The Makerlog Thread (immediate roadmap, feedback) [July 2020]

Hi Makerloggers,

I'm continuing to build and improve on Makerlog, and I'd like to provide you a couple of status updates on where it's going and of course, ask for your feedback through the process.

What we're doing now

  • Working on product mainly, improving the UX and reducing bug count
  • Completely re-doing Gold to be a bit more appealing
  • Researching new ways of doing achievements and improving engagement)
  • Improving profiles, improving discussions, improving notifications

What we'll do

  • Improve the marketing strategy.
  • Write more stories and pick up the newsletter.

Notes

  • I've been quietly working, hence I haven't focused much on marketing lately. I know it's a bit of a mistake, but I just needed to focus on what I was doing.
  • I'm looking for your feedback on what I'm doing and please be brutally honest. It helps steer the ship!
Ali Salah

CHANGES ARE FIRE 🔥

Here is my feedback:

I think we'd have a much cleaner feed if we:

  • Moderate the feed: Write some log-rules and remove test, life, and other annoying logs from the feed.
  • Remove github integration because most git logs aren't readable / meaningful.
  • Remove trello integration because people who create tasks for themselves aren't writing them for an audience, so they don't explain well.
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Sergio Mattei Author

I happen to agree with many of these points, so will definitely take in consideration.

Thanks!

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Carl Poppa 🛸

I agree with @lori. imho it's not always easy to find motivation to get certain "life" things done (for me: e.g. I dread doing housekeeping, paying bills…), and being able to log it somewhere keeps me going. It's like… this stupid mundane thing MATTERED! My inconsequential little life isn't completely POINTLESS lmao 😄

The examples above, plus say prepping a nice dinner, going out for a run, working out etc. are all part of a healthy maker's mindset and routine.

Maybe there's a way to separate the two? One feed for general / all the logs, and another for just hardcore "maker" stuff.

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Carl Poppa 🛸

Another thing is the 'guilt' factor. When I see Oliver just did a 10km run, Lori just did a workout, or @Monday just had the zoomies… it kind of nags at me that I have to go out and stretch my legs today too, even if it's just a walk in the park. That part of the accountability works (for me!)

I like seeing these life logs. It reminds me that everyone here has, or is trying to create, a balanced life too, and we're not all just 2-dimensional coding machines :)

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Ali Salah

@poppacalypse @lori

I 100% agree that life logs can be done in a good way. Housekeeping, working out, excercise. Getting our shit together is really important, even for work :D

The problem is that it opens the door for logs that are just there to keep the streak.. Like napping lol

So maybe we should allow life logs, but just remove pointless logs? 🤔

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Piotr Gaczkowski

I agree with @lori . There's just too much hustle porn everywhere. We are humans, not photoshopped models, and that's how our lives look like. We want balance, we want to see the actual action, not just the view from the top and success stories.

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Sergio Mattei Author

Folks - I strongly agree on the lifelogs part, they're definitely not going away. A balanced life is super important.

My main gripe is integration spam - how do you folks feel about it on the feed?

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Carl Poppa 🛸

@sergio Remove all integrations. It might "force" ppl to manually type in more meaningful logs.

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Piotr Gaczkowski

@lori I agree that this may help build a streak. On the other hand, the quality is inconsistent. When I look at the logs and see some people manually enter what they do with a description I understand, I know what they are up to. When I see they've pushed a bunch of commits, I'm not sure what the progress are. Such updates are probably only meaningful to the authors (which may not be bad in itself).

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Carl Poppa 🛸

@lori that's an idea.

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I have been using makerlog for a while now but my streak still has been 0. Timezone issue is always there, I guess!

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Sergio Mattei Author

Uh oh! Message me on crisp.

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Piotr Gaczkowski

Same here, I'm afraid. Though I just started treating Streak as something that comes and goes, while I see value and progress in the logging and interacting with the community :)

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@doomhammer I no longer think of them as something important anymore because it keeps resetting to 0 and it goes to 2 (max.) lol.

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Piotr Gaczkowski

@vaibhav yeah, I try to maintain my "internal" streak and that's what's important. Consistent work on our part :)

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Sergio Mattei Author

@doomhammer Folks - I'll be taking a look at this, this shouldn't be right. I recently pushed a fix that might have something to do with it -- although this isn't good.

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For me honestly, Makerlog as a product is already good enough. It already facilitates what I find valuable about this community:

1) Getting to know others working on cool stuff 2) Staying motivated

I wouldn't mind if you pivot to marketing and growth and leave the software as is for a while.

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Sergio Mattei Author

That's the plan! The final remaining changes for a while will be Gold and bugfixes… We need to start generating decent MRR.

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Ali Salah

@sergio 🔥🔥🔥 I 100% agree! I wanna reach that level with Instatus too and just focus on marketing :D

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