product strategy at New_Public; previously community & growth @ Geneva
I know that travel is valuable because most knowledge can’t be written down. The most crucial info about a society is how it feels to be there—the rhythms of street life, where and when people eat meals, how gender works. You can read a million things about Japan without knowing the bodily experience of walking around in a truly high-trust society,... See more
Benjamin’s library was a personal monument, the same kind that we all construct of things we like or identify with. Its importance was dependent on permanence — collections are made up of things that we own, that don’t go away unless we decide they should. “Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects,” Benjamin wrote.... See more
Above all, Sloman seems to be arguing for thinking through the practical implications of one’s beliefs.
Most issues can be framed in terms of the consequences they produce. Rather than asking whether it is right or wrong to, say, allow people to carry concealed weapons, we can ask what the consequences of such a policy would be. And asserting a... See more
Dunning highlights a thorny and persistent problem with the system of nonprofit neighborhoods: it channelled and mediated the voices and interests of residents in ways that muffled direct challenges to the distribution of power within their communities.
Insofar as the neighborhood nonprofits that represent them have depended on government for their... See more
This research looks at the influence of three commonly cited features on the success of digital local news outlets: the background of the publisher, experimentation with different revenue streams, and the wealth of the surrounding community. Of the three, only the wealth of the community is statistically correlated with “success” (which we define... See more
14. If you win every debate, you’re probably accumulating silent resistance.
I’ve learned to be suspicious of my own certainty. When I “win” too easily, something is usually wrong. People stop fighting you not because you’ve convinced them, but because they’ve given up trying - and they’ll express that disagreement in execution, not meetings.
Over a decade later, this is still the most useful framework for thinking about customers for your MVP. From @sgblank originally, I believe. https://t.co/BRltPCA3by