DEV Community: Matt Smithies

🧙‍♂️❤️🤑 Invite to become a DOVU developer champion [Open Source Bounty]

Matt Smithies — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 13:15:07 +0000

👋 Good day DEV community! 😁

Matt here, Chief Technology Officer from DOVU.

Just wanted to reach out to all and send out an invite to join our open-source bounty program.

You'll be paid in DOV tokens (minimum 2,000,000 DOV per project) for building open-source contributions that we have spec'd out. This is our current list we are initially looking at creating a Laravel and NextJS client for our API.

We have examples for both projects on how to implement the project in terms of structure and testing.

Why should you care?

We aim to provide opportunities for new devs.
All of your fully credited work will be advertised through our distribution channels.
We will provide direct on-one-one mentorship if you have any questions or queries.
We welcome and recommend that you add this experience to your resume and LinkedIn.
Connections to our personal network for possible future contracts and jobs.
Our tokens can be traded on Uniswap for Ethereum.
Get involved in innovative and tech-for-good carbon offsetting solution using Ethereum, DeFi, and Hedera Hashgraph.

An ideal person in our mind is a driven individual that is trying to break into the industry but is finding it difficult, perhaps due to personal circumstances or the current economy.

Interested? Find out more on this link and you can complete a Typeform and I will be in touch with you! 🤗

Thank you

Introducing the DOVU Token Grant Program 🚀🌔 £20k a month.

Matt Smithies — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 16:10:17 +0000

🚀 Big announcement at DOVU. 🎉

Our token grant program is now open for applications, it takes less than 3 minutes.

We will be distributing up to £20,000 a month in DOV tokens to developers and teams that want to build innovative Carbon Offsetting solutions using DOVU tech.

In the coming weeks, we will be adding more resources, support, and tools to help developers get started.

1) You'll get DOV token support for up to 6 months.
2) An invite to our private developer community.
3) Get exposure of your project on our social channels.

This. is. exciting. ❤️

We welcome any developer or team to apply that has a vision of building carbon offsetting solutions to apply.

A developer or team could get up to £6,000 in DOV tokens building carbon offsetting solutions with DOVU.

Apply to the DOVU token grant program

Reach out to me directly at matt.s@dovu.io if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them.

Kind Regards

Matt 😊

Exploring Hedera Hashgraph, my journey, and building trust.

Matt Smithies — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 06:42:58 +0000

(View the blog online, you'll see super cool gifs)

Welcome new subscribers in particular those that have taken interest in my new project Serverless Hashgraph, but more on that later.

If you'd want the link to the docs, here you go! And for a little minor flex, the project made it on the official community documentation on Hedera. The docs are open source so it was just a fork then a Pull Request 🤣.

For the Postman API documentation devil toads out there... 🔥

It is currently in softish-beta, you may run a client but you need to make sure that you use the testnet credentials from hedera but you'll likely be able to set your environment in the coming days.

Actually, the project made it into their boost program, so hopefully, it will garner some more attention.

If you want to find out more about me, my history in crypto, and why I'm building this project find out more below. 👇

Before we continue, in July achieved 13/46 in a global freestyle skateboarding video contest – take a look at the commentary for my run. 🎉

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My (brief) journey in crypto-land.

I've worked with blockchain technology in various forms since mid-2017. My first engagement, which was shortlived was with Blockmason. I helped them build their initial Lndr app using their Credit Protocol and a bespoke Telegram bot framework.

Unfortunately without tarnishing their reputation the way they handled my employment exit left a bad taste in my mouth and with all things considered my attitude was far more naive. I admit that I was out of my depth and communication was a challenge.

As some of you know during that time crypto-mania hit the masses, the end of 2017. Bitcoin was worth over $20,000, Ethereum spiked to over $1,300, and crypto was front and center in the public eye.

This mania had its roots from the bitcoin halving event from July 2016.

In early 2018 I joined Simpleweb Block, a spin-off agency of Simpleweb with a focus on decentralised technologies. One of my favorite years of my development career was working with Block, it opened my eyes to actually working with an onsite team and travel to meet with the team, being part of the energy and dynamic.

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sidenote.

Finding Simpleweb Block and working with them was a challenge, I didn't have a network at the time I could contact as I dropped all my side projects and my previous role to jump to Blockmason. It was a tough 2 months to find a job.

Since then after working with Simpleweb all my current opportunities have been rooted in the relationships I developed there.

We focused on a number of different projects some of which used the Stellar Network including TapMyData and Dovetail.

Our main client and part-owner were DOVU, we researched and built a sidechain with oracles to allow for seamless bi-directional transfer of assets from mainnet. We actually developed a lot of novel technology, we assumed was normal in the industry, when later on similar technology was considered groundbreaking. 😭

I originally first came across Swirlds the technological parent of Hedera in 2018, and tested their Java SDK to explore a proof of concept timestamp mechanism.

After Block, I transferred over to DOVU as a senior developer, and to say that the journey has not had its ups and downs, being a complete rollercoaster is not painting a clear enough picture.

I'm still at DOVU to this day and have grown to recently become their CTO. We've pivoted our focus into tracking real-life events and rewarding carbon positive behavior with tokens.

Overall my decentralised journey so far has been enjoyable, it has been really beneficial to be at the intersection of the dreamers, marketing, developers, and seeing the mania.

I feel somewhat privileged to have an awareness of this industry, the technical constraints, and seeing the speculative madness of "investors" trying to make the right personal decisions they can to make their life better.

Many of which are so deep in the weeds it becomes nearly difficult to see the wood from the trees. Technological tribalism, even to this day is rife.

One personal gripe I have in particular is that the claim that Blockchain or decentralised solutions solve the problem of commercial trust. As in order to have a business relationship, let alone any relationship we need to trust the other party to deliver on their promises.

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Why do we trust a brand?

Think about it why do you trust Paypal when you send money to a friend, it is a question that we don't think about, it just works.

We know that as historical a transfer has worked, we believe that every future transaction will work. You have friends that have used Paypal, the social proof and it naturally evolves to become part of your social groups vernacular.

Trusting a company, a brand in the traditional sense is paramount and vital to building up a base of real paying customers.

To get to this point takes time, to become a household name takes a lot of money, in many cases tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

From the perspective of a small startup with big dreams to change the world in a meaningful way this can be out of reach from purely a lack of runway and financial support.

Trust and decentralized technologies

Decentralised technology can provide a mechanism for publically displaying the intent of a decision. This is the primary reason that I find DLT and Blockchain fascinating.

With that said there isn't anything stopping anyone from submitting a transaction to a blockchain that contains falsified information but it can provide a mechanism for verifiable accountability. If a company makes a claim to be accountable for a particular action then backs out, this has the potential to cause brand harm.

So the question I ask myself, does a technology or solution have the potential to reduce the cost and the friction for a company to build something that is truly trustworthy?

I like the offering from Hedera, from the outside they are building "the trust layer of the internet" that anyone could plug into. The ball is in their court to develop a system, to gain the trust of the greater community, to grow their brand, and by enabling anyone to used that system any third party project will automatically inherit the benefits of social proof.

One such psychological challenge in the market will for the trust that Hedera develops in consumer markets needs to be decoupled from a given third party which utilises the technology, companies using hedera will be accountable.

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Thankfully the governance model they employ is unique within the crypto space with a focus on building a council of top tier enterprise clients to steward the direction of the project.

The acid test, which I believe is the gateway into public adoption is what is the clearest way that such technology can be explained to a normal person and will it save significant money for businesses.

How about will it provide new experiences to a low-tech consumer, is it capable to make their lives easier?

Imagine where phones were 10 years ago, even where voice interfaces were, remember when the first iPhone was released, and how groundbreaking it felt to a consumer market.

The world and technology have been laser-focused on reducing the friction for consumers, ease of use and attention have been the pillars of modern-day business.

So what am I building?

I've teased you enough if you haven't read the docs yet.

I am making interacting with Hedera Hashgraph as simple as possible for developers that have projects in any language and want to get started integrating their code.

I'm building a Serverless REST API client for Hedera Hashgraph. To the vast majority of web developers consuming an HTTP API is dead simple and it connects to their regular workflow, it also makes testing a breeze.

A developer using the project will:

Own the deployment of their client completely.
There will be zero additional microservice cost, both in terms of money and time.
All environment variables are encrypted, secrets are secure.
There is a deep test suite, to check the state of the application and configuration.
There is an optional inbuilt CI flow using Github Actions that when properly configured will validate the deployed client every day.
The API structure is clear, flexible, and easily extendable.

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Most blockchain or crypto projects I have been a part of the biggest problems have always been cost, scale, and most importantly technical accessibility. In 2017/2018 in order to interact with many of these technologies their was always a barrier to entry, writing in solidity (the OG smart contract language), and installation of other tools.

With Javascript this included the truffle framework and Web3 libraries, documentation has always been an issue and different versions can change the API. It can be a challenge to work with.

At the end of the day, not every developer knows how to deploy a docker container, let alone deal with any security implications for a serious DevOps deployment. Combined with cryptocurrency and the risk of losing real money a lot of care and thought needs to be taken before making any serious technical decisions for production.

To make it as easy and simple for any developer of any level to safely get started.

I'm looking forward to the serverless REST API being used in the wild and would love to see what projects will be created. I have my own personal wish list that I will be making prototypes, in due time.

Why does this matter now?

It almost feels like everyone has been talking about COVID-19, remote work, and redundancies so I rather not beat a dead horse anymore but...

Behind closed doors costs have been aggressively cut, the damage of the recession is trying to be minimised, that we are currently experiencing. Capital and free cash preservation are key. Angels and investors are being tighter fisted with investment, many companies being recommended to enter cockroach mode to simply survive.

For developers, especially remote-focused developers it has become significantly harder to find a new role due to the increase of supply. In my opinion, it is likely that many individuals may need to reduce their salary expectations in order to secure a role for the next 12-18 months.

When a workforce in a fast-paced startup is being cut by 30-50% priorities pivot, the mode switches to maintence inside of a core team. Innovation is less of a focus.

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During these next 18 months in order for cash-straped companies to become involved with decentralised technology the barrier to entry needs to be reduced, risk needs to be as low as possible and costs need to be stable.

Enter, my contribution, Trust Enterprises as an attempt to solve this problem.

On a positive and purely speculative note there could be an incoming bullrun mid-late next year, I hope that this developer tool will help introduce some developers get started in this arena.

Finally, if you have reached this far, thank you. For you new subscribers, feel free to hit unsubscribe from this blog, if it is of little interest 😭. Depending on how this project is received over the coming months I may add a specific blog or simply spilt this core blog up into specific projects.

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Until next time.

Matt 🚀

You have to try out this API.

Matt Smithies — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 16:40:52 +0000

Hi!

I'm Matt I created Safe Streaming in April, the API service provides a means for developers to deliver video content recommendations to users.

In simple terms, the service gives more information about video content to parents and survivors of trauma to empower them to make a safe choice before clicking play.

Our newest feature set is foundational to our continued development on our Alexa Skill.

Our new tagging system detects and covers sensitivities over these items:

Nudity
Violence
Bad Language
Sexual Assault (implied or explicit)
Abuse
Substance Abuse
Drugs
Racism

68 thousand sensitivity tags that cover 46 thousand movies and TV shows.

It goes deeper though.

With the API you can set up individual consumers with their unique needs and deliver instant recommendations. A given recommendation will show exactly what issues a piece of content contains and how it connects to a consumer's preferences.

The missing piece of the puzzle, providing clearer labels for video so viewers can avoid sensitive content.

Probably the most data-rich content labeling system in the industry #boldaf 😎

I mentioned earlier that we are working on an Alexa Skill to complement the API. After the release and some marketing, I will be running a paid hackathon and looking for innovative solutions.

Happy to answer any questions.

Fancy a chat with me? 👇

The real world is messy, consequences of code.

Matt Smithies — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 20:02:34 +0000

Watch this video, it is an important example of the responsibility we have as software developers.

Politics aside, think about the users' experience, how do you think they feel?

A person sees all of these "cryptic" error messages.
The system is difficult to use.
The system constantly kicks you out.
There is a helpline, that no-one is going to use.
There is a lack of trust in the system, what happens when the page changes?
A person tried the system 4 times throughout 40 days.

Due to the horrible user experience this fueled a sentiment of a lack of trust toward the Floridian Government.

This lack of trust will cost millions to them and the local economy.

Some of us will be in a position where our code will have real life-changing consequences to the public. Our code could make somebody homeless, our code could kill somebody.

Let that sink it.

Everyone relies on software to do everything for them, as we enter a world of greater automation the responsibility is going to lie on our shoulders.

The right to accessibility, the right to ease of use, and any future rights of software consumers is our collective responsibility.

There are other examples of software errors and although some are unavoidable most of the time it is the lack of foresight and testing.

Next time a client expects a quick return on their investment, remember that recklessness could destroy their company and your work could hurt somebody.

I admit that early in my career I've personally been pressured, sometimes this was self-inflicted, to deliver quickly, and to cut corners. I regret those decisions but being young, ego-driven, learning as I go I was trying to impress.

We all learn and grow.

This is why you should test, this an article I wrote which focuses on bang for the buck testing method I default to.

Reach out to me.

Matt.

How to save your client money.

Matt Smithies — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 20:56:37 +0000

Like this post?

This is one for the developers out there.

Let me tell you a story.

In early 2020 I created a subscription system for a crypto token, the idea being that using a token you could set up a rolling monthly subscription to a carbon offsetting product.

The feature was just over 2,600 lines of code.

I added tests for the entire feature, this was around 1300 lines. There were 30 tests and 195 assertions.

My colleague was completing the work of integrating stripe subscriptions, using laravel cashier.

Seems fine right?

We merged our work, there was an issue, my code overrode the subscription behavior which depended on stripe payments working.

I was focused so much on my feature that I'd ignored that side of stripe, this was an oversight by myself as I hadn't used cashier before.

I had tunnel vision.

Fortunately, due to the whole testing suite for the feature, we were put at an advantage.

I knew that if the tests run the feature worked, the tests bought confidence to the code.

This enabled us to change all of the effected method names of my feature and quickly resolve the issue.

We fixed the issue in less than 2 minutes:

Searching for all the effected method names.
Replacing the method names with something more suitable.
Testing between each step.

All green. All successful.

This issue was resolved on a pair programming video call, on my colleague's development machine, I am based in the UK they are based in Bulgaria.

The developer I was working with wasn't as well versed with testing as myself it was a great experience for them to feel the benefit of the time savings.

Without these tests, it could have taken hours to update the name and manually retest the whole feature. Even then our confidence would have taken a hit.

That is why you should test. It will save you time, your client money and will uncover issues that you have probably missed.

Trade hours for minutes.

It is tricky though, at first glance, and with a short term view of testing seems expensive especially with legacy systems. From the outside view, it first seems the benefit is opaque.

Photo by Hello I'm Nik 🎞 / Unsplash

Bang for the buck

Software development is complicated, there is a myriad of solutions for a problem let along with different stylistic differences between developers.

With little planning, most of the time the catchphrase for difficulty and options is "It Depends...".

But that doesn't help you or your client.

If budget or time is tight I opt for this approach.

HTTP API integration testing combined with asserting the database state.

Mock the expected experience of a client using your service, using API calls.
Assert that the response is correct and conforms to the spec.
Assert the state of the database, after the API call from inside of the integration test.

Aim to get into a position where if you comment out one line of code it will break the tests.

I can imagine that many of my tests break the concept of single responsibility and that it could be recommended to split them down further, but I don't care.

Sometimes it doesn't make sense to break down everything into how we "should" design our systems and write our code, sometimes doing that can be a waste of time, it doesn't instantly make your product better.

When budget and time is tight, we need to make difficult decisions and move forward with our gut. Sometimes we'll make mistakes.

Sometimes it is helpful if you think of testing as exploratory design, we are all used to writing notes to plan and remind us of our next steps. Think of the act of writing tests as permanently storing your notes, your process.

Testing is a form of documentation, for new developers to understand how your feature works. If all of your tests run, they can be used as a source of truth.

Reach out to me.

Matt

Take action and start building your MVP SaaS today

Matt Smithies — Tue, 19 May 2020 12:22:56 +0000

🚀 If you would like to see more in-depth content on the end-to-end process of building a micro SaaS with a basic automated deployment process using Laravel reach out to me! 🔥

In recent months it has been a pleasure to speak with new developers starting their remote journey.

One common theme that keeps coming up is how to get work, how to stand out from the crowd, how to get someone to take you seriously.

It is overwhelming, to even know where to start.

Starting your career, you will feel overwhelmed, there is no clear method to the chaos.

My recommendation is always to start to create a professional website, create a consistent narrative between communication channels, like LinkedIn, and create/contribute to projects that you can attach your name too.

All prospective employers just need to know that you are capable of creating a product and delivering.

Be empathetic to your prospective client or employer they are likely to be in a harder position than you. There is a higher risk connected to early hiring decisions, and if managed incorrectly there is the potential significantly hurt business.

Architecting and delivering on your own projects can be beneficial to clearly prove your value to the outside world, you'll have complete ownership.

If there is a problem that you feel passionate about it is easier to dig deep and find the motivation to finish. There is always a moment in every project where there feels like a wall of doubt in front of you, where you'll question yourself if the work is really worth it.

If you are solving a problem you care about, that you would actually use, start to build.

Below is one such product of mine, I hope it provides insight into my thought process and highlights the elements you'll need for a simple MVP.

Remember the MVP isn't just about the code.

The product is also the landing page, the documentation, support, and anything else you can do to make the lives of your customers easier.

Without support, software would cease to exist.

Photo by Neil Thomas / Unsplash

Introducing Safe Streaming

Safe stream is a tool that provides context-free guidance warnings of explicit content present in movies and TV shows in a standardised format.

We build tools that enable streaming services to integrate aggregated warnings in a single place. To empower their customers to check if there is damaging content at an individual level.

To give all content consumers a safe choice before they click play.

Our big aim is to provide these services to big streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. This data is encouraged used in a completely white-labeled fashion to meet with the design guidelines of a given brand.

Any developer can start using the API for free, the documentation is comprehensive.

The problem

Every one of us has a personal history, some of us have been through trauma in our lives and there could be particular issues present in content that we want to avoid.

There is a range of websites and blogs which provide such information, some of these include.

In addition to this, there are many blogs that provide such information but each site tends to skew for content warnings for a given type, sometimes the warnings miss the mark, sometimes there are conflicts.

As a consumer you need to visit multiple sites to get a clear view, to understand the issues that could affect you to make a safe choice. Imagine doing this for every movie, TV show, or at a granular level episode.

The big problem is in some cases content warnings are written as a generic form, details can be missed or overlooked, for an individual, the details matter and sometimes the context of a situation.

An individual should be able to make a choice, with evidence in front of them without needing to waste time checking that content is safe.

The Safe Streaming system collects and aggregates this data from multiple sources with the goal of reducing bias and providing a neutral perspective.

Photo by Robert Bye / Unsplash

The process of building the SaaS

The core of the product is data, the system needs current content guidance data to be useful.

In simple terms this of the overview of what the service does, collect and deliver data:

Collect, parse, format, and merge data.
Provide a documented API to access the data.
A portal to access the requests and history (a cherry on top).

As such, I began with the process of scraping data from 3 of the sources as listed above, one of which I used Unconsenting Media that provides a CSV which is open to use. As all of the sources had a different format the difficulty came from merging all of the films together that had the same name and year.

The process of data retrieval and standardised formatting took the longest time for the entire project.

In addition all of the ratings from each source where aggregated and averaged into a consistent format out of 10, in this case, this is the ratings for Knives Out on Kids in Mind and Common Sense Media.

Web scraping of sources becomes much easier when plucking the CSS selector using the web inspector on modern browsers. A scraper needs to be modified to fit all of the edge cases that could occur, even when a template used to show review information isn't always completely standardised.

The gathering of the data was the most complex part of the project, the other components were relatively trivial with the development of a couple of API routes and developing a free tier for prospective users.

The focus the entire time is to spend the minimal effort writing code and using tooling to hit the ground running.

Putting everything together these are the main items of the product:

A landing page focusing on our target market with hidden landing pages to focus on a single client, using Landen.
The safe stream API with a limited free tier, Laravel & Quick Admin Panel.
The portal that enables developers to check limits, track what content guidance has been queried with export functionality.
Documentation for the API with guidelines using LaRecipe, a Laravel library, and Postman documentation, a standardised tool for developers.

The infrastructure and continuous deployment

Part of this project was finding an excuse to justify the price of paying my own personal infrastructure. It wouldn't be a huge monthly cost but otherwise, it would have been wasteful.

There are 2 elements for the infrastructure.

Laravel Forge is a service that helps with the automatic provision and management of servers, the time savings and cost compared to other solutions like AWS is incredible.

On the lowest paid tier and coupled with Digital Ocean you can start with a single server (droplet) and deploy as many Laravel, HTML, and WordPress applications as you wish. For developers that have an itch to share their work and create side projects it really is a no brainer.

Don't even start to worry about scale, don't worry about AWS or Google Cloud until you have over 100k monthly users in your database. Focus on the product, focus on value creation.

Photo by Ethan Hu / Unsplash

Imagine being able to reduce the amount your time dealing with servers and focus on building your application. To get a product out to test sooner, and to lower the barrier to entry is a cost worth paying.

Get a deeper understanding of Forge and the features that are on offer take a look at this video course from Laracasts.

Timeframes building the product

Below is the task overview of the project, in different stages of development with some rough time estimates. The largest portion of time was preparation, in particular, the gathering and successful aggregation of data.

I hope this gives you an understanding of the technical steps to take to get an MVP project from concept to completion. I am conservatively estimating that 10-15% of the project timeframe ended up being wasted effort. The earlier these experiments are conducted and direction pivoted the less impact you'll experience in the medium to long term.

Concept

Initial landing page creation using Landen (2-3 hours)
Research and purchase of the domain name (1/2 hour)
Explored options for migrating the landing page with Laravel Spark, as it comes with Stripe integration (2 hours)
Experimentation using the IMDB data set for importing all movies as a starting point, then pivoted as the approach wasn't effective. (1-2 days)

Technical preparation

Writing, modifying and running web scrapers for 2 sources (2 x 1 day)
Importing and formatting of CSV files (1/2 day)
Formatting of all data to aggregate into the common movies by year, plus logic to handle edge cases. Most of the raw and aggregated data were stored as seeds at this stage to provide experimentation. (2-3 days)

Implementation

Using QuickAdminPanel to generate a scaffolded Laravel Passport OAuth API with a portal, an unreal time-saving. (2-3 hours)
Creating the API, searching by name of a piece of content then getting the guidance details of content (1/2 day)
Researching and implementing the free user access, 1000 requests a month, at the middleware level. (1 day)
Tracking all requests and limits for content as jobs. (2 hours)
Using Laravel Horizon to handle the Redis job queue, Redis is baked into Forge installations by default. (1 hour)
Editing the portal to show global stats, requests remaining for user roles (2-3 hours)
Adding Redis for caching, caching requests for 60 minutes, reduce load to DB. (2 hours)

Deployment

Laravel forge setup, linking with Digital Ocean account and deployment of the project, including the Horizon job worker. (2 hours)
Setting up a Managed DB from Digital Ocean, decided to cancel it shortly after due to incompatibility with SequelPro. (1 hour)

Support Items

Research into a suitable documentation tool or library (2 hours)
Writing documentation with recommendations on how to display the guidance to consumers (1.5 days)
Creating a Postman collection to help developers use the service (1 hour)

The cost of the project, the services used

These services are being directly used with Safe Stream.

Landen (Startup) $29 / month
Laravel Forge $12 / month
Digital Ocean (4GB / 2vCPUs / 80GB) $20 / month
Domain Name £10 ($12)

In total the current cost of the project is $61(£50) per month. It is worth noting that the Forge and Digital Ocean cost will be used for all future side projects, a personal infrastructure.

Photo by Nicolas Hoizey / Unsplash

If you are starting I would always recommend using Forge due to the time savings but you can start with a $10 digital ocean droplet.

The basic Landen pricing allows up to 3 sites, so I have some flexibility going forward. There are much cheaper and free alternatives for deploying landing pages such as Netlify and AWS S3. For my needs I was less concerned with the price, I wanted a landing page which I didn't need to develop, had responsiveness baked, professional-looking, and is generally mature. I didn't want to worry.

Cold outreach, the next steps of the project

There is still a lot to be done, and as the dust settles on my code in the cloud I pry my fingers away from the keyboard. I need adoption.

All development must be halted. Outreach is key.

My next goal, compile a list and reach out to at least 100 people who are involved in the video streaming guidance space and start building relationships. It is a tight niche but the goal is to find decision-makers that either is part of:

A movie and TV show database (IMDB, TMDB)
Content guidance sites (Kids in Mind, Unconsenting Media, Parent Previews)
Streaming sites - probably the hardest (Hulu, Amazon Prime, Netflix)
Services for managing guides and recommendations (Just Watch)

Unless I talk to these people I won't know the feedback, I won't know if the project is commercially viable.

The big question, is B2B the answer here, or are consumer-focused apps the way forward? Only time will tell.

The cold email

This is the form of the email that I am sending to all new contacts which I feel could be interested in this project. The format stays the same although the email content is different based on the person for a given company.

A subject line that solves the problem
Who I am and my experience.
The problem to the consumer.
How the product could help them.
A CTA asking for a reply, starting a conversation, to build a relationship.

Initial response and feedback

As of 19/5/2020, I've reached out to 5-6 cold emails directly, a couple have been sources using Rocket Reach. I've had a strong reply rate of 33% with 2 strong and thought out responses. One of which resulted in a video call.

I've shared this project on various developer forums including Dev.to, which resulted in incredible feedback that proves the need from a consumer point of view.

Depending on how the next couple of weeks and months transpire we will see if we can gather a handful of companies to partner with, to help with social proof when approaching media outlets and magazines to create a piece on the service.

So what does this mean for you?

I could keep talking about the roadmap and what my hopes and dreams for the future but that'll do nothing but keep us in the weeds.

It is easy to get distracted, writing code, and worrying too much technically sometimes isn't the most productive course of action.

For us, developers, code gives us comfort. To take a moment, stop and assess that building relationships with real people is what makes a business work and there isn't any other way around that. That is what you need to do.

I've worked with many startups (one that had over £250k in funding to start), and as most fail, around 90%. Burn rates of organisations can easily get into 5 figures a month, and if a developer isn't being utilized you are effectively setting fire to cash.

Photo by REVOLT / Unsplash

Why is this?

In many cases, the focus was on products and assumptions from a limited view of the world.

It all comes down to idea validation, we need to understand our customers and how we can serve them.

My recommendation to you, don't build anything substantial upfront, understand the problem, and what you need to prove a concept. Give yourself a week or two, no more, and otherwise focus on research, writing emails, or content.

Explore capturing feedback with no-code through different websites, landing pages and formats such as Landen, Google Forms, Webflow, Carrd or even Squarespace. For other free tooling to help developers look at this resource.

Don't worry about automating any systems at this point do things that don't scale.

Limit your exposure, build a data bank of proof, and ingrain the feeling in your bones that your solution will actually help real people.

You need to believe, powered by data and feedback, that if you build your product you will make your customers' lives better. Moving the needle forward.

On balance, a retrospective.

Matt Smithies — Tue, 19 May 2020 11:56:52 +0000

I've taken a little break over the last month from blogging, I needed it. The goal of this blog is to provide a resource that helps startup teams cope with remote life.

It's been a challenge to find a balance especially between work, life, and product releases.

It's ironic, writing in some form or another since 2017, and in the year 2020 given the recent pandemic, many people have pivoted to become an expert in remote work.

It's kind of intimidating, and I would be lying if I didn't feel inadequate, this resource is new and there are many "bigger" players with already established audiences that can make a larger noise.

It is human to feel that.

Although I'm capable of writing and publishing just under 4000 words in a day it won't be helpful to those that don't have the time or the will to battle through content.

The content here needs to be shorter, and have more impact, to think otherwise is simply counterproductive and ego-centric.

It is a gift to have your attention, your time to read my work.

I'm somewhat inspired by the style Seth Godin's blog, and although my content will ever be that short form, it is refreshing to see how far such a concept can be pushed.

Regardless these are some events and product releases from over the last 4 weeks (April 2020) that I've been a part of.

My 2nd blog post with Simple Programmer: "So You’ve Been Laid Off as a Remote Developer", this took a lot out of me to write.
DOVU Earth initial release, providing a monthly subscription for offsetting your carbon footprint, it also includes a novel method for Crypto based subscriptions.
Coursematch released a new product Virtual Open Days, conceived and delivered in less than 2 weeks. We've already run profitable open days through the service to actual UK universities.
Added new killer features to Coursematch B2B SaaS product Connect. To schedule the delivery of our Email, IM, and push notification channels through a campaign builder. Provide automatic reporting for the campaigns for universities to connect and build meaningful relationships with prospective students.
I became part of the United Kingdom Freestyle Skateboarding Association (UKFSA) management committee.
Safe Stream, a tool to help content consumers make a safe decision before they click play, built, and delivered in less than 10 days.

I'll be writing more about Safe Stream in the coming days, as Building an MVP SaaS in less than 10 days.

Building and releasing personal projects is fundamental in building up a personal brand and getting the outside world to actually know about what you do.

After all what kind of person would I be if I didn't follow my own advice?

Work hard enough to be naturally lucky.

[Feedback Welcome] Introducing Safe Stream: giving content consumers a safe choice before they click play.

Matt Smithies — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 07:11:47 +0000

Check it out here.

safestream.info

You can also read the documentation and get started using the API.

I built a "Tech for good" MVP SaaS in less than 10 days, including the main landing page, API (that anyone can access right now), dashboard with authentication, documentation, a basic automated deployment process, and request tracking.

My eventual goal is to pitch this API to streaming businesses to display this information to their consumer before they click play. I'll be creating client SDKs and demos around the API too as well as simple ML models.

We have content guidance review for over 20k movies and TV shows, and over 55k comments that describe the graphic and mature content.

If you are a developer, with time on your hands I highly encourage you to solve a problem that has affected you and get building.

That would be one of the best ways for developers looking to build their portfolios and experience, and if it is good enough it could have the potential to be sustainable.

Please note, I also work in 2 roles as an IT contractor for a Blockchain company and Lead/Solo Developer for an Edtech company.

Happy to answer any questions on the stack I use and the money I spend to handle this project and my personal tech stack.

Thank you for reading.

FREE COURSES - Laravel Daily 100% discount codes.

Matt Smithies — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 08:10:14 +0000

Get all of Laravel Daily's courses for free, its difficult to overstate how much value is in these courses.

They have helped me with my personal career, to become a better developer.

I'm a huge fan of Povilas Korop he is doing great work in the Technical community. Want to get to grips with Laravel, and make something, have a look at this free mini-course. https://lnkd.in/dnTkv7d

In addition, you can use this discount code to get all of his courses at 100% off STAYHOME.

His work on Structuring Laravel Projects is probably one of my favorite online courses I have ever consume and it helped me to expand my overall knowledge of backend development patterns.

Enjoy

Matt

A definitive overview of habits to keep you sane whilst working remotely.

Matt Smithies — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 11:49:33 +0000

There is no magic pill when getting working done from home, and if you are looking for one you won't find it here.

To be frank, it isn't that different from your regular job.

Get up, get dressed.
Commute to work.
Do work, eat lunch.
Leave for home.

As a remote worker the lines are blurred there isn't a commute and leaving for home can be difficult to commit to.

It can be difficult to actually switch off and stop working.

Thankfully if you are used already used to the structure of a 0900-1700 you'll find it a (little) easier to actually finish on time.

Following are a list of subjects which I've gone in-depth into and found particularly useful over the course of my career.

Finding and investing in a dedicated workspace
My personal setup, tools crucial for productivity
Making and committing to decisions beforehand
Giving your day a consistent structure, knowing when to stop
Making sure that your relationships at home stay strong
The pressures of productivity and procrastination
Getting outside and out of the work environment
Communication with your teammates
Eating well and taking care of your body

As I've been fortunate enough to work remotely for my entire career some of these will be out of reach and possibly impractical for your situation.

Note that some of these following items have taken me years to dial in, getting them to a stage that I am happy with.

Finding and investing in a dedicated workspace

As I don't have children yet and I live in an area where the cost of living is low I have my own study.

It is about the size of a small single bedroom, it has a door, which I can close if I am having meetings.

In previous homes I have shared a studio space but the challenge had been trying to balance the privacy of having a meeting and not disturbing the life of those around me.

I highly recommend at the very least to get your own desk, and a chair where you are sitting up. You can use a flat surface like an island in a kitchen but this can be difficult as your knee may hit, be uncomfortable and mess with your posture.

Working on a sofa, working with your computer on your lap will not work well for you. Your body will tighten up, you will find it increasingly more difficult to work and it will become a chore.

If you are uncomfortable you will be unproductive, you will be unhappy, you will start to be easily irritated.

If you aren't careful you might lash out at those that don't deserve it due to your frustration and stress.

Try to find a place where you can work from, that you can separate from your life from work. Preferably where you are sitting upright and you can relax your shoulders.

If space is a challenge and you are unable to find a dedicated space try this technique:

Sit on a different chair with a table, or flat surface, but sitting up in a reasonably comfortable position is key.
Move the table or chair that is in a different position then you would usually sit on.
Every day for work keep sitting in the same spot, make it a habit.

Doing this will help your brain understand when it is time to work, continuing this habit will help you mentally switch your homelife with your work.

When I am traveling at Christmas, I stay with family, I use a similar technique to simulate an office setting. I sit at the head of the table when it is pushed against the wall of a room.

This provides me with a kind of mental isolation to concentrate even though it is in an open room, my habit to work is locked in due to a ritual of sitting in a particular spot.

The problem is that working from home the line between work and life is blurred, you need to come to terms with the distractions. The postman will knock at your door, your help will be requested from family and friends you will be disturbed by life more than at a workplace.

You need a place where a switch will toggle in your mind, getting you into a state of productivity to get the ball rolling again.

Finally, if you are working in your bed don't make it a habit but make sure you are sitting up and you have enough pillow support on your back — especially for your lumbar.

My personal setup, tools crucial for productivity

This my current setup. A list of the items with prices, to get to this point it took around 3 years.

Late 2015 5k iMac 27" - Around £1800, including separately purchasing an extra 16GB of RAM. Paid off over 2 years on a 0% credit card
27" Samsung monitor - Approximately £300-350, certainly cheaper these days.
Herman Miller Aeron - Second hand from ebay around £330
Generic office deck - Around £100

A little back story.

For my first full-time developer role I worked with a company that provided all equipment. As an employee it is commonplace to get all the essential equipment you need to get the work done to the best of your ability.

When I joined them I even negotiated an office desk which I still use to this day, it is a key part of my setup.

A couple of years in with the role I was becoming increasingly frustrated that the equipment that was loaned to me, a mac mini wasn't up to scratch, the times to compile code for native mobile development was becoming increasingly slower.

Long story short my equipment was becoming a bottleneck in my productivity.

A slower computer leads to longer feedback cycles, a lower rate of dopamine release, a higher chance of breaking out of a flow state.

In early 2016 I personally invested and purchase the equipment I desperately needed.

As I didn't want to use up the majority of my cash reserves at once I got a 0% credit card to pay for the majority of the purchase. I deposited £400 onto the credit card as a down payment as I couldn't get a credit line for the full amount required.

From then on I slowly paid off the balance for over 2 years, approximately £50 a month.

One of the benefits of the iMac is the inbuilt stand, giving you a little bit more ergonomics.

The benefit of this approach is that the equipment was mine, I had control and ownership. When I moved on to a different role I didn't have to worry about sending back more equipment than necessary.

Lowering all hurdles and loosening potential future issues on copyright, I can prove that extra work I do in my spare time, personal projects belongs to me.

As a consultant purchasing your own equipment is paramount and as an employee there is less onboarding cost to get you ready to be productive.

Making and committing to decisions beforehand

Waking up and taking action in the morning can be a challenge, especially if you know you don't have to catch a train or be on the road to get to the office on time.

It is easy to slip into bad habits such as giving yourself permission to not get dressed, or if you work with flexible hours sleeping in longer when needed.

Adding little rituals in the morning prepares your mind for the start of a workday.

The night before work I like to think of myself in two states.

Before sleeping, a tired person but can make decisions and carve a plan for the morning with the ability to influence the future self.
In the morning, a person with good intentions but may have forgotten decisions from the night before and potentially vulnerable with distractions.

Making any decision, no matter how small, will have an effect on your future self and in a negative light you will be deferring the problem for the future.

Think of making any purchase with future implications, let's say a new contract for a flagship phone.

Such a phone may cost £50-60 on the high end a month, this by itself isn't a bad thing, you can receive the benefits that come with the device but your cash flow will be reduced.

Its all about balance are the benefits really worth the impact of the loss over 24-36 months.

Digging deeper, if you don't have much money and taking care of your home is a struggle that amount could pay for a bill, or contribute to the delivery of groceries.

We live in a society where instant gratification is glorified over delayed rewards.

If we apply this thinking to remote work, how can you help yourself?

Make the decision and influence yourself the night before:

Get your clothes ready and fold them on your chair you work from the night before, in the morning this obstacle of your
Going to the gym? Do the same as above but with place your towel and your bottle of water with the clothes.
Do you love coffee? Set up your machine, Aeropress or French press the night before next to your kettle.
Do you have a todo list you don't want to forget about, write it up and place it on your desk or keyboard.
Taking a trip in the morning? Set up all of your bags, make sure your laptop is charged up

Commit the night before, make it easy to follow through to take action.

A lot of this preparation will become automated habits. What this means is that your life will end up being less stressed and you'll feel less pulled in different directions.

I firmly believe that every day we have a set number of decisions we can make before we run the risk of becoming mentally exhausted, I noted this in my article what does it mean to be a senior developer.

Giving your day a consistent structure, knowing when to stop.

Working from home provides flexibility but with that we must develop a level of discipline.

By not having social paranoia of someone potentially watching you in an office we are required to have a degree of personal accountability.

The work that we do and by extension the overarching result we deliver is intrinsically tied to our discipline.

I believe that structure around the hours that you work is vital for remote work, otherwise, you will run the risk of losing control and sight of when to stop.

One of the biggest fears you should own is knowing that by overworking you will be at a much higher risk of burning out. Every time you spend an extra couple of hours on a task when you should there be a cost that will need to be paid at some point in the future.

The journey of work, building projects, and delivering is a marathon, not a race nor a sprint.

In some cases, you may feel that I need to start work earlier and sleep less, and while it is true that temporarily reducing sleep could yield

That is one of the reasons why I disagree with some of the vocabulary that is outlined in agile methodologies, such as sprint. For less experienced developers it is easy to think that a "sprint" means that I should work as hard as possible with godlike heroic efforts.

That is untrue, agile is focus around measuring the process of development so that a business can more accurately gauge their capacity for software outcomes.

Admittedly I personally know that occasionally I work more then I should, and it is interesting as for a lot of my work these days I enjoy the process of development

Even so my work structure is around 0800-1700, I may start at 0830 or even earlier, but the aim is to stick as closely to your hours as possible. At the same time being aware of your limits, and being aware of the future cost to yourself.

You can use similar a process for yourself, but what is important is knowing that you need to actually stop every night and committing to it.

Making sure that your relationships at home stay strong

By not sticking to the commitment of your personal work schedule you can run the risk of damaging your close relationships, especially if you have failed to effectively communicate the problems you have been facing.

We all know that some weeks and months are going to be easier then others but sometimes you'll need to work longer in order to deliver.

If this is becoming a habit that is having an effect on your relationships you need to be stricter with your time.

We can use the pre-decision technique as described earlier, these are some ideas, the aim, in this case, would be to set the times within an hour of when you are finishing your workday.

Making you stop and focusing on actual activities that will actually enrich your life.

Setting a time to go to the cinema.
Booking a reservation to go to a restaurant.
Scheduling a call after work, with a friend a co-worker.
Pursuing personal projects in your spare time.
Going to the gym, getting outside and doing something enjoyable, like skateboarding.

A trap I see looking into people that work on-site is that it is tempting to be dragged into going to the pub or having a drink with colleagues. This is something which although is nice occasionally you have to be careful to not make it too much of an ingrained habit.

The pressures of productivity and procrastination

There could be some days that you don't feel like yourself, you feel as if you are in your own bubble. Sometimes the work doesn't click and does don't achieve what you set out to do.

In these cases, morning meetings, stand-ups, with your team can fill you with anxiety. Sometimes to a point where you feel that you have failed yourself and your team. We forget that others are just trying to do the same, figure out problems and solve them, we forget that others struggle as we do.

This is one of the larger problems with remote work, we lose face-to-face insight into how our team is progressing through a given project.

The only real remedy is to be open and transparent, be honest and not hide the fact you couldn't achieve what you set out to do in such a short timeframe.

After all, you have completed the work you have finished, you have the toes that you have.

via GIPHY

I've felt it and it is likely that you have too, the isolation of being separated from the team can be heartwrenching, especially if your role is supposed to be someone who has more experience.

If you feel this way you need to open up, raise a concern, sooner rather then later.

No one is perfect, everyone will struggle at times.

By extension I consider procrastination is more of a symptom to a larger problem, and in many cases linked to this invisible pressure. It could be down to a reduced drive or direction and the leadership that we all require.

It is perfectly ok to reward yourself after you complete a task, but there will certainly be days that you are unable to focus or even get anything done.

At this time, a personal retrospective might be required, ask yourself these questions.

Have you been putting in too many hours?
Have you been able to switch off at night?
Have you gotten the sleep that you need?
Are there personal issues that are having an impact?
Has all motivation left you, perhaps your mind is racing with thoughts, making you unsure of your next steps?

Sometimes even working from home everything can become too overwhelming. You need time to rest and take care of yourself. In these cases reach out to your manager and notify them that you need a break, maybe you need a holiday or perhaps a day to rest to clear your head.

Your manager and the team are there to support you to do the best work you can, it shows strength and awareness that you are able to understand your needs.

In a small team, like a start-up, you are all in it together moving the needle toward a common goal.

Over time you'll slowly learn to believe in yourself and the others around you.

On the other hand, sometimes you need a little push to get your ball rolling and boost your mood, music can help with that.

Getting outside and out of the work environment

It is not uncommon to feel like a zoo animal pacing in the four walls of your home, sometimes you just need some fresh air for a few moments to help your mind.

I've found that traveling to the supermarket occasionally at lunch to do a couple of household chores can aid in temporarily separating yourself from work.

It gets you out of your environment, your focused mindset.

Sometimes you can be so focused that you can have tunnel vision and you'll lose sight of what is around you.

Photo by Matt Seymour / Unsplash

In addition to this, if you are fortunate enough to have a gym close to you take a moment to have a quick work out and get those endorphins rushing through your system.

What tends to happen is if you let go, and give your self permission to relax you'll undoubtedly be hit with a potential solution that you'd have certainly would have missed previously.

Communication with your teammates

Researching anything to do with communication with remote teams is this idea of asynchronous communication.

The theory goes is face-to-face you can chat, and work on issues in real-time.

One of the largest shortcomings is that you aren't going to have that same response, especially over different timezones.

This lack of synchronicity and being able to react based on facial expressions with a team is difficult to adjust to, I believe that is one of the reasons that have previously pulled companies from supporting remote work.

It is hard to mix a team of onsite developers with a couple of developers that work remotely.

Over emails or slack there will be a delay in a response, while this is true I don't think that there too much of an issue.

My recommendation is to make it a target policy that team members that you are connected to complete a task can be reached quickly through a video call, outside of times when there is a meeting.

This has to be somewhat flexible as everyone has a different capacity to work remotely. Flexibility, awareness, and kindness is needed on both sides of the fence.

Here is a list of video call software that I've personally used and has been helpful.

This should be bolstered with 2 default technical team meetings.

The stand-up. To share your work from the day before, what your plan is for the day and any blockers that could be in your way.
The exit chat. This is more of an informal chat to close the page of a given day, think of it as a tool to remind each other to stop and rest.

You can use many of these tools to pair programming by just sharing your screen, in many cases I have found this process to be better than sitting next to a colleague's monitor.

One item to add, you can feel isolated working, remember that these calls don't always need to be work only. Sometimes it is perfectly acceptable to simulate watercooler chat.

In some of my roles I'd occasionally help other members of my team research for mobile phone contracts or do smaller off-work tasks while on a call. These kinds of activities can help break up the day and help to build up friendships.

Eating well and taking care of your body

We've previously touched on going to the gym, getting physical exercise to help but being aware of your eating habits is crucial to feeling good.

It is easy to fall into a habit of starting remote work, getting tired of hitting a wall and grabbing some snacks as a distraction.

We've all been there and it is something to keep a close eye on, if it becomes a repetitive habit consuming those additional calories consistently and it could be hard to break.

You don't want to be in a position where you have a comfort mechanism to eat if you become frustrated or tired with work.

This is still something I struggle with myself today.

We'll revisit this topic in the future, but I've found that preparing food in advance makes it easier. Make the choice of eating prepared food easier than grabbing crisps or sweets.

By eating junk food your mood can change, you can feel tired and exhausted. Sometimes I feel surprised by how much better I feel just by eating healthy fruits and vegetables.

![My fiancee got these for me one February when I had the flu. I wanted them as a photo prop, hoping I’d get better in time to shoot it for Valentine’s Day, but… at least they looked just as pretty the next year.

What you see is the contents of 9 little boxes. I was surprised that so many were needed, but fewer just didn’t have the right look.](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1484979045040-0ab3854b6acb?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=80&fm=jpg&crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&w=2000&fit=max&ixid=eyJhcHBfaWQiOjExNzczfQ)

Photo by Laura Ockel / Unsplash

Now it is your turn, give these tips a try.

This is a relatively decent overview of how to get started with personal habits to help you deal with working remotely.

There is always more to learn, and all of these take time to process but after a while you will get used to your new environment and you'll find a rhythm that is fits you.

Subscribe with your email below and reach out if you'd like to see next.

Matt.

World Class Remote: Members Newsletter 02.

Matt Smithies — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 12:26:37 +0000

Follow along at World Class Remote.

Cover photo by Ben Sweet on Unsplash

Good afternoon world-class remoters.

I've taken a bit of a break these last couple of days to take a retrospective of this project and what I want to achieve.

Everyone has their own story entering the world of remote work, but globally we have now transitioned into the next phase where living a remote life will become commonplace.

Writing remarkable content

So far I've laid the groundwork for the overall direction and foundation, I feel fortunate to have such a positive response from friends and family.

The overall theme is focused broadly on these themes:

Dealing with your mental health and mindset.
Building up a personal brand.
Winning work and building relationships with your clients.

Given the current situation that the world is facing with COVID-19 there is unprecedented demand to adjust to remote life, as such the focus is going to create content around helping such individuals.

Furthermore, it is important to reduce the amount of new content that is sent out to subscribers. I don't want to overwhelm and given my limited budget I want the content to be as high quality or remarkable as possible.

Removing all subscriptions

I've decided to remove all pricing for the website entirely for the foreseeable future. I want to focus purely on creating content that'll help as many people as possible.

There will be a slack workspace, to discuss & ask questions around navigating the challenges of remote life, anyone is allowed to join from this invite link.

There will be the occasional post that can only be accessed by members that have signed in, see below for more details.

We'll see where this adventure takes us.

There is a time and place for pricing and subscriptions particularly when it comes down to issues of personal accountability commitment.

Highlights this week

These are the posts that have come out over the week, all of them are free to read but the final case study is viewable for signed-in users.

What's coming up in the coming week?

This is the primary topic will be the focus for World-Class Remote over the next week:

Habits that help keep you sane and productive whilst being remote.

These are the kind of items that will be included.

Frontloading of work, making decisions the day before.
Keeping to a schedule, "trying" not to overwork.
Taking time out of the day to catch some fresh air.
Tools and techniques which are useful in technical remote teams.

If you want to reach out with any problems you are facing with your remote work, hit reply and let's have a chat.

Thank you for reading.

Matt.