TOM CRITCHLOW
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2024
September
3,573 Days On The Road
The Last Installment
September 3, 2024
April
Working With Founders Who Have Conviction and Taste
Opening up a few spots for my active advisory practice
April 16, 2024
March
LinkedIn is not a social or professional network, it's a learning network
The world of work needs a new script
March 27, 2024
A Lil' Website Refresh
New design, new pages and more
March 20, 2024
Work is a Place
Maybe I don't like working from home?
March 6, 2024
How do You Cultivate Customer-Centric Executives?
Thinking about deep perspective change in executives
March 1, 2024
February
(Another) Quick Riff on Narrative Strategy
The logic of narratives, narratives as worlds
February 16, 2024
Notes on my Remarkable Tablet
Some notes on my note taking device
February 9, 2024
January
Notes on Search and AI
More questions than answers...
January 31, 2024
Don’t Give Advice, Be Useful
Always focus on the next most useful thing
January 23, 2024
Manifesting My Dream Clients & Projects for 2024
Let's do good work together
January 18, 2024
Narrative Aircover & Compound Narrative
The narratives that nourish and sustain you as an independent consultant
January 10, 2024
9 Years on the Road
A year of stuck-ness
January 4, 2024
2023
October
Becoming Creative
On starting, finishing and self promotion
October 5, 2023
June
Clients Have a Surprising Amount of Detail
On strategy & stewardship, kettles and reality
June 5, 2023
April
What would a map of your career look like?
It only makes sense in hindsight
April 26, 2023
The roadmap is not the territory
Notes on sequencing, strategy maps and business knowledge
April 18, 2023
Building an Interactive Blog Map
Adventures in unhinged web design
April 3, 2023
February
Writing, Riffs & Relationships
Conversation is the unit of content
February 10, 2023
January
The Magic of Small Databases
Notes on personal libraries, collections and small indexes on the web
January 27, 2023
Digital Bricolage & Web Foraging
An ongoing journey in using the web in new ways
January 20, 2023
Building a New Project in Public
Working title: Figma for Knowledge Workers
January 11, 2023
2022
November
8 Years on the Road
Getting lost and learning to steer by a new compass
November 10, 2022
October
What are Executive Off-Sites Good For?
The Theatre of Planning
October 6, 2022
September
Slouching Towards Innovation
The Streams, Feeds & Artifacts of Innovation Work
September 13, 2022
August
Generating Agency Through Blogging
Blogging as economic and social opportunity
August 29, 2022
July
Bezier Butts
Designing learning experiences to be relatable and engaging
July 14, 2022
Some Notes on Agency at Work
Making sense of autonomy, control and careers
July 5, 2022
June
Rejecting Specialization
Using vibes and voice to attract the right clients
June 16, 2022
A Podia Wishlist
A personal wishlist of new features
June 10, 2022
A map for indie living
Phase by phase, one foot in front of the other
June 3, 2022
May
Subterranean Blogging
Visible and invisible feedback loops
May 29, 2022
Blogging Streaks & Freaks
Again and again and again
May 20, 2022
Reflecting on things I failed to get done at Google
A meditation on corporate frustration & autonomy
May 12, 2022
Some Notes on Executive Dashboards
Command & Control & Confusion
May 6, 2022
April
Triple Entry Blogging
...and some thoughts on servers in the modern age
April 27, 2022
Increasing the surface area of blogging
Open feeds, OPML, books, blogs and graphs
April 21, 2022
Blogging in Service of Publics
Admiring The Government Digital Service in the UK
April 15, 2022
Notes on teaching & chairs
Repair, tacit knowledge and memes
April 6, 2022
Notes on a Blogging Accelerator
How to get more people small-b blogging?
April 1, 2022
March
Narrative Logs
Carrier bags and courses: Making the SEO MBA log
March 25, 2022
Holding (and scrolling) attention
From doomscrolling to bloomscrolling
March 15, 2022
Building a Digital Homestead, Bit by Brick
On the architecture of blogging
March 8, 2022
February
Electric Tables V0.2
From the web to spreadsheets and back again
February 7, 2022
January
Electric Tables V0.1
Experimenting with personal databases and the web as a texture
January 26, 2022
Quotebacks V1.1.4
Tweaks, fixes and full article saving
January 24, 2022
January 2022 - Map of Inquiry
Open questions and areas of interest
January 6, 2022
2021
December
Thinking in Public with the Leaders of Consulting Podcast
Consulting and blogging - what's not to like?
December 29, 2021
Talking Buy-in and Budget with Ross at Siege Media
Appearing on the content and conversation podcast with Ross
December 14, 2021
November
Chatting Consulting with Andi Jarvis on the Eximo Podcast
Independent consulting advice
November 30, 2021
7 Years on the Road
The Winds of Change
November 12, 2021
September
The Jigsaw of Independence
Putting together an independent life without falling apart
September 9, 2021
April
Digital Victories Podcast Episode
Discussing effecting change, the SEO MBA and more
April 21, 2021
March
Notes on an Open Scraping Database
Exposing the web's data texture
March 29, 2021
February
Reimagining the Research Lab
Musings on building an independent research lab
February 24, 2021
January
The Coming Era of Tokenized Essays
Narrative economics and crypto-models for blogging
January 26, 2021
The Consultant Out of Time
Chronos & Kairos - a framework for just-in-time consulting
January 26, 2021
Why can't I write code inside my browser?
Notes on rethinking browsers
January 14, 2021
2020
December
Filtered for... margin notes
Margin notes, in-line comments and more.
December 17, 2020
Weak Ties & Strong Intros
How to find the “dark leads” hiding in your network to generate client work
December 10, 2020
November
A Letter to Arnold
November 30, 2020
6 Years on the Road
From independence to interdependence
November 10, 2020
September
The Economic Power of Real-time Chat Spaces
Notes on an economic model for independents
September 22, 2020
Podcasts with Offline Rocks & Hundreds of Ways
Some recent yakking
September 18, 2020
Further thoughts about GoodReads & the web books ecosystem
Rough notes as followup to Library.json
September 14, 2020
August
Filtered for... inquiry vs insight
And an announcement: Launching Little Futures Season 2
August 19, 2020
The Contrary Consultant
Embracing the fool & the power of not fitting in
August 18, 2020
What makes a good "hire me" page?
Summary of the latest !& salon
August 11, 2020
Generating an alumni network for indies
Musings on groups of indie consultants
August 6, 2020
re: More experiments with video calls, and what slides are for
Putting words on faces
August 1, 2020
July
Updates to Quotebacks
Web configurator and more
July 24, 2020
Some notes on Thinking in Public
An evolution of my small-b-blogging thesis
July 23, 2020
The Indie Consulting Business Model Canvas V0.1
A way of thinking about your practice
July 23, 2020
Opening up in Open Spaces
Reflections on my first discord-salon session & details of the next salon
July 16, 2020
Setting up a Discord Room for my Blog
A cozy space for real-time chat
July 8, 2020
Quotebacks for Firefox is here!
Plus a new release for Chrome
July 2, 2020
June
Can Calendly Unbundle NYC?
How important are spontaneous coffee meetings
June 26, 2020
Navigating Power & Status
How to get things done inside organizations by understanding power potholes and status switching
June 24, 2020
Exploring ScrollToTextFragment
Buggy af for me...
June 10, 2020
disaster!
Roxy's first blog post
June 10, 2020
Introducing: Quotebacks
A chrome extension to quote the web
June 9, 2020
May
Sparring & Tenure for Indie Consultants
A guest post on Art of Gig
May 28, 2020
Filtered for... writing inside organizations
May 27, 2020
Filtered for... the design of virtual spaces
May 22, 2020
Filtered for... Play
May 20, 2020
A Good Looking Tiddly Theme for Digital Gardens
Based on the Krystal theme
May 19, 2020
The Challenges of Remote Consulting
Sensemaking & context from afar...
May 6, 2020
April
Collective Narratives & Sensemaking in Uncertainty
Launching the Yak Collective's first report
April 30, 2020
TiddlyBlink on Glitch
An "open source" Roam competitor
April 20, 2020
Library JSON - A Proposal for a Decentralized Goodreads
V0.1 for an experimental open bookshelf spec
April 15, 2020
After Peacetime
Mental models for navigating uncertainty
April 13, 2020
The Quarantined Independent
A new blogchain on surviving a global pandemic as an indie
April 8, 2020
March
Tap tap test
Fuck it let's test it live
March 31, 2020
Of Blogs and Beacons
Cozy spaces in uncertain times
March 23, 2020
My Bandcamp Blogging Bandwagon Reccs
Support indie music!
March 20, 2020
Announcing- The Bandcamp Blogging Bandwagon
Supporting indie artists on Bandcamp Friday March 20th
March 19, 2020
New Blogging 3 - Blog Patterns
Fiddling with the deckchairs...
March 16, 2020
February
Narrative Strategy
Thoughts on an emerging indie consulting style
February 20, 2020
January
Building an ebook version of Journey to the End of the Night for Erin
Technical specs and lessons learned trying to make a picture book "work" on the web
January 27, 2020
2019
December
Blocking & Unblocking Clients
Generating & Co-Creating Strategy in the Theatre of Work
December 6, 2019
November
Optimism as an Operating System
Yes! And... part 2
November 19, 2019
Yes! And...
How to be effective in the theatre of work
November 18, 2019
Fellow travellers on the road
November 14, 2019
Webmention believers...
November 5, 2019
Testing Webmentions
Fiddling
November 1, 2019
A blog tour
It's like cribs but for blogs
November 1, 2019
October
New Blogging 2 - Open Blogchains
Minimum Viable Infrastructure
October 31, 2019
5 years on the road
Thoughts on sustainable independence
October 24, 2019
Understanding Marketing Realities
Making sense of modern brand marketing
October 22, 2019
Occult Ads
Superstition and the industrial programmatic ad complex
October 21, 2019
September
Consulting Success Podcast
Talking trust, networking and indie consulting
September 30, 2019
Sweathead Podcast Appearance
Talking independence & identity
September 26, 2019
Workshops as Portals
And how to create clarity in consulting work
September 23, 2019
Networked Communities 3 - Sidewalk Spaces and Positive Gatekeeping
September 10, 2019
Networked Communities 2 - Blogging as a Social Act
Musings on bringing sidewalk life to blogs
September 4, 2019
Networked Communities 1 - Weaving a public web, or, why don’t I blog more?
September 1, 2019
July
Space for Creativity
Erin's Kickstarter - Journey to the End of the Night
July 30, 2019
S, M, L 1 - Wither Substack
A new dual author blogchain around new media formats
July 18, 2019
New Blogging 1 - Building Blogchains
New adventures in blogging and trying on blogchains for size
July 17, 2019
Help me write my book by annotating the outline
Experiments in cultivating annotations on this site
July 12, 2019
June
The One Page Strategy Canvas
Musing on working with complex systems
June 28, 2019
How (and why) to roll your own frameworks in consulting engagements
And the power of making simple, true frameworks with clients
June 27, 2019
Planting new varietals in my digital garden
or, how I'm using Screenotate to grab snippets of the web for my personal wiki
June 19, 2019
Using Bookmarklets to Script Static Sites
Auto-generating text snippets using a little javascript and bookmarklet magic
June 19, 2019
Blood In the Feed
The uneasy experience of predatory algorithms
June 6, 2019
May
Integrating Annotations into a Static Blog
Custom CSS, alerts and more
May 23, 2019
Blogpunk
The weirdos and zeroes of blogging
May 17, 2019
April
Ditching Hourly Podcast Appearance
Talking about The Strategic Independent
April 26, 2019
The Strategic Independent
How to do better work for more money, whether you're a designer, writer or strategist.
April 4, 2019
March
Magical Mystery Mix
Love of the groove
March 20, 2019
Strange Attraction
How to generate leads for an independent consulting practice
March 12, 2019
February
I, consultant?
The struggle to define who you are as an independent and the promise of charging more for your work
February 27, 2019
Building a digital garden
How I built myself a simple wiki using folders and files and published via Jekyll
February 17, 2019
Exploring the UX of web-annotations
Looking at Hypothesis, Genius and Google Docs
February 12, 2019
January
Weird Work
Wisdom from Venkatesh
January 22, 2019
2018
October
Ways of Seeing
How to recognize and understand culture inside a client's organization
October 29, 2018
Four Years on the Road
Sustainability, Independence & The Unknown
October 24, 2018
Who do I know in the kids book publishing world?
Erin's first illustrated book - Journey To The End Of The Night
October 16, 2018
Of Digital Streams, Campfires and Gardens
Building personal learning environments across the different time horizons of information consumption
October 10, 2018
September
Narrative spaces
Maps as Media Week 1
September 24, 2018
For the love of maps
Why I'm joining the maps as media course as a satellite blogger
September 19, 2018
The power of labels
How naming & labels can create powerful internal and external forces for independent workers
September 17, 2018
For the record blogging
A sketch of how Mozilla could save us
September 13, 2018
How to make AMP stories using Jekyll and Github Pages
Tap tap tap
September 6, 2018
July
The Practice of Media Design
An attempt to define and describe the landscape of my work
July 25, 2018
Re-booting the Malcontents Podcast and Looking for Feedback
Iterating on the model
July 14, 2018
High Fidelity Consulting
Ideas without details and details without ideas are both risky
July 10, 2018
Community Economics & A Kitty-Turtle Hybrid
From tokens to turtles
July 9, 2018
June
Strategy and stewardship
A model for retained strategy consulting
June 28, 2018
PDF Aesthetics
A publishing manifesto
June 8, 2018
Thank you Seth
Congrats on the new site
June 6, 2018
How to get things done
Two interesting frameworks for trying to get things done within an organization
June 1, 2018
May
Some good links
From dystopia to blogging and back again - some links I've enjoyed recently
May 20, 2018
April
Atemporality of the Corporation
What time horizon does strategy work on?
April 17, 2018
March
Strategy is the organic flow of ideas and people
Some links to chew on...
March 8, 2018
Talking getting things done with Ross Hudgens & Corey Eulas
A fireside chat about effecting change
March 7, 2018
February
Talking consulting on the Boundless podcast
Chatting with Paul about the future of work and consulting
February 26, 2018
Small b blogging
Network topology and the ghost of the digg homepage
February 23, 2018
The Malcontents Episode 4 & 5
About us and a focus on content careers
February 9, 2018
In the land of hierarchy, the networked individual is king
February 2, 2018
January
Who gives a shit about your content?
Creating connection in a networked world
January 30, 2018
Experiments in Networked Writing
What's next?
January 5, 2018
2017
December
Talking about careers
My guest episode on Jeff's podcast
December 14, 2017
Decentralized Revenue
Reading Peretti's memo with an eye to brand
December 13, 2017
The Malcontents Episode 3
How Content Works
December 8, 2017
November
A few notes on blogging & independent feeds
On resisting hyperfeeds
November 27, 2017
The Malcontents Episode 2
All about media revenue models
November 27, 2017
The Malcontents
A pilot for a thing that might become a podcast...
November 16, 2017
Intimate Marketing
Don't forget to have a conversation with your audience
November 14, 2017
Privacy Glitch
A digital art project exploring the relationship between the visible and invisible in media.
November 7, 2017
October
Three years on the road
A personal note on how it's all going...
October 24, 2017
Algorithmic text is exciting
I want to play this one just as it came out of the neural network...
October 20, 2017
How do you measure good content?
In search of a framework or process to judge editorial... quality?
October 3, 2017
September
00FF00
Why scrappy remixing and copy pasting is how I get around on the web
September 22, 2017
July
The Consultant's Grain
Why (their) culture eats (your) strategy for breakfast
July 18, 2017
June
Branding in the age of Content
How is branding different for a content-first business?
June 27, 2017
The Beginner's Guide to Community Building
A roundup of links and guides for thinking about and building communities online.
June 5, 2017
April
Context Collapse, Brands & Content
Why so much content is mediocre and what to do about it.
April 20, 2017
February
The State of Content
A survey of the landscape of the business of content in 2017
February 24, 2017
Some Interesting Media Strategy Jobs
Shorter than a blog post, longer than a tweet...
February 14, 2017
January
The Importance of Launching
Fuck yeah side projects!
January 26, 2017
2016
December
Some Interesting Agencies
A few fresh approaches I've seen recently
December 16, 2016
A fieldguide for independent strategy consultants
Some collected thoughts
December 14, 2016
Every Blog Takes a Village
Communities, platforms and blogs
December 1, 2016
November
Informal breakfast 2
For those curious about content
November 30, 2016
On Conferences
Networked talking. Like blogging IRL.
November 22, 2016
Starting an informal breakfast thing
Building community around content
November 1, 2016
October
Two years on the road
Thoughts from two years being self-employed
October 24, 2016
Indie Blogging & Distribution
You can't divorce content and distribution
October 21, 2016
Where will the next Twitter come from?
Twitter the company is in trouble, but Twitter the platform I believe will live on
October 20, 2016
September
Death of the Industrial Advertising Complex
Two excellent videos on the future of media
September 9, 2016
August
A Day In the Consultant's Life
What do I do all day long?
August 29, 2016
Intentional Communities
There's a reason this whole post is written in the disqus comments
August 25, 2016
Blogging, Not Blogging
7 ways to get back into blogging
August 9, 2016
Why I've decided not to launch a brand for my consulting work
Personal branding is hard but I'm making progress!
August 1, 2016
June
An alternative to the bullshit industrial complex
Keeping the web weird
June 3, 2016
May
Using Facebook Messenger as a Free Intercom Replacement
May 10, 2016
January
Intermodal Media
...or why Buzzfeed is dominating Facebook with silent square videos
January 21, 2016
What does it mean to build a marketing team for your startup?
January 7, 2016
2015
September
In The Future We Will All Fall Madly in Love With Our Toasters
...and why the future of the Internet of Things will be the Cute Home, not the Smart Home
September 13, 2015
You're Not Blogging, My Friend.
And That's a Problem.
September 3, 2015
August
A Meander Into Architecture
August 24, 2015
June
Google Photos for Work
A sketch of a hypothetical new product from Google
June 5, 2015
May
Poetry & Markdown for What?
May 11, 2015
Mediated Maps & Digital Blind Spots
An experiment in looking at the world around me through a new lens
May 5, 2015
April
How to use Google Slides as a free cloud-hosted illustrator replacement
April 20, 2015
Decentralized Brands & The Future of Content Marketing
April 15, 2015
Links April 9th
April 9, 2015
March
Links March 24th
March 24, 2015
Blog For The Young Things
March 23, 2015
Back to Blogging
March 22, 2015
January
Links Jan 26th
January 26, 2015
2014
December
Random Acts of Algorithms
December 3, 2014
Predicting A Global Economic Crash in 2025
December 1, 2014
April
Let Me Know How I Can Help
April 1, 2014
February
My Investment Thesis
February 1, 2014
2013
March
Creativity vs Innovation
Innovation is implemented ideas
March 22, 2013
2012
November
The 500 Year Old Meteor Doodle
November 15, 2012
April
The Art of Being Switched On
Life is rich and colorful, please don’t spend it on your phone.
April 12, 2012