š I met my friend @JamesMayes.bsky.social about a dozen years ago at a local chapter of TEDx in Brighton, where I used to reside during my university studies and the early stages of my career.
We quickly connected due to our shared heavy social media usage and mutual attraction towards good food & drinks, good people, and a passion for technology. Since then, weāve been friends, and Iām grateful to have him as both a friend and a mentor in my professional life.
Over the past year, James has been battling brain cancer. On top of this life-altering diagnosis, heās been incredibly busy. Since last year, heās been involved in the following endeavors:
Needless to say, for community-oriented individuals like myself, this book is already a must-read. I was fortunate enough to read early chapters a while back and eagerly anticipate delving deeper into the book.
For national, world, and general interest news, Apple News is really good. (ā¦) itās truly excellent. And a News+ subscription gets you access to a bunch of great publications with paywalls on the web.
My wife and I are on the bundled package which includes Fitness+, News+, TV+, and a bunch of iCloud storage and we havenāt looked back.
I donāt use Apple News+ as much as Iād like purely because I also have RSS/social + occasionally open the NYTimes app or The Athletic.
Iād love it if France-based publishers would play ball too ā and if there was additional support for foreign-language publishers.
But overall itās a great way to catch up on the news. Including Audio articles, Magazines, and Sports News ā thatās a really good curated tab of different news specifically tailored to teams that I follow!
Another post inspired by @Manton, as I continue to read my way through my subscribed feeds:
I’m Tibz on most socials, @tibz.blog on Bluesky, and @tibz@micro.blog on Mastodon / @iTibz on Threads.
These are all managed by Micro.blog. āAre you getting it? These are not three separate accountsā¦ This is one place to post. And weāre calling it a blog.ā š¤Ŗ
I’ve been loving the idea of Micro.Blog since its inception, but over the past few years, it’s really become a super interesting, powerful, and simple way for me to manage my personal online presence!
Getting ready to say goodbye to Foursquare, an app Iāve used almost daily since its earlier form back in 2009 between my time studying and working and living in the UK, then in San Francisco, Paris, and my native French Riviera. Back then I used to check-in to places I visited from the mobile browser of my Nokia blackberry knockoff (E63) (2009-2011), then an Android phone (2011-2013), and finally from the dedicated iPhone apps (2013+). During that time the Foursquare app (and later Swarm) has almost always been on my phoneās Home Screen.
Iām feeling genuinely sad about this, truly the end of an era for a formative time in my life, the late 2000ās-early 2010s āSoLoMoā (Social Local Mobile) apps.
4SQ has been invaluable, not just for memorizing/logging/remembering places Iāve been to, but also to discover new places.
I traveled the world by myself for most of 2017, but Foursquare was my guide to discover new favorites while visiting cities all around Asia or America for the very first time. The amount of time Iāve spent on this app is immeasurable and I have a hard time wondering how Iāll get by the next time I explore a new city in the world.
As I start looking at substitutes, it seems that Superlocal could be an option. Otherwise North.Industries which I need to look into. But I need to do a lot more research!
As a sports fan following different teams/leagues/sports, keeping track of “what game is on today?” or “I have some free time on Sunday, is there anything good on?” has been a STRUGGLE these past few years.
Usually, there are existing apps you can use, mostly for ā½ļø. Or Sports Media apps (like L’Equipe here in France, or The Athletic, or ESPN) etc.
But these aren’t great for the purpose of knowing
- What is on?- and When?
“When is there an exciting game around which I can plan to meet my friends, at home or in a bar?"
“How can I schedule my weekend in a way that I get to watch my team(s) while being mindful of family time and running errands?"
These are problems I’m continually experiencing.
To counter this, I’ve been using different websites that publish an RSS feed that you can subscribe to in a calendar app.
But as a self-described sports junkie, I ended up polluting my calendar with games, which made viewing my actual events pretty difficult.
The Solution
Fast-forward to October last year, when I discovered a service called Fixtured.
I can’t quite remember how it got put on to my radar, but Fixtured has totally changed this for me, and now I have one single place where I can see at a glance what’s coming up.
Today, it’s essentially a web-based calendar app, where you can choose which teams & leagues you follow across many different sports. It’s super easy to use in a “set it up once” type of way. I really like the design, and for someone like me, it is the PERFECT tool and usecase.
On top of that, the team behind Fixtured has been super responsive, keen to hear my feedback, and fast to implement new features/leagues/teams. They’re quite small (3 people) and works fast. In the past, they reached out by email and later via DMs to let me know about upcoming things. It’s been really cool to discover more about their work!
And I started sharing it with my friends in similar situations ā my good friend Jeffry sent me this message today:
“Fixtured has already changed my life. Thank you forever”
I’m just a fan of what they’re building and want them to succeed. So for any sports fan like me, check out Fixtured! šš¤
My all-time favorite artist (John Mayer) playing his very first concert in Paris. It was my second time seeing John after attending the Paradise Valley tour back in 2013
It was really cool to see him take the stage by himself for 2 hours! John played mostly acoustic, but it was an opportunity to hear songs from every single album he put out (with the additions of In Your Atmosphere and his iconic Free Fallin' cover!
If youāre fortunate to live long enough, eventually you get The Call. Sometimes itās an actual call, sometimes a social media post or a conversation on the street. But the message is the same: A friend of your youth has died.
The death of Matthew Perry was sad for all the reasons it is sad when a gifted, nimble, charming performer who has shared his struggles dies too young. But it was deepened by the particular relationship of āFriendsā to its audience. If you connected with the show the way the show wanted to connect with you, the weekendās news was a global version of The Call.
šš¼ Itās been a few months since Iāve gotten back to freelancing and I wanted to share that I have some availability between now and the end of the year.
š¼ Iām looking for additional work in Customer Success / Product Marketing starting at the end of August.
šš»āāļøIām flexible but typically specialize in early stage startups and small companies looking for a Jack-of-all-trade profile, across a wide range of industries.
You can learn more about my work via my portfolio website (http://Tibz.work/) and my DMs are opened for more discussions.
Iām not a fan of modern fandom. This isnāt only because Iāve been swarmed on Twitter by angry devotees of Marvel and DC and (more recently) āTop Gun: Maverickā and āEverything Everywhere All at Once.ā Itās more that the behavior of these social media hordes represents an anti-democratic, anti-intellectual mind-set that is harmful to the cause of art and antithetical to the spirit of movies. Fan culture is rooted in conformity, obedience, group identity and mob behavior, and its rise mirrors and models the spread of intolerant, authoritarian, aggressive tendencies in our politics and our communal life.
Day 11 of theĀ March Photoblogging Challenge:Ā “gimrack”.
I had to look up what it means, and it turns out it’s similar to knickknack.
My favorite one is this framed letter that Shana wrote after our first date, when I got home and she was traveling for work. Our first date was in London on Feb. 14th 2017, and our second date was a month later in Amsterdam for an extended weekend together.
Next to it stands a Polaroid photo of us on Times Square taken by local friends of ours, in November 2017 as we wrapped our world tour together.
š£ š¼ Iāve been thinking of how best to apply my skills and help companies grow. I can add a lot of value to a team focused on business & product but that hasnāt had the chance to think about how to support customers and how to onboard new users.
My sweet spot is early-stage startups and companies that need to set up and launch their customer experience: setting up their support strategy, help desk, help center, segmenting the customer base and understanding how to educate users in the best practices, how to use features, how to make sure they make the most out of a given product, all the way to community building. Basically anything customer-facing.
All of this to say Iām thinking about going back to freelancing but I need clientsā¦
Iāve been working full remote since 2015, have experience working with international, cross-disciplinary teams in the US, Europe, UK, whether B2B SaaS, B2C, sports, crypto, fintech, Dev tools, consumer, Iāve done a lotā¦
Layoffs are among the most challenging life experiences, causing more psychological stress than even divorce, according to one study. Losing a job can upend workersā finances and their sense of self, and layoffs in the world of remote work have in many cases been especially destabilizing, with employer missteps fueling uncertainty and unnecessary unknowns.
Last year ended with job cuts across tech behemoths [ā¦] For many of these companies, these cuts followed years of free-flowing perks and flexible work arrangements that were part of what was called a āwar for talent.ā
āThat is one of the great contradictions of corporate life,ā Ms. Sucher said. āAll corporations say āPeople are our most important asset,ā but they donāt really seem to believe that.ā
āCalling someone ātalentā is quite different from calling them a person,ā she added. āPeople arenāt a resource that can be depleted over time.ā
Contrast being told āimma checkin with you and share your profile with my networkā and never hearing back with how Nokia did it, at scale:
Actions > Words.
Nokia, when it was restructuring in 2011, gave the roughly 18,000 people who would be affected about a year of advance notice and offered them several pathways forward: The company would help them find new roles internally, get new jobs externally, start their own businesses or begin an educational program, among other options.
Nokiaās success metrics were whether people had a job lined up when they left the firm, and whether they were leaving with a positive enough impression that they would be open to returning in the future. Nearly two-thirds of people who left knew what their next steps would be.
āThis is going to be the lasting impression that sticks with your previous employees, your current employees and all future employees,ā said Tanner Hackett, chief executive of Counterpart, an insurance technology company that helps small businesses.
One of the most frustrating part is being told āwhat a great person you areā, āwhat a wonderful positive energy you bringā, āhow much we value working with youā, and āif things were different weād hire you again right awayāā¦
But youāre still showing me the door soā¦ šŖš„ š¤·š»āāļø
I do believe that good vibes/energy pay(s) off in the long term in terms of good reputation.
But short/medium term Iām yet to find a leader that values it at the point of backing someone when times get hard(er)
This was too relatable considering my current personal situation and professional predicament.
āRight now you’re in a very specific moment. It’s called liminal space. You’re in the ambiguous or disoriented phase, also known as the middle of a rite of passage. Part of that is just growing up, but it also has to do with what you found out. Now you’re transforming, incorporating that information into your identity. It can be scary, like free-falling.ā
āThe letter is typed on AS Bondy headed paper, dated 17 May 2011. It gives permission for a 12-year-old French boy named Kylian Mbappe to attend a four-day trial the following week. Mbappe was on his way to Chelsea.ā
I just received this email and I’m unsure how I feel about this…
On the one hand it’s a bit chaotic, on the other it’s very convenient, and allows more people to find alternative transportation methods compared to the Metro/Taxis/Uber.
But emailing your customer base without giving them facts is equivalent to sharing fake news and masking ‘opinion-as-fact’ in a way that is reminiscent of US Republicans and far-right politicians.
I believe more strongly in Regulate It than in Ban It.
Plus, the real problem in my mind lies with people, not in the devices themselves. There are lots of examples of things that donāt work here in France due to people being too selfish or individualists.
As I pointed out three years ago, if you woke up on a Casper mattress, worked out with a Peloton, _Uber_ed to a WeWork, ordered on DoorDash for lunch, took a Lyft home, and ordered dinner through Postmates only to realize your partner had already started on a Blue Apron meal, your household had, in one day, interacted with eight unprofitable companies that collectively lost about $15 billion in one year.
I tried living there for a bit last year, and the ambitions of the inhabitants are not intellectual ones.
The message Paris sends now is: do things with style. I liked that, actually.
Paris is the only city I’ve lived in where people genuinely cared about art. In America only a few rich people buy original art, and even the more sophisticated ones rarely get past judging it by the brand name of the artist.
But looking through windows at dusk in Paris you can see that people there actually care what paintings look like.
Visually, Paris has the best eavesdropping I know.
I donāt want to romanticize the French economy or French society, both of which have plenty of problems. And liberals who like to imagine that we could neutralize the anger of the white working class by raising wages and strengthening the social safety net should know that France, whose policies are to the left of U.S. progressivesā wildest dreams, has its own ugly white nationalist movement, albeit not as powerful as ours.
Still, at a time when Republicans denounce as destructive āsocialismā any effort to make America less unequal, itās worth knowing that the economy of France ā which isnāt socialist but comes far closer to socialism than anything Democrats might propose ā is doing pretty well.
I don’t necessarily agree with all the points made here, but some things are worth pointing out…
‘Every member of Forbesās 2021 cryptobillionaires list is a man. A third of them attended Stanford or Harvard. Out of the 12 listed, only one isnāt white. The web3 narrative feels like a TEDx talk given to a survivalist group.’
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