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🏅 Win a copy of Nadia Eghbal's Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

Hey indie hackers!

I have a bunch of copies of Nadia Eghbal's new book (Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software) to give away.

"Nadia writes from a unique perspective at the intersection of open source, economics, and poetry. This is the definitive book on the dynamics of online creative communities."

You can find out more about Nadia on her website or Substack.

To win...share a story of a community you love in the comments below.

I'll pick some winners on Friday.

  1. 2

    I am going to share the story of a community that is completely un-related to Indie Hackers, but to which I belong: MicroList. Microscopists around the world have always faced the same problems regarding the quality of the components they were sourcing, doubts with the algorithms for data analysis, steps to prepare samples, etc. Even though science is communicated more ore less openly through publications and conferences, a lot of knowledge was being locked up in lab journals and mental know-how.

    This is what motivated the creation of a public discussion forum to exchange ideas. But, before launching, they went one step forward: they convinced some people to spend a finite amount of hours per week answering questions and commenting. This commitment from known names in the field, was the real kickstarting point of the community. Everything was spearheaded by Jennifer Waters, who also got a Chan Zuckerberg grant to further improve the community.

    So, now you have it, an open community discussing everything related to optics, microscopy, techniques, software. You can post a doubt and get an answer from one of the top experts in the field, or by a fellow microscopist that has faced the same challenges that you have. I really enjoy the exchanging of ideas in transversal ways that wouldn't have been possible without an open forum like the one they created.

    1. 2

      I absolutely love stories like this. Super niche communities are one of my favorite things about the internet.

  2. 2

    Love this! Heads up for those interested in hearing from Nadia directly, she will be on my live show tomorrow (Thursday August 6) at 11 AM PT/2 PM ET. The book's publisher Stripe Press will be giving away copies of her book as well to all live listeners tomorrow, so this would be a second option to get your hands on a book.

    Get the deets here: https://www.digitalcampfires.co/jointhenext

    And @rosiesherry would love to have you there, of course!

  3. 1

    Dev.to has helped me a lot in my career. At a point when I felt like the tutorials on the internet weren't solving the personal challenges I was encountering daily.

    The people and content on the platform are of high quality. In 2017/2018 and I was able to connect with a couple of software developers who have helped me with job opportunities.

  4. 1

    Google+ was the community I loved most.

    The people (both users and Googlers), the vibe, the spirit of experimentation, the content, and the high signal to noise ratio were unique and unlike anything I have ever seen over the past three decades I spent online.

    Google discovered my Google+ content and turned me into a minor celebrity by featuring me in the Google+ Create program.

    I have been there from the platform's first day to its very last minutes. Every single day. For 8 years. And I can tell the tech press, who bashed Google+ out of existence, didn't know what they were talking about.

  5. 1

    I want to share about this open-sourced community that recently started called Foam. It is the open-sourced version of Roam Research built on Visual Studio Code using plugins. So far, discussions have been lively on Discord on how to move the open-sourced project further. After all, open-sourced projects improve based on the community supporting the projects.

    I recently joined this community and many of us are learning about zettelkasten method. One of the goals of this project is to make it as user friendly as possible for non-developers to use. I just want to share a moment that I saw in this discord chat. Someone was having issues with the setup of the template repo and seeking for help on the discord channel. He was a non developer who was overwhelmed. There was another individual that explained things to him regarding Visual Studio Code, Github and Foam. He even went on further to have a discord call to provide assistance. A discord call to a stranger just to help him with Foam!

    I was just amazed and wanted to share and hopefully get more people to be interested to contribute to Foam. :)

  6. 1

    This might be obvious... but I ❤️ IndieHackers. Right when I joined I felt welcomed. No one singled me out just because I my profile said ‘joined 2 days ago’. You can immediately start taking in the content from many writers here and create content of your own. What I also love about IndieHackers is how I can get awesome quality feedback for just about anything. If it wasn’t for IH, I would still have the ugly design from 2 months ago for BuildFaster.co. Now it is awesome :)

    Thank you 😊

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