Welcome.
I'm Jess Martin.
I write, speak, and create the future of computing.
Recent
- Copilot and Conversational Programming July 01, 2021
- The End of Paper May 18, 2021
- The Work I'm Looking For May 11, 2021
- On Designing a System-in-Context February 18, 2021
- Computing: A 500 Year Revolution February 17, 2021
Sign up to receive a weekly dispatch from the frontiers of computing, including links to and summaries of interesting writings, discoveries of new people and projects, and updates on my personal projects. Browse the archives.
Work
Current
- I livestream my adventures in programming on YouTube via Coding With Jess.
- I publish my research notes via a home-grown note-taking system.
- My current research interests are Realtime Collaboration Systems, the impact of rich Knowledge Representations, and inventing new Tools for Thinking.
- I design and deliver educational experiences to teach software engineering at scale at Lambda School.
Startups
- First - Helping real estate agents connect with their clients at the perfect time. Acquired by RE/MAX (press release).
- Ranger - Partnered with Shay Frendt to build a heroku-based monitoring service. We got acquired (press @ TC).
- Enroll - A platform for managing in-person classes, workshops, and courses.
- Office Hours for Startups - Meeting with local entrepreneurs to help them grow their business.
Projects & Open Source
- Spotify New Releases - 🎶 Timeline view of new albums by your Spotify-followed artists. 🎶
- CoolButtons - Nifty, iOS style glossy buttons for iOS.
- Taskpaper TextMate Bundle - Use TextMate to manage your Taskpaper files, complete with keyboard shortcuts and text highlighting.
- Language Popularity - Simple language popularity tracker based on usage and discussion on a few different sites.
- Procedural House Generation
Writings
Research Notebook - a collection of research notes exported directly from Jess's research notebooks.
A collection of articles across various subjects.
- How To Trello Your Project What to do when your todo list won’t do. May 2019.
- Why You Should Use Trello For Damn Near Everything No, seriously. April 2015.
- Catching My Breath After five years building a tech startup, a respite. May 2019.
- Life Beyond Zillow Real estate and the return of the relationship. December 2016.
- The Irrefutable Math of Relational Marketing The easiest way to grow your business is to talk to people that you already know. October 2016.
- The Real Raise Amount Fundraising reflections from raising a seed round and Series A. May 2015.
- Generating graphical content using grammars and graphs Graduate Thesis, UNC-Chapel Hill. May 2007.
Talks
Talks I've given in various venues.
- Product Management: Philosophy & Practices, delivered at CloudFactory, January 2013.
- Practices for Personal Productivity, delivered at CloudFactory, January 2013.
- Being Smart with Debt: Tactical Tools for Technical Debt, delivered at CloudFactory, December 2012.
- Tale of a Rewrite: Lessons Learned Rewriting Ranger, delivered at CloudFactory, December 2012.
- Learn to Speak Interface: Conversations Between Developers and Designers, delivered at RailsConf 2010, July 2010.
- On Giving, delivered at Relevance, November 2011.
- 3 Tips to Make Your Site Feel Better, lightning talk at DevNation Austin, May 2010.
- 3 Questions of a Product Champion, delivered at DevNation Durham, February 2010.
- CSS and HTML: The One True Way, delivered at DevNation Boulder, October 2009.
- Cloud Talk: A RunCodeRun Case Study, delivered at DevNation Boston, August 2009.
- Getting Girls With Musical Magic and Ruby, delivered with Chad Humphries at Developer Day Durham, March 2009.
- Procedural House Generation: A method for dynamically generating floor plans, delivered at Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, March 2006.
Elsewhere on the web
I post code on github.
I write on medium.
I occasionally tweet.