There is a lot of uncertainty online today. Honestly, I think it will be the default state of being online from here forward. If you want more certainty, you have to focus on tangible things in your community, workspace, and at home. I think that we have allowed a certain kind of financialization into the DNA of the web, and some people realized you can make money rocking the boat online in a predictive way, with another group just enjoying rocking the boat, while the rest of us just trying to live each day in our increasingly online reality.
Social
Social media doesn’t feel good in this moment. I do the minimum viable to keep my personal presence on Bluesky, Mastodon, and LinkedIn active. I do what is required to keep my professional presence active, with a solid focus on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Youtube, while actively publishing blogs, podcasts, webinars, and newsletters. It is all very doable in my busy weeks, but feel like it produces about 1/100 the ROI I used to be able to across Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube back in the day, with AI making things easier in some ways, but much, much, much harder in others ways.
Messages
I have Slack and Discord fatigue. It is similar to long Covid. I am active for my primary work, but only the minimum contribution to the once vibrant standards communities I have been part of. I want to do more. I have lots of things to share, and love learning from folks, but I just don’t always have the energy in between the regular work and conversations. Email is still my dominant form of messaging, with Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, Teams, and LinkedIn direct messaging keeping my one-to-one and many-to-many conversations powering my work.
Images
I always have energy for the Algorotoscope images that I use across all my API Evangelist stories. They are how I allow myself to find a balanced signal within all the noise online today. Beyond that I struggle with the lack of quality of AI generated images and diagrams, and would like to find a style that works using Miro, Mural, or some other diagramming software. I’d like something more dynamic that I could then use to generate dynamic images for social media, blog posts, and podcasts, but still trying to pretend the AI works when it really doesn’t.
Videos
The videos I record during public and private conversation are the center of my online storytelling right now, and will likely continue to be moving forward. I have regular live conversation 10:00 AM on Tuesdays and 1:00 PM on Thursdays where I have people come by to talk about interesting API topics. I take these conversations, plus other private 1:1 conversation I have with people and slice them up into the Naftiko Capabilities podcast, which I publish to YouTube, Apple, and Spotify—collecting and publishing video shorts to social media along the way.
Newsletter
This newsletter, along with Naftiko Manifest newsletter I publish each week are both a grounding force in my world. I regularly get folks asking me if it is too much work to do these, and to the contrary, I find them essential for making sense of the world. I’d be lost without them. My newsletters are a round-up of what is going on throughout the week, but provide me different voices for working through what matters for this week. This week, I find it important to think through what is working and not working when it comes to my online presence.
Commune
I setup an account on Commune this week. Commune is looking to be an alternative to Substack, and since I’ve purposefully avoided the Substack platform for ethical reasons, I am in need of building a network around my newsletters. My friend Fran Mendez is behind the platform and is approach it in a very thoughtful way that reflects my overall strategy outline here. I am determined to be intentional and thoughtful behind my social networks, messaging, images, videos, newsletters, and commune reflects what I think is needed in this moment.
Conversations
I am doubling down on conversations being the center to my week, and I invite you to come by Tuesday at 10:00 AM EST or Thursday 1:00 PM EST to listen in as a guest, or if you have something you need to share, I am happy to elevate you as a panel speaker. So far we’ve talked context engineering, JSON Structure, and will be talking governance this week. They are live recorded conversation, which anyone can attend, but then I use the best of the conversation to power the Natiko Capabilities podcast, and my social media storytelling.
Signals
I am determined to continue finding the signal in the noise of today’s market, and keep doing it successfully, no matter what hype cycles emerge. I am doing this by having a diverse social networking approach, but not too diverse that I wear myself thin. I am thoughtful about the images I create and will keep investing here to improve. I record videos and turn them into audio podcasts and shorts. I round everything up weekly in an API Evangelist and Naftiko Manifest newsletters. But cultivating a meaningful network of people and engaging in regular conversations with the people doing the real work on the ground across enterprises and startups is where I think the work matters the most as I continue to build relationships.
“It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.” ― Dan Simmons, Hyperion
