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Publish Your Work

[11] 31 January 2024  |  [12]braindump

As an electrical and mechanical engineer, my late father-in-law was an expert
in crafting home-grown black boxes that meticulously—and sometimes also
miraculously—executed certain tasks in and around the house, such as
automatically opening and closing the curtains based on the position of the sun
(that included LEGO Technic radar work), routing audio and video from the
doorbell to the TV or smartphone when someone pressed the button, or mediating
the central heating based on too many factors. He also loved building things
that weren’t really needed, just for fun: how about a full-size sixties jukebox
emulated with a couple of Arduino boards, where each mechanical piece was
hand-cut?

When I asked him why he doesn’t take pictures of each project to document and
publish them online, to inspire others, he was never interested. Most of these
projects aren’t well-documented privately either, leaving us now with
unsolvable puzzles when things break. But his ideas, as with all ideas, were
gradually formed by studying ideas and projects of others, so why not come full
circle to again share what you’ve made? I never really got an answer as to why
not.

When I talk to friends about blogging, or more generally “putting stuff out
there”, the vast majority of them don’t care, and that comes across as very
strange to me, since I do. Not everyone has the urge [13]to write in public.
Yet publishing your work comes with so many advantages that I don’t even know
where to begin to list them. I think many people underestimate the value of
sharing what you’ve made.

Austin Kleon wrote a whole book about this [14]called Show Your Work!, which,
as Austin puts it, is a good starting point for people who hate the very idea
of self-promotion. Perhaps I should have given a copy to my father-in-law,
although I doubt that would have changed anything. He was content tinkering in
his cellar without letting the world know what he made. Yet if he did, more
people would have made something based on his work. And that feeling of
contributing is amazing.

It doesn’t take a genius or a huge project to make a bit of an impact. Just
influencing your own “tribe”, as Seth Godin likes to call it, is more than
enough to get a positive feedback loop going. As a silly example, I fooled
around with hacking a [15]Phomemo M02 thermal printer a year ago, and I just
found out that there’s a Node CLI module on GitHub that thanks my article for
pointing them in the right direction. Conventional contributions to existing
open-source projects is of course the obvious other example, but it’s not even
needed to go that far. I sometimes just write about things I tried—and often
failed—to do, and it always puts a smile on my face when I notice someone
picked that up.

I don’t create or publish in the hopes of influencing others. I create things
because I have an urge to create. But it sure is great to help others along the
way, however small my contribution might be. I don’t care about being found
online and I am certainly not actively pushing my stuff down others’ throats
(Kleon’s rule #7: Don’t turn into human spam). I love reading about the
creation process of others. I love sharing my creation process. It’s almost
second nature: it feels like a wasted opportunity to do something good in this
world if I didn’t.

If you made something, great! Why don’t you tell us about it? It’s simple, you
just need to hire a VPS, configure iptables, download and customize a Hugo
theme, write front matter and markdown, have a CI pipeline setup, and install
Nginx. Ah, dang it!

[16] You Might Also Like...

  • [17]On Writing For Yourself In Public 06 Nov 2023
  • [18]Phomemo Thermal Printing On MacOS 03 Feb 2023

[19] Bio and Support

[20] A photo of Me!

I'm [21]Wouter Groeneveld, a Brain Baker, and I love the smell of freshly baked
thoughts (and bread) in the morning. I sometimes convince others to bake their
brain (and bread) too.

If you found this article amusing and/or helpful, you can support me via [22]
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References:

[1] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/publish-your-work/#top
[2] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/publish-your-work/#
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[11] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/publish-your-work/
[12] https://brainbaking.com/categories/braindump
[13] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/on-writing-for-yourself-in-public/
[14] https://austinkleon.com/show-your-work/
[15] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/02/phomemo-thermal-printing-on-macos/
[16] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/publish-your-work/#related
[17] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/11/on-writing-for-yourself-in-public/
[18] https://brainbaking.com/post/2023/02/phomemo-thermal-printing-on-macos/
[19] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/publish-your-work/#bio
[20] https://brainbaking.com/
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[25] https://brainbaking.com/post/2024/01/publish-your-work/#header
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