Thicket data repository for the EEG
anil.recoil.org
1{
2 "id": "http://martin.kleppmann.com/2021/02/23/patreon.html",
3 "title": "Building the future of computing, with your help",
4 "link": "http://martin.kleppmann.com/2021/02/23/patreon.html",
5 "updated": "2021-02-23T00:00:00",
6 "published": "2021-02-23T00:00:00",
7 "summary": "For the last five or six years, since I bid goodbye to the startup scene and Silicon Valley, I have been increasingly working in public. I have written a book, given around 100 talks (many of which are available on YouTube), published over 20 research papers (all freely available from...",
8 "content": "<p>For the last five or six years, since I bid goodbye to the startup scene and Silicon Valley, I have\nbeen increasingly working in public. I have <a href=\"https://dataintensive.net/\">written a book</a>,\ngiven <a href=\"https://martin.kleppmann.com/talks.html\">around 100 talks</a> (many of which are\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeKd45zvjcDHJxge6VtYUAbYnvd_VNQCx\">available on YouTube</a>),\npublished <a href=\"https://martin.kleppmann.com/#publications\">over 20 research papers</a>\n(all freely available from my website), and released and maintained\n<a href=\"https://github.com/ept\">some open source projects</a>.\nJust a few months ago I released a new undergraduate-level course on distributed systems, consisting of\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeKd45zvjcDFUEv_ohr_HdUFe97RItdiB\">7 hours of video lectures</a> and\n<a href=\"https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/2021/ConcDisSys/dist-sys-notes.pdf\">87 pages of notes</a> and\nexercises, all free; in student evaluation at the <a href=\"https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/\">University of Cambridge</a>,\nover 80% rated my lectures and notes as “excellent”.</p>\n\n<p>I love doing first-rate work and making it broadly available. In fact, apart from my book, I give\neverything away for free, because I want to be able to reach and help the broadest possible set of\npeople. And even my book is very cheap compared to the value that many people get out of it (just\n<a href=\"https://dataintensive.net/buy.html\">read the reviews</a>).</p>\n\n<p>Of course, nobody goes into academia because of the money (or the job security of untentured posts,\nfor that matter). I would probably be earning five times my current salary if I had stayed in\nindustry. But I have absolutely no regrets about taking that pay cut: I love the freedom to work on\nwhatever I find interesting, and the freedom to publish everything so that others can use it. If you\nhave found any of my talks, writing, or code useful, then you have also benefitted from the freedom\nthat I enjoy.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, like everybody else, I have bills to pay. At the moment I’m employed at the\n<a href=\"https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/\">University of Cambridge</a> on a fixed-term contract, funded by\na charitable research grant. This grant gives me wonderful freedom to pursue my research and make it\npublicly available, but it’s a fixed amount of money, and once it runs out, my job disappears in\na puff of smoke. This sort of grant is not renewable, regardless how amazing the work it has\nenabled. I can try applying for follow-on grants from other funders, but this takes a lot of time\nand has a low chance of success.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore I am setting up crowdfunding through <a href=\"https://www.patreon.com/martinkl\">Patreon</a>, in the\nhope of establishing a sustainable basic income that will allow me to continue my work of research\nand teaching long-term. I want to continue making most of my work freely available, so that the\nmaximum number of people can benefit from it.</p>\n\n<h2>Why support me?</h2>\n\n<p>I am offering <a href=\"https://www.patreon.com/martinkl\">three membership tiers</a> for anyone who wants to support my work:</p>\n\n<ol>\n <li>At the lowest tier, you will get regular news about new things I am working on, and exclusive\nearly access to drafts and work-in-progress. Keep your finger on the pulse of new research as it\nis happening. I will also send you some nice stickers (once I’ve got them printed).</li>\n <li>At the middle tier, you will additionally be invited to participate in an exclusive community\nwith other supporters and myself, with both live and asynchronous discussions. I hope to\ncultivate thoughtful, high-quality exchange of ideas with likeminded people in this community.</li>\n <li>At the highest tier, you get all the aforementioned benefits, plus the ability to influence my\ndirection when I’m choosing what to work on next. Not saying I will definitely do what you want;\nalso not saying that I will only take input from paying supporters (I still welcome ideas from\neveryone). However, I will consult and engage with supporters at this tier to get your opinions.\nI will also acknowledge you in any papers and books I write, making your name permanently etched\ninto the scientific literature.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>However, the biggest benefit is that by supporting me on Patreon you are enabling the creation of\nfuture work: that is, new thinking, writing, talks, and code that would not be created if I had to\nspend my time writing grant proposals or working for some company instead. If I have to go and get\na job somewhere, you will mostly hear me giving bland talks promoting the technology of whatever\ncompany I happen to work for. Being independent allows me to pick topics that I find interesting and\nimportant (such as <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZjhNTM8XU8\">database transactions</a>,\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uav5jWHNghY\">formal verification</a>,\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NULPSiOGw\">CRDTs</a>, or\n<a href=\"https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/curve25519.pdf\">elliptic curve cryptography</a>),\nand present them in an accessible and neutral way.</p>\n\n<p>I will continue making most of my work publicly available for free (except for books): even if you\ncannot afford to be a Patreon supporter, it will still be available to you. Patreon supporters\nsimply get earlier access, plus the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that you enabled the creation of\nnew work that, without your support, may never have existed. Supporting me on Patreon is <em>not\na donation</em>: it is an investment in future work that will hopefully be valuable to you.</p>\n\n<p>If you have found my work useful – for example, if you have applied ideas from my talks in your\nwork, or if my book helped you get a job – then I would be delighted to welcome you as a\n<a href=\"https://www.patreon.com/martinkl\">supporter</a>! And if your company uses my book for training\nengineers, please find out how your company can support me: even my highest supporter tier is a tiny\namount of money for a company that uses my work to improve the skills of their staff. I only get\naround $2 to $5 for every copy of my book that is sold; if you’re getting a lot more value than this\nout of it, it would only be fair of you to <a href=\"https://www.patreon.com/martinkl\">support me more substantially</a>.</p>\n\n<p>If you cannot contribute financially, worry not. I equally appreciate your support in the form of\ncontributions to the open source community, discussing interesting ideas with me, and sharing useful\nmaterial with others. I will continue to engage with you and answer your questions, regardless of\nwhether you are a paying supporter. And most things I produce will continue to be free, so that\neveryone can benefit from them.</p>\n\n<h2>Planned work</h2>\n\n<p>Keep in mind that when you support me, you are not buying a product. You don’t know exactly what\nyou’re going to get, because I don’t know exactly what I am going to do in advance either. That’s\nwhy it’s called research – it’s open-ended, and part of its purpose is to go down unexpected\nrabbit-holes if they seem important! You are funding a person because this person has done good work\nin the past, and is likely to continue doing good work in the future.</p>\n\n<p>I do have a lot of plans, though. At a high level, I am hoping to do these things over the next few years:</p>\n\n<ul>\n <li>Write another book to complement <a href=\"https://dataintensive.net/\">Designing Data-Intensive Applications</a>;</li>\n <li>Develop the foundational technologies to enable the\n<a href=\"https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/trve/\">next generation of collaboration software</a> (such as\nGoogle Docs), in a way that does not require\n<a href=\"https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html\">giving Google all of our data</a>;</li>\n <li>Continue writing research papers, blog posts, and giving talks/making videos on distributed\nsystems and related topics.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>There is no concrete timescale for these things; most likely I will work on several of them in\ntandem, as I have been doing over the last several years.</p>\n\n<p>Part of this story is creating educational content on topics that I find important, and part is\na vision for the future of collaborative computing, which my collaborators and I are realising in\nthe form of <a href=\"https://github.com/automerge/automerge\">Automerge</a>, an open source project. Our vision\nis articulated in the essay-cum-manifesto on\n<a href=\"https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html\">local-first software</a>, which I suggest you read if\nyou haven’t already.</p>\n\n<h2>Research philosophy</h2>\n\n<p>For me it is important to have this mixture of research, open source software development, and\nteaching (through speaking and writing), because all of these activities feed off each other.\nI don’t want to just work on open source without doing research, because that only leads to\nincremental improvements, no fundamental breakthroughs. I don’t want to just do research without\napplying it, because that would mean losing touch with reality. And I don’t want to just be\na YouTuber or writer without doing original research, because I would run out of ideas and my\ncontent would get stale and boring; good teaching requires actively working in the area.</p>\n\n<p>This interaction was articulated wonderfully by\n<a href=\"https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/gray_3649936.cfm\">Turing award winner Jim Gray</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I aspire to be a scholar of computer science. All fields of scholarship, from religion to\nmedicine, emphasize three aspects: meditation, teaching and service. Meditation (called research\nby scientists) is the official part of research. But, teaching (writing papers, explaining your\nideas, and transferring technology) and service (making computer systems and helping people use\nthem) are also major aspects of the scholarly process. They keep the scholar in touch with\nreality.</p>\n\n <p>— <a href=\"http://jimgray.azurewebsites.net/papers/critiqueofibm%27scsresearch.pdf\">Jim Gray, 1980</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(That’s from Gray’s letter of resignation from IBM. The whole letter is a fascinating read if you’re\ninto computing history. At the time Gray was working on\n<a href=\"https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/SystemR.pdf\">System R</a>, the precursor of all\nrelational databases we use today. It’s fair to say that his work has had a huge impact.)</p>\n\n<p>Another aspect of my research philosophy is that good work rarely happens with one person alone, but\nthrough collaboration with other good people. Quoting Jim Gray again:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Computer science is an empirical and multi-disciplinary field. The aspect of it that I work on,\ncomputer systems, requires lots of good people, time and equipment to produce anything of\ninterest. Projects of five or ten people working for five or ten years seem to be about the right\nscale. More modest projects are unable to attack significant problems. More ambitious projects\nhave unclear goals and have management problems.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You might be wondering: even if I get enough Patreon funding to cover my own living expenses, it\nseems unlikely that I will be able to crowdfund a team of five to ten people. Fortunately, I have\nfound over the last years that collaboration does not require all team members to be funded out of\nthe same purse. I constantly collaborate with people without being responsible for their payroll.\nIn open source, it is common for contributors to a project to be employed by several different\norganisations, and indeed such diversity makes projects better and more resilient.</p>\n\n<p>I work closely with the <a href=\"https://www.inkandswitch.com/\">Ink & Switch lab</a>, who have their own\nfunding. Some of my collaborators are PhD students who have their own stipends, or research fellows\nwho have their own grants. We come together because of our common interests, and because nobody is\ntrying to profit from the others. We have a vision of the future that we want to realise, and the\nfunding just lets us pay the bills as we work towards the greater goal.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, if my Patreon ends up being successful and generates more money than I need for my own\nliving expenses, I will use it to help fund collaborators. I am not aiming to recreate the lavish\nSilicon Valley engineering salary that I left behind; I just want to do good work without having to\nspend a lot of time chasing grants.</p>\n\n<h2>Alternatives to crowdfunding</h2>\n\n<p>Before moving to <a href=\"https://www.patreon.com/martinkl\">Patreon</a> I considered several alternatives:</p>\n\n<ul>\n <li>Academic jobs and fellowships? It’s a difficult to get a stable position at a research-focussed\nuniversity. Both jobs and funding are fiercely competitive (hundreds of applicants for one place),\nand they require a strong track record of publications. Unfortunately, there is a\n<a href=\"https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/248824-how-objective-is-peer-review/fulltext\">large degree of randomness</a>\nin the choice of papers that get accepted to top-tier publication venues. I am still interested in\nan academic career, but it seems unwise to put all eggs in this uncertain basket. Oh, and due to\nthe pandemic my current university has a hiring freeze anyway, so no jobs anytime soon.</li>\n <li>Founding a startup? Been there, <a href=\"https://www.crunchbase.com/person/martin-kleppmann\">done that</a>\n(twice). A startup is a great way of productising technology on a 1–2 year time scale; it also\nneeds fast growth and/or a strong revenue model. My current work does not fit that model since it\nfocusses on foundational technolgies with a longer time-scale (the 5–10 years mentioned by Jim\nGray), and it aims for public benefit rather than private profit.</li>\n <li>Getting a job at someone else’s company? I want to be free to choose what to work on based on what\nI believe is important, not whatever happens to suit a company’s agenda. I also want to be free to\npublish that work openly. Not many companies are willing to support such positions long-term.</li>\n <li>Consulting work and training? I could spend a fraction of my time helping companies solve problems\nwithin my area of expertise, or running training workshops. However, this type of income can\nfluctuate wildly, and generating a steady stream of clients is a lot of work and very distracting.\nIt’s difficult to make consulting compatible with the deep thinking and long-term view required\nfor research.</li>\n <li>Becoming a professional author? I have been able to draw a reasonable income from\n<a href=\"https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/09/29/is-book-writing-worth-it.html\">royalties for sales of my book</a>.\nHowever, I have no idea how long those sales will last, and I have no idea whether any future book\nI write will sell similarly well. Given this unpredictability, it seems unwise to bet on royalties\nas only income. Moreover, book-writing is only one of several things I do, and I believe the\nother things generate value too. I believe my funding situation should reflect that.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>With crowdfunding, I hope to not only generate a steady income stream, but also build a community of\npeople who are excited about the same topics as me, and who are invested in making these ideas\na reality. It is an opportunity for me to share early-stage work with enthusiasts, and to improve\nthat work through feedback from the community. And it is an opportunity for you to get an insider\nview of the research process as we build the future of computing.</p>\n\n<p>If you believe in our vision for\n<a href=\"https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html\">a better future of collaborative computing</a>, or if\nyou want to see more high-quality educational materials for computer science, then why not head over\nto Patreon and <a href=\"https://www.patreon.com/martinkl\">pledge your support</a>? It will make a huge\ndifference. Thank you!</p>",
9 "content_type": "html",
10 "author": {
11 "name": "Martin Kleppmann",
12 "email": null,
13 "uri": null
14 },
15 "categories": [],
16 "source": "http://feeds.feedburner.com/martinkl"
17}