Hello ✌️
Things have been happening and I wanted to do an update to keep all of you who follow me and The Thinkers Club on top of things. It’s a different format from my usual posts, so forgive me! But I believe this will be useful context of why it has been quiet the last few months, as well as my plans moving forward with this Substack and content in general.
Becoming a Dad
As of 26.6.26, I am now an incredibly proud father!! 🩷 My wife (Becky) gave birth to our daughter Ottilie Bedford - she came a month earlier than planned as was obviously very excited to join the world. This meant a longer stay in hospital than expected for all of us, but everyone was shocked by how strong and well she was doing being premature. Becky was incredibly strong throughout everything, definitely more calm and collected than me!
The last couple of months, getting to watch Ottilie grow and change and do little things for the first time has without doubt been the most beautiful thing in my life. She has grown so quickly, and I am extremely grateful that I have been there these last couple of months and been able to enjoy this time.
Moving on from Zerion
Earlier in June, I finished working at the company I had been at for the last two years. For those who don’t know, my day job is software engineering and at Zerion I had been an Engineering Manager specifically for the Wallet team.
It’s been a great couple of years. It’s a small team, but a bunch of folks I felt very close with, having had the chance to meet some of them in person especially. We had done some great work over this time, but unfortunately the wallet has fallen victim to the cutthroat nature of the crypto industry and is not going to be continuing in the same fashion.
I have been looking at whats next and continue to look for a role to hopefully start in September time. One of the non-negotiables is continuing to work very hands-on with AI and how this impacts the software development lifecycle as well as how it can improve the efficiency and creativity of teams.
Future of The Thinkers Club
I would be the first to admit that my writing on Substack has been sporadic over the years 😅 I have a tendency to go down rabbit holes, which doesn’t always lend itself well to writing consistently, especially when you are interested in different topics. Tools for Thought has been an area that I have consistently wanted to write content about though, share my findings and generally nerd out about.
The Thinkers Club concept was to support this, and build a community of people who were interested specifically around Tools for Thought and how AI can help us think. A lot of the writing is going to be about Obsidian, but I am also keen to not constrain myself to one specific tool, and will be keen to share everything that I am experimenting with.
There are a few topics I am really excited to dive into over the next few weeks. MyMind has released their API, which is massive. I have been using the tool for a long long time, and this dramatically changes the scope in how it can be used. I have also had some requests for specific workflows in Obsidian, so I will be sharing more of those soon also.
I will be making changes to the structure and cadence of how I post.
There will be a minimum of two posts a month:
All subscribers - this will be an article discussing a particular topic, tool, workflow or use case.
Premium subscribers - this will be a video deep dive on the same topic, walking through specific implementations or use cases.
Often the best way to explain is by showing, however videos take me a long time to create which is why I am keeping this as a premium benefit.
I have lofty goals for The Thinkers Club, and would love at some point to start bringing other people into the mix - whether it is looking at how other people are using specific tools or to get different perspectives on topics.
The Future of Everyday Obsidian
I created Everyday Obsidian a few years ago now. The motivation was mainly frustration from the lack of accessible content around using Obsidian as a daily note-taking tool. Many people I had spoken to at the time, thought it was a complex tool solely for PhD’s, researchers or engineers when that isn’t the case at all and I wanted to show this.
It was much more successful than I ever could have imagined. However I realised that a static video course is not necessarily the best medium for sharing the type of content I wanted to put out into the world. I created lessons for the course, and they would quite quickly come outdated, which lead me to losing confidence in what I put out there.
The Thinkers Club and how I have proposed to release content is in my opinion a much more efficient and effective way. Being able to release something each month, and staying on top of all of the changes that are happening across our little niche allows me to be much more fluid.
As a result, I will be deprecating Everyday Obsidian over the next few months. If you have purchased the course, you should already have lifetime access to premium of this Substack. I know there are people still waiting for updates and to see how the course develops, and the things you were waiting for will be shared on here.
congrats on becoming a girl dad! 🎉