Artefact 237
The sender of last resort
Email discourse, mailing lists, and three projects for 2024
1. Return to sender
Coming up for twenty years ago, myself and Helen started playing in bands around the London. Nothing that glamorous. The Hope and Anchor. The Dublin Castle. Occasionally something like 93 Feet East, or Barden's Boudoir. Turnmills once, though I still think it is likely we were booked by mistake.
Mostly this was between 2004 and 2009. Besides being a lot of fun, it was also interesting running a small cultural endeavour in the early days of the social internet.
I was in charge of the mailing list.
There was no real point having phone numbers, because phone numbers meant text messages and text messages were expensive. And this was before I ran our band MySpace...
...and learned to code badly to customise it in the process, and then somehow this led to being thrust into the innovation role at PHD... all of which is to say; have hobbies, kids.
But being in charge of the mailing list was even less glamorous than it sounds.
I would print out a few sheets of A4 on the office printer, take them to a gig, put them on a clipboard and take down emails from folk who wanted to know when and where we would be playing next.
In short, these connections were requests - “let me know”.
I have been thinking a lot about email in the last few weeks, and as a result revisited what a mailing list was twenty years ago.
I wrote a blog post back in 2015 about "The Certainty of Delivery":
"Maybe that’s why we’ve seen a return to email newsletters and podcasts, to posting letters and making things. There’s a certainty of delivery about them. People will get what we send. We’re not really sure whether the social network stuff we post is going to go any more, whether it’ll reach any of the people we want it to reach. Listen to conversations nowadays; there’s invariably an exchange where people ask “did you see the thing I posted..?”"
Newsletters are nothing new. I mentioned Marshall McLuhan’s mailing list back in Artefact 229 - a subscription newsletter at $50 a year in the late 1960s to receive actual mail, plus occasional experiments like the card deck below.
(Don't go getting ideas...)
But it was the delivery mechanism that was transformed.
A digital newsletter over email brought with it a guarantee that if you asked to be kept informed, you could be.
Let me know. What you are thinking, when a thing is happening, something you have seen. Let me know.
Nine years later from The Certainty of Delivery blog post, I can't help but feel that getting things to people who have asked you to let me know is harder than ever.
Not only are people much less likely to see what you post on social media, the expectation of production has increased, from text and image to audio and video (Being more video focussed as a platform is a sure-fire way to bring that advertising money raining down, of course).
It is less helpful for people and communities, the users these companies support to serve.
If you've been tracking Cory Doctorow's work over the last few years, you will be familiar with the term he has coined to define it: enshittification.
Here is his description of it in a recent talk:
[Enshittification] is a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Sitting here in 2024, I regularly find myself pausing to consider just how poorly the majority of social media routes are at delivering any kind of value for any type of community.
Whether it is a small community group, kids sport club, fans of a particular niche band, professional network or conference attendees, we have moved into an age where there are far fewer clear, simple and obvious way to connect.
With that in mind, I decided it was time to experiment a little with media again, and find ways to connect people and ideas in three different contexts.
2. Three Projects for 2024
The way I used to run 'three projects' was to write about them publically, and summarise with WBB (Why Bloody Bother?) and WDG (Woolly, Doable Goal). Then, in late December / early January, I would write a review of progress.
NB. I had mentioned the three rough projects in the previous January dispatch, but these have changed in shape a little since that email.
i. An Emerging Regenerative Practice
You may well have bumped into the term Regenerative before – indeed, you may be here having bought the Regenerative Design Field Kit we made last year (first edition sold out, second edition here).
I want to use this year to understand more about the term itself, how it is used differently across industries, disciplines, philosophies and more.
A key part of that learning will come from a series of monthly events Lizzie Shupak, Andy Thornton, Dr Rob Phillips and Emily Boxall and myself have started hosting.
We decided to call this collaboration The Steps Collective; Show The Easy Place to Start.
You can watch the first one, featuring speakers Roland Harwood and Liz Hosmer, here.
If you want to join us for the next event, at lunchtime on Thursday 29th February at The RSA in London, there are a few free tickets left here. Our speakers are Katy Shields (former mainstream economist, generalist, and co-author of the excellent podcast Tipping Point) and Lisa Merrick-Lawless (Co-Founder of Purpose Disruptors, and assessor at Cambridge Sustainability Institute).
You won't find The Steps Collective on social media, or indeed online in a conventional way.
We have decided to just run The Steps Collective as a mailing list.
It is fairly similar to the early noughties band days - there's a show, these folk are playing, come along. It also feels like the lighter the digital presence for something like The Steps Collective, the better.
What is minimum amount of digital energy expenditure you can get away with to connect people?
We are going to try other things too, like host it in different venues across the country (we have an invite from Plus X in Brighton already), and decentralise the concept by sharing the introductory words and the speaker brief, so anyone can run one.
WBB (Why Bloody Bother?) – I am really interested, compelled even, by the concepts of regenerative activity. I want to learn more about how that could / should / must inform all Smithery practice moving forwards.
WDG (Woolly, Doable Goal) – Host twelve meet-ups, one a month, with amazing people we can learn from, and share so that others can learn too.
Actually, before we go on to the second project, in the spirit of 'band mailing lists', you might like another side project...
Cardstock is a meet-up I have been running with Matt Ballantine, Rina Atienza, Stephen Anderson and, originally, Simon White for around four and a half years. It started as an in-person meet-up, but then... well, you know, 2020 happened.
One of regulars last month said something along the lines of 'I love just how hard to find Cardstock is for most people...'
Given I was thinking about all of the above, I decided Cardstock deserved a mailing list too.
It is usually at 4pm on the fourth Friday of every month, but this Friday we are being joined from Australia by Shermon Cruz who will talk about his Dreams & Disruptions futures card game, so we are doing it, gin in hand, at 7pm this Friday 23rd February.
Sign up if you want the link to join.
Back to our regular programming...
ii. A Strategic Design... Podcast
In the 2016 annual projects, I had set out to explore what is Strategic Design. In the years since then, I have collected various definitions, books, listened to talks, watched the emergence of different practices and companies explore this space, as well as working with others practicing under the strategic design banner.
One of those colleagues is Toban Shadlyn, whom I now co-coordinate the Innovation and Future Thinking summer course at IED in Barcelona. We were talking one day last year about the emergence of our respective practices, where and how strategic design is playing out today, and how it might continue to evolve. It occurred to me then there was probably a Pete Frame 'Rock Family Tree' style diagram you could draw across the field.
Anyway, last month I suggested to Toban that we could perhaps shape a little podcast project together, and explore a little of the history, perspectives and possible futures of strategic design.
She smartly suggested that rather than do this off our own backs, we should find a funder for it. As well as connecting people and ideas across the subject, we will find a way to connect to an audience who wants to hear it, and for that audience to share ideas themselves.
WBB (Why Bloody Bother?) – Strategic Design is a growing practice and it can be hard to describe, both to the people interested in practicing it, and especially for people who would benefit from it most. Exploring how different practitioners they have found ways to make the work land effectively could be a valuable resource for the next generation of design students, and the whole lot of people trying to make a difference in their organisations.
WDG (Woolly, Doable Goal) – Write a pitch document, describing what we want to achieve, and crucially why. Then find a funder who is willing to back this project, in order not just to cover the costs of the effort in creating a great resource, but to hold us to account to deliver it.
iii. Local Nature Group
As well as working with Rob and Emily from the RCA as part of The Steps Collective, I have also been helping here and there on a four year project they are running with partners called Ecological Citizens.
Related to this, Helen and I were talking through how we might act more locally as Smithery, here in West Sussex. I have written about this before, in a post about rewilding a new-build garden.
This local angle takes on a new urgency because of what has happened in the field next door. It was always scheduled for housing in the council plan, but a small wood has been growing in the meantime which has now been completely cut down.
What we have done in the last week is set up a local nature group for the estate, to consider how we can provide as much wildlife habitat within the existing estate as we can.
Part of this is sharing things we all see, knowledge we have, efforts we contribute, or resources we can share. By connecting a community in various ways around a topic like this, can we see both primary and secondary beneficial effects for nature and the people who live amongst it?
WBB (Why Bloody Bother?) – Individual gardening on an estate does not have the impact that collective efforts could have. What is our collective role in making space for nature, and how do we connect to do it?
WDG (Woolly, Doable Goal) – Through collective action, improve biodiversity and create better environments for nature, including native plants, across the estate.
I think that is all for today; it is certainly plenty to be getting on with.
Oh, one last thing - we have a shiny new website too, I would love to hear what you think.
Until next time...
John V Willshire
21.02.24