Coεmeta Public Work Log 2022.3.WSU — Cycle Completion
Winter Solstice Update (12/21/2022): good problems & the first cycle complete
This is the fourth Public Work Log entry for Coεmeta, a Public Benefit company providing data & sensemaking services with positive externalities. It’s intended as a window into our journey & playbook as it develops, in the spirit of working in public, contributing to knowledge commons, “finding the others” & leaving a trail + some resources for those that follow. I hope it inspires more folks to follow a similarly rewarding path & find similar (if modest & provisional) success. Feel free to reach out at any time, I’m happy to help however I can!
- Daniel McNichol, founder & Chief Scientist
This post is a belated mirror of the versions available at: Github (primary source & version control) & Roam (navigable outline format)
- comments, forks & pull requests are welcome!
It complements our Open Source Strategy repo, which offers more discrete, version-controlled resources related to the strategies & frameworks discussed here in more narrative form.
This update is entirely in TL;DR form, due to bandwidth & capacity constraints. (which itself perhaps speaks volumes…but a few additional details below).
📜 Prologue & Epilogue ♻️: a TL;DR
A full year has passed since embarking on this journey, the first full cycle complete.
- Predictably, things didn’t go quite as predicted: I expected to test & learn on several fronts, but never got to test some theories, & instead learned things I didn’t expect.
- All told, things went better than I could have hoped on the most fundamental “bottom-line” matters, mostly due to the kindness & generosity of others — for which I’m tremendously grateful & fortunate.
- But vital pillars of the broader mission went largely neglected as a consequence, & the vision itself evolved (as expected) in response to experience gained & lessons learned.
Regarding the initial pillars, a brief assessment:
- freelance: far too much
- relation: adequate
- content: very little
- public toolmaking: very little
The center / bottom-right quadrants of the mutant 2x2 got the lion’s share of effort & attention, which generally validated at least those portions of the model. A few notable observations:
- I’m naturally inclined towards high signal / low noise channels anyway, so when opportunities arose there I pursued them, for both tactical & dispositional reasons.
- Freelance client work turned out, as expected, to be high-certainty & low-scalability: low risk/reward ratio, little chance of asymmetric payoffs.
- — So this part “worked”, & has its place in the portfolio, but I over-indexed, & at times felt like I never left FTE life. (which was ….not the plan
- So I played the hand that was dealt, exploring opportunities & also mitigating looming risks (recession, etc), but was also able to leverage excess client demand to further build partnerships & relationships of exchange & mutual support — which was also always a critical piece of the mission.
- — But this was again in high signal / small scale scenarios (a la microsolidarity & squad wealth, which remain inspirations).
- And the more Public Work pillars of content & tool creation were crowded out, but I did feel good about supporting the public work of clients: from City Bureau’s tremendous program expansion to The Baltimore Banner’s launch, to a new engagement with a local Public Broadcasting network.
- — In fact this contributed to the aforementioned evolution & refinement of the mision itself: as a lever for impact
So I feel deeply gratified & substantially validated in my initial motivations & conception of this endeavor. And yet, not fully satisfied. There’s still vital, fertile ground to explore. So I’m excited for this new cycle, to continue wayfinding & course-correcting: new plans, new ambitions, new directions, new journeys.
I’ll have more to say (& hopefully show) on this in a future update. But suffice to say that the metagame endures, & it’s best in multiplayer mode.
Thanks for reading, follow me & the Coεmeta publication for past & future posts. And comment with your thoughts, questions or suggestions!
—
Follow on twitter: @dnlmc , @co3meta
Youtube: Coεmeta channel
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dnlmc
Web: coemeta.xyz
Coεmeta is about finding truth together
We create data & sensemaking tools & services with positive externalities: supporting commons, solidarity economies & prosocial change.
Learn more at coemeta.xyz
