This week marks “back to school” for many people in my community. Perhaps you also know people who are starting new things this week, or perhaps you’re one of them.

One dear friend is one of these new-beginners, which takes a heck of a lot of courage. Today, she begins to earn a degree in a field that she’s always found enticing, but that didn’t seem realistic to pursue. A few months ago, she had the sudden insight that getting this degree (and the life beyond it) is the best new chapter for her.

I’m so proud of her and excited for all these students creating these new stories for themselves.

For all of you intrepid new-beginners: I wish for you the opportunity to learn something wonderful about yourself. I hope you get the chance to welcome new people to your life. I envy you the new ways you’ll find to appreciate the complex interconnections among us.

Coming up soon with Catbird Content:

• September 26-27: Button Conference, online everywhere

• October 3-4: Converge Conference in Brighton, UK

Finds

OK, OK, I’ll shut up about Button soon. But not yet!

Storytelling is probably the most important content design skill that most of us haven’t developed enough. It’s important for any creative role, or sales role, or product role–any place I can think of that requires communicating to other people the why, what, how, and who of the work we do.

But high quality, practical guidance on how to develop and use storytelling in content design is pretty rare. That’s why my top pick for sessions to see live at Button is Alli Mooney’s talk Storytelling in Content Design.

If you don’t have your ticket yet, use my code for a discount: CATBIRD100 – and see my LinkedIn feed September 5 for a chance to enter to win a ticket!

Flexes and fumbles

I’m not sure this is a flex, but I also can hardly believe how lucky I am: This weekend, my co-authors and I are gathering together for the first time in person. This is for the book that will connect UX skills to the impacts those skills can make.

We have a lot of work to do! In so many ways, it feels like we’re just getting started. We’ve been interviewing people in design, research, content, and consulting roles. We’ve heard a lot about how they want to use the book, from writing performance reviews to making staffing decisions. We’ve also asked about what impact means to them, and what skill means to them. These interviews are grounding us, helping us fine-tune our understanding of who we’re serving with this book, and the jobs that they need done.

Y’all, we have so much work to do to create this book. 😅 I’m confident we can do it, and even more certain that I want this book to exist. But the terrain from here is steep! I’m so glad I’m in this with Maya and Kim.

I’m extra super aware of how much work it takes to make a book after getting to a mostly-complete draft of a new chapter, Building AI Features, for the second edition of Strategic Writing for UX.

It has taken at least twice as long as I estimated to write this chapter. There’s just so much chaff for the wheat when you’re researching how LLMs work. Even the “good” sources are sometimes technically incorrect! Finding those errors and missteps has been painful.

It’s maybe not a fumble if you catch it? But wow: in the midst of reorganizing several thousand words that make up that new chapter, I almost accidentally left out the part where I talked about bias inherent in the training data. 🫠

I’m very lucky that one of my early, early technical reviewers pointed out that it was missing. I’m also lucky that this excellent (and hilarious, and awful) example came to light at the same time: Startup Alarmed When Its AI Starts Rickrolling Clients.

Just remember, folks: AIs trained on the Internet are trained on the Internet. Think of them as slightly less accountable than an anonymous Redditor who might be feeling sassy that day, and please don’t cite them as sources.

As for me and my books, we’re going to continue to be thinking and writing, followed by the accuracy-promoting processes of reviewing and editing.

Philosophy

This week I’m thinking about the story of Labor Day as celebrated in the USA. Labor movements here are demonized by some as “communism” (in quotes because it has little to do with government systems of communism.)

The people who are against labor movements are usually, as I understand them, fearful or resentful that people who work hard might be cheated by people who are allowed to be lazy because they are protected by a powerful (and probably corrupt) union.

In my experience, and in experiences my unionized teachers and teamster friends have had, unions have been about securing protection from labor abuses. Those abuses include being cheated on their paychecks, being prevented from getting adequate medical care, being required to work in dangerous circumstances, and more. Far from being allowed to be lazy, unionized workers have more freedom to act on their own behalf, and on behalf of the people they serve. Unions are a way for workers to have a say, collectively, in getting a better deal for themselves.

As the owner of a very small tech-oriented business, I’m in favor of tech worker unionization. I don’t begrudge companies, owners, and shareholders making a profit, and I think that workers should be paid fairly and treated well. Workers provide the creativity of new ideas, apply insights to improve the products, and can be held responsible for the work they create. (Generative AI can’t do any of those things, by the way.)

I’ve heard people say that “unions are for blue collar work,” and I know that’s nonsense. Everything we do in tech, we do in our cross-functional teams. We are constantly building on the work of others. Why wouldn’t we help each other out? Tech employers are following the same exploitative playbook as other industries, controlling workers through a mythos of achievement (links to a timestamp at 11:35).  

I’m aware that in any agglomeration of power, whether that’s a union or an association of businesses, there will be people who corrupt that power to their own ends. But if it means that workers have protections from the worst excesses of barely-regulated capitalism, I’m in.

If you’re interested in the movement to unionize tech workers, I recommend that you read You Deserve a Tech Union by Ethan Marcotte, and look into the Tech Worker’s Coalition.

I write these newsletters myself, and I stand by what’s in them. If you have kudos, concerns, or questions, please tell me. —Torrey