building in public (is so meta)

gm and welcome to issue 64. Last week I wrote about dot connecting as a love language, Pharrell’s Lego movie, and dance parties at dawn.

This week I’m sharing the new inOregon website before it’s actually ready to be shared.

A lot of marketers and brand managers and software engineers would say: don’t do that. It’s not ready. The mobile design isn’t done. You haven’t gone through launch checklists. Wait.

But this isn’t some huge company. It’s one person, building in public. Sharing another layer of the cake before it’s been iced.

Why? Because I’m tired of being the only set of eyes on this thing. And because we’re almost always shown the final product—the polished version. And that does two things that aren’t really that useful:

1. It hides the volume of work and energy that went into the messy middle.

2. It puts the maker on a pedestal.

Which gives too much credit to “talent,” and quietly widens the gap between the person who made the thing and the person looking at it.

And then the viewer thinks: oh, I could never do that.

Which is a damn shame. Because they most certainly can. In their own way.

Remember that glossy poster in the hallway by your 8th-grade locker room? Some shit about how hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard?

Well. That poster knew what was up.

Because you can do the thing. Whatever it is. It won’t be easy, but you can.

Anyway—enough rah rah.

Here’s the wholly unfinished inOregon website. Tap the enter button at the top, then use this very official password: DrinkWaterBabe

Go ahead, break it even though it hasn’t been fully built yet. Tell me what’s confusing.

Note: this can only be viewed from a desktop; if you try from mobile, I promise you’ll get something really shitty that won’t make sense at all.

That’s it for issue 64. Truly.

Send love notes, criticisms, nitpicks, and OCD-derived commentary. Please and thank you, and see you next week.

xoxo,

lw