Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Changes: My New Role at Common Ground

One reason it has been a bit quiet here is I've been in a somewhat transitional phase in my life. Mark Shuttleworth's generous funding of SchoolTool wound down at the end of 2014, and Douglas Cerna and I have been successful so far in bringing in more funding through our company, SIELibre, but some additional income is necessary.

So I did extensive market research, futurology, watched TED talks until my eyes bled, and everything kept coming back to two sure thing high-growth sectors: organized labor and newspaper publishing.

As of the April issue, I'm taking over as editor of Common Ground, a little RI labor monthly primarily distributed through union halls. As a part-time gig, it is interesting. A chance to reach out to a different audience. We're going to re-vamp the (virtually non-existent) web presence and sharpen the editorial focus and design up a bit. I'm also going to be learning how to put together a newspaper, which I've not done before... Like most free-lancy writing gigs, exactly how well this pays depends on how quickly I get finished. If I'm fast it is pretty decent, but it might take me a while to get fast. Regardless, it is very much a part-time job.

It is going to cut into my blogging time -- having a big paid writing deadline every month tends to cut down on the writing for fun. I will also be pushing more stuff into a Common Ground twitter feed and some Facebooking at a certain point. I'll keep you posted on how all that stuff shakes out.

4 comments:

Mark Ahlness said...

Good luck Tom. I look forward to hearing your voice in the labor conversation.

garrett said...

Best Wishes Tom!

A note regarding LINK-O-RAMA - Swinging Modern Sounds

Seems there's so many causes, crusades, whatever these days. Tuttle SVC focuses on Education. Salt in Wound website campaigns for Narcissism. Guy with beard who hasn't taken a bath lately says Save The Forests, etc etc.
My latest campaign is Reduce Proper Noun Usage!
Have you read the Swinging Modern Sounds article? I almost started gasping for air due to the over-obnoxious-extreme usage of proper nouns. Author names Musician names Song names Book names Album names Website Names Actor names Artist names. If we're talking substantively, for all intents and purposes, this is needless filler. Is this the crap style we want to hand down to children?

Kerryn said...

Looking forward to working on this with you. I know you will bring it to a "new level".

matthewboh said...

Good luck! I'll be sure to read it