Community Websites

Speed-friending: speed-dating but for friends. A grownup show & tell. An adult recital. Some of the offerings of Mac & Cheese Productions℠, a lifestyle business that models and offers positive adulting and increases life fulfillment and ease through building connection: to others, to opportunities, and to self. You know all those things that are THE WORST? Small talk. Networking. Dating. Cleaning. Sales. Self-Promotion. Public speaking. Pricing. Saying no. Setting boundaries. Making asks. To Do Lists. Going places solo. Sticking out. Taking risks. Doing things that scare you. Doing things you're not good at. Doing things you have no business doing. Doing things you don't want to do but have to. Death. Reply All misuse… Saya (Sigh-Uh, like Maya) Hillman lives to make those things less worse. To make adulthood enjoyable. The poster child for living an idyllic, perfect fitting-life, Saya inspires groups and individuals to take charge of their lives and to learn, grow, and become even more delicious versions of themselves. Through events, courses, keynotes, workplace facilitation, products, consulting, writings, and community, Mac & Cheese helps adults become the best versions of themselves, redefine “success,” and design their lives to best fit themselves — to design their Life of Yes℠. An Evanston, Illinois native, Montessori and Boston College graduate, Chicago Girlie 4 Life (even when she doesn’t live there), and Winston-Salem resident, Saya’s a sad, mute wallflower turned joyful, self-assured wildflower. One of Chicago Magazine’s Top 20 Singles, Chicago Tribune’s Top 100 Innovators, and Brazen Careerist’s Top 20 Professionals to Watch, she’s been featured in Forbes and the New York Times, and is a TEDx speaker and an in-progress (fingers-crossed) memoirist. She’s traveled to all 50 states and 21 countries, fostered 18 puppies, met her husband via one of her own offerings, and is responsible for 7 3/4 couples (ask her about the 3/4).

Saman is a programmer, designer, and artist. Currently, Saman focuses creative energy on making videogames with web tech. Saman has an infrequently updated blog and can be found on Mastodon, Github, and Instagram. Saman can be contacted via email at samanpwbb at gmail dot com.

Dr. Doug Belshaw is based in Northumberland and has had a varied career. He works primarily through We Are Open, a cooperative he helped set up in 2016, and occasionally through his personal consultancy, Dynamic Skillset. He is interested in many things but is best known for his work on digital literacies. He successfully defended his doctoral thesis on the topic and then wrote a book entitled The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. He is also known for his evangelism of Open Badges. He was also Product Manager of MoodleNet. He aims to make the world a better place.

Mayari, also known as Maya, is a British-Filipina from the UK. She currently works in community at Vercel. Previously, she held senior frontend engineer and design engineering roles at Chaselabs, Outverse, hipeople, and Siemens. Mayari is passionate about building joyful and helpful products with Svelte, aiming to create UI that is visually appealing. She has a background that includes experience as a rail engineer before transitioning to frontend engineering and DX engineering.

JdM is passionate about development. As a computer science student, JdM uses their skills to innovate and create while contributing to a more free, open, and secure internet. Far beyond the digital realm, JdM wants to bring their motivation to the real world by sharing ideas and determination to improve the world. JdM would like to build a world of innovation, a more free world, a world where online privacy is not violated, a more prosperous world, a more sustainable world, and also a world of peace that would benefit all of humanity. JdM's goal is to imagine solutions.

Yann nominally does software and has done so since the late 1990s. He is good at embedded systems, Rust, C, C++, distributed systems, and infrastructure. He has worked at various places including Twitter, Lyft, and Airbnb. He is an expert in Observability and Reliability systems. He likes doing hardware projects, software projects, fish (reef and fresh water), pictures (of things), and space (and pictures of space), and the intersection of all of those.

McKinley is a designer and developer. They are currently building things at Stripe. Previously, they were building things at Netlify. They studied computer science and design at Northeastern University. They like to make things with React, TypeScript, and CSS. They also like to write about design and code.

VFiles is a designer and developer. He is interested in building tools for thought and creativity. He also enjoys exploring the intersection of technology and art.