October 24th 2014 is the day I walked out of Google into the crisp autumn air of freedom. Which means today is four years self employed!

Editors note: ahem. You might notice that today is in fact the 25th of October. Well, due to a tinyletter snaffu I tried to send this yesterday with no luck. So here's to 4.0027 days on the road!

Every year I like to reflect on a mixture of personal and professional things that happened. I missed the first year (I'm not sure I realized I was in it for the long haul at that point!) but I've done it the years since.

Here's the latest installment:

https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/10/24/four-years/

This one ended up being quite long and meandering but the biggest revelation is basically this graph which shows the client work I've done over the past four years:


That cyclic boom/bust of client work is inevitable and actually a feature not a bug - it's what gives me perspective to reflect on work. It's the freedom to take holidays in the slow times. But it's also the fact that allows me to dive head-first into more-than-full-time work when the client work is flowing and well paid and interesting.

The best advice I ever received starting out was to embrace the busy times and the slow times and I've done both this year - from a relaxed vacation in Uruguay at the start of the year to working nights and weekends over the summer.

Anyway - I'd hope perhaps there's some useful nuggets for folks thinking of carving their own independent path.

Much love and thanks for coming on this journey with me.

Tom x

PS - my wonderful partner Erin is in the middle of writing and illustrating a kids book. If anyone on this email list knows people in the kid's book publishing world I'd love an intro! Thanks. More info on the book with some images here: https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/10/16/journey-to-the-end-of-the-night/

You know I used to think of blogging and my love for blogging as somewhat whimsical but it's starting to become a much more important and urgent issue for me. It's increasingly clear the social networks have, and are, failing us.

The web is an infinite library and the bloggers are its librarians.

So what? What next?
 

Mozilla Slab

I wrote up a blog post here outlining a little vision for how someone could step in to help - namely someone with a long time horizon, with the right funding model and the right approach to building consumer products.

My proposal for Mozilla Slab


(do know anyone at Mozilla you can introduce me to?)

It's interesting by the way that the older I get the more my energy and attention shifts to the infrastructure, governance and stewardship of ideas rather than just the UI and flash....
 

The Power of Labels

In other news - as always when I get a little bit of downtime between client projects - my mind wanders and begins to pick on that ever-present concern of naming.

Media Design has been resonating with me personally more and more but in this post I explore why naming is powerful and link to a few HIGHLY RECOMMENDED talks from Sara Hendren and Robin Sloan:

The Power of Labels

Until next time ethernauts.

Much love,

Tom
 

One of the curses of being independent, of being untethered from an employer or job title, is that you are doomed to constantly question *what* it is that you do, and *who* exactly you are.

These can be deep existential questions. But useful ones.

At the beginning of the year - rolling off a big client project and finding myself with some free time - I began this introspection in earnest. Partly trying to push myself to find more of the interesting work that would stretch and excite me - and partly just to try and find a language to use to attract more clients.

(Yes, dear freelancer, when client work ebbs and flows so will your levels of introspection)

I shared a Google doc with friends (titled: "defining my independent work"). That stirred up some emotions and provocations but also highlighted the fact that I didn't even yet know the right questions to ask.

I found a professional coach to work with (recommended!). That helped find some of the right questions to ask.

I noodled.

And, finally, I doodled.

I don't think doodling in and of itself is the answer - but as the pressure release for all of the above (and, perhaps, a little too much coffee) things all of a sudden started to.... make sense? This was the diagram:

Sure, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense on it's own. But this is the kernel of the idea of "Media Design" coming to life. A unifying idea to tie together the threads of my work.

What is media design? I'm going to get to that, but first let's talk about the S-word.

I'm going to be honest - part of this whole exercise is an attempt to get away from SEO. I dislike much of the approach that the typical SEO industry takes, disagree with some of the fundamental ideas and try and distance myself from much of the industry in-fighting. But.... I've spent over a decade now working on the web and either directly or indirectly involved in SEO. It's what a lot of people know me for.

There's probably a reason my coach started calling it the S-word. I have strong feelings about it. Best not to name the beast.

But.... here's the thing. It's not that I don't believe that "traffic from Google" is a thing. SEO is alive and well as a tactic and channel.

And SEO is often the bridge to clients and projects for me personally.

The thing is, I believe that all of the really valuable work for clients I've done over the past 4 years comes from a broader skillset. An informed understanding of SEO, sure, but driven from a place of branding, user insights, org design, strategy and more.

Hence the introspection about defining and describing the work I do.

And I think I'm getting somewhere! This notion of Media Design - my early stab at a definition here:

Media Design is the practice of designing effective systems of content within the overlapping ecosystems of technology, distribution, production and experience.

By it's nature, media design is anti-disciplinary. Purposely broad to encompass and keep in the field of view all the necessary components of successful marketing / content / growth. It's not a slight on SEO, or even distancing myself from the tactics of SEO. But rather it's a broadening of the horizon. A lifting of the head to see what the far line of sight might reveal.

Who knows where this rabbit-hole goes. I don't think the axes of media design are quite right. I don't think I've nailed the definition.

There are more diagrams to be drawn.

There are case studies to detail.

There are, I think, perhaps, a set of principles for Media Design.

We'll get to all of that. This is just the beginning.

For more words and a less personal story about what Media Design could and should be head over to the blog (and almost no mention of the S-word!):

https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/07/25/media-design/

That's all I've got for now. I'd love to know what you think. Hit reply with your thoughts. There's only 165 of you, I can guarantee a reply if you reach out.

Much love to my fellow freelance inner-cave-divers plumbing the depths of introspection.

Tom

PS - there's a bunch of new subscribers this week that came via a mention in Sentiers. If you came via Sentiers, welcome! I don't usually post such personal updates, usually there's a few more links. But also, I like to keep you on your toes. If you *don't* know about Sentiers then please, please go sign up! Lots of really good stuff.

PPS - what is is it about tinyletters that invite such personal comment and reflection? Maybe the clue's in the name. These things feel more like fireside chats. More sub-surface. More hidden (despite these things being public on the web....). Long live the intimate tinyletter.


 

I've been following Bryan Boyer for a while but without exactly understanding why. But when I listened to the podcast with Bryan and Jarrett Fuller on Scratching the Surface I was intrigued by the Helsinki Design Lab and I started digging...

And what a goldmine! The Helsinki Design Lab operated from 2009 - 2013 and was operated by basically a small team of superstars. One of which is Bryan Boyer.

The HDL focused on "strategic design" and documented and published a ton of content along the way.

I'm working my way through the archives and their published books and blogging as I go. Two posts about strategic consulting that I wrote up here:

Strategy and stewardship - A model for retained strategy consulting

High fidelity consulting - Ideas without details and details without ideas are both risky

Hopefully for those looking to engage with "strategy" and "consulting" (whatever those things really mean!) might find these helpful. But really - head straight to the HDL source and start digging through the archives and let me know what you find.

Much love,
Tom

Phew. I'm on several client sprints all at once which has severely reduced my blogging and tinylettering output. But! The internets must go on. So here's some of the best stuff I've come across recently:

#1 - City Everywhere (video, 43min) - I don't even really know where to begin with this. Part performance art, part dystopia, part conference presentation this exploration of the future/present we live in is incredible. If you know anything remotely like it please sent it my way!

#2 - A lonely isle (6 podcast eps, 2-3 mins each) - if the last link featured dystopia then this is the antidote. Soothingly narrated in British tones this is a wonderful little heartfelt audio project about a rock in the middle of the ocean. Again - hard to describe but worth your time.

#3 - A guide to agile communication (blog post) - from the ever talented Giles this little manifesto for how and why corporate teams should blog is really good. Like, really good. "Planning your communication in advance on a grid is largely a waste of time" - oooh. Love it.

#4 - After authenticity (blog post) - from my good friend Toby this is just masterful piece of writing tying together many different threads around brands, authenticity, hipsters and  - I'm not going to spoil it - but man there's a great payoff at the end of this piece.

#5 - A framework for thinking about systems change (image) - this single image packs a real punch. Ever feel like you're not actually getting anything done with an organization? Check out this little diagnostics tool. Frustrated? Probably lacking resources. Confused? Probably lacking vision.

#6 - The excellence dividend (technicolor PPTX) - with bauhaus design and no-holds-barred punchy thinking this presentation really stuck with me. What if the trick to getting things done is an execution-at-all-costs mindset? Provocative.

#7 - Atemporality of the creative artist (wired.com) - this is an olide that I got via Venkatesh but boy is it a corker from Bruce Sterling.

#8 - A Vision for Sidewalk Toronto (blog post) - if the future of technology and cities is your jam (and if it isn't.... wtf are you doing here?) then this is a real gem. Be sure to read the post but also check out the full PDF linked in the second paragraph. Lots of small smart insights.

#9 - Effortless Slippage (blog post) - a masterpiece of techno-aesthetics from Ingrid Burrington. It's a deeply fascinating piece and the language just pops off the page.

Me? I'm just plugging away. 2018 is all about working with media companies apparently - leading audience development here, building business models there. If you or anyone you know works in audience development or is doing anything "interesting in media" then hit me up!

Till next time.

I love you all.

Tom
@tomcritchlow

Here's the thing. I've been thinking a lot about blogging recently - which, frankly, is probably far more interesting for me than for you. As the blogger - I'm the one receiving the benefits of the networked writing! You poor souls are just getting the words stuffed in your inbox each time.

Sorry about that. I'm going to start writing about things that are not blogging very soon. But - one last post! And I think it's a good one...

Small b blogging

In this one I write about my philosophy for networked writing and attempt to demonstrate how powerful writing with and for the network is even with small audiences (and audiences sure have changed in recent years!).

BUT! There's more for you special folks on the tinyletter list. See, here's my typical writing and publishing process for blog posts:

1. Come up with a crazy idea (usually involving too much coffee)
2. Write out a draft as fast as possible leaving in the typos and the emotion
3. Send out the draft to a close circle of friends for candid feedback and suggestions for improvement
4. Go through the soul crushing process of editing
5. Publish

So you can see what I mean here - and so you can compare the original draft to the final piece - here's a link to the draft post complete with typos, comments, notes and more!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iwaoMKpOE3BBGJSHKpcWU2IH0O4sHnPHxGA2MGtJ2m0/edit

There's something interesting here - namely that by getting a small trusted group to review an early draft I get the following benefits:

• A better post! Obviously, since I get feedback and suggestions
• I get a close circle of folks to give a close and careful reading of the post
• I instantly get a small group of "insiders" who then usually go on to help promote the post

For them of course they get to feel like insiders and I sure listen to their ideas and suggestions too! (as you'll see from the draft...)

This idea aligns so well with "small b blogging" - the idea of small networks sharing ideas. Maybe you can adapt it for your own style of publishing?

Ok. I'm done meta-blogging for a while. Time to write about something else...! Till next time fellow hyperlink-adventurers!

With much love

Tom

Hello there lovely people. It's been a few weeks since I last sent out a tinyletter. Hopefully we'll get back into a cadence for 2018. But I'm promising nothing.

If you only read one thing make it this:

https://www.mercatus.org/commentary/my-personal-moonshot

It's short - and I highly recommend it. It speaks to me because:

Networked writing is an unfair advantage.

(or, said another way - In the land of hierarchy, the networked individual is king).

There's an article by Venkatesh Rao called the Calculus of Grit which follows up on this idea. I tie it all together in this post: In the land of hierarchy, the networked individual is king.

The punchline is this:

"This might ultimately be the measure of the networked individual - to what extent do you populate ideas in the network? how easy is it to address and link these ideas together? and how often do you rework them and revisit them on the internet github/blockchain consciousness?"

Food for thought.

For the blog-nerds out there I'm also curious about how the medium shapes the way we write. RSS, wordpress, Google Docs, commenting, twitter. These mediums shape the message (McLuhan!). So how might these mediums evolve? How might *we* evolve them? I posted some idea-starters in this piece: experiments in networked writing.

Ultimately of course it's all just one big disappointment that we can't write everything in Google Docs. (Know anyone who blogs and publishes in Google Docs? I'd love to see that.)

In other, networked-living-news, the podcast I started with Sean -  The Malcontents - is up to 4 episodes. Listen here:

There must be a theory on the internet that any blogger left alone to their own devices eventually starts a podcast right? Or perhaps the theory is that *anyone* left to their own devices will eventually start a podcast? Either way - here we are.

I've started a podcast with my friend Sean Blanda. Sean is a great "content thinker"... ok, that came out wrong. I mean, he thinks deeply about content and what it means for the world we live in. If you don't know Sean then dive into his archives. (Yes! of course he's a blogger).

Anyway - this podcast we started together is called The Malcontents and it's going to be the two of us chatting about the digital landscape, the business models of content as well as occasionally goofing off about the web. Hopefully we'll keep it fun and informative. We've done two episodes so far:

Episode 1.

Episode 2.



We're using Anchor.fm to host and sometimes record the episodes which seems to be working ok and takes some of the headache away from us. You can subscribe hopefully everywhere you listen to podcasts:

• iTunes link
• Google Play link
• Anchor.fm link

I know the audio is a little rough here and there but it's genuinely fascinating how easy it is to get up and running with a podcast. Anchor let us record the first episode on the spur of the moment on my phone sat next to each other. Next, we'll see how easy it is to get the quality up to good enough! Come along for the journey.

Really keen for any feedback or advice on the show, what we should talk about, what we have talked about, or podcasting in general.

In other news - I wrote a little blog post this morning:

Some notes on blogging & resisting the hyperfeeds of BigSocial.

We're now up to 102 lovely Tinyletterer explorers. Deep in the internet jungle hacking through content hunting for treasure. Or some other analogy.

Anyway - thanks for sticking around and see you next time!

Much love
Tom

 

As the internet envelops us and seeps into every aspect, every minute of our lives there are some deep questions we're having to ask about the kind of society we want and the actors behind the scenes that are controlling this influence and power.

Obviously the entire debate around the election, fake news and the russians is the highest profile example of this. But I want to draw your attention to a piece by James Bridle:

Something is wrong on the internet

This piece is being shared by everyone I know on Twitter and rightly so, it's important. If you've already read it or seen the headline and dismissed it I want to ask you re-read it closely. The issue is not that these videos "aren't that bad" or that "it's a weird peppa pig thing" it's that this corruption of motivations is playing out all over the web in many different niches. From kids youtube to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

Thinking critically about this YouTube Kids issue the key piece in my mind is this:


It's never been more obvious to me of a situation where what users want (tightly controlled content for kids) is at odds with the motivation of the corporate entity Google (which needs an algorithmic filter).

James end's his piece with this:

Aside from the fact that "infrastructural violence" is a beautiful (and haunting) phrase there's something interesting here. We don't have tools to understand what's happening. What exactly is the issue? How big is it? How deep does it go?

This whole piece reminded me of a personal digital art project I worked on back in 2015 that I never published called Privacy Glitch. In this context of ways of seeing and understanding hidden networks I decided to publish the piece and you can check it here:

http://tomcritchlow.com/2017/11/07/privacy-glitch/

In particular, personally I found these images of Hillary and Trump (generated back in 2015) arresting:


The networked age is maturing and we're starting to see some weird structural effects emerge. It's a fascinating, if troubling, time to be working in the digital world.
 

Three years ago today I walked out of Google into the crisp autumn air of independence. My friend Jonathan Schnapp hosted a quit party for me at the Royal Palms shuffleboard club and I was suddenly out on my own.

(This is something I encourage everyone to do when they quit a job btw - quit parties are the best).

It's been three years of being self-employed and so far things have been great. A close friend recently said I haven't been lucky I've been patient. And... there's something to that. It's taken me a while to find my feet and find interesting work but it feels like the past 12 months have been filled with good work,

Three years on the road - go read the whole post. I also break down my five obsessions for the year ahead. It's personal but maybe you'll get something from it?

(Btw - if you want something that's not about me go and watch this video about machine learning, creativity, writing and text generation. It's simply the best thing I've watched recently.

Much love to all 97 of you. Till next time my tinyletter companions.

Tom

(As always - wanna chat? just hit reply)

Here's a question for you. How does branding differ for a content business than, say, an ecommerce business?

As I mentioned a few newsletters back I'm going through two "brand" projects for clients right now where we're re-thinking the brand and aesthetic from the ground up. Both clients are content-first businesses and the traditional process for thinking of branding isn't quite working. Traditional creative agencies don't get the brief. There's no 30-second TV spot to tell the brand story.

Now, I'm no expert on branding. I'm a student for sure. But I think there are unique challenges for branding a content business that I've not seen talked about.

My friend Sean Blanda just put out a tweetstorm this morning that you should absolutely read.

And I wrote a post called "branding in the age of content" a few weeks back.

Both of those provide a glimpse at the problem but without really offering much in the way of solutions.

So!

I'm still thinking deeply about this problem. I'd love your help. Have you been involved in branding for a content business? Seen anyone doing this well? Any insights into the unique challenges that a content business faces?

Write me back and let's figure this out together! You're all smart folks (all 85 of you!).

Hello to my fellow 73 tinyletter-ers!

Thanks for sticking with me. I put a new post live this morning that I put a lot of effort into. Blogging is a fickle beast. Sometimes they come easy, sometimes you have to wrestle with them. This one was a grade a struggle to pull it out of my head and put it into words!

Here's the piece:

The Consultant's Grain - Why (their) culture eats (your) strategy for breakfast.

Despite the title hopefully it's relevant for all kinds of folks; consultants, agencies, in-house etc. Anyone who is trying to drive change can hopefully relate in some way to the forces of culture and strategy.

Anyway - I'd love to hear what you think about it. What made sense? Which pieces missed the mark? How can we improve our understanding of the (often) implicit culture around us?

Till next tinyletter!

Tom

PS - the title is inspired by a piece by Frank Chimero called the web's grain which is just a beautiful piece.

There's a grand total of 68 of you on this intimate little tinyletter now. Perhaps I can win the award for slowest growing email newsletter of 2017? That said I value each and every one of you so thank you for sticking around and thank you for the thoughtful replies and emails and high fives.

So I've been busy...! Hence the slow newsletter and slow blog. But the advantage to being busy is that I've been able to use my work to inform my writing. Projects on the go right now:

1. A community strategy for an enterprise company that is building a brand new community from scratch. After my initial chat with them it was clear the team didn't have a strong sense of how community works online and so I started looking around for a "beginner's guide to community building". After a tweet I got some great responses - everything from the beginner's guide I was looking for up to some esoteric theory. I collected up the links and published them here: The Beginner's Guide to Community Building.
2. Two separate clients are undergoing re-brands. They're both content-first businesses and so I'm thinking through a lot of the nuance of what branding means for a content business. Unlike a vertically integrated product company a horizontal content company is wide, and the content is the product. So how do you brand the site? How do you brand every interaction? I jotted some notes down here: Branding in the Age of Content. Of course, my buddy Elan who is a *real* brand strategist came along and summed up the post in one line: Every page is the "about page" when users discover your content via search. Smart guy that Elan.

What are you working on? What are your thoughts on community, content and brands? Send me a note, comment on a post or drop me a tweet!

See you in a few months. xo.

Tom
tomcritchlow.com

The blinking cursor. The publish button staring me down. Creating content through narrow distribution channels to wide audiences is a unique problem known as Context Collapse.

This idea of writing for everyone and no-one at the same time explains a lot of bad brand content on the internet and I wrote about it here including some ideas on how to fix it:

http://tomcritchlow.com/2017/04/20/context-collapse/

--

What else is going on? I'm preparing a piece about strategy consulting. You might have seen me get obsessed with this concept recently with my writing on a fieldguide for independent strategy consultants. Here's some more links on the topic:

* strategy as an unfolding network of connections (pdf) by Stripe Partners
* the Q-lab aka slack consulting from Venkatesh Rao
* small groups and consultancy from Matt Webb

So here's my ask - have you seen anything interesting I should be looking at and referencing as I think about strategy consulting for web businesses?

Just hit reply and start typing.

Till next time,
Tom

Hello to the small gathering of Tinyletterers gathered here. Huddled around the warm CPUs. Telling stories and sharing ideas.

I've been pretty busy since we last spoke! Most recently, I was out in San Diego presenting a talk called The State of Content. It's a new presentation format that I'm trying out where I've gathered a bunch of interesting ideas and threads and pulled them into a (slightly) coherent narrative.

If you're a content enthusiast (and who here on this list isn't?) then you can check out my slides here:

http://tomcritchlow.com/2017/02/24/the-state-of-media/

But! If you're really keen you can access the Google Slides directly at this link. They're open for commenting so please comment away!

So, what's been keeping me busy? Well aside from preparing these 75 slides I've been pretty heads down with the consulting work I do for content companies. A friend of mine was considering heading out on their own as a self-employed consultant and asked for some advice so I wrote up some thoughts here:

http://tomcritchlow.com/2016/12/14/fieldguide-independent-consulting/

Maybe one day when I have more time I'll flesh this out into a book of some kind... For now - if there are any topics that interest you from that brain-dump please reach out! (Any other self-employed consultants on this list? email me!)

What else?

Oh right - I wrote a piece on the importance of side projects (and how 276 lines of Python got me a job at Google). Ironically I've not had much time for side projects recently (does a baby count as a side project?). What are you all working on?

Anyway - enough about me. Hit reply to this email or leave a comment on the disqus on my site. I'm always keen to know who reads these things! There's 53 of you. I could totally make my way through 53 email replies...........(!)

Till next time Tinyletter adventurers.

Much love

Tom

Hello to all 29 of you. This infrequent message is written with freezing fingers in Manhattan. I'm on-site with a client but the client hasn't shown up yet so I'm taking the opportunity to dash this out.

I've been thinking a lot about community recently, and how blogging and Tinyletters can play a role in the modern web. How (and why?) do we carve out these little spaces for ourselves?

Some things I've been writing on that theme:

Every blog takes a village - "But that’s because most people think of blogging as writing at people - when really the key to networked writing is writing for and with people." (oh, so, by the way - you should totally hit reply so we can have a conversation! Not just a one way dialogue...)

On conferences - "Much like blogging has value in networked writing - there’s value in networked talking." Basically - I'm speaking at a conference in San Diego in Feb 2017. But I also really like the words networked talking and I might use them again (headsup!)

Breakfast! - I'm hosting a little meetup this Wed morning at 61 local in Brooklyn for folks curious about content and interested in talking. 8.30 - 10am.

There's lots more to be written on this topic. What's your take on communities? What weird corners of the web do you engage in that aren't Twitter/FB etc? Anyone here still active in (gasp) a forum? Hit reply! Or come to breakfast on Wed and chat!

Over and out for now.
 

Well hello there. What kind of dufus am I that I'm composing an email newsletter to only 6 people?

I'm doing it because it's a valid reminder to myself (and to you!) on the power of starting something. The power of invocations. Every launch has to push through that stage from nothing to something and it's exhilarating to know that maybe this email is the start of something bigger.

This email is also a reminder to stop and build community (something I've been writing about recently) - and that in order to do so you need to create a deeper connection than just shouting into the void. And writing to six people doesn't so much feel like the void as it feels like story time at the local library.

I'm also excited to be here because perhaps emails are truly the future of blogging? It's hard to blog (see my post blogging, not blogging for tips on how to start) but it's easy (we'll see!) to write a newsletter. What do you think? Does this feel more intimate? I think so. And maybe it feels more genuine too - an alternative to the bullshit industrial complex perhaps?

What do you all do? And why did you subscribe? There's only six of you, so perhaps hit reply and say hi!

For more on what I'm up to these days - why I've decided not to launch a brand for my consulting work and also a day in the consultant's life.

Much love,
Tom

--

PS - for my all time favorite invocation on beginnings check out Ze Frank's wise words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYlCVwxoL_g