I'm back to normal operation after cold recovery. Maybe not running optimally but who ever is?

For today's livestream at 13.30 CEST we will be making the Rpi keypad Keybow take control of my Elgato Keylights which will be both useful and should be fun. This leans on work by the Nerves Keyboard gang, our previous streams where we covered mDNS and and all the Nerves stuff we've been up to. Scheduled stream can be found here if you want to get notified as we go live. Video will show up on YouTube directly after and on the site RSS whenever I get through publishing it (usually later).

On BEAM Radio we dropped another episode, this one on Elixir and Productivity.

I want to do more of all this

I will attempt to keep this brief. That's not my typical strong suit.

I enjoy what I do in public on the web a lot. Writing blog posts, writing newsletters, livestreaming programming and creating open source things. I want to do more of that.

Now the way I currently fund that is by balancing consulting work and creative work. The creative side pays essentially nothing and is probably net-negative. The consulting side is very lucrative and successful. I've also done some paid mentorship work which has been very rewarding but it can't compete with consulting for profitability and it can't compete with creative projects in desire.

I can keep doing things this way but I want to try and shift the balance. I want to be able to do more on the creative side and common good side and easing up on the consulting over time. Since my entire family relies on this business to make a good living I'm not willing to drop a lot of income.

This newsletter is my direct line to my readers so this is where I try ideas and ask questions where I'm happy to receive thoughts and guidance. I'll outline some of the things I want to be doing:

• Build software for public use, likely for publishing/content (indie-focused, self-hosting/small-scale, open)
• Shorter, thoroughly worked videos that are not just livestreams, both Elixir and wider tech
• Blog posts again
• Open office hours that are publicly available to book for people who want advice/networking/troubleshooting

So would this be something you as a reader would consider supporting if I put up a Patreon or similar approach? I consider this artistic or creative work and my consulting clients won't pay for that. I'd rather have patronage from the people that enjoy my work. To be quite honest I have no idea if this is at all feasible. So I'm asking, would you support it?

Someone in the Elixir community said "you are doing the things I want to do" and asked if they could support that somehow. If enough of you feel that way, maybe there's something to that.

Please let me know your thoughts and feelings, I want the input. Nothing is decided yet. E-mail works well via lars@underjord.io or on Twitter where I'm @lawik.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate your time.

- Lars Wikman