Consolidated resources / support / consulting
Here's a hot take thought I just had. It would be beneficial (for me) to have access to a list of Convex developer resources for pushing a project forward. For example, I'm pretty new to Convex, and will undoubtedly get stuck at some point. I'm already going around in circles trying to get auth work in a Next.js 14 app with Lucia 3 (the official Convex template only supports Lucia 2 right now). 🙂
Although the Discord channels are great for support most of the time, if it's something you need to get done in a timely manner then something more formal would really be handy.
Maybe this could be in the form of consultancy services from the Convex developer team? i.e. Perhaps a paid service that I can get help with particular issues I'm stuck on. Or, this could be a list of 'certified' Convex developers that provide similar services. Mentoring services would be great but not everyone can afford to spend dedicated free time helping others even though they may want to.
The Stack articles are great by the way, so this really helps. I'll try to blog myself when I have the time and feel a bit more experienced with Convex. Maybe a list of developer blogs, and YT channels, would be cool too?
Just some ideas. Any others along the same lines?
4 Replies
Good ideas. So a few reactions that may or may not be helpful.
1. search.convex.dev is a unified search system we try to constantly update with new sources. one idea your post inspires is we can augment it with external projects potentially, but we'd have to think carefully about that and curate it to make sure the quality stays high so folks are getting good help
2. When it comes to consultations, we typically do sit down a few times and do an "architectural review" sort of F2F with paid pro teams
especially as they get deeper into their project and want more direct involvement in their architectural decision making
so this is a kind of "paid consultation" in a way because paid users are... paying convex
3. A more general purpose scalable consulting service... we're not quite big enough for that yet, but it's something we'll keep in mind as time goes on. one way we might approach it when we're bigger is having some sort of certification system and then authorize some other parties (independent etc) to be certified consultants and help out convex customers. whether we'd do it in house or not, it's too early to say.
a more general feeling you're tapping into that we'd agree with is convex is a pretty new way to build, and so it needs a lot more supporting material & etc than most products you might try. most people end up loving it, but the right way/easy way/slick way to accomplish things might be a little novel. and we definitely owe the community really good ways to discover all those practices
we take that really seriously, and we'll keep trying to make it better and better. we have a head of dx hire that's starting tomorrow, actually, to help out folks like Ian and Michal and all the people that spend so much time on those resources. we'll definitely be investing more and more in it in the future. keep the feedback coming!
I'll toss in some input too. My cofounder and I are building a system that could be used to solve for this very well, its completely unlike anything else out there, its not a direct area of focus but its definitely a significant pain point that i have experienced and its not just convex, clerk too and nextjs itself. The problem every site is its own silo but in reality im building a product that has to interact with all this. Making the challenge of the support i need that more complex. AI is not the solution entirely, as i use it liberally and still have had many couple hour sessions of getting stuck up on something as simple as a order of operations, i tried multiple chatbots.
Anyway, for this solution our system would be configured as a tip based system, that rewards multiple people in different roles from (solution input, validating the answer, refinement of the issue/question) and figure that all out. I see it being very useful to get that quick help, and as i see it there is always lots of people online that could help but are not incentivized to do so in any way. So if there is some gamification and some money to it, it would be a amazing solution. When I'm in stuck its worth $10-$40 or whatever to get out of it as quickly as possible.
It would also solve it being hard to ask "dumb" or "poorly defined" problems as well as broader questions. As then i don't feel like i'm just wasting someone's time. The problem is for this to really work well it has to be integrated into the current systems. Hopefully that gives enough of a sneak peek at what we are doing.
It would also solve it being hard to ask "dumb" or "poorly defined" problems as well as broader questions. As then i don't feel like i'm just wasting someone's time. The problem is for this to really work well it has to be integrated into the current systems. Hopefully that gives enough of a sneak peek at what we are doing.
sounds really interesting! built on convex, I hope? 😄
Yes, definitely the real-time + transactional side is going to be a lifesaver, we cant exactly know how many weeks covex will save us, but its definitely huge. Our system is highly interactive tracking almost every action by every visitor and its all designed around engagement of the silent majority so its going to be quite database heavy 😅