Launching I/O
Did you know Blogger is still around?
Back in high school and college I kept a blog. It wasn’t anything revolutionary. It was primarily a way for me to cosplay as a tech journalist, mimicking what I loved to read in my favorite magazines and news websites of the era. It started on Blogger (… which is actually still a live service, but doesn’t look like it’s been updated in 15 years) and eventually made it’s way to Wordpress. I posted fairly consistently, and even though I had no idea what I was doing (or how to write) I gained a small following and formed online connections with a few regular readers.
Social media happened. Wordpress began to feel clunky and isolated. RSS readers fell out of favor, replaced by the magical feeds of Facebook and Twitter.
I continued to share the tech and design news that excited me, but through posts on Twitter. As my design career progressed I shared my experiments and projects with my friends on Flickr, Instagram, or Facebook. Over time, these platforms either died or shifted their business model away from the value I originally found in the networks.
I’ve been itching to own my ideas again.
Through reading the book The Shallows I discovered the idea of the Commonplace Book. It’s a sort of personal journal, dating back to the seventeenth century, for tracking a lifetime of ideas, learning, and development. I realized that back when I kept my own self-hosted blog I was leaning into that tradition. I’ve always enjoyed browsing my old posts and notes, sometimes drawing new connections between my old ideas and today’s problems.
So, this site is my attempt at owning my content again, and at creating my own digital Commonplace Book.
TL;DR
I/O is where I post what I’m excited about. What I’m learning, what I’m making, where I’m going… I want to channel all the energy I’ve been dumping into other networks, and instead collect it here.
I / O
Input / Output
Idea / Object
Inspiration / Outcome
The name I/O is built around input (research, inspiration, connections) and output (designs, products, relationships, discoveries.) I’m planning to mostly use this space for quick updates about personal design and engineering projects, but it will also be a tool for more long-form documentation of larger projects.
Thanks for reading. I’m honored you’re here.
