“Off” the newsletter break
TLDR: After a two year newsletter break, I’m back. If you want to follow this new phase, you can hit subscribe here, if not you don’t need to do anything, I just want to share my gratitude for subscribing and supporting the first phase of the newsletter, it meant the world to me!
I haven’t used this newsletter and social media in two years (or a bit more). No Instagram, Facebook, Reddit… Ok a little Twitter and Linkedin but then I stopped those too.
It’s been a mix of getting back into the “real world” after the pandemic, lots of amazing work experiences, and wanting to dive deep into my articles but not having the time to do it.
I’m feeling the pull again. There are a lot of articles in the backburner that are just waiting for me to hit send.
I know as soon as I hit send on those articles, pandora’s box will open. Back to the routine of creating content, checking notifications, the drama, the (self-made) pressure to ship new content and the hours and hours spent researching and writing.
But even if I have worked on some incredible open and community projects with the SNCF (the main french rail company), with the ADEME (the french agency funding the ecological transition) or the IGN (the french national cartographer), among others, there’s a lot that I’ve missed. The learnings, and thus the ideas, never stop flowing, so I have a lots of ideas in my notebook with articles that I haven’t posted. And I miss creating and the conversations that follow. I miss being a part of it all.
It’s been pretty freeing to take some distance from writing, and evaluate what I wanted to write about and what those I want to help need.
It gave me the space to work as a coach in the Akimbo and AltMBA workshop launched by Seth Godin, to do lots of consulting, to attempt to change the patent system (without much success), to try writing a newsletter on systemic change, to try my hand at writing Twitter threads with a couple that did pretty well, and even write some semi-regular posts at Linkedin.
So it’s been two eventful years that have give me space to enjoy my family and experiment a bit more. And it has given me space so ruminate on the question of what to do next, and what would help most the people I seek to help?
Do I go back to writing about open source the same way I was doing before?
Open source businesses and communities are what I know and am pretty good at, and I’ve been doing it for the last 10 years. So sometimes I’m tempted to explore other venues. But even after so long, I’m still fascinated at the disproportionate effect a small group of people who openly collaborating with a few people can change their industries.
And I still see many people who could do it and still don’t see the opportunity, and many people who are doing it who could do it a lot better.
So, for now, the plan is to go back to writing the articles that worked the best in the first phase, doing profiles on great open organisations and communities like Arduino, Team for the Planet, Wikipedia or Precious Plastics. How did they start? Why and how do they work? And what are the takeaways we can apply regardless of where we’re at.
This newsletter and a few consulting clients will be my primary professional focus for now.
I’ll try to write here regularly (at least every week). It’ll likely be a mix of deep dives and easy to digest insights into community, open source, leadership and whatever other topics inspire me.
A lot of you have subscribed to this newsletter for various reasons over the last few years. I started it to share my learnings on the hidden power behind the often misunderstood world of open source and community building. Somehow there are hundreds of you now.
This new phase may not be all that interesting to you or your priorities may have shifted to other areas. If not, all good, no need to unsubscribe as I won’t message this list anymore.
And if you want to follow along my journey and learn some stuff along the way, I want to make sure that those who don’t want to receive it are not spammed, so if you do you can subscribe here to make sure you get it.
I’m grateful and excited to have you with me in this new journey.
Be great!
Jaime