I'm going to try to write more often again. I enjoy it when I do it, but rarely find the time. What I'm planning on doing is going over the news in my "field" and writing brief thoughts about it. If you come across this, know that I'm approaching it as more of an exercise for me than a resource for you. If anything helpful comes of it, though, that would be nice 🙂
Today I'm kicking it off with two things. The first is the news that Thinkific, a Vancouver startup, has gone public. I've used the platform a couple times, and recommended it to a few people. Recently, I helped a client of ours at Éphémère Creative to setup some training material on there. As with any platform that isn't custom built, there are some things I wish it could do that it doesn't, but overall it does what it does very well.
The fact that Thinkific went public, and how it's being framed as part of the "creator economy" has me thinking about a discussion I had with Joel Harrison about how "stuff" has gotten so inexpensive (well... a lot of stuff, anyway) and how content has become such a massive part of our economy. Which means people are needed to create that content. And content competes for limited attention. Which drives up the cost of our attention. Which should change how we value our time? (question mark because I'm really unsure)
It's something I think I'd like to explore some more when I have a minute. If the people selling to us are increasingly competing for our attention and thus our time, should that affect how:
Maybe that's already a thing? The fact that independent "creators" can launch successful businesses based on the value people ascribe to their content and the attention they are willing to give them does create additional competition with employers, in that an employee has an additional potential source of employment to turn to? I'm sure as hell not an economist. And I'm not sure if that's a good way to frame the relationships between sellers/people/employers, etc. but I'm finding it interesting to consider.
Thanks for reading, or not reading, my word salad.