Subtitle: Rumors of Portland’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

This is a deeply personal episode. I spent most of my life within a 60 miles radius of where I was born. That all changed when I relocated to the Portland, Oregon metro area. I came here on a fact-finding mission in 2017 and fell head-over-heels in love with the place. It’s no accident in the slightest that the most creative period in my entire life has transpired right here in Portland. I guess that’s why it’s a real sore spot for me when I see Portland dragged through the mud in the press—not to mention the whole concept of living in a dense urban environment. Are moving to the suburbs really the answer to the challenges of pandemic living? Does living in a “hip” city really have any influence on high-level creativity and artistic scope? Tune in to hear my story and my take.

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Tumblr is a social media platform heralding from a different time…the era of “Web 2.0”, when oodles of visual customization features were a given and open functionality like RSS feeds were compulsory. Yahoo! and Verizon nearly drove Tumblr to an early grave, but with the acquisition by Automattic, there is hope yet. Can Tumblr survive—nay—thrive in 2021? Jared White investigates.

Prior discussions of Web 2.0 stalwarts Tumblr and Flickr:

The vital necessity of competence in leadership and governance, life imitating art imitating life, and a megadose of fascinating news regarding Twitter’s forays into decentralization and open moderation tools…all on the latest installment of Fresh Fusion.

In the wake of last week’s horrific events at the United States Capitol where domestic terrorists stormed into the building and nearly toppled a duly-elected Congress, one of the top questions on everyone’s minds is: what is the role of Big Tech in the face of such extremism and anti-democratic conspiracy theories? What should Twitter, or Facebook, or Amazon, or Google, etc., be doing about all this? Do we even want them making unilateral descisions at such fundamental levels which affect policy making and political discourse? And just where did this violent strain of conservative evangelicalism come from anyway?

All this and more right here on the Fresh Fusion podcast.

This is it! Tune in for all the juicy details of why I walked away from Mastodon and the “Fediverse” after a year of fanboyism, and what needs to change in open social networking protocols before I let go of Twitter and Discord. Also some Fresh Picks of the day!

My year in review episode. What a year! What a review! Ooo boy. Tune in to hear how my “3 Words for 2020” went and what I’m looking forward to in 2021. Surely everything’s going to get better, right? RIGHT??!!

I just came back from a retreat. Wow! The saying is true: change of pace + change of place = change of perspective. As creators, we’re always working in one of two modes: the nose to the grindstone, going through the motions of daily output mode; and the 20,000 feet, blue sky thinking mode. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to get into that second mode in the same physical environment as where you’re typically heads down making incremental progress. Let’s dive into the vital importance of getting away in order to reinvent everything.

Use the hashtag freshcreator and/or freshpick on Twitter to let us know what to feature next!

Do you ever find yourself watching a video on YouTube from your favorite creator, only to find that—as the video plays—it slowly dawns on you that the whole story arc of the video was simply a pretense for a sponsored product promotion? Sucks right? Because as a content creator, if you lose the trust of your audience, what do you have? Nothing. Let’s talk about that. Also: I only use Rollings Reliable Baking Powder. 😜

You can enjoy the process, and optionally you can enjoy the outcome of that enjoyable process, but you can’t enjoy the outcome if you hate the process. The ends never justify the means. Also on today’s episode: my spoiler-free review of Seduced, the shocking sex cult documentary now playing on Starz.

Share your Fresh Pick of the day with the hashtag #freshpick on Twitter, and your link just might appear in a future episode of the show!

It’s the first official new episode of Fresh Fusion, and it’s a doozy! There’s an oft-expressed notion rooted in misguided pragmatism that says your users/customers/audience don’t care about the tools you use behind the scenes. They only care about the final product. I fundamentally reject such a notion, and I’m here to tell you why. Users DO care about the tools you use, because you MAKE them care. That’s your job as a creator. That’s your job as a marketer. Let’s dive in!