Welcome to the DevChat blog! ✍️ 🎉

Welcome! This is the first ever post on the DevChat blog! I’m Booligoosh, the new main moderator of DevChat. I’ve been trying to add awesome and exciting new changes to DevChat, and this is the first major one! Based on a survey that I sent out a few days ago, it seems that the majority of you DevChatters would like to have a blog.

It seems like a blog is the go!

You also gave a variety of awesome ideas about what to put in it. Based on that info, I’ve decided the following. Each week, I’ll be posting a ‘weekly roundup’ post on here. This will include stuff like:

• Talking about some stuff that happened on DevChat that week — what people worked on, discussions that took place etc.
• Job opportunities that have been posted that week
• Articles on the blog that have been posted that week
• People who are looking to collaborate with others — because this:

(#1 was that people weren’t sure if they were good enough)

• Things people have been building that week
• An interview with one DevChat member each week — talking about what they do, how they got to where they are, what they’re working on, what tools they use and how they stay productive. Note that this doesn’t just have to be ‘A-list’ professional devs. It can be anyone from university students to teens to professional developers to people just learning to code. This is because we understand that people are at different levels and in different situations, and it would be really cool to get insights from ALL types of people in our community. If you’d like to be interviewed, Direct Message me on DevChat (@Booligoosh). Remember that you don’t have to be the best developer in the world (but if you are, DM me also) 😉

As you can see, a lot of this stuff is based around the members of DevChat! This means that each week I’m going to ask a bunch of people to DM me with stories of what happened, if anyone nice helped them somehow, if they’d like to be interviewed etc. I’ll send an announcement out each week (but don’t worry, I won’t use @everyone so you won’t get spammed or anything).

But this is just the content of the weekly roundup! What about the rest of the time?

Basically, the DevChat blog is something that anyone in the community can contribute to, as long as it is about or related to development (this could include stuff like web design or programmer lifestyle and inspiration as well).

If you want to post an article on the blog, simply join the channel #blog_contributors and tell me (@Booligoosh) what you want to write about. Here are some ideas of what you could write about based on the survey results:

• Career advice
• A story about how you built a product, side-project etc.
• Tutorials on anything development-related
• Inspirational posts
• Professional tips
• New frameworks and how to use them
• News in the industry
• How you like to learn new things
• Productivity tips
• Tips on staying healthy as a programmer
• Anything else you want! 🎉

Another idea that I had is for each channel of DevChat to write a ‘why I should be interested in…’ post. For example, the people in #javascript could collaborate to write a post called “Why you should be interested in JavaScript” or “Why you should learn JavaScript”, containing all the reasons why they like the language (or subject if you were in a channel like #ai_machinelearning).

Also, note that I will be limiting posts to one post per user per week. This is just so the blog doesn’t get dominated with one user’s 300 Medium drafts. I might change this in future depending on how many people end up writing on here and how often they want to.

Also, I know that some of you do have stuff to write about:

Also, if have something to say or write about but you’ve never written a blog post in your life, don’t worry! I (and hopefully some other people in #blog_contributors as well) am here to help you, and to guide you through the process. You may even learn some stuff along the way! Also, you can share drafts of your blog post in #blog_contributors for people to go and leave feedback on. I’ll also guide you in getting up and running with the Medium platform.

Okay, that’s it for today! See you in a week’s time, for the first weekly roundup! Don’t forget to Direct Message me @Booligoosh on DevChat if:

• You want to be interviewed
• You’ve seen any cool stuff going on in any of the channels on DevChat that you think should be recognised in the weekly roundup
• You’ve seen a user on DevChat be very nice or helpful that you want to be publicly thanked / recognised in the weekly roundup

Also, don’t forget to join #blog_contributors if you want to contribute. I’ll help you get set up!

Finally, if you have any feedback or further ideas for the blog, you can DM me on DevChat.

See ya round! — @Booligoosh