Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
Yesterday was World Press Freedom Day. I’d planned to publish this post then, but my mother was in the in ER. (She's out now; the rollercoaster continues.) A functional, free press is a vital part of the foundation of democracy, right alongside free and open elections. It&
This is my monthly roundup of the media I consumed and found interesting. Here's my list for April, 2021. Books Captain America Vol. 1: Winter In America, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. To be honest, I was expecting more. Ta-Nehisi Coates is such a brilliant writer, but this
Yesterday, Jason Fried, Basecamp’s CEO, shared an internal memo he’d written about changes at the company. In it, he details how political discussions are no longer acceptable at work, and how benefits he considers to be “paternalistic” - like gym memberships and farmer’s market shares - are being removed.
I’ve been lucky to get some productive, actionable criticism on my short stories, both from writing classes I’ve been a part of and journals I’ve submitted to. The most common criticism goes something like this: “your line to line writing is solid, but you let the idea
I’ve been having a lot of really inspiring conversations about decentralization lately. Decentralization doesn’t require the blockchain - and pre-dates it - but the rise of blockchain technologies have allowed more people to become comfortable with the idea and why it’s valuable. Decentralized platforms have been part of
I'm experimenting with adding live discussion to every post. Comments are powered by Cactus, which in turn is powered by the decentralized Matrix project: they're not monetized or tracked, and you can choose to take part using the Matrix client of your choice instead of on
Fiction
Daniel found the door to another world the day his father died. It sat behind the ugly painting of a hillside in France that his dad bought at a second hand shop a few years ago; he hung it proudly in his bedroom, despite Daniel’s mother’s protests. It
I have a persistent, infuriating problem with typing. The only laptop I own with a functional keyboard is my iPad Pro - the one device in this form factor that doesn’t actually ship with a keyboard. Even my work laptop suffers from the notorious broken butterfly keyboard problem. Keys stick.
1: I get my first vaccine jab tomorrow. Pfizer. I’m excited: by my reckoning that makes me about five weeks out from being immune. I’m privileged in that the pandemic has been inconvenient at most, but I miss hanging out with my friends and extended family. I can
This is my monthly roundup of the media I consumed and found interesting. Here's my list for March, 2021: a month where, at least in the United States, mass vaccination started to present the light at the end of the tunnel for the pandemic. Books The Death of
Today Richard Stallman announced that he has been reinstated as a board member of the Free Software Foundation with the antagonistic comment: “Some of you will be happy about this and some of you will be disappointed. … In any case, that's how it is and I'm
It’s far easier to think of problems than solutions. When I was founding my first startup - accidentally - in Scotland almost twenty years ago, the reaction I got more than anything else was “it’ll never work”. So many people told me to go get a real job that I