News Orgs on the Fediverse

Ben Werdmuller:

Subsequent conversations have convinced me that I'm right about the assertions I made about the Fediverse for media organizations. There's a huge need, a huge opportunity, and the underlying technology is there.
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What if we had a great experience that ties together both short-form discussion and re-sharing and long-form reading, in a way that better showcases both kinds of content and realizes that the way we consume both is different? What if it had a beautiful, commercial-level design? And what if it remained tied to the open social web at its core, and pushed the capabilities of the protocols forward as it released new features and discovered new user needs?

I'm on the same page. Media companies and newspapers everywhere could really benefit from a first-class fediverse client built for their exact needs. Posting to social media could be much more functional than sending out a small bit of text and an unfurled URL. I haven't done any exploration on this myself, but I sense in my gut that Ben's correct.

Three immediate ideas. 1) Full control over what content is pushed out to the Fediverse and direct ownership of the conversation which takes place around it. 2) Reporters for a newsroom can post from accounts on that instance, essentially bringing their official social media presence into a verified and trustworthy location. 3) A more controlled environment for publishing breaking news or simple updates.

I'm particularly intrigued by the idea of reporters and editors having their own accounts on a newsroom's fediverse instance. You can't beat the kind of legitimacy that provides. It also greatly extends a paper's reportage, piggybacking off of the personalities they employ. Because of social media, tons of reporters have higher profiles these days. It only makes sense to offer them an official place to break and discuss news related to the coverage of their paper. Of course, plenty of reporters would still prefer to have social media accounts outside of their place of employment. I'm just imagining how fruitful this kind of collaborative opportunity could be.

Ideal Process versus Reality

Matej Latin provides good advice for young designers. Namely, that the ideal process learned from books is not true to life.

[T]he double diamond design process which has been often cited as the design process doesn't reflect reality. It's the perfect ideal that designers strive for but rarely achieve. Designers simply don't have that much control over the influencing factors so a design manager reading through a perfect, cookie-cutter case study, even if it uses the double diamond process, knows immediately that it's fake.

Frankly, I sometimes see advanced designers demanding excessive adherence to process from their reports. I suspect that comes from a lack of faith in their designers, and also anxiety from not knowing every detail of the project. Delegating work means trusting that your staff can handle the job. Overemphasizing a double diamond process (or the related documentation) for every single thing creates a classroom-like environment. It feels less than professional despite being by the book.

Downsizing and Continuing On

Two weeks ago, my company went through another round of layoffs. One of my direct reports was relieved of his job. He was a strong designer who was becoming more reliable by the day. In no way did he deserve to be axed. And it certainly won't help our company reach our stated goals. We invested a year and a half into him, and he repaid us by taking the job seriously and taking increasingly more initiative. It was exactly what you hope to receive out of a young designer. Another company is going to be lucky to have him. I know he'll be fine, in the end.

For the time being, I'm left to catch up on all the in-the-weeds details on projects I had delegated to him. He had been handling that work so well, I was only needed for the design direction. Now I'm catching up on a dozen BAU Jira tickets and reintegrating myself into the day to day of a couple teams he had been in. My workload has doubled, even if my responsibilities haven't changed. I am being provided some time from another UXA in the company, which I'm thankful for. I hear she's a skilled designer, but even so there's going to be weeks of onboarding her.

I'm also thankful to still have my own job. Thankful that at least one person looked at my name on a list and chose not to mark me as expendable. I mean, I don't see myself as expendable. I aim to provide far more benefit to my company than is listed in the job description. Is that apparent to the people running the budget? I don't know. Can you know? As far as I can tell, "work hard and be nice to people" remains the best career advice I've yet found. More than anything, that should put you on the good lists and keep you off the bad lists.

Before all of this happened, I was getting into another good rhythm with this site. Writing more. Posting more. I was feeling good about sharing more of my life, here. Then the layoffs put me in a mood. I wrote a few versions of this post which ended up in the digital garbage. When I'm feeling bitter, I find it's best to hit pause. Try to rebalance. Suss out what really happened and why. I now believe what my manager told me is true: it wasn't personal, it was a balance sheet issue. Executives set a new payroll limit which was lower than before. Simple. Mechanical. Capitalism doing its thing.

I'm convinced all of the recent layoffs in tech are the result of executives continuing to seethe about the wage gains workers made over the last few years. Low unemployment was giving laborers more strength in the bargaining. Wages were outpacing inflation. People with million dollar salaries hate that. A lot. The easiest fix is to increase the unemployment. Downsize the company, claim to be restructuring for future growth in a changing landscape, blah blah blah. The same as it ever was. So it goes.

Robot Friend

Making friends with the robots living in the local antique shop. Beep boop.

Duolingo and You, or Not

Dave Rupert made some smart comments on Duolingo.

Slowly you realize the truth about Duolingo; it's not a language learning platform, it's an engagement platform. And through that engagement you might pick up some language skills. Duolingo does little in explaining how rudimentary concepts like verbs or participles work and instead lets you piece it together solely from repetition and context clues. Repetition in learning is important but without ever addressing the fundamentals of a language Duolingo reveals it's prioritizing something else over language mechanics.

He's right in that Duolingo prioritizes repetition over language mechanics. I can't argue with that. Except to say that the repetition is what makes it work for me. I don't open Duolingo to learn the rules of a language (French, in my case). I use Duolingo as a reliable way to inject 10 to 20 minutes of French into my life everyday. And I reinforce that education with a twice-monthly one-on-one lesson with a private teacher.

If you're using Duolingo, I'd recommend ignoring every app mechanic but the streak. Keep the streak going, because it's the daily bit of language which keeps it alive in your brain. And don't expect to become fluent from the app, either. It won't do that for you (unless maybe you dedicate an hour or more a day?). For that reason, I think Rupert is right walk away, having read his explanation. If you don't have enough motivation to learn a language with other supportive practices, Duolingo is probably not going to provide much benefit to you in the long run.

I could replace Duolingo with daily reading in French. I have French books and I do read them, but I'm constantly going to the dictionary to look up words and conjugations. There are thousands of idioms and colloquialisms which need googling to understand. What makes Duolingo better, in my opinion, is that it keeps it simple. It grows the vocabulary slowly, repetitively, and the translations are always a click away, should you need it. And it's on my phone, which is with me all the time. I can do my daily 15min from anywhere at anytime.

So I'd agree with Dave that Duolingo is not the perfect way to learn a language on its own. If it's not working for you, let it drop. But for me, it's the exact kind of reinforcement which propels me forward into fluency. For anyone who truly does want to learn a language, my advice would be to take regular lessons or classes, but to support that with a daily Duolingo habit. Or maybe use Duolingo to find which language you truly want to learn. You might think it's Spanish, but maybe you find you really enjoy German? In any case. it's an excellent app. I've found it incredibly useful. Especially when my expectations for it are in line with what it provides.