Working in public

A Way To Be More Open

Finished things don't spring up out of the ground in their final state — people have to work hard on them. This is my way of pulling back the curtain on how I work.

What is working in public?

Working in public is the idea that we should all share more of our work in progress. Finished things don't spring up out of the ground in their final state — people have to work hard on them. So working in public is an attempt to show that hard work. Or at least the time and effort that go into things, even if it's just a slow burn over some period of time.

Why would I want to work in public?

This is my way of pulling back the curtain on how I work. It's something that I feel is important and wish that there was more of on the internet.

The internet is such a big, corporate, impersonal, hate-filled mess, but there was a time when it wasn't and it could be cozy again. I consider mkalvas.com to be my version of a cozy little digital garden, safe from the ads, tracking, and noise of the rest of it. I don't know if anyone visits this site and I don't really care.

Another reason to work in public is that I believe that writing (more broadly doing) provides a final generative step in knowledge creation and retention). So anything that I can do to lower the barrier and promote more writing (code and words) is a good thing. One simple thing that can lower that barrier is to allow myself to be more comfortable with unfinished, unpolished things. I find that saying "this isn't done enough to go on the site" results in less doing in the first place.

More specifically for me, this is an attempt to keep fiddling, experimenting, and enjoying programming and writing. It's a promise to myself to publish half-baked things and not worry about it. It's my way of taking ownership over this site and being OK with whatever state it's in. I don't need to perform like we're pressured to do in other spaces.

It's a record of thoughts, notes, and projects.

It's my little corner of the internet.

It's for me, but you're welcome here too.