On Our Radar: We Need To Talk

Coax—Rachel and Travis Gertz’s digital magazine for people who run projects—will not stand idly by. It hits you with bold and brash graphics, late-night no-holds-barred conversations, and frank perspective from project managers, designers, developers, and artists out there in the trenches. It’s personal.

Check it out—the articles are infused with character and solid, professional statements about life in the creative and digital fields. —Mica McPheeters, submissions and events manager

Your weekend reading

1. “Don’t hire a junior developer if you don’t plan on investing in their future.” In “The Catch-22 of Being ‘Too Junior’,” Jennifer Wong offers straightforward advice on what to do (and what not to do) when hiring a junior developer. I thought this article was a great companion to Lyza’s recent column on practicing mentorship. —Yesenia Perez-Cruz, acquisitions scout
2. If you would like to learn what it takes to never compromise, Richard Stallman’s computing habits are an excellent place to start. My favorite part: he browses the web by emailing requests to a program that visits the URL, scrapes the page, then mails the results back. If you’re lucky, he’ll open up your pages in a graphical browser like Konqueror, but he prefers to use Lynx. —Tim Murtaugh, technical director
3. Design is all too often an afterthought when it comes to health technologies and systems. This week, I’ve been following a discussion on GHDonline about why that’s the case—both here in the US and around the world—and what exactly we can do about it. The discussion’s wrapping up, but give it a read and chime in this weekend if you’re interested in healthcare or implementing technology systems in low-resource and low-bandwidth settings. (Full disclosure: I spend my days managing the communities over on GHDonline, so I am a bit biased here, but I think you’ll find it’s been an interesting conversation.) —Marie Connelly, blog editor
4. At TYPO Berlin last week, Typotheque’s Peter Bil’ak unveiled a new model for testing and licensing fonts. Developed over a couple of years by a handful of independent designers and programmers, Fontstand addresses the abiding tension between technology (type) and the legality (licensing) of that technology. Make some time for this talk—Fontstand is a pretty big deal. —Caren Litherland, editor
5. File under kicking-myself-for-missing-it: a huge Twitter chat around #WOCinTech, where women of color in (and entering) the tech industry traded answers to questions like “What was something you learned about searching for a job in tech that no one told you?” and “What technologies or software products are you playing with?” Luckily for those of us who tuned in too late, Stephanie Morillo Storified the whole thing. Read through the responses and find new folks to follow. —Lisa Maria Martin, issues editor

Overheard in ALA Slack

Your Friday gif