Digital Citizen Fastmail

Abha Chiyedan wants to help anyone who struggles with productivity. If you have ever wondered how to stay productive and maintain a healthy work-life balance, you won’t want to miss this week’s episode of Digital Citizen.
Episode Notes
Abha Chiyedan found the transition to adulthood to be difficult and shared her personal experiences in a blog in 2016. This passion project transformed into a full-time job when she founded The Werk Life, a productivity and wellness brand with digital planners designed to bring peace and calm to your busy life.
▶️ Guest Interview - Abha Chiyedan Learn more about Abha Chiyedan. Shop The Werk Life planners. Follow The Werk Life on tiktok. 🗣️ Discussion Points Some of us would rather enjoy the moment and put off whatever can be done until tomorrow. If you find yourself getting stuck in a procrastination rut, try practicing self-awareness and deciding what you can do as an alternative. We often don’t realize how long we have actually been doing something. Abha suggests trying timers, time blocks, and rewards to help. For example, you might reward yourself with five minutes of scrolling on your phone after thirty minutes of work. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to productivity. If the tool you are trying isn’t working, be honest with yourself and try something else. The Werk Life offers many free resources in addition to planners. Check out their website if you need inspiration on where to start. Don’t get bogged down in the planning stage. Sometimes you have to say this plan is good enough and move on to executing it. Not everything is always what it seems on the internet, and if the content you consume makes you feel bad, give yourself the room to step away. 🔵  Find Us Digital Citizen Website: fastmail.com/digitalcitizen. Check out our blog. Tweet us: @Fastmail. Follow us on Mastodon: @fastmail@mastodon.social. 💙  Review Us If you love this show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Take our survey to tell us what you think at digitalcitizenshow.com/survey.

We delve into the intricate balance between productivity, technology, and digital culture with our special guest, Adam Conover. Explore how modern tech influences our work habits, the impact of personal knowledge management apps, and the complexities of email management in our daily lives.
Episode Notes
Discover insights into the profound effects of internet usage on social life, the challenges of maintaining productivity amidst technological advancements, and the evolving dynamics of fan engagement across different media platforms. Join us as we navigate the nuances of digital habits and their implications on personal and professional spheres.
▶️ Guest Interview - Adam Conover Learn more about Adam Conover. Subscribe to Adam Conover’s Patreon. Listen to Factually! with Adam Conover. 🗣️ Discussion Points Productivity apps and technological tools aim to streamline our workflows and enhance efficiency. However, there's an underlying risk of becoming overly reliant on these tools, potentially leading to a counterproductive cycle of planning without execution. This segment challenges listeners to consider how their tech use affects their actual output. The digital age has fundamentally altered our social habits and cultural dynamics. This discussion delves into the impact of digital habits on personal relationships and mental health, questioning whether our online personas and activities are enriching our lives or detracting from genuine human interaction. Personal knowledge management apps like Obsidian and Roam Research have gained popularity as tools for organizing thoughts and enhancing productivity. However, this segment probes into whether these apps truly contribute to productivity or merely serve as sophisticated distractions. The conversation sheds light on the broader question of what productivity really means in the context of information overload. Email is a part of everyday life, but it can be difficult to manage. This part of the episode explores various strategies for email management and discusses the broader implications of these practices, such as whether our quest for a clean inbox actually advances our productivity or merely feeds into a cycle of constant task management. The platform chosen to engage with an audience significantly shapes the nature of that interaction. Different mediums, from Twitter to Patreon, influence the dynamics between creators and their followers. By examining the phrase "the medium is the message," this segment invites listeners to reflect on how the constraints of each platform impact communication and, by extension, the creator-audience relationship. Internet culture reflects and amplifies broader societal issues, including inequality, racism, and online violence. Explore how digital spaces both mirror and exacerbate real-world social dynamics, prompting a critical examination of our collective online behavior and the responsibilities of digital platforms in shaping public discourse. 🔵 Find Us Digital Citizen Website: fastmail.com/digitalcitizen. Check out our blog. Tweet us: @Fastmail. Follow us on Mastodon: @fastmail@mastodon.social. 💙 Review Us If you love this show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Take our survey to tell us what you think at digitalcitizenshow.com/survey.

Listen to a snapshot of Digital Citizen, a Fastmail Podcast. Hear clips from our guests and their perspectives on how we can all become better digital citizens.
Episode Notes
The 'Digital Citizen' podcast, hosted by Ricardo Signes and co-host Haley Hnatuk, aims to guide listeners in using the internet more thoughtfully. The show features discussions with leading technology experts focusing on the changing dynamics of cybersecurity, social media, and the overall digital environment. It emphasizes the importance of remembering the human element behind technology, offering practical advice on becoming a better digital citizen. The podcast encourages listeners to adapt to the ever-changing digital world and promotes positive technological change and innovation.
🔵 Find Us Digital Citizen Website: fastmail.com/digitalcitizen. Check out our blog. Tweet us @Fastmail. 💙 Review Us If you love this show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Take our survey to tell us what you think at digitalcitizenshow.com/survey.

Comedian and labor organizer Adam Conover talks to Fastmail CTO Ricardo Signes about Adam’s ongoing work as part of the WGA strike and the impact of AI on creative industries.
Episode Notes
Hear why the Writers Guild of America is currently on strike and the role Adam has played in the overall process as a member of the board and the 2023 Negotiating Committee.
▶️ Guest Interview - Adam Conover Learn more about Adam Conover. Check out Entertainment Community Fund. Subscribe to Adam Conover’s Patreon. Learn more about Writers Guild of America - West and Writers Guild of America - East. Listen to Factually! with Adam Conover. 🗣️ Discussion Points Adam is a comedian, writer, television host, and the host of the podcast Factually! with Adam Conover. The Writers Guild of America is a labor union that represents about 11,000 writers specifically in film and television. They have a contract with the film and TV production companies, who have spent the last 10-15 years figuring out ways to make the work of writers more precarious and pay them less. The Writers Guild is now on strike to try to fix that and put contractual protections in place so that writers will be able to make a sustainable living in their industry. Although AI text can be useful in some contexts, it can also be considered a plagiarizing machine. The only reason it can produce the output in screen and script writing is because it has been trained on the real work of writers. These large language models, however, can not actually do the work of a writer because writing is so much more than just outputting text. The biggest fear of writers today is that companies will ask them to modify the scripts written by AI. But, since the script would be written by AI, the company would feel justified in paying the screenwriters even less despite putting in the same amount of work to modify the script. Although Adam is worried about what AI may be able to do over the course of the next 5 years, he is not worried that AI will end up writing movies or make art. Another big issue right now is around streaming residuals, which are less than they have been in the past. Though this is a really important cause, it has gotten more attention compared to some of the Guild’s other equally valuable demands. This includes the fact that companies are trying to eliminate the writers’ room and operate with a freelance model. If this happened, television writing would cease to become a career. WGA is not asking that everyone cancel their Netflix subscriptions. Rather, they just ask that people boost them on social media and publicly support them. Supporters are also encouraged to donate to the Entertainment Community Fund, which gives grants to people within the industry who have fallen on hard times. 🔵 Find Us Take our survey: digitalcitizenshow.com/survey. Digital Citizen Website: fastmail.com/digitalcitizen. Check out our blog. Tweet us @Fastmail. 💙 Review Us If you love this show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Take our survey to tell us what you think at digitalcitizenshow.com/survey.

On this special Philly Tech Week episode of the Digital Citizen podcast, Fastmail COO Helen Horstmann-Allen speaks with Alex Hillman, Will Toms, and Michelle Freeman, three of the savviest digital citizens in Philadelphia about community building offline and online.
Michelle is the Founder of Witty Gritty, a civic-focused marketing events engagement company based in Philadelphia, and Amplify Philly, an initiative co-run with REC Philly aiming to amplify the intersection of business, tech, art, and more. Will is the Co-Founder of REC, a company that works to get independent creatives paid for doing what they love. Alex co-founded Indy Hall, Philadelphia’s first coworking community, which has been gathering people since 2006
▶️ Guest Interview - Alex Hillman, Will Toms, and Michelle Freeman
Follow Alex on Mastodon: @alexhillman@jawns.club Follow Will on Instagram: @thewilltoms Follow Witty Gritty on Instagram: @wittygrittyphl Learn more about Indy Hall. Learn more about Amplify Philly. Learn more about Witty Gritty. Dive into 10K Independents' mission. Get involved with RECPhilly. Explore Philly Tech Week. Read articles about PTW 2023 on Technical.ly Philly. 🗣️ Discussion Points
Alex explains that the difference between community building on and offline is that offline community building gives you many things for free, such as serendipity. Natural and organic conversation is one of the things that makes a community so special, which is very difficult to build online. Online, you have to be specific and intentional in building community. In our hybrid world, being online serves as an enhancement for in-person experiences. It allows people to keep in touch between meetings through tools like email and Slack and make connections with people they can later connect with in-person. Our guests are all three extremely proud of their home city of Philadelphia. What makes the city so special is that the city has more creative talent than any other city per capita, even though they don’t have the entertainment infrastructure of New York or LA. REC Philly highlights the resources Philadelphia has to leverage to entice creatives to stay rather than relocate to another city. The first thing people can do to become better digital citizens is shift their identity online from building an audience to building a community. As a community builder, your role is to create a space for people to connect with others.  ⭐️ Takeaways
It is important to add value to the spaces you inhabit, whether they are on or offline. Simplicity makes participation accessible. Something as easy as encouraging people to participate in thematic name tags (or screen names on Zoom) can spark meaningful conversations. When it comes to community building, “Onboarding is forever.” Be intentional about the type of community you want to build and start laying that groundwork early on to help foster its growth. 🔵  Find Us
Take our end-of-season survey: digitalcitizenshow.com/survey Digital Citizen Website: fastmail.com/digitalcitizen Check out our blog Tweet us @Fastmail Follow us on Mastodon: @fastmail@mastodon.social 💙  Review Us
If you love this show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

On the final episode of season two of the Digital Citizen podcast, JiaJia Fei talks to Fastmail CTO, Ricardo Signes, in this special extra-long conversation. They discuss how museums and the art world have changed in the past few years and how they may continue to evolve.
JiaJia Fei is a Digital Strategist working at the intersection of digital marketing, web, social media, art, and culture. She has been featured in Vanity Fair and Vogue and has worked in digital marketing for 15 years for organizations, including the Guggenheim Museum and the Jewish Museum. Now, she runs her own digital media agency working with clients in the art world to help broaden their audience.
▶️ Guest Interview - JiaJia Fei
Learn more about JiaJia Fei Follow JiaJia on Twitter: @VAJIAJIA 🗣️ Discussion Points
Museums are essentially repositories for telling stories. It is the job of a museum to interpret why objects have value and help visitors better understand them. Many museums are beginning to put effort into digitizing their collection for people from all over the world to enjoy. It is the job of museum technologists to speak the language of art and technology. Many activities which existed as analog, such as shopping and watching films, have quickly adapted to the digital world. However, the art world has moved very slowly into the tech space. JiaJia believes that this is largely due to the fact that art as a whole is largely experiential and requires an in-person experience. The most interesting project JiaJia saw during the pandemic was the MET and the Getty putting all of their images online for the video game, Animal Crossing. This allowed players of the game to interact with the artwork in an environment totally outside of the museums. Ultimately, this encouraged interactive digital experiences. At the beginning of social media, museums were hesitant to participate because of the protection of their images. It is the responsibility of museums in the digital world to be the steward and authority when it comes to the digital representations of art. The more museums fear reproduction, the more bad images are likely to reproduce on the internet. Thus, institutions need to share images of the artwork they house online. The most important thing the art world can do is improve access to their collection for everyone. As consumers of culture, it is important that people continue to support them and their work. ⭐️ Takeaways
Don’t be afraid to try new artistic experiences. Digital technology gives us new ways of engaging with art which we should all try out and see how we feel about them. If you have a favorite cultural institution, check out their social media. It can be a great way to engage more expansively with their collection, hear about new openings and events, and find out about new institutions you might not have heard of on your own. Museums exist to preserve pieces of our culture and the stories that accompany them. If you aren’t taking the time to visit the museums around you, virtually or in-person, you should. You will likely be surprised by what you learn about the greater world and the place where you live! 🔵  Find Us
Take our end-of-season survey: digitalcitizenshow.com/survey Digital Citizen Website: fastmail.com/digitalcitizen Check out our blog Tweet us @Fastmail 💙  Review Us
If you love this show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Take our survey to tell us what you think at digitalcitizenshow.com/survey.