As I stated in my first podcast “conversation”, one of my main goals with these is to give a little exposure to people in the industry whose names you might not know quite as well. There and thousands of great designers and developers who don’t blog, tweet, or otherwise self-promote, and I’d like to hear what they’ve got to say about our industry. That having been said, my most recent conversation is with someone whose name you might have heard a bit more, especially if you spent a lot of time on jeffcroft.com or in the Django community. Even still, I find him to be someone who doesn’t get near the exposure he should, so it seemed appropriate to have him on the “show.”
So tonight, I jumped on Skype with Nathan Borror, a wonderful designer/developer hybrid and one of my closest friends. We spent much of the conversation discussing Nathan’s awesome new project Readernaut, but also briefly hit on his feelings about the advertising world, his job in journalism, his Django Basic Apps project, his icon work for EveryBlock, and more.
Click play to listen.
Nathan is without question one of the best designers I know. I first met him around two years ago, when he came into the Lawrence Journal-World for a job interview one Friday afternoon. It took about five minutes for us to decide we wanted to hire him.. I don’t think Nathan was quite so sure, though. At the time, Rails was at the peak of its hype, and Nathan had been spending some time with it (and rather enjoying it, as I recall). When we explained to Nathan that we were using Django, this other similar framework that wasn’t bean talked about too much, I think he was a little hesitant. And this, even though he was being interviewed for a design position where he wouldn’t interact with Django too much (he would be doing mostly design and HTML/CSS). So, he went home and downloaded Django to “check it out.” Before Monday rolled around, he’d relaunched his personal site on Django. Besides an obvious testament to how enjoyable Django programming can be, all of us at the Journal-World were absolutely floored that this guy we were interviewing for a designer position was able to pick up Django in a weekend to the point where he could make a great new site with it.
Nathan’s been similarly impressing me ever since, so if you’re not familiar with his work, please give the conversation a listen. I hope you find it enjoyable and informative. I’m sure Nathan will be reading the comments here, so feel free to feed back with questions for him or suggestions for me on how to make these “conversations” better for you guys. And don’t forget to subscribe to the feed!
001 // Brian McKinney // 08.12.2008 // 6:56 PM
Another great “conversation” Jeff. I’m definitely a fan of Nathan’s work, so it was interesting to hear his take on his work in the advertising industry, as well as creating and growing readernaut. Also, the sound quality seems much improved, a lot more balanced, and a bit easier to listen to (except for the rather loud scratch at 19:20 - which sucks if you are listening in headphones). I was surprised that you were ready to roll with another interview so quickly after the first, how do you find time to do all of this stuff?
002 // kevin // 08.12.2008 // 7:21 PM
nice callcast jeff. as you know I think nathan’s work on basic-apps has been a tremendous resource for the django community and you’re dead on when you say he’s an amazing designer. keep the great conversations coming! oh, readernaut is addicting.
003 // Jarques // 08.12.2008 // 10:12 PM
I really enjoyed this conversation. I viewed Nathan’s work and was just amazed at what he has done. Beautiful work really.
Keep these coming!
004 // Trey Piepmeier // 08.12.2008 // 10:36 PM
Amen.
005 // David Yeiser // 08.13.2008 // 7:08 AM
Great interview! Readernaut is very cool. I totally agree with your comment about it being one of the best designed web apps out there. I’m blown away that one person could do all that.
006 // Scott Nellé // 08.13.2008 // 7:33 AM
I’m loving these. I’ve never been able to get behind listening to podcasts, but I think this one is going to stick for me.
007 // Matt Brown // 08.13.2008 // 9:23 AM
Awesome callcast. I love how you keep the feel of these talks open and friendly, yet still keep things moving. You might just be the Charlie Rose of the intertubes man — keep it up.
008 // Noel Hurtley // 08.21.2008 // 1:46 AM
Thanks for the great interview with Nathan Borror. I’ve followed and admired his work for years even if he changes his domain every year (or two).
I look forward to the next callcast. Your informal and friendly style of interviewing people is a refreshing change from the kind of interviews you’ll hear in most podcasts.
009 // Karen Templer // 08.25.2008 // 1:31 PM
Funny — I wonder if Lawrence breeds it in us? I’m a KU design-school alum (grew up in OP) who runs Readerville and recently launched what sounds like a similar app (though ours is Rails, built by Ben Scofield):
http://notebooks.readerville.com/
Haven’t seen Readernaut, given the private beta. But may we all live long and prosper!
010 // Dean // 09.25.2008 // 9:15 AM
Terribly sorry I’m hopping into the game so late, but the “podcast” (if you could really call it that — step above IMO), Jeff, is pretty awesome. You’re right, Nathan doesn’t receive the exposure he deserves!
…tuning in.