There is more content than ever, but it is almost always SEO-optimized & AI-assisted. Usually one interesting idea and few arguments, get expanded into pages of noise, always in a different shape.
I like skimming most blog content in the same consistent structure:
- key idea
- claims
- arguments
- counterpoints
- action items...
Then, if it looks worthwhile, I then read the full post.
The same structure doesn't work for every content type. Research, product, engineering, marketing... each require a different reading shape.
I have been doing this manually for hundreds of posts, with ChatGPT copy & paste, customGPTS, etc. Eventually turned it into Chrome plugin and since it has become part of my daily reading workflow.
Skimlane lets you create different reading recipes and use Chrome's on-device model (or BYOK) as a local reading harness.
I built it for myself, love using it, and decided to share it. https://skimlane.com/
I did. My path was: software engineer, consultant, architect, TPM - driven by desire to have impact and move one the moment I noticed stagnation of personal growth.
Definitely having technical background helps with managing products that are highly technical or for technical users.
W/o going into the whole rabbit hole of PMing, here are a few links I found useful on my journey
In case you are really interested what it means, but not only picking on the nirvana word, here it is:
The Bazaar, and open source in general cover the development model through open collaboration. That is awesome, but not enough. You need to think about open funding and open governance elements.
- Ex. DeFi (that is a word now people seems to be familiarizing with) is an extension of open source where monetization is also backed in the project. It is open source + monetization in a decentralized form.
- There are also MANY blockchain projects that incorporate governance by voting of token holders, etc. That is better than a bunch of folks with commit (or some other lifetime) rights taking all the project decisions, at least it is more transparent. That is open source + decentralized governance.
So the conclusion is:
Open/free source (cool but not enough) + decentralized governance + open monetization = nirvana. To get there, that will take the next 20 years.
(Disclaimer I wrote the article)
My first ever computer was a Pentium 4 and I've started my software career around the middle of the open source era (not the free software era). I have missed the beginning and the history of open source, but I'm very interested in what is coming next. There is so much written about the history and various definitions on Wikipedia, that wasn't the focus of the article (hint: the future was). I've included just enough selective facts about the history, to make a point. The focus has been to predict what comes in the next 20 years.
Today, when I chat with kids that are starting their careers, they are hardly excited about what happened 20 years ago, not to mention 40 years ago. They don't give a sh*t about the ideological differences between free & open source, and what the early internet connection speed was. But they are defining the next 20 years through some Javascript and Web3 technologies.
DeFi and other blockchain projects follow the same model. It is not only about writing the code, but also running it. In which case you can embed the monetization in the software. Hats off.
stars, forks are the metrics that first hit you when you browse a project, so it is part of what THE platform hosting most OSS projects tries to convince us matter.
There are other ways to check real people involvement in the project (such as issues, PR) but even these can be single company employees. I'd say we are missing open financial metrics that are missing.?
Remote API, only if you decide to bring your OPENAI or ANTHROPIC keys.