I haven't talked much about Meteor.js club or what it is on this blog. When I decided to leave Differential, part of that decision was driven by the fact that I felt a very strong 'tug' to begin teaching and training people. The ideas immediately began flowing in, like this blog for example, where I talk about Meteor.js every week. I came up with a monthly Question and Answer session to let people ask experts about Meteor. Of course, the Meteor podcast kind of slid right in to place in my pantheon of Meteor ideas for getting the word out. Even Meteor News site, Crater made sense as a Meteor Club 'thing'.

In a sentence: Meteor.js Club is a place where I want people to feel comfortable coming and learning about Meteor and how it works. Some of my work is free for the public, and some of it is paid so I can feed my family.

Picking top priorities

With all of these options and ideas, it can be hard to execute well on everything. I still spend portions of my day doing consulting work - that means I need to focus my efforts with laser-like precision if I want to execute on ideas with excellence. You'll notice I never mentioned the 'Testing with Meteor.js' book. It didn't feel right to push it to the top of the pile when Velocity is still in a state of flux for Meteor.js. So with that in mind, my 'Mastering Meteor.js' class became my top priority because I find I can effectively teach an audience and help support my family while doing it. The idea actually stemmed from a few conversations with Brennan Dunn and Sacha Greif, I'm immensely grateful that they gave me their time and insight on my new business.

A new hope for testing

Since the beginning of Velocity, I've been participating in the weekly online meetup and trying to keep up with the changing landscape that has been Meteor.js testing. I was very fortunate to meet and friend Sam Hatoum as part of this process. He is a great guy and he has been putting in a ton of time driving Velocity forward. One day a few months back, he asked if I could stay after and we could talk more on the hangout. Turns out he wanted to start a book of his own and like any great guy would, he wanted to give me a heads up. I was torn. I knew he was a really smart guy and when it came to testing stuff he was an authority. You want success for your friends, but at the same time he would be competing with me and the book I was working on. It was also around this time that Differential began making some shifts to execute their future vision, which created the perfect opportunity for me to set out on my own and pursue my passion of training, teaching, community building, and writing.

While I feel like I have exceeded my greatest hopes for launching a training and teaching business, it all came at the expense of writing the testing book. Granted, this wasn't exactly a bad thing, as even today Velocity is drastically different than it was back in August. When Sam came out with his pre-release version, I started to realize I wouldn't be able to keep pace with his ability to commit time to his book, and quite honestly, competing just didn't make sense. I struck up a conversation between myself, Sam, and Differential to see if we could find a way to deliver the best content possible to the community, because in the end, isn't that what this is about?

As you may have seen on the Differential blog today, the two books are combining forces and I'll be working to help Sam out as a technical editor/reviewer of his book. I'm extremely confident Sam is going to hit it out of the park with this project. I'm also helping out as much as I can with the Cucumber.js velocity package, as it will likely be my preferred testing package moving forward.

When old things die away, new things spring to life

In my continued conversations with Sam, we both realized that we wanted to find a way to work together on more projects. We decided that we could combine the idea of book writing and my new business direction of training.

It is with the greatest of excitement and admiration that I announce the 'Testing Meteor.js' class that Sam and I will be hosting online January 19th and 20th. If you're curious about this class and how it will make you a stronger developer, you can go and read more about the testing class.