“Request Tracker is an open source tool written in Perl that was developed in 1996 by Jesse Vincent. ”
“Front-page Hacker News discussion of Jesse Vincent's viral Keyboardio Medium post on the Huaqiangbei electronics market in Shenzhen — 358 points and 118 comments deep on the economics, supply chains, and culture of Chinese electronics manufacturing.”
“Jesse Vincent and I were lodging together at YAPC::Asia in 2011. One morning, we went out and got breakfast, and he said, "Do you think that someday in the future, if I retire, you'd be willing to take over?" Then he handed it to me about two weeks later. ”
Long-form on-camera interview (1:11:45) with Jesse Vincent during the Model 01 production push, recorded April 20, 2016 (uploaded December 15, 2017). Covers the Keyboardio origin story, Jesse's transition from software (Request Tracker, K-9 Mail) to hardware, and the work of building an heirloom-grade keyboard with his wife Kaia.
“Jesse from Keyboardio here — We'll be releasing enclosure CAD so you can build your own enclosure that feels different or better fits your own aesthetics. We made a very conscious choice to go for something on the more organic and designy end of the spectrum as a counterpoint to most other ergonomic keyboards.”
“Folks coming from the software world often describe hardware as being difficult. Hardware isn't hard, it's just slow. In the software world, we've gotten used to being able to iterate through a dozen prototypes in a day. In the hardware world, a prototype might take a week or two to put together.”