In observance of Learning inDay I thought I might put together a linkdump of things I consider to be “educational”. While this list is curated (by me) it’s also a decidedly unorganized curriculum; it runs the gamut from tech to marketing to biology to…well, you’ll see.
I’ll start this off with Carolyn Van Slack’s GopherCon ‘19 talk “Design Command-Line Tools People Love”. Imminently practical even for non-golang developers, this is the talk that I want anyone who will ever write a CLI to watch - and then watch again, and take notes, and maybe watch a couple more times - before ever putting hands to keyboard.
Also in the space of tech practicum is Ronak Nathani_’s Kubernetes Workshop_. Featured at SiteCon ‘21, this workshop is a hands-on intro to how LinkedIn will be leveraging k8s for deployment orchestration. The workshop was super well-attended, so the guidelines also have the advantage of having been QA’d in realtime by an audience of 200-some-odd participants.
While we’re on the topic of SiteCon, I’d be remiss if I didn’t link to perhaps my favorite Fireside Chat of any SRE[in]con/SiteCon. In it, Bruno Connelly guides Kevin Scott - the SVP of Engineering at LinkedIn at the time - through a variety of topics including technology, LinkedIn history, Scott’s education/career path, and…chicken assholes. Seriously, just watch it; you won’t be disappointed.
Only vaguely related to the above, there’s a really nice post I stumbled upon a couple of years ago about “What do executives do, anyway?” It’s been hugely helpful for shaping how I think about executive leadership, and it’s a relatively short read (not everything on the Internet has to be a video.)
In a similar space, I’d consider Bryan Cantrill’s “Principles of Tech Leadership” to be “required reading” for pretty much anyone who works in the tech industry. (Worth noting: Cantrill is also in the category of speaker for whom I would generally recommend listening to anything he has to say.)
Marketing guru Seth Godin’s “This is Broken!” is a humorous and insightful take on…well…things that are broken, and some of the reasons why they’re broken. I’m almost positive I’ve mentioned this one here before; I reference it fairly frequently, and re-watch it once a year or so.
Another talk I make it a habit to re-watch with fair frequency: Professor Robert Sapolsky’s lecture on “The Uniqueness of Humans”. I don’t run in the right circles to be able to speak to the man’s academic credentials, but what I do know is that he’s an incredible speaker with a knack for blending humor with profundity.
Okay…there are approx. a berjillion things I’ve left off this list - I blame the editor (also me) - but it’ll have to do for now.
Happy Learning inDay, folks - go learn somethin’!