Welcome.
I'm Jess Martin.
This is where I write, speak, and create the future of computing.
Recent
- Analogies for Innovation Teams November 26, 2020
- Notes on "How can we develop transformative tools for thought?" September 25, 2020
- Reinventing the Book September 25, 2020
Work
Current
- I livestream my adventures in programming on YouTube via Coding With Jess.
- I publish my research notes via a home-grown Zettelkasten.
- 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.