Special thanks

“There’s no such thing as a sure thing. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what you think.” — Ali from Draft Day

In the summer of 2015, I wrote a reminder to myself on a little scrap of paper:

Quit August 1st no matter what.

I folded the paper and put it in my wallet, carrying it around for weeks. I was nervous about quitting my job. After 14 years with the same company — a great team, the kind of place someone could just keep working for years and know they were working on something valuable — I knew I needed a hard deadline to move on to focus on Micro.blog.

It was a big risk. So thanks first to my wife, Traci, who knew it was important to me and gave me the go-ahead to make the jump from a good job that supported our family to something unknown. At times Micro.blog has been a challenging journey that I couldn’t do without you there.

To my kids, Alexandra, Meredith, and Julian, you make me want to leave the world a better place. Thanks for your jokes that I would never finish this book, but also for your perspective on how the next generation uses social media.

To my mom, thanks for setting me on the path that decades later would lead me here. Believing I could do just about anything (maybe even write a book) started with family and friends believing in me.

To all 3000 Kickstarter backers, thank you for supporting the project early, for participating in the Micro.blog community, and for your patience.

To my friends and beta testers, thanks for checking out Micro.blog even before it had its final name, and for your feedback in Slack and email.

To my blog readers and podcast listeners who read the first published draft, you caught many typos and awkward grammar that I would’ve missed. The detailed editing notes from Nick Radcliffe were especially invaluable.

To the IndieWeb community, the work you all have been doing for so many years is an inspiration. I’m so glad that Micro.blog can play a part.

To Jean, thanks for wanting to be such a big part of Micro.blog from the beginning. From your leadership in the Micro.blog community to our discussions of platform features, Micro.blog would be missing something important without you.

To Jon, thanks for Sunlit and Wavelength. I’m lucky that we still get to work on these apps together even years after first dreaming up the idea for Sunlit in Montreal, before Micro.blog was even a thought.

To Vincent, thanks for your work on Gluon, and more recently for agreeing to join the Micro.blog team to make the whole platform better. Our support for Android would not be possible right now without you.

To Daniel, we sometimes joke that our podcast is half entertainment for listeners and half therapy session for ourselves, but it’s true that talking through the development of Micro.blog and this book has been invaluable.

It has been the highlight of my career to be able to work on Micro.blog. There is still a long road ahead to build the web we deserve. I hope to be working on Micro.blog for many years to come.