I’m writing every day for a month (and why you should too)
--
I’m sitting on a train in Australia with bright pink notebook on my lap. There’s a badly drawn Apple logo on it — a throwback to sitting around a cafe table in London as the only one without a new Macbook — and it’s completely and utterly jammed full of notes.
This little notebook is one of seven that are bursting with data and observations from my travels around and as part of the global startup ecosystem. And as I try to cram another scribble into a page of notes, I’m feeling suddenly and self-consciously aware of exactly how much information is trapped there.
I’ve been abroad for the last two years as part of cofounding a company called Corilla, a “GitHub for content teams” startup spun out of Red Hat in Australia. We packed our bags, joined the NUMA startup accelerator in Paris, and so began our journey.
And what a 🎢 journey.
Collecting stories by doing
To say the last few years have been an adventure would be an understatement. Working across 13+ countries under the famine and feast conditions of early stage startup life has been all at once a showreel of amazing people and exciting locations, and the humbling stumbles of being so often so out of balance.
But it amounts to the same thing, here as I return to Australia to collect the kind of startup visas that simply didn’t exist a few years ago. A chance to reflect and take on the serious undertaking of translating those experiences for both myself (improving my abilities as a leader and overall self development) and for the community (in distilling these experiences as narratives).
Common narratives create community
I was reminded how universal this feeling is speaking with an excellent human by the name of Martin Talvari — formerly of Slush and now of Myriad. I can already sense a lot of heads nodding, Martin is so well known for his exploration of the global startup ecosystem that I actually ask people “when was Martin here last?” when I visit a new coworking space or accelerator.
I told that to Martin a few days ago at the time of writing this and he thought I was crazy but conceded it’s true, and shared this same feeling of needing to document his journey. Not his journey. But his journey. And his journey is one of not only epic adventures but extremely valuable data collection.
Something that needs publishing.
Sometimes this is easy. A few years ago I started a community tech journalism project to test a hypothesis that founder narratives are more valuable as a regional ecosystem accelerator than headlines about fundraising. Long story short this proves to be the case and I parked the project (more on that later this month).
In that project I wrote a lot. And I could afford to by staying late each night at Red Hat and writing until my hair caught fire. Better yet my boss had met with Tyler Crowley who spoke to the value of documentarians as community catalysts and like that I was it. Just don’t tell HR.
Or my credit card company — as my first trips to the EU and US were a mix of debt and hustle as the start of my clumsy foray into international relations. But like anything in the startup world it’s about starting with whatever you have at hand, and a few years on I’m not just the Antipodean tech journo hustling to get access to events; I find myself presenting awards at them as an ambassador of incredible Australian startup initiatives.
The challenge now is that I’m not being encouraged to write by a great team at Red Hat. I’m the managing director of a startup coming out of beta, with team across four countries and users across eighty or so. How can I find the time to wiggle my fingers on a keyboard and craft perfect prose to move the minds and hearts of our community?
An exercise in lean daily narratives
The idea is for all of March I’m going to take a cue from the likes of Seth Godin and write a daily post.
About a topic that I’ve found myself sketching ideas into that ridiculous pink notebook you saw up the top. About something that really mattered to me while in motion, and that feels compelling to share now I’m back in Australia for the month.
And as much as I love writing, I’d love more if these themes and information were seeding the community that itself seeded my own journey.
And unlike this epic post, the challenge is to keep as lean and focused on a core idea as possible. At the end of the month I’ll recap with some thoughts on the experience as well as any interesting metrics and community feedback.
At this stage I’ve got no thoughts on how to bundle them as a collection or how I might choose to seed them outside of writing directly into Medium, but I can explore that as I go — please send me any ideas or feedback.
The first step in writing however is just starting to write. So here we go…
