Steve_Edwards:
Hello everybody and welcome to another thrilling episode of Views on View. My name is Steve Edwards, the host with the face for radio and the voice for being a mime, but I'm still your host. Today with me on the panel, I'm flying solo again after last week's episode with Lou Dieboldt. And today I have a very special guest. His name is David Neal. How are you doing David?
David_Neal:
I'm doing alright.
Steve_Edwards:
Good. So there's a little bit of background. I had heard David's story a little over a year ago on another podcast about his foray into drawing and art. And as a developer who is very much a developer and not an artistic bone in his body and who couldn't draw to save his life if he had to, I found it very fascinating how he sounded like he was similar to me. But. got into it and is actually very good and publishes books of drawings now. So I thought it would be an interesting story for all of you to hear. So to start out David, why don't you just tell us a bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, why you're famous and we'll go from there. So, I'm David and I'm a writer and a writer. I'm a writer and a writer.
David_Neal:
Well, thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate the opportunity to share my story. And my name is David Neal. I've been a software developer since the 90s. I got on, you know, started building web applications pretty early when the web started to take off. And for years, that's all I did pretty much was. build web apps, classic ASP, ASP.NET, a lot of Microsoft stuff. And somewhere along the way, I started working from home. And one thing led to another, and I ended up getting involved in the developer community. And I wanted to give back and wanted to get involved. And through some encouragement, started doing some speaking. And I've been. active in the developer community for over 10 years now. And, uh, as a, you know, I guess to kind of lead into this, the story, uh, I found a way to engage audiences through drawing.
Steve_Edwards:
Excellent. So before we get into the drawing part of things, I'm always interested in hearing the technology backgrounds and tools and, and stuff that you've used
David_Neal:
Mm-hmm.
Steve_Edwards:
along the way. I started like you, I started probably in the late nineties, uh, coding. My initial coding was in VB six inside of Microsoft access 95. And, uh, you know, and then, uh, with the web stuff, it was front page 98. I took over a website and somebody's doing front page. And then I learned my SQL. and PHP from there and spent a lot of time in PHP and then that's morphed into JavaScript and Vue and other tools. So I'm curious to see what tools did you start out with? You mentioned ASP and ASP.NET, obviously.
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
And do you still do a lot of Microsoft stuff or using a lot of open source stuff or what's your tools of choice these days?
David_Neal:
Yeah, so pretty similar start with web programming. I had been doing Pascal and C and some other languages before them, but started using Visual Basic and was helping folks before ASP came out. I was helping folks write macros, engineers with Excel macros and
Steve_Edwards:
Mm-hmm.
David_Neal:
VBA. And that was
Steve_Edwards:
Yep.
David_Neal:
my introduction into Visual Basic. And that led to me doing some apps with VB3 and VB4,
Steve_Edwards:
Oh wow, that's way back, okay.
David_Neal:
V and VI, and
Steve_Edwards:
Yeah.
David_Neal:
somewhere around VBVI is when I started building some web apps using, well, I started learning with Frontpage as well. I think somewhere in the mix there, I was playing around with Frontpage, and then Visual Studio, Visual Interdev. which was an IDE around that time of VB6. So I started using that to create ASP websites, web apps. And there came a time, you know, I was learning some JavaScript or JScript at the time. There was a popular website back then that James Shaw was running called Cover Your ASP. And he, all of his examples used J script instead of VB script. And that was very intriguing to me because I was learning JavaScript and thought, well, this would be a way to, you know, kind of learn the language better is just kind of force myself to move away from VB and start using J script. And then I, entertained the idea of jumping to Java. I started looking at the Java language and I liked the syntax, kind of that, you know, some similarities there with JavaScript, at least in syntax-wise. And as I was learning, I was going to some events like Microsoft Tech Eds and things of that day. And I went to the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. the year, I think it was 1999 or 2000. It was the year that Microsoft publicly announced the.NET framework and C Sharp. And I was just very fortunate to be there for that event. They gave everyone that went to that conference a little book called, Presenting C Sharp. And being the nerd that I am, I went back to my hotel and I read that book, start to finish and fell in love with the C sharp language. It was, it was probably a year or more before I could actually get my hands on visual studio and start to actually use C sharp. But once, once I had it, there was no looking back. I started, you know, really working with ASP.net from that point forward. And so for many, many years, ASP.NET and C Sharp were my go-to stack of tools, SQL Server on the backend. And I worked for a number of startup companies and different things in the Nashville, Tennessee area. And so I helped when I started getting involved in the developer community, I helped run. and manage the.NET user group in Nashville, Tennessee. I did that for a few years. And somewhere along the way, I started really, you know, Node.js came out and every time, you know, I was still building a lot of web stuff, I was still doing a lot of JavaScript as well as C-sharp. And when Node.js started to become popular, I would, you know, take them. a little time to investigate it and come to the conclusion, oh, it's not for me, or it's not ready for me yet, kind of thing. But when they started to add support, or the open source community started to create some things like SQL Server clients for Node.js, that's when I finally started to take notice. And like, well, I could actually use this now because I can use it with my. my favorite database. Node.js then became my primary platform somewhere around 2013 or 14. And that's been pretty much my focus ever since. I didn't rage quit.NET. I'm still a Microsoft MVP. I still am involved in the Microsoft community. I like to help folks any way that I can and I still keep tabs on some of the.NET stuff, but for the most part I use Node.js and other JavaScript things on top of that.
Steve_Edwards:
So you're primarily what you would I guess we would call you a backend developer then Dealing on server server side code
David_Neal:
Yeah, that's been a lot of my focus. Many of the startup companies that I worked for, I was a one man band, sort of speak, and had to wear a lot of hats. And so I did, you know, I did what people call full stack development for a long time. And so I had to like when jQuery came out and I was able to use jQuery to do a lot of stuff on the front end. That was amazing. And. I still love it. I mean, sometimes I'll go back and play around with some jQuery and it's still as, as awesome as it always was. And, um, you can do some fun things with it. Um, but, uh, yeah, for, for, for the most part, I was full stack, but my sweet spot was definitely back in.
Steve_Edwards:
So have you delved, have you, you mentioned full stack, so when you've done front end, what kind of, when you've had to do that out of necessity, what were your tools of choice or not of choice, as the case may be?
David_Neal:
Yeah, for years, let's see, before React, there were things like Backbone and Marionette with Backbone. I used some of that. React came along and the company I was working for at the time decided to adopt React, so I used that for several years, but it never quite clicked with me. I didn't really care much for Angular or some of the other. I took some, you know, look at, you know, I'd take surveys every now and again, like play around with Aurelia or some other front-end framework around those, you know, back in the day. But when Vue came out, that one really did click with me. And anytime I do front-end work, It's just not all the time, but you know, I'm working on some projects right now that have some front end stuff that I'm building. My go-to is view.
Steve_Edwards:
Well, that's great considering this is a Vue podcast. And
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
in full transparency, when I invited you on, I did not know that. It was your story that I was really interested in. So it's quite fascinating to hear that you also use Vue when the need arises.
David_Neal:
Yeah, I'm
Steve_Edwards:
I
David_Neal:
doing.
Steve_Edwards:
came up through the Drupal world myself and got in through AngularJS and then moved over to Vue later when Angular did their whole rewrite. But
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
that's fascinating to hear. Your step's there. All right, so with that, let's get into your drawing story and how you mentioned how back, I don't remember when you said it was, timeframe you were getting involved as a speaker in the development community and you started speaking. And if I remember correctly, that was sort of the impetus for getting into the drawing. So how about you start there and tell us how that evolved.
David_Neal:
Yeah, so around 2011, someone finally encouraged, you know, public speaking, being able to get up and give a talk at a conference or an event was something that I always wanted to be able to do. Even back in the 90s when I would go to events like the Microsoft Tech Eds or whatever, I really admired folks in the developer community who had the courage to get up and share. their experience or teach what they had to teach. There were a few heroes that I looked up to that were really good at speaking that I thought, man, I wish I could do that someday. So fast forward to 2011, I'd been involved in the.NET user group. I was sharing with someone how I was doing something with ASP.NET using you know, rest, API's. I forget what I was doing at the time, but they said, Hey, you need to, you need to give a talk on that. You need to share that. I'm like, no, I don't want to do it. No, you really need it. And they, they wouldn't let it go. They, they said, I'm going to put you on the calendar and you're going to give them the presentation in like two months or something like that. So, uh, since I was on the hook, I did it. And I The first time I got up to speak, I was so nervous and it was awful. You know, it was the stereotypical, you know, really bad presentation. I, I fumbled all over the place and, but, um, the encouragement that I got afterwards really, you know, just, I don't know, really sunk in or, or something wanted to do more of it. I wanted to get better at it. And so over the coming years, I started applying to speak at other user groups and to speak at conferences. And each time it was such a struggle to actually do it, but once I went through with it, I felt great. And it was really appreciated the positive feedback I was getting. And I remember It might've been 2012 or so. I was at a conference in Louisville and the guy, you know, I was going to other people's talks, trying to learn what they were doing, you know, like I want to be a good speaker. So I was trying to learn from other speakers who I admired, uh, and try to. You know, uh, reverse engineer any, any good stuff that I found, you know, that other speakers were doing. And one speaker got up. and was giving a presentation, and he had this cool cartoon character that he used throughout his presentation. And I thought, man, that is so cool. That is so fun. And so I asked, I met him after his talk, and I said, did you draw that? He says, no. I bought these, or I commissioned the artwork from a friend of mine. And he said, each illustration cost like $50. And I'm thinking, oh. I can't afford that. I can barely afford to go and send myself to some of these conferences. It just seemed like I was kind of disappointed. It was like, oh, I don't want to spend money. I just want to be able to do that. And so that planted a seed. And a couple of years after that, I think it was the beginning of 2015. I had already done hundreds of talks by that point. I had gotten better as a speaker. And I thought my presentations were fairly entertaining and engaging. But I just felt like I wasn't getting the engagement that I thought I should be able to get. People thought I was a good speaker. They gave me good feedback. but I just didn't feel like anybody was walking away from my talks going, Oh, I am so fired up to do that or to try that. I just wasn't getting that kind of reaction. So I was feeling burned out and about ready to hang up the hat for a while, maybe take a year off or something. And, but I couldn't let it go. I started doing research on how I could be a better speaker. And I came across a video on YouTube by Dan Roam. Dan Roam was giving a presentation at Google on his book called Show and Tell. And this 45 minute presentation makes the case that very simple. illustrations and I'm saying so simple. They are literally lines, arrows, shapes, and stick figures. He made the case that you can communicate far more than you can with bullet points and photos and anything else you might put on a slide, and you can be far more engaging. And I watched this guy's presentation, I think, four or five times because I was just blown away at how awesome it was. And the drawings really resonated with me. a Kanban software company at the time, where visualizations were, you know, that's the key to the product is being able to visualize your work. I thought, well, that makes total sense to visualize what you're trying to communicate. It, you know, in a very specific way through some simple drawings, that would be far more useful. than me having a stock photo up on the screen, you know, and trying to crack jokes about whatever the topic that I was talking about. So. Yeah, 2015 was the pivotal year for me. Um, I found, uh, Dan Rome's video. I bought his book called show and tell. And, um, I made the commitment that the next talk I was going to give, uh, I think I'm, I set myself a goal of like, I'm going to draw five of my slides, something like that. And I had a, an old iPad. and a cheap $5 stylus. And I downloaded some drawing apps on the iPad and found one that I could somewhat understand. And the drawings that I created were absolutely terrible. They were stick figures and lines and arrows and shapes and stuff. But through those objects, those simple objects, I was able to tell a story. in a way that I'd never been able to tell before. And when I gave that first talk, by the way, I blew past five slides. I ended up drawing almost every slide in that presentation. I couldn't stop, I just fell in love with it. Once I realized just how powerful it was and how it enabled me to give a presentation exactly the way that I wanted to. I couldn't stop. So I drew almost every slide in that talk. And when I gave that first talk, I knew within the first 30 seconds that it was a game changer. The audience was far more engaged and I could tell that they were really connecting with the story I was telling.
Steve_Edwards:
So if I could interrupt real quick,
David_Neal:
Mm-hmm.
Steve_Edwards:
what, so this is, I'm assuming these are some sort of deep, deep tech talks, right, about Node.js or something like that. Is that correct?
David_Neal:
Well, this particular talk was not a very technical talk. It was a talk that was around the subject of managing software projects using Kanban. So it was
Steve_Edwards:
Oh.
David_Neal:
a, it, it lended itself, you know, kind of to giving a visual story of like, here's, you know, here's, here's what work looks like when we don't use Kanban, here's what it looks like when we do use Kanban. And I was able to tell some funny stories. personal stories through these illustrations to make points and to tell, to talk about the history of, of Kanban and you know, all these kinds of storytelling I was able to do through illustrations. And then later
Steve_Edwards:
So
David_Neal:
came the chip.
Steve_Edwards:
what kind of, I'm sorry, what kind of, so what were these drawings of, like Kanban boards or illustrations for your stories or
David_Neal:
Yeah,
Steve_Edwards:
what
David_Neal:
some
Steve_Edwards:
exactly were you illustrating?
David_Neal:
of them were silly illustrations like, you know how in Agile one of the practices is like, you know, creating user stories, you'll like write a story on an index card. Well, I drew a very crude index card and I drew, you know, hand lettered on the index card, something like, you know, as a user I want to run with scissors.
Steve_Edwards:
Ha ha
David_Neal:
You know,
Steve_Edwards:
ha ha.
David_Neal:
something. something funny like that,
Steve_Edwards:
Yes,
David_Neal:
you know,
Steve_Edwards:
that's great.
David_Neal:
and that's what came up on the screen. And people just ate it up. So I'm talking about the challenges of agile practice and, you know, some of my personal stories around how I became involved in agile and what I've learned along the way. So yeah, there was one illustration that was like a very crude whiteboard with some you know, to do doing and done lanes on it with, you know, some squares to represent sticky notes. And, uh, it was all very poorly drawn, but that was kind of the charm too. You know, even, even though the drawings were terrible in the sense that, you know, I didn't know what I was doing and, you know, couldn't draw very well at the time. Uh, it was, um, it was still entertaining. And then later on became the challenge of, well, now that I know how to do this, now that I can see that it's so powerful, how do I apply this to my technical talks as well? And so I started out by just doing a mixture of, you know, anytime that I wasn't showing code, I would, you know, just adding a simple silly face or a drawing of a rocket ship. or whatever onto the screen. So instead of using any kind of clip art or photos, I forced myself to, well, how can I draw this to represent this idea that I'm talking about?
Steve_Edwards:
So yeah, so as somebody who has attended many tech talks and watched slides, I can attest, at least for myself personally, they art, some sort of art is definitely more engaging. Other forms that I've seen from speakers are gifts or GIFs, don't
David_Neal:
Mm-hmm.
Steve_Edwards:
wanna get that debate raging, or memes or photos or something like that. So. Yeah, when you're in the middle of a dry tech talk, then the art certainly does does a lot to spice things up.
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
edit here for a minute my phone's going off I forgot to turn it down my house phone just a second we grab that Okay, done with the edit. Okay, so you started throwing those in and how did you know or note the engagement? Is it like just looking at people's faces that you're talking, you can tell that people are interested and nobody's dozing off or falling asleep? You know, is it comments afterwards, all of the above?
David_Neal:
It was absolutely all the above. I could tell, you know, just from people's expressions and the smiles and the engagement with the topics and the stories I was telling, that it was far more engaging. And then I had, you know, folks coming up to me after I started doing these talks, who just gushed about... how much they enjoyed it or they would ask me, did you do those drawings or how did you do this? And folks asking me, hey, how can I do this? How can I start doing this same kind of thing for the talks that I give or presentations that I need to give at work? Or do you think I could apply what you've done to some of the boring meetings that I. that we have in my office or something like that. So just the feedback, one way or another, was just over the top. Compared to the three or four years prior to that, the engagement that I got from that moment forward has just been exponentially higher.
Steve_Edwards:
So how much time did you put into drawing and learning to draw on a regular basis? I'm assuming this wasn't just, hey, I'm gonna draw this one time. Oh, that looks good, I'm done. You definitely have your own style as I look at your art and things you put on Twitter, your book or so on. So drawing like that, especially for a non artistically gifted person is... And maybe that's not true about you. I don't know. I just know it is for me But that's got to take a decent amount of time and practice So I'm curious how much time did you put in what tools did you use? Did you use like pen and paper? You mentioned that you had an old iPad with the cheap stylus, you know, was it all electronic stuff? How did that all work?
David_Neal:
Yeah, well first of all I've pretty much stuck to electronic and have since. I dabbled a little bit here and there with physical mediums of pen and paper, sketch books and things, but I keep coming back to using an iPad. I think it's a great drawing experience. But for folks who are starting out, you could use something like, you can buy a lap size and use dry erase markers and sketch some things out and take photos and add those into, like a digital scanner app on your phone and import those into your slides. That's a really cheap alternative to getting stuff into presentations. I couldn't tell you how much time I ended up spending on that first presentation. I know I was still like in the hotel room the night before I gave my talk. I was still drawing. I couldn't stop. I just fell in love with it right away. And, um, even though the drawings were terrible, I had so much fun and yeah, I, I wondered if folks would get it or not. I wondered if folks might make fun of some of the stuff that I created. So there was some apprehension and anxiety there of like sharing these things in the wild, but I was like, I'm going to go for it. You know, based on what I saw in Dan Rome's presentation in his book is like, it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be art. It just needs to be iconic and look like the thing that you're talking about. That's all that matters. It doesn't have to be beautiful. And like I said, you know, even the fact that it was terrible is... added to some of the charm and entertainment. But once I did that presentation and I had fallen in love with drawing, I knew that it was something I wanted to continue doing, but I had to have an excuse to draw. It's not like I'm creating a new presentation every week. So, I decided to adopt a learn in the open kind of attitude I committed, I kind of set a goal for myself. Like I'm, you know, every week I'm going to try to draw one thing a week. I'm going to set aside some time and, you know, try to come up with a clever, funny idea. I remember like drawing a, you remember the old Visa or MasterCard commercials where it said, you know, it's everywhere you want to be.
Steve_Edwards:
Yes.
David_Neal:
Well, I drew a parody of that, that was JavaScript that said, you know, JavaScript, it's everywhere you want to be. And, you know, I, it was a terrible drawing. I posted it on Twitter and got a lot of laughs and feedback. And so Twitter and other social media became like my accountability partner for creating these drawings. I would come up with something about once a week and post it on Twitter and get you know, get positive reinforcement from social media to keep getting better. And, um, I, I don't know how much time I've invested in drawing over the last six, seven years now, but, um, it has been a joy that I didn't know, uh, was waiting for me. Um, it's, it's become quite a wonderful hobby. And one of the cool things I found was, you know, how in programming, when you get, um, in that zone, it's like you're, you're deeply focused, you're, you're coding, you're, um, you wake up on the other end and you're like, you know, what happened? You know, the day's gone. I forgot to eat, you know, kind of feeling, right?
Steve_Edwards:
or the night's gone and it's time to get up and go to work or something like that.
David_Neal:
Right. Well, I found that when I was drawing, I got that same feeling. And that was part of the, you know, the encouragement or the creative rush is that when I was so focused on reverse engineering, this, you know, my programming mind is thinking, well, okay, here's an image, or here's something I want to draw. How can I decompose or reverse engineer this photo so that I can create something that's recognizable. With the tools that I have and the skills that I have, how can I create a drawing that's going to remotely resemble this object or this idea, this concept? And so when I would get into those moments, I found that I was able to get into that creative zone faster and deeper than even some of the programming I was doing.
Steve_Edwards:
So you mentioned Dan Roam, yeah, his book, Show and Tell. So in terms of your technique and learning how to draw better, has your learning been mostly from trial and error? As you said, learning out in the open, have you used other books and tips on how to draw better from different people? What's been your, I guess, your source or sources of? of tips on how to do it better.
David_Neal:
Yeah. Aside from watching a few tutorials on YouTube, just to get some vocabulary and understand what folks were talking about when it comes to using terms like values and shading and some techniques. Aside from that, I'm pretty much a hundred percent self-taught. And it has very much been a trial and error kind of thing. And it's been. learning the tool, like the apps that I use, and learning how to, you know, be really a power user of the applications and use that to my advantage, and learn like the, you know, the experimentation and learning some new things. Like, you know, early on, I figured out without anybody showing me, hey, I can use layers inside this drawing app to compose a drawing, you know, these stackable kind of images so that, you know, if I need to make a change, I'm not totally messing up, you know, some other part of the illustration. I can just redo or, you know, refactor one layer, you know, and to use engineering terminology, I can refactor one layer and the other ones will still be the same. And I figured out how to do that like with shading. Uh, there's a, there's a pretty simple way of adding, uh, 3d shading to a, an illustration that doesn't involve coming up with any new colors is it's, um, it's just using, uh, a mask or, uh, a layer on top of that, that is multiplying, uh, gray on top of that, that layer. And I, I know I would go and, you know, maybe watch a YouTube video like, Oh, well they're. You know, they're kind of doing the same thing. I figured it out on my own. This is cool.
Steve_Edwards:
So when you started out, did you start out just in black and white and then start adding colors later? Do you start using colors right off the bat? Out of that one. So, I'm gonna go ahead and start with the white and then I'm gonna start with the blue. So, I'm gonna start with the blue, and then I'm gonna start with the blue,
David_Neal:
I started using colors from the beginning, but I discovered that as I got better at drawing and my skills got better, my techniques got better, I found that I didn't have to be very technical with the drawings. In fact, the simpler, the better. And what I found was I went through this kind of arch of like trying to get better at drawing and trying to make more complicated or more illustrative or artful pieces and then realizing I don't need to do that. In fact, for presentation purposes, black and white are really all I need. And that is visually much more, there's a lot more contrast there. It's visually more remarkable I think. It gets people's attention because there's no color. I may like have an entire presentation that's black and white and then maybe have one or two slides that have color in them and that makes those slides really stand out in the presentation. And one of the reasons for that is I think visually when you're presenting to an audience screen. The screens are unpredictable how, you know, what quality they are, and usually they're terrible quality. I found that, hey, if I'm presenting code, if I'm doing any kind of live coding, it's actually better to have black text on white background because of the higher contrast. Because if you try to use a dark theme for a presentation, depending on how good the projector is, it's probably not going to be very readable. Right. So I'm a big fan of making things as high contrast and as visible, appealing as possible. And I think black on white is, is a safe bet. And so all the talks that I've been giving in recent years, that that's been my go to.
Steve_Edwards:
Yeah, I can speak as someone who's given talks and seen talks. The dark theme just doesn't work. It's just way hard to read, especially if you, if you're in a room, say where the lighting is not really good, uh, or there's issues with the screen or the projector or something like that.
David_Neal:
Yep.
Steve_Edwards:
The black and white is the cleanest and best for seeing your code for sure.
David_Neal:
Yep.
Steve_Edwards:
So now we've talked about how you got into the drawing and learning the open and using Twitter. Let's talk about dad jokes. I have a slight reputation for the dad jokes and I know that you have the illustrated book of dad jokes that you can find on your site. So how did that come around? Have you always been like a dad joke fan and just found this as a way to combine your two interests or is that a later interest or how does that work?
David_Neal:
It's kind of a later interest, but you remember me talking about like the JavaScript, it's everywhere you want to be. You
Steve_Edwards:
Yes.
David_Neal:
know, I started creating a lot of puns and, you know, programming related jokes in that vein and had a lot of fun with that. So over time, as I started creating more and more of these kind of parodies or puns of visual puns, I started adding them to my presentations. Usually at the beginning, like, you know, a lot of times you're giving a talk, you're, you know, you get everything set up and ready to go and there's still five or 10 minutes before your talk starts and you're just standing there looking awkwardly at everybody and, you know, everybody's looking awkwardly at you and feeling self-conscious and all that. So I decided, you know what, I'm gonna I'm going to put some of my jokes here that, you know, some of my, uh, my number one hits from, from Twitter and put those in my slides and just cycle through them before my talk starts. And that, that really, uh, was a home run. You know, folks really, really love that. I'd people I'd see people, you know, taking pictures of the screen or, and you know, laughing and everything. So that was really encouraging. So I continued to do that. Whenever something would hit me, I would think, hey, you know, I'm gonna turn that into an illustration and post it on social media and see if anybody thinks it's funny. And I can't remember, like a couple of years ago, I did a 30 day challenge. to myself to do like, I'm going to, for 30 days, I created a, a quote, like a inspirational quote and illustrated it, you know, so things like, uh, Martin Luther King Jr. or CS Lewis, or, you know, some of the past presidents or, or, you know, any kind of quotes of wisdom, uh, that, that folks know. And I would. like try to create an illustration with that. So I did that for 30 days. I stuck to it and was able to accomplish it. And what I found was at the end of that 30 days, I kind of had this, you know, a little bit of a leg up on, you know, it forced me to think about ways of drawing that I hadn't thought of before. Because I would come up with these ideas like, well, how do I do that? How do I come up with an illustration that goes with that quote? And, it kind of forced me to learn. So last year at the beginning of 2021, and I don't remember why I, in the first place, I wanted to do dad jokes, but it seemed like the easiest thing to do. Oh, I remember my son, one of my sons gave me a dad joke calendar. And,
Steve_Edwards:
Yes, I have one on my desk.
David_Neal:
and, and when I read the first day, I was like, Oh, I could draw that. you know, that would be a lot of fun to draw. And so I had this idea at the beginning of 2021 that I would draw a dad joke every day. And my initial goal was, you know, every day for the month of January, I would draw a dad joke. And I was pleased when I accomplished that goal. But the feedback was so great from folks that I felt like, hey, what if I could keep going? How long can I keep this up? And so one month turned into two months. And by the time I'm getting into March, I'm thinking, this is... This has got momentum. I can't stop now. I, you know, I gotta, I gotta do this as long as I can. And you know, how long, you know, it could it be possible to keep up a streak of one year drawing something every day for a year? I didn't think it was possible. Like I felt like something was gonna come up, some kind of event that I was speaking at or travel that I was gonna have to do. that something was going to happen and it was going to interrupt where I couldn't publish something every day. But the long story short, I somehow managed to do it. I drew a dad joke every day, 365 illustrations for the year of 2021. And throughout the year, people kept saying, well, when are you going to create a book? When are you going to publish these? Are you going to create a calendar? you know, lots of different ideas. And I'm thinking, yeah, I would love to do that. I don't know if I can do that or not. So this year after sitting idle for a few months, I'm thinking, well, Father's Day is coming up. And it sure would be cool to turn these illustrations into a book. And it was quite a challenge, but I was able to go the self-publishing route through Kindle on Amazon and create a color book and Kindle version of, I think I took, it's either, 365 that I drew, I picked the 250 that would fit the book format and turned that into a book.
Steve_Edwards:
Yeah, my foray into the dad joke sort of had a, uh, a similar start. I think I've told the story before, but I was at a very, very large company doing, doing a development and we used to have a standard meeting every day, you know, sort of the pseudo scrum type of approach. And at the end of every meeting, my boss would say, does anybody have any words of wisdom and nobody would say anything. So one day I started piping up. and saying just, you know, some stupid words of wisdom or something. And so
David_Neal:
Hehehe
Steve_Edwards:
I started like looking for a while there. Pinterest had some decent ones. And
David_Neal:
No.
Steve_Edwards:
then I'd Google over the Internet and I find some and. And and share those, everybody loved them. You know, I'd get laughs in the group.
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
And and after a while, it was harder and harder to find, you know, quote unquote words of wisdom tips, you know, that would have some sort of humorous
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
twist to them, that's always a requirement. Just the straight ones are boring. One
David_Neal:
Yep.
Steve_Edwards:
of my favorites is, when I die, I wanna have an open casket funeral, but, or excuse me, a closed casket funeral. But halfway through, I want the organist to start playing pop goes the weasel over and over till pretty much everybody's staring at the casket wondering if I'm gonna pop out, that type
David_Neal:
Yep.
Steve_Edwards:
of thing. I did one where I said next time, somebody comes up to you and asks you if you're at a store, and an employee comes up and says, did you find everything you needed? You should say, no, are you hiding things?
David_Neal:
Ha ha ha
Steve_Edwards:
And so one of my coworkers said, there's a lady at Costco that does to me every time, I'm gonna say that to her next time. And
David_Neal:
Yep.
Steve_Edwards:
it turned into that. So pretty soon, I've always been one for the puns or the one liners or the play on words.
David_Neal:
Right.
Steve_Edwards:
Stephen Wright is to this day my favorite stand-up comedian if you know who he is.
David_Neal:
Yeah, that's
Steve_Edwards:
Incredibly
David_Neal:
her dude.
Steve_Edwards:
dry, no smile, no raising
David_Neal:
Yep.
Steve_Edwards:
of the voice, one-liners and I would love to throw some of his out like you know one of the best ones I can do is if I'm sitting in a group and my foot falls asleep you know because I'm sitting weird or something like that I'll say man I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day because that means it's gonna be up all night you know that kind of stuff. And then pretty soon I started thinking, oh, look at the, start telling the dad jokes. And so I have a number of sources like on Instagram or Twitter accounts, or I have a dad joke calendar as well, you know, sitting in front of me and one of those little square desk calendars. And so I just started telling one every the day and I started posting them on Twitter and Facebook. You know, I'm one of the older people that still uses Facebook occasionally. Uh, and I would get people coming up to me in places like church. or other places, dude, I love the dad jokes, those are so awesome.
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
They make my day every day, you know. And then I started doing them in Slack at work. The organization and company I work for now, we started out as, I was literally employee number three and we had about four or five. Well, then we got bought by a larger organization. And so we had a new Slack room, you know, organization. for the larger company, GovExec. And there's a random room, and a lot of places will have a random, just
David_Neal:
Right.
Steve_Edwards:
to chat about whatever goof around. So I started posting a dad joke for the day in there, and I'd get responses. And then one week I was gone on vacation and didn't have access to the Slack channel. And I came back and there's a message in there that says, am I the only one that misses Steve's dad jokes every day in here?
David_Neal:
Yeah
Steve_Edwards:
some guy pops up and says, yeah, my dad died a long time ago and these dad jokes remind me of him. And I was like, wow,
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
talk about having a big impact just by sharing a little bit
David_Neal:
Oh
Steve_Edwards:
of humor,
David_Neal:
yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
you know? So, yeah, when I saw, I was looking at your Twitter and I saw that, I was like, that's awesome, you know, that's a great way to get a little humor out there. And
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
people ask me if I write my own. I say, no, I'm not quite that skilled. I have my own sources, so
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
I don't. When it's on a wild tongue-in-cheek, I'll say, yeah, I write all my own jokes. Didn't you know that?
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
But it's funny, what's even better is when it inspires other people to start doing the same thing. So we're in our random room at work, other people have started coming in and adding jokes and stuff too.
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
So it's just sort of a fun thing to do. And then I started, about a year ago, I started telling some at the end of the podcast with Picks. And it's just a fun little thing,
David_Neal:
Yep.
Steve_Edwards:
fun thing to do, but
David_Neal:
Well,
Steve_Edwards:
it sure
David_Neal:
I,
Steve_Edwards:
can add a lot.
David_Neal:
yeah, I experienced a lot of that too. Last year as I was doing these jokes, I was hearing from folks who were taking the illustrations that I was posting and sharing them on Slack channels and different things at work or with their family. One, one dad says, told me that he looks forward to my dad jokes every day so that he has something to share with his kids when they get home. and loves getting the eye roll from his kids. And that's part of what fueled me to keep on going, was hearing feedback from folks like that all throughout the year, saying what an impact it had made on them, and how they were sharing it with other people, and families, and coworkers. And it was just really cool to see that.
Steve_Edwards:
Excellent. So is there anything else we missed? Anything to discuss on your drawing journey?
David_Neal:
Um, well, I will say that one outcome of the drawing the dad jokes, uh, committing to doing something like that on a regular basis, uh, improved some of my skills tremendously. Uh, I could see over that, the course of that year, uh, at, at different points throughout the year, I could look back at say the previous three months or whatever and, and see. a difference in the quality of the drawings or the quality of the lettering or the lines or just how I was doing certain things. That year, I learned a lot. I've become a real believer in this idea of practice. To use an overused quote, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It's commitment to doing a little bit of practice on a regular basis. And it may not seem like you're making much progress, but over time, uh, you'll look back and go, wow, I can't believe how far I've come. And it could be, you know, five, 10 minutes a day. And you can apply that to so many things. Like we're all beginners when it comes to something. Um, you know, anytime you pick up a new computer language or you're trying to learn a new skill, you're trying to learn, yeah, hey, I want to be a, I want to learn how to play guitar or I want to learn how to, you know, speak a new language. Um, it's going to be painful at first. It's going to be hard and it's going to be hard to, um, to push through. those feelings of like, I'm not getting anywhere, or this is really hard, or it's just not working. But if you stick with it, and you commit to doing a little bit of practice on a regular basis, you know, doesn't have to be every day, but some kind of commitment, you're going to make progress. And over time, you'll be amazed at how far you can come.
Steve_Edwards:
Well, yeah, I think, and I think probably an important part of that, uh, based on my experience is, uh, the feedback, you know, can help you, uh, uh, it gives you incentive, I guess, you know, it's like, you know, say you go on a, you want to go on a diet, you want to lose weight, you want to lose 20 pounds or whatever the number is. And so you're, you know, modifying your food intake and your exercising and If you go through all that and you don't see any weight come off, you get discouraged. Now this doesn't work, I'm gonna quit. But if you see the weight come off and you see that improvement, you see the results.
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
then yeah, that's going to give you more incentive. And so, you know, when you're doing this out in public and people are saying, hey, this is awesome, I love it. Or even if I would, you know, I guess it's going to depend on the person. Even if you yourself notice, hey, I'm getting better at this. I can do it quicker and I can do it better. And my pictures don't look so stick figure like, then you know, that's going to give you the, the incentive as well, for sure. So, all right, well, excellent. Well, thank you for that history and that story. I find that hearing success stories like that sort of, motivates people to wanna try the same thing, even if it's not the same thing that you're doing. It motivates
David_Neal:
Yeah, I
Steve_Edwards:
them
David_Neal:
sure hope so.
Steve_Edwards:
to follow their own thing. Years ago, I had followed a dream. I pursued a dream for quite a while for a particular job and I finally got one of the jobs and I was working at a large software company at the time and or a medium-sized software company anyway. And so the word had gone out that hey, you know, see who's leaving because he got such and such a job. And I had a lady who worked on my floor in a related department. I happen to see her in the lunchroom one day and she said something to me. She says. I know that. seeing what you did is gonna cause more people to follow their own dreams or their own goals too.
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
So yeah, your story is definitely one, especially for me, you know, one of those, I don't know if you call it a bucket list item, or I guess the list of things I would love to do, but I just haven't taken the time to do drawing and being able to be artistic
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
is certainly one of those for sure. For sure.
David_Neal:
Yeah, for so long I would see other artwork. I could appreciate it. Like I, you know, it really resonated with me. Anytime I'd see somebody who could create some cool illustrations. I remember years ago, there was a designer that worked at a software company who was like creating stickers and T-shirts. And I thought, man, that is so cool. I wish I could do that. And now I'm creating T-shirts for Pluralsight and stickers for Pluralsight. I created swag and shirts and other things for different conferences. If you go to say Connect Tech in Atlanta, it's a pretty cool conference. All their illustrations and artwork, I did that. And that's like hugely rewarding to be able to see some of the results of these years of practice that I've been. this journey that I've been on to see folks not only appreciate the work that I do, but actually use it and enjoy it. It's been hugely rewarding.
Steve_Edwards:
Excellent. Okay, so with that, we're gonna move to picks. Picks are the part of the show where we get to talk about other things that may not be tech related. In the past here on this show, we've had children's books and foods and TV shows and movies and adult books and anything else. So we'll let David go first. What do you have for picks for us? Anything?
David_Neal:
Yeah, so even if you're not interested in getting into illustrations for the purpose of like giving talks or creating content for one of the things you can do that is still extremely powerful is to take sketch notes doodle on your notes like if you're taking notes it during presentations or you go to a talk or you watch a talk. online. If you use illustrations as part of your, you know, capturing notes, it will help you to learn. It'll help you to remember. You can go back and look at some of those doodles and things you've done on paper. And it may sound silly, but you can remember and recall much more information that way. And so I highly recommend checking out a book called the Sketch Note Handbook. by Mike Road. So fantastic introduction into how you can, just using the skills that you have, using the pen and paper or whatever your preference is, start to take more illustrative and artful approaches to taking notes and helping that to retain and learn things. Outside of illustrations, You know, I'm a fan of guitars, music, I like to eat bacon, I like to drink coffee. So if you want to talk about any of those topics, I'm game.
Steve_Edwards:
Eating bacon, coffee, is there a particular brand or type of bacon that you like or are you just sort of a bacon generalist?
David_Neal:
Well, my go-to, I appreciate lots of different kinds of bacon, but my go-to, like everyday kind of bacon for me, is Wright's W-R-I-G-H-T. They used to make, I don't think they do anymore, but they used to make a pecan smoked bacon that was my favorite.
Steve_Edwards:
That sounds good.
David_Neal:
But the applewood is still pretty solid. a few years ago. And the bacon challenge is you eat nothing but bacon for 30 days.
Steve_Edwards:
Good Lord,
David_Neal:
And
Steve_Edwards:
my arteries are screaming just listening to that.
David_Neal:
I know it sounds crazy, right? I lost 18 pounds eating nothing but bacon for 30 days.
Steve_Edwards:
Oh my
David_Neal:
And
Steve_Edwards:
gosh, that sounds so opposite of what you would expect from hearing something like that.
David_Neal:
Well, it's basically like low carb or keto type diet. I was cooking about four pounds of bacon a day. And so I found lots of different ways to mass produce bacon in different formats. And somebody asked me, lots of people have asked me, didn't you get tired of eating bacon?
Steve_Edwards:
That was my
David_Neal:
No,
Steve_Edwards:
question.
David_Neal:
no, not at all. Bacon's awesome. Doesn't matter how much you have of it. It's still awesome every time.
Steve_Edwards:
Oh my gosh, 30 days of eating nothing but bacon and you lose 18 pounds, huh?
David_Neal:
Yep.
Steve_Edwards:
Wow, that's
David_Neal:
Now,
Steve_Edwards:
amazing.
David_Neal:
one of the most interesting places I've run into in my journeys, uh, if you happen to find yourself in Denver, Colorado, there's a, used to be just one of them, I think there's two or three of them now, but it's called the Bacon Social House and it's a restaurant that pretty much focuses on bacon. So there's bacon drinks, bacon desserts, bacon meals. You can order a flight of bacon, which comes out on this charcuterie board, like six different kinds of bacon. It's really amazing.
Steve_Edwards:
Wow, you are quite the bacon connoisseur, I have to admit. That's quite impressive. Quite impressive. So Wright's Bacon is the go-to bacon of choice, huh?
David_Neal:
Yep. For cooking purposes, one of the most popular is Oh man, now I'm drawing a blank. Benton's bacon. It's a very famous bacon. It's made in Tennessee. Chefs use it all over the world. And it's so strong. It's very salty. It's a lot of smoke flavor. So you can't really eat it by itself. By itself, it tastes like you're eating a piece of charred meat. that came from a barn fire.
Steve_Edwards:
Ha ha ha ha ha.
David_Neal:
But when you cook it in stuff like an omelet or some other dish that calls for bacon, it is very, very good.
Steve_Edwards:
Now what's the brand of that again? Bitten's?
David_Neal:
Benton. B-E-N.
Steve_Edwards:
Oh, Benton's Bacon, Benton's,
David_Neal:
Yeah, Benton.
Steve_Edwards:
gotcha, okay.
David_Neal:
Benton's Bacon.
Steve_Edwards:
All right, we'll put the links to that in the show notes for sure. Awesome. Those are some definitely some good picks. I like that.
David_Neal:
And why don't football players wear glasses?
Steve_Edwards:
I don't know.
David_Neal:
because it's a contact sport.
Steve_Edwards:
Yes, yes, wait, oh dang, I missed the opportunity for the rim shot, but we'll give you a delayed rim shot here. Thank you, thank you. As somebody who wears contacts, I can appreciate that very much. And then now that it's football season, a very timely joke, shall we say. Okay, my turn. So speaking of dad jokes, as we have, I will share my dad jokes of the week. So, you know, a common... Topic among that you've heard among women is how painful childbirth is. You know, it's one of the most painful things you can go through in your life. And they've said many times that childbirth is the most painful thing anyone can experience. Maybe I was too young to remember, but I really didn't think it hurt that much.
David_Neal:
Nice.
Steve_Edwards:
Um, and so, uh, not too long ago, I was looking for a gift for my wife and for, you know, like a birthday. And so I went to the department store and I asked the clerk, Hey, how much for that funny looking spray? She said, perfume. I said, no, per bottle. And then finally, this one's sort of a meaty joke. What do you give to a cannibal who's late for dinner? the cold shoulder.
David_Neal:
Oh man, that's
Steve_Edwards:
Yes,
David_Neal:
great.
Steve_Edwards:
that's in that good.
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
So yes, those are the dad jokes of the
David_Neal:
Nice.
Steve_Edwards:
day. So with that, we will wrap up. David, if people want to see your cartoons and buy your book, if they wanna give you money or accolades, where can they contact you? Where can they see your stuff?
David_Neal:
Yeah, best place is my website, reverentgeek.com. R-E-V-E-R-E-N-T-G-E-E-K. And I am reverentgeek everywhere, so you can find me on Twitter or Instagram, or GitHub, any of those, I'm reverentgeek everywhere. On my website, you can find some technical stuff, you can find portfolios of some of my illustration work, and you can find a link to my book and order some stickers. I also draw avatars for folks. So some caricature style, more illustration profile style, I can do... lots of different things. I've been doing that for years. I've even done avatars for entire teams, conferences, things like that. So if you're interested in a drawing for your avatar, hit me up.
Steve_Edwards:
Oh, I might take you up on that. I have a little avatar that I use everywhere on my Twitter and I use it in Slack and everywhere that I just made up years ago on faceyourmega.com I think was what it was because I saw another developer that had one and I thought that's cool but I might have to
David_Neal:
Yeah.
Steve_Edwards:
hit you up for an avatar. I could use an update. It still shows me with a goatee that I don't have anymore. But anyway, all righty. Well, thank you for coming on. Thank you for telling your story. I love the story and I'm sure that many other people will as well. And that will wrap it up for this episode of Views on View. We will talk to you all next time.