Back in 2022 (I think), I opened the doors to a new slack community for independent and self-employed strategy people: brand, innovation, product, comms, planning, design, insight, experience, commercial, social, content, digital - there’s lots of flavours here.

I’ve been very slowly working my way through the people who have shown interest in joining the community - but I wanted to create a wider, more open space where we can all connect, as there are now about 2500 of you on the list who are keen to join.

That’s what this is. Not a newsletter, but a different, quieter, calmer space to connect away from social. antisocialmedia?

I think we’re all a little fed up of social channels, filled with noise and bots. And no-one needs another newsletter, nor do I have any designs on being well known or sharing my own thoughts. So this is a little different to a regular substack, I’m not going to be filling your inbox regularly with my words - but rather doing three things:

1/ Sharing our gigs - the roles we find and share via the community space, so they appear in your email, rather than you having to check our jobs page {but you can opt-out of this feed, as it’s not of interest to all}.

2/ Sharing our thinking - highlighting and sharing the work that we’re all doing, independently. If you’d like to share your work, an idea, a thought, some prose, a question, something you saw, felt or wished you’d said - just send me a message.

3/ Sharing #curiositystream from the slack channel, so more folk can benefit from it.

In time, I’d like this to become a scrapbook of the brilliant independent minds in our circle. It could become an opportunity to share ideas, co-create and build something bigger than any single one of us. It could connect those of us with more flight hours to those coming up through the ranks. Maybe it becomes something like a village newsletter or post-it note you leave on a friend’s laptop. I’ve never had much of an idea where my projects will go - they’ve almost always been about engineering serendipity, and creating spaces where interesting things might happen. Perhaps this is another town square where we sit, drink, and share stories. Or maybe it might turn into a ghost town.

Because I think you lot are such interesting, wonderful, curious and curious (both meanings) people.

If you’re on the paid tier - that helps me run the project, find the clients to share their briefs with us, and invest in supporting more strategists - thankyou. You’ll also get access to immediate notifications of jobs from friends.

I’d love to hear from you - tell me about your work, what you’re doing, where in the world you are, and what you’re thinking about.

mk