8 tips to grow your audience by teaching with Skillshare

Skillshare is one of my favorite startups to emerge from the recent innovation boom in the education field. Simply put, Skillshare is a platform that allows anyone to teach a class or take a class. After taking a couple of fantastic Skillshare classes, I decided to develop my own, based upon my experience getting two iPhone apps into the App Store with no prior coding experience.

I’ve been teaching a local class in New York City, The Non-Programmer’s Guide to Getting an App in the App Store, for eight months now. Class growth and student sign ups were slow at times, but I’ve stuck with the class long enough to have a generated a lot of positive feedback.

It’s been an amazing and educational experience for me. If you teach a class, or plan on teaching a class, here are some tips to help you make the most out of your class. Continue reading

Epiphanies I had while teaching myself to code

Learn to code

It’s been about a year since I decided to teach myself to code. At the time, I had a bachelor’s degree in English, a job in retail, and zero knowledge about programming. I’d had minute brushes with coding in the past but hadn’t even thought about math or coding since high school.

The impetus for learning to code came from my growing addiction to Hacker News. I, too, wanted to build cool things and understand how web apps and programs worked. I wanted to have an app in the App Store, dammit. I wanted to start a business.

But, for someone who couldn’t tell JavaScript from Common Lisp, I had no idea where to start. Continue reading

10 Tools, Tips, and Tricks to Hack Your Workflow

I spend a lot of time on the Internet, reading articles, following startups, and collecting tools. Most things I find don’t stick, for generally one of three reasons: it sucks, it’s cool but not something I need, it’s cool but I don’t need it right now. But, on rare occasion, an app, website, or workflow will actually make its way into my tool chest. Over time, I’ve built a collection of tools, tips, and tricks that make my life a little bit better.

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Getting busy and being social for the socially awkward

Dann's busy calendar

A few years ago I found myself out of a long-term relationship and suddenly had nothing but free time. As a homebody, both in and out of relationships, this was fantastic. I’d take the long way home after work, pop in a movie, and relax. I steadily worked my way through my Netflix queue. I didn’t feel rushed, had no real obligations outside of work, and set all my own rules. It was glorious.

Soon, however, I began craving social interaction, with some caveats. I did not want to be busy every night of the week; I was enjoying my time to myself way too much. I had no interest in loud bars or clubs, paying for uninteresting movies because I was invited, or staying out until all hours of the night. Whenever I’d ask someone what was going on, it usually tended to fall into one of these categories. Continue reading