ncase
patreon
What Explainer Series Do You Want? (+ Patreon unpauses in November)
🕑 Added 2021-09-29 21:01:18 +0000 UTC[reading time: 2 minutes]
[optional survey: 7 minutes]
Hi folks!
After a year of burnout-hiatus, this Patreon will be un-paused on November 1st! That's when you'll be charged again. If you've changed your mind about financially supporting me, no worries! Sharing my stuff & subscribing to my newsletter / RSS helps, too. :)
Previously I said it'd be October 1st, but on second thought a) I'll give you more time, and b) I'll spend October finishing up the catgirl music video on my alternate Patreon.
After that, I'll spend November finishing Nutshell / "Expandable Explanations" (here's the open beta if you missed it) which will launch late November / early December.
After that, I'll use Nutshell in a "deep explainer series" about... something! But what? That's where you come in...
π Nicky's Explainer Series Survey (Google Forms but no login required) π
π€ (13 ideas to rate, 7-minute survey) π€
This won't determine my next explainer, it's just to get a "sense of the room". In fact I'm already 80% sure what my next topic will be, but I dunno what's after that... and maybe you'll suggest a totally new topic I'd love to learn & teach!
Why a "deep explainer series"? Three motivations:
- To overcome two big limits of my past work, on your side & my side:
- You/reader-side: My explainers rarely get into real depth. For example, Evolution of Trust helps you learn about game theory, but won't help you actually do game theory. Inspired by 3Blue1Brown's "Essence Of" series, I want to try helping you learn actual skills.
- Me/creator-side: Making a bunch of one-off explainers feels... "one damn thing after another"-y? Like, what's this adding up to? Yet when I try making a gigantic Magnum Opus, it's always an overscoped mess. Making a series is the best of both: small episodes for tight creative scope, yet "adds up" to something bigger.
- You/reader-side: My explainers rarely get into real depth. For example, Evolution of Trust helps you learn about game theory, but won't help you actually do game theory. Inspired by 3Blue1Brown's "Essence Of" series, I want to try helping you learn actual skills.
- One huge motivation I had for doing "science communication" is so I have a LearnβTeach loop ββ learn something, teach it to consolidate my learning (& while I still remember how to explain it to novices, since I was a recent novice), then get feedback from you so I can learn more, repeat!
Sadly, my usual Explorable Explanations take 2-3 months to make, which is a very, very slow loop. So I want to try a small episodic series, for a tighter LearnβTeach loop. - I want an excuse to make something with Nutshell, as well as Andy Matuschak's tool-for-thought, Orbit.
. . .
tl;dr:
- This Patreon unpauses Nov 1st
- Survey: tell me what topic(s) y'all wanna learn
- Oct: catgirl musical / Nov: finish Nutshell / Dec: explainer series
Again, sincere thanks for all your support during this past harsh year. π
πππ,
~ Nicky Case
Comments
James Zaki
Done! I'm wanting to make a nutshell about web3 (something that's been on a todo list for a while). Let me know if I can help π€
AP
Oh my goodness. Even if you do none of these, just reading the topics and mini descriptions was like having a great dinner! :D
Seanny123
If you need help with the Computational Neuroscience explainer, it was the topic of my Master's degree. Admittedly, I am biased towards our neural simulation framework, Nengo and it's IDE. But I can also give you a good overview of how others approach these problems!
Golda Velez
Oh and I don't get on patreon that much so by any chance if you are open to this email me at gvelez17@gmail.com - would be honored :-)
Golda Velez
Glad you are back on! Nicky are you ever available for commission? I am with two groups that I would love to explore having explorable explainers for, one is WhatsCookin.us for cooperation and sharing and one is the BlueskyCommunity.net for decentralized networking. It would be amazing to have your talents applied to these subjects - honestly the cooperation one is really based on evolution of trust...
