The Alchemist Camp Podcast

An Experiment

(The beginning)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello all. I'm Mark and this is an experiment. I'll start by introducing myself a bit. I run a Web site called alchemist dot camp and on that site I've created and shared a lot of programming tutorials. Their screen casts for a niche language called Elixir and a web framework called Phoenix. It's written in that language. You don't need to be an Elixir dev to get any value out of this podcast though. Instead I'm going to be sharing some things that don't fit that well into a screencast programming tutorial format and will be based on my my main interests, which are entrepreneurial pursuits.

[00:00:45] I used to run a non-tech business in college. Then another one in my mid to late twenties and programming is definitely something I'm interested in as well. So this should be aimed at people fall into the the solo dev / entrepreneur / indiehacker / bootstrapper, or what have you, demographic. I'm also very interested in teaching and continued learning.

[00:01:13] Actually that's kind of what made all this possible in the past. I didn't study computer science or anything that closely related to it, although I did study a fair amount of pure math as a student. But as an entrepreneur running a relatively cash intensive and inflexible non-technical business I saw the power in what programmers could do and wanted to get some of that. So I started studying on my own, I made some flash games, worked sort of a bridge job that was sort of technical but not that technical... studied some more and then eventually got into a Silicon Valley unicorn tech company and that and a YC startup and I would say made pretty much the full loop from non-technical business person to tech employee and now back to self-employed doing something more technical.

[00:02:15] So you might wonder, why this podcast? What is this podcast? Well, it's an experiment. As I said and one of the big reasons is that alchemist camp did pretty well in 2018 or at least pretty OK especially considering the small time investment I've been working on it for just about exactly a year and now there are usually a dozen plus likes for every video I put up on YouTube. I'm getting about one paid subscriber each week and getting overwhelmingly positive feedback from those who have subscribed. And I want to document some of what I've been learning and also hopefully help out some others who might be in a similar situation as I was in three years ago when I was working a tech job but really wanted to do something entrepreneurial or those in the situation I was in prior to that when I was running a non-technical job and wanted to bring some technology into it.

[00:03:17] So here's the plan. It's not a goal to earn any money at all from doing this podcast least not directly. If more people hear about alchemist camp and more people sign up as subscribers that's great but I'm not really going to be pushing that at all in here. Instead I hope to provide something of value to you. Goodwill is immensely valuable and there's no tax on it.

[00:03:42] And I also hope to learn from the process both directly from you in your comments and feedback and from the process of organizing my thoughts and putting these out there. Now, I realize I have diverse interests so there will be multiple feeds. One will be focused on coding and business. If you are a solopreneur or an indiehacker or a technical person who wants to build a business or a pseudo-technical person who is already building a business and wants to get more technical there will probably be something of value for you.

[00:04:19] A second feed will be entirely about learning. This might seem a little bit odd but keep in mind I have been a teacher before I actually have taught mathematics, I've taught English as a foreign language, I have taught programming concepts and I'm really interested in this... and I'm also really interested in learning myself. So there's a lot to say there and I think for both developers and entrepreneurs it's useful. But obviously not everyone who wants one feed will want the other which is why I'm separating them.

[00:04:53] The third feed will be a meta podcast. I'll call it The Metacast. It'll be ideas from others' podcasts and books that I find valuable enough to repackage and share along with where I found them. If you're interested in any or all of these topics then please do subscribe and leave me a kind comment on whichever platform you're on. And until next time, I wish you a happy and productive 2019.


Show notes

Alchemist Camp has been running for a year and it's time for a new experiment.

In this episode, Mark gives a brief introduction and shares his motivations and plans for this podcast.


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