Three Years of Crowdfunded research.m4a
Metadata
Highlights
- That’s fine for members. But what do I get out of this? The way I escaped the essay-as-duty frame is by recognizing: here’s a context which pushes me to think carefully about some aspect of my work. Here’s a context which delivers a meaningful hit of creative gratification—reliably, right now—while my long research project rolls unpredictably onward. With that frame, essays for members become a creative “move” in my toolbox. Choose a question, a detail, a practice, an idea; write what I think I think; discover much more in the process. These essays become part of actually doing the research, not an added burden. (View Highlight)
- My pitch to members is less transactional. It’s more like patronage in a historical sense. My work is a public service, and my primary outputs are available for free. Becoming a member is like being a tiny grantmaker. It’s saying: “Yes, for the price of a monthly latte (or whatever), I’d like to help enable progress in the domains Andy’s pursing.” Now, that’s a fairly pure relationship. It’s basically an elaborate donation box. But then I muddy the waters: as a bonus, I say, you’ll also receive regular behind-the-scenes essays, events, early prototypes, and so on. (View Highlight)
- There’s one obvious related approach here I haven’t tried: creating an ongoing realtime discussion community, through tools like Discord, Zulip, or Discourse. I’ve joined lots of online communities on platforms like those, and they’ve never worked for me. They always end up feeling like a burden—one more inbox to check, another thing I have to keep track of—rather than a fount of joyful connection. Also, if I’m really trying to grow my “scene”, I don’t love the idea of a paywalled members-only discussion community. If we really care about good conversation, we want the community to include people who do good work and contribute good discussion. That set only partially overlaps the set of my patrons. I could add some layer of invitations, but I don’t want to be responsible for “playing host” on this scale. I continue chatting with others who have invested more heavily in these sorts of environments; maybe at some point I’ll find an convincing angle here. (View Highlight)
- Wonder—here is the gift of an endless open field, to explore as I see fit. Craig Mod described this as “feeling bestowed a permission to do the kind of work I believed I was capable of, but perhaps not strong enough to do entirely on my own.” I get that too, and I’m grateful for it, but much of the wonder I feel arises from a sense of permissionlessness: I don’t need to seek anyone’s approval to pursue whatever I find interesting. With no grant applications to write and no tenure committee to appease, I can square up to the true task (the much harder task!) of courageously chasing what I actually think is best. Not what I imagine the crowd wants me to do; not what will likely produce shiny short-term results; not what will let me rest comfortably in my sphere of competence. It’s a towering call to action, and I’m tremendously grateful for it, and (of course) I absolutely struggle to live up to it. (View Highlight)
Three Years of Crowdfunded research.m4a
Metadata
Highlights
- That’s fine for members. But what do I get out of this? The way I escaped the essay-as-duty frame is by recognizing: here’s a context which pushes me to think carefully about some aspect of my work. Here’s a context which delivers a meaningful hit of creative gratification—reliably, right now—while my long research project rolls unpredictably onward. With that frame, essays for members become a creative “move” in my toolbox. Choose a question, a detail, a practice, an idea; write what I think I think; discover much more in the process. These essays become part of actually doing the research, not an added burden. (View Highlight)
- There’s one obvious related approach here I haven’t tried: creating an ongoing realtime discussion community, through tools like Discord, Zulip, or Discourse. I’ve joined lots of online communities on platforms like those, and they’ve never worked for me. They always end up feeling like a burden—one more inbox to check, another thing I have to keep track of—rather than a fount of joyful connection. Also, if I’m really trying to grow my “scene”, I don’t love the idea of a paywalled members-only discussion community. If we really care about good conversation, we want the community to include people who do good work and contribute good discussion. That set only partially overlaps the set of my patrons. I could add some layer of invitations, but I don’t want to be responsible for “playing host” on this scale. I continue chatting with others who have invested more heavily in these sorts of environments; maybe at some point I’ll find an convincing angle here. (View Highlight)
- Wonder—here is the gift of an endless open field, to explore as I see fit. Craig Mod described this as “feeling bestowed a permission to do the kind of work I believed I was capable of, but perhaps not strong enough to do entirely on my own.” I get that too, and I’m grateful for it, but much of the wonder I feel arises from a sense of permissionlessness: I don’t need to seek anyone’s approval to pursue whatever I find interesting. With no grant applications to write and no tenure committee to appease, I can square up to the true task (the much harder task!) of courageously chasing what I actually think is best. Not what I imagine the crowd wants me to do; not what will likely produce shiny short-term results; not what will let me rest comfortably in my sphere of competence. It’s a towering call to action, and I’m tremendously grateful for it, and (of course) I absolutely struggle to live up to it. (View Highlight)