Seven People That Inspire Me To Be More Creative

Eight years ago, back in 2017, I wrote about five people who inspire me. These five share something important: they’re all great teachers. Each of them is not just good at experimenting and innovating, but can put those learnings into teaching.

A lot has changed since 2017, but people who blend creativity and education are still some of the most inspiring people to me today – with one exception. The ones I’m most drawn today tend to add one another piece: optimism. That’s not to say the previous ones didn’t; it’s more likely that I’m noticing it more, and appreciating it more.

A few weeks ago I started thinking about who inspires me today. Most are people I’ve never met, and only had occasional social media-related interactions with – following on BlueSky, occasionally joining live streams from, reading blogs, newsletters and listing to podcasts.

I debated writing a note to each of these people, but decided to do a post celebrating them all instead. Thank you all for being cool and inspiring people. 😎

Cassidy Williams

Most people in tech might know Cassidy Williams from her hilarious TikToks which gave me many laughs during lockdown. From newsletter jokes, JavaScript parodies to whatever this is, the more far out and unexpected, the more I end up laughing. 😂

Meanwhile she’s been working at some of the most fun developer-focused companies like CodePen, Netlify and GitHub – bringing her passion and energy to code collaboration in a way that’s needed.

When we launched Hardcover on Producthunt, Cassidy commented at 12:01am – literally the first comment by anyone outside the team. She’s an advocate for small players, women, and diversity in tech (which is also a theme for this list in general).

Cassidy puts out a newsletter every week (rendezvous with cassidoo) with an interview coding question of the week. She seems like a fun person to hang out with, and I’m sure is an amazing mom.

Jason Lengstorf

Jason is a prolific creator in the programming space. Like a lot of people, I found Jason through his show Learn With Jason, where he and a guest build something in about 90 minutes. The format is both educational and entertaining.

His episode with Colby Fayock on Using WordPress with Next.js ended up being a template for this blog (before I moved from Next.js to Astro), and for the Hardcover Blog. His live streams are more organized and better run than ones by big companies. You can tell he takes setup seriously, yet maintains a lighthearted and fun vibe when on camera.

His post about AI generated art back in 2022 inspired me to create AI art of my wife using the same guide as a valentines day gift.

The only decoration I have on my desk is a Rainbow Corgi Duck which I use as a watch stand while working.

Jason has launched many other fun projects over the last few years. The Web Dev Challenge is one of my favorites. Four Developers build something with the same theme with the same time limitations. The variety and limitations spark new creative ideas. It’s like Project Runway for coders.

He’s recently launched Leet Heat – a show that’s a combination of Hot Ones and Jeopardy.

His most recent project, CodeTV, pulls together content from all of his different projects into a channel for developers. It’s like Dropout TV for devs. I’m a supporter and over in the Discord if you want to say hi. 👋

Chris Oliver

My first post about Ruby on Rails on this blog was in May 2005. Rails 0.13.1 had been released, and they were amping up for the big 1.0 which came out in December of that year. In those early days, I learned a lot by doing side projects, working at IZEA, EnvyLabs and Code School, and from Railscasts.

In about 2017 my role at Code School started leaning more towards management. With 11 people on my team, I wasn’t as up to date on the latest dev trends. When I switched to Product Management, I spent even less time coding – mostly only on small internal tools and on projects in my offtime.

In December of 2018 I left my job at Pluralsight, with the goal of having more time to build things I’d always dreamed of (The Minafi Investor Bootcamp was the first).

Of all the Rails education resources I found, Chris Olivers’ Go Rails was the most useful without a doubt. It filled the Railscasts void in my heart, but also featured longer series. Having a solution to a specific problem solved in a single video enables just in time learning – a format we often struggled with at Pluralsight/Code School.

I’d recommend it as the first step to anyone wanting to learn Ruby on Rails even today. It helped me to rebuild and refresh my Rails knowledge and gain back some developer confidence.

When Hardcover reached the point where we wanted to accept payments, I went to Go Rails to see what Chris recommended only to find he created a payment gem (pay) that works with multiple backends! We’ve been using it for subscriptions on Hardcover for the last 3 years.

As someone who knows how hard it is to create great developer content, but also creating entire systems around that content, I have huge respect for Chris and everything he’s built. I’m excited to see he’s a Co-Chair for the final RailsConf in Philadelphia – he seems perfect to help grow the Rails community.

Maggie Appleton

Technology is one thing we as humans use to advance civilization, create art, and increase productivity. That nexus is where Maggie thrives – theorizing about the future, but rooted in reality today on how to take that next step forward. She shares the same space in my mind with Bret Victor; both of them pushing design and user experience with technology.

Maggie is the first person I heard use the term Digital Garden to refer to their site. That might seem like a small change, but it impacts the way we think. If your blog is only one thing, that’s the format you’ll stick to.

For a few years in mid 2010s, I spent a lot of time Twitter. I still remember something I wanted to communicate and trying to get it down to 140 characters. I was locked into that box, which limited my own creativity in how I thought through a problem. If you can change how you communicate to span more mediums, it opens up how you can think through a problem and communicate your takeaways with the world. Maggie understands that.

Maggie’s Garden stretches all kinds of formats – from her numerous podcast interviews to talks she’s given alongside posts in different stages (from seedling to evergreen).

Her talk about The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI from 2023 seems as prescient today as it was then.

I remember reading her Command K Bars essay around the same time I was implementing search in a modal on Hardcover (also using Command K to open). That’s happened multiple times with Maggie’s writing – touching on things that I’m working on only to see she’s written an entire analysis of the topic.

One of the best ways to get me to listen to your podcast is to have Maggie on. 😂

Shirley Wu

I love a good data visualization. If someone can communicate a complex topic using interactivity, great design, color, and typography in a way that presets the topic better than in words alone then I’m often left in awe. It’s a combination of vision and execution in a way that can fall flat if something doesn’t feel right.

In 2023 I read Shirley Wu and Nadieh Bremer’s book Data Sketches. It ended up being in my top 3 books of the year, alongside The Will of the Many and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

Data Sketches hits on something that very few things I’ve ever read does: the journey. The format of the book is like this: each month Shirley and Nadieh would build out a data visualization (independently, so two separate data vizzes) and write about the process. The book is a collection of those notes, sketches of works in progress and the final products.

Her Interactive Visualization of Every Line from Hamilton (on Pudding) came at a time when I knew every line from Hamilton. Seeing it presented in this way blew my mind.

I enjoyed reading through what was in their minds as they were trying to solve problems – including what didn’t work. After reading Data Sketches, I was immediately inspired, started learning Svelte, and built The Social Histomap (very rough, but a good learning experience).

Shirley gave an incredible keynote called Taking Up Space that everyone should watch. It’s amazing and had me tearing up at times. Between physical art installations, digital creations and self reflection, I found myself nodding along and smiling at each creation.

In 2024 she tried something I’ve only dreamed of: establishing a studio in Tokyo. I didn’t even realize you could create a company and then sponsor your own visa in Japan 🤷‍♂️.

I can’t wait to see what she creates next in the intersection of art and technology as well as hearing more about life in Japan!

Chelsea Fagan

Chelsea started The Financial Diet a few years before I started Minafi – both in the financial space. Between her book, podcast, and YouTube channel, she’s extremely prolific in the financial sphere and created a safe space for women to talk about money.

I recently finished the book Men Who Hate Women. It’s a sobering analysis of the hate-filled communities that bully women while hiding behind anonymity online.

Chelsea has no doubt experienced her share of online hate. Her recent response to the trolls was a masterclass in how to respond. When I showed it to my wife, she gasped and snapped in agreement. 😂

One thing about financial content: once you learn enough there’s very little to do. You switch from spending time understanding how to diversify your portfolio and reduce your taxes to working on your mindset. It’s part of why I stopped blogging about financial topics – I got tired of looking at every problem through the lens of finances.

Somehow Chelsea continues to post new content that inspires me in areas beyond the financial. She has her pulse on the intersection between politics, money and feminism – which has branches to mental health, motivation, and just living your best life. Whenever one of her videos shows up I always watch it.

Nadia Odunayo

When I started Hardcover, it wasn’t originally a book tracking social network. It’s precursor was an embedded angular application on my blog to show what I was reading. When Goodreads announced they were shutting down their API, my backend would have to change and that sparked me to start Hardcover.

At the time I hadn’t heard of The StoryGraph. I was looking for book tracking services with an API, and none existed (only a few exist even today). It wasn’t until a few months into Hardcover that I stumbled on it. Since then I’ve joined Nadia’s The One-Woman Dev Team Diaries newsletter, watched her many talks at conventions, and celebrated SG’s success.

Meanwhile Nadia seems so authentically herself. Posting what she’s reading in her newsletters, sharing elaborate dances on her Instagram as a form of self expression, and acting as a proponent of anti-corporate sentiment.

The StoryGraph is a competitor to Hardcover, but in the same way The Financial Diet is a competitor to Minafi. I’m excited to see SG push the envelope and innovate on recommendations and what readers are asking for. Many of the same problems readers mention my own interviews are ones Nadia is working on. It’s incredibly rare to be able to look at a new product release and trace it back to the source problems, while seeing how the connection was made to this solution.

The rise of SG also proves the distaste for Goodreads in a way no other site has. I’m excited to be building products in the same space as Nadia, and would love to work on something together someday.

Takeways

When I look back at my previous post, I see people who are more in the category of thought leaders. When I look at this list, I see a mix of teachers, learners and sharers. People who want to connect different groups together with each other and all grow because of it (still true about the first list, but I’m noticing it more).

I think that better encapsulates where I am in my life right now too – looking to grow the Hardcover community, build more things that I find fun, and spending more time with my real-life friends and family.

If anyone on this list is ever in Salt Lake City and wants to meet up, I’d love to buy you a coffee/beer/meal/book. 📚