Allen Digs Into My Affairs

Allen Webster, creator of 4coder and systems programmer at RAD (now part of Epic Games), interviewed me in earnest about my life as an indie organizer—where I must confess I’ve never opened up like this before.

Have you ever asked yourself, while attending one of our conferences:

• What does Abner do as a full-time organizer?
• What does it actually look like, day in and day out?
• Why the obsession with being sponsor-free?
• Aren’t there good tech companies that can help him grow the conferences even faster?

If you’ve wondered along these lines before then this video should hopefully prove fun and enlightening. You’ll learn about my strange (but, in my view, necessary) career path that’s been a bit of a black box until now.

Follow Along More Conversations

This is the first in a series of important discussions Allen is having with industry figures. He’s zooming in on angles most us programmers tend to miss and tries to understand what people are doing in a broader sense. I think it’s a very worthwhile and interesting project! (Fun fact: the awesome visualizer you see in the video was programmed by Allen himself. Over a weekend jam.)

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Post-Interview Notes

Nearing the end of my conversation with Allen I accidentally imply you must go through the first 25 to 30 episodes of Handmade Hero in order to attend Handmade Boston. Please note you’re not actually required to go through all the episodes. (All the power to you if you decide to though!) This is just a rule of thumb to convey the real expectations:

1. That you’re already comfortable with the kind of programming shown in Handmade hero.

2. Alternatively, that you’ve written some substantial application or game in a systems language like C.

And you should be good to go.