Audacious-ness as a necessity

This week I've been thinking about being audacious.

It's not just been this week to be honest. It's been at least a year in the making and then a few months of talking about it. The openly talking about it has really helped not only build my confidence, but it's also brought a real sense of joy to my work.

Being audacious in community creates belief. Not just to our own efforts, but also to that of others. It helps us all believe in what we are trying to do is possible. When we believe something is possible, magic happens.

And, this week, the vibe is that good things come to those who are audacious. It pays to be audacious. And perhaps, even more so, as a woman, founder, neurodivergent, 5x mother, the odds are always against people like me to succeed.

Sometimes the barriers feel too big to overcome. That life would be easier not pushing for the big changes we believe in. People like me have no choice but to be audacious. To believe that we can do it.

It was being audacious that helped me overcome my complete sh*t of 2024 year of stress and burnout.

It was being audacious that helped me push through with creativity. To find the joy that helped me claw my way through.

Being audacious is what the haters will interpret as arrogance, but it's far from that. It's me embracing myself. Realising I have so much to give. And picking myself day after day to create change.

Being audacious, at some point, becomes a necessity. It's the remedy against enshittification. It's saying enough. It's saying no. It's saying that we can do better. And then it's doing something about it, rather than just talking about it.

Being audacious is believing in the pot of gold at the end of the tunnel, even if you have no idea how you'll get there. It will help you find your way.

Being audacious is a sign of care. And those who know me will know that I say community is care. I'm being audacious because I deeply care about my work and the community that I serve.

Being audacious is simply being true to myself. It helped me lose my public speaking nerves because I simply felt comfortable showing up as who I am.

And of course, being audacious is like a flywheel. The more you do and believe in it, the more you realise you can achieve. My previous self would never have believed I could build the best tech community out there. I now believe that is a possibility (where I still have a long way to go and it could still fail), but the point is, the odds are increasing in my favour.

What I've written this week:

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Rethinking progress in an intangible economy | Bennett Institute for Public Policy

Dame Professor Diane Coyle highlights a foundational shift in the global economy: intangible assets—like data, intellectual property, design, and organizational culture—now drive the majority of economic value. This is especially relevant for communities, which are often rich in intangible assets yet struggle to measure or monetize them.

In particular, data stands out as a core intangible that underpins the rise of AI and digital economies. It is a non-rival asset—meaning it can be used by many without being depleted—making it a potential public good when shared appropriately. However, current economic systems and national accounting methods fall short in capturing this value accurately, often using cost-based proxies rather than reflecting true utility, context, or network effect.

Library Newsroom Project

This is an example of how community is the glue and it's so hard to separate things out. Journalism and news is becoming more community-led—Community Centered Journalism is a thing. Third spaces, like libraries, are increasingly used for more community things.

What even is community these days? It's everything. It's everywhere. It cannot be separated, so let's stop trying.

For paid members, there's a link to 68 resources on Community + Journalism via the Knowledgebase, plenty to get you thinking about how to be more journalistic with your community effort.

Strengthening Community

I enjoyed reading this about how Open Co-op is working with Amnesty International.

It doesn't say too much, but it did make me laugh out loud because they had a section where they started sharing what they were doing and went with starting with empathy, spurring collaboration and showing up.

I literally rolled my eyes when I read that because I'm so tired of hearing vagueness in what it is we do...but then laughed at when I read what followed, something a bit more specific and helpful, which was:

No, what are you actually doing?

Oh, ok, we’ll if you want to be really specific:

Carrying out user research to better understand the AIUK community and how a community platform can help AIUK better support them
Collaborating with the DDaT team and AIUK’s new Community manager to create new processes and policies which will help eliminate frustrations and problem areas
Creating missions to help playtest a number of candidate community platforms that have the potential to help AIUK’s activists connect, learn and thrive

How (and why) to do pop-up communes | Chloe Sladden

I'm sucker for these types of posts and it's always a reminder to myself to actually get off my butt and do something about it. One day perhaps. 😄

Is human language at an inflection point? | Kate Lindsay

I'm a big believer in lexicon as an essential part of understanding our people, to an extent that it's valid to start building a community with a lexicon. We should be intentionally paying attention to the words people use. Understanding how it changes is part of this.

Building community and clean air solutions | MIT Technology Review

We need more stories like this. Ones that build with community but very much focus on solving a problem.

A $50 million fund to build with communities | OpenAI

OpenAI is launching an initial $50 million fund that supports nonprofit and community organizations, informed by the independent OpenAI Nonprofit Commission report

At OpenAI, we believe AI should help people solve humanity’s hardest problems, and that includes empowering the organizations on the front lines of that work.