Here at Cloudinary, we provide a cloud-based tool that enables our users to compress images and video for their websites and apps. Our goal is to preserve the visual integrity of the content, but deliver the smallest file size to any device or browser to ultimately optimize website performance and end user satisfaction.

Managing media files (processing, storage and manipulation) is one of the biggest challenges we encounter as practical developers. These challenges include:
A great service called Cloudinary can help us overcome many of these challenges. Together with Cloudinary, let's work on solutions to these challenges and hopefully have a simpler mental model towards media management.

Last week, I was invited to an exclusive hackathon to build apps for musicians. The app team I was assigned to was tasked with building a video upload site for Bounce videos. Bounce is a style of music that originated in New Orleans. The app would be called BounceDotCom.com and there were plans to have Big Freedia, the Queen of Bounce, promote it. I knew the organizer could make things happen, so I jumped at the chance.

Developing a library requires a different approach from developing an application. You must consider the use of the library in someone else’s application and design for it. React is well suited for this purpose. And if the library you are creating is an adapter to another library, you can dynamically generate the component's properties definition to ensure they are forward compatible. There is however more than one way to achieve the same goal, with some conventions to follow and others to cautiously not follow. In particular, I chose to use the context function even though it is an experimental feature because it is useful when you don’t know, or can’t dictate, the way your library's components will be utilized.

