TOM CRITCHLOW

Latest Writing

2024
March

Work is a Place Maybe I don't like working from home?

How do You Cultivate Customer-Centric Executives? Thinking about deep perspective change in executives

February

(Another) Quick Riff on Narrative Strategy The logic of narratives, narratives as worlds

Notes on my Remarkable Tablet Some notes on my note taking device

January

Notes on Search and AI More questions than answers...

Don’t Give Advice, Be Useful strategy Always focus on the next most useful thing

Narrative Aircover & Compound Narrative strategy The narratives that nourish and sustain you as an independent consultant

9 Years on the Road A year of stuck-ness

2023
October

Becoming Creative On starting, finishing and self promotion

June

Clients Have a Surprising Amount of Detail On strategy & stewardship, kettles and reality

April

What would a map of your career look like? It only makes sense in hindsight

The roadmap is not the territory Notes on sequencing, strategy maps and business knowledge

Building an Interactive Blog Map Adventures in unhinged web design

February

Writing, Riffs & Relationships Conversation is the unit of content

January

The Magic of Small Databases Notes on personal libraries, collections and small indexes on the web

Digital Bricolage & Web Foraging An ongoing journey in using the web in new ways

Building a New Project in Public Working title: Figma for Knowledge Workers

2022
November

8 Years on the Road Getting lost and learning to steer by a new compass

October
September

Slouching Towards Innovation The Streams, Feeds & Artifacts of Innovation Work

August

Generating Agency Through Blogging Blogging as economic and social opportunity

July

Bezier Butts Designing learning experiences to be relatable and engaging

Some Notes on Agency at Work Making sense of autonomy, control and careers

June

Rejecting Specialization strategy Using vibes and voice to attract the right clients

A Podia Wishlist A personal wishlist of new features

A map for indie living Phase by phase, one foot in front of the other

May

Subterranean Blogging Visible and invisible feedback loops

Blogging Streaks & Freaks Again and again and again

Reflecting on things I failed to get done at Google A meditation on corporate frustration & autonomy

Some Notes on Executive Dashboards Command & Control & Confusion

April

Triple Entry Blogging ...and some thoughts on servers in the modern age

Increasing the surface area of blogging Open feeds, OPML, books, blogs and graphs

Blogging in Service of Publics Admiring The Government Digital Service in the UK

Notes on teaching & chairs Repair, tacit knowledge and memes

Notes on a Blogging Accelerator How to get more people small-b blogging?

March

Narrative Logs Carrier bags and courses: Making the SEO MBA log

Holding (and scrolling) attention From doomscrolling to bloomscrolling

Building a Digital Homestead, Bit by Brick On the architecture of blogging

February

Electric Tables V0.2 From the web to spreadsheets and back again

January

Electric Tables V0.1 Experimenting with personal databases and the web as a texture

Quotebacks V1.1.4 Tweaks, fixes and full article saving

January 2022 - Map of Inquiry Open questions and areas of interest

2021
December

Thinking in Public with the Leaders of Consulting Podcast Consulting and blogging - what's not to like?

Talking Buy-in and Budget with Ross at Siege Media Appearing on the content and conversation podcast with Ross

November

7 Years on the Road The Winds of Change

September

The Jigsaw of Independence strategy Putting together an independent life without falling apart

April

Digital Victories Podcast Episode Discussing effecting change, the SEO MBA and more

March

Notes on an Open Scraping Database Exposing the web's data texture

February

Reimagining the Research Lab Musings on building an independent research lab

January

The Coming Era of Tokenized Essays Narrative economics and crypto-models for blogging

The Consultant Out of Time strategy Chronos & Kairos - a framework for just-in-time consulting

Why can't I write code inside my browser? Notes on rethinking browsers

2020
December

Filtered for... margin notes Margin notes, in-line comments and more.

Weak Ties & Strong Intros strategy How to find the “dark leads” hiding in your network to generate client work

November

6 Years on the Road From independence to interdependence

September

The Economic Power of Real-time Chat Spaces Notes on an economic model for independents

Further thoughts about GoodReads & the web books ecosystem Rough notes as followup to Library.json

August

Filtered for... inquiry vs insight And an announcement: Launching Little Futures Season 2

The Contrary Consultant strategy Embracing the fool & the power of not fitting in

What makes a good "hire me" page? Summary of the latest !& salon

Generating an alumni network for indies Musings on groups of indie consultants

July

Updates to Quotebacks Web configurator and more

Some notes on Thinking in Public An evolution of my small-b-blogging thesis

The Indie Consulting Business Model Canvas V0.1 A way of thinking about your practice

Opening up in Open Spaces Reflections on my first discord-salon session & details of the next salon

Setting up a Discord Room for my Blog A cozy space for real-time chat

Quotebacks for Firefox is here! Plus a new release for Chrome

June

Can Calendly Unbundle NYC? How important are spontaneous coffee meetings

Navigating Power & Status strategy How to get things done inside organizations by understanding power potholes and status switching

Exploring ScrollToTextFragment Buggy af for me...

disaster! Roxy's first blog post

Introducing: Quotebacks A chrome extension to quote the web

May

Sparring & Tenure for Indie Consultants A guest post on Art of Gig

The Challenges of Remote Consulting Sensemaking & context from afar...

April

Collective Narratives & Sensemaking in Uncertainty Launching the Yak Collective's first report

TiddlyBlink on Glitch An "open source" Roam competitor

Library JSON - A Proposal for a Decentralized Goodreads V0.1 for an experimental open bookshelf spec

After Peacetime Mental models for navigating uncertainty

The Quarantined Independent A new blogchain on surviving a global pandemic as an indie

March

Tap tap test Fuck it let's test it live

Of Blogs and Beacons Cozy spaces in uncertain times

Announcing- The Bandcamp Blogging Bandwagon Supporting indie artists on Bandcamp Friday March 20th

New Blogging 3 - Blog Patterns Fiddling with the deckchairs...

February

Narrative Strategy Thoughts on an emerging indie consulting style

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

2019
December

Blocking & Unblocking Clients strategy Generating & Co-Creating Strategy in the Theatre of Work

November

Optimism as an Operating System strategy Yes! And... part 2

Yes! And... strategy How to be effective in the theatre of work

A blog tour It's like cribs but for blogs

October

New Blogging 2 - Open Blogchains Minimum Viable Infrastructure

5 years on the road Thoughts on sustainable independence

Understanding Marketing Realities Making sense of modern brand marketing

Occult Ads Superstition and the industrial programmatic ad complex

September

Consulting Success Podcast Talking trust, networking and indie consulting

Sweathead Podcast Appearance Talking independence & identity

Workshops as Portals strategy And how to create clarity in consulting work

Networked Communities 2 - Blogging as a Social Act Musings on bringing sidewalk life to blogs

July

Space for Creativity Erin's Kickstarter - Journey to the End of the Night

S, M, L 1 - Wither Substack A new dual author blogchain around new media formats

New Blogging 1 - Building Blogchains New adventures in blogging and trying on blogchains for size

Help me write my book by annotating the outline Experiments in cultivating annotations on this site

June

The One Page Strategy Canvas Musing on working with complex systems

How (and why) to roll your own frameworks in consulting engagements strategy And the power of making simple, true frameworks with clients

Planting new varietals in my digital garden or, how I'm using Screenotate to grab snippets of the web for my personal wiki

Using Bookmarklets to Script Static Sites Auto-generating text snippets using a little javascript and bookmarklet magic

Blood In the Feed The uneasy experience of predatory algorithms

May

Integrating Annotations into a Static Blog Custom CSS, alerts and more

Blogpunk The weirdos and zeroes of blogging

April

Ditching Hourly Podcast Appearance Talking about The Strategic Independent

The Strategic Independent strategy How to do better work for more money, whether you're a designer, writer or strategist.

March

Magical Mystery Mix Love of the groove

Strange Attraction strategy How to generate leads for an independent consulting practice

February

I, consultant? strategy The struggle to define who you are as an independent and the promise of charging more for your work

Building a digital garden How I built myself a simple wiki using folders and files and published via Jekyll

Exploring the UX of web-annotations Looking at Hypothesis, Genius and Google Docs

January

Weird Work Wisdom from Venkatesh

2018
October

Ways of Seeing strategy How to recognize and understand culture inside a client's organization

Four Years on the Road Sustainability, Independence & The Unknown

Who do I know in the kids book publishing world? Erin's first illustrated book - Journey To The End Of The Night

Of Digital Streams, Campfires and Gardens Building personal learning environments across the different time horizons of information consumption

September

Narrative spaces maps-as-media Maps as Media Week 1

For the love of maps maps-as-media Why I'm joining the maps as media course as a satellite blogger

The power of labels strategy How naming & labels can create powerful internal and external forces for independent workers

For the record blogging A sketch of how Mozilla could save us

July

The Practice of Media Design An attempt to define and describe the landscape of my work

High Fidelity Consulting strategy Ideas without details and details without ideas are both risky

June

Strategy and stewardship strategy A model for retained strategy consulting

PDF Aesthetics A publishing manifesto

Thank you Seth Congrats on the new site

How to get things done strategy Two interesting frameworks for trying to get things done within an organization

May

Some good links From dystopia to blogging and back again - some links I've enjoyed recently

April

Atemporality of the Corporation strategy What time horizon does strategy work on?

March

Strategy is the organic flow of ideas and people strategy Some links to chew on...

Talking getting things done with Ross Hudgens & Corey Eulas A fireside chat about effecting change

February

Talking consulting on the Boundless podcast Chatting with Paul about the future of work and consulting

Small b blogging Network topology and the ghost of the digg homepage

The Malcontents Episode 4 & 5 About us and a focus on content careers

January

Who gives a shit about your content? Creating connection in a networked world

2017
December

Talking about careers My guest episode on Jeff's podcast

Decentralized Revenue Reading Peretti's memo with an eye to brand

The Malcontents Episode 3 How Content Works

November

The Malcontents Episode 2 All about media revenue models

The Malcontents A pilot for a thing that might become a podcast...

Intimate Marketing Don't forget to have a conversation with your audience

Privacy Glitch A digital art project exploring the relationship between the visible and invisible in media.

October

Three years on the road strategy A personal note on how it's all going...

Algorithmic text is exciting I want to play this one just as it came out of the neural network...

How do you measure good content? In search of a framework or process to judge editorial... quality?

September

00FF00 Why scrappy remixing and copy pasting is how I get around on the web

July

The Consultant's Grain strategy Why (their) culture eats (your) strategy for breakfast

June

Branding in the age of Content How is branding different for a content-first business?

The Beginner's Guide to Community Building A roundup of links and guides for thinking about and building communities online.

April

Context Collapse, Brands & Content Why so much content is mediocre and what to do about it.

February

The State of Content A survey of the landscape of the business of content in 2017

Some Interesting Media Strategy Jobs Shorter than a blog post, longer than a tweet...

January

The Importance of Launching Fuck yeah side projects!

2016
December

Some Interesting Agencies A few fresh approaches I've seen recently

A fieldguide for independent strategy consultants strategy Some collected thoughts

Every Blog Takes a Village Communities, platforms and blogs

November

Informal breakfast 2 For those curious about content

On Conferences Networked talking. Like blogging IRL.

Starting an informal breakfast thing Building community around content

October

Two years on the road strategy Thoughts from two years being self-employed

Indie Blogging & Distribution You can't divorce content and distribution

Where will the next Twitter come from? Twitter the company is in trouble, but Twitter the platform I believe will live on

September

Death of the Industrial Advertising Complex Two excellent videos on the future of media

August

A Day In the Consultant's Life strategy What do I do all day long?

Intentional Communities There's a reason this whole post is written in the disqus comments

Blogging, Not Blogging 7 ways to get back into blogging

Why I've decided not to launch a brand for my consulting work strategy Personal branding is hard but I'm making progress!

June
May
January

Intermodal Media ...or why Buzzfeed is dominating Facebook with silent square videos

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

You're Not Blogging, My Friend. And That's a Problem.

August
June

Google Photos for Work A sketch of a hypothetical new product from Google

May

Mediated Maps & Digital Blind Spots An experiment in looking at the world around me through a new lens

April
March
January
2014
December
April
February
2013
March

Creativity vs Innovation Innovation is implemented ideas

2012
November
April

The Art of Being Switched On Life is rich and colorful, please don’t spend it on your phone.