Food Waste, Web3 & more🌽🚀

Plus DeFi, Dev Interrupted, and how to build communities

How Farmlink is using Food Waste to Feed the Hungry

At the end of November, I published my 7th episode of my Growing the Green Economy Podcast featuring Aidan Reilly, co-founder of the Farmlink Project. They connect farmers to food banks, delivering millions of pounds of farm-fresh produce that would otherwise be wasted, to feed families.

Aidan and I talked about how Farmlink is diverting food waste and why spoilage in our food system is such a problem—with major untold impacts on climate change. Plus we dive into what's going on with supply chains, mutual aid concepts, and more. 

Listen in

Diving into DeFi & Web3

I'm a longtime believer in the potential of distributed ledger technologies like blockchain to address certain technological use cases - and I've been an investor in and user of cryptocurrency since late 2015.

As an active political participant with many leftist views, it's been frustrating seeing how the dynamics around crypto have evolved online, particularly as I've gotten more involved in decentralized finance (DeFi) and the future of the Web over the last couple of years.

I tweeted about my frustration with the current political dynamic and narrative around crypto and I think the resulting discussion was well worth a read. Read the whole comments to see my thoughts on how DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) can enable worker power, the opportunities in DeFi to improve lives, and much more.

Conor🌖conorbronsdon.ust@ConorBronsdon

It's disheartening to see the lack of nuance applied on the left to crypto / NFTs. There are valid climate concerns with Bitcoin & other proof of work blockchains, but proof of stake based chains + tokens like $SOL, $LUNA & $AVAX are no more energy intensive than a Google search

8:01 PM · Jan 18, 2023

However, it is important to note that there are valid concerns in the space, one of which is the lack of regulatory guardrails and financial protections for consumers, which leaves too much open space for scammers and other bad actors. This week saw the exposure of one of the worst - and Bloomberg wrote all about it.

A decentralized-finance project called Wonderland is being rocked by controversy following the disclosure that it was being run in part by a felon with ties to one of the biggest cryptocurrency scandals.

Writing and Hosting Dev Interrupted

Season 2 of Dev Interrupted opens w/ Conor Bronsdon interviewing LinearB co-founders Dan Lines & Ori Keren about how they have 10xed their startup while 5,000 miles apart.

I've been hard at work the last couple of months on our Dev Interrupted project—producing the podcast, growing our team, launching our 2nd INTERACT conference which I'm once again hosting, and also doing some writing.

If you're interested in learning more about software development or engineering leadership, check out some of the podcasts I've hosted below - or either of the two articles I've recently written with the collaboration and help of Adam Noble.

+ keep your eyes peeled during Season 2 for several more episodes that I'll be hosting.

A good SRE engineer will tell you your service is never down. A great SRE engineer will tell you that’s not what you should be…

Move over, Han Solo. Kessel Run is more than fiction, it's the US government's attempt to build startup culture and DevOps into the DoD.

Brian Singer, co-founder & CPO at Nobl9 and Conor Bronsdon help us close out season 1 of the Dev Interrupted podcast with a discussion on entrepreneurship.

Can you do me a very quick favor?

Ratings and reviews are the way podcasts get discovered.

With the return of my Growing the Green Economy Podcast from hiatus, I could really use your review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify - whichever is easiest for you.

Can you take 60 seconds to help me out?

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts

Leave a review on Spotify

Guest Appearance: Pathmonk Presents

Finally, I was happy to appear on a recent episode of the Pathmonk Presents podcast for marketers discussing how to build community in marketing and how that community development can drive awareness for customers. We get a bit nerdy, but if you're interested in marketing it's a good bite-size 18-minute pod.

Conor from LinearB offers us a great overview of whom they serve and why they do it while diving into the role of community growth in their buying journey.

Thank you

Thanks for reading this third edition of Test Lab - as always you can respond to this email or drop me a tweet with your feedback, or reach out if you want to collaborate on a piece of content.

Look out for a new Test Lab edition in the next few weeks with a fresh episode of Growing the Green Economy, an article or two that I'm working on about Web 3, and hopefully more exciting news!

Talk soon-

Conor

@ConorBronsdon