Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

As Ben transitions from Upcase to Formkeep, so too will the podcast transition to an open discussion around growing thoughtbot's internal projects and maintaining them as businesses, highlighting our hopes, experiments, tactics, failures, and success along the way! Today Ben and new co-host Chris discuss finding that magic feature or metric around which to structure pricing, selecting the right fr...

Ben talks with Ashe Dryden about ways to approach diversity in the tech community from workplace, conference, and personal perspectives. AlterConf The Diverse Team The Inclusive Event Model View Culture Brianna Wu - 9 Ways to Stop Hurting and Start Helping Women in Tech Fund Club Ashe on Twitter

Ben and Laura Roeder, founder of Edgar, chat about anthropomorphizing your brand to build better engagement, going the extra step to care about customer success, and some tips for social media marketing best practices. This episode is brought to you by Formkeep : Form endpoints for designers and developers Edgar Edgar is my boyfriend - Sticker shown at the top of this glowing love-letter to Edgar...

Ben talks with Hiten Shah, co-founder of Crazy Egg and Kissmetrics, on the value of helping others, frameworks for a better life, being an infovore, and tips for finding a successful product niche. Upcase : 50% Off Your First Month For Giant Robots Listeners! Crazy Egg Kissmetrics Jeff Bezos - Regret Minimization Framework Hacks for Infovores "Be Good" - Paul Graham The Lean Startup Jack Dorsey on...

Ben and Eric Normand of LispCast and PurelyFunctional.tv talk about the pros and cons of Haskell and Clojure, empathize on some of the pain points of running an educational coding platform, and hypothesize on how the next great programming "killer demo" will present itself. Upcase : 50% Off Your First Month For Giant Robots Listeners! LispCast - With welcome message for Giant Robots listeners Pure...

Ben talks with Steli Efti, CEO and Co-founder of Close, on maintaining energy and passion in speaking, why engineers make great sales people (and how they can be even better), and managing your emotions to be more productive and happy. Upcase : 50% Off Your First Month For Giant Robots Listeners! Close How to Build a Solo SaaS Sales Machine Engineers Vs Sales People The Startup Chat Steli on Twitt...

Chad talks with C. Todd Lombardo & Trace Wax about their new book, co-authored with Richard Banfield, Design Sprint: A Practical Guidebook for Building Great Digital Products, as well as the process and benefits of design sprints. Upcase : 50% Off Your First Month For Giant Robots Listeners! Design Sprint: A Practical Guidebook for Building Great Digital Products Giant Robots #106 The Characte...

Brenda talks with Sara Chipps on the desire to educate in code, her inspiration to work on hardware, and the troubles of manufacturing. Upcase : 50% Off Your First Month For Giant Robots Listeners! Jewelbots CSS Dev Conf Girl Develop It Mesh Networking FIRST Robotics Programs Web Summit Barbie, You Can Be Anything Campaign NodeBots Highway1 Sara on Twitter Sara on Medium

Chad Pytel and Laila Winner welcome Star Simpson to discuss PLIBMTTBHGATY (Programming Languages I’ve Been Meaning To Try But Haven’t Gotten Around To Yet), fostering community through meet-ups, and the finer points of taco delivery via drone. Upcase : 50% Off Your First Month For Giant Robots Listeners! Makani TacoCopter CloudApp PLIBMTTBHGATY Laila on Bike Shed Brain𝑓*ⓒ# plibmttbhgaty.com MIT /...

Ben talks with thoughtbot designer Brenda Storer on fitting both development and design in her job title, tips for public speaking, and introduces a new change to the show. Upcase : 50% Off Your First Month For Giant Robots Listeners! Girl Develop It CSS Dev Conf The Tim Ferriss Show Startups for the Rest of Us Comedy Bang Bang The Bike Shed Savage Lovecast Get to know your new sometimes-host bett...

Ben talks with John Norman about his process and modified approach to the delivery, payment, and tech of modern managed health care. They also touch on age bias in the programming world, living a purpose-driven life, and dealing with startup growth. Iora Health "The Hot Spotters" - Atul Gawande The Healing of America - T.R. Reid WellnessFX Agile Manifesto HIPAA Being Mortal - Atul Gawande "How to...

Ben talks with Adam & Jerod of The Changelog Podcast to discuss their personal interviewing modalities, doing full-time media creation, and a new video project aimed to explore the actual people behind your programming heroes. The Changelog Beyond Code Keep Ruby Weird The Moth Semisonic- "Closing Time" Wistia Wistia on Giant Robots thoughtbot's Podcasts (just in case you didn't already know ab...

Ben talks with Mirabai Knight about the technology and uses of modern stenography; including using steno with Vim, and her work on Plover, the open source Steno engine. StenoKnight CART Services Giant Robots 164 Transcript White Coat Captioning Stenotype Steno Alphabet Chart Drew Neil on Giant Robots Plover : The Open Steno Project How Stenography Works Stenoboard - 3D Printed Kit Stenosaurus Succ...

Ben talks with Nadia Odunayo about giving non-technical conference talks and full-time pairing. Playing Games in the Clouds - Nadia's 2015 RailsConf Talk Floobits Makers Academy RubyConf Nadia On Twitter

Ben is joined by Brinkley Warren of MegaBots Inc. to discuss the history, build, and strategy behind the MegaBot Mk II, USA's entrant in next years giant robot duel! MegaBots Giant Robot Duel Kickstarter MegaBots Inc. (with initial challenge videos) Darpa Robotics Challenge IHMC Grant Imahara MegaBots On Twitter Brinkley On Twitter

Ben and Jules Coleman, founder of Hassle, discuss staying close to the codebase while in a more managerial role, the challenges of rapid growth, and the value of internalizing feedback. Hassle Kaizen The Shit That TechCrunch Doesn't Tell You Jules On Twitter

Ben and Drew Neil discuss freeing up Vim's leader key, the value of visual learning, and using GitHub to crowd source closed captions. This episode of Giant Robots is sponsored by: Digital Ocean : Simple and fast cloud hosting, built for developers. Use the code GiantRobots for a $10 credit towards your new account. Retronyms : Make music whenever, wherever. Tap your inspiration and remember to ke...

Ben and fellow thoughtbotter Mike Burns take time out of their Summer Summit schedule to chat about launching offices, the art of classical code, and why Mike no longer loves Haskell. This episode of Giant Robots is sponsored by: Digital Ocean : Simple and fast cloud hosting, built for developers. Use the code GiantRobots for a $10 credit towards your new account. Links & Show Notes The Classi...

Ben is joined by trepidatious producer, Thom Obarski, to talk all things media at thoughtbot, compare working in tech to entertainment environments, and bestow some beginner advice on starting one's own podcast. This episode of Giant Robots is sponsored by: Digital Ocean : Simple and fast cloud hosting, built for developers. Use the code GiantRobots for a $10 credit towards your new account. Links...

Ben is joined by Tom Stuart to talk about incorporating computer science topics into Ruby, his process of preparing talks, enriching your development career with a bit of computer science knowledge, and gushing about how amazing computers truly are. This episode of Giant Robots is sponsored by: Digital Ocean : Simple and fast cloud hosting, built for developers. Use the code GiantRobots for a $10...

Ben is joined by Steve Tooke to discuss the importance of communication, testing, and building Cucumber 2. This episode of Giant Robots is sponsored by: Digital Ocean : Simple and fast cloud hosting, built for developers. Use the code GiantRobots for a $10 credit towards your new account. Links & Show Notes Your Tests Want You to Change Your Design The Deep Synergy Between Testability and Good...

Ben welcomes Joe Ferris, thoughtbot's CTO, to discuss design parity within the company, inversion of control, and solving all the world's problems with monads. This episode of Giant Robots is sponsored by Digital Ocean. Simple and fast cloud hosting, built for developers. Use the code GiantRobots for a $10 credit towards your new account. This episode of Giant Robots is sponsored by: Digital Ocean...

Ben and Samir Talwar of Codurance discuss the appeal of functional programming, mob programming, and a different take on conferences. This episode of Giant Robots is sponsored by: Digital Ocean : Simple and fast cloud hosting, built for developers. Use the code GiantRobots for a $10 credit towards your new account. Links & Show Notes Codurance What is Go? (the game, not the language) Mob Progr...

As Giant Robots nears its 3 year anniversary, Ben welcomes back Chad Pytel to reflect on the highs and lows of the previous year at thoughtbot. This episode of Giant Robots is sponsored by: Digital Ocean : Simple and fast cloud hosting, built for developers. Use the code GiantRobots for a $10 credit towards your new account. Links & Show Notes Kaplan Acquires Dev Bootcamp Learn is Now Upcase S...

Ben welcomes Denise Yu and Rosa Fox of Codebar to discuss the importance of fostering community, mentoring tips, and more. Codebar Denise on Twitter Rosa on Twitter