I’m excited to share this pithy rundown of my team's work on the Threads app, complete with plenty of examples. This project was a fascinating one, and getting to think through how to unlock text-based sharing via text-based design was downright poetic. We spent a lot of time considering how to simplify extremely complex concepts, and we sweat the details down to the character.
You can check out the whole piece here.
Getting to be a part of the talented team that designed Threads, both on the product and brand side, was the best part of the last six months and undoubtably a career highlight. The team was extremely small and scrappy, which is how I ended up moonlighting as brand copywriter, while also leading naming and content design for the app.
You can try Threads now.
I couldn’t be more thrilled to be giving a talk (and mini workshop) at the upcoming Button conference on how to translate life experiences into authentic leadership styles. Attending Confab, the original “big tent” content strategy conference, wayyyyy back in 2012 is something that I credit with really getting to know this field, the people working in it and setting myself up to build a career within it—so this one is very meaningful for me!
The conference is hybrid this year, which means you can attend online or in-person in Seattle. If you’d like to come along for this ride, you can use my speaker code PENSIERO100 to get $100 off your ticket.
You can purchase your tickets here. Hope to see you there!
It was such an enjoyable experience to get to be on an episode of Zak Rosen’s Best Advice podcast. My advice is dead simple but probably changed the course of my life.
You can listen here.
I’m excited to be giving a talk at Perspectives on authentically growing into leadership called Scaling Yourself Without Losing Yourself.
You can learn more here.
It was a lot of fun to be included in Working in Content’s recent Career Q&A piece, alongside many amazing folks in the industry. If you’re looking to break into the Content Design, Strategy or UX Writing world, there’s a ton of extremely useful advice in this piece.
You can read it here.
I suppose I’ve been falling down on the job to keep this updated, although I also suppose I have valid reasons (it’s early 2021, folks).
First, I neglected to share that back in October of 2020, we changed our titles across all of FB Inc from “Content Strategist” to “Content Designer.” I got the very cool opportunity to play a lead role in making that change happen. I’m really happy with where we ended up, and why. Elisabeth Carr’s note, which you can read here, explains more.
I also recently had the opportunity to contribute to a piece honoring women who spark creativity for International Women’s Day. You can read the piece here.
I’ll be sitting on a panel in a few weeks that’s focused on how to grow a content strategy / content design / UX writing practice. Should be a great discussion with some very interesting folks. Hope to see you there!
You can get tickets here.
Very proud of our team, which worked with care, craft and speed to design Facebook’s first ever dedicated space for news.
In a few weeks, I’ll be speaking on a panel as part of General Assembly’s Women In series.
You can get tickets here.
Soft Center’s first record is out! You can hear it on Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you stream. To get the vinyl and see tour dates, check out our Bandcamp at softcenter.band.
We also made a music video for one of our first singles, Loose Ends. Watch it here.
CNET recently wrote about my team, which is focused on building news products at Facebook. It can sometimes be difficult to explain what it is we do all day, but I feel like this article does a pretty great job of profiling both the team and the work.
Here it is: the result of all that Tiny Telephone studio time! We're making our first record and releasing it independently on vinyl. You can pre-order it through Kickstarter now.
A few months ago, my car got towed from a Brooklyn street and I posted about it on Facebook. Many who read the post urged me to pitch it around, so I did.
1. I'll be presenting later this month at the Dialog conference in Sweden on the difference between content strategy and content marketing—and how you can successfully combine their forces. If you happen to be in that part of the world, come check it out.
2. Mixing on the first six songs Sean and I recorded at Tiny Telephone with Beau Sorenson is now complete. Stay tuned for more news about their upcoming release!
Mixing at TTSF with Beau.
Had the amazing opportunity to record an EP in the beautiful Tiny Telephone studio in Oakland this week.
Mixing's scheduled for July. Stay tuned!
Over the course of 2016, I wrote down the things I got really into.
An example of a page from my 2016 notebook dedicated to "Jags"
I know I kinda missed the boat on this timing-wise, but I've been meaning to share it, so here goes (in no particular order):
Excited to have the opportunity to speak at two awesome digital / UX conferences this month. Here's the info:
At the Digital Strategy Innovation Summit in LA, I'll be giving a talk about Content Strategy's power to humanize digital experiences.
And at Forge in Philadelphia, Sara Getz and I will be speaking about scarcity as a proxy for quality in digital design.
If you're an LA- or Philly-based designer or strategist, would love to see you there!
Last month, I had the opportunity to speak about the creep line at IE's Digital Strategy Innovation Summit about The Creep Line. It was a blast.
I recently wrote a little something about the magic of lyrics for One Week / One Band.