Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
This year I’ve directly hired for lots of different engineering positions and skillsets: in particular, Ruby on Rails, React, DevOps, and QA. In the process, I’ve read through thousands of resumes. Some patterns and anti-patterns have become clear. I can’t speak for any other Head of Engineering
To illustrate why geographic ecosystems are important, I used to tell a story of three cities. It went something like this: I founded my first startup in Edinburgh, Scotland. At the time, there was no startup ecosystem at all: there was no money, and no culture of support. Everyone told
I love Wet Leg. Their latest song is all about social media addiction and (like everything else they’ve done) it’s brilliant. [Link]
“What we see over and over again is that humanitarians are being expected to hold some of the most sensitive data in the world of the most vulnerable people in the world and have the resources of mall cops to protect against the cyber hacking equivalent of Delta Force.” [Link]
“Enda Brophy, associate professor of the labor studies program at Simon Fraser University, says there’s more frustration with capitalism as a system now than at any time since perhaps the 1960-’70s. “Significantly, poll after poll tells us that younger generations and millennials above all have highly negative opinions
“In this study, we investigated the cause for comprehension decline when reading on a smartphone by simultaneously measuring respiration and brain activity during reading in 34 healthy individuals. We found that, compared to reading on a paper medium, reading on a smartphone elicits fewer sighs, promotes brain overactivity in the
“For one thing, [...] American lawmakers and regulators have often looked at the “consent spam” polluting Europe and pointed to it as one of the worst consequences of GDPR. This new decision [...] exposes that spam to be a violation of the law, not a fulfillment of it.” [Link]
““My wife has requested that I don’t use cruise control or autopilot while she’s in the car, as we experienced an unwarranted, aggressive automatic braking episode which caused great pressure against her pregnant belly on a previous road trip,” one driver said in their report.” I drive a
“A year after the coup, the military continues to egregiously restrict media freedoms across the country and attempts to terrorise journalists into silence. Nearly all the journalists who were working in Myitkyina before the coup have fled. Many are unable to continue reporting at all.” [Link]
“What does a truly inclusive culture look like? Most newsrooms think of diversity and inclusion work primarily as an internal affair — being respectful to everyone in the organization and treating everyone within that sphere equally. But inclusion work can’t succeed in a bubble.” Useful insights and tactics for improving
I’ve been trying to find an internal blogging solution for my team and have been coming up empty. Can there really be no good internal blogging product? For our intranet, we use Atlassian Confluence - it’s a bit clunky, but it’s more or less worked as a
“I am Bruce Schneier, a longtime security technologist, author, speaker, and thinker; and author of many books, papers, and articles on the topic both Internet security and privacy. I currently teach cybersecurity policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. I am writing in support of S.2992 and S.2710, which