PragmaticBookshelf

PragmaticBookshelf

Devtalk Sponsor

Spotlight: VM Brasseur (Author)

A Hero’s Journey
with VM (Vicky) Brasseur
@vmbrasseur

VM (Vicky) Brasseur, author of Forge Your Future with Open Source, discusses her journey to becoming a Pragmatic Bookshelf author. Find out how VM went from free/open source advocate and corporate strategist to pragmatic author, and you’ll discover what it takes to write a book.

INTERVIEW

Listen to the complete audio interview here:

https://pragprog.libsyn.com/episode-02-vm-brasseur

WIN!

We’re giving away one of VMB’s books to one lucky winner! Simply post a comment or a question in her AMA below, and the Devtalk bot will randomly pick a winner at a time of the author’s choosing … then automatically update this thread with the results!


SHOW SUMMARY

For those who prefer to read rather than listen, the following are highlights from the interview.

VM (Vicky) Brasseur spent most of her twenty-plus years in the tech industry leading software development departments and teams, providing technical management and leadership consulting for small and medium businesses, and helping companies understand, use, release, and contribute to free and open source software in a way that’s good for both their bottom line and for the community.

After discovering Project Gutenberg—a free eBook platform for public domain content—VM was hooked on the free/open source model as a way to share documentation, software, and knowledge.

Although VM had been writing articles and contributing to free/open source projects before becoming an author, making the leap from article writer to book author was intimidating—and not necessarily something she considered on her own. But thanks to her editor, Brian MacDonald, VM was convinced to write Forge Your Future with Open Source, the first and only book to detail how to contribute to free and open source software projects.

You can stream the episode here: https://pragprog.libsyn.com/ or subscribe to the RSS feed using the following link: https://pragprog.libsyn.com/rss.


Now that you know her story, check out VMB’s books below!

PragProg Books by VM (Vicky) Brasseur

Dont forget! You can get 35% off VMB’s book with the coupon code devtalk.com!

Forge Your Future with Open Source
book-forge-your-future-with-open-source


Connect with VM (Vicky) Brasseur

Twitter
LinkedIn
Website


YOUR TURN!

We’re now opening up the thread for your questions! Ask VMB anything! Please keep it clean and don’t forget by participating you automatically enter the competition to win one of her ebooks!

Most Liked

vmbrasseur

vmbrasseur

Author of Forge Your Future with Open Source

/me waves

Howdy, all!

Have any thoughts you’d like to share or questions about being an author for Prag (or just in general)?

AstonJ

AstonJ

I started listening to this but got a call halfway thro and haven’t had time to get back to it, but just want to say I was really enjoying it - you were all having such a blast! :smiley: (I reckon you should organise an night out once these covid lockdowns are over …I get the feeling you’d have a whale of a time!! :partying_face:)

On topic: does your book cover more general topics like making a living from open source software too Vicky? I reckon a few people may be interested in that as it has cropped up in conversation a few times over the years. (Something I always mention is public speaking - a friend of mine earns a chunk of his living through that.)

vmbrasseur

vmbrasseur

Author of Forge Your Future with Open Source

Howdy, @AstonJ!

This book is more about how FOSS can help your career than how to get paid to work on it.

However, the next book (currently being written!) will include a lot of information more relevant to your question since it’s about the business strategy side of FOSS participation.

Where Next?

Popular Community topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
A PragProg Hero’s Journey with Dr. Venkat Subramaniam @venkats How do you grow a successful career as a software developer while...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
“Don’t Be Afraid” Hero’s Journey with Maik Schmidt @maik ! When you’re focused on your goals and you keep your eyes open for opp...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
“Finding the Boundaries” Hero’s Journey with Noel Rappin @noelrappin Even when you’re ultimately right about what the future ho...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
A Hero’s Journey with VM (Vicky) Brasseur @vmbrasseur VM (Vicky) Brasseur, author of Forge Your Future with Open Source, discuss...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
A Hero’s Journey with Brian P. Hogan @bphogan Brian P. Hogan, author of Build Websites with Hugo, discusses his journey to becom...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Rebecca Skinner @RebeccaSkinner Welcome to our latest author spotlight, where we sit down with Rebecca Skinner, auth...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight: Sean Moriarity @seanmor5 Machine learning sounds both magical and difficult, but with the right tools and the right...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Democratizing Deployment with Ellie and Pep @elliefairholm and @Gilacost Ellie Fairholm and Josep (Pep) Giralt D’Lacoste are o...
New
New
Margaret
Ask Me Anything with Ellie Fairholm and Josep Giralt D’Lacoste @elliefairholm and @Gilacost On February 24 and 25, we are giving you ...
New

Other popular topics Top

New
Rainer
My first contact with Erlang was about 2 years ago when I used RabbitMQ, which is written in Erlang, for my job. This made me curious and...
New
AstonJ
I’ve been hearing quite a lot of comments relating to the sound of a keyboard, with one of the most desirable of these called ‘thock’, he...
New
AstonJ
Do the test and post your score :nerd_face: :keyboard: If possible, please add info such as the keyboard you’re using, the layout (Qw...
New
AstonJ
In case anyone else is wondering why Ruby 3 doesn’t show when you do asdf list-all ruby :man_facepalming: do this first: asdf plugin-upd...
New
AstonJ
Continuing the discussion from Thinking about learning Crystal, let’s discuss - I was wondering which languages don’t GC - maybe we can c...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Programming Ruby is the most complete book on Ruby, covering both the language itself and the standard library as well as commonly used t...
New
DevotionGeo
I have always used antique keyboards like Cherry MX 1800 or Cherry MX 8100 and almost always have modified the switches in some way, like...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Lint your docs like code: turn any style guide into enforceable rules with Vale and publish clear, consistent content every time. ...
New
xiji2646-netizen
There’s a GitHub repo at forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills that’s sitting at 97.8k stars. It’s a single CLAUDE.md file with four behavi...
New