Earlier this year, I wrote about what I hoped to contribute to the community in 2020. This was before we all knew the dumpster fire that 2020 would become!
I hope you'll indulge me this meta newsletter around what I hope to contribute in 2021.
In that January piece, I stated that the best way for me to contribute to the community in 2020 was to make public the answers I give in private. I wish one of you would have asked me "Cool story, how will you track that?" to which I would have responded "Right, I have no way of tracking that".
Furthermore, what I didn't fully realize at that moment is that the questions I receive are but a small part of the general no-code braintrust. For me to truly be useful to the community, it isn't enough to simply answers questions posed to me publicly. The great thing about our space is that what one person will build will someone else builds given the exact same building blocks. What I hope I meant at that time is that I'd like Automate All the Things to be a space where you can learn the building blocks to then go out there and build whatever it is you want. Some of you reach out to me when you do get blocked but most don't so why limit ourselves? What 2020 has taught me is that for Automate All the Things to be that place, it's not enough for it to only show what I know. I guess hindsight is 20-20 (get it!).
So looking to 2021, I want Automate All the Things to be the place everyone comes to learn how to automate stuff. I don't want the automations to be limited to the tools, frameworks or workflows I know!
That's why for the last couple of months, you've seen guests appear on the stream. Sometimes, it's the guest teaching me stuff (thanks Joe, Daniel, Gio and Jacob) other times, we're tag teaming a build (thanks Victoria). I don't think I can consistently teach you all something (unless we want a weekly stream about syncing Airtable to Webflow). And it's such a joy to learn from everyone coming on the stream that I can't imagine not continuing to do that in 2021.
So in 2021 I'm going to be responsible for keeping the show running: writing this weekly newsletter, streaming every week (maybe twice a week?) and making sure that the content we create reaches the right people. And that's an easy goal to hold me to: did the show/newsletter happen this week?
But that's it, I'm now but a lowly host making sure things run smoothly (and that we have some fun)--Automate All the Things is now in your hands! In 2021, it's going to be about you teaching me (and everyone else) how to Automate All the Things!
Couldn't be more excited about what we'll learn and I hope you'll come along for the ride. Whether that's as a learner or as a teacher is fully up to you.
Before I go, I would like to thank the Finsweet team (Joe, Rohan and Sergey specifically) who make Automate All the Things way more beautiful and exciting than I ever could. Shoutout to Stephen O'Grady who reviews this newsletter every week in addition to letting me show off his automations on the stream, to Colleen Brady who helps things run smoothly around here and was the first to ever join a stream! Final thanks to everyone who participates in any way --as a viewer, contributor, automator, whatever-- it's amazing that we've found our little space on the internet where we can share in our passions to do less mundane stuff.
Best
Aron
