✍️Another blog post! Why my side project runs off my laptop instead of the ☁️. Priced out running it properly (DigitalOcean + PlanetScale + Bupstash backups) — ~$10 USD/month for a weekly cron job. Now it just runs locally via launchd 🙃 www.ericapisani.dev/trillium-updates-choosing-to-self-host/

Know Your Stuff Ontario!

A newsletter that uses AI to summarize bills and their impacts as they move through the Ontario Legislative Assembly. Stay informed without subjecting yourself to the click-bait and stress of the news...

buttondown.com

✍️Wrote up some fun lessons from a few months of building Trillium (my Ontario bill-tracker side project) with Claude's API, including the time it flat-out refused to make up a bill summary when my prompt was faulty. 😅 www.ericapisani.dev/trillium-upd...

Trillium Update: Lessons from Steering Claude and Building on Its API

Since sharing what I've learned in my initial post about Trillium a few months back, I've gotten much further with it. There was about a month of legislative activity (~February/March) that gave me a...

ericapisani.dev

Built a Claude skill in a codeathon that generates codebase diagrams from unfamiliar repos 🗺️ tldr: Claude is great at code structure, terrible at line numbers (like, off by hundreds), and subagents make a real difference for complex workflows write-up here 👇 www.ericapisani.dev/generating-d...

Generating diagrams for unfamiliar codebases using an AI skill

Everyone who has worked in software has experience poring over multiple codebases trying to understand how all the different pieces of functionality interact. One of my first starter tasks when I joi...

ericapisani.dev

✍️ New blog post: I built the same project twice to see how much initial structure affects AI coding assistant results. Spoiler: quite a bit. www.ericapisani.dev/give-your-ai-coding-assistant-something-to-work-with-a-case-study/

Give Your AI Coding Assistant Something to Work With: A Case Study

Over my winter break, I'd been noodling over a new side project idea related to Ontario politics. I used to enjoy following what goes on, but these days looking at news articles and reading the email...

ericapisani.dev

Had a great chat with Olimpiu Pop on the InfoQ podcast about hosting QCon London's "Performance and Sustainability" track and how developers can take small steps to improve software's environmental and social impact. You can listen or read the transcript here: www.infoq.com/podcasts/dev... 🎧

Developers Can Improve the ESG Aspects of Software By Tackling Early Ethical Debt

Erica Pisani, host of the Performance and Sustainability track at QCon London 2025, reflects on lessons from assembling the track and from attending the talks. She touches on the importance of the env...

infoq.com

Just sent out my end-of-year newsletter with updates on what I've been working on - new blog posts, a side project idea focused on Ontario politics, and taking a look at self-hosting my git projects. If you'd like to get updates like these in your inbox, you can subscribe at www.ericapisani.dev

Erica Pisani

Sr. Software Engineer based out of Toronto, Canada. I write about things I learn and am curious about related to tech.

ericapisani.dev

✍️ New blog post alert: What I learned from Anthropic's "Building with the Claude API" course My biggest learnings from the course and what I'm excited to explore next. www.ericapisani.dev/what-i-learn...

What I learned from Anthropic's "Building with the Claude API" course

I decided to take this course in order to get a high-level understanding of all the features that Claude had to offer, and a better understanding of how these services worked under the hood, as well a...

ericapisani.dev

✍️ New blog post alert: How I use AI Still learning, but starting to see real benefits in my day-to-day work. www.ericapisani.dev/how-i-use-ai/

How I use AI

Like so many others, I've been experimenting with a number of different AI-powered tools to find the ones that work best for my style of working and how I learn. For folks trying to get some ideas of...

ericapisani.dev

Is your company considering open sourcing that internal tool? The answer on whether to or not depends on more than "is the code good enough?" www.ericapisani.dev/considering-...

Considering open sourcing software at your company?

From what I've seen in my career so far, the motivation to open source software at one's company tends to fall into one or more of the following buckets of reasons: 1) As a way of giving back to the ...

ericapisani.dev

Discovered greenpt.ai and I'm excited to finally see a privacy-focused and environmentally conscious GPT provider out there 🤩

Built my first side project in ages: a Toronto independent grocer finder! 🛒 Turns out parsing municipal data is tricky, but I had a blast working on something I actually wanted to use. Can read more about it here: www.ericapisani.dev/building-my-...

Building "My Local Grocer"

This is a side project that I've been picking away at on-and-off for the past few years, and I'm finally at a place where I can say I'm "done". My Local Grocer was my attempt to make small mom-and-po...

ericapisani.dev

Building a conference track? A new guide by Erica Pisani on #InfoQ shares lessons from hosting a track at #QConLondon. 💡 Pro tip: Start outreach months early & be upfront about speaker benefits (travel, etc.). It’s a game-changer. Read the playbook: bit.ly/4feFxCH

A First-Timer’s Guide to Curating a Technical Conference Track

One first-time track host shares the process, constraints, and takeaways from building a track from scratch at QCon London 2025.

bit.ly

Joined Gaël Duez on the GreenIO podcast to chat about the track I hosted at @qconferences.com London this year, the tight relationship between performance and sustainability in software, and so much more! 🎙️ Episode is on all major platforms, and also here! ⬇️ podcast.greenio.tech/e/r8km95l8-5...

#59 Debriefing Qcon Sustainability track with Erica Pisani

How is sustainability covered in main tech conferences? Sure cybersecurity, DevOps, or anything related to SRE, is covered at length. Not to mention AI… But what room is left for the environmental i...

podcast.greenio.tech

Reflections on the "Performance and Sustainability" track that I hosted at @qconferences.com London this year: www.ericapisani.dev/reflections-...

Reflections on "Performance and Sustainability" at QCon London 2025

I had the privilege of hosting the "Performance and Sustainability" track at QCon London this year. It was my first time hosting a track, and I was incredibly fortunate to have the following talented ...

ericapisani.dev

For those at @qconferences.com London 2025, come check out the last talk of the day in the Performance and Sustainability track up in Mountbatten - Holly Cummins' "The Efficiency Paradox"!

Sarah Hsu introducing us to Green Observability at @qconferences.com London 2025 as part of the Performance and Sustainability track 🤩

Alex Good talking about how we can build build more local-first software - removing the high level of dependency that often exists in software today on centralized servers that are often outside of our control at @qconferences.com London 2025

"Sustainability means different things to different people" Jade Abbott speaking about AI and sustainability at @qconferences.com London 2025 in the "Performance and Sustainability" track

"The frontend is the most overlooked area in Green IT" One of the many valuable lessons shared by Ludi Akue in her talk as part of the "Performance and Sustainability" track at @qconferences.com #QConLondon2025

Issue 3 is out now! Visit our Etsy Store to get it, as well as issues 1 and 2! www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1... We are so excited to have you join our community. If you haven't already, head to the418.dev to sign up for our newsletter ❤️

The 418 Issue #3 (PHYSICAL) - Etsy Australia

This Zines item is sold by The418. Dispatched from Canada. Listed on 04 Mar, 2025

etsy.com

Thanks @dev.to for the wonderful stickers! ❤️

I'm excited to announce I'll be hosting the "Performance and Sustainability: How to make Software Greener" track at #QConLondon, April 7–11, 2025! You can check out all the amazing speakers that will be a part of it here: qconlondon.com/track/apr202... Hope to see you there!

QCon London 2025 | Performance and Sustainability in Practice: How to Make Software Greener

Get practical inspiration and best practices on emerging software trends directly from senior software developers at early adopter companies.

qconlondon.com

Edge computing is more accessible than ever. Learn what it is, why it’s growing, and how to use it in your apps. Watch @ericapisani.dev's talk to explore the future of #EdgeComputing. youtu.be/K6c29Gtlpjs?...

Living on the Edge • Erica Pisani • GOTO 2024

YouTube video by GOTO Conferences

youtu.be

Any Gen Z podcast fans here? I'm doing a research project on younger podcast fans, and I'm trying to get 100 responses to this survey: forms.reform.app/pF4xrZ/podca... (Feel free to pass it along to folks you know! 🙏)

@the418.bsky.social is officially migrated over to BSky! 🎉

The 418 Zine@the418.bsky.social · 2y ago

We are so back

TIL about "The Copenhagen Catalog" and I kind of want a poster of these. Anyone know where I can find one (or even the ebook for it)? Sadly, it looks like the original site no longer runs, but I found what it used to look like on the internet archive - web.archive.org/web/20180914...

The Copenhagen Catalog

150 principles for a new direction in tech - The principles were created by hundred and fifty humans in 48 hours at Techfestival in Copenhagen as the next step after The Copenhagen Letter.

web.archive.org

Assorted reads for January 📚 www.ericapisani.dev/assorted-rea...

Assorted reads (January 2025)

Hi folks, I hope you've all been doing well! 👋 I've been starting my new year on a bit of a podcast-listening binge, revisiting old shows that I've stepped away from for a bit as well as trying some ...

ericapisani.dev

First newsletter of 2025! ✍️ www.ericapisani.dev/privacy-pres...

Privacy-preserving payment systems, goals for 2025, and a new side project

Happy New Year all! I hope you had a great holiday break and a wonderful start to the year. I enjoyed some much needed rest and got a chance to read a lot of books I've been meaning to get to. One o...

ericapisani.dev

For those who need something light hearted in their feed right now: Here's a clip of my dog Ada walking down stairs entirely on her front paws because she hates the feeling of her winter boots on her back paws

1/5 ➡️ How Cell-Based Architecture Enhances Modern Distributed Systems by Erica Pisani & Rafal Gancarz bit.ly/3PvRGr1 @ericapisani.dev