Practical starting points for a polymath
I’ve been reading The Polymath by Peter Burke over the holidays. I make no pretence of being any sort of polymath in the sense Burke describes, but as a generalist who likes diving in and out of...
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Finding intimacy in the infinity of Clubhouse
Clubhouse is, as they say, a thing right now. A self-styled drop-in audio app, it’s moving from beyond just the darling of the dilettante set of Valley media hobbyists, spiralling outwards past the...
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Zenko Mapping, Inception and Pace Layers #WIAD2021
I was honoured to give a talk on Zenko Mapping as part of this year’s virtual Word Information Architecture Day. Thanks to Mike and Mari for the invitation, and help in planning. As per the last talk...
View ArticleMapping the territory – Design and Economics
A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with Simon Gough about a submission I’d made to host a talk at the first Design and Economics Unconference. It was one of those things that had flown past my...
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How To Resign – Three Tips From Ten Years Ago
There are very few ways in which Smithery is like The Queen. The only one worth mentioning is that we both have two birthdays. Ten years ago today, on May 4th 2011, I resigned from my previous job as...
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Fidelity, Non-linearity, and the Double Diamond
I’d recently shared the Design Council’s new Systemic Design Framework work, including a wholesale upgrade for the Double Diamond model that’s well worth your time. Having been a fairly vocal critic...
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10 Years Later: A Decade Of Smithery
Helen and I were standing in the kitchen this morning, talking about how today marked the official tenth birthday of Smithery, when we officially opened the doors to take on client work. “Ten years...
View ArticleWatch Me Think (in real time)
This feels strange… I’m doing a talk, live, in person, to people. I vaguely remember people – legs, arms, faces, right? Wave their arms around when talking. Those folks. It’s at Watch Me Think in...
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Making the most of moments that matter
The creation of a commonplace book As perhaps we all have, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting in the last few months about how to make those precious moments when people are together really matter....
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The Entropy of Insights
I was flipping through my Readwise highlights the other day, and came across this gem again. It’s the neatest wee description of entropy; moving “from rare configurations to common ones”. Except from...
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Cosmic Ordering on the High Street
From a London wander last week. Rather than letting shops look empty and dormant, a few management companies have put ups signs like these. They promise a great and wondrous experience within, from a...
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Salad days in the layers of Leather Lane
I’ve been in London and Brighton recently, getting back out into the world. I’ve been uploading a bunch of pictures over here on Flickr, just gathering a bunch of things I’ve noticed in the layers of...
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A bar without walls
Spotted in a barber shop last week. I won’t name names, as I’m not entirely sure how legal it would be… During last summer, they opened up within strict COVID guidelines, as did the pub nearby. As...
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Introducing the Community Power Compass
The prologue This started as a quick blog post a week ago, simply collecting together some field notes and some emergent ideas on how to cast a critical view across the Web3 space. Through the process...
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How to use the Community Power Compass
The recap You’ve likely read the first post, introducing the context for this tool, the Community Power Compass, and how it pulls three key freedoms and controls from The Dawn of Everything by David...
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What is 1+1? Bot defence for beginners.
I had a call this morning from a mystery number, with a voice purporting to be “Sarah Wilson from the Housing Repair Team”. It was obviously a bot, and as always a simple tangential question throws...
View ArticleExploring the Evolution of Cards
I spoke about cards at Papercamp 3 a little over a week ago. And I saw Tom Abba for the first time in person, since, perhaps, he and Duncan talked at the first card-based meetup I hosted in 2013....
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The Unbelievable Age
There have always been unbelievably bad ads. They are now just unbelievable in a new way. I was at the cinema at the weekend with friends. It is probably one of the few opportunities nowadays where I...
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The dram is out of the bottle
My flight back from Barcelona Design Week has been slightly delayed, so you lucky people get a ten minute blog post inspired by wandering the whisky aisles of the duty free. In short; major...
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Making green spaces visible for communities
Today I quickly put together a timelapse video using Google Earth Pro, a free-to-download piece of software from Google. This was for our local nature group, to visualise not just the housing...
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