Category: EventsCategory: Events

TOMORROW!
◾ MINI ESCAPE POD Q&A #32
Got two spots open – come ask me about websites, sales pages, building an email list!
Friday, March 13 from 9:00 AM – 9:45 AM EST: (Members only, start your first month here)

NEXT WEEK!
◾ CO-WORK ESCAPE POD
Work on taxes, your website, your scales, your paintings, your opera, your ballet.
Tuesday, March 17 from 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST: https://luma.com/74xh39db

◾ SUBSTACK LIVE WITH MAX PETE

“The tech dream is a nightmare… more people I talk to that are in this industry want to leave and do something else—like work at the coffee shop, work at Trader Joe’s—but don’t know how to do that or feel like they can’t.”

That’s from my talk with Max Pete last year – tune in next week!
Wednesday, March 18 from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST (just be on Substack)

I just make these up as I go along, flowing from one idea to the next (need to do another “get our photos off the cloud” meet up again).

I’ve definitely been influenced by reading Cory Doctorow’s book ‘Enshittification,’ about getting away from the megacorp tech companies, and this Focus Escape Pod is a proper step in that direction.

On Wednesday, March 25 I’ll be hosting a 90 minute Zoom call, and there will be a “cohort” on the Discourse platform (not Discord), too.

It’s not like I’m the super best instructor guy for this. Sure, I’ve been noodling around on the web since the mid 90s, but there’s people who know more than I do about all this, which is why I’m asking them join us and help folks understand a little bit more about HTML, uploading files, DNS, and all that fun stuff. We’re gonna make the “scary stuff” a lot less scary.

On Tuesday, March 3rd at 10am EST I’ll be talking with artist, photographer, website builder, fog enjoyer, Noah Kalina on Substack Live.

I believe you can get a reminder if you sign up here, but I still don’t know how anything works on Substack.

On Wednesday I hosted a talk about Breaking Up With Gmail. During the call we agreed that it’s not “all or nothing,” just a little less of the dumb shit. I’ve still got my Gmail account (from 2005), but it’s a place-holder account for occasional client work and such, and I’ve been paying for Fastmail (referral link) since 2014. Progress, not perfection!

On Thursday morning I did a Substack Live with artist Mel Mitchell-Jackson and we talked about internet platform burnout, leaving stable jobs to pursue creative work, big social media numbers that don’t convert to actual sales (500,000!?!?), the importance of building trust, and why it’s so hard to make art when also trying to please the algorithms; watch it here.

Then on Thursdays Escape Pod Zoom call we did a “show and tell,” where everyone got to talk about what they do, and what they’re up to!

On Monday’s Substack Live, I talked about lots of stuff, like putting the bulk of my work on my own site, and then when it comes time to send a newsletter, I never have a shortage of ideas to pull from. Something to consider with your own website, maybe?

On Wednesday, I had a conversation with label owner Michael Gilbride about the economics of leaving streaming platforms, why physical mail might be making a comeback, and how musicians need to think about learning business skills – woah boy!

On our Thursday call, we talked about Polymarket becoming a big thing on Substack, making promo stickers, the challenges of finding places to post our flyers, getting people from social media to subscribe to our newsletters, and lots more.

Then on this morning’s MINI ESCAPE POD Q&A we talked about the SEO game with Substack and our own websites. If people are searching for your specific project name (“Social Media Escape Club”), Google will usually surface it without big time optimization.