Cory Doctorow is a bestselling author of both science fiction and
techno-sociological nonfiction, one of four editors of longtime popular
weblog boingboing,
and an activist and advocate for intellectual property rights, working
extensively with the Electronic Freedom Foundation and others to put
control of content back in the hands of the users like you and me.
Photo credit: Jonathan Worth 2013
Today,
we talk about the EFF's plan to defeat Digital Rights Management (DRM)
as a business model of rent-seeking corporations. DRM is the set of
digital locks on the content you buy--everything from eBooks to your
car's computer have DRM embedded--and while it isn't impossible to
break, it is highly illegal for you (or anyone) to do so. That means you
don't have control of things that you bought. It also means that
security flaws cannot always be researched or revealed. That's a big
problem.
We also talk about how he became a
writer and how he gets his writing done despite a punishing travel and
speaking schedule. Spoiler: 250 words a day, every day will result in a
finished product very quickly. That's one page per day. You can do that,
can't you?
Shava Nerad is the former Executive Director of the Tor Project, open source software that helps users protect their online privacy. She is currently CEO of Oddfellow Studios, and a frequent writer through Quora (where I met her) and on her Patreon site.
Today, we talk about her early days as the youngest female Chief Software Engineer at DEC and IT manager at MIT, how to manage and relate to very different people, how she won an argument with Richard Stallman, and how and why Tor came to be one of the most praised and reviled pieces of software in the world (often by the same people).
Extended bio:
Shava Nerad has been working online since 1982, when she was Chief
Software Engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation on the IVIS Project,
the first commercial multimedia authoring system in the world. She has
been staff or faculty at UMass/Amherst, MIT, UNC/Chapel Hill, and
University of Oregon. She’s done commercial work for DEC, Varian,
ComputerVision, her own web consultancy Net Prophets, Inc., and eMarket
Group, Ltd.
While at eMarket as VP/Marketing and Business Development, she led
her company to 3rd fastest growing private company in Oregon, #285 on
the Inc5000, 25 in the Inc Urban 100, and Best Companies to Work for in
Oregon. She was nominated for Woman Entrepreneur of the Year by
reporting staff of the Portland (OR) Business Journal for her business
acumen and service to her community. She has a long history of nonprofit
and political activism, including leadership positions at Oregon Public
Networking/efn.org, The Tor Project, and Democratic organizations in
Oregon.
David Heinemeier Hansson is the co-founder (with Jason Fried) of Basecamp (formerly 37signals) , author of Remote and Rework (also with Jason Fried), and creator of the Ruby on Rails framework. He's also a race car driver, having won the 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race, and an avid photographer.
Today, we talk about why it's best to build products that you would (and do) use, the low-risk approach to building a company, why funding yourself helps to slow the clock, how that approach bleeds over to every aspect of the business (from marketing to management), and why much of his life is lived outside the office.
