000 — Trailer / Intro
Hey, I’m Ryan Hefner and I’d like to welcome you to the All Play podcast. On this show I will be sharing my experiences as I build products and open-source software, sharing the highs and lows that go into building a solid product, and hopefully leading to a successful launch and growth of customers.
In this episode I share a bit of my background, moving from Ohio to New York to work at Fantasy. The roles and responsibilities I learned while working at an agency. My transition into working on product at Vimeo, and how I re-wrote the Vimeo Video Player and eventually grew to become the Director of Engineering at Vimeo, overseeing all things players and video focused. And, how during these career transitions, I have continued to work on products and open-source software.
I hope you’ll find this show interesting, and look forward to sharing the ups and downs that go into building, launching, and growing products — and who knows, maybe companies.
To follow along, you can find me at ryanhefner.com, follow me on Twitter @ryanhefner, and keep up with the show on allplay.fm and @allplayfm.
Help yourself, while supporting the show, by trying some of the services that I use, and highly recommend:
Transistor FM
Fathom Analytics
This was originally posted on: https://www.allplay.fm/podcast/000-trailer-intro
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Transcript
00:00–00:09
Hey. How’s it going? I’m Ryan Hefner, and this is the All Play podcast. This is a trailer episode, so I’m gonna give you a little information about who I am and what the show is gonna be about. So I’m Ryan Hefner.
00:09–00:41
I’m a web developer, and I’ve been working in the industry for about 20 years now. Through that time, I’ve worked at agencies and software companies and have also been working on my own stuff for pretty much the whole time as well. I’d say my my career as an employee has probably been a little bit more successful than my career with side projects. But, nonetheless, I still keep plugging away on them. So like I said, you know, I’ve been a web developer for 20 years.
00:41–01:21
I think my career really took a turn for the better when I was hired by an interactive agency, called Fantasy Interactive. They were out of New York. That allowed me to move from Ohio to New York, and it really, you know, pushed me and and I grew a lot while I was there. I was at Fantasy for about 2 years and I worked on everything from, you know, client discovery calls to working on information architecture and UX and wireframes, you know, collaborating with the designers and then ultimately building the final products and projects that we are working on. But, you know, over that time, 2 years is is a pretty good time at an agency and a lot of long hours and stuff.
01:21–01:37
And, one of my friends was actually hired over at Vimeo. And so he put in a good word for me there. And, you know, thankfully I was, I was hired by them. The company was about 15 people at the time. And my first project was actually, rewriting the Vimeo video player.
01:38–01:55
At this time, it was still in Flash. So it was it was a bit of a task. And, yeah. I mean, I, you know, I got that out. I worked with the team on the HTML 5 video player and pretty much worked on most things video while I was there.
01:55–02:10
So I was at Vimeo for about 6 years and eventually became the director of engineering there. And so, yeah, it was like TV apps and and a bunch of different stuff. And, you know, that was that was super fun. Again, I learned a lot. It was an awesome team.
02:10–02:57
The company grew a ton. I think by the time I left, it was nearing almost like 200 people. And actually, I think probably people didn’t realize how small Vimeo was when it at the time and it for as many, you know, as many people as watched it and saw the embedded players everywhere. But, yeah, after that those 6 years, yeah, I had all I had been working on some of my own stuff, you know, during that time at Vimeo, and just kinda wanted to figure out what the next move was. So in 2016, I left Vimeo and pretty much took like a 6 month kinda personal sabbatical, working on my own stuff and also just kinda, I guess, like relaxing a bit, and trying to figure out what the next move was.
02:57–03:28
But over that time, you know, money starts drying up a little bit and you gotta you gotta start making some stuff. So I I started taking on some contracting gigs and consulting for different companies and still kind of working on my own stuff, but obviously trying to balance that. And then in 2017, I actually welcomed my daughter into the world. So then obviously priority shifted a little bit more towards the contracting consulting, but still kind of, you know, still was able to get some of my own stuff out. And then in 2020, my son was born.
03:28–03:57
And actually at that time, I’d say the priority there was definitely just making sure that the contracting and consulting gigs were solid and, you know, were gonna sustain us. And we actually moved from New York to Atlanta, Georgia. So, you know, it’s been about 3 years and so far so good. The contracting gigs are still pretty solid. And, you know, not too many spaces in between those as they come up.
03:58–04:42
But, you know, the more that you work on on different client different projects, the more exposure you get to all the the kind of rough edges, the sharp edges that are out there. So my backlog of potential project or product ideas is kinda overflowing at the moment, and that’s where this kinda comes in. So, you know, it’s been 3 years, and I can’t really say that I I mean, I’ve I’ve pushed out some open source stuff over the time, and I’ve kinda been a little bit poking on some of my own stuff. But I’m really gonna start diving in and really getting serious on some of these side projects and try to, you know, make them a reality. And so this show is gonna be a little bit of a documentation of that.
04:43–05:23
I’m gonna be testing out different, you know, different software, different frameworks, really trying to figure out what is my kind of preferred framework of choice. The thing is I’m not actually too sacred about frameworks, but I do think that you should just go with the things that you know and whatever works best and for you. So, you know, I’ve I’ve done Laravel stuff in the past, and I’ve also, but I’d say I’ve been more and more working in the JavaScript world lately with just, like, Next and React and all this other kind of stuff. So I I feel like I’m kinda I’m at, like, a cross roads with that. I’m gonna try to figure out what makes the most sense for me.
05:23–05:54
So I’m gonna be sharing some of those tales. I’m also gonna be really digging into marketing and and distribution and just trying to figure out what goes into, you know, a successful product or launch and also just kinda keeping the the marketing and hopefully customer acquisition stuff rolling. And, so these are gonna be sharing those tales. And, you know, I’m definitely gonna be pumping out a bunch of open source stuff along the way. That just is my kinda like default.
05:54–06:14
It’s like kinda like open first mindset. So, yeah, you’ll get some, exposure to some of the open source stuff that I’ll be eventually popping out. And, Yeah. And I’m also gonna share the stuff that’s working and not working. And hopefully it’ll be informative.
06:14–06:45
Hopefully it can be fun. I’m looking to bring on a few people from time to time to just hash stuff out, and, we’ll see where this goes. This is also kind of like a little bit of a a project that’s gonna work its way out. And really all play is just the the the idea is that just try to have some fun with this stuff, not get take it too seriously, but at the same time, I think it still deserves, you know, a certain level of craft or dedication to to make stuff really a success. So there’s this balance there for sure.
06:46–07:16
And, yeah, that’s a little bit about me, what the show is gonna be about. I will I’ll be book updating this podcast probably weekly, maybe even more so. I’m gonna try to keep them really short and kind of like one topic focus. So there might be a day where I’m just I have a lot of things on my brain. I’m gonna try to knock knock, you know, podcast out for each high level point, and, we’ll see where it goes.
07:16–07:34
But I’m gonna try to keep this under 10. Like I said, I’m Ryan Hefner. You can find me at ryanhefner.com. I’m on Twitter at ryanhefner, Hefner with one f. The podcast will be at all play dot f m, and on Twitter, it’ll be at all play f m.
07:35–07:51
So I hope you’ll join me. I hope we can have some fun together, have some, you know, conversations, maybe do some q and a stuff, and we’ll see where this goes. Have a great day. Talk to you later. Bye.
