October Roundup
October Roundup
Where I share some of the things I've been thinking about, learning about, and exploring across work, tech, wellness, and life.
Hi Friends,
Fall is here in New York. I know because the leaves are starting to change color and the days are getting shorter. The mercury hasn’t dropped yet though; it’s been in the 70s this week.
Happy Work Anniversary
October marks the one-year anniversary of incorporating Tenger Ways and signing our first contract with a consulting client. I wrote a blog with my reflections - my gratitude for making it through the first year, some thoughts on my pivot from product to service, and why I’m optimistic about continuing into year two. Read more here: https://www.tengerways.com/blog/happy-one-year-anniversary
Communication Platforms and the Slack v. Workplace War Continues
Last Saturday I came across an anecdote on my Farcaster feed about how Shopify tried to shut down slack and move communications over to Workplace. It immediately brought back memories of a similar attempt at Cornerstone. It didn’t go well. Apparently, it didn’t go too well at Shopify either. What did they have in common? Both were driven by the CFO in attempt to rein in costs.
I had an unpublished, half-written blog sitting in my drafts folder, specifically about this topic - how companies want to consolidate all communications into a single platform. So of course I had to spend my Saturday finishing that blog and publishing it.
My main points are that forward-thinking companies embrace multiple platforms and let teams choose what’s best for them and CFOs shouldn’t drive technology decisions. Here’s the full post and as always, I’d love to hear what you think: https://adrienneshulman.medium.com/the-best-companywide-communication-platform-a337c9eb52fe
MVP Podcasting Continues
I launched my first podcast a few months ago. It’s called Four Old College Friends and the format is simple - it’s just me and 3 of my old college friends getting together to talk. We record our conversations and make them available for anyone to eavesdrop in. My motivation was to learn the technical aspects of podcasting. My friend Jessica’s motivation was to satisfy her New Years Resolution which was to unlock creativity and “create something” this year. Episode 3 is now available - the theme is friendship in our 40s. You can listen on Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio, PodChaser, and other platforms. If you’re a friend, leaving a review is greatly appreciated!
FarcastHER
I picked up a temporary side-gig to lead the FarcastHER channel over on Farcaster. It’s part of a 6 week experiment the Farcaster core team is running, with the goal to dramatically increase (10x) quality engagement in the protocol. In the almost one-year since I joined Farcaster, one of the things I’ve loved most is how often we’re taking online relationships to other dimensions. I’ve had dozens of video calls and telegram chats with people I first vibed with in the public farcaster feed, I’ve traveled to Boston to help organize and participate in the first FarCon user conference, I’ve gone to several meetups and happy hours in NYC, and I’ve got one scheduled in Los Angeles next month.
So naturally as channel lead, I wanted to find an opportunity to bring a new dimension to our online conversations and decided to host a virtual meetup. About 15 women showed up, from Europe to California, and we had a chance to put actual faces to PFPs, share what we’re working on, and enjoy a 10 minute guided meditation.
Poem
Ok, despite all the love I have for Farcaster, I also noticed a recent trend of people choosing mental health over social media, as they announced an intention to take a break from online spaces. I wrote a poem about it, in the tritiplicata form created by
.It’s okay
To lean in and lean out.
We have friends on these platforms, and yet
The platform’s not a friend
Choose yourself.
Across the Internet
One rule for being a good writer: “write the kind of stuff you like to read. Writing for yourself is fun, and it shows. Writing for others is work, and it shows.” https://collabfund.com/blog/the-written-word/
Do women apologize too much? I thought this was a good essay about a topic that’s been written about a lot: https://medium.com/fearless-she-wrote/why-is-apologizing-our-first-instinct-93ec3a656c9b
If you’re a woman, have you ever thought about connecting with you womb? I hadn’t, until someone shared this 10 minute meditation with me. https://m.soundcloud.com/appletreemeditation/womb-meditation
During DevOps Enterprise Summit I was in a birds of a feather session talking about AI adoption and the enterprise. We agreed that enterprises are slow to adopt AI because, well, they’re slow to adopt anything new. They’re big and risk averse. But one reason that didn’t come up was politics and turf wars! In this A16Z podcast, Databricks cofounder and CEO, Ali Ghodsi, talks about how he is seeing internal politics slow down AI adoption. Executives fighting over who should “own” it- IT, product lines, data, risk, CTO, CIO. Sad, but entirely believable!
A note to my subscribers:
I started this substack in December 2022 as an experiment to see if developing a writing habit would help clarify my thinking and/or provide any other benefits. You can read about my original intentions in my first post here.
I plan to continue to write about twice a month and will be sharing musings, meditations, and links to things I’m finding interesting as I build out my consulting company, raise my kids, and have fun creating and learning in the worlds of crypto, tech, finance, science and wellness.
Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here, or find me on twitter and farcaster.
Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️