design

Being resourceful vs. being a resource

Pin this on early-Monday-morning syndrome (if you haven't figured this out by now, I often write posts in the margins of my day, then set them to go live a few hours later when I figure folks are awake and paying attention). I meant, in that last post, to explain a key difference between the reasons people wanted my help as a consultant, and the reasons they should have. The distinction should matter to hiring managers in today's economy, and it applies far beyond my little world. So it's worth another post.

Most of the time, people solicited my help (and I served) as a resource. They wanted someone to design, build, and/or operate something for them.

Reminders of why I wound down Small Initiatives

The past several days had a way of reminding me why I wound down the types of part-time consulting I did most often as part of Small Initiatives.

My Scripps job keeps me hopping, now more than ever, as we rethink what it means to be a local news media company from this point forward. That rethinking also makes the job far more interesting, mostly in good ways. I am certainly not being denied the strategic responsibilities I coveted so long.

Meanwhile, consulting tasks people most frequently asked me to do when I ran SI -- and about which I still get questions most every day -- frankly become less interesting by the minute:

Blogress report

It takes a while to move around several years of blog posts and several more of static documents.

I managed to install a bit more of a design on JaySmall.com, notify Google of the changes, get server redirects working to preserve the old Small Initiatives content, get Ka's blog going on its own, and install some Drupal modules that make writing and editing easier.

Perhaps most important, SID made his way here, in a, like, groovy color-halftone form that brings some of my old world (newspapers and print design) to my "now" world (interactive media).

Much more to do, in my own sweet time.