Micro Monday

David Johnson is originally from the UK and now lives in Maui. He’s a life coach who works with introverts and Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs), and has practiced Buddhism for over 30 years, so he evaluates the Micro.blog experience from some interesting angles. It’s been an interesting six months. It’s almost like my creativity and my ideas are expanding more as well as my excitement for what I can do. Crossing The Threshold

This week’s guest is Joe Cieplinski. Joe talks about his podcast and conference Release Notes, first learning about Micro.blog, how he approaches what to post on Micro.blog, customizing the design of his microblog, and why he no longer posts to Instagram and Facebook. I actually post quite a few photos now in Sunlit. I haven’t posted to Instagram in like a year now. And I’m just putting all of my photography out there on Micro.blog, which is a lot of fun. […] And also sharing small thoughts, but like I said, not the negative stuff. I try to find on Micro.blog reasons to post positive things. Things that are encouraging or inspiring to people, or at least inspiring to myself.

This week on Micro Monday, we have our first Scottish guest. John Johnston is a primary school teacher who lives in Glasgow. We talk about the signal-to-noise ratio on social media and what makes Micro.blog a great experience. I’ve learned more about the tone of online conversation on Micro.blog than anywhere else. Even if there isn’t a community of teachers talking about education all the time, even people are talking about something I’m not desperately interested in, you can enjoy it because of the tone.

The Microblogger known as But She’s A Girl is a biologist based in Birmingham UK who has “too many interests” outside her professional life: cycling, programming, photography, music, sewing, and crocheting. We talk about these interests, blogging, and the album A Pocket of Wind Resistance. It took me a while to appreciate the model, that it is more about people posting on their own blogs, essentially, and other people following along with that in a centralized place… I really like the tone of the way that people post on Micro.blog. It feels like a very human place to be, where people treat each other with respect and humanity.

Mike’s microblog caught our attention because he posts incredible drawings as works in progress. In this episode, Mike talks about his process and how he is using the iPad to create his artwork and Micro.blog to share it. He also appreciates the camaraderie of the Micro.blog community: It’s like walking into a room and there’s always a seat for you. And you don’t have to speak, if you don’t want to.

This week’s guest is Kim Landwehr. Kim is no stranger to social media and blogging platforms. We talk about what is different about Micro.blog that holds her interest: There are a lot of interesting people, obviously, on Micro.blog, but also I’m less afraid to put my ideas down. Not everybody agrees with everybody else, but they disagree in an agreeable manner.

This week’s guest is Martin Feld, from Wollongong, Australia. Martin credits microblogging with his ability to write more consistently on his long-form blog as well. (That’s no small feat for someone who describes himself as “Seinfeldian overthinker.”) We talk about how the Micro.blog timeline has been great for finded like-minded people, including people who like guinea pigs.

This week, Gabriel Santiago talks about how Micro.blog has helped him to find joy again in blogging and stay off Facebook. We also talk about the experience of community and conversation on the timeline. To be honest, at first I felt out of place because most of the people I happen to follow are coders, developers, engineers, things that I am not… Then I realized they are just normal people and we have common interests.

It’s time for another episode of Ask Manton. We collected questions from the Micro.blog community and talked about some of the features and issues on your mind, in particular: Portability and Backups Possibility of Private Accounts Adding photo collection grid and “On This Date” memories to Micro.blog and more Thanks to everyone who submitted questions. We’ll do this again in another couple months. In the meantime, you can ask @help or email help@micro.blog.

It’s the 50th episode and Jonathan LaCour is our guest!

Tom Cutting, creator of the Stickman Diaries, talks about the winding path of his working life, including copying code for Pong to play with his brother, working in desktop publishing and the prepress industry, and eventually embracing the internet. He also talks about his favorite piece of tech, the iPad, and how it makes it possible for him to do art. About Stickman Diaries: One of the things I like about Micro.blog is that I don’t feel like I’m performing. If somebody likes it, they like it. I’m doing it really for myself, as a record of things. The nice thing about not knowing whose following you is there’s no number ticking up to make you think, ‘Oh no, I must get my drawing out this week, I can’t disappoint my viewers.’

Chris Wilson joins us on Micro Monday. He lives in Kraków, Poland, and works for an ad technology company, but he is originally from London, where he graduated with a degree in Politics. We talk about how his blog has evolved throughout this journey, which included teaching English in several countries, and how his podcast dreams are deferred while his infant daughter makes predictable quiet time a challenge.

This episode takes us to Finland to chat with Sven Seebeck, a blogger, a photographer, a musician and a music teacher. He’s been blogging since 2008, focused on a variety of topics. We talk about the difficulty of doing a music microcast without falling into the trap of perfectionism. Regarding the Micro.blog community, Sven compares it to that favorite bar of yours, “where everybody knows your name…”

This week’s guest, Ben Norris, is a husband and father of six children (plus a new puppy), as well as being an iOS developer, a blogger and a sketchnoter. He has also written quite movingly about mental illness and healing, and we chat about that a bit. Ben’s Sketchnote of Manton’s Talk at Peers Conference Sketchnotable Mormon Sketcher Coming Out (tl;dr Hi, I’m Ben, and I have OCD.

This week, Annie Mueller is our guest. She’s a freelance writer who has recently relocated with her family to Puerto Rico. “I do the words,” her About page says. And she likes Micro.blog: I feel that it’s less about me expressing myself, and more about being part of this conversation with other people who are making their own cool things. It’s a neat meeting of interesting minds, and creative, thoughtful people. I just really enjoy the conversations that take place there.

This week we head back to the home of the Kiwis and talk to Tony in New Zealand. An engineer by trade, he’s been blogging since 2002. I love writing but most of my writing I do for me…I just basically do what I think I would want to look back and read. I don’t really have an audience in mind.

We kick off the New Year with Jack Baty, a long-time blogger and a partner in a digital development studio since 1995. He has a eclectic mix of interests that you might want to check out. The fellow pictured in his avatar with the pipe is not him, but it’s a cool story. Micro.blog has become my favorite place to hang out online. And I’ve hung out in a lot of places online, so that’s saying something. Tilde Club Jack’s Tilde Club page

This year, New Year’s Eve falls on a Monday. It’s a good time to reflect on the past year, and in that spirit, this episode is a short retrospective of our first 10 episodes. If you’re new to the podcast, here’s a great starting point. Links to the episodes excerpted 1: Manton Reece 2: Christine Lane 3: Scott Yoshinaga 4: Patrick Rhone 5: Kitt Hodsden 6: Jonathan Hays 7: Rosemary Orchard 8: Sergio Ruiz 9: Jess Nickelsen 10: Sarena Ho

John Philpin has been blogging and microblogging for a while. Now he’s taking on a new challenge: microcasting. We talk about the similarities between microblogging and microcasting. We also learn about John’s People First project and how that influences his approach to the PeopleCast microcast and his other work. Everybody hesitated about blog writing because they said, “Well, I’m not an author,” and then, bit by bit, it became acceptable to do whatever kind of blog you want, and I think that what’s happening now is that podcasting is going the same way. Subscribe to PeopleCast

This week, Khaled Abou Alfa discusses his philosophy of blogging, which he’s been doing for over 14 years. He explains how a short post by John Gruber provided the impetus to start using his Micro.blog account. Khaled: “I think I am blogging more now than ever did since 2004, when blogging was really new and exciting, which is a great testament to Micro.blog. Jean: “If we did advertising, that would be on a billboard.