193 - Tim Benniks

Tim Benniks is principal developer advocate at Uniform, where he focuses on developer relations, community building, and content creation. He’s active in the developer community through speaking engagements at conferences and creation of YouTube videos on modern technologies. Tim collaborates regularly with startups like Cloudinary, Prismic, Zeplin, and NuxtJS, and is a member of the MACH Alliance Tech Council.

It's all about quality, community, and development of great websites.

Twitter → twitter.com/timbenniks

Items:

• Desk: Yaasa Desk Pro II
• Laptop: MacBook Pro 14” M1 Max
• Screen: LG UltraFine 32UN500-W 32"
• Dock: CalDigit TS3+
• Mouse: Logitech MX master 3
• Keyboard: Keychron Q2 with Gateron Pro Red switches and Keychron OSA Keycaps
• Audio interface: Rode Rodecatser pro
• Mic: Shure SM7b + TritonAudio FetHead
  
• Camera: Sony ZV-1
• Lights: Elgato Key Lights + Elgato Flex Arm
• Mouse mat: DAWNTREES
• Elgato Stream deck mini
• Speakers: M-Audio BX5
• Apple AirPods 2

What is your favorite item in your workspace?

My keyboard. I recently dove into the keyboard rabbit hole and learned that not all typing is equal. I’m enjoying this new typing experience very much. Other than the keyboard, I like using my Sony ZV-1 camera. It is marketed as a vlogging camera for beginners on YouTube. But, if you know what you are doing, this camera is amazing. You can use it in many different situations, giving decent video no matter what you throw at it. I also have more professional cameras, but for my desk setup and vlogging, I always come back to the little Sony ZV-1.

How do you spark creativity?

Creativity is the main driver for anything I do. I have trouble stopping it and sitting down to plan how I want to do something. If my mind decides to like something, I can’t sleep or notice traffic lights, for example. So for me, it’s about: how I chill out my monkey brain to make sure the creativity goes into something useful.

How do you manage work-life balance?

My wife and I recently moved from the city (Paris, Amsterdam before that) to the countryside. We live on a 250-ish year old farm in the middle of nowhere. Being in nature, working from home, walking the dogs in the forest, or chopping firewood all bring balance. I used to work at ad agencies with extremely hectic projects and crazy clients that made me travel a lot. I loved the intensity of it, but since the pandemic happened, we decided it was time to calm down our home life and approach work differently. I now work at a start-up, which is also hectic, but it has an entirely different vibe. A vibe I love.