Tag: anil dash (page 1 of 1)

January 2, 2022 / 0 Comments

A Digital Reset and other links for the new year

Anil does a personal digital reset each year. I took this as a motivator to improve my relationship with Twitter. However, I didn’t do a complete unfollow as he does. Instead, I used Tokimeki’s unfollow tool. I dropped about 200 accounts. I also got rid of some lists. I found myself particularly interested in decreasing the news & politics accounts I follow (unless they were about Los Angeles), removing weak or no longer relevant work ties and people I might personally enjoy but not in tweet form.

What’s left?

people I know and like
good tweeters
basketball
Los Angeles
General Company Town and Streaming work follows

I really want to spend 30 minutes or less on Twitter most days (basketball and televised live events excluded), and I don’t want to be depressed after I’ve done so. Let’s see how it goes.

“The world is not generous with downtime. There’s always more to be done or things that could be done a little better. So to harvest the benefits of rest, you need to nurture it and protect it.” – Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in How to Rest Well

I’m in the middle of a two-week break from work but spent the first two business days of it working (even though everyone in our division was, in theory, also on holiday). Taking rest seriously seems like a worthy resolution.

“No 8 a.m. Meetings in 2022 ”

— Roxane Gay

‘Nuff said.

Do you spend your best hours checking emails, catching up on work, or doing tasks for your family? Try giving that time to yourself instead. Use it to focus on your priorities rather than someone else’s. You can use that hour or two for anything you want — it might be for a hobby, a project that you feel passionate about, time with your children, or even to volunteer and help others. Setting aside your best hours to focus on personal goals and values is the ultimate form of self-care. – Tara Parker-Pope in NYT’s Well Newsletter

Too many NYT links in this list, but let’s do one more.

Let’s leave the last word to Dawn Staley:

“I’ve never felt more Black than right now.”

September 15, 2015 / 0 Comments

XOXO Fest 2015: Quotes and Queries

“Was it worth your fam or worth all a the fame? Exchange your personal relationships for personal gains.”—Wale, The Glass Egg

“My desire to do it the way it is being done is.” – Heather Armstrong (Dooce)

What do you give up of yourself to make money (on the internet but, really, in any gig)?

Is it worth the trade?

“[W]hat we want to do is make a place where things that we couldn’t have imagined can grow.” – Alex Blumberg (Gimlet Media)

“It’s about culture clash on equal terms. Your adventure being someone else’s disaster.” – Spike Trotman (Iron Circus)

“We are not taking anything from you, because it was never yours to begin with.” – Spike Trotman (Iron Circus)

“Let’s all just take a minute and acknowledge that to a certain extent we are all just posturing when we come together in public to discuss our achievements.So don’t be too hard on yourself if you’re currently being too hard on yourself. And don’t pat yourself on the back either, if you’re super concerned with stacking up accolades. Death is coming for all of us.” – Mallory Ortberg (The Toast)

“We know a couple stories of mostly dudes who are promoted as being these brilliant founders and treated as if they worked alone. And that ain’t how the internet was made. What is best on the internet is what drives us to love technology, to be creative in these ways has very little to do with what makes start-ups really wealthy.” – Anil Dash (Your Internet Dad)

“Don’t be a snowflake in someone’s avalanche.” – Zoë Quinn (Quinnspiracy)

“Design is a value statement. What we build and how we build it says a great deal about what we value and who we are. What we make easy speaks to what we value and what we make difficult speaks to what we reject.” – Eric Meyer (Meyerweb)

Am I conscious of injecting my values of my work? Does my work reflect who I think I am?

“What would you regret? What are three things you’d regret?” – Amit Gupta (@superamit)

You used to be like Pusha T but you’re 40 now and have regrets. What are you going to do about that?

Find my answers and change my life.

Don’t believe me? Just watch.

September 13, 2015 / 0 Comments

Nostalgia Vibez

“They are the waters of March, closing the summer and the promise of life and the joy in your heart.” – Bossacucanova, Aguas de Março (feat. Cris Delanno)

Aaron Hawkins and Brad Graham are looking at me from the stage. They’ve been gone from this world a while now and yet, here they are. Anil invokes them in his XOXO talk and while there are many folks in the audience who know nothing about them—that is Anil’s point and the problem his and Gina’s new project, Makerbase, is attempting to solve—I feel their presence in the room like the moving portraits of Harry Potter’s magical world.

A conversation on twitter about Six Feet Under had me going through my blog archives recently. It was time travel to a decade ago when I was processing the death of that Uppity-Negro and reflecting on the conversations we’d had. Aaron, more than anyone at the time, ignited my digital world. His words sparked my words. His comments section was where much of my online community formed. Many of my dearest friends today can be linked to connections and ideas and ways-of-being made then. With him. I miss him.

The very first thing I did at my first SXSW experience—also a decade ago—was Break Bread with Brad. It felt a lot like opening night here at XOXO 2015 actually (thank you, Andy and Andy) although there were far more people here awkwardly but openly chatting in the Park at Washington High then there were in Austin that night. Both spaces had the same vibe: Warm, welcoming, accepting, kind.

I got it.

Dooce’s excellent talk was a bit of a mirror. She asked herself and all of us, what had we given up of ourselves to make a living online?

Eric Meyer’s heartbreaking and heartwarming talk wondered what values we were investing into our work with the decisions and systems and processes we make? This may be the central thesis of this year’s event. It was a bit of Alex Blumberg’s thoughts for us and a lot of the point of Anita Sarkeesian’s work.

I got it.

The Suck not-panel and Anil’s talk have cemented my feelings of nostalgia for the internet in the wayback machine that I’ve been having all festival. Well, the ideas of the culture back then. What I’m realizing this weekend is that despite our short memories and the ephemeral nature of our digital selves (by the way, finding references to things from just 10 years ago online that still work is a reminder of this, so hard!), we haven’t lost that. It’s a state-of-mind. It’s a way-of-being (I wanted to put “online and off” here, but that’s showing my age even more, innit?). In 2015, everybody’s Internet so you feel smaller—I feel smaller—but that’s okay. It doesn’t change that I can create. I can write. I can make things and be proud of them.

It requires more discipline. It demands that from those of us who know better. Those of us who recognize the magic of the not-so-long ago.

The memories of those we loved and mattered and have gone from that time deserve that.

Let’s break bread. Let’s get uppity.

October 16, 2013 / 0 Comments

My Tumblr is Tryin’ to Tell Me Somethin’

“If I were you I would say yes.” – Margaret “Shug” Avery, Maybe God Is Tryin’ to Tell You Somethin’

Make something people will love.

“We used to have Internet companies we loved. This isn’t rose-tinted nostalgia about The Good Old Days; The apps were uglier, and harder to use, and less popular back then. But we rooted for the companies that made them, because we knew that the people who made Flickr, or Blogger, or Movable Type, or Upcoming, or Manila, or Delicious, or countless other early social apps really loved the web. We loved the web because it changed our lives, permanently and for the better. That is, in fact, what I was really grieving for almost a year ago when I wrote The Web We Lost. But I was wrong. That web isn’t lost. It’s just dormant.”

— Anil Dash

Make something people need.

“The world needs sustainable, profitable, vibrant content companies staffed by dedicated professionals; especially content for people that grew up on the web, whose entertainment and news interests are largely neglected by television and newspapers.”

— Jonah Peretti

Know why you’re making it.

“[T]he best brands focus not on what they do or how they do it, but why they do it. Find your why and you’ve found your story. Transcend category by focusing on your role in people’s lives. Compelling brand stories speak to values, to what your brand stands for and why it exists.”

— Scott Donaton

Be the change.

“The job of the change agent is not just to surface high-minded ideas. It is to summon a sense of urgency inside and outside the organization, and to turn that urgency into action. It’s one thing for leaders to use fresh eyes to devise a new line of sight into the future. It’s quite another to muster the rank-and-file commitment to turn a compelling vision into a game-changing performance. My friend and Fast Company cofounder Alan Webber puts it well. Progress, he likes to say, is a math formula. It only happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change. That’s why the third principle of change is for leaders to encourage a sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo, to persuade their colleagues that business as usual is the ultimate risk, not a safe harbor from the storms of disruption.”

— Bill Taylor

Think the best of people.

“Design everything on the assumption that people are not heartless or stupid but marvelously capable, given the chance.”

— John Chris Jones

Know your principles and values.

“Designers would do well to embrace this parent-as-designer comparison. There are limits to how much you can control the life of something you’ve created. What matters is being clear about your principles. Then you can have faith that the final product will turn out fine.”

— Baratunde Thurston

Quit coasting.

“I want you to think about something.
Maybe you’re like me: coasting along, doing okay, not lacking for anything material. You have a good life.
What else is there? Oh, that’s right: everything.”

— Chris Guillebeau

Okay.

December 18, 2012 / 0 Comments

The Story of Yay (or why I’ve stuck with Flickr)

“My heart will never feel, will never see, will never know.” – Grimes, Genesis

One of the things that I’m most proud of from the last 5 years is that, for a time, I was the #3 result for the word “yay” in google image search. I’m down around #8 now but it’s still my own little piece of recent internet ephemeral fame. The story of that picture is one thing but the story of how it became so highly ranked is pretty straightforward. Flickr makes images easy to find. Someone that I don’t know was looking for a “yay” picture to go with an article and found it (either through flickr or their own googling) and…magic.

They had every right to use my photo. I use a Creative Commons license on Flickr that allows for non-commercial usage with attribution. I suppose I could quibble if the site is ad supported but I was able to make these decisions about my pictures. I can make it on an individual basis. I can share my photos as widely as I choose. Be that one other person or the world. I pay for the privilege. I’ve done so for many years now.

The conversation around Instagram and their Privacy Policy/Terms of Use changes the past few days ties nicely in with Anil Dash’s post from last week about the web we lost. I remember when the Flickr community participated actively in helping to form and re-form the policies around the service that still persist today. I remember the many heady conversations and points of view and how it felt, even if it wasn’t necessarily the case, that the whole community was engaged and invested in the outcome. That the instagram community has reacted similarly seems like a throwback to that time.

That may just be what’s in my field of vision, though. Unlike on Flickr, I struggle to make sense of the broader community on Instagram (probably because there isn’t a meaningful web experience) so who knows if the masses actually care. It was a reminder, though, that Flickr does care.

And pretty much all of the moments of the last decade that I care about that were lucky enough to be captured in an image (still or moving) are on that old photo service.

Like nerdwedding11.

And SXSW.

And the Yay Flag Opening Ceremony.

See you around the old neighborhood.