I’ve been tasked by my daughter with getting Taylor Swift tickets at the presale today. Talk about pressure.

Time for another AIGA vision quest

“Re-envisioning AIGA Moving Forward Together”

Today, AIGA sent an email out to all members announcing the departure of their executive director and the beginning of a new attempt to reimagine AIGA. (If you don’t know, AIGA is the professional organization for design, formerly known as the American Institute of Graphic Arts.)

I’m been an AIGA member for much of my professional career. I was active at a chapter level for over a decade. Over that time, people repeatedly tried to reimagine the central organization, its chapter system and its funding mechanisms. No one was ever satisfied. They wanted to make it better, and then every designer would want to join and help change the world.

And yet, the organization got smaller.

AIGA has meant a lot to me and it definitely helped my career, but structurally, it’s been broken for a long time. It was built in a pre-Internet era. A time when the only way you got to see a legendary designer was to go to a conference or have them come to a local AIGA chapter. When networking was done primarily at the local bar. A time when being aligned with a large national organization gave you needed credibility and clout.

But now, YouTube means you can see all of your favorite designers deliver inspirational talks from the comfort of your own home. You can network with anyone, anywhere, anytime. The world changed, but the structure remained, and that was before the pandemic hit.

AIGA isn’t alone. Lots of member-based organizations are trying to figure out how to move forward. These organizations can bring value to their members, but they will need to embrace a different approach, building valuable online communities that may or may not be connected with local chapters.

In the end, we’ll see how AIGA’s latest re-envisioning works out. I’m optimistic, but time will tell if they are able to make the hard choices.

Just hit a (small) milestone for my long Ph.D. journey. My first solo IRB approval, and tomorrow, my web-based experiment goes live. Now fingers crossed that the students who are supposed to take the survey actually take the survey.

This line from Brent Simmons on Inessential feels particularly dead on:

The internet’s town square should never have been one specific website with its own specific rules and incentives. It should have been, and should be, the web itself.

I’m dusting off my CSS skills so I can customize my Micro.Blog blog. I’m having fun and I want to keep experimenting. That said, I’m terrible at it. 🤣

I just created a Link Out page on my Micro.Blog site that has all of my active (and less active) online accounts. Basically a DIY linktree page. I’m going to use it on all of my bios.

Showing his grandparents all the things he can play on his viola.

🏀 Pretty good basketball night for my South Carolina Gamecocks. The women’s team – #1 and defending champs – defeated a ranked Maryland team on the road and the men managed to finally beat Clemson.

I gave the fish at bobwertz.com his own verified check mark. He seems pretty happy with it and I didn’t even have to spend $8.

I’m going to download all of my Tweets and Facebook posts, and then use Blurb to produce a physical book containing all of them. I’ve got lots of great stories from when my kids were little that I shared on social media. Would be a shame to lose them.

📺 I’ve enjoyed Andor. Such an interesting extension of the Star Wars Universe. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this show when it was announced, but I think it’s one of their best shows yet. Can’t wait to see all the pieces come together over the next three episodes.

I’m interested in the new version of Affinity Designer, Publisher and Photo. I have v1 of all of the apps, and will likely upgrade, but I still find myself using Adobe apps because that’s what I’ve used for my entire career.

One of the weird things about working on a Ph.D. at this point in my life… You head to the coffee shop to study for an exam, and your high school kids want to tag along to work on their homework.

The woman in the elevator just complimented my “sippy cup” and now I think I need a new travel mug.

7 subscriptions I happily pay for

Worth every penny

It seems like everything is going to subscription pricing. I subscribe to a whole host of streaming services, bundles, news sites, and software. Many of them don’t always seem worth the money, but as I look at what I subscribe to, I realize that I don’t mind supporting products and creators that I love. So here are a list of services that I really, really like and happily pay for:

Micro.Blog $5/month

I backed the Micro.Blog Kickstarter and I’ve had a paid subscription ever since — even when I wasn’t using it every day. I’m happy to support a product with a viewpoint that aligns with my values, and Micro.Blog is that type of service. Now that Twitter is unstable, I’m glad Micro.Blog is my home base.

Upgrade+ $5/month

I’ve listened to Myke Hurley and Jason Snell talk about Apple and the larger tech industry on Upgrade since 2014. I listen to a lot of podcasts, but this is the one I listen to every Monday. Paying for the “+” gets me ad-free episodes and an extra segment, but, I’m just happy to support a show I love.

Six Colors $6/month

Jason Snell and Dan Moren write Six Colors. I get additional articles and an extra podcast on Friday afternoons, but again, a way to support writers that I like. (Dan also writes a series of science fiction spy novels that I like a lot. Check them out, too.)

Ulysses $29.99/year

A distraction-free writing app that lets me write in Markdown. I’ve used Ulysses for a long time and almost everything I write starts here (including this post).

Fontstruct 5€/month

I don’t spend a ton of time over on Fontstruct, but I love it dearly. Fontstruct lets you build modular fonts and export them. Tons of fun and a great community. It’s free to use, but the 5 euros helps pay the bills.

Notion $5/month

Notion is… a lot of different things in one package. I use it for tracking tasks, managing grad school projects, jotting notes and planning for the future. Well worth the $5 a month.

Zotero $20/year

I’m a Ph.D. student. Zotero is a citation manager that lets me track all of the sources I need for my papers. It’s not the prettiest app, but it’s incredibly powerful. Free to use, but by $20/year gets me more cloud storage. In a couple of years, I’ll happily upgrade to the $60/year plan. Worth every penny.

✅ We voted this morning. In and out in five minutes. Make the time to vote today. Your vote counts.

✅ Pro voting tip: Always check your state’s sample ballot before you head to the polls. That way, you won’t be surpirsed by the random constitutional amendment or ballot question that gets added to the end of the ballot.

Twitterless, Part III

Preparing for a future without Twitter.

I’ve been preparing for the demise of Twitter since long before Elon Musk made the offer to purchase it. In 2016, I wrote a post — Twitterless — about what would happen if Twitter “disappeared tomorrow.” I outlined a couple of key areas that would be problematic for me and possible solutions.

A year and a half later, I wrote a follow up post — Twitterless, Part II — that noted my progress on replacing the role Twitter plays for me, and the challenges that still existed.

Times are changing, though, and I honestly believe that we all need to be diversifying — and if possible, owning — our social media presence. Becoming less reliant on the big social media behemoths is the first step.

I ended that post with a promise to follow up on my progress, but as Facebook became more and more evil, I focused on moving away from Facebook. Replacing Twitter was pushed to the back burner.

Now that Twitter armageddon may or may not be here, it’s clearly time that I renew my quest to find an alternative. I figured I’d check back in on those questions that I asked back in 2016 and see how I’ve done:

I’d lose a bunch of contacts. Yep. I’m going to lose a bunch of people who follow me on Twitter. I’ve tried to connect with people on other platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, but I can’t find everyone, and you know what, I’m okay with that.

I’d change how I watch live events. This is still a problem as I noted yesterday. Live events are fun to follow with other people, and Twitter is great for that. No other service is quite like Twitter for those instant commentary events.

I’d have to rethink how I find articles and stories. I use Feedbin as an RSS reader, but that’s not my only solution. I subscribe directly to The New York Times and The Washington Post. And — as shocking as it might seem — I also get a lot of value out of Apple News+, which I get with our Apple One bundle. My local paper, The State, is included in with Apple News+ and I catch a random assortment of articles from sources I don’t normally read. It’s a nice way to diversify the news I see every day.

I’d have to rethink how I share content. When I wrote this, I felt like traffic to my blog was coming primarily from Twitter, but over time, that lessened and most come through search engines. I’ll still create and share, but I’ll just use whatever channels are available at the time.

I’d change the way I use Facebook/Instagram. I once thought that Facebook and Instagram might provide a solution. I’ve mostly left Facebook, and Meta seems to only care about the Metaverse now anyway. I’m not that interested in Instagram now that it’s trying to be TikTok. I don’t feel any better about Facebook than I do about Twitter.

I’d try to find a replacement. I backed the Micro.Blog Kickstarter back in 2017 and I’ve had a paid account ever since. I originally connected Micro.Blog to my Squarespace site, which worked well over the years. I believe in the idea of a feed-based, open social media platform, but because I was still using Twitter, I didn’t fully commit to using Micro.Blog.

I’ve still got Sketchbook B and it’s still hosted on Squarespace, but I made the decision this summer that all of my future blog and short-form posting will be hosted on Micro.Blog, specifically, bobwertz.com. Why? I love the community, and the platform lets me easily post my content and crosspost to other services if I want to. It also lets me follow people who post on Mastodon, and they can follow me at @bobwertz@bobwertz.com. I like writing my blog posts in Ulysses in Markdown and the just post them directly to my site. I feel Micro.Blog gives me the best of all of the potential options and I’m happy with that choice.

Looking back, I think I’ve prepared pretty well for the potential downfall of Twitter. I’m not leaving completely, but I’ve got one foot out the door and I feel good about the solutions I’ve worked out for me.

If Twitter ceases to be enjoyable, I’ll leave. To be honest, I’ll miss it. I joined in 2008 and 14 years is a long time to use any service. It’s part of my daily routine. At the end of the day, though, if a service isn’t making my life better, I’m better off without it.

I’m trying to create a new habit of using Micro.Blog instead of Twitter. I’m trying to post daily… but I have crossposting turned on so it looks like I’m using Twitter more than ever.

27 years ago, we had our first date. Celebrating with a drink at Craft and Draft in Irmo.

Getting work done at Starbucks this morning.

I’ve spent a little time today working on my Micro.Blog setup. I customized the CSS on bobwertz.com. Now, I’m dusting off the Ulysses integration. I need to add a couple more things to the site, but I’m happy with how it’s coming together.

I know lots of people are jumping to Mastodon, but Micro.Blog has always been my Twitter implosion backup plan. Great service and community. Lets me cross post to Twitter if I want to. I love the concept of using RSS (or JSON Feed) as the foundation of an open social network.

My 17-year-old is telling our 10-year-old about an old technology from her childhood… cable television.