EVOKNOW Blog

Unleashing Your Entrepreneurial Spirit at Any Age

In a world where change is the only constant, embracing entrepreneurship can be the key to unlocking personal growth and professional success. Whether in your energetic 20s or your wise 40s, the path to entrepreneurial success is open to all. As an entrepreneur since my second year in college, I have always seen and met people who want to be entrepreneurs but have yet to start.

This blog post explores some of the critical points I often share with people to encourage them to harness their unique strengths at any age to become successful entrepreneurs.

The Roaring 20s: A Time for Entrepreneurial Exploration

Your 20s are a time of exploration and minimal liability. This is the perfect stage to dive into entrepreneurial activities. You can take risks and experiment with new ideas with fewer personal and financial commitments. It's a time to be bold, to fail, to learn, and to grow without the fear of significant consequences.

The Fantastic 40s: Double Income, Double the Hustle

When you reach your 40s, you're likely more financially stable, often with a double-income household. This stability provides a fantastic opportunity to pursue a second hustle. It's a time to leverage your accumulated skills and resources to build something meaningful – a venture that could become your primary source of income.

Entrepreneurship in the Age of AI and Technology

The current era of AI and technology has dramatically changed the landscape of starting a company. It's no longer just about having a great idea or business acumen; understanding and integrating technology into your business model is crucial. This tech-savvy approach can provide a competitive edge and help streamline operations, reach wider markets, and offer innovative solutions.

Being Yourself: Your Unique Entrepreneurial Edge

One of the key ways to stand out in the business world is to be authentically you. What do you bring to the table that's unique or of high value? Your personal experiences, skills, and perspectives can set your business apart from others. Remember, while striving for uniqueness, it's also important to recognize that being a 'unicorn' is rare – focus on being the best version of yourself.

Going Above and Beyond

Being professional and putting in that extra effort - be it 110% or 120% - can significantly differentiate your business from competitors. This extra mile in quality, customer service, or innovation can make your brand more appealing and trustworthy to customers.

Showcasing Core Convictions

People are drawn to authenticity and depth. Having core convictions that are evident in your business practices can attract clients who value and resonate with your principles. For example, my journey of writing a dozen technology books not only showcased my expertise but also my core convictions, attracting customers who valued this depth of knowledge.

The Global Competitive Edge

In today's global market, what your company offers can likely be duplicated elsewhere. However, the key to customer loyalty lies in staying ahead of the competition. At my company, we understand this well. Despite the possibility of our services being replicated by firms in Vietnam, India, or elsewhere, our customers stay because we consistently deliver excellence and possess in-house expertise that's unparalleled.

Entrepreneurship is a journey that varies for each individual, but the core principles of risk-taking, authenticity, and relentless pursuit of excellence remain constant. Whether you're just starting in your 20s or leveraging your experiences in your 40s, the entrepreneurial path offers a fulfilling way to make your mark in the world. So, take the leap, trust your journey, and watch as your entrepreneurial dreams take flight.

The Unloved Workhorse Language that Keeps the Internet Running

PHP is the programming language that everyone loves to hate. If you're a computer science purist, PHP is an ugly mess of compromises. The hip new startups scoff at its perceived weaknesses. But here's the thing - PHP powers a massive chunk of the internet. It handles boring but essential jobs like databases, forms, and CRUD operations. While Silicon Valley chases the new hotness, PHP keeps working. 

The hate comes from PHP not fitting theoretical ideals. It evolved gradually as the web took off, not designed pristinely from scratch. To purists, PHP is an ugly mutt. But ugly mutts can still be excellent pets. PHP gets the job done for millions of devs daily.

Programmers can be elitist and jump on bandwagons. The flashy new languages get the hype. But longevity comes from solving real problems for real users. The latest hotness fades quickly. New only sometimes means better.

Good programmers focus on the right tools for the job, not cherry-picking based on their personal preferences. If your business needs demand cutting-edge tech, by all means, reach for the stars. But often, boring old PHP is the pragmatic choice. It handles the unglamorous work of powering e-commerce sites, content management systems, web forums, and more.

The best developers work comfortably in the languages that fit their tasks. An expert PHP dev will outperform an amateur stumbling through the trendy new syntax. Coding skill and experience matter more than abstract metrics.

So, be wary when people hate PHP. They often lack real-world perspective. The world runs on compromises and trade-offs. PHP made choices that optimized for beginner accessibility and web development. That worked astonishingly well. The web as we know it today was primarily built on PHP.

The flashy startups chasing VC funding mock it at their peril. Their hot new tech may fade quickly when the winds of fashion change. PHP abides, powering an ever-growing chunk of backend infrastructure. It's the reliable old car that keeps on trucking mile after mile. You'll never look cool driving it, but you'll get where you want to go.

Reference:

The original article was published on medium.com

Building a Team Knowledge Base with Private Stack Overflow

As a software team manager for over 21 years, I've learned that most engineers dislike documenting their work. They love coding new features but hate maintaining old code or writing documentation. While this may not apply to top engineers at big tech firms, it rings true for most average developers.  This aversion to documentation stems from several reasons. First, engineers tend to be less people-centric and need help to write docs with others in mind. Also, documentation invariably becomes outdated quickly, so why bother?

However, good documentation brings immense value. It allows companies to train new hires faster. When new engineers join, they must shadow existing work, learn the tools, and start on non-critical items before tackling significant projects. Without quality documentation, new hires become frustrated, spending excessive time getting up to speed.

I've tried various solutions - internal wikis, Google Docs, auto-generated docs from code - but all failed eventually. However, I recently discovered a great approach: Private Stack Overflow.

Leveraging Stack Overflow's Q&A Format 

Every good developer visits Stack Overflow daily to find solutions fellow coders discuss. It has become an indispensable resource. 

Stack Overflow's core strength lies in its Q&A format. Developers can post questions and get answers, which get upvoted/downvoted by the community. This surfaces the best solutions organically. What if we create an internal Q&A system on Stack Overflow for our private team? We can, and it's free for small teams!

With a private Stack Overflow instance, asking questions and getting targeted answers from colleagues beats reading lengthy theoretical documents. The team collectively contributes knowledge through focused Q&A, benefiting from diverse perspectives - engineering, QA, ops, business, etc.

A Mock Example 

Say my company hired a new CS grad who wasn't handed any docs. Instead, we added him to our private Stack Overflow and told him to review the code and ask questions. 

After inspecting some code, he posted:

Why do we include tax in pricing for European countries?

The lead developer responded:

European countries use fixed VAT rates, so people expect prices listed with tax included. We do:

Display Price = Price of Product x (1 + tax rate)

E.g., if product costs £100 and VAT is 20%:

Display Price = £100 * 1.20 = £120  

The DBA added:

We don't store Display Price in the database since tax rates can change. We only keep it for transactions. This avoids recalculating product prices if VAT changes later.

E.g., if Display Price is £120 but the database stores:

Product Price = £100

If VAT increases to 30% later, we will update the tax rate config.

And the marketing manager commented: 

Handling European taxes properly has helped us launch dozens of franchises successfully. Make sure you understand the EU tax calculations.

This example demonstrates how Q&A draws knowledge from all roles, not just developers. The conversations are tagged and searchable, too!

Additional Benefits

Stack Overflow also provides badges and gamification features, even for free private instances. Our team now has a friendly competition, asking and answering questions and earning badges!

If you lead a small engineering team, I recommend exploring Stack Overflow's free private offering. It has worked remarkably well for us as an engaging team knowledge base. 

Check it out here: 

https://stackoverflow.com/teams/create/free

Reference:

Original post appeared on medium.com


Automating Video Tasks for YouTubers with FFMPEG

As a beginning YouTuber and long-time software engineer, I rely on FFMPEG to automate repetitive video processing tasks. In this post, I'll share some FFMPEG tips and tricks I've picked up from running multiple YouTube channels over the past year.

Streamlining My Workflow with FFMPEG

I launched my first YouTube channel a year ago - a first-gen immigrant lifestyle vlog. Since then, I've added a macOS user group channel and two more niches. Producing many videos means wrangling tons of files on my Mac Mini M1. 

While I love editing in Final Cut Pro, automating specific tasks with FFMPEG saves me time. For example, I built a script to batch-trim raw footage and cut intros. This automation helps me focus more on content creation.

Installing FFMPEG on Mac

Before using FFMPEG, you must install it via Homebrew - the missing package manager for macOS. Check out my video for a quick guide:

Once Homebrew is set, grab FFMPEG by following this video: 

With FFMPEG ready, let's look at some practical Automator workflows for YouTube creators.

Trimming Videos

Trimming footage in your NLE is easy, but I needed to batch-process clips. My script scans a folder, trims the first 15 seconds from each file, and exports shortened versions. The key FFMPEG command:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 00:00:15 -c copy output.mp4 

Removing Audio

When repurposing videos as background visuals, stripping audio is essential. This command handles it in one step:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy -an output.mp4 

Extracting Audio

I often extract audio from YouTube videos to listen offline. FFMPEG makes this simple:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -q: a 0 -map a output.mp3

Check out the process:

More FFMPEG Uses

That covers my common uses, but I'm always learning new FFMPEG tricks. Here are a few more quick workflows:

  1. Extracting images from videos for thumbnails
  2. Creating slideshow videos from images
  3. Downloading audio from YouTube playlists

FFMPEG has many advanced features, like adding subtitles, concatenating files, converting formats, and more. I'm just scratching the surface of what's possible.

What FFMPEG uses would you like me to cover in future tutorials? Let me know in the comments!

For more on this powerful open-source tool, check out the official FFMPEG site:

https://ffmpeg.org