What I'm Working On In 2015

For the majority of 2014, I was occupied with some contract work doing a mix of front-end development, WordPress development, and later, product design. Moving into the new year (I’ll be a free agent as of January 26th), I’m looking to get back into a mix of working on my own products and filling in the blanks with freelance work. In an effort to map out my intentions, I wanted to go over what products I’ll be working on and what sort of freelance work I’m looking to take on.

The Meteor Chef

The Meteor JavaScript platform caught my eye back in 2013 when I was looking for a good solution to build my first product, Proper. At the time, Meteor was still in “beta” and I decided adopting it into my own work would be fun.

After spending just a few weeks with the platform, even in its early state: I was hooked. The simplicity and speed of the whole thing made it possible to accomplish huge swaths of work while still delivering a surprising level of quality to the user/customer.

Around November of 2014, I launched The Meteor Chef: how to do everyday stuff with the Meteor JavaScript platform. The “everyday stuff” being features that you may need to implement in your Meteor app, explained in the form of practical recipes. From November onward, I’ve been releasing new recipes every 2-3 weeks.

Expanding on Meteor

Not only is working on The Meteor Chef fun, it’s also given me an opportunity to build on my development skills and create a “name” (whatever that is) for myself in the Meteor community. As I’ve remarked to friends, this is the first time I’ve been excited about working on a project in a long time. As I’ve learned, when you’re excited about something purely for the love of the idea: that’s what you should be working on.

Moving into 2015, I’ll be focusing on building out The Meteor Chef, working to make it a real business. Right now the recipes on the site are free, but I’m working on building out a “pro” service that will focus on more in-depth learning around Meteor. I’m also working on a job board that will showcase employment opportunities around Meteor. I’m still working out the kinks and don’t want to disclose too much, but here are my rough goals:

  1. Build out The Meteor Chef brand as a reliable resource in the Meteor community. This would not only apply to learning material created by myself, but also by others. I’d like to become one of a few “hubs” for learning about Meteor.
  2. Create a self-sustaining revenue stream that allows me to focus only on The Meteor Chef. This would involve releasing paid resources through the site that readers could purchase and charging for postings on the job board.
  3. Offer consulting services around designing and building Meteor applications (trying to leverage both my design and development skills in a package).

If I can turn these ideas into a profitable business that I can support myself with: I’ll be happy. I’m confident in the quality of product I can offer and I love the idea of seeing Meteor become a bigger player on the web. If I can work to help in that effort, rad!

Meteor? That’s it?

Of course not! Meteor is my focus in the short-term, however, I have a bigger idea in mind that all of my work on The Meteor Chef will influence. If all of this is successful, I’ll be taking what I learn and rolling it into that. For the time being, though, my lips are sealed :)

Can I help you become a mogul?

Glad you asked! The number one thing you can do to help me is send people looking for top-notch design and/or Meteor development my way. It’s going to take a hell of a lot of effort to pull all of this off and I can’t do it alone. If you’re looking for a friendly, talented chap to build cool stuff with: get in touch.

Here’s a short list of what I’m looking to work on:

  1. Building business tools. There’s an immense amount of value in “building things to help you sell the things you build.” I can help your business build things like dashboards and customer engagement tools to do more with less effort.
  2. Adding personality to products. I’m a strong believer in the idea that copywriting is interface design and I can help businesses to “humanize” their UI in a way that encourages customer engagement.
  3. General Meteor consultation. I have my hands in Meteor daily and know my way around. I can help your team make the right decisions and structure your product in an intelligent way that ensures prolonged success.

Onward

I’m looking forward to the new year and getting back into working for myself. It’s a tad scary and super exciting. If you see me on the road and I look a bit weary, give me a sip from your canteen.

It’s time for a cowboy to dream.