2020 in Review
Like many people, 2020 was an unusual year for me. Away from the broader circumstances, I managed to keep busy with a stream of writing, experiments and projects. The core of my work continued to be my educational zines and the infrastructure around them.
The Year of Zines and Companions
I published four zines during the year, with a recurring theme of "weird programming languages" that was more accidental than deliberate:
The containers zine was a long time coming, and I was especially happy with the final result. For two of these publications, I also built companion websites: a SQL playground for SELECT Star and CSS examples for the CSS zine. The idea was to address a recurring tension with my work: you can't fully grasp a technical subject without trying it out. The sites offer a place for quick experiments, though I haven't heard much feedback yet to know how well they achieve this.
A Fresh Look for an Old Frenemy
Wizard Zines got a full redesign this year. The change was more exciting to me than to anyone else, as is the way with these things, but I hope the better organization and the fun animations come through. You can see the old version alongside the new one. Melody Starling handled all the design and CSS. The project was the direct inspiration for the CSS zine.
The Realities of Physical Shipping
I had grand ambitions for shipping physical zines, and the reality was more modest. I printed 400 copies of "Help! I have a Manager!" in February, left them in a box for six months, and finally shipped them out starting in September. I wanted the process to feel special, so I designed printed envelopes and had a custom stamp made.
It was a lovely response on social media, but the process had practical problems. Packaging all 400 zines took two to three days. To keep the price reasonable, I shipped via letter mail without tracking, which meant some topics didn't arrive or took many weeks to do so. I'd like to do this again, but probably in a less artisanal, more efficient way.
Experiments in Online Learning
One of my more significant experiments this year is the “questions!” web app, available at questions.wizardzines.com. To see it in action, you could try the questions about CORS. The goal is to help people identify gaps in their knowledge without turning it into a traditional quiz. A previous experiment, Flashcards, had users focusing too much on the score.
The key design choice is that the primary interaction for each question is clicking "I learned something!" – rewarding new insights rather than prior knowledge. I also made an open source version for anyone to build their own site. I'm still unsure about the future of this project, but I'm happy with the progress.
Separately, with Allison Kaptur at the Recurse Center, I ran an event called "Domain Name Saturday," where participants attempt to write a DNS server in a day. It turns out that's dishearteningly difficult to complete, but it was fun to try. The end-of-day "bug presentations" were a great way for everyone to share their journey and learnings, regardless of how much code they finished.
Considering the Business of It All
Revenue was up 2.3x over the previous year, which I attribute chiefly to publishing twice as many zines. My year-end review led me to continue this path. It's satisfying to see an easy link between effort and value, and I value the control over my time, even with the lack of coworkers.
I also ran !!Con NYC remotely this year. As a conference, it translated better than expected to an online format, which may be because it's centered on watching a shared block of talks. The Discord-based event with clapping emojis captured the excitement reasonably well, though ad hoc conversations were harder. We charged $64 (pay-what-you-can) and shipped shirts and sweaters worldwide via a Python script. While it worked, I'd likely use a storefront with order codes next time; it was more customer support than I'd like.
Reflections in Practice
Several things went well structurally this year: working with others was a peak that came up repeatedly; adding beta readers to the zine creation process made a large difference; and adopting Focusmate meant I wrote around 80% of the Bash zine in focused sessions. Lower stress and higher output resulted. Finally, royalties distributed to others were a particularly nice thing to do.
I wrote my first post on running the business: A few things I've learned about email marketing. I'm planning more on this topic.
For the coming year, I'm thinking about creating more interactive educational tools similar to the question and playground sites, and whether to continue the current physical shipping model. Zine topics are always scarce, but for once I have one idea locked down.
