February 2018 Summaries

DigitalOcean, a cloud computing platform, has experienced rapid growth and strong profitability, reaching $200M in annual recurring revenue. The company's founder, Ben Uretsky, is stepping down as CEO to identify his successor, who will be instrumental in scaling the business beyond 1,000 employees and evolving its go-to-market strategy. Uretsky will take on a new role as Chairman of the Board, supporting the company vision and strategy while working closely with the new CEO. The company has achieved significant milestones, including raising $123M from top VCs and growing to over 400 employees worldwide. DigitalOcean is confident that its best days are still ahead, with a strong leadership team in place and a clear leader in the industry.

The DigitalOcean team has a strong emphasis on creating visually appealing and approachable design elements, such as illustrations and branding, to transform technical content into touchpoints that celebrate the diverse personalities behind developers. The Brand Designers at DigitalOcean work together to create consistent visual identities across various platforms and campaigns while also being mindful of cultural sensitivities and accessibility standards. They draw inspiration from a range of sources, including editorial illustration, film, comics, and book covers, and have developed unique approaches to illustrating technical concepts, such as focusing on primary actions or messages behind complex ideas. The team's global distribution allows for open communication and collaboration through systems like daily stand-ups, critiques, and private Slack channels. Their design process is guided by the company's core values of being friendly, accessible, and inclusive, which have evolved over time to reflect the diversity of users they aim to speak to.

DigitalOcean's Write for DOnations program, now in beta, aims to build a welcoming community where members can share their ideas and experiences. The program follows the same editorial structure as its predecessor but introduces new features such as matching donations to tech-focused nonprofits. The company seeks feedback from the community to inform the full release of the program, which will allow authors to donate to organizations shaping the world of tech. DigitalOcean's goal is to emulate the best that tech has to offer by giving back to the Community and promoting a culture of kindness and generosity.

In an effort to simplify the management of IoT devices, Muzzley has developed a platform that allows consumers to interact with various devices from one interface. The company, co-founded by Domingo Bruges and Sasha Dewitt, aims to provide transparency and protection for its customers' data. Through its tech stack evolution and approach to data management, Muzzley seeks to address the pain point of smart home consumers while maintaining a focus on consumer privacy and data security.

We compared the performance of Standard and Optimized Droplets when running a CPU-intensive application, a React Boilerplate app with automated test scripts. We used a $40 Standard Droplet with 4 vCPUs, 8GB RAM, and 160GB SSD storage, and an Optimized $40 Droplet with 2 dedicated vCPUs, 4GB RAM, and 25GB SSD storage. The Optimized Droplet outperformed the Standard Droplet in all tests, executing 37.3% faster when running sequentially. However, for applications that perform similarly and do not take full advantage of all CPUs, choosing the $40 Standard Droplet may be a better choice due to its additional memory and larger SSD. The test results showed a small improvement of 4.9% in using an Optimized Droplet compared to a Standard Droplet.

The DigitalOcean Community has developed an eBook version of their "How To Code in Python 3" tutorial series, made available as an open educational resource. The goal is to facilitate access to this content for people with limited internet access or those who primarily use mobile devices, and to drive engagement with software development across broader communities. The project was initiated during a company-wide Hackathon, where a team of developers created the eBook using pandoc, GNU Make, and Perl scripting. The eBook will be released through major eBook distributors, catalogued in libraries, and made available as an open educational resource in schools and universities. It is expected to empower readers to make their own contributions to open-source code via software and documentation pull requests or repository maintenance.