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My projects on Hackster

After 10 years helping build a thriving open-source hardware community at Hackster.io, I'm joining Hackster.io's roster of independent contributors as the first Pro Partner. I’ve watched this program develop over the past six months, helmed by the inimitable Jinger Zeng, and I think it's a massive win for all involved – Hackster/Avnet, our partners, and certainly the Pros ourselves.

Working at Hackster has brought constant change, which is where I thrive. I love adapting to new challenges with creativity and grounded optimism, while picking up new skills I can pass forward to others. I'm stoked to continue working with my favorite team from this new angle, and to gain more flexibility for other projects.

What stays: I’ll still be creating videos (including my Hackster Café interview series), MC’ing virtual events, covering IRL events, producing hardware projects & tutorials, writing articles, and creating other content for my favorite platform in the world.

What’s new: My material will be more self-directed, rather than producing almost everything for Hackster’s YouTube channel. I’ll also be available to produce short social videos and other media for events, companies, and organizations with a mission for good. Also, maybe a small hardware business (PCBs, 3D models, plotter art, and so on).

For now, I'd love it if you subscribed to my personal YouTube and monthly-ish newsletter.

The big picture

Most people – definitely enough people – want to help fix the world. But it can be intimidating because of the perceived amount of time, energy, money, and other bandwidth required.

I want to use my skills to help others break through the paralysis that comes with Big Problems:

• Inform – Remove knowledge barriers. Often, the most intimidating problem is figuring out what the “right” thing to do is – which is a never-ending learning process. No one has time to research everything. So, figure out some good approaches, through open research and interviews. Break down complex concepts to make them approachable.
• Activate – People want to do the right thing. Give them a button to push. Promote and interconnect those who are already doing the work, to reduce duplicated effort. Help make it possible for people to support themselves and their passions through good works.
• Entertain – Make the better way = the convenient, cheap, accessible, popular, awesome way. Make it the obvious choice. Make it irresistible!

[yes, this is a reference]

Specifically, I want to pour energy into enabling sustainability, privacy, and ethical choices. While I support and share many kinds of enabling content – as well as non-tech projects and random stuff I like – my active projects usually center around these themes.

What’s next?

In 2022, I launched Green-EE: a directory of resources for running a small hardware business sustainably. I’ve long wanted to start such a company, so now I’m putting the gears in motion to create it. I’ll be revamping and updating Green-EE as I go.

As you can see in the 10-year retrospective below, I’ve created a number of open-source circuit boards during my tenure at Hackster, and I’d like to build up a small side business selling those, plus potentially 3D prints via Shapeways, plotter art prints from my AxiDraw, and other dreamy dreams.