Intro

• You don't just have to be good, you need to be findable.
• Build sharing into your routine.

You don't have to be a genius

• Don't buy into the "lone genius" myth.
• "Scenius" - great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals.
• Start asking how you can contribute to a scenius.
• Be an amateur.
• Contributing something is better than contributing nothing.
• Think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.
• Find a scenius and start taking not of what they're not sharing. Fill the voids.
• The only way to find your voice is to use it.
• If you want people to know about what you do, and the things you care about, you have to share.
• Just remember that you're goint to die, and therefore have nothing to lose.

Think process, not product

• People want to see how the sausage gets made.
• Become a documentarian of what you do.
• Sharing process is most valuable if products of your work aren't easily shared.
• Shape the scraps and residue of your process into something.
• Documenting and recording your process will help you see your work more clearly.

Share something small everyday

• Focus on days.
• A daily dispatch show what you're working on right now.
• Frame it as "what are you working on?"
• Only put things out there that may be helpful. Always ask "so what?"
• Stock and flow. Flow is the stuff that reminds people you exist. Stock is the durable stuff.
• Maintain flow while working on stock in the background.
• Stock is best made by collecting, organizing, and expanding your flow.
• Think of your website as a self-invention machine. Fill it with your work, ideas, and stuff you care about.

Open up your cabinet of curiousities

• Wunderkammern - wonder chamber of your curiousities. Have one of those.
• Collecting and creating are on opposite ends of the same spectrum.
• Your influences are worth sharing. They clue people in to who you are and what you do.
• Love your garbage. If you like something, like it.
• If you don't properly attribute the work of others, you not only rob the creator, you rob all the people you've shared it with. They can't dig deeper.

Tell good stories

• Work doesn't speak for itself.
• The value of things to others is deeply affected by what you tell them about it.
• The stories you tell about your work have a huge effect on how people feel and understand it.
• A story must have structure.
• The key is to edit the messiness of life and your work into something with structure.
• Pitches are stories without endings. They are a great structure for open-ended stories.
  • First act is past. Why do the work? What have you done?
  • Second act is present. What are you doing now?
  • Third is future. Where you're going. How can someone help you get there.
• Keep bios short and sweet.

Teach what you know

• Emulate chefs by out-teaching the competition.
• The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others.
• Make people better at something they want to be better at.
• When you teach someone how to do your work, you're generating more interest in your work. You're letting them in on it.

Don't turn into human spam

• Shut up and listen. If you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader.
• Be interested in something and someone other than yourself.
• If you want fans, you have to be a fan first. If you want to be accepted by a community, you have to be a good citizen.
• Be a connector.
• If you want to be interesting, you have to be interested.
• Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you'll attract people who love that kind of stuff.
• "Whatever excites you, go do it. Whatever drains you, stop doing it" - Derek Sivers

Learn to take a punch

Sell out

Stick around