Reflections and Future Directions: Seeking Input on Work and Community Involvement

• Lars Wikman is at a crossroads: commercial Nerves consulting pays the bills, but he also does extensive community work (EEF board, conferences, speaking, writing, video)
• He's explicitly asking his audience what they want him to focus on—acknowledging many followers may not even care about Nerves specifically
• Commits to reading and responding to all input as he makes decisions about the next year
• Transparent about the tension between pragmatic business needs and community contribution

Lars Wikman, who runs the Swedish consultancy Underjord, is openly soliciting input on how to allocate his professional time. His commercial work is firmly anchored in Nerves (embedded Elixir) consulting, which sustains his family, plus some creative work around video and writing. He notes that NervesCloud and Nerves-focused work will remain his commercial center for the foreseeable future.

Beyond commercial work, he maintains an extensive portfolio of community activities: serving on the EEF board, organizing the Goatmire conference, speaking at both Elixir and non-Elixir events, writing blog posts, creating video content, live streaming, and podcasting (though he admits to being "sloppy" on the latter). He acknowledges the irony that many of his followers may not be professionally interested in Nerves at all, yet still follow his work.

Rather than announcing a plan, he's genuinely asking his audience what they find valuable and committing to read, consider, and typically respond to input. This is a rare moment of transparency about the creator's dilemma: balancing the pragmatic need to make money with the desire to contribute to the community, while being uncertain about which community contributions actually create impact.