Susie Conley

About Logseq: it is a tool to organize knowledge, a tool for bullet points. Not as technical as some, but much more technical than others: Emacs, Workflowy, Dynalist, Roam Research, Obsidian. Roam Research (a category defining “knowledge graph”)  and Obsidian are in similar spirit. It's an open source outliner software. Built on top of a datab... See more

8:05 - Building a public presence. Learning something. And then turning around and sharing that is learning in public. Essentially blogging got Shawn the job he has today… And also helped him transition from a front-end career to back-end. Became known for this essay: https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public/

About running a community: Having a community is valuable to understand what your user base wants to accomplish. User interviews are a tool, but they can be rather artificial. A community chat or forum is invaluable for educational materials for users. They can find existing article content, or come into the channel to ask a new question. If commun... See more

0:00 - People are drawn to you for your specific skillset that only you can fill. There’s a U-shaped hole in the universe. And you created that gravitational pull that people find you. And I think as far as careers go, the more unique you are, the more un-subsitutable you are, the better compensated you will be. And the more you enjoy your job.

You can also work in HCI as a practitioner, such as an engineer, and do product work and engage with the community.

38:45 - Great tips on how to dig into the literature with Google Scholar

40:30-50:00 discussion of community overlap between academic & product designer or engineers.

Bottom Line: Anyone can step into this world without a degree.

• Status quo should not be underestimated, nor always messed with.

Community helps you: capture intel; we learn from our customers what they want and what they are doing; receive feature requests; learn what potential features are getting buzz before building them; users learn from each other; nowadays we even end up hiring folks through these communities.

23:00 - 31:00 Discussion of striking a balance between maintaining the status quo vs coming up with new ways of interacting with computers so we don’t get stuck in a rut trying to translate everything too directly.

• It goes back to first principles. By and large, the reality is that a lot of usability is driven by the cognitive architecture that is... See more

About Cal Newport's book, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.” (Cal debunks the long-held belief that “follow your passion” is good advice.) Career capital is the accumulation of specialization and skills, as well as reputation, network, and people who know you and your work well. Kevin Kwok, a tech investor applies a compelling P/E ratio analogy to ca... See more