David LaFontaine's
Sips from the Firehose
A blog that attempts to distill the internet into one easy-to-gulp mental beverage.
Ahhh! Tasty.
The Poison Metric That May Kill Your Newsroom: Podcast
Paul Gewurz, the host of "Small Press, Big Ideas" and I discussed how data & analytics are leading news publishers to ruin their relationship(s) to their audience, Podcast available on Apple Podcast on Spotify A sample, where we discuss where so many organizations...
Quick Hit: Alt-text Unintended Consequences & Image-generating AI
If there were ever an example of why AI needs humans in the loop, well, actually … this isn’t the most compelling. But it’s informative. (H/t Washington Post’s most recent excellent scrollytelling example -...
Heather Armstrong, aka “Dooce” Was So Very Many Things
Dooce Was Brave. Funny. Self-lacerating. Self-aware. Bubbly. Withdrawn. An early pioneer of the "MommyBlogger" phenomenon. And now: dead. Far too soon. Many years ago, before the rise of "micro-blogging" platforms basically sucked all the oxygen out of the room and...
Google Analytics 4 Fundamentals: My Class on Pluralsight
A bit of shameless self-promotion here: I have a new class up on Pluralsight, training (formerly) ordinary people in the arcane knowledge needed to become a (wait for it!): CREATIVE DATA SCIENTIST!! It's called Google Analytics 4 Fundamentals. For the uninitiated,...
The Dangers of Over-Design: supply-chain breakdown is what happens when we get TOO efficient
By now, we're all familiar with the visuals associated with the Great Supply Chain Disruption of 2021. Container ships bobbing at anchor off Long Beach Harbor. Bare shelves. Long lines. How did we get here? How can we fix this? I keep coming...
Creativity During the Pandemic: Pumpkin-Carving Beyond Jack O’Lanterns
Carving Using Clay-Sculpture Tools To Produce Organic ArtThe "Night of 1,000 Jack-o-Lanterns" exhibit at the Chicago Botanical Gardens was a breath of fresh - albeit pumpkin-spice-scented - air. After months of feeling trapped, increasingly bored with the...