Bandcamp is doing a nice fundraiser today where they’re waiving their transaction fee to get more cash in the pockets of artists. Tom is encouraging bloggers to share their favorite albums on Bandcamp so we can all find some new favorites and support great music. Join the #BandcampBloggingBandwagon. I’m writing this post hastily too late […]
I love blogging. I enjoy forum discussions. All too often, I relish Twitter banter. But these short-form formats are far from the only ways to write online. For certain projects, where I want to explore a subject in depth, it feels like the only answer is: go long. I’ve been thinking a lot about blogs, […]
This post is part of Blogging Futures, a collaborative blogchain-based learning adventure exploring how we can reimagine blogging. Feel free to join the conversation! Blogging is great, but it sometimes feels like every blog is an island. To have a robust blog society requires connection, community, conversation. Part of the problem is we don’t have […]
Continuing my “Networked Communities” blogchain with Tom Critchlow, talking about how we write, how we connect, how we build communities online & more. This is the third post; see Post 1 (me) and Post 2 (Tom) first if you haven’t read those yet! Tom’s latest post puts forth another way to frame what blogging is […]
This is the first post of a blogchain with Jinjin Sun on the theme: “Why Bad Art”. We’ll be exploring the mysteries and pleasure of so-called “bad” art: why we like it, what it actually means, and perhaps how we can make bad art (that’s actually good) in meaningful ways. More to come! This blogchain […]
Part 1 of a blogchain with Tom Critchlow on the theme of networked communities — exploring possibilities for conversation space, community networks, open writing ecosystems, working in public, the greater blogsphere present and future… More to come, including a nicer way to browse this and other potential future blogchains as soon as I add a […]
I came across a Twitter thread recently about the brutal economics of independent bookstores, and it prompted me to consider some possibilities for making the bookstore business more sustainable. I ended up with some thoughts about how bookstores might experiment with memberships, subscriptions, and patronage; I’ve edited and expanded those thoughts here. A huge issue […]
One of my secret hobbies is following all manner of cool GitHub repositories. My chops as a developer are limited, but it’s always fun to learn about new technologies and poke around the READMEs to get a sense of how various apps, libraries, utilities, toolkits, and side projects are used. GitHub is mostly used for […]
Some initial ideas for “learning patterns” — building blocks that might be components of great learning experiences. After, of course, A Pattern Language. As in APL, these patterns could operate on a few different levels, organized perhaps by scale or context. They encompass lenses for thinking about interactions with subject matter, communities of learning, the […]
Do I have a book buying habit? I like to think not; I like to think that I have discerning taste, that I buy books carefully, I like to think I mainly only buy books that I really want, valuable books, with enduring wisdom or captivating narratives or ideas eminently relevant to my personal growth […]
An after-drizzle; an echo rain. The droplets return for another pass, rebound off the front that preceded, slingshot back through space and time. We were fooled, by the gap the pause the sunshine smile, then snapped back through the gauntlet, double-wet, showered again, submitted for the second time that day to the pummel of the […]
There are so many different organizational models for how people form communities of work, learning, and creative collaboration. What are the most interesting and innovative? I’d like to take a partial stab at a tentative taxonomy, considering models ranging from hacker school, to guild, to science lab, and more. This combines several of my interests: […]