Thunder Nerds

282 – 🪴 How To Grow Your Own Digital Garden with Maggie Appleton

Listen Later

In this episode, we get to speak with Maggie Appleton, Art Director & UX Designer at egghead.io. We discuss the ethos of Digital Gardening and the value of cultivating ideas in public. We also dive into Maggie’s digital anthropology work and discuss how visual metaphors better shape our understanding of technology.

✨ Episode Sponsor
  • Auth0: https://auth0.com
  • Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
  • Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
  • Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/
🔗 Episode Links
  • Website:  https://maggieappleton.com
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/mappletons/
  • Github: https://github.com/maggieappleton/
  • Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/mappleton
  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggieappleton/
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggieappleton/
  • Sketching and Logo Creation (with Maggie Appleton) — Learn With Jason: https://youtu.be/4mrrNAjiTvk
  • A Brief Introduction to Digital Anthropology: https://maggieappleton.com/digital-anthropology
  • Digital Gardener: https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners
  • Digital Gardening for Non-Technical Folks: https://maggieappleton.com/nontechnical-gardening
  • Obsidian: https://obsidian.md
  • Keychron: https://www.keychron.com
  • If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future – by Jill Lepore: https://www.amazon.com/If-Then-Simulmatics-Corporation-Invented/dp/1631496107
  • Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com
  • Hosts: 
    • Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
    • Brian Hinton: https://twitter.com/mrbrianhinton
📜 Transcript

Brian Hinton: [00:00:00] I’m Brian

Hinton.

Frederick Weiss: and I’m Frederick Philip von Weiss. And

thank you so much for consuming the Thunder Nerds, a conversation with the people behind the technology that
love what they do

[00:00:46] Brian Hinton: [00:00:46] and do tech

good.

[00:00:52] Frederick Weiss: Yeah, thanks

everybody for watching the show. If you can please go to the notification bell and subscribe. Remember every
time you click the notification bell, Brian Hinton gets his wings. Brian, who do we have for our
sponsor?

[00:01:15] Brian Hinton: We’d like to thank

Auth0, Auth0 is this season’s sponsor. They make it easy for developers to build a custom secure and
standards-based login, a unified login and authentication as a service, to try them out, go to Auth0.com
today. Also check out their YouTube and Twitch under the username, Auth0 with some great developer resources
and streams, and last but not least is our avocado labs.

[00:01:43] I love that name. An online destination that their developer advocates run

organizing some great meetups. Thank you Auth0.

[00:01:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:01:52] Yes.

Thanks Auth0! Let’s go ahead and welcome our guest.

[00:02:00] we have an amazing guest today. We have Art Director. Writer, Designer,

Developer, Anthropologist, chimera. I think I’m saying chimera correctly… and UX designer, Maggie
Appleton. Welcome to the show. Maggie really appreciate you being here with us.

[00:02:21] Maggie Appleton: [00:02:21] Thanks.

Thanks.

[00:02:22] Thanks for having me on. I’ll also say I’m a mediocre version of

all of those things are listed, so don’t expect on next book.

[00:02:31] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:31] You are a

chimera, so I imagine you have some kind of an understanding of these things. Hey, how have things been for
you? How’s the COVID situation going on in your side of the world?

[00:02:43] Maggie Appleton: It’s not too

bad. So I’m here in London. And we got out of the area more stringently, locked down two weeks ago. And
the weather aligned perfectly. So it’s been like 24 degrees which I can’t translate. Someone will
have to. Like 80 in Fahrenheit, I think ever since locked down, lifted about two weeks ago.

[00:03:04] So we’re still, you can’t go out in groups of like more than 30 or

more than six inside, but the fact cafes are open is an enormous change for us. And we have restaurants
again. Like it’s been really wonderful. Were

[00:03:16] Brian Hinton: [00:03:16] you on, oh,

go ahead, Brian. Yeah. Were you on full lockdown yourself? The past year or like what, was your situation
like?

[00:03:24] Maggie Appleton: [00:03:24] Yeah. We

went in even within an hour of being locked down a bit, but they got pretty strict around. It feels like a
couple of weeks before Christmas. Maybe it was like mid November. We went into a pretty hard lockdown. The
sort were like nothing’s open, but grocery stores and pharmacies and we’ve been in hardware.

[00:03:41] Yeah. But vaccinations are rolling out. So like I got my first one last

week, they’re starting to vaccinate people in their thirties and twenties right now. So yeah, it’s

[00:03:49] Brian Hinton: [00:03:49] happening?

What were you like? What did you have the sore arm

[00:03:54] Frederick Weiss: [00:03:54] and what

vaccination did you actually get?

[00:03:56] Maggie Appleton: [00:03:56] So

curious Pfizer. So everyone under 40 here, they’re not giving them AstraZeneca and Pfizer I’m to
Pfizer

[00:04:03] Brian Hinton: [00:04:03] too.

[00:04:04] Frederick Weiss: [00:04:04] Yeah,

same. I know this actually affects your life and affects your work. At, your company and maybe other things
that you’re doing too.

[00:04:16] Maggie Appleton: [00:04:16] Yeah. I

was, I got, honestly, I’m very privileged and lucky in that the company I work for , we’ve been
remote first since day one. So I started working for them five years ago and everyone else is based in the U
S. they’re mostly in Washington state.

[00:04:29] We have some people in Portland. And yet we’ve always just worked

remotely. I’ve moved countries about five times since starting to work for them. But finally settled
back down in London. So yeah when, COVID happened it sucked, I had to give up my coworking space and move
into my small London flat, which is now my bedroom and the office and hang out and everything all in
one.

[00:04:54] But work-wise, I was very fortunate. They didn’t change much in my

day-to-day work. Yeah. I

[00:04:59] Brian Hinton: [00:04:59] I think the

tech industry, we’re pretty lucky in that regard to have the ability and blessed to not have to worry
about those sorts of things. A lot of people do. Yeah.

[00:05:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:05:10] Yeah. So

what, let’s talk a little bit about what you do, Maggie let’s talk about your day to day.

[00:05:17] What exactly do you do at egghead?

[00:05:20] Maggie Appleton: [00:05:20] I

definitely we’re a small team, so we’re the kind where you do whatever needs to be done. But I’m
vaguely in charge of anything that is to do with art direction, visual design design fairly generally. So I
have one of the designer works in the team.

[00:05:37] Who’s, an incredible unicorn who knows everything from react to front

end UI, and really covers that brown really well. And I work more on art direction, visual design, and then
I helped do UX design too. So thinking more through user flows and experiences and what someone needs to see
in a certain context and copywriting considerations.

[00:05:55] So I’m on the two ends of the spectrum, right? If you usually have UX

on one end and then UI stuff in the middle and then like illustration visual design on the other, I hit the
two ends and skipped the middle.

[00:06:05] Frederick Weiss: [00:06:05]

You’re a little bit of a developer as well, too.

[00:06:09] Maggie Appleton: [00:06:09] Yeah, I,

again, I call myself a very mediocre developer, but almost like a hobby.

[00:06:14] The company I work for teaches front end web development. So we teach

JavaScript, react, view, angulate and all kinds of the classic node, hot new JavaScript frameworks as a
video platform. So by web now I just started playing around with it, to play around with JavaScript. I knew
basic HTML and CSS from.

[00:06:36] Being a teenager on the internet and customizing my Neopets page and my

MySpace, that CSS profile. Yeah. But never took it seriously. And didn’t think I was terrible at math.
So went, oh, I can’t do programming cause I’m crap at math. But then yeah. Started picking it up and
playing around with it.

[00:06:54] And of course I love the animations and, what would be database, but

without the data. So playing around with SPD sheets and , but without anything to do with Excel
spreadsheets. So yeah, I really love fun web development. It’s much more just about the frivolous, like
visuals.

[00:07:13] Brian Hinton: [00:07:13] Yeah.

I’m curious too about the anthropology side. Do you have a background in that? What’s yours? Yeah

[00:07:24] Maggie Appleton: [00:07:24]

That’s, maybe, the weird bit that anthropology is.

[00:07:28] Brian Hinton: [00:07:28] Yeah.

Developer designer. I think it’s through college.

[00:07:33] Maggie Appleton: [00:07:33] I studied

cultural anthropology for my undergraduate degree.

[00:07:37] I did a, liberal arts school in the U S which was great. And I found out

the apology and immediately was like, oh, I’ve been waiting for this. This is exactly the kind of stuff
I love. It’s all just cultural analysis and trying to understand the variation in ways cultures can
express themselves all across the world and why we develop certain traditions or written rituals or beliefs
and what, like purposes, those stuff, people.

[00:08:02] So yeah, so I majored in that as an undergraduate. And then of course

graduated and was like, cool. I have an anthropology degree and would like to hire me.

[00:08:12] Brian Hinton: [00:08:12] So has that

helped you at all in any of your life? Either the code or design side, like what does it contribute?

[00:08:20] Maggie Appleton: [00:08:20] Yeah,

for, I’ll say right after I graduated, I I went into web design and graphic design cause that was
employable.

[00:08:27] Brian Hinton: [00:08:27] And for

apology

[00:08:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:08:28] to

design, it’s actually very natural. It seems that obviously what you’re doing with digital Andrew
anthropology, but it seems. Almost like a very natural transition for maybe almost anybody to go down that
route. Because it empowers your work so much. And with, metaphor design and being able to explain these
concepts, it’s a very

[00:08:52] Maggie Appleton: [00:08:52]

advantageous.

[00:08:53] Yeah. I, and it’s funny too, that it came back around with UX design

right now. It’s very similar to anthropology. It’s come full circle. But up until three or four
years ago, I had never really had a UX designer. It’s fairly new in the Spanish human history. Let’s
say it’s been around, I think for three or four decades at this point, like any kind of official
industry.

[00:09:16] So yeah, so once I realized that UX designers were just like

anthropologists and in disguise, I started being like, oh, I think I’m going to hang out with you people
more because it seems like you’re reading all the same theorists that I read. And you’re like,
Pulling in all the same material.

[00:09:29] So yeah, so I’m very much kind of leaning back into my aunt’s

psychological roots. Now that UX design is a thing

[00:09:35] Frederick Weiss: [00:09:35] maybe it

would help the audience. If you just describe what for the people that might not understand this concept,
what digital anthropology is and how how you employ it every day at your work and use it with

[00:09:49] Maggie Appleton: [00:09:49] your

work.

[00:09:50] Sure. Yeah, That’s definitely not an obvious thing. Because

anthropology can, a lot of people will even think oh, that is like digging up old human bones. Analyzing,
which is absolutely a part of the field, these archeologists fall under the umbrella of anthropology,
because we have physical, biological, linguistic and cultural, the full, main disciplines or branches of the
discipline.

[00:10:13] So I started cultural, which is, yeah. Again, the way people behave on

cultures and digital anthropology is specifically just looking at anything that involves digital objects. So
anything that is mediated, we would say by. Things that run on binary code and computational logic. So that
includes the entire internet.

[00:10:31] So it gives you a broad span. But digital anthropologists tend to study

cultural elements of that. How do people socialize in, in online spaces and, how do we understand
computational objects as partners in our rituals or how they mediate the way that we decide to structure our
life.

[00:10:52] What is valuable to us? It’s a broad range of things. You’ll study

AI. Machine learning is like a big topic at the moment. I can’t say I officially use it in any direct
way, like on a day-to-day basis at work. It’s very much like I spend a lot of time in the JavaScript
world and looking at them being like, huh, you guys are being like tribal people your whole life.

[00:11:12] Alignment

[00:11:17] like what stickers are shirts and how you’re signaling to the other

tribal members. Hey, I’m with a view

[00:11:23] Brian Hinton: [00:11:23] does matter,

stickers matter.

[00:11:26] Frederick Weiss: [00:11:26] Yeah.

[00:11:28] Maggie Appleton: [00:11:28] Yeah.

I’m very much like a sideline anthropologist at the moment. It’s analyzing things from. Twitter
threads, all that sort of stuff, but nothing that’s on a day-to-day level that intense.

[00:11:43] Brian Hinton: [00:11:43] I’m

curious too about how when you went into that, did you have maybe a mental picture where you would actually
end up when you started the degree? What you were thinking of doing.

[00:11:55] Maggie Appleton: [00:11:55] No, I was

the most naive 19, 20 year old. I just was like, I took my first anthropology class and kind of fell in love
and had that thing of this is great.

[00:12:06] I’ll just start reading Elise theorists and love it. And it was only,

in the senior year where we all looked off professors like, so what do we genuinely? They went well, the U S
army hired a lot of anthropologists. That’s good. The best way to I guess beat your enemy is to really
understand the deep details of the culture.

[00:12:32] Like what is shameful for them and what are their weaknesses and what do

they value and really love. If you can understand that you can really get inside their head and mess with
them.

[00:12:45] Frederick Weiss: [00:12:45] Just like

with Facebook or Twitter, it’s the same kind of Platform right. Attacking people’s psyche.

[00:12:53] Maggie Appleton: [00:12:53] Yes.

Yeah. And there are anthropologists working at places like Facebook and Twitter too, but yeah the U S army
hires a lot of them and we also, and so it was that or, graduate school, we were all like, I think I’m
going to go look for jobs somewhere else.

[00:13:09] Brian Hinton: [00:13:09] That’s

funny.

[00:13:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:11] I really

enjoy your website and I dunno if I could call it a blog, your digital garden and your digital essays.
It’s really inspiring the way that you create these illustrated metaphors. Do you mind just brushing up
on those, like a little bit, just like.

[00:13:28] Telling us what, that’s about and what, you do with those and why, you

put those up there and then we’ll, maybe we’ll dive into a little bit more what a digital garden is
and how it’s been around since the late nineties and how, you’re using it.

[00:13:45] Maggie Appleton: [00:13:45] Sure.

Yeah, so I’m, known as like a visual metaphor nerd is the way I would best describe it

[00:13:56] With my work at egg head when I first got started there, most of what I

was doing was we released courses about rape. Yeah, essentially print and web development. So are things
like cool backs in JavaScript, right? Or like state management and react. These are the topics we
cover.

[00:14:11] And I came on as the illustrator and it’s the coolest we put out, I

started making illustrated books that go on top of it. My job from the beginning was how do you represent
really abstract programming concepts and something that someone can see and it’s meaningful it’s not
just not holding a react logo or like a bunch of gears and some other frameworks logo.

[00:14:34] I really was like, okay, how do you come up with a metaphor? That actually

means something and communicates what is essentially just like abstract concepts and syntax. Which was a
really wonderful challenge and got me to really get to explore really deeply, how you design a metaphor, how
metaphors work you can see something there in really how you come up with meaningful visual symbols for,
otherwise abstract concepts.

[00:15:03] Yeah, so and so, some of the weapons yet, these cool illustrations

I’ve made for egghead, and then that eventually turned into doing a lot more. What I call illustrated
essays, where I get I’m taking concepts that are difficult, or at least complex. If you’re not a
developer, like I, I did one on what API are.

[00:15:19] Which, everyone, what do you mean by API? What do you mean? It’s one

program talking to another, it’s just like a, is this like an interface I can click on? Is this like a
thing I send as a link in an email? What are you talking about API? So I did this illustrated essay that
explains API soup, metaphor of robot waiters, who like to bring you data.

[00:15:38] And you can only say certain things. You can ask them for certain things

that are on the menu. So I learned about this, the idea of Metaphors will be what we say. They hide and
highlight certain things. So you have a thing you want to represent, which is like an API. And the metaphor
is like the lens you’re going to view them through.

[00:15:56] So that’s like robot weight and robot weight, as we can say, will have

certain qualities, right? Like they’ll bring you something, they give you a menu of Selected options and
there’s nothing you can’t order off the menu. And then we map right, the qualities of that onto the
API and go, okay, I get it now, API spring, new things.

[00:16:14] And you can only be awesome for a limited set of things. So, the

highlights, the things that those two things have in common and the hides, all the things they don’t. So
there’s tons of details about API. So you’re not going to get from that essay because it’s like,
The details of, rest of us is soap professed as graft throughout life and should be it, don’t go into
that.

[00:16:31] And there’s tons of qualities about a hypothetical robot Weta that

aren’t included in the essay, because those two things don’t share those qualities. So like the
robot way, they might like it. Wear a bow tie. Okay. That isn’t that essay? All that, like to get paid a
salary that has nothing to do with API.

[00:16:46] So like those qualities are hidden and only the two things, the qualities

that you think share the overlap or highlighted, and those are the things you draw attention to. So it’s
how

[00:16:56] Brian Hinton: [00:16:56] metaphors in

the anthropology side coming into play there. Yeah. I also want to point out one thing I love so much about
all of your, at least all of my I’ve looked at as a source code, a browser, you put wonderful all texts
with all of your images or are most of them that I’ve seen anyway, which is great because accessibility
having an image and a fancy graphic is great, but it’s like people can’t.

[00:17:23] See it can’t understand it, then we don’t get a lot of that or

enough. Yeah. It’s great. It’s especially hard with, I know, complex illustrations to put the right
text in there.

[00:17:33] Maggie Appleton: [00:17:33] Yeah.

Yeah. I do try to make sure, like you’re with me to get, I swear there are a couple of times

[00:17:45] we’ll have the audience do that. Okay. Yeah. If you find one, like

really PE my my sights on get please log an issue. We’ll PR fix it. Like it’s totally fine.

[00:17:55] Brian Hinton: [00:17:55] Yeah. I like

the meat planet. One of them a lot too. You somehow made something that’s gross, which is grip. Now. It
is gross and generally, I don’t know what we’re doing.

[00:18:05] We made it not that gross to

[00:18:08] Maggie Appleton: [00:18:08] look at,

which is good. That one is funny. Like I’ve been, yeah. Vegetarian for, well over, maybe it’s like
over a decade. I forget when I first really went it was like a decade. Yeah. Anyway, that essay is about
cultivated meats, right? Growing meat in labs.

[00:18:26] Won’t really have to kill animals with this idea. We’re just gonna

grow it through in, in bioreactors and fermentation tanks, which is really cool. I’m following the
cultivation. Meat industry as a fan. But to make that essay, which is all about that, I had to just download
the most grotesque photo.

[00:18:42] So I have a reference folder. It’s just like butcher shops and blood,

and it’s just like guts everywhere.

[00:18:50] Frederick Weiss: [00:18:50] It looks

at your computer

[00:18:55] Maggie Appleton: [00:18:55] or your

anthropologists. Yeah. So as a vegetarian, I have an extensive collection of, very meaty reference images.

[00:19:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:19:06]

That’s a great quote of extension, a very meeting that reminds me about one of the things I saw on what
it was learning with Jason, where you were there and you were drawing.

[00:19:17] I think you guys were coming up with ideas for. Some sandwiches and you

had such amazing just to see your process of going through this and thinking about everything and then the
finished results. It was really cool to see that. We’ll put a link in the show notes.

[00:19:34] Maggie Appleton: [00:19:34] Yeah.

That one was fun.

[00:19:35] Jason’s wonderful. And he’s incredible at running that show. I

think almost every single day he’s got someone else on and they’re like exploring some wild, new
idea. Anyway, it’s a great show. If anyone is interested in web dev.

[00:19:46] Frederick Weiss: [00:19:46] Yes,

absolutely. We’ll put a link to that. Yeah. Watch the station show.

[00:19:49] Yeah, we had him on a few months ago. Great guy.

[00:19:52] Brian Hinton: [00:19:52] It looks as

if we have circled back to what is a digital guardian. Yeah. What is that?

[00:20:00] Maggie Appleton: [00:20:00] So

digital gardening is the hot new buzzword of 2021 or maybe 2020. Yeah. It’s funny. Cause yeah, so the
term first came up in the 1990s as part of it was right in the beginning when they were trying to figure out
what hypertext was, the web’s exploding. How do you get people to navigate the space? How do you teach
them that blue, underlying text means you should click on it? That’s a thing you could teach people. So
it was figuring out how to get people to navigate through hyper tech space.

[00:20:30] And people were using this metaphor of gardening, right? So you are going

to have God and links and they’re going to be like Wiki, God knows it was the beginning of wikis and
becoming a really popular thing that was like very early on. There was all this kind of noise about it, and
it didn’t really become like digital gardening as a concept until 2015 was this point where Mike
Caulfield there’s way at pat Hopkins on, Twitter, who’s like an incredible thinker in, terms of what
is the web and how do we relate to it and trying to advocate for, wikis and personal websites and people
really building their own space online.

[00:21:06] And he now works in disinformation studies. Anyway, he wrote this long

essay called the garden and the stream, which was about this idea that the web used to be. Would you say
topographical? So like geographical space, like early Geocity sites were very much about like sites in
relation to each other.

[00:21:23] And everyone built their own weird little website and they linked to all

their friends and what brings. And you knew what things were, they stayed stable. You could go to
someone’s website and it would be that they might have updated it, but you knew where it was.

[00:21:36] And like you know if anyone else went to that website, you saw the same

thing. And then. I forget what year they like to cite this too. It was whatever year that Facebook bought in
the news feed. Was it like 20 2006? I’m going to try and remember my history. Anyway, we got this new
concept of the street, right?

[00:21:54] When you sit back and a stream of content is delivered to you and your

stream is different to everyone else’s stream and you can’t see each of the streets. So you’re
like all having a different experience of the web and it’s constantly moving. So you can’t, oh,
Chris Aldrich is great. He knows a ton about this too.

[00:22:11] So actually we listened to him more than my feet, a little bit, but things

come to you and everyone gets a different stream and you suddenly now have a web that’s constantly
moving and is chronologically based.

[00:22:25] The New York Times actually just made a film. Was it? Last week, or this

week with the same concept, they didn’t necessarily reference my coal fields, but they probably should.
And other people will be working in this space, but they were really the ones advocating this idea way back
in 2015.

[00:22:40] And so this is a long way of saying gardening is this idea of getting back

to the spatial topographical web. Okay. Where we are building our own personal spaces online that are not on
the surface of companies like Twitter and Facebook. There’s not, there’s anything inherently wrong
with them, but it’s just, you don’t know the content and they’re in charge of what and
algorithms are running, who sees what, and it’s really hard to find joy back to content or to verify
who’s seen.

[00:23:06] What if you can’t tell? But coming back to this idea of you have your

own space, you control it and it’s your own space to put up. What we would call personal knowledge. So
it’s, less posting you can post blog posts about what you really want, but a lot of it is people are
posting ideas that are in progress and half finished things.

[00:23:26] And you’re just trying to cultivate your own personal Wiki on the web.

Yeah, avoidable gods and they’re still graphic of it. So I do a little illustration for kind of the six,
what I call design patterns of gardening in that.

[00:23:37] Brian Hinton: [00:23:37] Yeah.

That’s a perfect visual metaphor for the walled gardens.

[00:23:41] Like you, you can’t your plants can’t spread and grow and. Span,

because you’re stuck in this like box, which yeah, it’s perfect.

[00:23:50] Frederick Weiss: [00:23:50] And

that’s the thing about people. We, change, we grow it’s not about, oh, I’m going to put out a
post that’s evergreen it’s, just, we are a term, if you want to say evergreen we, have ideas and
those ideas evolve, not only do they change or sometimes pivot, but sometimes they just get better.

[00:24:10] And why do we need to have these? Things that are stuck on on medium,

forever, that don’t evolve. We can revise it, but our, do we need to be held to something that we said
20 years ago when you know, the technology change or some other pattern changes,

[00:24:31] Maggie Appleton: [00:24:31] yeah.

Yes, it’s very much about two year updating your ideas because gardening’s ideas like you’re
constantly tending your digital garden.

[00:24:38] So yeah, you can put up an idea and it might not be perfect. You’re

putting up what you know so far and you have to be transparent about that. So a lot of people will put tags
on their posts. Half finished or just an idea. Or like I use the categorization of, I’ll say I have
seedlings, I have budding and I have evergreen and evergreen means like, really thought it through, I’ve
edited this thing.

[00:25:01] I’ve revised it a ton. It’s really like solid boarding as it’s

getting there, but given a fast path, like it’s still not perfect. And seedling is what I’ve just. I
like chucking up notes that they’re half finished sentences. This is just I’ve just had this idea
and I’m trying to figure out what it is.

[00:25:17] So people have different levels of this and another puzzle says, who does

this really well? And he’s like internet famous, right? Squad and.net is like a really old school
blogger who’s been around for ages. And he puts everything from like his certainty level on a scale of
one to 10, how important he thinks the thing is when he started that, when he finished a whole log of what
it’s changed, he’s like all this wonderful metadata.

[00:25:39] Giving you yeah, like visibility into how the post came to be and what

stage it’s at and where he thinks it’s going. And it’s just this idea of us all wanting more
metadata about information on the internet, we’re not just like looking at something and being like, oh,
this is just like someone.

[00:25:54] Finished things someone’s thought through, but having spaces for

imperfect things and things that will be revised to be able to live on the web too. Yeah.

[00:26:02] Brian Hinton: [00:26:02] It reminds

me a lot. There was a, I wish I could remember the quote verbatim, but essentially someone talked about
planting a garden. How you plant your different plants throughout your whole garden bed and you have this
like vision of how old looks, but then as it grows chaos, Turns it into something that was much more
beautiful than you originally intended.

[00:26:21] And with removing the walled gardens, you spread it out. So I may take

some of your concepts and do something of my own and it just keeps spreading. And then we ended up something
much better than if it was just on Facebook. Yeah.

[00:26:35] Maggie Appleton: [00:26:35] Yeah And

it is also in the, in building these, on the open web, in HTML, CSS, a little, maybe a little bit of
JavaScript that’s debatable.

[00:26:46] It gives us space to play. I like the idea of playing with different kinds

of links with different kinds of categories and ways of organizing things and really that sort of creativity
and interfaces that people had in the early web. Because then if you have a Facebook profile you fit into
that category.

[00:27:01] So right. You put your photo here and you put your hometown here on your

agenda here, right? Like you don’t have to fit into the cookie cutter and digital Goggins part of the
philosophy, at least in the way that I understand it and think is important. It’s That you get to just
play with it does assume that you have some fluency with HTML and, like the native tech of the web, but just
actually play with the medium and to be like, okay, I can put images anywhere I can.

[00:27:25] I arrange things anywhere and I can decide how I want to present these

posts and link them together. So it feels to me like an opportunity to have a playground and to arrange
things so that they fit your mind, the things you’re exploring and the things you want to. To be
researching and who you want to connect to, rather than just like the same format everyone puts up on, on
social media.

[00:27:47] Frederick Weiss: [00:27:47] Do you

have any examples of something that you’ve done with this recently? For example, anything, they were
like I think this definitely couldn’t have been a blog statement that I put out there and it’s there
forever. I’ve been working on X, Y, and Z. And here’s the value of it.

[00:28:05] If you could explain that to somebody like in a real example

[00:28:10] Maggie Appleton: [00:28:10] So wait,

do you mean a post I’ve made that went through a number of revisions on the goddess? Exactly. Yeah.
Sure. Actually, honestly this is very meta, but right. That post on the history and ethos of the digital
garden, which I started writing.

[00:28:25] A year ago. And I started writing. I put up a page that said the history

and ethos of the digital garden and chopped up some vague sentences and links to some gardens. And it was
just like a haphazard thing. Let it sit dormant for six months, people would stumble across it.

[00:28:39] They’re like, oh, you should finish this. And I also put ’em in a

little box. I’ll put some of my posts that say coming soon, if you want me to finish this, bug me on
Twitter to finish writing it. And I mostly pay attention to the posts that people tweet at me saying, Hey,
you should finish this. Then I actually go, I actually should finish that.

[00:28:55] But that post, I just, I kept working on it and it would get revised and I

would add different things to it. And I really only cleaned it up properly over the last two months, which
is like a year after, like all this sort of hype had originally happened, but honestly it took me that long
to be sure that I.

[00:29:11] Totally understood what digital gardening was and was watching the trends

of how people were trying to apply it. What people really thought it was. And I just, I didn’t feel I
could write that post until I had watched the community, discussed it for that long and heard all the
different takes and knew who to link to and who should be credited for things.

[00:29:31] So I built it really slowly 20 minutes, every two weeks or something

working on it. It depends on what kind of writing you do. Awesome. People really can just sit down and
write, but I’m a very slow writer. I just, it takes me a long time to figure out what I’m saying and
say it.

[00:29:48] So gardening appeals to those people.

[00:29:50] Brian Hinton: [00:29:50] Yeah. And

hearing you explain it and talk through it a little bit more than just reading, it really makes it just I
don’t know. It makes me happy to look at it now, too. Cause I’m looking at your, one of your most
recent ones on your site anyway, it’s highlighting the pattern language or project.

[00:30:08] Zen Zana, dude, I love the draft in progress and then there’s a coming

soon. And then you outline that so you have the different sections below. Yeah, it’s just so nice. It
does really remind me of a Wiki too, for sure. When you think about it, like how wikis tend to be very much
always in progress where you’re adding those individual pieces and chunks and outlining, and then coming
back and expanding on it.

[00:30:34] It’s almost like your own. Docs.

[00:30:39] Frederick Weiss: [00:30:39] And I

like this, a full history of digital gardening. And you talk about where it comes from the origins and the
nineties, and you go into everything and you highlight here, all those things from the tweet as well. A lot
more in detail here with what it is.

[00:30:57] You have all your illustrations down here. It’s a long article, but

like these are great. It’s very much worth the read to carefully read it too. I might add there’s a
lot of great information in here.

[00:31:11] Maggie Appleton: [00:31:11] I’ll

say the community around us is really wonderful. I’ve been on Twitter for a while, and I just found
incredible friends and communities on there and just ran into the most wonderful people and had great
professional connections. But, the people who are around digital gardening and tools for thought and Rome
research is, other big tools that like people congregating around.

[00:31:35] And I wish there was more of a name I could give to this community, but

it’s just great. That’s just these people doing tweet threads on their understanding of gardening
and Linking you to really interesting papers from the ACM for 1994 and like hypertext explorations.

[00:31:50] And you’re just, it’s just like community knowledge coming

together. So I’ll say everything I’ve written in there is really that other people pointed me to it,
or they had insights and I tried to cite as many people as I could, but I, I do the idea of the best I can
do is be. Cultural anthropologist.

[00:32:05] Who’s like helping a community tell their story. Like I would love it

if that was my role in this whole weird mini historical trend in which the passengers help congregate it
together. Yeah.

[00:32:17] Frederick Weiss: [00:32:17] Hey,

here’s a great comment. Maybe you want to take this one,

[00:32:19] Brian Hinton: [00:32:19] Brian? Yeah,

Nikki, if I say this wrong, sorry.

[00:32:23] Nikki Dix says I was originally inspired by Maggie’s website. I’ve

never enjoyed blogging, but I’m really excited to have a go at a digital garden learning as I go even
more so after hearing this. So thank you. Oh, that’s great.

[00:32:38] Frederick Weiss: [00:32:38] She goes

on to write as a. Complete noncoding just started using Rome.

[00:32:45] How much HTML do I need to learn and where should I start? Maggie?

I’ll let you take that one.

[00:32:51] Maggie Appleton: [00:32:51] Sure.

Also say this there’s another post of mine garden called digital gardening for non-technical folks. So
that’s if you aren’t interested in learning code and you don’t want to get into the HTML bed,
there’s a bunch of really great services and things coming up that you can use.

[00:33:07] And roam research is one way you can use it as a source for your notes.

And there’s a service called Rome God. And I think it’s Rome dot God. And it’s the URL that will
source your own notes and turn it into a more presentational website format, digital garden. But I’ve
put in the post that you can also do it with the notion that it is really becoming a really popular way for
people who don’t want to touch code to be able to build models.

[00:33:29] And obsidian is another tool that’s doing this. I’ll be getting a

lot of great DMS for people who right now are building digital gardening platforms and systems and
There’s some really exciting ones coming out that I’m hoping will, come to fruition, that it may be
an alpha or beta at the moment, but I’ll say over the next two years, it’s going to be a lot more
options to people who don’t want to dig into the code side.

[00:33:54] Frederick Weiss: [00:33:54] Yeah. I

think there was a really good interview with you. And I forget what the gentleman’s name was that you
were on his show, where you talk all about Rome and, that went into the details of that. What we’ll put
up. I’ll find that again. I’ll put a link in the show notes. Who was that? I don’t remember
Maggie.

[00:34:12] Maggie Appleton: [00:34:12] I’m

trying to think of who it might’ve been because there are a few I think it was a reason. One. Cause
Rome, FM I think is what was like a room specific podcast. And then I was on Robert has fields and runs a
number of Rome tools on YouTube, which I did. And I’m trying to think of what a recent one would have
been.

[00:34:30] I don’t have room.

[00:34:33] Frederick Weiss: [00:34:33] Gotcha.

Yeah. We’ll put a link in the show notes. Maybe you can tell us what, some of the biggest challenges
that somebody might face when they. Start this is it just a thing where it’s just super hard to get your
head around it? Or maybe there’s something else that I’m not thinking about?

[00:34:52] Like what, are some of the biggest challenges to overcome this start?

[00:34:57] Maggie Appleton: [00:34:57] I think

people, I think justifiably do get a little caught up on what tool to use or what platform because.
 which one’s right for me. Do I want to get into building this? If a little bit, maybe HTML, CSS,
and you’re Ooh, do I want to like, start like a good sort of gap mine’s built on Gatsby, which is a
JavaScript I wouldn’t say framework, but a thing where you can build a blog with it.

[00:35:23] Yeah. Static site generator. That is the official tent. Next JS is a

similar one that has a lot of people in Jekyll. Like these are all sorts of website builders that have
people who have built God, God unfriendly themes that have kind of things like bi-directional linking and
maybe they’ll have a graph overview of all your notes, so people can browse around the minimal visual
way.

[00:35:45] So there’s lots of really interesting things. Themes being built if

you’re willing to go use code. So even just that is deciding, am I going to go the more technical route?
Or am I happy with just using roam or obsidian or the notion that they’re not old private companies and
I don’t think there’s too much risk really in putting your notes in, one of those, as long as you
have your own backup for displaying locked down notes.

[00:36:09] Cause you know, you do say we will see long-term in the web companies fold

and platforms go down and as long as you have your own backup, it’s okay. Just to not put all your eggs
in someone else’s basket is the principle. So yeah, I’d say picking the right platform.

[00:36:25] And then after that Yeah, it depends on if people are really clear on what

their sort of niche or field is. I think of when people would say I don’t know what to write about with
blogging. They go I don’t know what I would write about. I think actually gardening helps make that
easier because you just look at whatever you’re reading at the moment and what you’re
consuming.

[00:36:45] And it’s easier to put small notes okay, this is one thing I’ve

noticed from something I’ve written, it’s not a whole blog post, like a fully formed opinion where I
know what I think is just this is interesting, I’ll just post this podcast and some notes below it, or
I’ll just post this article it’s notes below it.

[00:37:01] And it takes the pressure off you to create something that is an opinion.

[00:37:06] Brian Hinton: [00:37:06] Yeah. I

liked what you mentioned about tools. Simply because I know that a lot of people get fixated on that and
they bounce around from tool to tool and then never actually do anything. Just pick one thing. Do it and
see. I think once you establish yourself and have a pattern, then you can explore other tools, but keep
going with that one and be like, oh, this one actually may work better for me.

[00:37:31] Move forward. I love that. I love it, I just like clicking through and

browsing your site because it’s just interesting. The fetishism, and mechanical keyboards a lot. Love
that. That’s great. Did you get one? Did you get a key?

[00:37:46] Maggie Appleton: [00:37:46] So I

guys. You can’t really see it. I’m bad at arranging.

[00:37:50] Let me zoom in.

[00:37:51] Brian Hinton: [00:37:51] Here we go.

Now we can see it. Yeah.

[00:37:54] Maggie Appleton: [00:37:54] I forget

what brand it is. I should know, but it’s great. It is one of those where I went down the rabbit hole of
researching mechanical keyboards and then very clearly it was like, this is so much like fetishism is a
break, like cultural anthropology concept of, when you.

[00:38:09] Project human light qualities on to physical objects or you mistake the

object for a social connection. You’re like, okay, if I get this keyboard, I’m going to be like a
more socially competent person or like I’m going to be more effective and it’s you’re trying to
project human quality on the object.

[00:38:28] So I actually have to write more on that piece. I’ve just only written

an introduction, like a comeback. Yeah. Nice. Yeah.

[00:38:37] Brian Hinton: [00:38:37] Yeah. Yeah

[00:38:40] Maggie Appleton: [00:38:40] Yeah, I

had the same one as you then. Cause I recognized that orange escape key.

[00:38:45] Brian Hinton: [00:38:45] Oh, Nick

said something else. I’m willing to learn to code. In fact, I’d love to, I just never have. I’m
about to start a M C MSC.

[00:38:54] So I was thinking of creating a digital garden for my learning. Yeah,

[00:38:59] Maggie Appleton: [00:38:59]

definitely. That’s great. Now I want to ask follow up questions. What’s the MSC about yeah. Yeah.
What is the MSC about? That’s great. Cause I love the idea of people open sourcing. What’s usually
held behind academic walls and not where you’re putting up, I don’t know what really is more
copyrighted than an academic degree, but this thing of otherwise people have to pay tens of thousands of
dollars to get access to this knowledge. And if you can just take parts of it and put it up on an open with
you and just give people entryways into your field of knowledge. I’m really, I think that’s really
wonderful,

[00:39:34] Brian Hinton: [00:39:34] Chris

Aldrick Aldrick Holdridge I have, I’m probably butchering that said something nice too about taking a
season or two of thanks, Frederick, for using a tool before moving on to other fields.

[00:39:46] Yeah. That’s nice. Yeah. Advice. Good advice. Yeah.

[00:39:50] Maggie Appleton: [00:39:50] Yeah.

Like it’s like a test God, and right. You could put up like 10 or 15 posts on something. And then if you
find you don’t like the platforms, which is something else

[00:39:58] Brian Hinton: [00:39:58] applied

positive psychology and coaching psychology.

[00:40:03] Maggie Appleton: [00:40:03] Nice.

Nice. Yeah, there you go.

[00:40:09] Frederick Weiss: [00:40:09] All that

being said there it’s, not like your saying blogs are the devil, right? It’s just something very
different, but I’m just making, just communicating that you’re not stating that there’s a line,
you shouldn’t blog, but it’s just a different thing and it makes a little bit more sense.

[00:40:30] I don’t know if it’s fair to say in certain fields, like in our

field where you could build up your technology and build up your ideas on these things. And you’re not
just putting something out and then it’s supposed to be evergreen.

[00:40:44] Maggie Appleton: [00:40:44] Yeah.

Yeah. Now you’re making me wonder exactly what the technical definition of a blog is, other than.

[00:40:51] It’s a web log. Cause, the thing, the difference that we would say

between a garden and a blog, it’s mostly about the blogs are usually chronologically ordered, right? So
most recently, try this in the past and you browse in a very linear form. So it just, doesn’t, it’s
harder to find all the information that is connected by relationships with gardens.

[00:41:11] You want to arrange them by topics and you want to make sure notes that

are related to each other are linked together. So you can. Between topics and it doesn’t really matter
when they were written as not, you’re more interested in the content and how they relate versus the blog
is time is the only thing that matters here, like uptown

[00:41:29] Frederick Weiss: [00:41:29] Just like

Mickey has here.

[00:41:30] It’s blogs assume that they have to be perfect and perfect. Again is

the enemy of good, right? It’s you’re going to be just halted from doing anything. So just, get out
there and. And seating notes, show my learning out loud. Yeah, exactly. Show you, show your learning out
loud. People want to see how you think and you should just get it out there.

[00:41:52] Don’t be afraid to put something out there in the world and show your

process and your progress.

[00:41:59] Maggie Appleton: [00:41:59] Yeah.

Business. I’ll mention, I’m showing you wine is the champion of this ethos. I don’t know if you
guys have had him on yet, but he’s really into learning in public and has some really wonderful posts
about the ethos of learning in public and different kinds of learning in public and different phases of
learning in public.

[00:42:15] And he’s also really into digital gardening and is cool. So like

he’s a good one to look at. If you’re interested in the idea of learning in public and how to go
about that.

[00:42:24] Frederick Weiss: [00:42:24] Okay.

Yeah, I will reach out to this person. We will get them on the show. That sounds great. So Brian, we think
it is a, is it time?

[00:42:32] Brian Hinton: [00:42:32] One, I do

want to mention one thing about your tech stack and your website. Fantastic. I love you, even though
it’s also like your living code digital garden. I’m curious how to search, what mentions and nested
note folders are going.

[00:42:49] Frederick Weiss: [00:42:49] Oh sorry,

Before you say that Nikki didn’t catch that.

[00:42:53] Who was that? What we just mentioned?

[00:42:55] Maggie Appleton: [00:42:55] Oh, Shaun

Wang I think it is his Monaco that he goes by, but Sean Wang. Yeah. He’s in the web dev community. If
you search learning and public, I’m fairly sure he’s one of the first Google search results.
He’s been on this for a while.

[00:43:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:43:10] Thank you

very much.

[00:43:11] Maggie, Brian.

[00:43:13] Brian Hinton: [00:43:13] Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I was asking how that, how your new updates are coming in and how’s that’s progressing.
I’d love to see how you do web mentions. Cause I’ve seen a few people do it. And I’m curious,

[00:43:26] Maggie Appleton: [00:43:26] I

definitely need to implement those. This is where being a mediocre developer really makes you slow
development too.

[00:43:30] And so he likes to stare at the problem for a while and then you’re

like asking people about it or like how. Let’s mention luckily, the people who are involved in the indie
web, which I’m Chris Eldridge, who is his wonderful advocate for the indie web. And they’ve really
great dogs about how to put web mentions in.

[00:43:47] So I know I’ve bookmarked a bunch of those and I need to just set

aside a Saturday and read through them and figure out how to put it in. Are you gonna

[00:43:54] Brian Hinton: [00:43:54] write a

little essay about it?

[00:43:58] Maggie Appleton: [00:43:58] Yeah.

I’ll put up notes like how I’m doing it. I don’t think it will be too hard. Part of me is a
little worried about myself.

[00:44:04] I have to make my website more spatial and it’s still pretty linear in

the posts. And so at the end you get like my references and then you get notes that are linked to this note.
And then I’ll ask myself, I’ll put like web mentions below that and just stop stacking everything,
which is fine.

[00:44:18] But I’d say I’m trying to think of ways to put sidebars in or move

the metadata somewhere else. So we played with ideas. Cool.

[00:44:27] Brian Hinton: [00:44:27] So yeah, as

Frederick was saying, we’re at, towards the end of the show and what we do is a lightning round.

[00:44:38] Where we ask you questions and it’s like one after another, I go,

Frederick goes and you just answer through them. Lightning is just like that. I’ll go first. Would you
rather be able to copy and paste in real life or undo?

[00:44:59] Maggie Appleton: [00:44:59] Okay.

[00:45:00] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:00]

That’s fair. Maggie, what is your favorite thing about yourself?

[00:45:10] Maggie Appleton: [00:45:10] I’m

British. And I’m unqualified to answer that question where legally not allowed to,

[00:45:18] Brian Hinton: [00:45:18] Well,

what’s one pet peeve of yours that you wish you could just get rid of that you have that because it
hampers your quality.

[00:45:27] Maggie Appleton: [00:45:27] I feel

like I make too many cups of tea throughout the day. I don’t know if that’s a pet peeve where no pet
peeve is something’s annoying, right? Yeah. Bad cups of tea.

[00:45:39] Maybe I can’t tolerate too high of a standard. Okay.

[00:45:45] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:45] Earl gray

or what’s your T

[00:45:48] Maggie Appleton: [00:45:48] Oh, just

like English breakfast. I can’t stand out. Like English breakfast like milk, sugar, like a very similar
standard.

[00:45:55] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:55] Oh. So

you’re not getting down there. The London fog. Gotcha. All right.

[00:45:59] Brian Hinton: [00:45:59] Okay.

You’re waiting somewhere.

[00:46:02] Where we were somewhere where you’re okay. Waiting. You don’t mind

waiting

[00:46:07] Maggie Appleton: [00:46:07] anywhere

that I have a book, which is anywhere I go.

[00:46:10] Brian Hinton: [00:46:10] Oh, nice.

[00:46:12] Frederick Weiss: [00:46:12] Nice.

What are you currently reading?

[00:46:16] Maggie Appleton: [00:46:16] This is,

it’s a really good book for me to get if Jill the pool, which is so it’s, the history of the very
first company to try to do data collection in the 1950s.

[00:46:29] And, trying to Matt human behavior and put it into computers and then try

to predict how people are going to behave based on that. And they were doing it in the context of U S
elections and it lays the foundation for everything that has now become Facebook and Google and
Amazon.

[00:46:44] Interesting. Yeah, it’s really good.

[00:46:47] Brian Hinton: [00:46:47] I’m to

add that one to my list. Okay. You’re in the circus. Would you rather be the person with their head
inside the lion’s mouth or be shot out of it?

[00:46:59] Maggie Appleton: [00:46:59] Shot out

of a cannon. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. Which smell that

[00:47:04] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:04] is

possible. You never know. Yeah. The lion could have some Bianca or something.

[00:47:09] What is your podcast that you’ve been going to lately? Just for

entertainment.

[00:47:15] Maggie Appleton: [00:47:15] Oh, I

love the Postlight podcast, which is pulled forward and I’m gonna forget his co-host name, but they run
a digital agency in New York, but Paul forward is like an incredible tech writer. Who’s just. Everything
you write, so just die over.

[00:47:28] But he’s really funny as is his co-host and they just comment on the

tech world, but in a way where they’re both very experienced and have been around forever. And I just
appreciate it.

[00:47:37] Brian Hinton: [00:47:37] I love that.

What’s the one chore that you absolutely hate to do?

[00:47:45] Maggie Appleton: [00:47:45] In the

UK, we have limescale and allow water, which just covers any surface you have and just like weird white
flaky stuff.

[00:47:52] And you just have to spend like all weekends, just scrubbing it off. It

just builds up and destroys your flat. So I spend an inordinate amount of time scrubbing, limescale off
everything. I just hate it all the time.

[00:48:03] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:03]

Maggie’s favorite cartoon as a kid.

[00:48:08] Maggie Appleton: [00:48:08] Since who

didn’t grow up with television is the problem we grew up in.

[00:48:13] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:13] Let me

revert. What’s your favorite cartoon now?

[00:48:19] Maggie Appleton: [00:48:19] I’m

not fine. I don’t watch cartoons.

[00:48:25] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:25] It’s

[00:48:25] Maggie Appleton: [00:48:25] all

right. Which is not a TV show, but a comic.

[00:48:33] Brian Hinton: [00:48:33] Yeah. I have

so many of their books. I love them a lot. So Mars is livable, but it’s a one way trip. Would you go to
Mars?

[00:48:43] Maggie Appleton: [00:48:43] Now I

really I’m really here for the earth. Like I’m really,

[00:48:49] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:49] it’s

your thing. Yeah. We all have our plans.

[00:48:57] Maggie I’m home. It’s one in the morning. You’re just trying

to get the key in the door. It’s pouring out. You’re like, just get me in the house you get in the
house. There’s a ghost.

[00:49:07] Brian Hinton: [00:49:07] It’s

looking right at you. What do you do?

[00:49:11] Maggie Appleton: [00:49:11] Try to

take a photo with my iPhone now.

[00:49:15] Frederick Weiss: [00:49:15] All

right. You can get your choice.

[00:49:24] Maggie Appleton: [00:49:24] I was

thinking of evidence. I just went to the land of deep, fake videos. I don’t know what an iPhone photo
would have done for me there, but like

[00:49:33] Brian Hinton: [00:49:33] What’s

one thing you miss a lot about being a kid.

[00:49:45] Maggie Appleton: [00:49:45] Oh, God,

I’m really bad. I don’t know. Sorry. I’m thinking of too many things. Maybe it was just like, I
get really lost in, just doing. Maybe it was pre-internet days. I don’t know. I’ve just got really
lost in doing things like organizing my entire beanie baby collection, like categories or something, or just
cutting and pasting a thousand strips of paper together.

[00:50:04] Like it was, yeah, very much just like spending hours, getting lost in

very simplistic tasks and times before we, I was on the screen all the time.

[00:50:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:11] I hear

ya. This is my last question. Maggie, what do you do that brings you joy? What do you do for fun? Any
disconnect?

[00:50:22] Maggie Appleton: [00:50:22] It’s

definitely still drawing, even though it’s, part of my career or professional, whatever it is with doing
over there working it’s, still if I need to decompress for the day I’ll put on like a YouTube
lecture of someone I really like, but then I’m doodling and I’m not, it’s not for, to show
anyone or to do.

[00:50:41] It’s just sort of me trying to think with my hand and my body really

satisfying.

[00:50:46] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:46] I do have

a follow-up question, but I’ll let Brandon first.

[00:50:52] Brian Hinton: [00:50:52] What kind of

drink can be bitter and sweet

[00:50:58] Realty?

[00:51:03] Frederick Weiss: [00:51:03] Anyway

Maggie, this might not be a lightning round question, but for the people that want to do it. What you do.
Where do you find that you’re the most creative and you get the most done in which medium? So when I say
that is it when you put pen to paper, when you put a pencil to your iPad pencil, or when you’re in
illustrator or Figma or something like that where, do you feel like you’re the most creative and,
why.

[00:51:36] Maggie Appleton: [00:51:36] Yeah, I

definitely use an iPad with procreate on an iPad pro is my medium for the moment, just because it has the
most flexibility. It feels, it doesn’t feel just like paper, but it’s getting there. It does what
you need to and that space it’s just being able to use your hands and think spatially and.

[00:51:56] Look at what you’re drawing and respond to it in a constant feedback

loop, right? It’s not like you create the image in your head and then you draw it. But this relationship
between you and what you’re creating in this constant loop is like where the thinking happens. I know
that’s like a famous Richard Fineman quote that someone else wrote.

[00:52:12] Like how did you come up with the ideas of when he drew like Adams and

stuff? And he’s now I felt like it was part of the process for me in the paper. It wasn’t like I
came up with them and then threw them down. Like it didn’t know what they were before I drew them. That
loop is really magical.

[00:52:26] Process to be in. And that kind of thing, I’m always addicted to.

It’s just like you, you don’t know what you’re doing until you see on paper and then you respond
to what you’ve made and it just becomes this infinite game.

[00:52:37] Brian Hinton: [00:52:37] Nice. I love

that. Yeah. Okay. I’m going to try it one more time. Why is Peter Pan always flying?

[00:52:44] Because he never lands.

[00:52:48] Frederick Weiss: [00:52:48] Oh,

[00:52:50] Maggie Appleton: [00:52:50] that is

good. Now, you’re making me think there’s more layers to Peter pan than I originally perceived.

[00:52:58] Brian Hinton: [00:52:58] Yeah,

it’s deeper than we all thought.

[00:53:01] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:01] W

we’re right at the end, we want to make sure that we put up all the places where people could find you
at Maggie. So I’m Twitter’s LinkedIn here.

[00:53:11] And then, your website, of course, Maggie appleton.com dribbbles with your

first initial, your last name. Is there anywhere that I might be missing here that you want people to look
up to find more about you.

[00:53:24] Maggie Appleton: [00:53:24] No, they

can see, I think that’s pretty good. My, my website tends to, I try to make it at least the hub that it
will link to anywhere else that needs to be

[00:53:32] Brian Hinton: [00:53:32] yeah.

[00:53:32] For our audio listeners. Can you put that back up? Like a reference?

[00:53:36] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:36] Yeah.

[00:53:36] Brian Hinton: [00:53:36] Yeah, sure.

Yeah. It’s maple tons. It’s spelled M a P L E T O N S for her Twitter and Maggie, M a G I E.
appleton.com for website and yeah,

[00:53:51] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:51] I want to

say. Yeah. Before we get to that before, the last thing we’d like to do is offer a, an opportunity
for

[00:54:03] Maggie is here. Do you have anything to say to the audience chairs, yours?

[00:54:11] Maggie Appleton: [00:54:11] Ooh. The

only thing I can think of to recommend that, I just want to say if anyone doesn’t know who Brett Victor
is yet, and hasn’t read his work worry, dream.com, go do that. That’s just like a life changing
experience if you’ve never experienced before and you work in tech.

[00:54:26] So that’s the only thing I’d recommend.

[00:54:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:28] Awesome.

Thanks. And Nikki had a good time. Thanks, Nikki. You guys.

[00:54:32] Brian Hinton: [00:54:32] Thank you,

Nicola. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. And appreciate you joining us. I always say it is the most valuable
thing we have and for you to spend just some time with us. Thank you so much.

[00:54:44] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:44]

Especially on a Saturday. Yeah

[00:54:47] Maggie Appleton: [00:54:47]

That’s fine. Thank you for all the great questions too. This was, it was this incredibly easy you
always, where are you going to come on and say stupid things or just have, no content. And then you guys are
just great questions. Made it super easy.

[00:54:58] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:58] Thank

you. Really appreciate it. No, this was excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much, Maggie. And then thanks
everybody out there for watching. Really appreciate it. And we’ll catch you next time. Thanks everybody.
See ya.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store
Thunder NerdsBy Frederick Philip Von Weiss, and Brian Hinton
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9
  • 4.9

4.9

22 ratings