Chapter 30 – Wakelet.
The Humans Are Coming.
Ever since I took the leap in to freelancing this time last year, I’ve tried to attend every event possible. I’ve plodded along to most of them on my own, not really caring that I didn’t know anyone at said events. Because, slowly but surely, I did start to know people at said events.
There’s Mark, who is one of the most well connected guys I’ve ever met. There’s Josh, who runs Stand4Socks, a social enterprise which combines buying socks with supporting social causes (more on this in the future). And there’s Jamie, who is sat next to me right now at an event and is currently starting a software business that analyses which university students are most likely to drop out early.
If you want connections, I got ‘em. Unless you want more connections, then you’re best off going to Mark.
My favourite part of this so-far-year-long-journey has been meeting tons of interesting people with some unique skills and exciting startups.
Which is great, because I’m obsessed with Startups. Especially Manchester-based startups. And one of my favourite startups right now is a content site called Wakelet.
Odds are you’ve never heard of Wakelet. It’s getting pretty big, but the team there don’t shout about that fact. It’s a humble startup which is growing quite rapidly.
To summarise it, Wakelet is a site which lets you curate a variety of links, images and videos in to collections called Wakes. People have used it collate all of Prince’s music videos, interviews and live performances. They’ve used it to provide a comprehensive collection of everything Kanye. They’ve even used Wakelet to organise and present every professional goal ever scored by Cristiano Ronaldo, plus other information like his individual achievements, charity work and funniest moments.
These collections take a colossal amount of effort, but people seem to be enjoying putting that effort in to Wakelet. And I’m not sure why, but that excites me.
I think it excites me because Wakelet could be massive. It has a long way to go, and a lot of pitfalls to avoid, but it’s on my radar as one of the next big websites that a lot of people are going to know about.
Wakelet’s mantra is ‘The Human’s Are Coming’. Why? Because this world is often too automated and lead by software that does our work for us. The guys behind Wakelet know that. And I agree.
Which is why I love Wakelet. There’s no automation here. It’s effort-driven, just like how I see myself. If you want to create a collection that people consume, you need to put the work in.
And yet for how big a fan I am of Wakelet, I’ve never made #MyFirstWake. But that’s because I’m waiting for the right moment, I don’t want to waste that hashtag on some cobbled together collection that I’d stop caring about a few month’s down the line.
No siree! #MyFirstWake will drop in a few days, and it’ll actually mean something to me. That first collection, the first stamp I make on a startup I’m hyping more than I probably should, will be a collection of my first month of Chapters.
See, Medium is beautiful and all, but I want somewhere else to group what I’m writing. I won’t do one Wake a month (that’s too much), but I’ll add all of my first month to one Wake. And after six months I’ll create a Wake of my favourite Chapters so far. Then once I hit a year of daily blogging, I’ll just go absolutely nuts. I can’t wait.
So head on over to Wakelet, look around, and feel free to tell me what you think by tweeting me @EllMorrow. (Cooch, I expect a good gif for how impressed you are by Wakelet).
Wakelet, I’m coming for you.
See y’all tomorrow.
Everything else…
The event I was at tonight was Northern Quarter Tuesday Talks at Rise on Deansgate. Lots of capitalisation there, sorry.
Anyway, it was my first NQ Tuesday and it was amazing. The first talk (over Skype) was from a digital design and development agency in Helsinki called Great Apes. I’d never heard of them, but they were the guys behind the UI/UX of the game Quantum Break, which is massive.
Second talk was from Misbah at Wakelet (he’s the Head of Marketing there, super sound guy). And the third talk was from Social Chain, which is one of the biggest things to come out of Manchester in a long, long time.
All in all, a hell of a good evening. If you want to know more about NQ Tuesday Talks, check out the Meetup page here or head over to their Twitter.
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By the way, from now on, I’m going to put a random gif here every day. Just so people actually want to read ’til the end.
