Matt's Roof Garden
Powered by 🌱Roam GardenJune 21st, 2020
Reading
Can I create a customized newsletter? Projects
Person/Gaby Perkes suggested this offhandedly and the idea has stuck with me.
"You'd be a master of sending newsletters I feel like if you ever wanted to set your mind to it. Just like awesome resources or links from the interwebs." "You totally should" "I would love to see what things you find" "It's like a little dose of happiness sent right to your inbox" "You could start with a small group of friends to try out different things!" "You are a collector of strange wonders and enticing secrets"
At the same time I ran across a super interesting tweet from Person/Azlen Elza about a website newsletter combo where a user can 'subscribe' to whatever branching note or topic interests them.
"How do you watch a digital garden grow? Playing around with the idea of a newsletter where you can subscribe to individual notes or topics and receive a weekly/monthly newsletter of personalized updates"
What would be the core tenets of my personal newsletter?
should always feel like a draft, very
"sketch" a al xkcd graphs
What do I find so interesting that I would write about? curiosity
What I'm learning about right now
Rendering
LEED Certification
Coding info
Note taking
Spaced Repetition
Roam Research tips
What kind of sections would be a part of the newsletter?
What have I been learning recently?
Cool things I've found
new plex additions
pg13
what I've been listening to this week
most played track this week
quote of the week
word of the week
one word from all my daily words
What are some good examples of beautiful and well thought-out newsletters?
theSkimm
beautiful font
starts with a gif
nicely formatted quote at the top which links to more info
uses plain language
always links to more information
share options beneath each story
nonsenseNYC
Frequency: Weekly on Friday afternoon
unsubscribe option right at the top
stylized as pure monospace text
week overview at top, info at bottom
donation link at bottom
Sections
week overview
XXXXX EVENTS XXXXX
event details
XXXXX ONGOING XXXXX
XXXXX UPCOMING XXXXX
XXXXX WISHLIST XXXXX
XXXXX OVERHEARD XXXXX
excerpts from
XXXXX LEARNING XXXXX
XXXXX UPCOMING XXXXX
XXXXX HELP XXXXX
XXXXX NONSENSE XXXXX
info about the newsletter
link so submit new links
Pain Points
far to long
each newsletter is ~ 7800 words. Far to long!
I get it at a bad time
by the time I get the newsletter on Friday evening, I've already made plans. Pretty much any Friday event is impossible to go to
difficult to find anything with their organization
annoying to read monospaced text
link to submit ideas is hidden
why is the
this puts unsubscribe at the forefront of your mind
Mi Niu York
Start with an image
"A weekly newsletter for curious people"
Pain Points
I unsubscribed because there wasn't that much I was interested in / had to wade through uninteresting bits
windscribe
gif heavy
plain language
Misc things to be aware of
dark mode in gmail inverts lots of colors
what does it look like on mobile?
should there be an TOC at the top?
maybe a quick graphic overview of the newsletter contents
the less scrolling the better
I've wanted my whole life to be a leader, someone who takes charge and is listened to.
if so could notion be used as a visual backend for highlights?