Pete's February 2022 update
Uncategorisable, that's what you are.
Dunedin has been hit hard by COVID so we’re staying home and keeping out of trouble. Unfortunately it’s a bit hard to avoid people when you have tradies turning up at your house every day.
No new job yet, but I launched two things in February so I’ll claim that as a win.
Highlights and Insights
Book progress: Published! And 24 copies sold so far. I’ve set a goal of 100 copies sold by the end of March. You can help out by buying a copy right now! Buy now!
Learn more about The Startup Guide: An insider’s guide to winning startup weekends and hackathons
(Fun fact: Every time I write the full title I inadvertently type “hackathongs”)
Startups supported: 3.
Pretty awesome to see the progress of startup founders I’ve interacted with in the past. Founder Louise Gilbert posted an incredible update on her progress since the SheStarts bootcamp a few years ago.
I launched another thing: Jobs for Generalists in Innovation, Startups and Tech. GIST Jobs collates job listings for generalists (like me) to make it easier to find these uncategorisable roles.
It’s had quite the response from the community, too, with lots of generalists sharing their difficulties with career pathways and job hunting.
It’s been fun to build the site, iterating and improving, and practicing my marketing and comms craft.
Job hunting: I’ve had some very interesting conversations, ruling a few things in and out. Some disappointments, too. I was in the top 3 for a role at Startmate (but not, y’know, top 1). But progress being made and fingers crossed I’ll have some news to share next month.
The chook shed door is progressing well. I built a frame and the timber is all stained and ready for the next stage. But the project is stalled because the painters are using the chook shed as their base.
In the meantime I built a few steps leading up the hill to the side of the house. This meant pushing a heavy wheelbarrow up a muddy slope, which did not go well…
I made proper pita bread for the first time. Very satisfying watching the little discs fluff up into pillows in the oven.
Read / Watch / Listen
[Watch: 1 minute on Instagram] This 4-year-old snowboarding dinosaur has all the philosophy I need.
“I won’t fall.
Maybe I will.
That’s OK, ‘cause we all fall.”
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CZhVwWahu9l/
[Read / scroll: 2 minutes] How famous logos would look in the middle ages. The first sentence of this article is: “The Middle Ages were a pretty tough time to live through, what with the Black Death, average life expectancy at around 33 years, the brutal conditions of serfdom, and (as far as my research can discover) absolutely zero access to Brand Strategy Consultants who could help your business develop a recognizable corporate identity with a dynamic, memorable logo.”
[Read: 8 minutes] The problem with design thinking. A history of design, design thinking, and its failures. I thought the problem with design thinking was people doing it wrong — like improvisers playing a Theatresports game and completely missing the point behind the restrictions. But it goes deeper than that.
There’s another problem, too. By embracing “design thinking,” we attribute to design a kind of superior epistemology: a way of knowing, of “solving,” that is better than the old and local and blue-collar and municipal and unionized and customary ways. We bring in “design thinkers” — some of them designers by trade, many of them members of adjacent knowledge fields — to “empathize” with Kaiser hospital nurses, Gainesville city workers, church leaders, young mothers, and guerrilla fighters the world over.[Watch: 8 minutes] Sommelier Explains How Every Glass Affects Wine
[Read / Play around with: 8 minutes] A Search Engine That Finds You Weird Old Books. I like the term “rewild your attention”.
“I woke up angry at the food units. I fried them in butter out of spite.” — Ellis Brooks, My 24-Hour Experiment With Dystopian Food Units