(Originally published on Think Vitamin)
A few weeks ago Carsonified’s Mike Kus gave five good great reasons why designers should know how to code. It generated quite a discussion. Around the same time I stumbled upon Forrst, a new platform for short-form sharing between designers and developers.
The Founder
It wasn’t a big surprise to learn that Forrst is a creation of Brooklyn-based developer/designer, Kyle Bragger. I first met Kyle when he was a developer for Huffington Post (back in the early days), more recently he’s CTO of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Cork’d. Anyone who knows Kyle, however, knows that he produces a seemingly never-ending stream of special projects. Honestly, I’m almost convinced that the internet actually spat him out as a human a few years ago.
The Feedback
While Forrst is early in it’s release, It’s safe to say that there’s some great long-term ideas in the community features that will have a profound impact on how designers and developers collaborate and learn more about supporting and even trading roles in development cycles. In fact, here is a sample post from a new member. Within moments it was peppered with positive and helpful feedback:
More Finds From Forrst:
- Mike Evans (@magic6435), designer/developer shared a REST interface for mongodb
- Thaibut Ninove (@thaibutninove) posted; applescript, allows users to tweet itunes tracks
- Kushal Pisavadia (@kushalp) a London-based standards-lover shared javascript to enable faux html 5 support in IE
- Posted! Relative time stamps in PHP anyone? shared by Billy Fowks, co-founder of rososo.com
- Quirky endeavors are discovered, like the one from Jonno Riekwel (Jonnotie), a designer doing a “psd a day for a year” thing & another from a co-founder of newly launched yayeveryday!
- Pre-launch landing pages posted for new products like tapmates’ “screenport”
- A few folks share and discuss their workspace preferences
- And, finally, jQuery badassitude gets lots of love & learning
How Forrst Works & Getting an Invite
- Forrst is currently invite-only during beta testing; you can join the Forrst “Search Party” on Twitter and if you’re paying attention. Kyle lifts the invite code requirement for 15 minutes every day, and new users can get instant access v. waiting for an invite code via email.
- Features for now include: profiles, follows, community badges and “expert mode,” email notifications, and an activity feed.
- Use the bookmarklet for easy posting as you go about your usual day online
Since Forrst is still in its infancy, I asked Kyle to answer a few more questions in his own words:
Q. What makes Forrst different from other repositories out there for code-sharing?
>> Well Forrst isn’t quite a repository per se where you might host a project’s code (like Github or Beanstalk), instead it’s a destination where community members can share code snippets they find clever, interesting, or maybe even perplexing, and instantly get feedback about them.
Forrst is designed to help foster discussion and learning between its design and developer users. I do have plans to hook into popular hosted repository sites to a certain extent, so that even if you’re used to sharing bits of code via Gist or Pastie, you’ll still be able to do that when sharing on Forrst, but Forrst is meant to be the social destination for discussing code and design discoveries.
Q. Forrst is newly launched, but already there are vibrant discussions taking place. What’s been the biggest surprise to you watching the Forrst community form?
>> It’s been simply amazing seeing just how passionate and active the community already is; two guys are already working on a weekly Forrst podcast, there’s an informal “build an app in a week” contest going on (it ends March 3rd); everyone is just super willing to provide constructive feedback, both to me as I continue to develop the site, but also to each other. It’s a great feeling — and really encouraging — seeing Forrst grow the way it has so far.
Q. You seem to have become a community manager almost overnight, what’s it like to manage a community of designers and developers?
>> So far I’ve gotten a ton of positive feedback and constructive criticism; I think it’s hugely beneficial that this product happens to be for designers and developers — it makes distilling bug reports a lot quicker, and everyone’s had really valuable insight into what’s working and what’s not (in many cases, backed up by mockups and code snippets to illustrate their point — I can’t complain about that!)
I think, in general, if you’re building a product, you can’t be afraid of hearing criticism about it; with Forrst it’s especially interesting since the target audience are my designers and developers, who have tons of experience in app development. The very goal of Forrst is to bring these two groups together to do great things, and the fact that they’re already helping me build a better product is evidence of how awesome this kind of collaboration can be delivered via short-form sharing.
Mike Kus wrote, “If you’re a designer who can’t code, learning code opens up a whole new world of job opportunities, whether you’re looking for freelance gigs or permanent employment. One of the main reasons I learnt to code was because I was so frustrated by the lack of opportunities for designers who can’t code.”
Thanks Kyle, see you over in Forrst!