Blake Erickson

I’m a software developer and builder. I’ve been in tech for 20+ years and writing code for most of that time, mostly with Ruby/Rails and JavaScript, turning messy ideas into small, well-designed products.

Previously, I spent over eight years at Discourse as a software engineer. I was an early employee (#11) and worked in many different capacities from devops like tasks, feature developent in Rails and Emberjs, and working closely with customers and users to build products they love. My most recent project was adding background video encoding support via aws mediaconvert.

I care a lot about developer experience: clear APIs, good docs, and small feedback loops. I enjoy working on a feature from start to finish. All the wayfrom sketching out an idea, to designing the data model, to polishing the UI, to writing the README so future travelers know what they’re getting into. I also enjoy deep dives into the inner workings of a system and fixing tricky bugs.

Outside of work, I’m a husband, parent, snowboarder, and car nerd. If I’m not at a keyboard, I’m probably tuning a Subaru, riding a mountain bike, or in the mountains somewhere in Idaho.

I’m currently building Recourss, a Discourse-powered RSS reader. You can see more of my work on GitHub or follow me on X. If you’d like to get in touch, email me at blake [at] blake [dot] app.