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Coming up soon with Catbird Content: |
| | | Sustainable Content by Alisa Bonsignore—I’m so very happy this book exists in this world.
Before reading it, I knew that for digital content to exist, it has to be stored somewhere. It takes up digital space (memory), which has some cost. Each byte of content is pretty small, in that one space.
But for that content to be delivered, it has to be transmitted and replicated, sometimes to hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of digital spaces. It’s frequently duplicated and translated into multiple languages. Sometimes the content (and all of its translations) is replicated worldwide, so that it’s easier/faster to transmit locally.
When you’re thinking about hundreds-to-thousands of pieces of content (text, images, videos, oh my), transmitted hundreds-to-billions of digital places worldwide, it’s suddenly a staggering number of bytes flying around the world, to your email, into your browsers, into your apps.
What Alisa does in her book is to make this problem of scale understandable, and make tangible the impacts this content quantity has on the real world. She translates that massive amount of storage and delivery into a truly enormous amount of energy, which is the currency of sustainability.
Our energy usage creates pollution, usually. And what Alisa does is to demonstrate how content folks like you and me can make a difference in the sustainability efforts at our organizations—and for our world—by measuring and reducing the carbon footprint of our content.
If you’ve read it already, what do you think? Are there parts that are implementable for you already? I’ve been posting about it on LinkedIn and on Bluesky—I hope to see you there.
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| | | | I’m proud of my students at the University of Washington. We are coming to the end of the quarter, and their draft content strategies (using Meghan Casey’s excellent book) are shaping up. They’ve worked hard to understand what it means to “just” use content as a strategic lever, and they have some pretty good solutions for their (fake) clients.
In contrast, students may be working with clients as early as January. New to me, I’ll be one of the instructors for their Capstone program, in which they seek to apply and showcase the skills they’ve learned in their undergraduate years. Over 18 weeks, they’ll work in teams to solve problems, create an MVP of a solution, and iterate it. They might have a corporate, government, or non-profit sponsor, or might choose to work on a passion project of their own. If working with a junior team of developers, product owners, and UXers sounds amazing, the program is still open for more sponsors (at no charge)!
If all that sounds like I’m Super On Top of Things! And Full of Energy! —please know that perception isn’t reality. Yes, all these things are happening, but it feels like a fumble to not tell you that also, behind the scenes, I’m just gritting my teeth into the end of the year.
In short, I’m tired. I didn’t schedule my work particularly well this fall, and definitely overstretched in some areas. But I also don’t know that I made the impact I should from all that stretching; as a business, I’m in an experimenting and developing stage, which doesn’t necessarily bring in much money. I have been doing valuable work, and learning important lessons, but I know I need to make some adjustments.
To make those adjustments, I’m talking with excellent folks like Heather O’Neill from Pixels for Humans, who does business coaching. I’m enticing a new bookkeeper to work with me, so I can make more informed decisions. And I’m doing more to make sure people know they can hire me (see the new section at the bottom of this email)!
All that is to say, if you have any urge to hold me up as some exemplar of “doing it right,” whatever “it” is, please don’t look for me on that pedestal. Instead, I’m at the coffeeshop next door—please pull up a chair and say hi. We each have to work through whatever lies in our own paths, but I find it so encouraging to know we’re together (more on this below).
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|  | | | In the USA, the holiday season is in full swing. There are holiday fairs and festivals, and I can’t say I’m feeling it yet. There’s first a holiday celebrating the last time “manifest destiny” swept the continent, killing indigenous people and trying to eradicate their culture. It’s called “thanksgiving.”
But I do feel immense gratitude for the people I am connected with. In the past several weeks, so many people have talked with me, sent me email, gathered with me, with a central theme emerging: We’re all still here, and we’ll do what we can. And what could be better than that?
I felt this gathering-gratitude even more personally after the “bomb cyclone” event in the Pacific Northwest, where I live. Neighbors caught up with each other, helping to clean up broken branches, clear gutters. People offered electricity, hot showers, and freezer space when they had power but their neighbors didn’t.
I’m a firm believer in the power of humans to do good with each other. And I believe that most people try to do good, more often than not. What “good” means may be different, but understanding where people are coming from helps us come to consensus. Together, we build a shared ethosphere. It’s up to each of us to tug, nudge, contribute, resist, and participate to help us move in the direction we think is right. |
| | | When I can help you or your team, please get in touch. Design consulting: Solve problems with adoption, onboarding, usage for products and services, and design process and skill alignment for teams. Training & facilitation: Keynotes and other presentations, plus hands-on workshops in UX content, visioning, naming, and team building. Mentoring: I work with individuals to focus their own career development, including navigating change, constraints, careers, and more. Open office hours (free!) I hold 2 hours a week open on my calendar to connect with people who don’t have business with me, but just want to talk.
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| | I write these newsletters myself, and I stand by what’s in them. If you have kudos, concerns, or questions, please tell me. —Torrey |
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