Welcome 👋 Matt, Charles, Maya, Jay, Catherine, and Bianca. It's also fantastic to see all the new K folks (did you plan this?): Katie, Kelly, and Kimberly. Thank you for being part of Future Community. Reach out with any questions or suggestions. I read everything.
Today I'm on the road ( 🚗 🚋). Just spent a few days driving to the East Coast with our daughter and helping her move into her first post-college place. Tomorrow night I'm headed south. If you're in DC and want to talk let's DO IT (click reply or message me).
And if you're a newsletter person in DC you really should come to the Newsletter Nerd Club Live event at 12:30 pm Thursday. See more on that below ⤵️
Bright Ideas
Smart people with big ideas and a few great events...don't miss these.
Doing YouTube stuff? Liz Kelly Nelson of Project C put together an incredibly thorough overview of changes to the YouTube Partner program. You'll want to read this if you're a creator or org working on audience or revenue with video.
Newsrooms get good content done. I've been filling you in for a while now on how companies like Hubspot have been building and using newsletters to deliver actionable and useful "newsy" content to current and potential users. It's not branded marketing slag. It's trusted info from real writers. It's content built to make you memorable, trusted, and valuable. Memory, trust, and value are critical in a zero click non-search world. These pieces explore this in a couple different ways:
- How to Build a Brand Newsroom [Aubree Schaffer / Sprout Social]
- The return of the media brand [John Saroff / Nieman Lab]
People are done with big tech meaning that we're well into a moment when real non-partisan and non-polarizing organizing communications has potential. Memo to Democrats: Your Anti-Big Tech Majority Is There for the Taking by Ami Fields-Meyer [The Contrarian]
Make signing up harder. Yes. Harder. You might have seen my piece on Activity Anchoring a while back. If you bring people in via the easiest possible way hoping for volume you might be left with a low value audience. Harvard Business School covers this with actual data in Want People to Commit? Make Signing Up a Little Harder.
Cold outreach...IYKYK. Consulting and self-employed folks may appreciate this from Lilli at IMMA Collective: Cold outreach: what actually works in 2026 (and what doesn't)
About the Civic Action Toolbox from Planet Detroit: Journalism tells people what’s happening. This tool helps them take action.
Events and Training
- Check out this in person Scribing Fundamentals workshop if you live in Western Massachusetts or thereabouts. Scribing is visual notetaking and it's a brilliant addition to your personal practice. [via Josh Stearns]
- Frank xPortland is happening at the Ecotrust building on October 15th. That link should get you a discounted rate. Frank is a masterfully curated gathering of talks by strategists, storytellers and scientists put together by the Center for Public Interest Communications at the University of Florida.
- Splice Beta is an annual 3 day event for news, audience, and related creatives across Asia and the world. Find out more about Splice Beta: Fork It! happening this November in Chaing Mai.
Want to get your event or training out to the Future Community network? We're happy to share. Click reply and make sure we know about it.
Newsletter Nerd Club Live in DC
Save your spot at Newsletter Nerd Club on Thursday. This is an in person event in downtown DC.
Join folks from DC Public Library, Secret Ballot, Brookings Institute, Forward Blue, US Ignite, National Academies, HIPS, Integrity Matters and more. We'll pull back the cover and talk...
🪴 Subscriber numbers
🪴 Goals (make money, drive attention to something else, thought leadership, sell stuff, take action, sell ads, etc.)
🪴 The plan - where are you headed? How? Why?
🪴 How it's staffed / how is content created
🪴 What platforms you're using
🪴 What other channels are you bringing to this? Social, events...
🪴 What are your costs like and who pays them
🪴 How it's integrated or not with social media and other channels
🪴 The what, how, why of your AI use
🪴 Challenges, blockers, obstacles,
🪴 Successes, wins big and small
🪴 What you do really well
🪴 What you need help doing
Leave with ideas and plans for...
🟢 How to connect a newsletter to revenue and fundraising.
🟢 Why AI means that newsletters have more relevance than ever and play an organizing role in your content program.
🟢 How to staff a newsletter and create content that works in an already overwhelmed comms shop.
🟢 How newsletters are working in channels other than email like YouTube, WhatsApp and Signal.
🟢 Pros and cons of common newsletter, email, and eCRM platforms.
Find out more and save a spot.
Future Community Jobs
Stay tuned for tomorrow's big jobs update. Remember, the full Future Community job list is always on and updated.
Ted here. I run Bright+3 where we give changemakers the ideas, inspiration, and tools to create content that builds stronger communities. I also write this newsletter (aka Future Community) and run the Future Community Jobs list.