Week One in the Rear View

This week has been a creative and at times chaotic whirlwind. But before we get into that, I wrote this devotional moment that I had originally intended to be a part of this post. So, if you haven't gotten an opportunity to check it out, I'd recommend swinging by there first.

Week in Review

One week ago today, I launched my patreon account and in doing so effectively pushed Constant Source into the public eye. Since then I have:

  • whipped up a working website
  • set-up this blog
  • selected not one but two project management tools
  • began working on a mass communication tool
  • set up a communication hub that will eventually serve as an HQ for Constant Source content.

It's been a stretching week for sure, as I have been flexing creative muscles that have either been dominant for a while or have been awakened for the first time.

Lessons

  1. Measuring Engagement is Complicated: When I sent out the email to everyone last week, I sent it to about 100 individuals or family units. These people were hand selected by me as people who have walked with me in some significant fashion over the course of the last decade. When I sent out the email, I included links to different parts of the project: Expertise Chronicler, Patreon Page, and then each of the social media sites. I used a special kind of link called bit.ly that allows me to track click engagement, aka how many people clicked on the link in my email to get to the site that the link was intended for. At first, I thought these numbers would be more helpful, but unfortunately due to the nature of the tool, we only know how many times they were clicked not how many different people clicked. For instance, we know that the Patreon page was accessed 44 times via the email link, while the expertise chronicler was accessed 18 times. But we don't know how many different people clicked on our links, we only know that out of those clicks we have 5 "early adopter" patrons and 3 "early adopters" willing to share their skills. To remedy this I have signed up with convertkit.com, which allows you to set up a list of emails and then delivers information back from every email sent. Hopefully this will tell us more about the number of people engaging with CS.
  2. Creating a website is easy, creating a website that you are happy with is hard: Setting up a squarespace account and then pushing publish on a theme that I thought looked cool was a 25 minutes process. Since the initial signing on however, I have spent hours manipulating the Constant Source website trying to make it look like something that would draw people in and get them excited about CS. I edited content and added pictures; I moved text boxes around and changed font size, color, and shape; I've changed headers and footers and I've added and deleted pages and still there is so much to be done. Needless to say, I imagine that the website will be something that will be in quite a bit of flux in the weeks to come.
  3. Project Management Tools Abound: Constant Source will start small, but there are so many ways that I think Constant Source will grow and managing all of those ideas and processes well is going to be key to its success. So naturally, I decided that I needed to find the right tool. I have been shocked by the amount of project management tools that exist. Over the course of the last two weeks, I have previewed at least a half dozen tools trying to figure out how they work, their features and how they are going to be helpful for CS. Basically, I have whittled it down to two tools that I am using for different purposes. I am using Trello to keep a public project board, so that those who are interested in the work can follow along on its progress. Alongside of Trello, I am using a tool called FreedCamp that allows me to separate tasks into groups and then add subtasks, due dates, and track progress all from within each individual task. The main difference being that Trello is all manual. I had to go in and note what the labels would mean and then choose to name the columns according to their priority, while in freedcamp the process is much more automated and the user interface is much more intuitive. Why these two? Money and ease of use. Project management tools are really expensive, which makes sense because their is a whole industry dedicated to this type of work. However, I just needed something simple and inexpensive to keep all of my tasks in check. Also, Trello was one of the only project management tools that would allow you to enable public sharing for free. Long story short, if you or a friend is ever looking for personal project management tools, Trello and Freedcamp are the way to go.

Next Step Questions [These questions can be seen as rhetorical or conversational]

  1. How quick is too quick to "remind" people about the email that was sent to them last week?
  2. Is it appropriate to circle back?
  3. What should circling back look like?
  4. What parts of website need attention first?
  5. I want to start blogging on the Constant Source site, but I'm not sure if I can fit that in regularly, better to wait till I can set a routine or should I just jump in?

Hours Logged since Jan. 1st: 41 hours  

Thanks for reading, let me know your thoughts and or questions about the creation journey in the comments below

Ken Kuhn