I have decided to make a career move and have accepted a position as Developer Relations Engineer at Golioth.io. I’m happy to announce that Elliot Williams will be the next Editor in Chief of Hackaday.
Right now I’m in my 13th year at Hackaday, having started in the summer of 2009. But like all of the Hackaday writing crew, I began as a loyal reader of the site. I remember hearing about Hackaday when Kevin Rose mentioned in on an episode of the old CNET TV program The Screensavers early in 2005. Having already been building robots and just starting on 8-bit AVR microcontrollers, Hackaday was exactly the source of new and interesting projects I was looking for.
An enormous amount has changed since then. When I started as a writer we had just stopped using black and white photos. A few articles later, we removed the CSS that forced all articles to be lowercase. When I became head editor in 2013 we stopped calling it Hack a Day in favor of Hackaday, and about a year later we overhauled the site, moving from green-on-black to yellow-on black and expanding the 470 pixel content width to 800. Progress.
What hasn’t changed is how we stay fresh. Hackaday has always trusted our writers to guide us by following their own interests. The people who write for Hackaday have far better things to do, but they use their writing as a creative outlet to focus on leveling up their skills, to discover new uses of available technology, and to share that energy with the greater Hackaday community. They live all over the world and work in many different fields. These experiences come together in there collective writings. I’m lucky to have this great group of writers, and so are you. When their time has ended, the hope is that a new group of readers will step up to the plate and make sure the good times never end.
Something Special at Hackaday
Hackaday is a truly independent voice and the trust our readers have in us is our most valuable asset. Over the years, I’ve seen one site after another fall to the blight that is the advertorial or “sponsored content” — when some company pays to have their message published on an otherwise trusted site. Hackaday has never had to do this. Editorial independence is a luxury we have thanks to the strong backing of our parent company Supplyframe which believes that the Hackaday community is worth it. Of course, you wouldn’t have it any other way.
Supplyframe bought Hackaday in July of 2013 and invested heavily in the future of the organization. They created Hackaday.io to provide a place for project hosting, and the next spring we launched the Hackaday Prize. We hosted our first conference that November 2014 in Munich to announce the grand prize winner. This was the predecessor to the Hackaday Superconference which began in 2015 and has grown to be widely recognized as the finest hardware conference out there.
During this time, Hackaday started writing long-form articles on a range of topics; deep dives into historical figures, primers for picking up new skills, interest pieces on the world around us, and explainers on the science behind equipment and materials we all use when building projects. Joe Kim came on as Hackaday’s art director and grew up a visual presence around these longer articles that is uniquely Hackaday. And the writers and editors stepped up beyond the shorter project features to meet this challenge.
I love it at Hackaday. I’m sad to leave.
Why Leave Such a Good Thing?
So why would I ever leave the good thing I have going for me? Well, I’ve always wondered if I could write firmware professionally. While that’s not exactly where I’m going, it is a step in that direction.
Over the summer, my good friend Chris Gammell mentioned he was contracting for a startup that is building cloud services for firmware engineers around the Zephyr open source RTOS. I decided to give it a try, as I have a number of microcontroller IoT platforms over the years. I love the idea of being hardware agnostic, and I’ve long been a proponent of signed binaries and over-the-air updates. The cloud side has web control and a REST API as you’d expect, but I was happy to see it also has terminal-based control for those of us who like easy scripting.
This fall Chris let me know he was considering going full time in Developer Relations and was looking for a counterpart who knew how to write firmware. The job is to get to know every part of the platform, to work on the documentation, to build hardware demos in tandem with Chris and write content around those, and to get to know the people using the platform and support them with any help they need. So, play with embedded systems, write about them, and geek out about it with other people! It’s a chance to leverage the things I’ve been good at here at Hackaday, plus to get some firmware work on my resume. The stars have aligned and I feel like I have to make the leap.
Hackaday’s Bright Future
It’s been amazing to be here for this, and that’s why many of the writing crew — especially the staff writers and editors — have been a part of Hackaday for so many years now. Yes, I’m stepping away, but as the new Editor in Chief, Elliot Williams is building on his more than seven years of experience with Hackaday.
Tom Nardi is taking over as Managing Editor, and Kristina Panos will become Assignments Editor. Jenny List and Adam Fabio are long-time members of the editing staff. These editors are all backed up by more than thirty other writers who have kept our publishing schedule full around the clock, day in and day out, year upon year.
While today I’m saying goodbye to editing and writing, I’m not saying goodbye to Hackaday. You can bet that I’ll continue reading and sending in those tips.
Thank you to everyone who has sent us a link to a project to show off on our front page. Thank you for all those constructive and insightful comments that add depth to the articles we published. Thank you to everyone I have met, not through a screen, but out in the real world — those instant friendships are forever cherished. And thank you to everyone who values passing down knowledge and helping others level up.
Long live Hackaday!
Thanks Mike, it has been great working with you.
Best of luck in the new endeavour, and don’t be a stranger!
(Sniff!)
P.s. Was it something I wrote?
B^)
I knew this going to happen. Ren… :)
p.s. #2 does this mean Caleb Kraft is coming back?
B^)
Best of Luck! Thanks for all the hacks!
Should that be….
So long and thanks for all the hacks
Can’t quite believe we’re going to loose such a tireless hacker/hack reporter. Working with Chris must be a pull, he’s another of my fav tech-gods-on-the-internet. Good luck with your future endeavours!
Sad news :-/
Yes, you’ve done a great job especially with the conventions and hosting and videos. Thanks for taking on that tiring work!
This is sad news, but also not sad at all. I can only assume we’ll see just as much of you at Supercon, perhaps even more! Congratulations!
All the best wishes Mike. Especially loved the way you did the podcast with Elliot!
Have fun “coding the future” :)
I am going to miss your voice, both on the site and in the pod.
Best of luck, Mike!
congratulations Mike and congratulations Elliot!
+pi
Press (F) to pay respects.
F
End of an era! Always fun to hang out with you at conferences, look forward to doing it again (and you not working Supercon)!
But it was only recently that I learned how to pronounce your last name. Best of luck with the new venture!
Me too – only when you did the intro to the Ligo thing! Sounds like a great name to have after a few beers!!
I’ve enjoyed your articles over the past few years.
You’ll be missed, Mike. Hopefully we can catch up at DEFCON, and I will pay for a bite this time.
Thanks for your dedication to making hacks accessible. I visit HAD several times daily and I am never disappointed. Best of luck!
Very excited to be working with Mike directly again! And Elliot is going to be a great chief! I am looking forward to continuing to read his stuff and listen to the podcast.
I could have done it with a 555 timer.
Not a Haci!
No soup for you!
A 555 and not a 556 timer?
Coulda’ done it with HALF a 556.
Farewell.
Thank you for your contribution.
I didn’t like the man much until I met him in Belgrade. I hope he does well.
So long, and thanks for all the Szczys!
Well played sir, well played!
Nice.
We’ve never met but I’ve been a subscriber for several years. Thanks you for a great job. I appreciate the timely issues and have learned a lot. Best of luck in your new position!
Thanks for your years dedication and good luck on your next adventure.
Godspeed bud.
Will be sorry to see you go. Good luck in your new venture. If only we had an edit button, I might go back and delete a few moans about the lack of an edit button.
You will be missed! Keep on hacking!
“Here’s my 2 week notice. Notice that its dated 2 weeks ago!” Thank you for everything and best wishes to you and your’s!!!
Best of luck at the new gig and don’t forget to come visit us every once and awhile!
Best wishes on your endeavor, Mike! I will certainly miss you on Hackaday. Thank you for all your hard work, and for the excellent site you have helped Hackaday become!
Best of luck Mike — Working for you (and Hackaday) was one of the defining moments in my career that helped be pivot to create Hacksmith Industries!
All the best!
Good luck Mike!
For a parting gift are they going to give you a vowel?
LOL!
He’ s slavic, vowels are optional.
Good luck.
Thanks Mike!
Congratulations to you both! Sorry to see you go Mike but it does sound like a great opportunity… onward and upward!!
All the best to you, Mike! You made Hackaday something I wanted to read, and then something I wanted to write for, and now someplace I never want to leave! You’ll be missed. But, the show must go on! We’ll keep a stiff upper lip! Or something like that.
Congrats on the new chapter in life. Also looking forward to your sharing knowledge gained in your new endeavour
again congratulations and best of luck.
Bye Gustav. You know what I mean :)
Cheers! Thanks for all the articles over the years, I’ve learned a lot from your insight and curation.
Aw Mike, thanks for all the awesome over the years.
Congratulations on the new opportunity, not least because it sounds as though it will keep you still firmly “in the community”
Thanks for everything, Mike, and best of luck to you.
Wish you all the best!!. Keep Hacking Daily, ok?
All the best!
Thanks for all you’ve done for the site and the community over the years, Mike!
Also, thank you for being cool about me asking for an unusually large HaD t-shirt. I’m an unusually large guy, and not everyone is as cool about that sort of thing as you were to me. Thanks, man!
So long and thanks for all the hacks. It’s been a pleasure reading your articles all of this time.
Think you can pardon me and lift my comment ban on your way out?
So you’re saying there’s a chance?
<3
Thanks fol all, including all the podcasts
I thought you would be going away to play the trumpet 🎺🎺 professionally!
Thanks for all the great reading during toilet breaks at work.
All the best with the new job, you’ll do great!
Congrats, Mike! Thanks for all the great articles. Best of luck in your new role!
All the best from here Down Under, Mike! I enjoyed your editorial stewardship over the years and am sad to see you go. Hopefully you can drop in with the odd article from time to time!
ps. would love to see a return to the green-on-black look :)
Never learned how to pronounce you — and we never interacted much — but I’ll miss you all the same.
/le salute
Here’s how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9CmUOvGwUA
If you don’t want to click a damn youtube video to see how to pronounce it, I just googled it too, and apparently it’s like “stish”.
Have fun Mike! Thanks for nerd-herding with the best of them.
Mike, it’s been a pleasure working with you. You’re a fantastic editor, and your integrity is without question, even when there’s been drama and reporting has led to conflict with sponsors. The quality of the content at HaD is superior, and you have left some big shoes to fill. Good luck at Golioth!