The Human and the Technical

October 24, 2025 @ 2:44 PM

I wrote a small thing on LinkedIn yesterday about the differences in media and tech companies, based on my experience of working for various large companies. I wrote:

Tech companies tend to focus on process, data, and engineering practice. Media companies focus on the humans driving the technology. Great software engineering orgs should have a balance of both.

It's a high bar, to be sure, but occasionally, companies do get this right. I've been watching sessions from the current Ubuntu Summit the last couple days, and I'm reminded that Canonical did pretty well at this when I was there.

When I joined, Ubuntu was using the tagline "Linux for human beings," and one of the things I really enjoyed about working there was the diversity of humans working at Canonical, the level of interest in human endeavors outside of tech, and the technical rigor we undertook in our work. There was a lot of effort on the teams I was on to figure out our development process, how to structure our work, and how to deliver value on the six-month Ubuntu cadence. There was also a recognition of humans behind the technical work, and I had great chats with colleagues there about art, literature, gaming, and more. I suspect this says as much about open source development as it does Canonical, but I did think about it while watching these Ubuntu Summit sessions recently.

20 years of Django and me

July 14, 2025 @ 12:30 PM

I saw that it's Django's 20 year birthday today (via Simon Willison). Wow, that's hard to believe, but also, I know it all too well. My own career parallels Django's history.

Back in 2005, I was about a year into my first real professional career. I was what we called at the time a "webmaster." I ran the web site for the library systems of Auburn University. I had been programming in Python for a little over a year and had fallen in love with the language. Then I found Django as it was open sourced. It so immediately matched my mental model of programming for the web in Python that I started using it everywhere I could - small sites at the library and my own personal sites.

That work lead me to a deeper connection in the Python and Django communities, which lead me to meet Rob Curley, which lead me to the Washington Post, which ultimately really started my love of working in the publishing and media industries. Now here I am 20 years later, still doing web development, still loving Python, and still working in media, entertainment, and publishing. I don't use Django as much anymore, as my work these days is focused more on AWS and infrastructure, but it's influence on me cannot be overstated.

Cheers, Django! Here's to 20 years more. Carry on!