Introduction & Background
I nerd out on citizen journalism, history, psychology, urban planning, parenting, public policy, theology, and stand-up comedy.
I’m a compulsive sharer of information which I find interesting to me and to people who’ve made the mistake of telling me what interests them.
I had formed observations about lots of things and how (I thought?) I understood how the world works (or doesn’t?) I wanted to publish those observations, provoke commentary, and generate feedback to improve my understanding.
My objective was to talk about things that were interesting, useful, and potentially wicked problems.
I remembered that during Pandemic Summer 2020, I had sporadically reached out to old friends, classmates, and colleagues: furtive attempts to “go outside and touch grass.”
With an ambition to exercise self-discipline and self-expression, I set a New Year’s 2022 resolution to write something - anything - every day. It lasted about two weeks.
So, I refactored my resolution: without a set agenda, I would purposefully reach out to my own network and attempt to reestablish contact. I went far and wide in casting a net for people and things to talk about. In some cases that meant seeing each other’s faces (on a screen) after 5, 10, 15, or nearly 20 years.
Inevitably, the last two years provided ample material for hobbyists to share their so-called insights on their given system of interest. Amateur economists, amateur epidemiologists, amateur historians, amateur investment bankers, amateur lawyers, amateur leadership coaches, amateur lobbyists, amateur management consultants, amateur organizational designers, amateur sociologists, amateur supply chain managers, amateur real estate agents, and amateur urbanists were launching new podcasts daily.
My first observation after a dozen conversations was to avoid creating artificial urgency by sandwich-scheduling calls. There was a lot to catch up on and I wasn’t accomplishing my objective if the “coffee chat” ended abruptly.
The second observation was questions about my intent: “What are you going to do with all this material? Are you gonna do a TedTalk? Are you writing a book? Is this going to be published in an article? Did you know you have a good voice for a podcast?”
Who knows. Maybe the answer is: all of the above!
Starting with User Stories