This year’s been a crazy one for several reasons:

• The startup I’ve been working on for the past few years ran out of money.
• Two promising full time job opportunities turned out to be a bad fit.
• I’ve been able to work on some awesome projects like Laravel Forge and Shipping Docker.
• I got the flu (I’ve never had it).
• And the worst: My biological father passed away.

One could say I’m still recovering. So I’ve found myself back to doing full-time web development consulting. I’ve also spent nearly all of my free time working to launch my next product, Crondog.

Design and development are what I do. They have their challenges, but aren’t particularly hard any more. But launching, sustaining, and growing a real software business is something I’ve yet to be able to do with any success.

That’s why I’m headed to Microconf 2017. I’m looking forward to soaking up as much knowledge as I can. I can’t wait to pick the brains of folks much smarter than I when it comes to building software companies.

This is something I’ve never done—I’ve only ever been to technical conferences. On paper it’s a risky investment, considering I’m working with an unsteady cashflow situation. However, I believe the results, though they may be intangible or time-delayed, will be tremendous. This represents a purposeful, concerted effort to grow the parts of my skillset that are weakest.