My Activity Report For 2020

It’s that time of year again. It is time to reflect on the things that happened on The Polyglot Developer, what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what the upcoming year looks like.

If this is your first time stumbling on an annual report article for The Polyglot Developer, you won’t find any tutorial content. This is mostly a numbers-based reflection, but it could be useful if you’re interested in building your own blog, video channel, or overall brand.

In this particular activity report, we’ll follow the same formula as the 2019 report, which includes analyzing the written content on the blog, video tutorials on YouTube, the podcast and Twitch channel, and any services and operating costs required to keep the channels alive.

Announcing, Blogging with WordPress for Beginners, an Online Course

I’m pleased to announce that the course, Blogging with WordPress for Beginners, has been released to The Polyglot Developer courses portal.

So what does this course attempt to accomplish?

If you’re interested in starting a blog to represent your brand and grow your audience, you’ll see how to do this using WordPress, a popular content management system (CMS), and a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

Boost the Performance of OBS Twitch Streams on Mac and Windows

So you’ve decided that you want to start streaming content to Twitch, YouTube, or similar. When I say streaming, I mean live streaming, not publishing pre-recorded videos to be watched on-demand. Streaming is so popular that you might think it’s as easy as opening your web camera and clicking stream. The reality is that there’s a little more to it, more so around stream quality and performance.

Take my stream for example. I stream a few times per month on Twitch using The Polyglot Developer. The first few streams had a large amount of framerate stuttering, audio and video synchronization issues, and computers sounding like airplane jet engines. I was able to resolve these problems by changing the way I streamed with Open Broadcast Studio (OBS).

In this tutorial, I’m going to walk you through some of the things that can be improved in Open Broadcast Studio to give you better stream performance on the popular content streaming networks.

Live Stream with Guests Using OBS with Skype and NDI

As a technical content streamer, one of the most difficult tasks for me to accomplish was with having guests participate on the stream. To be clear, I don’t mean having guests participate in the chat, I mean having them on the stream with their video, audio, and sometimes screen.

Think about it. You’re streaming to Twitch or another platform using Open Broadcast Studio (OBS). You’re probably streaming your video and audio, but what happens if you need to include a guest? Do you do a Zoom meeting and screen-grab their video using OBS? If you’re capturing the guest video, how do you pipe their audio? What happens if they need to share their screen as well?

This can turn into a complicated mess.

In this tutorial we’re going to see how to have guests on your stream without a bunch of complicated hacks. We’re going to see how to use a network device interface (NDI) with Skype for easy inclusion into Open Broadcast Studio.

5 Tips for Working Remote in Tech

There’s a lot happening in the world right now, forcing companies to change the way they operate. For a lot of people, this means working from home, something they may have never done before, or have not done regularly.

Working remote or working from home may sound like a dream come true, but it involves more focus and self control than you might think. You want to be able to prove yourself capable, while not burning yourself out in the process.

I’ve been working remote for the past five years and have picked up a few tips and tricks that I thought I’d share to those that might be struggling with their new way of working.

My Activity Report For 2019

It has been another great year for technology and The Polyglot Developer. Like I’ve done in a 2018 activity report, and the years before it, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on all that was accomplished for the 2019 calendar year.

If you’re unfamiliar with this kind of post, it is more or less a numbers report for the various things that happened throughout the year. Such things include blog, podcast, and YouTube metrics, as well as information around events and speaking engagements.

Not only is this an opportunity for me to keep track of things, but you can use it as an opportunity to learn about how I’ve conducted business and apply it towards your own.

The Community Contributions of 2019

Last year, in my article titled, The Community Contributions of 2018, I highlighted 11 tutorials that were contributed by the community. To show my appreciation towards the guest contributors on The Polyglot Developer, I wanted to highlight the content that they’ve produced in 2019.

If you found any of the following tutorials valuable, I encourage you to reach out to the author on social media and thank them for taking the time to produce such great content.