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As part of a new generation of leadership at Code for Boston my colleagues and I were charged with defining and building process for the organization. Some of this process was gifted to us via previous practice. Some of this process was thought out, and some of it was ad-hoc. Either way we thought we could be a better organization if we memorialize, communicate, and execute on our process.

I am in the process of reading A Swift Kickstart to learn the Swift programming language. Swift will be maybe the fourth or fifth language I am learning and so far I am enjoying it a bit more than many of the other ones I have tried to learn. Learning a language is about building the muscle memory around the words and syntax used to communicate in it. Many programming languages share similar concepts (like functions, variables, constants, etc.) and you need only map these concepts to the new syntax and conventions used by your new language.

Someone shared this article with me today and I felt the need to respond in poem.

Last night I helped present a webinar for folks in the Code for America network about live streaming their events. Most of what I learned about YouTube and live-streaming came from my friend Lon Seidman whom I helped film and edit with at CES a couple years ago. You can spend a lot of money on live streaming but ultimately the goal is to get a decent picture of your presenter and really good audio.

One of the biggest challenges I face on a daily basis, especially at Code for Boston, is trying to remove myself as a dependency from the organization. There is a difference between success because you are good at something and success because you have built an organization that is good at something. As Al Gore is fond of saying, “if you want to go quickly go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”