Nate Cooper's Blog, page 2

Being Growth Mindset-Oriented Doesn’t Mean You are Always Happy

Carol Dweck, an accomplished psychologist and professor of psychology identified in her book Mindset two approaches to what I would call problem solving. There is the fixed mindset approach and a growth mindset approach. When confronted with a challenge, someone in the fixed mindset often chooses not to see the problem as solvable.

“I can’t do that.”

“I’m not good at that.”

“They are so much further ahead. Why start?”

These are all phrases uttered by the fixed mindset. When in a fixed mindset, you choose to see the world in a certain immovable way and your position in it as immovable. You see yourself as incapable of effecting change.

I’ve spent the better part of the past six years immersed in the field of positive psychology. But I can tell you this in all honesty: Building a business is really fucking hard.

Those in the growth mindset tackle problems differently. They see challenges as a stepping stone:

“Oh interesting, I haven’t seen that done that way but I could give it a try.”

“I haven’t done that before but today is a great day to start.”  

With the growth mindset, we do not define ourselves in relationship to the problem. Instead we acknowledge the problem’s existence and look for ways through or around it. I have found the growth/fixed mindset framework very useful as an instructor. Because I teach technology and coding, I notice that many otherwise very intelligent people often fall into a fixed mindset when starting to learn. They say “I don’t have the brain for coding.” “I didn’t grow up with this stuff so it’s too hard for me to get started.” These are just iterations of fixed mindset statements.

Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

I start most of my coding classes with an introduction to the growth mindset. By doing this I am not alone. Growth mindset is pretty widely adopted in classroom learning especially in childhood education. It’s even often combined with mindfulness as a one-two punch approach to get students to rationally assess their emotional reactions to a learning a new subject. Emotions can often cloud judgement when facing a challenge.

The idea that you can rewire your brain is fundamental to learning. As an educator, I must believe that rewiring neural pathways is not only possible but a necessary part of learning a new skill. In the past 9 months or so building my own school I have faced a lot of challenges. I also have personally learned a lot. Not only have I learned and grown as an individual, I have had to manage the institutional learning and growth of an an organization. This involves managing the needs of different stakeholders.

We may know that putting a smile on things will often get us ahead.

Reboot Labs at its core is a very mission driven company. We believe that anyone can learn a technical skill and that it starts with belief in a growth mindset. I’ve spent the better part of the past six years immersed in the field of positive psychology. But I can tell you this in all honesty: Building a business is really fucking hard. There have been times when working with my team that I was questioned regarding the growth mindset. Because at times things became stressful, my team would question whether our values were out-of-sync with our processes. “We preach the growth mindset but we don’t always adhere to it.”

I’m a big believer in positive psychology, but I think it can often be misunderstood. Being in a growth-mindset does not mean you are always happy or that you cannot or should not acknowledge stress. In this video RSA ANIMATE: Smile or Die adapted from a talk by Barbara Ehrenreich, Ms. Ehrenreich points to the pitfalls of positive psychology.

Our emotions do not rule us but they exist for a reason and acknowledging them rationally and how they point us in the right direction is part of the learning process.

We may know that putting a smile on things will often get us ahead. The most successful of us in American business culture often embody a limitless and abundant happiness. For Ms. Ehrenreich this sort of boundless happiness, in the face of real struggle often ignores the realities of that struggle. Imagine you are talking to someone who is clinically depressed. While there is compassion in the suggestion “exercise more and get some sunshine” (indeed sunlight and exercise do have measurable effects), it ignores the reality of what is happening for that person chemically in their brain.

The growth mindset and a positive approach to problem solving is necessary for learning whether personal or institutional but growth does not always come without pains. Growth is the acknowledgement of the pain, stress, or frustration and the willingness and ability to see it as step of the process. Our emotions do not rule us but they exist for a reason and acknowledging them rationally and how they point us in the right direction is part of the learning process. Having a growth-oriented mindset means we are positively oriented but acknowledging setbacks, frustrations, stress is more important to growth than ignoring them.

The post Being Growth Mindset-Oriented Doesn’t Mean You are Always Happy appeared first on Nate Cooper.

Being Growth Mindset-Oriented Doesn’t Mean You are Always Happy

Carol Dweck, an accomplished psychologist and professor of psychology identified in her book Mindset two approaches to what I would call problem solving. There is the fixed mindset approach and a growth mindset approach. When confronted with a challenge, someone in the fixed mindset often chooses not to see the problem as solvable.

“I can’t do that.”

“I’m not good at that.”

“They are so much further ahead. Why start?”

These are all phrases uttered by the fixed mindset. When in a fixed mindset, you choose to see the world in a certain immovable way and your position in it as immovable. You see yourself as incapable of effecting change.

I’ve spent the better part of the past six years immersed in the field of positive psychology. But I can tell you this in all honesty: Building a business is really fucking hard.

Those in the growth mindset tackle problems differently. They see challenges as a stepping stone:

“Oh interesting, I haven’t seen that done that way but I could give it a try.”

“I haven’t done that before but today is a great day to start.”

With the growth mindset, we do not define ourselves in relationship to the problem. Instead we acknowledge the problem’s existence and look for ways through or around it. I have found the growth/fixed mindset framework very useful as an instructor. Because I teach technology and coding, I notice that many otherwise very intelligent people often fall into a fixed mindset when starting to learn. They say “I don’t have the brain for coding.” “I didn’t grow up with this stuff so it’s too hard for me to get started.” These are just iterations of fixed mindset statements.

Fixed vs Growth Mindset

I start most of my coding classes with an introduction to the growth mindset. By doing this I am not alone. Growth mindset is pretty widely adopted in classroom learning especially in childhood education. It’s even often combined with mindfulness as a one-two punch approach to get students to rationally assess their emotional reactions to a learning a new subject. Emotions can often cloud judgement when facing a challenge.

The idea that you can rewire your brain is fundamental to learning. As an educator, I must believe that rewiring neural pathways is not only possible but a necessary part of learning a new skill. In the past 9 months or so building my own school I have faced a lot of challenges. I also have personally learned a lot. Not only have I learned and grown as an individual, I have had to manage the institutional learning and growth of an an organization. This involves managing the needs of different stakeholders.

We may know that putting a smile on things will often get us ahead.

Reboot Labs at its core is a very mission driven company. We believe that anyone can learn a technical skill and that it starts with belief in a growth mindset. I’ve spent the better part of the past six years immersed in the field of positive psychology. But I can tell you this in all honesty: Building a business is really fucking hard. There have been times when working with my team that I was questioned regarding the growth mindset. Because at times things became stressful, my team would question whether our values were out-of-sync with our processes. “We preach the growth mindset but we don’t always adhere to it.”

I’m a big believer in positive psychology, but I think it can often be misunderstood. Being in a growth-mindset does not mean you are always happy or that you cannot or should not acknowledge stress. In this video RSA ANIMATE: Smile or Die adapted from a talk by Barbara Ehrenreich, Ms. Ehrenreich points to the pitfalls of positive psychology.

Our emotions do not rule us but they exist for a reason and acknowledging them rationally and how they point us in the right direction is part of the learning process.

We may know that putting a smile on things will often get us ahead. The most successful of us in American business culture often embody a limitless and abundant happiness. For Ms. Ehrenreich this sort of boundless happiness, in the face of real struggle often ignores the realities of that struggle. Imagine you are talking to someone who is clinically depressed. While there is compassion in the suggestion “exercise more and get some sunshine” (indeed sunlight and exercise do have measurable effects), it ignores the reality of what is happening for that person chemically in their brain.

The growth mindset and a positive approach to problem solving is necessary for learning whether personal or institutional but growth does not always come without pains. Growth is the acknowledgement of the pain, stress, or frustration and the willingness and ability to see it as step of the process. Our emotions do not rule us but they exist for a reason and acknowledging them rationally and how they point us in the right direction is part of the learning process. Having a growth-oriented mindset means we are positively oriented but acknowledging setbacks, frustrations, stress is more important to growth than ignoring them.

The post Being Growth Mindset-Oriented Doesn’t Mean You are Always Happy appeared first on Nate Cooper.

Territorial versus Action Mindset

In the past few weeks as I’ve travelled back and forth between Los Angeles and New York, I’ve found myself in several conversations and activities centered around agency. While these different practices all have unique lexicons, whether it be through the wellness community, psychology, art, science, or entrepreneurship (to name a few), I’m noticing some common threads that are beginning to shape my thoughts.

Several months back I got into Carol Dweck and the growth versus fixed mindset. As an experiment I started to mashup this idea along with some design thinking practices in my classes. What I found is that by doing this, I’m able to see changes in the communal body of the classroom where students feel more self-empowered and less reliant on me to give them the “right answers.” There are many aspects to these ideas that I’d like to write about and that’s why I’m going to graduate school this Fall to investigate and interrogate some of the ideology behind the practice.

One such area I’m currently fascinated with is the idea of agency within a network. In terms of human experience, it might be described as the moment at which one sees themselves for who they are truly and their place within a system. “System” here is intentionally vaguely defined but for our purposes it could be a classroom, it could be a social circle, it could be a personal journey or career. The idea being to confront one’s own role without judgement to see the past and the future through the lens of the possible.

The idea being to confront one’s own role without judgement to see the past and the future through the lens of the possible.

I, myself, have come to this path through the technology sphere. Being self-taught as a web developer, committing myself to the open-source platform WordPress, participating in and organizing hackathons, I witness moments of agency and awakeness as others pitch in to create new things. The “pitching in” moment being a point at which one realizes their full capacity for self-empowerment. A good friend and mentor to me, Edward O’Neill has taught me that all learning is self-help and I can see that being true as learning has happened for me and through facilitating it with others.

The trick is that all of these moments of agency happen within a fixed system. There needs to be a trust built first. Trust that the space is safe. The minute the trust and safety is broken, the capacity for change or self-realized agency is lost. We give into the fear of the unknown and the fixed mindset. This makes the practices difficult to scale. Since trust can only be built within closed systems, there’s a tendency to silo. We end up with Yoga, high-scale startups, art retreats, hackathons, improv groups and the like all stuck in silos. Empowerment works within but not between these disciplines. In the right hands, these communities have the power to enable self-empowerment and yet the minute you step out of the circle, the practice is prone to manipulation.

The fear and mistrust that happens in the gaps between these practices mirror to some extent the pillars of economics and society. Mistrust or a lack of faith is the basis for the old economy of scarcity. Scarce economic models prey on fear and lack. There’s not enough to go around, therefore we must protect our belongings. I like to think of this as territorial thinking. The idea of drawing boundaries around property, while helping to ensure the appearance of security, is the very idea that is preventing more radical changes across society.

It’s not the way that I’ve found success and it’s not the way that I see the future going. Scarcity models are giving way to abundance models built upon sharing resources. This shouldn’t be seen as an endorsement of the glib “sharing economy,” instead I think it’s more about APIs and open-source practices. While not well understood outside of technology circles, APIs and open-source practices are thriving practices for developing an abundance mindset. While I’m apt to avoid preaching for some techo-libertian-utopia, I think these practices need to start being spread (and to some extent are already) outside of the tech world.

Scarcity models are giving way to abundance models built upon sharing resources. This shouldn’t be seen as an endorsement of the glib “sharing economy,” instead I think it’s more about APIs and open-source practices.

While it may be difficult to form any perfect meritocracy as a sustainable model, building an open-source, action-oriented mindset approach to tackling projects does move in that direction. Action and reputation, instead of territory becomes the main indicator of success. When your ideas are trafficked through practice and application, then you can claim success. It’s why I get up every day and write down thoughts like this. The world is changing and we’re struggling to keep up. Change is going to happen to all of these groups simultaneously and we need them to start cross-talking and sharing rather than giving into fear and scarcity.

The siloing and territorial mindset are doing us more harm than good.

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Blaming Ourselves for Poor Design

Do you want to change the world? It starts with stopping. You have to stop complaining. You have to stop looking for answers outside of yourself. You have to listen and pay attention to what you want and what you’re capable of. Too often we feel simultaneously helpless to enact change and act too hard on ourselves. “Most people are lazy. Most people are duped. Most people don’t understand their actions or don’t consider them. They don’t see what effect their having.”

If you have said words like these before, it’s worth turning them back on yourself. Are you lazy? Are you duped? Do you understand your actions and how they affect others? It’s easy to offhandedly say “yes” to these questions and not really take the time to consider them so let me ask you to do this. Read one sentence at a time. Give yourself a minute. A literal full minute to consider your answer. Turn off your phone. Close that tab in your browser that’s pinging you with notifications. Be in the moment. For one minute at a time.

We take naturally the everyday stresses of modern life because we choose to see bigger systems out of our control as the result of other’s selfishness.

The truth is we’re all lazy at times. Many of us are also very hard on ourselves. We expect a lot by generating a mile long to do list that even Superman with super strength, speed, and agility couldn’t accomplish. A friend asked me recently, “What if I don’t have a calling?” This person explained that if they had the time to themselves, they wouldn’t paint, they wouldn’t write, they would simply play video games. I could feel the weight the person brought down in the room on us. “So what?” I asked. “Maybe you should play video games. You’ve worked hard. You deserve a break.”

The realities of modern life is that we’re all overachievers. Society makes us feel all kinds of personal anxiety like we are letting ourselves down. Sometimes though, it’s just not paying attention to our bodies, our minds, or whatever placeholder term you have for soul/heart etc.

I was walking down a hill recently in California and I saw a sign spraypainted on the ground “Stay on Sidewalk.” It was seemingly innocuous. The street had a problem where pedestrians would step out into the roadway and interfere with car traffic. Obviously this could be dangerous if one or the other isn’t paying attention. Obviously if you’re in a vehicle which could go several hundred miles per hour, it’s frustrating when a pedestrian moving 5 miles an hour is blocking your way to get home and finally rest and see your family after a long day.

This street was highly utilized by pedestrians. Everyone will tell you no one walks in LA and if you do walk in areas, you’ll see this is just a fixed mindset speaking. There were several dozens of people wandering around that area on the Saturday I happened to be there. Though LA is very car-centric. I’ve seen pedestrians bow to the will of the car left and right and so it should be rather elementary that one would obey the command “STAY ON SIDEWALK.” But I was annoyed. Annoyed at the lack of empathy. Annoyed by the fact that pedestrians and motorists don’t understand the real problem which is this: The sidewalk was too damn narrow.

For the amount of foot traffic in that neighborhood, where a bike and walking path wind around a gorgeous panorama view of the surrounding communities, that sidewalk was designed poorly. Pedestrians walking either direction have to stop to let others by. Sometimes runners are going at a fast pace and they get stuck behind slower, middle-aged people going on an evening walk. All of this coexistence happens quite naturally, for sure, but that little bit of anxiety in the sidewalk: “STAY. ON. SIDEWALK!!” It’s just taken in course.

And so we take naturally the everyday stresses of modern life. Not because we always have to, but because we choose to see bigger systems out of our control as results of other’s selfishness. We start with blame and worst of all we blame ourselves. “That was stupid of me stepping out into the road. I should have known better. I’m at fault.”

We tolerate these moments of anxiety which bring pressure to us. Then we hold others accountable for their “selfish” actions. We complain to our friends on Social Media about how stupid people must be for believing one thing or the next without seeing the bigger picture: that the system is poorly designed.

The post Blaming Ourselves for Poor Design appeared first on Nate Cooper.

Are New Yorkers Inherently Mindful?

I like to think I resisted this a bit but I think I’m slowly coming to terms with being a digital nomad. I’m typing this while in the back of a Lyft which is taking me from Long Beach California to Santa Monica where I have set up shop for the Summer. When I was younger, growing up in California, I used to fantasize about being bi-coastal.

I thought that might mean having an apartment in San Francisco and one in NYC and travelling back and forth for work. Now I think that’s a bit limiting. This country is mighty big, it’s true, but the world is mighty small. After spending time in Mexico City, Brussels, Berlin, and London last year I figure: why limit myself? I still feel like a New Yorker though. Perhaps that’s why I’ve resisted the moniker Digital Nomad.

True nomads, I believe don’t really have a home base. I like my home base. It feels good to “go home” from time to time (as I am about to do this week to teach some classes in NYC). Perhaps one of the reasons I feel at home there, is that it takes a long time to *feel* like a New Yorker. NYC is a brutal place at times and at other times – the times tourists seem to not understand – it is one of the best places on Earth.

I’ve had friends I care about, and strangers I’ve spoken to slam my city because of the brutish pride with which New Yorker’s speak about their home. “It’s the greatest city in the world” sounds incredibly ignorant especially to those who’ve been there. I think those who speak the most ill of New York are those who have tried living there and find it wasn’t to their taste. “It’s just a city. Why do people wear living there with a badge of pride?” It’s not a terrible question to ask, rhetorical though it might be.

Shall I answer it with an equally rhetorical and cryptic response? Do you think if you have to ask, maybe you don’t get it? I constantly hear from current and former New Yorkers, that we denizens of this city can be narcissistic. Having spent the past month in Los Angeles I can’t say I don’t notice the differences. Though I’d be remiss to say I haven’t witnessed a fair amount of self-absorption here. Indeed, I’ve been very curious about interrogating the differences between narcissism and self-absorption. If you figure that one out, let me know. But is being focused on one’s self entirely bad?

Understanding Adaptive Narcissism

I can’t say I don’t see the criticism that New Yorkers are self-focused as valid at times. I do, however, also sense that there’s something missing in the critique. I went so far as to find this article by psychology today that suggest narcissism isn’t all that bad. How can being aware of one’s self be bad if balanced with understanding one’s limits and an extreme focus on empathy? Is the adaptive narcissism described by Psychology today realistic?

On both coasts and abroad I find that there’s a renewed interest in meditation. Long the realm of crunchy culture, meditation is being considered seriously by science and is making it’s way into corporate culture. Having spent a couple Sundays in Long Beach taking meditation classes, I think I’ve found another word that encapsulates this kind of adaptive narcissism: Mindfulness. Merriam Webster (sorry brits) defines mindfulness as: “the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.”

Mark Twain said: “All generalizations are false, including this one.”

A friend commenting on the differences between Los Angeles and New York said that New Yorkers are hard on the outside but soft on the inside because they know the struggle is real. What registers as smug self-absorption by outsiders, sometimes is, in fact just the opposite. I think New York breeds its own form of mindfulness. Don’t stop walking on the sidewalk. Don’t stand at the top of the stairway leading to the subway. Don’t have a long phone conversation on the train. Look forward and at others and: walk. fast. Does this mean everyone follows these rules? Of course not. As Mark Twain said: “All generalizations are false, including this one.”

People in LA I’ve spoken to found New Yorkers to be rude. “The people at the deli counter seem set on getting you in and out. No chats or pleasantries. Others cut in front of you on line.” I think this is the quintessential New York experience. It’s not that we don’t see that as rude sometimes. It’s that we don’t give a shit. Life is too short. We have our own shit to deal with. If you think we haven’t seen some shit, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. We just refuse to let it get us down. We are hardened on the outside but knowledgable within. That’s why you can take the New Yorker out of New York but you can’t take the New York out of the New Yorker.

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Comics Are Good for Learning Complex Things

I’ve spent the past ten years of my professional career in various aspects of adult, technology education. About midway between the start of my journey to now, came: Build Your Own Website. A comic book I collaborated on with my friend, the talented artist and designer Kim Gee. In retrospect, I wasn’t even sure exactly why I wanted to do a comic. I knew that I liked Kim’s comic work and I knew that I wanted to organize my process for how I taught myself web development and WordPress but it was only after I connected the dots looking back that I realize how important that decision was.

“Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”

― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner

The source material that eventually became the comic, wove together elements of my own personal and professional fabric. Teaching myself WordPress was a personal journey (a hobby) at first. In 2002 I felt I needed a website, but I didn’t know why. But eventually I started messing around with WordPress and have been blogging on this site you’re reading now since I was in my early 20s. Sometimes other people needed help with WordPress or Websites and I got paid for some freelance gigs on WordPress but it wasn’t my main source of income. In 2006 I moved to NYC and got a job at Apple to pay the bills. Some of what I did at Apple included sales, mentor-style teaching, and one to many teaching. I taught other Apple employees as well as customers and I developed training materials. When I first jumped ship to start my own company, I was placing a lot of faith in WordPress and my personal skills with it. I had the intuition to write. I’d always dreamed of being a writer and I needed to organize my thoughts, so a book seemed like a natural place to start.

It was! I was so excited to be able to sit down and write about all of the challenges I went through teaching myself web development. Within only a few short months I put together a manuscript for “All the things you need to get a website going.” But it was just sitting on my hard drive collecting dust. I was riddled with anxiety about putting out a comprehensive guide to anything. What did I know? I had only taught myself these things. I had friends who knew much more than me about many aspects of web development. Who was *I* to have the ego to decide I could write a “comprehensive guide?” That seemed incredibly fool-hearty. But regardless I knew that having a physical book (an object) allowed me to put something tangible into the world that represented my values. I was just starting to build my company around training and web development. This book could be my manifesto.

The amazing Kim Gee. :)

But how could I release it knowing that it is faulty and imperfect? I knew from personal experience I had a real knack for teaching people in-person and part of my approach has always been extremely empathetic and patient. In my experience people are usually their own roadblock when it comes to technology, adults especially. There’s a very real fear that comes along with learning something new and technology is new and frightening and chaotic and ever changing.

I like what Steven Pressfield says about Fear: “Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”

― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner

Learning to Teach Yourself a Skill Doesn’t Have to be Hard

Think of some skill you taught yourself. Let’s use an imperfect example: Say you want to learn how to play the guitar. You can look at sheet music. You can google chord progressions perhaps. You could sign up for private lessons. If you look hard enough, you can probably find millions of methods to learn how to play the guitar. But here’s the difference between those who have tried and failed and those who know how to play the guitar. The ones who learn to ~play enjoy it a whole lot. At one point they were a beginner just like you but there was something in their approach that lead to enjoyment. There are scientific explanations for this. One is called flow.

Flow is a universal process of human enjoyment while doing an activity. You can find your way to flow by focusing on challenges just beyond your current skill level. This seems to produce a kind of engagement level that keeps you progressing in the activity. In fact if you’ve ever seen someone engrossed in a game, you might recognize this activity. But it goes beyond gaming and can apply to other types of activities like sewing or gardening. It’s the act not the end goal that is the thing. You try and fail but the payoff is just enough that it’s actually somewhat rewarding and you want to continue. If you’re learning to play guitar, you don’t become Keith Richards overnight (or ever), but you personalize your journey and you find your way by trial and error. Learning to see failure as a guide is called the open or growth oriented mindset. It’s an approach to life that sees errors as opportunities for growth.

Design Thinking for a Better World

The brilliant and wonderful Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud opened me up to the idea of comics as symbols.

I’ve know about flow for many years now and it’s helped me personally but I wasn’t sure how it fit into technology education or my work. Now that I’m incorporating Design Thinking into my approach to teaching, it’s helping me to mine my past for gems of knowledge. I’m finally starting to notice some fruitful patterns in my journey. At a young age I was given the incredibly brilliant Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. In brief it’s a kind of deconstruction of the comic medium through a comic medium. Kim and I had some discussions about it as we were preparing our Kickstarter for Build Your Own Website. Turns out it was a big personal influence on both of us, even though we were at different stages in lifes and both had pretty major differences in career paths.

One idea that stuck with me from Understanding Comics book is this idea of comic as symbol. Humans are pattern-seeking. Even in very abstract forms, we can still construct a meaning. In an extreme form this manifests as pareidolia, seeing faces everywhere. Key to this concept though is that as meanings abstract they become more open to interpretation and more cross cultural. Words are only worth their meaning in particular languages but pictures cross cultural boundaries. Pictures beg equally for emotional and linguistic interpretation.  A drawing becomes a stand in for a concept that taps into the “readers” psyche in the same way a logo, brand, or color might.

The comic medium removes some of the barriers for outsiders looking into a culture to get a window into complex topics. It can connect dots between big concepts more easily by appealing to the emotive part of the brain rather than the intellect. This is the so called system one of the dual process theory. As I more explicitly make connections between design thinking and my body of work teaching and learning technology, I feel like I’m starting to fail in the right direction. The open and cross-cultural signifiers of the comic form, allow for analogies not to be taken so literally. Instead, they challenge the readers to build their own meaning and in doing so, readers give themselves permission to fail towards growth. It opens up their minds to new experiences because the challenge is rewarded by small wins. You recognize the pictures and *feel* better about the concepts because they are fun. Where as trying to learn the concepts through words alone might fail because the words are so alienating, the fun of a comic allows you to connect to an otherwise foreign world.

Humans are pattern-seeking. Even in very abstract forms, we can still construct a meaning.

Some People Hate WordPress like they Hate Comics

While I’m humbled by the praise I’ve received for the book and it continues to touch and reach people beyond my wildest dreams, it has been criticized as well. The criticisms are not unfair either. All the ones I’ve seen say some variation of “it’s dumbing down” or “it’s too basic.” Believe me, I’m used to it. Whenever I’m in a room with full stack or backend developers, you can tell they think the same way about WordPress developers. (This Quora answer kind of demonstrates this) WordPress isn’t “serious” if you want to be a “real” developer. I’m willing to admit there’s some truth to it. WordPress and my comic oversimplify some pretty complex things. They aren’t perfect. They have quirks and faults. But instead of seeing that as a negative, I feel that’s their strength. Being fun, open, and something that appeals to amateurs never *seems* sexy, especially if you have already predecided you don’t want to give it a chance. My mother hates cartoons for instance.

I’ve been with the WordPress community for over 10 years now. Just in the last five, as I jumped ship from stability into an uncertain future, making WordPress the core of my business, WordPress itself grew from 20% – 26% of the web. Open source stuff is messy. (It’s also hard to teach.) But I firmly believe beginners need to understand that it’s OK to be afraid of big, open, chaotic experiences. Just as people with deep tech knowledge have a responsibility to not alienate them. If more people understood their power rather than focusing on their limitations the world might be better off. There are huge communities of people out there just like you. Nobody but you can connect the dots of your personal journey.

tl;dr

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”

― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Photo Credit: grendelkhan

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Seeing The Future of Tech in Mexico City

I came down to Mexico because I care about education. My friend Eme, trusted me to come to New York when I was hosting an event last November. He bought his ticket and jumped in and while here, he gave a wonderful and moving talk about Dev.f a school that he set up with his partners Elias and Enrique to teach young Mexicans how to code. Having witnessed first hand the explosion of tech education in New York and San Francisco, I was surprised to learn that there wasn’t an equivalent in Mexico.

Diego and Jorge from Bridgefy a Mexico City based Startup incubated in San Francisco

While New York is saturated with coworking spaces and incubators, things down here in Mexico are at that exciting stage where, there’s a feeling of almost infinite potential.

As a teacher at General Assembly for several years, I’ve seen small developer bootcamps grow into multi-million dollar companies. There’s been an explosion of demand for developers in the states and a growing niche industry built around training junior developers. Being in Mexico City and seeing the tech startup scene here, reminds me of being in New York tech 4 years ago. While New York is saturated with coworking spaces and incubators, things down here in Mexico are at that exciting stage where there’s a feeling of almost infinite potential. Surprisingly for me most of these companies and individuals are working under the radar of U.S. companies.

Students from Dev.f the first “Hacker school” in Mexico

Dev.f has a key partnership with Google’s Latin American arm and is being approached by some major U.S. tech companies for partnerships. I spoke with my friends at tech startup Bridgefy who were incubated in San Francisco and frequently travel to the U.S. to speak with their investors. Admittedly I had a small sample size for my data, working mostly through the connections I have directly from StartupBus Americas. But seeing the reactions of my compatriots in the U.S. to the perceptions of Mexico just doesn’t square with the reality. In our global economy, Mexico seems poised to become a real player and there’s an excitement you feel here like discovering a gold-mine of energy, talent and hope.

I will admit, I didn’t see much outside a small section of Mexico City, and what I’ve been told by others who live there, the hipstery tech scene is quite a bubble of wealth in an otherwise impoverished country. But the American perception of Mexico as essentially a scary, desert could not be further from the reality. Walking the streets of Roma/Condesa or seeing the opulence of Polanco, it’s easy to imagine you’re in European capital or New York City at times – and for someone like me who loves Mexican food, in many ways it’s far superior to both. Seeing the state of tech here and the growing potential and places like Dev.f and companies like Bridgefy make me very excited. I can’t wait to return.

seeing the reactions of my compatriots in the U.S. to the perceptions of Mexico just doesn’t square with the reality.

Brazil, Get Ready to Build your Website

My awesome publisher No Starch press sent me a couple copies of the Portueguese translation of Build Your Own Website last night. So neat to see this. 

Roger Ebert’s Life The American Dream Itself

Photo Credit:  Kevin Horan

I am a midwestern son. There’s a sequence in the documentary ‘Life Itself’ that suggests that Roger Ebert styled himself as a Chicago journalist in an archetype of public figures like Studs Turkel. He was, for a time, hard drinking and hard living. Enjoying life in it’s ups and downs in a way that is both uniquely human and uniquely American. Seeing this film as I have now, in a time in life where for unrelated reasons, I’ve recently had to explain and often defend being both a New Yorker and American, it has given me pause to reflect on my midwestern-ness. It’s a claim I don’t often make about aspects of my personality and to say they are at best unsettled would perhaps be an understatement.

I grew up in California and having spent nearly a decade now in New York I’m often accused of being alternatively laid back (the West Coast side) or shall we say ambitious (the East Coast side). Sharing that I was born in Illinois and have fond childhood memories of returning to the Land of Lincoln and the land of my parents isn’t something that I’m oft to do unless you are close to me. I spent the formative years of my life learning how the world works from the perspective of diverse and conflicted California. By the time I had made it to Santa Cruz, a stereotype of California cool and a sign that you had made it by West Coast standards, I was constantly being accused of seeming East Coast. I lived blocks from the beach. I could hear the ocean crashing from my bed and on occasion sea lions barking – surprisingly – from miles away.

Eventually New York’s pull couldn’t evade me and I’ve made a happy home here and been able to watch Brooklyn change from my window and in some ways feel the gilded walls closing in in similar ways to Santa Cruz. Here people are compelled to say “Why would you ever leave?” In reference to California’s famous sun and weather and I say “Why not?” I couldn’t see getting to where I am now without moving. I’m a published author and have a successful independent business that has paid the bills for four years now. When I travel back to California and meet people from the tech industry out there I can’t help but feel that there’s not a snowballs chance in hell that I would have met them if I wasn’t where I am professionally in New York.

I’ve had a series of friends new and old visit from Europe and the continent and now that I’m an erudite New Yorker, I find myself having to explain my fellow countrymen in ways that don’t always feel natural. Perhaps that’s why the Ebert documentary hit me like a ton of bricks. When I think of celebrities, of artists, of people I admire and what I want out of life, there’s a certain midwestern quality that I find I am drawn to in somewhat inexplicable ways. It’s explained in ‘Life Itself’ that after Roger Ebert won the Pulitzer prize while writing for the scrappy Sun-Times – a commuter rag I can recall my Chicago suburban relatives explain to me – Ebert was courted by major publications like the NY Times and Washington Post. Roger was quoted as saying “I don’t want to have to learn new streets.”

When I think of celebrities, of artists, of people I admire and what I want out of life, there’s a certain midwestern quality that I find I am drawn to in somewhat inexplicable ways.

While on the one hand I’ve never lived in Chicago and on the other I feel deeply connected to the Bay Area and have a homey understanding of New York, there’s something about this sentiment that rings true for me. A loyalty to home, a sense of pride in the scrappiness of the paper. There’s something there that is American, heartland and Chicago. While in California, the dream is to be discovered and move up in the world and in New York, you wouldn’t leave because you feel well and true that this place is the best place on earth, the sense in Chicago that you stay despite being able to leave is both heartbreaking and wonderful. Something that I inherently feel and understand and fear perhaps that I’m overstating (as someone who isn’t from there) but I look at people like Studs and Ebert and Jean Sheperd and I feel like “yes” these are people who embody that spirit. They are people I aspire to be.

“There’s something in the spirit of Northern Illinois that is simultaneously understated and resounding – a midwestern cool.” Photo by: Ben Margot, AP

It’s why I felt so deeply hurt at news of Robin Williams passing. I can remember as a child seeing bits of my grandpa in him and feeling he was part of the family. It’s also why I think of Bill Murray as the archetype of the celebrity. There’s something in the spirit of Northern Illinois that is simultaneously understated and resounding – a midwestern cool. Look at Oprah! In ‘Life Itself’ we’re told time and again stories of unknown directors that Roger Ebert (along with Gene Siskel) pulled up from obscurity because they thought they deserved a voice. There’s a sense of Roger as an American success story both in his talent but also in his desire to give back. His humble beginnings were a tutorial for him on both the promise of the American dream but also the sense of duty to it. That’s perhaps what’s missing sometimes I feel as culture moves to the coasts. I’ve benefited greatly from being pulled up by others here in New York. It wasn’t always out of a sense of duty, but instead a sense kinship or reciprocity. In California I was brought in by the warmth of people’s generosity but it can often feel cold and individual there despite the sun. In neither place do I feel quite the same sense of humble duty. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist in either place, but rather it doesn’t exist in quite the same way.

There’s a wonderful reflection of death as a part of life in the documentary. The film doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of declining health as Roger Ebert went through many medical procedures towards the end of his life. It also confronts what death means in the context of life, cinema and America. I find intellectual communion in statements from Roger like: “Look at a movie a lot of people love and you’ll find something profound, no matter how silly the film may seem…” Through passages of the film Ebert is painted as both a sophisticated and stubborn egotist and at the same time a populist. At one point at a conference he’s asked why his opinion on a film matters more than anyone else’s and he says “because I have a Pulitzer.” It’s both harsh and true. Later though he’s lauded for his insistence that anyone can get a movie. Time and again we’re shown filmmakers like Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and Martin Scorsese who basically credit Siskel and Ebert with making their films more palatable to audiences. Morris says “I don’t think I would have had a career if it weren’t for those guys.”

Yet when Siskel and Ebert at the Movies was growing in popularity there was a staunch refusal in the LA and New York markets to pick up the show. There was a sense that New York and Los Angeles film criticism was superior. Look at this article Ebert wrote on unfair criticism of Michael Moore’s Roger and Me where he staunchly rebukes Pauline Kael of the New Yorker, a woman he admired and credits for opening up the path of film criticism for a new generation. From the article:

Does Moore “demean” the subjects in his film, the “little people,” by holding them up to ridicule? I don’t think so. I think he is looking at the infinite goofiness of human nature — at the things people will say — with the same deadpan astonishment that I sometimes have when I watch the TV news.

Though respectful and accomplished, Roger Ebert seemed resolute in his dedication to the everyman ideal found throughout American storytelling. He believed in the American dream in both it’s promise and it’s faults and in doing so he embodied an archetype of the American journalist/writer we see manifest from time to time in literature and popular culture. Throughout the film ‘Life Itself’ A thread of a quote from The Great Gatsby is played and repeated. It is noted as one of Roger Ebert’s favorite quotes and one that embodies the American dream.

“Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning ——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Watch Bill Nack, a friend of Roger Ebert recite this passage from the Great Gatsby at Ebertfest

The Great Gatsby is a testament to American idealism, failure and reinvention. Famously read on stage, presumably ironically by Charlie Kaufman and retyped in its entirety by Hunter S Thompson, another iconic writer on the American dream from a previous generation, in order to gain insight on it’s rhythm. The story of Gatsby itself is an examination of the American dream through the lens of a midwesterner, Nick Halloway who is transported to the opulence of the East Coast to find the self-made Gatsby at once incredibly successful but as is described in the quote above, chasing an unattainable past. America allows for one to build their own path and for even the humble son of a electrician as in Ebert’s case to rise to the pinnacle of American journalism. But only to a point.

For all the optimism of the American dream, we can’t stop the inevitable passage of time. “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him…” But what makes us American is our unwillingness to let that stop us from trying to reinvent the past by focusing on the future. What is sometimes seen by non-Americans as American ignorance of the past and the foolish, resolute pursuit of forward movement, is in fact laced with knowing fatalism and sadness, regret but optimism. Optimism in the belief that the failures of the past cannot be reconciled by dwelling on them. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning ——”  And this is Fitzgerald writing nearly a century ago. What codifies the American spirit, and perhaps terrifies other non-Americans is the fact that we know the journey is unknown, we know the clock is impossible to turn back, but the only natural course of action we know is forward into the future. Even if it’s to chase an impossible past. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

What is sometimes seen by non-Americans as American ignorance of the past and the foolish, resolute pursuit of forward movement, is in fact laced with knowing fatalism and sadness, regret but optimism. Optimism in the belief that the failures of the past cannot be reconciled by dwelling on them.

What I’m reminded of watching ‘Life Itself’ as a Californian turned New Yorker is that while that indomitable spirit of constant progress may be born on the coasts, it’s the midwesterners who celebrate it, give it life and frame it in such a way as to make it sustainable. Roger Ebert’s gift to us wasn’t only the work he did himself, rewarding and important as that is. Like Gatsby, Ebert is as aware of the past though refuses to acknowledge it. Unlike Gatsby he’s aware of his shortcomings. Ebert’s giving life to the next generation is a way of addressing the inevitability of death while reminding us it isn’t an obstacle to progress but a motivator. For all his success he recognized our world isn’t perfect and sought to make the best world out of what he was given.  He “beat on, boat against the current” and was able to give new life to others through the stories he chose to give light to and the stories he created in his own life. Ultimately he was adding to the story of what it means to be American and what make up American ideals by backing up his writing with action and determined spirit. His midwestern values informing his perspective. What could be more American than that?

 

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