Coders are people, too
We talk a lot about people at &yet: putting people first in business; replacing words like “users” or “customers” with “people” whenever possible; the fact that (as one of our best-loved t-shirts reminds us) software is about people. I recently upgraded my desktop wallpaper to this beautiful “Pixels are about people” graphic, as a kind of talisman I can refer to throughout my day.
It’s a conscious choice we make, putting people front and center in our language — because it’s far too easy to lose sight of the wildly complex, multifaceted, fascinating people we’re making things for. And we believe with our whole hearts that business and whole-humanness are not just compatible, but that it’s possible to build thriving businesses precisely by putting people first, and making space for humanity and humane-ness.
(This is also why we’ve been so focused on weirdos lately — because when you take the time to connect with your weirdos, you put that human connection first, and build trust from a place of genuine shared interest.)
Recently we had the opportunity to work with the folks at Heroku and Salesforce on a project that we’ve fallen in love with. Wicked Coolkit is a collection of retro style, open-source web tools that are built on Heroku & Salesforce, and that allow web developers to showcase their multi-facetedness.