Obligatory First Post and Explanation

Woah! Some things have changed. Yes... yes they have.

For those of you who haven’t seen my most recent YouTube video, that’s probably a good place to start. So… here’s the video explaining most of what’s going on here.

So, number 1, yes the YouTube channel name has changed. And like I mentioned in the video I really want to provide more details around the topics I cover. This (new) site is the place for all that content.

But… that's not the whole story and I think that many of you may be email subscribers from my old (now no longer in service) newsletter that was called “The Weekly Cloud”. If you were subscribed to The Weekly Cloud you probably noticed that there really weren’t that many emails sent, and that’s mainly because it was overwhelming trying to maintain so much content.

Originally I naively thought I could maintain the following types of content.

1. A youtube channel

2. A blog

3. An email newsletter

4. A medium channel

And that was a mistake. What ended up happening was that I would make videos, I would transcribe those videos then I would post them to my website and medium.com. Honestly, that’s redundant and kinda unnecessary. While it is good for SEO, I’m not sure organic search results are really what I was going for anyway. so… it’s time for a new plan.

The New Plan

Not to repeat myself too much, but like I mentioned in the video, the first part of the new plan is to change the format of my videos slightly. I think I was already kinda doing this, but the name of the channel didn’t match the content, so now that’s been fixed. The videos on YouTube will continue to be not-too-long, simply because long-winded videos just don’t do that well on YouTube for most audiences. A lot of my viewers simply aren’t looking for deep dives. You might be one of them and that’s fine. This newsletter and site probably won’t be for you. On the other hand, I have received many comments asking me for deeper explanations on topics I cover on YouTube. so… I’m trying to please both groups and I think I can pull it off.

This site (learnfastmakethings.com) is where I will be making the longer content and providing references to what I consumed to learn what I learned and say what I said. It’s not going to be just transcripts of my videos. It will be unique content related to the video and also a ton of reference material. I plan to link literally every single piece of content I consumed while learning, hence the name. If you like taking a crash course on a topic and learning something fast, I hope I provide you with enough references that you can send yourself down a rabbit hole :)

This new site is hosted on SubStack.com. So while it’s ironic that I, a web developer by profession, haven’t made a custom website, the truth is that it really doesn’t make sense. Substack provides all the features I could ever want. I write content here, and people who subscribe get emails. It’s so simple and works really well. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel when such a great tool already exists.

So… that’s my plan. I hope you like it. I’m still working out all the configuration of substack so stuff might be weird for a bit, but I’ll work all that out. I have also imported all the content from my old site and will be redirecting all traffic here soon. Eventually, I will start to make content here that is not specifically tied to a YouTube video or potentially figure out a plan for providing early access and exclusive content to those of you who may choose to join as a paid member, but that will take a little time.

Thanks for your understanding while I shuffle all this stuff around.

~ Gary