Dreb Bits

Category: Career

Yet Another Co-working Space?

Since last year, I’ve been itching to fly out somewhere. This time, it’s not about finding my self or escaping from a mistake (yeah, just like the rest of the human race, I ran off before from some very bad decision). But I’ve been looking for a workplace where it could offer me the convenient space to work with an affordable rates for freelancers. I wasn’t able to find one so I started doing a bit of traveling.

Fast-forward and a couple of times I’ve been in and out of the city, I couldn’t still find a space I want to spend my day in and out.  There are a couple of co-working spaces here in Davao and most of them just sprouted recently. But I see a couple of issues from yet another co-worker‘s point of view.

  • Spaces setup aren’t spacious. If it is, it’ll cost you much-much more.
  • Most co-working prices are for SME (small-medium enterprise) folks.
  • Fully-booked spaces.
  • If some exist that I’m not aware of, they don’t market enough. If they don’t market enough, they simply don’t need me/no room for me.
  • Missing a bit of interior flavor and mixed work-and-play.
  • Missing some digital nomad needs.
CYY_6614
A co-working space in Manila. Spacious isn’t it?
Photo from Warehouse Eight

You might ask why not work from home. I got 3 answers for now:

  1. I was working from a studio apartment where I sleep, work, eat (and …sleep again?) all in the same very room. And our house (which where I’m currently staying) isn’t conducive for daily-brain-squeezing-yet-fun-tasks I deal in work.
  2. I always like working with people around—it inspires me when I see them working hard esp. when at one point I see myself slacking/procrastinating, and there’s more to it.
  3. High speed and reliable internet is pretty expensive here. Can be justified when shared with same paid individuals.

I’m here in my room at my parent’s house and it’s been months since I’m back and it’s been months since I’ve been checking out (cheap) flight bookings because of the same drive.

But..

There’s no escaping this time. I’m gonna let myself face it with whatever I have. I don’t want to go home again thinking I’ve got nowhere else to go to work conveniently.

Norma Jeanne Maloney

Sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know.

It suggests that sheer talent or even honing your skills aren’t enough. You gotta go out there and get connected with people that would take you toward the direction of where you’d like to see yourself to be.


When someone comes to apprentice with me, I’d like them to make a two-year commitment and not work outside of Red Rider, because I think it takes that amount of time to go out and paint decent signs.

Showing up for two years even you feel like there’s nothing could come out of it. I’m not all about how after 2years you’ll be making so much money but it’s more on having to accomplish what you you’re trying to be best at.

Read up on Norma Jeanne Maloney: From Truck Driver to Complete Creative Control.

Happy Holidays!

Just want to take a moment to be and to feel grateful in where I am at this point of life. Since I joined 10up, days are always challenging and I even get to contribute to WordPress core. Nailing a milestone! I’ve been introduced to a bunch of tools and worked with talented folks that inspire me to thrive.

Looking ahead, I’d still seeking that environment where I can work and grow physically. Next year should be a level harder than this one.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Been bonding with family and extended families lately. Happy times indeed. Hope you’re celebrating it with someone.

Simple Act of Contributing

Ever since I got familiar with how the WordPress maintain its codebase and the community behind that pushes fixes and features, I’d always imagine my self being a part of it. And the recent release, WordPress 4.4, is the start of the journey.

I didn’t do much but the simple act of updating a doc block is something could be truly appreciated by the community (core). Once you’re in there, you’ll know how they work hard and not thinking about how their efforts are being compensated. Some #10uppers are part of those who look into the platform very closely and I got in because of them as well. You just need to be in the right team to get you started 🙂

Now the plugin badge will never be alone.

DevCon PH 2015

I’ve been wanting to attend conferences for developers and on November 13-14 the biggest developers in the Philipines held its second summit and it’s a plane ride away from home—I was on high again.

What I’ve learned from the conference (aside from handshaking and saying to speakers that they did a good job):

  • thechangelog.com
  • Prepare business cards (lotsa!)
  • Constantly talk your ideas
  • Why open source prevails? Because human is kind by nature; we’d rather contribute for the goodness than making the cause of someone’s downfall.
  • “Great support, great communication that translates your knowledge to the clients.”
  • Your dorm mate might be one of the speakers!
  • Docker!
  • Mantra in development: “Immutability, decomposability, distributed, continuous”

It was a nice experience overall despite that…

Joining 10up

On July 27 I officially started working for 10up, a well-distributed digital and strategic consulting agency, and knowing that I am based and currently live in the Philippines proves that they(we) are truly expanding globally!

I’ve been a full time freelancer for almost 3 years and the feeling of getting lonely is inherent in the freelance world eventually, at least in my situation. Over the years, I enjoyed the love and hate relationship with the people that I always got to talk to almost everyday — the clients. They’ve given me the  challenges that brought new learnings and some of them bridged ways to creating plugins.

But ever since I started working as a freelancer or even during college times I knew I would like to be part of something great. In fact I feel grateful when I create websites or help businesses build their online home but the experience didn’t come close compared to sharing the challenges and fun if you are part of a team.

I yearn for that moment when, around making our capstone project during senior year, my team had been maximizing all the resources we could get and poured everything we have for a project. It’s inspiring to see all efforts coming together towards a common goal, and seeing them looking up to each other is another reason to be grateful at what we’re doing.

Working with a team, sharing the same passion, can be a far greater and fulfilling experience anyone can ever have in his lifetime. I truly can’t wait to share my life work with 10up, and to contribute in diversifying the team even more and learn from the talented individuals they already have.

Bits of Happiness

Nailed a milestone today. It’s cool and refreshing to see a Plugin Developer badge on my WordPress.org profile. It maybe small for some but happenings like this contributed to my journey in pursuing happiness in life.

What’s next? It’s just my first plugin. I am hoping to push lots of free rice into the WordPress community including a theme. This platform is amazing. The people behind are a bunch of amazing folks.

That badge!

 

What Had Been and What’s Coming

This year is going to be finally over in a couple of hours. There had been so much things happened as usual, but this time things got intense and this year highlighted more of my career and identity.

Career

I was juggling between photo editing and web but primarily with web. I was able to come up photo shoots with my sister and it’s been awesome covering adventures with photos. I was really thinking of making both my primary jobs. I just don’t like the photo editing if I only edit photos that I didn’t take. So I have to end the photo editing part in the wedding photography studio. And I was back with web as my only job and photography as hobby. But I sold my camera to a friend somewhere in August. He hasn’t paid the half balance yet and Its been almost 3 months since he paid the first half and I’m a little upset obviously. That’s one part of my life that I suck at – selling and who to sell.

So I haven’t had any real photography sessions lately except with my phone. It can still give me good photos but I can’t wait to have a device again that solely for taking moments that I value the most. Photography as a profession is something that I don’t want to focus on yet even if I have the device again. Some people said I should get serious on it though but no as of this time.

I’m still not good at business. I could see there’s a little improvement though but not in the level that I’m willing to go against risks. I planned to put up a coworking space since I’ve been desperately looking for one in our area. Well, not quite desperately since I haven’t found or created one. Since there’s none, I have this idea of creating such community/business that provides rental desk to freelancers like me. I’ve always been wanted to work with people – inspires me to do great work that I can show off to them and restrict me from doing things unnecessary for work or in a workplace. I started talking to few people and conducted a survey but it hit me again. That lazy moment. The downtime. I know the coworking would prosper and has visible market but I lack the guts and courage and determination to push it forward. And it is back in my head again. Recently though I’ve been working for most days with a friend. We work either in her house or in my apartment. I guess we can see the year will end for me with that conclusion.

And still regarding about business, that little improvement I mentioned is because I listen to Sean McCabe podcasts. This man is awesome (together with his friends) and his dedication to his works is just shooting through the universe. I learned so much over the course of listening to almost 100+ of his podcasts to date. I’ll surely going to stick my nose on his podcasts for more years to come.

Works in the web was steady until recently. It’s the second time that it feels like December is a cooling down point. Last year, I didn’t have much work during the same month. And if it’s beneficial or not depends on the person and I say it’s fair on my part. I spend some time to rebuild my portfolio that I am hoping to launch first thing next year and the rest is for random things that include discovering new series, just recently though, reading and just plainly do nothing. It’s good to just do nothing once in a while.

On the contrary of not pushing the coworking, I created a team that I named Countryside. I team up with a friend to provide services on web development. We started to move to a higher bar on this as I have bought a domain for it. But there’s still doubt, again. Sometimes I think its just won’t going to work anyway specially if there’s no work coming our way.

One more thing I’d like to bring up is my thing about contemporary house/office interiors and building things with woods. There’s a subtle magic I feel when I see a space with wooden accent. I love outdoors. I like being with the woods – the color, textures and its unique presence. I have an uncle that work on that field. I’m working on looking for someone here in our area that might in need of his help and that I can start helping with as well.

Looking back at all of them now, I actually have had a bumpy ride on my career path. But there are few things that I’d like to clear with moving forward…for what’s really going to come. Starting next year, new beginning as may sound it is, I’ll look for a day job as web developer. Countryside will be a part time endeavor only. Well, Its safe to say that the day job could/should be enough to cover my bills and I could explore the other side of web development with Countryside. On the other hand, I will pursue and try to look for someone who needs house decorations or wooden furnitures and tap my uncle on that. They say you should be doing something different from what you’re doing in your day job. Could provide a dynamic in your system.

I think all of these are pretty solid to me but we cannot always guarantee in life that it will going to be how we plan it to be. The very reason why I decided to write it here so I could go back and read it again and asses if I still have the same direction that I want to pursue or if there’s a change in plan.

I can’t believe these are all the things I wanna share that I have all this time in my mind just solely about my career. What’s up with my identity will be in the next post. Writing it while getting prep up to welcome twenty fifteen later.

A Year Anniversary of Your Ever After Studios

The cool guys of the wedding photography team in Davao founded by Raphael Banta and Joemar Lamata just celebrated their 1yr anniversary since they have decided to put up a studio.

3 months after the birth of the studio, I was privately messaged by Raph, closed friend of my brother who happens to be the co founder of the photography studio, to work with them as part time photo editor. We’re friends in fb. He might have seen few of my photography works and decided to take on hiring me to help their massively growing clients with wedding photo editing. I was flattered and filled with excitement. It was never a mistake for me to to say yes to their offer and as of now I am editing the 9th set from YEA studio.

Raph is someone I shared with few of my visions in life including creative esp. interior design matters. Recently, they have re-organized their office setup (2.0 as I fondly call it) and he keeps on offering me to work in their office even before, wether it’s web development or online editing works. Now that the setup is partially transformed into somewhat more artsy way, there’s a chance that I might going to work in there to do freelance or photo editing jobs.

Your Ever After Team have been really welcoming. I am very greatful to be part of their 1yr anniversary with their studio. I can’t wait for what’s up for them and how will my relationship with them improve over the coming months.