Dev Diaries #0 - A fresh start at Utopian.io

A brief introduction

After 9 months working with Ethereum at @SwapyNetwork, I learned a lot about blockchain, business, and development. I had a lot of fun going through a few challenges, such as connecting a Chrome extension (MetaMask) within an Electron application and using uPort to manage identity in our dapp.

It was a great experience, especially because of the team. We built a strong culture of learning with our mistakes and improving ourselves as developers, at the same time we became great friends. After working for 2 years as a fully-remote employee, I was missing the social relationships that are developed within a company's office, so that was really great for me.

During the time I was working at Swapy, I became a lot more interested in blockchain and its potential to change the world. I got involved with so many awesome companies, products, and initiatives. With no doubt, the one that got my attention was Utopian.io.

My relationship with Utopian.io

I've been using Steem since 2016 and by far it's the blockchain that I see the most value. When I started using it I saw so much potential, especially within the open-source world. One of my first posts here was describing some kind of utopia where open-source developers could be rewarded for their hard work using cryptocurrency, not depending on any terrible company to pay their salaries. It sounded like a great idea, but I didn't have the resources and the knowledge to develop something that huge.

About a year later I bumped into the announcement of this new project on the Steem blockchain called Utopian.io. I was amazed... @elear alone was able to develop a prototype that was already working and rewarding developers. As soon as I saw it, I started using it to post my own projects and I was so happy that it actually worked.

I soon became a sponsor and when I had a chance I made my first contribution to Utopian itself. A few months later I saw this bounty and I wanted to contribute more to the platform and of course make some extra $. So I made 2 bigger contributions both to the frontend and the backend (#1 and #2).

It was nice to get closer to the people who were building this utopia and soon I realized that I wanted to be a bigger part of this. It was all making sense:

• I've been working with web development for almost 5 years now and since the beginning, I'm involved with open-source.
• I've been interested in blockchain since a long time ago and I'm working full-time on dapps since last year.
• My favorite blockchain is Steem and I'm involved with it since the beginning.
• As a developer, I always wanted to build something that could help a lot of people.

It became clear to me that I could do great things if I dedicated more of my time to Utopian. So I reached @elear and asked to become a full-time developer for Utopian. Now, since about a month ago, I'm working Monday to Friday (and a little bit in the weekends :P) to develop the Utopian platform. I'm so happy to take this step because I think I'll be able to deliver great things to the community and at the same time I'm glad to work with something that I love and has so much in common with my beliefs.

What do I expect by being a full-time developer of Utopian.io?

As I said, I'm so happy to work with something that has so much to do with me and of course, I have some expectations and goals for this role.

What do I want to deliver to the community:

• Great and reliable software.
• Transparency in all the development process.
• Bring the community to the development process and listen to what they want!

My goals as a developer are:

Develop software that is used by thousands of people.

I have some experience building software. From mobile apps to web platforms, I've built a lot of stuff. But until now none of them were used by more than a few hundred of people :(

So, one thing that I want to accomplish in Utopian is to reach the mark of 1000+ active users on something I've helped building. Then, why not 100000+? I believe this isn't too far to Utopian.

Be part of a decentralized team.

I really like the idea of a decentralized company. With the internet, we're eliminating the geographical barriers. It feels amazing to work with people that are in a totally different country, with a completely different culture, but sharing one thing in common: Utopian. I think that when we shut down geographical barriers we're able to unite the best people around the world, and in my opinion, this is happening at Utopian.

Work in a big project with many developers involved.

I have a few personal projects, but work in a team is way funnier. Although is harder to organize and deal with different opinions, a good team can build anything. It's always good to count on good other developers to help you.

Inside a team, I like to be in charge of organizing the tasks and delegating them, but I've never done this in such a big and decentralized project. That's a big challenge for me and I'm excited to learn a lot in the process.

Work with education

One thing that I found out about myself recently is that I love to teach. It brings me so much joy when I'm able to speak about something that I know and somehow inspires other people. I have a lot of close relatives that are teachers, so I feel that this is in my blood and this is one thing that I want to work with.

I've seen some interesting tutorials on Utopian (for example @tensor), so I'm wondering if I can start doing some. But I'll think more about it in the future.

Finally, my personal goals are:

Of course, I have dreams, desires, and plans regarding my personal life. And I think this is, in some ways, tied to the professional goals, so that's why I think it worth mentioning it.

Financially

I quit the college recently, so one of my main goals is to establish myself financially in order to don't regret my decision.

So I want to make more money. I don't mean to be super rich, but I want to get married and have kids in the future so I want enough money to have the freedom to enjoy this.

Habits and routine

• I want to have a working routine where I can fit other stuff that I love doing (for example: spending quality time with my family and friends, doing yoga, cooking, playing music, cycling, gaming, etc).

• I want to have time and money to take care of my health. For me is really important to invest in my health, so this is one of my priorities.

• I want to work and travel: I don't want to be a full nomad, but I want to experiment a bit with this lifestyle.

What are my plans for the close future?

I sense that I'm in a work in progress to find my best workflow. My goal is to be productive and efficient with my tasks so I can have time to spend "offline" on my personal goals.

I'm switching back to a "remote" lifestyle, meaning that I'm working from home most of the time. From my last experience, I wasn't very productive at home, depending on the day. So now I'm planning to work from co-working spaces some days of the week. Here in Brasil, we have this nice company called BeerOfCoffee, where we can pay a monthly fee and use the space of its partners. I'm planning to start using it soon.

In other words, I'm trying to find the best workflow to be productive. Aside from finding new places to work from, I also have plans of being more transparent with my work (for example this post that I'm writing :P).

A simple idea that I'll put in practice soon is to share my statistics weekly. I use WakaTime, RescueTime and Toggl to track my work, so I'll write a simple script that will run weekly to fetch the reports and create a simple post on Steem. This way I'll think twice before procrastinating!

I also intend to keep this series as a weekly compilation of my day-to-day work, thoughts, plans, ideas, etc.

What I'm working on?

Right now, we're fully focused on delivering Utopian.io v2. We're rebuilding the platform from the ground. @hernandev is doing an amazing job providing the structure needed to grow his little baby. I'm working mostly in the frontend, implementing layouts and features. You can follow the work here.

I also made some contributions to the Sign Up module and will probably work more on that soon.

Thanks =)

I'd love to hear your thoughts on anything that I wrote.

Also, if you want to, follow me here and on my GitHub.