secondary thought.

Why do I like this so much? For many reasons but primarily I see the heart of an educator. I see the heart of a helper. I see the heart of a guide. When promotion of a product is paramount, the product is more important than the community. But when there is a vision that drives the product, the product and team are humble enough to say that we care more about developing the people (in this case, developing developers) that the product, while we would like for it to be used, is not as important as the mission of building better developers.

That is so freaking inspiring to me. Because I want to help other get to where they are going. I have said that before. But when ‘getting them to where they are going’ has to look a certain way, that does not indicate guiding to me. That says, to me and in my opinion, that for you to truly be great you have to use this thing.

And we know that is not the case. So we are developing developers. We hope you use hyper. But we hope and long more than that for you to level up and truly be a great developer.

Here’s too leveling up. It is a journey we are all on together. If you are interested in joining the hyper community, you can go here.

Niching Down

Ben Patton — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 23:22:08 +0000

Photo by David Travis on Unsplash

I think I have finally decided what I want to pursue as a Developer and that is Developer Relations. I love helping others get to where they want to go and more than that I love telling them about things that will help them get there.

The Working Genius blog posts that I wrote a week or so ago are an example of that.

Why?

Well I know that I want to help others get to where they want to go. But in tech the best thing to teach is the thing that you just learned because it is fresh on you mind.

I graduated my coding bootcamp about a year ago and I believe I have a years worth of experience that can be incredibly beneficial to those changing careers to help them both choose what to learn and set themselves up to get a job.

I love coding and eventually we have to chose something that we are going to focus on, aka chose a niche.

So I want to help people who are changing careers into tech set themselves up for getting their first software job by teaching them the tech that I think will make them the best developer they can be.

What to Teach

I think it is important that these technologies help the learner understand fundamentals and standards so that whenever they are looking for and applying to a job they know foundational skills that transcend the technology they learned.

So I am looking at doing some series and blog posts on the following (not in order, just thoughts):

hyper.io — Teaches Document Database Design. Basically hyper will teach users how to write well architected code. It is a Software Architect as a service. It is so good! I cannot wait for the world to get their hands on hyper.
remix-run — Where hyper teaches clean architecture through use of the service, Remix will teach Web Fundamentals through use of the platform/framework. Remix boasts of spending more time on MDN than on their actual documentation website.
Svelte & SvelteKit — Svelte has been described as glorified html. I would honestly teach svelte to a beginner before teaching html, css, and javascript separately because it does all three of those just in a single file. The only reason I would teach html, css, and javascript separately is so that the learner knows they are three separate things.
MVC — This is not necessary a big deal but many larger companies use the Model, View, Controller architecture pattern for code. The primary reason for teaching this is to reinforce the teaching that you need to have a well defined architecture for your applications.
Functional Programming — One Day in the far future haha. Occasionally I will go scuba diving into functional programming. I like this analogy. If I stay down for too long I run out of oxygen. But I can take it in doses and the more I learn the deeper I can go. I want to help people learn FP because I believe its benefits are enormous but I want to have a better understanding first.

So ultimately I am niching down by just making the decision that I want to teach beginners and help people change careers. Some of these technologies are ‘newer’ but they are based off of standards and best practices that I believe will last for a long time to come.

Community Building: Where To Start

Ben Patton — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 22:10:09 +0000

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

As I have been learning about community there is one thing that is at the foundation of building a community.

A Common Interest. A Gathering Point

This may seem super obvious but it is impossible to build a community if you, the community builder do not know what you are gathering people to, helping them with, providing resources for, etc.

This is why the best community builders and leaders are those who have used the product, believe in the mission and vision of the product, and want to tell others about it.

Some Common Sticking Points

Often times you will get an early adopter that will want to spread the word. You may even get someone who just wants to support you and spread the word that way. However, unless the person knows the product, uses it, and is learning how to use it better, you will have a very hard time with this person building your community.

If you want a community builder, they are more than promotional. They can do that but to build community they need to help others use the service or product. They need to be able to answer questions.

In my opinion, you need someone who actively uses your product and wants to promote it. This is very much like a Developer Relations, Marketer, Salesman, Developer Advocate, and Developer Experience all wrapped up into a job with a fun name, Community Builder.

So start with people who are excited about and like talking about what you are doing. Then see if they want to help others learn. The teaching and building apps with your product and what you are offering will bring out their natural marketer and promotional spirit as well.

Community Building — Learning In Public

Ben Patton — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 21:16:38 +0000

Photo by Kimson Doan on Unsplash

Community Building — Learning In Public

Building a community is one of the most confusing things to me. I don’t know how consistent these articles on community will be but consider this my learning in public for community

What Is Community?

I am coming at this from a developer perspective. What does it mean to ‘build a community’? Right now there is a lot of hype around the word community. I read that Venture Capitalist are requiring those they invest in to have a community plan. But can community be bought?

I remember a couple of years ago when all of my friends were into Cross-fit that all the did was talk about Cross-fit. It has actually become a double cliche now to say that Cross-fitters talk about Cross-fit. But how does this pertain to community?

In one sense it is pricy. Cross-fit is anything but cheap to spend 45min in a gym with one coach yelling at you so you are a part of the club. Now, don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends do Cross-fit but what are you paying for? I would argue that you are paying to be apart of the club, i.e the community of cross-fitters.

Marketing & Community: Are They Similar?

This is a question that I am working through right now.

I have mentioned Seth Godin and a lot of the thoughts that I get from his writing and keynote speeches. One of the questions when thinking through marketing is “people like us do things like this.”

How does that relate to community? Well in one sense, ‘permission marketing’ and thinking for ‘what change you are trying to make’ has to do with the people you are seeking to help. That much is obvious.

But community is not so obvious. I reached Shawn Wang, known as Swyx, and asked him about community. One thing he said that stuck with me is:

Community is different than DevRel Content Creation.

This thought intrigued me for a variety of reasons but the most prevalent thoughts come from various podcasts and interviews with Swyx. Here are a few.

Community Building is the hottest new thing in tech.
Everyone wants community building to be a part of their startup/company.
There is no real definition for the ‘job description’.
A community builder does a little bit of everything. Meaning a ‘community builder’ does devrel content creation, developer advocate, marketing, sales, etc.

This brings me to my parting thought for today.

The more we try to define what community is, the more community will morph into other things. There are people more fit to build community but those people are attuned to individuals and groups. They are not attuned to a job description. They are gifted at shepherding people where they want to go and walk alongside them on their journey.

Feel free to comment and ask questions. I am learning about community as I go.

How an Assessment to Help With Work Helped Me Understand My Wife

Ben Patton — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 13:46:09 +0000

Photo by Hassan Pasha on Unsplash

Conflict is not my forte. For some people they love conflict because conflict means you are moving through something to something better, hopefully. For me, I struggle with not taking it personally.

But this assessment I have been referring too, The Working Genius, has helped me to put language to what typically happens within my marriage conflict/arguments.

The Typical Argument

The Working Genius of Wonder means that I like to think of ideas. I like to dream. I like to think of possibilities. But it also means that my head is a lot of times, ‘in the clouds’, so to speak. That does not mean that it is wrong to think that way but I have to recognize that not everyone does.

The Working Genius of Discernment means you evaluate the ideas of others. You are giving to them, serving them, helping them by walking through their idea to see if it is a good one or has merit to it. That does not mean merit in the sense of the idea itself but if it is worth implementing.

I will use wonderers and discerners as the terms for these geniuses from this point forward.

For a discerner it can be really hard to talk with a wonderer because the wonderer is pondering, dreaming, speculating, and so on. The wonderer is not presenting complete ideas ready for evaluation, most of the time.

For the wonderer it can be really hard to talk with a discerner because it feels like their ideas are being attacked and that they cannot dream of possibilities. It is critically important for the wonderer to know that the discerner is helping and serving NOT trying to tear their idea apart.

Marriage ‘Conflicts’

Most of our marriage conflicts begin at a root level of not understanding the other person.

The language of this assessment has helped my wife understand each other better. I am the wonderer. She is the discerner.

✨ There is no more value in one genius than the other ✨

In fact, I would say I value her genius more than my own because she helps me to make decisions based off of quick thoughts. She helps me evaluate. But I have to remember that she is not attacking my ideas. She is wanting to help me think through them and evaluate them to know if they are to be acted upon.

Here is a practical example that is silly but helps understand the point:

Saying, “I would really like to live up North where it is colder more during the year,” is a terrifying statement to my discerning wife because she immediately starts to evaluate the idea by asking, “does he really mean that? If he does here are the 1264 things we need to think about.” Also, she loves warmer weather so there is that 😂

For The Workplace

The point of this assessment is that teams and organizations would know how to work better together more effectively and efficiently and as a result have greater joy and understanding in the workplace.

People think differently, that is no surprise. But for some reason when it comes to work, our definition of work has been very limited. You either do your task the defined way or find a different job. This has changed some but I think it has predominantly changed in the form of leniency on the job. Mostly this means we move people around until we find a good fit for them but why not find someplace that would be the best fit for them from the start.

I think we can move that direction and The Working Genius is really driving that effort.

If you are interested in learning more about the Working Genius, you can go to their website. They also have a podcast that explains the different types and walks through what it looks like for the different types at work while removing some common misconceptions about the different types.

The Working Genius Assessment — Understanding The Work We Do

Ben Patton — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 13:02:41 +0000

Photo by Ben Garratt on Unsplash

The Working Genius Assessment — Understanding The Work We Do

As a recap, here are the six types of Working Genius and my Geniuses, Competencies, and Frustrations.

I will use the word Genius a lot. This is not me referring to myself as a genius. This is me using the assessments wording for a ‘natural gifting’.

Wonder — The natural gift of pondering the possibility of greater potential and opportunity in a given situation.
Invention — The natural gift of creating original and novel ideas and solutions.
Discernment — The natural gift of intuitively and instinctively evaluating ideas and situations.
Galvanizing — The natural gift of rallying, inspiring and organizing others to take action.
Enablement — The natural gift of providing encouragement and assistance for an idea or project.
Tenacity — The natural gift of pushing projects or tasks to completion to achieve results.

You can find these on the Working Genius [_website](https://www.workinggenius.com/)._

My Geniuses, Competencies, and Frustrations

Working Geniuses: Wonder & Enablement

Working Competencies: Discernment & Galvanizing

Working Frustrations: Invention & Tenacity

My Day-to-Day

I don’t know if this is the case for all who have the genius of Wonder, but my day-to-day is typically pretty frustrating. I dream and think of how things could be better and I want so terrible for it to be better. But I have not figured out how to communicate this effectively yet. That when I suggest something because I have thought about it at length and the possibilities of implementing a change, I am not saying I am dissatisfied or hate the company. I am saying, ‘things could be so much better if we were doing this.’

The weird and sometimes incredibly frustrating part of this is that the genius of enablement tied with the genius of wonder makes it seem even more like ‘my ideas are the best and I will help you towards that idea.’ Which I understand sounds arrogant. I am still learning how the two work together.

My competencies are discernment and galvanizing. This means that I can spend time evaluating ideas but it is not my preference because I want to help others. I want to enable them to do what they want, not pick them apart. My genius of wonder already feels like that to some degree. Galvanizing is also not my preference because I don’t really like the responsibility of rallying people. I can do it but where I thrive is being on board with the idea and seeing the idea bringing about greater opportunity within the team or organization.

My frustrations are invention and tenacity. In one sense I really hate that I don’t have tenacity because this makes me feel and I think look, a lot of the time, like a really terrible worker. The genius of tenacity is defined as “The natural gift of pushing projects or tasks to completion to achieve results.” To be on any team that is focused on ‘deliverables’ is so unbearably frustrating to me. I don’t really like to just ‘get something done’. I like helping others get something done.

Where this really gets confusing is when someone says, “Well what if helping someone (enablement) means that you ‘get the thing done’?” That is a fair question but enablement is more rightly defined, in this sense as encouragement. Thinking for others and helping them do their work better.

Invention was confusing to me at first because I was confused as to how I could have wonder and not invention because they seem somewhat similar. But an example from my own life answers this well I believe.

The last year I worked in ministry, I was working with Senior adults and I was told, “make this ministry whatever you want it to be.” I don’t know if I have every been more stressed. To create something ‘new’ was terrifying and too much pressure.

Conclusion

I feel like I have to write a conclusion for today, otherwise I would write forever on this.

I hope that those few examples of my Geniuses, Competencies, and Frustrations were helpful for understanding what this assessment is trying to do.

Tomorrow I will give a short example, a story from my life, that illustrates how understanding geniuses of others and them understanding your geniuses can help when working together or having conversation.