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!
Best of luck Mike – thanks for explaining the failbot to me!
I haven’t finished reading the article yet, just came to the comments to see if anyone else was triggered by the there/their misnomer. Apparently not :3
Either way god speed and best of luck. Back to the article :D
I must have lost track of events. I thought Mike left the building long ago, and Benchoff was the HAD stud duck. I enjoyed Mike’s tours of the various *spaces. Hopefully another will pick that up soon. As the say; the only thing certain, about change, is that change is a constant. Keep on safely truckin Mike.
Been so great working with you, you’ll always be Hackaday Mike in this corner of the internet. Wishing you and your family the best.
Thank you for all your hard work and good luck with the new job! The Screensavers and Call For Help was a huge part of my childhood I really truly miss CNET/ Tech TV.
Thanks for everything Mike! Except that one article. (Sarcasm!) But seriously I kinda liked the lowercase letters. Best wishes for your future endeavors.
Adios Sir,
I have always enjoyed your writing and humor. Best of luck in your new adventures.
To Elliot:
Congratulations on the new position! I’ve said it before, but you are one of my favorite writers on Hackaday. Your technical depth coupled with your low key but sharp sense of humor never fails to impress. I’m so glad you are staying with Hackaday!
To Mike:
I’ve never had the pleasure to meet you, Mike, but feel like I know you from the countless hours I’ve listened to you and Eliot demonstrate your love for technology and your love for your audience in your weekly podcast. Your passion, your honesty, your curiosity, and your sense of fun came out in every episode. It especially made the long drives on vacation in the summer much more enjoyable.
I can’t help but think that if Bob Hope were still with us and knew you were retiring that he’d have this to sing:
“Thanks, for the memories,
The ram and rom we fuzzed,
The conferences’ end buzz,
Your writing was superb,
A better guy there never was,
Yes thank you … so much.”
Cheers, friend.
Good luck! Thanks for your work. I’ve read the posts here almost daily
Goodluck on the move, Mike, you’ll be missed.
Thanks for all your guidance and push with my blog posts over the years.
Hope to catch you again IRL sometime soon.
Best part is you will not be missed, as Editor 😀 – Elliott is going to fill in your shoes quite well. So yay for a smooth transition of power, or passing of the baton, or whatever else is an appropriate phrase.
Vale Mike, have fun being a “real” engineer, whatever that is! Don’t be a stranger!
All the best, Mike! Good luck on this next chapter!
Thanks Mike for all the hacks and good luck! Congratulations Elliot!
Thanks for all your work on Hackaday and good luck with the new adventure!
Bye and thank you! Hope you will have as much fun with your new job as you had here.
Best of luck in the new job! Has it really been 8 years since supplyframe took over? Yowsers, how time flies!
As a hackaday newbie, I really appreciate the independence of the site. Thanks for championing that and long may it continue.
thank you!
Sad to hear that you are leaving, Mike! I wish you the best of luck with your new job! Btw.: The touch interface on the back of a display about which you are talking in the latest podcast exists already. Here’s a paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1518701.1518995
Don’t go!
I never learned how to pronounce your last name!!!!
Good luck, and thank you, Mike. :)
Thanks for all your great work throughout the years and best of luck!
You was great for all these years.
I’m a newcomer since I started to dabble in 3D printing and Arduino projects so have not come to know the depth of the community yet.
All the best for your new challenges and I hope you left the command to someone you trust so we all can continue to enjoy and share!
This and the death of Masayuki Uemura.
What a day
Thanks for everything Mike. Hackaday was my main route back to electronics in 2012 and is one of the few sites I still read daily (via RSS natch) from that time. Your new gig looks exciting. Enjoy every minute.
GREAT (GREAT) work Mike. Good luck at Golioth!
Congratulation to Elliot ! Please (please) continue to write us these excellent articles.
If it´s you who threw the infamous Brian Benchoff under the bus, congratulations !
If not, who did it ? Supplyframe ?
Was that “editorial independence” ?
Thanks for massively boosting the presence of HaD, and helping to make it the wonderful place it continues to be. I’ve enjoyed your articles for years, commenting just under the name Drew earlier. Best of luck to you, long live Hackaday
You have been a steady hand.
Good luck with your future endeavours.
What a time to be alive…
Why live now when you can finally make a whole processor out of 555s ?
So long and thanks for all the fish!
congrats Mike!! thanks for everything!
Live long and prosper.
Thanks for all the fish! It was awesome getting to meet you, and I hope to once again during the next (hopefully) in person supercon happens.
Best of luck Mike!
Thank you Mike!
Thanks! Good luck!
Back in the black and white days I would read HaD from my cubicle while I was taking calls. Tonight I ran several ws2812b strips around my house fed intermittently by some 30v landscape wire with 3d printed enclosures for the buck converters. There’s not a chance that would have happened if not for the many things you’ve written over the years. Thanks so much and god bless.
Thanks for all of the awesome work, all of your patience, and for giving me daily inspiration.
Thanks for these years and all the best for the rest ;)
Sad to see you go, have fun where you end up!
Best of luck, you will be missed!
Goodbye, Mike! I’ll miss you! You were nice!
>> The stars have aligned and I feel like I have to make the leap.
Very few of us techno-nerds have the an opportunity where things fall into place to chase our dreams (at least in my case). I applaud your opportunity and wish you nothing buy happiness.
You’ve completely changed the meaning of “hacker” into something super positive
Cheers and best wishes!
I much appreciate how well you have managed.
Be well. Bless you.
I really hope there is an in-person Super Conference in the future, and I really hope you and I both attend and we can spend a few minutes catching up. I really enjoy talking to you.
I grew up reading Hackaday and never stopped! I’ve learned so much over the years and I KNOW I’m a better engineer/student because of this site. That’s in no small part due to your hard work Mike! Good luck with your next adventure!
Dang Mike, I’m going to miss you in the future podcasts! Here’s hoping you success in your future endeavors!
Sincerely,
SeanT (Mississippi)