Bethany Janos 
Brittany Ellich 
Eggyhead 
Jonathan Tamsut Bethany (00:00) Welcome to the Overcommitted Podcast, your weekly dose of real engineering conversations. I’m your host Bethany, and I’m joined by…
Brittany Ellich (00:08) Hey, I’m Brittany Ellich.
Erika (00:09) And I’m Erika
Bethany (00:11) The three of us met while working on a team at GitHub and quickly realized we were all obsessed with getting better at what we do. So we decided to start this podcast to share what we’ve learned. We’ll be talking about everything from leveling up your technical skills to navigating your professional development, all with a goal of creating a community where engineers can learn and connect. Today we are joined by Cassidy Williams, Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub. Cassidy has been in the dev rel space since her very first job out of college.
And over the past decade, she’s brought that expertise to companies like Venmo, Amazon, Netlify, plus countless startups she’s advised along the way. She also shares what she’s learned through her blog and newsletter, which has been running strong for over eight years. Today, we’ll talk about building a career endeavor, creating content that actually helps people, and her philosophy of lifting others as you climb. Welcome, Cassidy.
Cassidy (01:01) Hello, thank you so much for having me.
Bethany (01:04) We’re so excited to chat with you and have you. To kick us off, is there anything you’re currently building or obsessed with learning right now?
Cassidy (01:13) man, I just have like a pile of side projects that is ever growing and I occasionally try to dabble. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to do like desktop apps well with local LLMs, because I think that could be neat to like lean on the privacy aspect of making local tools that actually have the AI aspect in it, but it’s not going well. you know, that’s the like…
thing I’m trying to get better at, but otherwise, you know, blogging. At the time of recording, it’s December. I don’t know when this episode is coming out. But I try to blog every day in December for blog vent. And I always start super strong with like a list of ideas. And I’m now getting to the point where I’m like, hmm, it’s a few days in now. And I’m starting to really just grasp at straws like, okay, what can I write about today before I pass out at night?
Bethany (02:02) I think that’s awesome. I love seeing your blog vent series. honestly, when researching to talk about today, there were so many interesting things from your last blog vent, and it’s so fun. Such a good idea. And you’d think that desktop apps with LLMs would work better, because all these, like Apple is like, you can run all this machine learning on here locally. ⁓
Cassidy (02:11) Yay!
Yeah, you would think and
and and I’m sure it will get easier over time. I think that’s the the pro and the con of being early in a lot of tech stuff where the docs just aren’t there. You’re when you’re on like really bleeding edge stuff. The previous indicator was like.
there are a certain number of questions on Stack Overflow about a certain topic. And if there’s not that many questions, no, you’re early, which is good, but also rough. And now it’s like…
where are the resources if it’s not like very explicitly defined in docs, people aren’t writing blog posts, it’s not trained in like the LLMs you might be asking questions to. I think that’s where we’re at right now with a lot of these bleeding edge technologies where you are kind of going in blind trying to figure it out and maybe you’ll produce something. And I think it’s also, that’s just not my strength is desktop stuff. I want it to be, but I’m…
It’s all new, which is fun and good learning experience.
Bethany (03:20) That is awesome. So one thing I was curious about, I was reading a lot and you’ve had a really cool career and started into DevRel. Could you maybe share with the listeners how you got started in the DevRel space?
Cassidy (03:36) Yeah. And so I kind of started in college, kind of. And so I majored in computer science a while ago now. And when I was in school, I really enjoyed just coding and everything. And I kind of just figured I was going to be a software engineer. And I liked building things and shipping things. And there was a point where I started going to hackathons more. And those were
hackathons were kind of different back then. Everything was in person. You stayed up all night drinking Mountain Dew and like shipping stuff. And I started seeing that occasionally employers were there and I was like, wait, this is your job. That’s kind of neat. Um, and so that’s, that was kind of like my first exposure to it. And at the time this was, let’s see, when did I go through this program? I want to say it was like 2013 Twilio put together a program to try to help people.
communicate tech better. And so it was like practicing public speaking, technical talks, practicing writing blog posts, practicing writing tutorials and everything. And they only ever did the program once because it was a lot of like content for them to review, but I appreciate them doing it. But I was a part of that program and it was really, really helpful. That’s where I wrote my first tutorial that is still on my GitHub to this day of that was just like a basic HTML and CSS tutorial, but I tried to be thorough. And that’s where
I started giving talks and I was giving talks to like high school students about like, why you should major in computer science. But then I kind of got the bug. And when I was a senior in college, I was at a hackathon and just like building something. And I had talked to some of the companies there. And one of them were, was Venmo and it was the founders of Venmo. was still relatively early at the time. And
As I was talking with them, they were saying, we actually need help talking to developers and we like your code. What if you did both? And so I ended up, there’s a whole other backstory of how things ended up happening. I’m going to do very speedy thing. did a hackathon on an airplane. That was a flight from San Francisco to London. My team ended up winning and I ended up speaking at the United nations and. And that United nations trip. I also interviewed at Venmo and I got the job.
So that was like a very big like, what? But that’s just what happened. And that is how I ended up working at Venmo to do like dev advocacy, but then also was an engineer on the product at the same time, because it wasn’t like a full-time job, quote unquote yet. And so I was speaking at hackathons and meetups and conferences and stuff, but also working on the app itself. And so I built blocking in the app. If you ever block someone on Venmo, that was me.
and a lot of like very early things. But then as I got more and more into the advocacy side, I kind of turned that more into my career. Whereas I’ve gone to different companies over time. I was actually talking to Brittany about this the other day. It’s kind of been a dev rel sandwich of sometimes I’m in developer relations talking to devs and making up my full-time job. Sometimes I just want to code and I’m quietly coding at my desk and that is my job. And then I miss talking and…
get the bug again, and it goes back and forth. And so currently, I’m in advocacy, I like it, and it’s fun, and I’m not tired yet.
Bethany (06:49) That’s awesome. It really is like a pendulum ⁓ in a way. It’s like sometimes you just need to persevere that or like preserve that energy and then other times you’re like, all right, I got all this energy, let’s spend it. Yeah.
Cassidy (06:53) Yeah.
Right. Let’s do this. Yeah. And, and
I also really just, I love talking to developers and I think you all can agree because you started this podcast. Like it’s, it’s great to be able to kind of lift as you climb and, and, and pay it forward and give the knowledge that you have to other people, especially when you can see that they’re able to use it and grow their own careers as well. That that’s, that’s the best part.
Erika (07:25) Well, it almost like goes back to what you’re saying at the beginning of like trying to build something and reaching for that like community of like, Hey, is anyone else doing this? Like, is anyone else seeing this? Like what’s going on? Like, yeah. And there’s so many spaces for like developers to connect. Like the first thing I thought of is like most projects I see now have like most like major projects that aren’t like one person has like a Slack channel where you can like go and connect or some kind of like
Cassidy (07:33) Mm-hmm.
Right.
Erika (07:55) community where you can like go and ask questions. And it’s like, we all we all enjoy that. And like, as much as there’s a stereotype of like, a software engineer, like in their basement by themselves, like, kind of meet each other to like figure it all out. And it’s, yeah, it’s like exciting to have those conversations and
Cassidy (08:06) Yeah, I do love that stereotype, honestly.
Yeah,
it’s exciting to see the impact of the conversations too, people who have read a tutorial where you’re like, my goodness, they built the app, yay, or they figured out XYZ or they got the job. It’s exciting to be able to be a part of that like rising tide lifts all boats sort of thing. And that’s really what I love about the job.
Bethany (08:35) I love that mantra so much of basically lifting as you climb or raising others up. And I think that is such a great mantra to have in everything, to put people at the forefront and help people the way you’ve been helped and things like that. Is there any notable examples of ways you’ve been lifted up through your career? And curious how you continue to lift others up in this phase of your job.
Cassidy (08:40) Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
I feel like the mentors I’ve had throughout my career and just advice and stuff that I’ve been given have, I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for people who were able to give me those tips where, yes, I have worked hard, I’ve done the interviews, I’ve built the things, but I’ve gotten a lot of guidance and direction by people who were willing to lend that hand and be just like, hey,
you’re not doing this right. Why don’t you go in this direction? Or, hey, you could be making more money if you do something better or ask a certain thing, or even just ask the right questions to the right people. And I have so many examples of it where the first time I actually heard the phrase, lift as you climb, was from a mentor where she was saying, like, you’re at a point where your career can go in a lot of different directions, but you need to remember to give back.
to people because someone has to fill the gap that you leave as you move up in your career. And now that person works at GitHub and I get to talk to her regularly. And that little advice that she gave me has carried me so much in a lot of aspects of my career. And then other people where they’ve said, wait, you’re not getting paid when you speak at conferences? You know that you can, right? You shouldn’t just go on your own dime. You’re providing a service to people.
now I know, of course, but at the time I was like, wait a minute, what? Because it just was a foreign concept to be of getting paid for speaking at a thing for an organizer. so, so like the there’s been a lot of instances of that of people saying like, hey, you’re not necessarily on the right track, you should correct yourself. But then also saying you should talk to this person or let me introduce you to this person or
Try to do X, Y, and Z in these parts of your career so you can get to that next step. And I try to do that for others as well, where it could be just me reviewing a resume or giving a mock interview. But sometimes it’s just saying like, hey, I see what you’re doing here. Love that you’re doing it. You’re wrong. And I’m saying this lovingly and I want to help you improve. it might be just like how they’re cold calling in an email or how they’re…
writing a blog post or how they are trying to portray themselves a certain way to get a job when that’s not necessarily the way to do it. And there’s a lot of nuance in there that is different from person to person, but it’s something that I think really matters. having a community and mentors around you makes such a difference in your career, and it’s easy to not want to ask for help, but I’ve learned that that…
is pretty much the way to be able to advance.
Brittany Ellich (11:35) I love that so much. You mentioned there’s been a lot of change in the development industry recently, not only in software development, but also likely in developer relations. And you actually mentioned in a blog post last year that developer relations isn’t dying, but you think that it’s going through a period of evolving. What evolution have you seen and how have things been changing?
Cassidy (11:40) Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Brittany Ellich (11:58) I mean, even since last year, I would imagine how things changed since then.
Cassidy (12:00) Yeah,
it’s, it’s such a weird, like, I don’t even want to call it a pendulum because I don’t think we’re going back to anything. But first of all, DevRel, like when I first entered it in the, in the Venmo years over a decade ago, it was going to, going to events and just like being a present and a present person, a presence at all kinds of different events constantly. And it was a very in-person thing. And then the pandemic happened.
And so many things started changing in terms of like, okay, now dev advocates are content creators. They’re making YouTube channels and podcasts and live streams and they’re posting as much as they can. They’re getting lots of eyeballs. And then a lot of the world has changed and the algorithms are different now. And a lot of people who were content creators are like, this is exhausting now. And so some people are still doing it. Some people are not doing it.
It’s a lot more strategic now where it’s not put a mass amount of content out there and people will come. It’s more like, okay, how do I identify certain things? Well, what behind the scenes work can I do that will eventually long tail be better where there’s always been aspects of that. But for example, our team, get a lot of feedback from developers and we figure out, okay, what is the actual story behind this feedback? They don’t know how to do.
X, Y, and Z, but that also means that they don’t fully understand the purpose of this. How can we kind of create that narrative to understand that purpose? And then that ultimately does turn into tutorials that turns into talks, live streams, various pieces of content and going to events. But it’s, it’s a different type of strategy, if that makes sense. And I think like a lot of
elephant in the room, there have been a lot of layoffs in DevRel in the past and now it’s back. And that’s been a very interesting thing where there is a point where in when economy things were changing in 2023, 2024, so many DevRel teams were laid off. And it’s just the nature of the beast and how things happened. And now it’s coming back with a vengeance because I think companies are realizing, wait, they do things that are valuable. And
figuring out what that is has been different from company to company where some companies, what they really need are technical writers. They just need people who can write the docs and be like very direct about tutorials. Some people need a technical mouse piece where it probably could be a marketing person and not necessarily a dev rel person. Some people need UX researchers and dev rel definitely encompasses a lot of different roles and that has been kind of shifting again and again over time, but really it’s
someone who listens to developers and can figure out how to communicate them to get what they need for the goals of the company. And I think that’s always what it’s been, but how we’ve approached it has been evolving over time. And it’s in an awkward stage right now because I think tech is in an awkward stage right now.
Brittany Ellich (15:05) Yeah, that tracks. agree. Tech is in a very awkward stage. So it sounds like DevRel most so for background Erika, Bethany and I are all software engineers. We don’t work in the DevRel space. We just kind of do some stuff sometimes. And so we’re not necessarily working with DevRel day to day. I’m curious. What should companies be looking for?
Cassidy (15:08) Yeah
Yeah.
Brittany Ellich (15:29) when they are looking to hire somebody in general. Like are they just going to go find the person with like the highest follower count and like, all right, you’re the person to do this or like, what is it that they, what is it that companies should be looking for?
Cassidy (15:35) No.
That’s such a great question, because that’s one where I’ve actually told companies saying like, you have to stop looking at follower count because that doesn’t mean anything. there was once like, it was, I felt so like petty and smug where a company came to me once like tail between their legs and they were saying, you were right. We hired someone because they were super popular on YouTube, but they didn’t actually know what the job was. And I was like, exactly. So satisfying. I love being right.
But anyway, I feel like companies need to first of all, talk to someone who like knows how developers think chances are they’ve been a developer or at least they’ve worked a lot with developers in the past. should be someone who knows how to code or at least knows how coders work. Cause there that it’s a mindset you, you, you all work in engineering. So you know that there there is a coder mindset, a developer mindset, where you don’t necessarily need to be the best developer in the world, but
you need to understand like what problems they face. And I think from there, it’s how do you solve said problems? And I think it again, depends on the company’s needs. And so it’s really hard to just like do a blanket. This is what you need. But sometimes it’s figuring out, okay, how do we make it so that way these company events are the most impactful as they can be specifically for developers. And so it could be just like, okay, what do you want?
these events spaces to be. Do you want them to be just a bunch of demos? Do you want them to be workshops? Do you want us to teach? Do you want us to just like enhance what the sales and marketing teams are doing? There’s that. Or do you want to focus on the devs who aren’t there IRL in real life? Where do you want them to be reading your tutorials or do you want them to be kind of following your TikTok account? Or do you want them to be…
just using the product or do you want them to be selling this product to their managers? Do you want to do like a top down or a bottom up approach? Because sometimes DevRel is like, I’m talking to the CTOs of all of these teams and like, I’m trying to say, this will increase how your developers work or solve your developer’s problems. Or are you talking to the individual developers themselves and saying, okay.
you want to work faster, this tool can do it. You are solving these problems, here’s how you can solve them better. And so there’s a lot of different strategies. And I think the best advice I can give is to really know who your audience is and what you want to do for them. Because after that, it’s very easy to find the person. I shouldn’t say very easy, but way easier to find that person because there’s, have all different kinds, even at GitHub where
My team is specifically, target open source developers and people who are learning to code maintainers that community. We have another team that’s dedicated to just enterprises and talking to enterprise developers, talking to those CTOs. We have another advocacy team that’s just the security angle and talking to security professionals. You kind of need the different kinds depending on who you’re targeting.
Erika (18:39) So we’ve talked a little bit about how companies think about developer relations and what kind of content to put out. How about you personally? What’s your content creation philosophy? And I guess, how did you start? And then how has it kind of changed over the years?
Cassidy (18:53) man. I, it’s a good question because I feel like I need to figure out how to more accurately define it for myself because for me, because I’ve been in it for so long, so much of it is driven by my gut, which is not something that you can pitch to a manager where you’re just like, I just know that devs will like this. Okay. Just trust me. Sometimes that works, but that doesn’t, that doesn’t always work. I, I feel like when I approach
advocacy, I try to figure out like once again, who am I talking to? What do they care about and stuff? I really try to regularly go through like feedback of what developers are saying. And we have a bunch of different feedback channels at GitHub. For example, people can give feedback on the docs. have forums for maintainers. We have a maintainer community. We have the GitHub community, so many different things. Try to figure out what those trends are. And we have different people on our team who they, their entire job is just identifying those trends.
and then figuring out, okay, how do we want to reach them? And so I know that earlier, for example, when I say earlier, like a year ago, we had kind of a gap in live streaming where people could just ask questions, office hours and stuff. And so our team put together a regular live stream on Thursdays where every Thursday we have different people across different time zones and languages, just live streaming, chatting, and devs come and ask questions. And it’s been…
one of the biggest drivers to the GitHub YouTube channel and to maintainers getting questions answered purely because we’re just online at the same time answering their questions. Sometimes there’s an SEO play where we talk to the marketing team and we say, okay, what are devs searching for the most? Sometimes it’s really obvious stuff that you wouldn’t think, but people are like, I just want to know how to do dark mode and light mode better on my readmes for my repos.
I can whip together a blog post for that. That’s nice and easy. But then sometimes it’s like, what AI model do I use? Or what productivity gains can I have? And there’s like specific search queries. And so we try to figure out, those questions mean we need videos on this, blog posts on this, podcast episodes, things like that. And so we try to, once again, identify small things that are somewhat reactive, but then also figure out like…
longer term strategies of what’s something that’s scalable and sustainable for all the humans to do and take on. But then like, what is the narrative that we’re pushing at a particular time? And, and like right now we have a very broad one, for example, as an org where we’re trying to say like, GitHub is like by builders and for builders. That’s, that’s so broad and so many developer companies can say that, but what are the different like,
pillars of messaging that we can give to developers so that they can say like, when this tool comes out, this will help me build better. Or, these new tools are built by people who really care because they are also builders like me and figure out how do we convey that message in everything we do.
Erika (21:48) That is so inspiring that like the first response to your question to that question was really in relation to like listening, like, like, for you, like, it’s listening like comes before anything and like
Cassidy (21:57) Mmm. What a concept.
Erika (22:06) Yeah, like sort of a guiding principle that I got from what you’re saying is like, how do I connect with what people want to hear and in a way that they can receive it and like, there can be a conversation there.
Cassidy (22:19) Right,
well, especially too, because sometimes like, the, how do I phrase this in a very political way? There are sometimes where people are like, we want the people to think this, and they don’t, that’s just the reality of it. And so it’s, you have to meet people where they are and slowly kind of direct them in a certain way. But at the same time, you don’t want to just say like, you should think that AI is the best tool for you.
They’re just, they’re not gonna do that. Most devs are pretty skeptical, myself included, even though I use it. And so you have to figure out, because I know you’re skeptical, I hear your problems. I wanna figure out how can I answer some of them where it’s not black and white, it’s a big gradient. How can I figure out, okay, I know that copilot has been good for me. I know that copilot could be good for you, but it’s…
understandable that you might not be sure like is it really a good productivity gain? Is it just going to break my flow? Is it just going to hallucinate? What are things that I can do to say it won’t hallucinate if you do this a little bit more? Or it might help you better if you do this sort of thing. And so you give tutorials on it to not necessarily change their minds but to be open to the kinds of ideas that might be helpful to them and solve their problems or
You could say, okay, these groups of people don’t want to hear this and that’s okay. We’ll just make other content for them and focus on different areas so that we can kind of cover lots of different bases.
Erika (23:51) sure. Yeah. Yeah, and I also appreciate that like the goal it sounds like is helping people solve the problems that they want to solve. Like, and everybody’s problem is a little bit differently. You can maybe like address 80 % of what people want to hear, but maybe there’s like a few people who are really vocal and they want that one edge case or something like that.
Cassidy (23:59) right.
Yeah.
Right. And you also have to figure out how to weight those where it’s just like, is this a vocal minority or do people actually really care about this or, or recognizing not everybody will be happy about every single thing, but how can we at least make them neutral instead of angry or something? Cause I, I am a grumpy developer too. There have been times when I was like, this tool is terrible. And I’m like, it’s actually not that bad. Okay. And, and figure, figure out how you can again, meet them where they are, make, make content that
Erika (24:28) Yeah.
Cassidy (24:41) helps them build better and then if they don’t wanna hear it, you move on and make other things.
Bethany (24:48) Yeah, this is reminding me of like, I read the Pragmatic Engineer book. ⁓ And there was a great quote that just continues to stick with me about all feedback is a gift. You just sometimes have to do a little extra effort to unpackage that and like derive the value from it. And it’s hard when it might be rough feedback, Like, users aren’t necessarily giving it in a kind way to you, I’m sure. ⁓
Cassidy (24:53) yeah, yeah.
Right. Real.
Yeah.
Bethany (25:12) And so being able to try to unpackage that is such a skill and so important, mean, in day to day, but also for DevRel and stuff.
Cassidy (25:21) Yeah,
there’s like that rule, don’t read the YouTube comments, but at the same time, sometimes they’re valuable. so, yeah, it’s feedback is a gift and you can take that and really run with it if you are able to package it in the right way.
Erika (25:34) Well, and this is, it’s valuable for like engineers who are in dev rel specifically too of communicating with colleagues or across teams, like across your org, like, you know, maybe you have a product or a platform on, you know, on a, in a company and somebody else has confused it, how to use it, or, know, they have a
Cassidy (25:45) Right.
Mm-hmm.
Erika (26:00) a request or something, even leadership, like they think that it needs to go a certain direction and you have concerns or you have ideas, like the way to communicate it effectively. You’re saying like really what I’m taking is like really does start with like listening, asking questions first, and then kind of using that feedback to drive how you communicate.
Cassidy (26:16) does.
Yeah. And I think when you, when you hit a certain point in your career, you realize the code you’re writing is just like part of the job. Human problems are so much harder than coding problems. And so even, even if like you’re not in advocacy, you could do a lunch and learn for your team. If you know that like they’re, tend to struggle with this and you could help teach them that. And you could figure out how to communicate better on code reviews or in docs, or you could figure out.
even how to prompt an LLM better by being able to figure out what the core problems are in those communication gaps and speak to them.
Erika (26:59) giving me a lot to think about. One more question related to content creation is whether you have a favorite medium of all these ⁓ ways to communicate, whether it’s videos or blog posts, the live streams, what do you have a favorite?
Cassidy (27:03) Sure.
Mmm.
So I like blog posts because I can do them async, where I can just write and move on with my life, edit them later or something like that. That’s so nice. Making videos is okay if I don’t have to edit them. Video editing is the bane of my existence. And so whenever I have to make a video for GitHub, for example, I always kind of ask, saying, is the video team gonna support us with this or is this a solo thing? Because…
If the video team is doing it, I’m like, great. Okay, cool. They have professional editors who like editing. Wonderful. But if they’re not helping, my word. I’m always just like editing and I’m like, why do I breathe like that? And just looking at yourself, even like listening to yourself on a podcast, you’re like, why do I sound that way? Why is my voice so weird? You did just a lot of that. So I admit I like writing because I can hide behind my words.
But I do genuinely like live streaming purely because there’s no editing. You do it, you talk to the people and then you can move on with your life. Anything where I can kind of just do that, I do enjoy. But man, video editing or like podcast editing that I loathe listening to myself.
Erika (28:21) I think I have yet to meet anyone who really enjoys listening to this out of their own voice.
Cassidy (28:26) Yeah, I feel like what I do I’ll be like, what are you like? What? What? Who are you? Because, man, it’s yeah, it’s so weird. I’m just like, am I nasally? Where did that come from? It just is what it is.
Erika (28:30) Yeah.
Yeah.
Bethany (28:39) Yeah,
I think it’s always the discrepancy of what you think you sound like. I have the same thing. I’m less weird about hearing my voice back, but whenever I see images of myself, I’m like, who is that person? I don’t know her. Whoa. Yeah. So I think it’s just what you’re used to seeing or hearing versus what other people are used to hearing or seeing. It’s just that difference is so uncanny.
Cassidy (28:44) Right.
Yeah.
Right.
This is a very like specific thing that most people probably don’t have to deal with. But when you speak on a very large stage for a very large tech company, sometimes before you do, they have their own hair and makeup people and you just kind of obey what they do to your face and hair. Every time they do. And I look at myself later, I’m like, I don’t look like that. Where did that face come from? And that even happened recently where I was like this video.
is a completely different human being purely because they just they just make you look just different enough from what you’re used to that it throws you off but it’s also nice to not have to like do your face in the morning again that’s a very very specific to like this this world that i’m in but that it’s so weird it’s so weird
Bethany (29:47) yeah, definitely. Every time I put on makeup or anything I’m like, whoa. I spoke at, like I did a lightning talk at Go for Convair the first time and some people took pictures of me and they were like the most terrible pictures I’ve ever seen and it was probably because, exactly. And I’m like, okay, I’m not going to focus on this. It’s fine. yeah.
Cassidy (29:51) Who’s that?
cool.
It’s like your mouth is in a weird shape because you’re in the middle of the word. Ugh.
I know. And it’s hard
to like, it’s so vain to even talk about, but it’s such a thing where like, I’ve been trying to tell myself saying if they took that picture and they think it’s good, maybe other people think it’s good and it’s just you thinking it’s weird. But at the same time, why is your mouth like that? Just, yeah.
Bethany (30:27) Absolutely, absolutely. All right, well, before we wrap up, we always do a little fun segment and usually try to tailor it to our guests or whatever the topic is. So today, I’m so excited that you are a huge keyboard enthusiast. And just to give listeners an idea of how big Cassidy is in the keyboard world, she made the Stack Overflow key, which blew up online.
Cassidy (30:35) Eww.
Bethany (30:56) the Scrabble keyboard which was amazing and also a really cute- my gosh yes yes ⁓ I love-
Cassidy (31:03) Not that I had them
within arms reach or anything.
Bethany (31:07) love this! I was also
going to mention your really cute keycap set that’s on drop. ⁓
Cassidy (31:12) It’s somewhere back there. I have
so many keyboards behind me. I love keyboards.
Bethany (31:16) Amazing.
Yes. So I just kind of wanted to do a little round robin. What are we all typing on right now? And is there a dream keyboard we have? Even if it’s not in the realm of like possibility, like what would your dream typing experience be?
Cassidy (31:25) Ooh.
Mmm.
You all go first,
because I’ll take so long.
Bethany (31:37) We can. I can go
first too, because I wrote the question, but I have a moon lander with a little nice little duck ⁓ thumb cluster. I like it. I have a plank, which is a 45 % keyboard, so very tiny for mobile usage. And I like that because I have tiny hands too. So I would love something that like combines those two. And I know it exists. I just need to like find it. And then also
Cassidy (31:45) Wow.
Bethany (32:02) I would like it to be Bluetooth, so I didn’t have to worry about toting around cables, but Bluetooth for split keyboards are like so hard to find. Yeah, you always have to connect them two together and then they’re Bluetooth or like connect one and it’s really weird. So that would be my dream.
Cassidy (32:09) So hard. So hard. Yeah.
have a link to send to you. But everybody keep talking.
Bethany (32:23) Yes, ⁓ I’m so excited.
solve our keyboard problems for us, please.
Brittany Ellich (32:26) We secretly just wanted all of your recommendations. Yes.
Cassidy (32:28) And he was just like, wait a minute.
Easy.
Erika (32:33) I am not the most exciting as far as like what I’m typing on right now. Where I have like a Mac Pro keyboard and that’s what I’ve been using and like very simple. ⁓ I will say like so I’m not like a computer keyboard enthusiast but I am a piano player.
Cassidy (32:43) gets the job done.
Ooh.
Erika (32:52) And so like, I get the feeling aspect of it where like, you’re like typing on something or like you feel the way that like the keys work in your hands. I don’t know, I guess that’s like kind of what I would want is like the piano feel. Like I want like a Steinway piano feel keyboard and like if it could look like a piano too, like that would also be really cool. So I’m going to say like in the dream world where…
Cassidy (32:56) Yeah.
Yeah.
Erika (33:20) Yeah, coming up with a keyboard myself, like, yeah, that feel.
Cassidy (33:23) that’s,
my husband was a piano performance major and we have discussed this exact topic. So I see you and I understand you. Yeah.
Erika (33:29) Really? All right, keep me posted if you feel inspired.
Brittany Ellich (33:35) That’s amazing. I am also a little bit boring. I used to have a Huntsman Mini Razor keyboard, but I got enough complaints from Zoom calls from the sound that I now have this $30 Logitech silent keyboard. And it’s not nearly as satisfying. need to see. also, Bethany shared a link of the keycaps that you designed that.
Cassidy (33:42) Ooh, okay.
You
Mmm.
Brittany Ellich (34:02) are so cute, so I want to see if I can find like some switches that are silent and do something fun.
Cassidy (34:02) Thank you.
Well, do I have the switches for you? So first of all, I also keep quiet keyboards nearby because I really like my loud keyboards, but they are on the shelf when I have a podcast or something. But I’m currently typing on what’s called a Think 6.5. have these keycaps are called GMK Oblivion and it’s got like the Vim keycap sets here. And then I have a little escape key that looks like a Game Boy, which is very fun.
Brittany Ellich (34:11) my gosh, amazing.
Cassidy (34:34) And this keyboard is super heavy. It has a brass weight on it. And so like it’s a weapon if someone tried to break in I am protected But the that is the keyboard that I’m typing on it has what switches that are called creams. They’re novel keys creams Smooth like butter Super quiet great for podcasts those and then on my Scrabble keyboard that I have here This is a wooden case for my Scrabble keycaps these ones there are
linear Gateron black inks that are also relatively quiet, but my favorite quiet switches, which is on a keyboard behind me, are called Xylance, and they’re like heavy tactile switches, but silent. They’re so nice. I love them, and I can send you all many links, and we can put them in the show notes too. But ⁓ anyway, I…
Brittany Ellich (35:18) Yes.
Cassidy (35:20) I love them. I have a problem with all the keyboards that I have, it’s so fun to get different boards that you can create. And I’m going to transition now to the question of a dream keyboard. So you remember like the iBook G2, G3s, like Legally Blonde, those MacBook. What happened to those? What happened to us as an industry?
Those computers were wonderful and we have the technology.
One of the things that I built recently, and I wish I could show it on screen right now, it’s a typewriter, and it’s on my blog. It’s called the Micro Journal. It’s a digital typewriter. And it actually has a keyboard that’s a lot like the Plank. Bethany, so you should check it out. But it has an ortholineo keyboard, and it’s a digital typewriter where you type distraction-free. It’s great. And then it has some firmware. It’s all open source. You can 3D print it. It’s awesome. Where you can hit the key command, and it exports everything you’ve written.
to Google Drive. It’s great. I’ve used it to write blog posts. I’ve used it to like slowly write feedback and stuff for people. And it’s so nice to just have it in its own dedicated place. What I want is a computer, a writer deck of sorts that’s in the form factor of the iBook G3. I want it to have a mechanical keyboard with silenced switches and like a uniform low profile keycap set.
But I also want the screen to not be an E Ink screen necessarily because the frame rate is very low. Have you seen the daylight computer? It’s like an E paper screen and it’s very, very cool. It’s like a black and white screen that’s like E Ink, but with a 60 frames per second frame rate. That a distraction free screen, a cool aesthetic, a mechanical keyboard.
That device is my dream and I implore anyone who listens to this, build it for me, I’m begging you, because I think that would be so nice. Anyway, that is my dream.
Bethany (37:20) we need to send that out to all the keyboard manufacturers as a cry for… yeah! That’s amazing, I love that. And I am definitely going to look into that micro journal to try to print it, that sounds incredible.
Cassidy (37:23) The odds.
It’s
so nice. I’m very, very obsessed with it just because first of all, it’s always great to like have an open source thing that you can make in real life, but it also just looks cool. I’m putting it in our chat and we can put it in the show notes too, but it’s like a portable machine that just works. You turn it on, you write, you can have multiple files in it. It’s got like a very, very, very low level operating system. But again, it’s all open source and so you can do whatever you want with it. It’s great. I love it.
Bethany (38:01) Amazing. my gosh. So cool. We’re definitely linking that
Cassidy (38:06) Yay.
Bethany (38:07) Alright, well as we wrap up, where can folks find you?
Cassidy (38:11) You can find me at Casadoo, C-A-S-S-I-D-O-O on most things. My name is Cassidy Williams. There’s a Scooby-Doo character named Cassidy Williams, and so she really ruins a lot of my SEO. So, casadoo.co is my website, and that’s where my blog is, and it links to my GitHub and all of the other things, Blue Sky and stuff too. So, if you look me up, you’ll find me, if you look past the Scooby-Doo references.
Bethany (38:36) Amazing. I don’t even know that. Wow.
Cassidy (38:38) I know. I didn’t either until I was like, wait, why are people asking me if Casadoo is related to Scooby-Doo? And then it made sense. Yeah, I know. Same. Yeah.
Bethany (38:46) no, I didn’t even put those together, that’s so funny.
well, thank you so much for tuning in to Overcommitted. If you like what you hear, please do follow, subscribe, or do whatever it is you like to do on the podcast app of your choice. Check us out on Blue Sky, join us on Discord, and share with your friends. Until next week, bye.