Artefact 234 – Your Letters
I sent out the latest edition of the Artefacts newsletter earlier this week, 3000+ words on a variety of things. Interestingly, various people got in touch with contributions, thoughts, questions, and more, but all via different platforms. There was no…
I can’t believe there’s no butter
Well, not no butter. But certainly less than you’d expect. Another example of what producers are having to do in the face of ever-rising input costs. The wrappers are probably long paid for in bulk. The boxes they’re packed into…
Taking Care of Water: IEDIFT 2023
Toban Shadlyn & John V Willshire 📢 Calling all futurists, changemakers, change-seekers, innovators 📢 . Come spend two weeks this summer at IED in Barcelona attending the Innovation and Future Thinking course. We will be bringing together a group of…
Hanging with your prosthetic selves
This week I read Zoe Scaman’s latest report on communities; there probably aren’t many (if any) people paying as much attention at the intersections behind brands, agencies and whatever community is in these conversations today. If that’s your bag, do…
How I Created LEGO Serious Play
…wait, what, that’s not true, how can you even go about claiming that? Of course I didn’t create LEGO Serious Play. But ChatGPT claims I did… It’s just so damn eager to please sometimes, it’ll say anything. Not that I’m…
Deliberate Data Leaks
For the past five years or so, I’ve been taking photos at Gatwick Airport. No, not of planes taking off. Nothing as exciting as that. Photos of the water refill machines. I know. Exciting, right? It’s up there with my…
Making space for the year
I didn’t feel ready to start this year. Instead, I decided it was time to redesign the home office. Our work went longer into December than it would normally, yes, but there was something more to it than that. After…
How to use the Community Power Compass
A practical walk through on how to use the Community Power Compass to evaluate and analyse communities in spaces like Web3.
Introducing the Community Power Compass
The background context for a beta version of a tool for investigating and evaluating different types of community, particularly those in the Web3 space.
A bar without walls
Spotted in a barber shop last week. I won’t name names, as I’m not entirely sure how legal it would be… During last summer, they opened up within strict COVID guidelines, as did the pub nearby. As with most pubs,…
Salad days in the layers of Leather Lane
I’ve been in London and Brighton recently, getting back out into the world. I’ve been uploading a bunch of pictures over here on Flickr, just gathering a bunch of things I’ve noticed in the layers of these places. It’s not…
Cosmic Ordering on the High Street
From a London wander last week. Rather than letting shops look empty and dormant, a few management companies have put ups signs like these. They promise a great and wondrous experience within, from a yet-unknown mystery occupant. “Just imagine, in…
The Entropy of Insights
I was flipping through my Readwise highlights the other day, and came across this gem again. It’s the neatest wee description of entropy; moving “from rare configurations to common ones”. It started me thinking about a variety of projects from…
Making the most of moments that matter
The creation of a commonplace book As perhaps we all have, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting in the last few months about how to make those precious moments when people are together really matter. For a lot of…
Watch Me Think (in real time)
This feels strange… I’m doing a talk, live, in person, to people. I vaguely remember people – legs, arms, faces, right? Wave their arms around when talking. Those folks. It’s at Watch Me Think in London, on 13th October. There…