Archive
A collection of my past writing, grouped by year.
2020
Subtle Shifts in Seasons
Thinking about gradual seasonal shifts while in Asia. A third child due in May, a new pastoral role, seminary finishing. Subtle change is still change.
2016
Building a High-Performance Team
How to grow a Cambodian team from one to ten without losing the things that made the first one good.
Five Ways to Find Seed Funding for Your Cambodian Startup
Practical funding paths for early-stage builders in Cambodia. Friends and family, grants, crowdfunding, and the local ecosystem nobody tells you about.
My Wife, the Hero
First Mother's Day after Eden was born by emergency C-section. Three weeks of seeing Breanne as a mother, and seeing what she's actually made of.
10 Things I Hope for My Daughter
Ten days after Eden was born. The things I want her to know, before she has to learn them somewhere else.
Designing Better Projects
What ICT4D projects look like when you start with the user instead of the deliverable.
Revenue Projections
On building things first and projecting revenue later. Why testing with users matters more than spreadsheets.
Slow Focus
Why I'm leaving 'hustle' and 'grind' behind. What slow focus actually means after a year that nearly broke me.
Failure
Missed a week of daily posts. Onward.
Learn to Debug
A short quote on why debugging is the cornerstone of being a programmer.
Go Outside
A short note on getting outside more in 2016.
Uneasy
Two men tried to break into our house in Cambodia last week. We're safe. A short note about what that does to your sleep.
Fears
Fear of failure, of being found a fraud, of disappointing a loved one. How to move with the fears, not against them.
2015
Talent and Dreams
On the Book of Mormon musical, talent, and the cost of not giving up on dreams that look hard from the outside.
Early Mornings
Writing this at 5:30am on our eighth-anniversary trip. A note on why early mornings still feel like the only time I get to myself.
On Being Sick
Buying cold medicine for the first time in two years. Brands shouting on a shelf, and why the alternative is talking with your users.
Goals vs. Resolutions
Reframing new-year resolutions as positive goals, because subtraction makes a worse foundation than addition.
Dreams
A short paragraph on how the things you chase shift over time, and how that's not a failure of imagination.
Airplanes
I love airports. A short piece on transit, distance, and the strange comfort of being in motion.
Role vs. Contribution
Title isn't the same as the thing you contribute. A short distinction worth keeping in front of you.
Follow Up
A note on the 24-hour rule for email and what it actually signals to the people you work with.
9 Tips for a First Time Manager
Things I wish someone had told me before the first time I had to manage someone else's work.
Transparency
Open-sourcing the work we were doing at Development Innovations, and why we tried to publish more than we hid.
Trust
A conversation about who someone trusts and why, and what that says about asking users to be vulnerable with you.
Everyone Will Code
A 2015 take on code as basic literacy, plus the dashboard I prototyped in four hours when I needed to see our work clearly.
Readers are Leaders
The leaders I trust are still readers. A short note on the habit.
Make Time for Fun
A short reminder to make space for the thing you don't have to be good at.
Sell Me On Your Idea
Why NGOs should pitch like startups, and what happens when 80-page proposals replace 5-slide decks.
Creativity for All
Bringing non-designers into design thinking, and why creativity isn't reserved for the creative class.
Copy or Care?
Phnom Penh coffee shops copying each other instead of paying attention to their own customers.
The Fight
An MMA fight analogy for getting back up.
A Culture of Yes
Inheriting an organizational culture vs. founding one, and what it costs to shift the default answer to yes.
It Comes from People
A Geek Heresy quote and the reminder that technology isn't the answer. People are.
Delivery and Outcomes
The consultants who don't deliver. A note from inside international development work in Phnom Penh.
I Don't Know
"I don't know, but let me find out for us." A management line worth practicing.
Your Values Matter
Why values aren't decoration. They're the way you keep showing up the same person when nobody is watching.
Dealing with the Lows
On running an agency in Cambodia, watching a close friend leave the field, and the importance of finding someone to talk to.
Five Problems with ICT4D Communications
Sector-wide patterns that keep ICT4D projects from being readable to donors, to users, sometimes even to themselves.
Context and Storytelling
What NGO communications usually miss. The specific person you're trying to reach, the moment you're meeting them in, the story they already have running.
I'm Taking a Break From My Agency
Four years head-down. Tired, beat up, burnt out. Why I'm stepping aside from Glean to take an Innovation Program Manager role at USAID's Development Innovations project.
Start a Conversation With Your Users
User research that isn't a survey. How to actually sit with the people you're designing for, and why most NGOs skip this part.
Developing an Online Profile for Your Users
Why most NGO user profiles are useless, and what a real one looks like. Built from actual user research, not marketing personas.
Generational Foundation Building
My dad spent 30 years as a school custodian. What he was actually building, and what it means to be his son in Cambodia now.
2014
My Thoughts on Startup Weekend Cambodia
Notes from mentoring at the second Startup Weekend in Phnom Penh. What worked, what didn't, and what the ecosystem still needs.
7 Tips for Breaking Into The Design Industry
A phone call with Monte Zucker, two years of apprenticeships, and the work that nobody assigns you. How I got in, and what's worth trying.
Loss, Grief, and Reflection
My grandmother died last week at 91. Stubborn to the end. Some things you only learn from someone leaving.
9 Things I've Learned Freelancing
Five years in. What I'd tell a younger version of myself before he picked his first client.
8 Simple Ways to Provide Value to Your Clients
Practices that stuck after years of freelance work. Most of them not about deliverables.
How I Left My Day Job to Be A Freelancer
The Tim Ferriss negotiation, the panic attack in the kitchen, and the choice that put us on a plane to Cambodia.
2013 By The Numbers, A Year In Review
$132,661 gross. Numbers from a freelance year in Cambodia and what they actually say about the work.
Core Values of a Startup
Why values are scaffolding, not branding. And what happens to a young team without them.
Obligation, Service, and Doing The Right Thing
On being told a client wanted to end the working arrangement. The first time I had to sit with being fired and not be the one to leave first.
Lessons Learned From Buying Halogy
A year after buying the CMS, what went wrong and what I'd do differently. Mistakes happened. I trusted the wrong folks to handle development.
2013
Cambodian Startup Opportunities
Notes from speaking to 80 young Cambodians at Startup Weekend. The gaps in real estate listings, lodging, payments, and where local builders could go to work.
Setting A Work Schedule
How a 4am Cambodia kitchen, time-blocking, and dropping the meeting-by-default habit changed what I could actually ship in a day.
Why I Acquired Halogy
Why I bought out a small open-source CMS in late 2012, and what I thought it would let me build.
2012
Alphabetical CSS
A small CSS ordering habit from the early days of my front-end work.
Kirby & Content First
Leaving WordPress for Kirby and discovering what content-first design actually meant for the way I built sites.
Staying Focused
Focus blocks, killing notifications, and the early-2012 productivity habits I tried to build while running design work.