Gary Portnoy had one goal: have a song so famous that every cab driver would know it.

Even though “Gary Portnoy” is not a household name, he achieved his dream.

These days, the conversations may be happening in ride shares instead of cabs. But the conversation probably goes something like this:

Driver: So, what do you do?

Portnoy: I’m a composer.

Driver: Anything I’ve heard?

Portnoy: How about the theme from Cheers?

Pretty good way to be known.

(For those of the Cheers generation, Portnoy also wrote the Punky Brewster and Mr. Belvedere themes)

The Cheers theme is so well known, that it gave me my own goal: learn the opening chords, so I can play them every time I pass a piano. Achievement unlocked, btw.

Many times when I do this in public, a stranger has instinctively shouted “Cheers!”

So, how do we get a little bit of this Portnoy magic in our work… ?

To get every developer to know your name, you want to give your content a chance of success.

And this gets a little counterintuitive… to reach devs who haven’t already found you, remove the focus from the one thing you want them to learn: your name.

P.S. You can also learn to spot the mistakes with my Technical Content Checklists. Have you checked them out yet?