Skip to main content

Open source startup founder, technology leader, mission-driven investor, and engineer. I just want to help.

Subscribe to get updates via email.

benwerd

werd.social/@ben

Ben Werdmuller
 

Fairness Friday: MADRE

Every Friday I highlight a new social justice organization, inspired by the VC Fred Wilson’s Funding Friday posts about crowdfunding projects.

This week I donated to MADRE, an organization dedicated to working “with women leaders who protect and provide for communities facing war and disaster. Together, we build skills, strengthen local organizations, advance progressive movements, and advocate for rights.”

Its work includes ending gender violence, advancing climate justice, building a just peace by supporting women, and advocating for a more equitable foreign policy.

If you have the means, please join me in donating here.

· Posts · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Norminess: the extent to which you are willing to fit into the mainstream patterns dictated by life under capitalism, vs going your own way and refusing to confirm your identity, practices, or desires.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

"Gathering statistical responses" is not the same thing as "listening and understanding".

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Any institution that thinks it knows best without listening to its community, yielding ownership to its community, and making space for its community is doomed to failure. That's true if you're a company, a membership organization, a non-profit, or a political party.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

I'm selling my old car (a 2015 Hyundai Elantra; I know, I'm pretty fancy). So far Carvana seems to be by far the best experience for this, by a mile. Why is everything else so clunky?

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

RSS / Atom / WebSub, IndieWeb, and ActivityPub aside, am I missing actively-used open protocols and standards for subscribing to published content?

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

If you were starting a multi-user blog for your engineering team, which platform would you pick? Let's leave both Known and Medium out of the conversation for now.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Everyone in the house is sick but me. Finally, folks began to emerge from bed, so I paused work to make soup and tea and make sure everyone is more or less OK. I make a pretty good impromptu vegetable soup, as it turns out. Now, back to work.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

If it becomes common to write articles using ML, presumably those articles enter the corpus and become a bigger part of it, and over time the algorithms will start to learn to write from themselves. Like photocopying a photocopy, language will start to get weird. I can't wait

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

I don't know who needs to hear this, but every person on your team is a whole, three-dimensional human with hopes, dreams, and a whole set of skills and insights that lie outside the thing you hired them for. Your team is a community, if you'll let it be one.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

I'm explicitly going out of my way to source engineers as inclusively as possible, to try and build a team that is representative of the people they build software to support. I'm really glad to have support in doing that. It's shocking how many people think it's not important.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

One day I want to do a reverse Slack and start building an enterprise SaaS tool but end up with a really rad massively multiplayer game universe.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

I’d love to verify my vaccine status on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. It would be great to give people the confidence that I care about not giving them a life-threatening disease. Is anyone working on anything like this?

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Somewhat regretting my decision this morning to recommend that the entire upper management team at my company watch popular UK sitcom Peep Show

This is why it's important to have your coffee BEFORE the meeting starts

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Does anyone have great suggestions for experiential holiday gifts?

(Not objects and not digital objects, but things that you can experience and ideally remember forever.)

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Six months out, I’m still only a real person in emulation. I have flashbacks; I feel unbelievable guilt; I hurt in all kinds of ways. Carrying on as if that isn’t true requires real effort on my part; an emotional burden in itself. Unfortunately, I know I’m not alone.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Very few mishearings have disappointed me like learning that the chorus to The Weight actually starts: “take a load off Fanny”.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

One of the most important questions turns out to be: what is the future you want to build?

Is it one where everyone has equal access to knowledge and opportunities? Where everyone can have a good life regardless of background?

Or is it something else?

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Dissolving a company turns out to be the hardest problem in computer science.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

If you haven't yet, for whatever reason: please get vaccinated. It really matters.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Fairness Friday: Jackson Women's Health Organization

I’m posting Fairness Fridays: a new community social justice organization each week. I donate to each featured organization. If you feel so inclined, please join me.

This week I’m donating to the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Based in Jackson, Mississippi, JWHO provides important women’s health services to its community, including abortions. It is the clinic at the center of the current Supreme Court case that threatens to overturn Roe v Wade and rob 65 million women of their right to choose. It is also the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi.

It describes its mission as follows:

‌Jackson Women’s Health Organization (JWHO) offers affordable abortion care to women living in Mississippi and/or traveling to the state of Mississippi.

‌Our commitment is to provide confidential health care to women in a safe and professional environment. It is our conviction to respect a woman’s reproductive choices specifically regarding a woman’s right to control whether she wants to become a parent or not.

The clinic provides vital services for its community, and its fight will have a disproportionate effect on the human rights of women across America. There are few more important battles today.

I donated. If you have the means, please join me here.

· Posts · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

I've had (and am having) a number of really hard conversations this week. I'm also really conflict-averse; a textbook people-pleaser. It's not a positive trait, and just makes it all exponentially harder. If this is also you, how have you got better at it?

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Abortion is a human right.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Non-work conversations I’ve been a part of lately have included improving working conditions under one fundamentalist dictatorship and helping a family safely leave another, and I’m feeling very grateful and privileged to be trusted in these spaces.

· Statuses · Share this post


Ben Werdmuller
 

Thinking about the future in every way. There's A Lot to Think About.

· Statuses · Share this post


Email me: ben@werd.io

Signal me: benwerd.01

RSS feed icon

Werd I/O © Ben Werdmuller. The text (without images) of this site is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.