1 / Let's get Technically Lit

Welcome to Issue 1!

Blank canvases are exhilarating and terrifying. At least, that's what I'm thinking at 9:30 p.m. the night before the first Technically Lit newsletter is supposed to go out. Before I light my computer on fire, let’s start with introductions.

Hi, I’m Nick. Quite by accident, I fell in love with building digital products and I’ve somehow spent the last 15 years building them with teams of all shapes and sizes in more industries than I can count.

As they say, “the years start comin' and they don't stop comin'”.

Along the way, I’ve managed to carve out a reputation as a translator–someone who can move seamlessly between design, engineering, stakeholders, and the rest of the product team to connect dots, build alignment, and get stuff done.

A few years back, I realized that no one really teaches you how to become a translator. You kind of have to get lucky and figure it out. 

Yet, I’ve found them to be the most indispensable people to have on a product team. Without them, teams devolve into silos, people get tunnel vision, and everything grinds to a halt.

So, here I am. Trying to fill in this gap by teaching product professionals how to be translators.

A big part of that mission is technical literacy. I believe that code and technology are the secret languages of digital products. And, the more fluent a product team is in technology, the better results they’ll achieve together.

My grand vision board dream is to turn all of this into a proper school one day. But, today, we’re starting with content.

We have bi-weekly podcast interviews with product professionals to explore how real practitioners approach product collaboration and technical literacy in practice.

We’re creating tons of hands-on tutorials and walkthroughs on YouTube so you can level up your collaboration and technical literacy skills.

There’s this newsletter, where not only do you get a direct line to my current thoughts on these subjects, but you can also stay in the loop with all the content we’re producing.

And finally, we’re cooking up some courses that’ll dive deep into making smarter technical decisions, building better products, and collaborating more effectively.

After years of dreaming about it, I’m so excited to get the ball rolling here. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey.

Let’s get Technically Lit,

Nick