The Simple Good
The Simple Good, my first project after PwC: a crowd-sourced photo blog of small good things every culture shares. My co-founder still carries it on.
At a glance
- Role
- Co-founder
- When
- 2011 to 2012
- Where
- Chicago
- Team
- Two co-founders
- Scope
- A crowd-sourced photo blog: the site, the launch, the community and a gallery show
Results
- 26 Aug 2011Full public launch, after a summer soft launch
- 100+People at the gallery show of the photos
- Still goingCarried on today by my co-founder
Steam rising off a morning coffee. A flower on the way to work. Kids laughing in a park. By 2011 I’d been to about 35 countries and kept noticing the same small good things everywhere. The Simple Good was a place to collect them, and my way out of corporate life.
52 photos and an invitation
It started with 52 photos from my travels, each of something simply good, and an invitation: send us yours, with the story of why it’s good. Street art, a landscape, a meal, anything. The point was to let people see the world through each other’s eyes, and to share back.
We soft-launched in the summer of 2011, collected feedback, redesigned the blog, made a logo, and did the full public launch on 26 August 2011. Readers could subscribe and get the simple good delivered every day. My launch note said the idea came from everyone I’d ever met: what I have really been doing my whole life is learning about people and society from each and every person I’ve interacted with. I still think that’s the job.
Learning to build in public
I had never built a website. I taught myself HTML and CSS to do it, learned what it takes to publish on a schedule, and learned social media by doing it badly first. Then we took the photos off the screen and onto real walls: a gallery show that drew more than 100 people.
It was the first thing I started after leaving a salary. I found out that starting is a skill you can practice, like anything else.
Still going
I built it with a co-founder. She carries it on today.
What I did
- Co-founded a crowd-sourced photo blog of the small good things every culture shares
- Picked, shot and wrote the first 52 posts from my travels through about 35 countries
- Taught myself HTML and CSS and customized the site design myself
- Ran a summer soft launch, took the feedback, redesigned the blog and made a logo, then launched publicly on 26 August 2011
- Opened it up to readers: anyone could send a photo with the story of why it’s good, and subscribers got one every day
- Took the photos off the screen and onto real walls: an interactive gallery show that drew more than 100 people
- Grew the readership on Facebook and Twitter, learning social media by doing it badly first
Deliverables
- The Simple Good website and photo blog
- The first 52 photos and their stories
- A logo and a redesigned blog, ahead of the public launch
- A daily email subscription and a public submission flow
- An interactive gallery show of the photos, 100+ people
Skills
- Building a website from scratch in HTML and CSS
- Curating and editing photo content
- Launching in public: soft launch, feedback, relaunch
- Growing a community on social media
- Producing a gallery show
- Photography
What I learned
Starting is a skill. You get better at it by shipping something small, in public, and listening to what comes back.
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