22 Side Projects From the Buffer Team

At Buffer, we’ve long had teammates who have side projects in addition to working at Buffer. It’s pretty common for our team to run their own blog, we have several published authors on the team, and many of our engineers run apps that have nothing to do with their regular work.

Though some companies prefer that anyone on their team not have side projects and actively discourage it, that has never been our way at Buffer. In fact, working at Buffer means you get a free Buffer account, making it even easier to promote any side projects you might be working on.

The benefits of side projects

• You can work on something you’re passionate about. Maybe there’s something you’re particularly passionate about and although it doesn’t seem likely to be your full-time job, you can still feel fulfilled and work on it as a side project. We have several teammates who work with nonprofits they are passionate about.
• Gaining new skills. Working on new projects gives you the chance to learn new skills outside of your regular work. I learned how to edit a podcast with my side project and eventually it became useful in my everyday work as well.
• Make new connections. Working on a side project is an opportunity to connect with and learn from a new group of people outside of your regular connections. It’s a great way to expand your network and build some new and lasting relationships.
• Get a sense of accomplishment outside of work. Personally, I think it’s healthy to have something else in life you’re getting a sense of accomplishment from in addition to work. This is one of the reasons I’ve had side projects and hobbies for years.

How to make time for side projects

• Choose one: If you have a ton of side project ideas, this one is for you. Instead of starting them all at once, start just one to see how it goes before you decide to add in a second or even third.
• Get friends involved: It can be easier to work on something if you have multiple people pushing it forward and it can add some motivation to keep going as well.
• Focus on urgent, not perfect: Avoid focusing on getting everything done perfectly and try to just create or ship whatever you’re working on.

The 22 Side Projects the Buffer Team is Working on

Here’s what our team works on outside of work. Hopefully you might spot some cool side project ideas for yourself, or check out some of the things our team works on.

Apps

Andy: Alpenglow, F1 Calendar, Starglow

• Alpenglow: An app to check sunrise, sunset and golden hour times as well as quality predictions. Also sends out notification reminders and with Alpenglow Pro will notify you if the next forecast is looking good compared to your desired threshold. The app can be doing on both iOS and Android, often featured by Apple and includes over 35+ localizations.
• F1 Calendar: Taking over the development from a few friends, I rebuilt F1 Calendar as an easy way to check Formula 1 Session times in your timezone as well as making the data available via Calendar subscriptions. The site has been going for 14 years and we now have additional sites for F1 Academy, F2, F3, Formula E, IndyCar, MotoGP.
• Starglow: Essentially Alpenglow but for viewing the night sky. It’s been requested quite a bit from users and friends. It displays weather parameters for each hour, focused mostly on cloud coverage and visibility which are key to view the night sky clearly. The app is currently on the App Store for pre order, aiming to release it in April.

David: Contain
Contain is a browser-based, accessibility-first design tool. Current UI design tools like Figma and Sketch are great for visual explorations but become cumbersome with responsive design, components, animations, and user interactions. Website builder tools push too much complexity on users, and generate bloated, inaccessible code. Contain solves this by living in the browser, meaning everything you design is built with accessible HTML and CSS. This brings the design process into the final medium, making responsive design, container queries, and user interactions possible while cutting much of the waste from the design process.

Eric: PlayCraft
Platform for everyone to create web games and share it to their friends in seconds! We’ve built our own modular framework to create games really quickly for PixelBrawlGames. With today’s AI capabilities, we’re using this same framework to create new games with a single prompt.

Martin: Palabreja, Voices.ink

• Palabreja: A NYTimes Spelling Bee Game clone in Spanish.
• Voices.ink: Voices.ink is a cutting-edge application that streamlines the note-taking process by using AI to record, transcribe, and analyse audio, summarizing it directly to your Notion account. It identifies key points and actionable items, ensuring detailed yet concise notes.

Mike: Carpeta
Carpeta is a project-management tool for interior designers, architects, and industrial designers to help them centralize all their conversations, budgets, and files, and better manage their time while managing their projects.

Freelance

Karinna: Pilates Instructor
Karinna is a certified Pilates & Lagree Instructor, and teaches classes in her spare time.

Martin: Two Emotions
Street & Travel Photography

Mitra: Social media manager for The Used, Thrice, Dustin Kensrue, and robbietheused
Mitra is the social media manager for bands/artists The Used, Story of the Year, Thrice, Dustin Kensrue, and robbietheused. She’s been working with these bands since 2017.

Mitra: Mitra Mehvar Photography
Mitra does live music photography, primarily for rock bands.

Music

Brandon: Kid Lightbulbs
Brandon writes, produces & releases music under the name Kid Lightbulbs from his small home studio. He’s released 3 albums under this name, the most recent being RUINED CASTLE in December 2024.

Nonprofits

Amanda: SheSharp
Amanda runs SheSharp: a non-profit foundation based in The Netherlands that makes it easier for all women and non-binary people to enter, stay, and grow in the tech industry. We host events, facilitate mentorship programmes and give out funding through scholarships, and a plethora of other initiatives.

Kateryna: TallinnJS
It is a technical community for JavaScript developers in Tallinn

Sofia: Nosotras Hablamos Design
Nosotras Hablamos Design is a community where Spanish-speaking women come together to practice English and explore the world of design through engaging conversations and workshops.

Small Businesses

Andy: Woof Warehouse
Andy works on a Shopify store that sells dog bandanas and accessories. He focuses primarily on the tech side of things, customizing the store, plugins, and branding, while also caring for and photographing the adorable pups.

Mike S: Otter, WTC

• Otter: Mike co-founded Otter. Based in Spain, Otter helps people make custom furniture by connecting them to local carpenter’s that suit their needs.
• WTC: A hat brand 🧢 with statements designed for creatives, entrepreneurs, and those who embrace a life of thinking and doing business with purpose – more designs coming soon!

Mitra: The Torshi Dough
Mitra bakes sourdough bread at her home cottage bakery

Nathan: Riftgate
Board game and hobby shop. I’ve got a brick and mortar store at 5412 S 900 E Murray UT 84107

Podcasts & Writing

Andy's personal blog
Pretty light on posting but finally decided to shift from andydev.co.uk to ay8s.com which I use everywhere else. Got a new post up about App Clips in Alpenglow and hope to share some more transparent updates about Alpenglow once I’m not reliant on a third party API for the majority of data.

Diego: Pink and Her Cast
With my partner, we launched this book that he wrote and illustrated himself. I did the editing, formatting and cover design (+ translation since the book also exists in Spanish). We wanted to create a book with a valuable lesson for children: That sometimes life will throw curve-balls our way, and that even though we might feel like we are the only ones going through it, we are not alone and others might actually be feeling the same way or going through similar situations. Fun fact: Our 8-year old nephew did the Title and appears in the credits.

Jess: Pinecone Papers
A blog about how to mindfully journal and track symptoms when you have a chronic illness. Working on a downloadable printable journal that will be out later this year.

Joe: Practical Jetpack Compose, CI/CD for Android with GitHub Actions, Practical KMP

• Practical Jetpack Compose: A book to teach Android Developers how to build apps using Jetpack Compose, Googles new UI framework for Android!
• CI/CD for Android with GitHub Actions: A book to teach Android developers how to automate their testing and release process using GitHub Actions.
• Practical KMP: A book to to teach developers how to build apps using Kotlin Multiplatform, the framework from Jetbrains that allows for code sharing between Android & iOS!

Kirsti: SA Tech Marketers Podcast and Community
The South Africa Tech Marketer’s podcast aims to help spotlight fantastic talent we have in South Africa, and the community is set up to help us connect and grow. It’s sponsored by a company called The Global Talent Co, which is effectively a recruitment agency for SA marketing talent. They help South Africans get remote jobs — it’s neat. 😄

Lexi: The Burden of Joy
Lexi’s debut novel is available from Rejection Letters, an indie press.

Mike: Building Better
A weekly podcast where we reflect on building better businesses and relationships inside the hectic startup and digital business world.

Nate: Almost Heretical
A podcast by Nate (a former pastor) and his wife Shelby (a Bible scholar). They reimagine and revisit the Bible for those deconstructing Christianity.

YouTube Channel

David: Build UX
Build UX is a YouTube channel on focused on accessible design and development. Past series have focused on building out design ideas from Dribble in Figma and code to be accessible, performant, and responsive. Current videos focus on shorter accessibility tutorials that span design and development, as well as test-driven development (TDD) techniques used to build resilient user interfaces.

Over to You

That’s enough about us, we’d love to hear from you, too! Are you working on any side projects? Feel free to drop a link in the comments! If you are, how do you make time for them and stay motivated, are you working on more than one?