Where do you publish or get validation for your side projects?

When I first started sharing my Ethereum builds, I would post on /r/ethdev. I eventually moved to Twitter, and was able to get traction there.

What is the most valuable non-Ethereum conference you have attended or would like to attend?

DockerCon was fun back in the day. Excited to attend more now with an Ethereum lens!

What is the last technological development that got you pumped and where did you discover it?

Flashloans, word of mouth at ETHDenver and then on crypto-twitter. It is a really neat concept and one of those emergent properties of our young technology.

How did you first learn about Ethereum?

I think I first saw it on Hackernews but I can’t remember for sure. I was super into Docker at the time and Ethereum didn’t ‘stick’ until I saw Jordan shredding on YouTube.

What is the best tutorial you’ve ever worked through?

Jordan Leigh’s YouTube series on Dapp development. It was a great introduction into dapp building and Jordan is a good teacher.

I try to channel my inner-Jordan when creating the videos for eth.build.

Why didn’t you get involved sooner than you did?

I was busy messing with Docker. I built this tool called Captain that allows developers to easily template, build, deploy, and control scalable micro-services. It remains closed-source at the company I created it for. 🙁 Lesson learned.

What learning resources (blog posts, guides, etc.) do you remember reading first?

Other than the YouTube series from Jordan, I remember the Ethereum website with the greeter bot. Then, I failed through some Truffle stuff. I think I went through a lot of Medium articles too.

How would you convince a developer friend that Ethereum is worth checking out?

First, probably just talk through what decentralization really means, but then I can show them etherscan and then eth.build. I think it’s good to get your hands on things first and poke around. I’d help them with that. Maybe show them some recent trends like DeFi, PoolTogether, flash loans, etc…

Were there any aspects of Ethereum that turned you off at first?

The barrier to entry was too high for some reason, I shilled my work to people in the space like crazy and no one cared. I think it’s key that we nurture effort at first instead of results. Like, dude, this stuff you built is great and it’s obvious you can build, but here is a little runway to try something else.

I had built some pretty elaborate web3 products (for example galleass.io) but no one cared. It would be cool to grab people like me at that time and give them a 3 month grant to build something new with some mentorship etc.