Jamie Thingelstad

I loved the framing of these three kinds of listening from Carolyn Coughlin “Become a Better Listener” in episode 157 of the Knowledge Project Podcast.

Listening to Win: Let me make the problem go away, by telling you don’t have a problem.

Listening to Learn: Getting underneath what is being said and reflecting back to the person.

Listening to Fix: Let me take your problem and solve it for you.

I was able to attend the Minneapolis Downtown Council Annual Meeting today. I believe this was the first back in the Armory since the 2020 meeting.

The outgoing chair Mike Ryan gave a good overview of the improtance of downtown and the council, and also welcomed the new chair Karin Lucas from SPS Commerce!

SPS is the 10th largest employer downtown with 1,346 people!

I enjoyed the session that Amelia Santaniello led with Steve Cramer, Greg Cunningham, and Mayor Jacob Frey. Frey got up at one point and gave a stump speech for Minneapolis which was great.

I’m done writing for the timeline.

There is a concept in Indieweb communities called POSSE. The acronym stands for publish on your own site, syndicate everywhere. This approach is an attempt to give you the best of all worlds. You can own your own content. Solve the not your domain, not your words problem. Then use various tools to syndicate your content to other services.

It is a fine idea but in practice I think it is broken.

The medium affects the message. Ultimately how you write and publish affects your writing. Social media brought with it whole new norms. No titles for content. Short posts. No rich markup so images and links are handled as metadata.

Some of this, like titles being optional and brevity, are probably good things.

But others are not. And when you syndicate to various platforms it is hard to not have that ultimate destination impact your writing.

What does this look like?

On micro.blog limiting myself to four photos because I know that when it syndicates to Twitter it will only include the first four.

Being cautious about which hyperlink to use first because that is the one that will show up on Twitter regardless if it makes sense for the content.

Not using titles because it changes how syndication works.

I’ve even seen posts use hashtags and @username conventions on a platform that is ignorant to them, but are solely intended for the service it is syndicated.

I disconnected my blog from all syndication and it is interesting how freeing it has felt.

I use titles more. I use the number of photos I want. I add links where they make sense.

Writing for a timeline is a job. The timeline is a distilled and sterile system to give the algorithms an equal chunk of content to drive engagement. The limits of those chunks are non-sensical outside of that timeline.

Let’s break free of the timeline.

Let’s make the web weird again.

We all enjoyed Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. If your looking for a delightful and fun story this will hit the spot. 🍿

We went to the Art Shanty Projects on Lake Harriet today. Tammy has been to this many times, but it was my first. I do like events like this that make for fun days in the cold of winter. The Shanties themselves were very cool. Notable highlights:

• re(center)ed which provided an opportunity for people to write a message on a piece of wood and then hang it anonymously on the wall. Every few hours the curator would pull them down and burn them in a “pyre”, releasing the sentiment.
• Archive of Collective Memory that allowed you to submit a message via the web that was then turned into an audio loop and played through a wooden wall that you had to put your ear against to hear it.
• Blankets of Ice which had a bedroom set in the middle of the snow with a “quilt” pattern made of colored ice blocks.
• Chapsicle of Love provided marriage service at the event.
• Techno From the Sun was a shanty powered only by solar energy with people DJ’ing techno music inside. You could modify and add to the mix by moving levers and dials on the outside of the shanty.

I was left wanting to have a Shanty next year that distributed a POAP and allowed people to record a memory of the event in some way. 🤔

Today is the launch of Echo Forest. This NFT project has Minneapolis connections being led by Brooks Clifford and Matt Benesch.

I minted two Wolf Healers, 18 and 19. I really dig the artwork and I’m excited to see how the utility evolves. Plus it is a great opportunity to be involved in a local project.

David Horsager of Trust Edge gave a fabulous keynote for #TeamSPS 2023 Sales Kickoff. David’s passion about trust and how it impacts everything around us is very thought provoking. His Eight Pillars of Trust are a great tool to consider team and self-improvement.

1. Clarity: People trust the clear and mistrust or distrust the ambiguous or the overly complex.
2. Compassion: People put faith in those who care beyond themselves.
3. Character: People notice those who do what’s right over what’s easy.
4. Competency: People have confidence in those who stay fresh, relevant, and capable.
5. Commitment: People believe in those who stand through adversity.
6. Connection: People want to follow, buy from, and be around those who collaborate.
7. Contribution: People immediately respond to results.
8. Consistency: People love to see the little things done consistently.

The new POAP Family feature is a cool way to see what POAPs people share between events. I looked at holders of my 50th Birthday POAP and I was surprised to see that there were 7 Cryptog’s HODLER’s who had my birthday POAP. The biggest were 13 of the 34 that also had my 51st Birthday POAP.

This kind of graph analysis of POAPs is an interesting extension and a way to build connection.

We had an awesome evening at The Great Northern K’óoben pop-up at Glass House.

A collaboration between chefs Gustavo Romero (Nixta), José Alarcón (Centro, Vivir), and Noe Lara (BLVD) accompanied by mixologists Mike Hidalgo (Sonora Kitchen), Daniel Guerrero (Colita), and Daniel D Torres (Iconos Gastro Cantina), food collective K’óoben (Mayan for “kitchen” or “stove”) describes itself as “a space that belongs to everyone but does not belong to anyone—a sacred place for Mexican families, meeting point of collaboration and coexistence with family and friends, with one goal: to keep alive the roots of Mexican & Latin cuisine.”

Join us for the collective’s 5th pop-up experience, featuring guest chefs Nettie Colon (Red Hen Gastro Lab), Pedro Wolcott (Guacaya Bistreaux) and Soleil Ramirez (Arepa Bar), who will explore what it means to be crafting and cooking Latin cuisine in the middle of winter in Minnesota. The evening includes mouthwatering food and chef stations, three specialty beverages, a mezcal/tequila tasting, live artwork by Gustavo Lira Garcia, and performances by DJ Yalen Villalobos and Huehuecoyotl Collective — a three-piece group incorporating pre-Hispanic instruments and live electronic manipulation.

Every dish and drink was amazing. All of these places should be on your lists of places to visit in the Twin Cities.

Social media is a mess.

I’ve lost track of what is social about it. It is a Skinner Box of addiction. The reductionism of a timeline is tiresome. The dopamine inducing likes are there to create some saccharin view of engagement.

I recently noticed that I was falling back into behavior I had broken out of years ago. I was again finding myself checking the Twitter timeline to see what is happening. Then I would feel bad about introducing into my brain all this random crap. The coach part of me knows this isn’t what I should be doing. But the monkey brain loves to see new things, chase them down, and play with the ideas in my head.

The problem is me Twitter, not you. Actually that is wrong. The problem is both of us. The problem is actually the entire social media model. It is an apparatus of addiction built around nothing. There is no there to find. There is no end to reach.

So I unfollowed every account. If you notice I unfollowed you on Twitter, don’t take it personally. It’s me, not you.