Building my personal site — project 2, kick-off | 12 projects in 12 months
Hello all! I'm currently on a journey to complete 12 projects in 12 months after coming to terms with not being able to finish my projects.
I've not had a personal site for the longest time (years at this point). In my mind, a personal site for a designer and/or developer typically been your resume or blog. I'm not looking for work and I don't fancy myself much of a blogger. But that's about to change...
I love the building in public movement. Being transparent about the highs and lows, the risks and rewards of building and launching products is a fantastic way to inspire (and ground) others who are thinking of doing the same. I've dipped my toe in by posting on IH but I now want to dive in so to speak. And with that, I'm going to build a personal "building in public" site to share my projects, the highs, the lows, warts n all!
What I plan to do this week
- Write a commit a scope for this project
- Get some wireframes and mock-ups designed
See my progress in real-time
In the spirit of building in public. All of my strategy, design work and project management is publically available here
Thanks for reading and remember to keep moving forward.
Hi Aaron,
Good luck with the 12 projects in 12 months challenge.
I will be following your posts to see your progress. I might begin something like this af the beginning of next year.
I think it's a good idea to start a personal website to keep track of the 12 projects and to share your knowledge there.
I have yet to read up on your first project, will do that shortly.
PS.
It's strange to see how your first IH post exploded and this post didn't get a single comment yet.
Hi @Terry Verduijn, thanks for reaching out,
Awesome that you're thinking of doing something similar. I'd love to see what comes of it if and when you choose to start. Curious you say you see the value in a site to track the 12 projects. If there was a product out there to quickly spin up a personal site catered to "building in public", is that something you'd use? (I'm curious, not trying to sell anything :D).
I'll not get too much into my last project but I managed to get a very "rough around the edges", "good enough" thing that I do get value from on a daily basis. Another thing is I'm already finding friction whilst using It and they signal very obvious changes or features to be added which is a good sign.
Whilst I did nail my "minimum scope" for the last project, I did a whole bunch of tweaking and glorified procrastination so I'm aiming to improve with each project.
Thanks for following, appreciate it.
I don't think it's something I would use, as I want to build that myself as first project, but there might be a market for it.
I tried your first product, it's indeed very minimal, but if it's something you use everyday then you should consider it a success.
Are you planning to maintain all products throughout the year? So also roll out updates on the products?
Your own site is a nice first project to do. I'd love to check it out once you get started.
Last month's project is extremely minimal. Not at all where I'd like it to be but a success all the same (for the reasons you mentioned).
Coming from perfectionism, it's taken a lot to publish last month's project at the size that it is but hey, it's all a process and hopefully I'll see more output per project if this goes how I want it to. (that's the plan anyway).
All that being said, yes I am going up maintain and update some of the projects I complete as I go through this process. I'm itching to expand mindo so that will definitely be the first product I revisit.
Best of luck to you when you get started.
p.s. my first post was the first thing I've ever publically written. It was a little freakish how much traction it managed to get. I expect a tough grind from here on out :)