Damien Katz

This was one of my very favorite talks at Rubyfringe, and one of my few regrets was that I never got to complement you on it personally. Evan Light and I have talked about it a few times since the 'fringe. I think it affected us in similar ways. There was a lot of talk at Rubyfringe about how you're young and unencumbered, you can do whatever you want, so get out there and take risks and couch-surf and make something awesome. You, on the other hand, really bared your soul about what it means to take risks when you have a family depending on you. As a husband and father who still wants to do amazing, innovative things in software, your talk left a powerful impression. Thank you.

I watched the video yesterday. Thanks a lot for talking about this part of your life. I'm very inspired!

Excellent talk! Very inspiring.

Great video thanks for sharing.

Hey Damien,
That was an inspiring talk. I have been following CouchDB for a while (skimming really - mostly the documentation, never the code) and it felt good to hear how you stretched yourself on it.
I just had one question, how did you get people to eventually listen to you enough to tell them what CouchDB can do? How did you go about getting IBM to take notice? Thats one part I did not get from your presentation.
And lastly, you have lovely kids!

Damien,
this is very, very inspiring. I cannot tell you how much this is aligned with what I feel and think! Thank you very much for sharing your success story with people. Be sure that by this talk only you have kick-started a few more nice projects in the world.

Thanks!

Damien - I was part of the crowd there, and I gotta say this was one of those talks that really left a mark. Great to see this online now so others can watch it.

Finally ended up dabbling in CouchDB a week or so back and really am enjoying looking at the problem of data storage in a completely different light.

Thanks for your contributions in terms of discussing your journey and the technology itself!

Rowan

I loved the video.

Inspirational video. Keep up the good work.

Excellent presentation, many thanks for sharing. The best inspirational speech I've seen on programming.

I've also taken a few years out in the past (and still going) to work on something I believe in which led to me doing a phd and (soon) releasing a product. I had a couple of questions:

(1) how do you get by without the cameraderie of the office?
--> I really like hanging out with people at work. this sort of disappears when i'm working on my own and i tend to get isolated. A year working on my own is too long for me. How do you compensate for this?

(2) how do you cope with the stress when the money gets low?
--> i find that even if i'm quite close to finishing something, if the money gets low I get too stressed and i have to get a job. I can't even program in this mode. This tends to derail me for 6mths or so. Are you able to get work out during this phase?

Andrew

I just had one question, how did you get people to eventually listen to you enough to tell them what CouchDB can do? How did you go about getting IBM to take notice? Thats one part I did not get from your presentation.

I just put it out there and wrote about it on my blog. Most of the advocacy came from others who used it. Don't ask me how they found it.

how do you get by without the cameraderie of the office?
--> I really like hanging out with people at work. this sort of disappears when i'm working on my own and i tend to get isolated. A year working on my own is too long for me. How do you compensate for this?

It's hard. I communicate with people via chat and irc and that helps. But being physically isolated from my development peers isn't easy.

how do you cope with the stress when the money gets low? --> i find that even if i'm quite close to finishing something, if the money gets low I get too stressed and i have to get a job. I can't even program in this mode. This tends to derail me for 6mths or so. Are you able to get work out during this phase?

Just look at it like an education with free tuition but no room and board. And the goal at the end isn't money, it's knowledge. Thinking like that made it easier for me to push forward.

But I mostly just tried to not to think about it. And we didn't get ourselves into debt, which lots of people do even with fulltime jobs. Stay out of debt.

Andrew,

You ask two excellent questions & as his wife, my answers are a little different than Damien’s. First, it is quite hard on Damien to not be in any office with any peers. I think he compensates with his online friendships & by blogging. A few that were helpful in ways they might not even know are: Ned Bathchelder, Jan Lenhardt, Jeff Atwood, and Thomas Gumz. I thank them, and I’m sure there are many more I don’t know about. Also, Damien and I both felt/feel isolated & try to deal with our issues together. We know that it will not always be this way & try to focus on the benefits of living the way we do. That is why he stressed “more family time” in the talk.

Second, you are correct about financial stress making it tough or impossible to focus on work. We knew that from the beginning, so our plan was for me to be in charge of all of our finances. That allowed Damien to not think about our finances. I paid the bills and managed all the money (or lack thereof) and just told Damien how much longer he had before he would need to get a job. Also, we had to be very frugal with our money, and relied a lot on hand-me-downs from my brothers and gifts from Grandma instead of buying things for our baby. We actually became amazed at how many toys and clothes we got without spending a dime. Our “vacations” were at my parent’s lake house. Not bad, but we did miss traveling. Another key to our finances was moving from Massachusetts to N.C. b/c the cost of living was so much lower. That includes rent and food, but also HEALTH INSURANCE. At the time, Mass. didn’t have state-sponsored healthcare. I don’t know what it’s like there now, but when we moved healthcare in Mass. was about 4 times more expensive than health care in N.C., so that was a big factor. As new parents we couldn’t go without insurance, and I hope we never have to. Also, we put off having a 2nd child for a while b/c we couldn’t afford maternity coverage. Damien put off a shoulder surgery for a few years b/c we didn’t have good coverage & he didn’t want to take the recovery time off. Another episode that helped financially is when Damien was an expert witness in a patent lawsuit. I won’t name the companies involved b/c I’m scared of lawyers, but Damien made a lot of money in a short amount of time providing his expertise in this case. It was grueling for Damien, and unfortunately the incorrect side won by trying the case in front of a jury somewhere in Louisiana where the average education level is 8th grade. It gave us a new view on intellectual property and patent law, but it also gave us enough money to keep going on Couch for a long time. So Damien is not lying when he says he tried not to think about it, but someone was thinking about it for him and he always knew we were being responsible. We always had a backup plan, which I believe you must to ease your mind.

Thanks for the helpful comments, Laura. Very interesting to hear it from your side.

>Also, Damien and I both felt/feel isolated & try to
>deal with our issues together. We know that it will
>not always be this way & try to focus on the
>benefits of living the way we do. That is why he
>stressed “more family time” in the talk.

It's very good that you can both agree on the way you've restructured to fit in with the couchdb work. In fact, I guess it's probably essential. My wife also supports me fully in my work, and we made the decision together to opt out of full-time work.

The main problem I grapple with from day to day is working at appropriate times, so that I can spend evenings with the family. I've tended to fall into the habit of not working too much in the mornings and working until late at night. A problem of work discipline.

>That includes rent and food, but also HEALTH INSURANCE.

Hmm, I forgot that in the US health care isn't free. It must factor quite heavily in decisions. Healthcare is free in the UK, and as long as you get the right hospital it tends to be more or less ok, particularly for emergencies. Better to get private if you can afford it, but the state health care is sufficient. Generally no-one uses insurance for maternity cover over here.

>I think he compensates with his online friendships & by blogging

It's a good idea. I wonder if there is any s/w for a virtual office where webcams are used to allow people to situate themselves next to selected people and see/chat to them as if they were sort of in an single room?

>but Damien made a lot of money in a short amount of time providing his expertise in this case.

Nice ;-)

We survive by me doing 2 days a week consulting work in London. Only gives 3 days a week real work time, but it's better than nothing. I've managed that for 4 years now.

Immense kudos to you guys for having the guts to do it full time.

Thanks so much for the presentation and the comments. It's fantastic to see people like yourselves taking risks to do something new, interesting and helpful to others.

Cheers,
Andrew

Damien,

I enjoyed listening/watching your presentation. I took a year off and worked on a SmallTalk implementation and I know the excitement of learning something new and the hardships of having a young family while you are off doing something crazy. I abandoned my project when Java arrived, tried a few other things which didn't o anywhere and ended up working on "other's crap" for money.

Despite my crazy doings in the past, I find it hard to believe the risks you took. It is a remarkable story and I am happy for your success. Good luck with CouchDB.

Praki

There's a hero among us - Damien Katz! :)

Damien thanks a lot for this talk, truly inspirational, exactly what I needed on my path. Thanks for cool software and all the good stuff that came out of what you're doing.
I think what you did is truly heroic.

Your story is awesome, you are awesome, and CoudchDB is awesome. Thank you for sharing this story.

john
johnmwillis.com

Good speech :-))

I forgot to say I really like your slides :-)

Damien,

You ever run across something and think to yourself, "Man... that's just what I needed to hear." Call it fate, call it whatever you like but it was just by "chance" that I clicked through to a link that came across the wire having no idea what was on the other side. The link brought me to your talk.

Thank you so much for opening up and sharing your journey with everyone. I think it's just what I needed to steer me onto the right path to also being "that guy", who works on stuff that's cool.

My challenge is trying to find out what "cool stuff" is worthy enough to justify a change like you took. There are many ideas floating around, but nothing concrete and I have no clue what kind of traction they will get. All part of the game I guess.

Regardless, thanks so much for the inspiration. Your experience proves that it can be done.

Good stuff.

Great talk.
I appreciated your honesty. It takes courage to open up like that in front of an audience.

It also takes courage to do what you did (sell your house, live off your savings), and surely a very supportive family :)

And congratulations for your beautiful daughters, I work from home too, with monetary ups and downs, but being there for my daughter is everything to me.

Awesome video mate. Kudos to you for following your dreams.

Wow! Your slides are a breath of fresh air and your talk is so inspiring. I started watching the presentation to hear about couchDB but what I got was way better. It's all been said already but I wanted to thank you anyway, thanks!

Thank-you for sharing your story. I wish I had talked with you back when I was laid off. Very inspiring!

Very very very good talk, it's a such a great feeling to see someone who did (and still does) something he genuinely loves and talks about it with real passion. It's the radical opposite of what you usually hear at these conferences (which I'm afraid are getting more like corporate schmoozers), devoid of any soul and obsessed with the mighty VC money and its god the pageview (or 'eyeball'.

All I can says is wow - I was in a rush tonight and I still took the time to listen to the whole thing. Best endeavors for whatever comes next - great things I'm sure!