Somehow I managed to convince NervesCloud to sponsor Goatmire. Maybe I am a co-founder, maybe my other co-founder is a sweetheart?

Anyway. If you need to update Nerves devices we have the tool for you and if you need to update things that don't use fwup. Maybe some Yocto, swupdate, RAUC or RDFM. It can be figured out. Reach out.

And even if you need to host things yourself we can quite possibly still help support you and provide you with a robust experience and a backstop for some of your most important infrastructure.

The website exists but reach out if you want to know more. Love to have a chat.

AshConf at Goatmire

A collaboration between The Ash Project, Alembic and Goatmire International. Taking last year's Ash Summit and pushing it further.

Ash is a part of the ecosystem that is absolutely thrumming with activity, opportunities and possibilities. I also happen to like the framework itself. This is going to be awesome.

The registration is open and the first 15 to sign up get an Ash gift bag :)

Elixir Hackathon at Goatmire

Now also featured in the Goatmire menu. Registration is coming soon so monitor your socials.

Keep walking

I don't earn my keep in the Elixir ecosystem through phenomenal code. Most of my contributions are about making noise, reaching people, speaking and outputting something consistently. This newsletter. The Nerves Newsletter which includes changelogs, packages and so on.

Something I am not great at but do okay and which is very valuable is "just doing the thing". This is how workshops and pre-conference satellite events come together. Me and co-conspirators talk to people who can host, figure out logistics, buy things that need to be bought. Prepare material that needs to be prepared. Dan Janowski has spent the last year doing a lot of this for the EEF. I do some of that as well.

For me it is my desire for things to happen, the certainty that nothing will happen if someone doesn't explicitly own it and the fact that I have a lot of say in how I spend my days. The opportunity cost in contracting income is staggering. I should be making bank instead. But I do care to try and make a significant impact on my commitments.

Right now I have some stuff I'd love to pull the trigger on over and over again on behalf of the EEF where I simply have to balance it against work, Goatmire, vacation time, family and other commitments. Which is tricky.

The work is simple and time-consuming. Cold outreach. If I don't want it to be spam I have to put my hand on every email at least a little bit. But I have maybe 200 high quality leads for companies and a long tail in the thousands. Reach out, get them in the registry and convert them to being a sponsor.

And this is important. The Erlang Ecosystem Foundation is not guaranteed. Don't take it for granted. It needs money to do meaningful work and there is plenty of the work and precious little of the money.

If you are good at repetitive work, feel okay doing this kind of work and have some time to put in, let me know. We could do a lot more with a bit more time.

Suffice to say, what you consider easy is often what others consider hard. I keep writing for people because writing takes me no time. I keep chatting in various community spaces to help keep them alive and lively which is, weirdly enough, a relevant contribution. But the more important ones are more akin to chores. A structured newsletter is not a ton of fun to write but it is also not difficult. Organizing events is very rewarding for me but it is a fair bit of work. An event like a meetup or workshop is preceded by a large amount of small chores. A conference is preceded by a mountain of small and large chores.

None of this is doable unless you build up enough energy to overcome the initial friction and doing the thing. You don't necessarily need to know what you are doing. But you absolutely have to be doing or nothing happens.

I appreciate you reading this. Have a good weekend.