Status update: What week is it?
Getting back into the swing of things.
Time is a flat circle and I’ve been on vacation for the last couple of weeks with my family. And before that, I was finishing up another project before it launched. So it’s no wonder that ProjectGarden got a little neglected. Apologies for those that are following along with bated breath.
When I started working on this project, I knew it wasn’t going to be a quick and easy project. The idea behind ProjectGarden in order to be truly useful (I think) was much more than I could do in a short period.
I’m really pleased that I was able to get the initial functional version of the project done in only a couple of short weeks. I got it to a place where I (and others) could start using it. Yes, I continually find myself thinking, “I wish this piece was built!” But for me, that is just an indicator that it might actually be useful enough to warrant existing.
Will others find it useful? I’m not sure. I’ve yet to see any indicator of that, but I also haven’t really been pushing it out into the world beyond talking about it on Twitter. I’ve been enjoying building in relative obscurity where I can flail around and figure things out without too many people noticing.
What’s Next?
I want to make sure to continue to set appropriate expectations. This coming week is the last of my mini sabbatical (where I get to work on whatever I feel like) and it’s also when I’m going to be focusing largely on figuring out the next steps for my day-to-day work going forward. I’m hoping that continued work on ProjectGarden will be a part of that, but honestly, it’ll most likely be only during nights and weekends.
As for the next most vital task, it’s most likely a housekeeping one: migrating the project to a proper Rails app, as opposed to the limited and stripped-down Sinatra version currently being used. For those that aren’t technical at all, it mostly just means that our little project is growing up and needs some more robust tooling to help me accomplish some of the fun new features on the horizon.
Once that upgrade is done, the next feature I want to tackle is the ability to have project-specific pages. These could be for collaboration or brainstorming (similar to the project summary doc I have in Notion) and could be used to start gathering feedback from others. It’ll also likely become a core piece of a bunch of the next wave of features.
Asks
While I’m working on getting back into the groove of development work, there are two main things I’d love from you:
Checkout my projects page and ideas page and let me know your initial thoughts. They are still pretty basic, but I’m curious as to what people think and what they’d like to see.
If this looks interesting to you at all, feel free to create your own account by going to https://projectgarden.co/login and authenticating with your Twitter account. If you don’t have a Twitter account, can you reply and let me know?
And if you’re not already, you can follow along on Twitter: @zackgilbert and @projectgardenco. Please feel free to send along your thoughts, high fives, recommendations, or any and all feedback.
Until next time, keep growing!