Okay, it’s time to officially let the cat out of the bag and clue you into the thing we’ve been alluding to the past few weeks. We’re adding a new segment to the DUX podcast family called Build Process. It will join The Drunken UX Podcast and Real-Time Overview as the third part of the series that you’ll be able to get when you’re subscribed to the podcast in your go-to app.
First off, Build Process is being designed to fill the gap for a mid-length segment that will fit in between RTO’s ten minute length, and DUX’s hour and a half. It will be a twenty-to-thirty minute segment where Aaron or Michael will sit down with another web developer and chat with them one-on-one about how they got into web development, what drives them, what they have trouble with, and how they stay good at what they do. It will have a very conversational format and might involve drinks depending on the setting, with the idea being that it will provide some water cooler chat for folks that don’t have access to a water cooler. For now, we aren’t committing to a production schedule for BP, and instead will try to opportunistically release at least one episode a month, depending on the number of folks we have time to sit down with. Most likely, we’ll release them when available on one of the Mondays when DUX isn’t airing.
Build Process has one other big goal that we think is very important. Imposter syndrome is something that runs rampant in our industry. People always think others are doing more than them or know things better. They constantly measure themselves against other people’s success, but don’t stop to consider what it took to accomplish that, and how many things didn’t go right first. We want to showcase great people who are awesome at what they do and are doing cool things, but also show that they struggle with things as well, and have to work hard to keep up. We shouldn’t constantly compare ourselves against the unicorns that we look up to in our fields.
Neil Gaiman on Imposter Syndrome
“…Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.
On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”
And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”
And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.”
The first episode of Build Process will air tomorrow, June 18th, and features Paul Gilzow, a senior developer at the University of Missouri.
If you think that you or someone you know would be a good guest for an episode of Build Process, we’d love to hear from you. You can use our contact page to reach out and let us know.