Why I'm hiding from LinkedIn

9 years ago I wrote a post on a blog my friends ran, about how frustrating it is to run local events and get people to come back. I wrote it angry and I waved away my editors’ concerns about my own reputation because I wanted my frustration to be palpable.

I’m thinking about that post as I embark on my next project, but before I do that I should explain why I’m hoping LinkedIn doesn’t see this, while at the same time craving their eyeballs.

I start a lot of things

I have lots of ideas, and I flatter myself that quite a few of them are good ones. But a good idea won’t always be successful… in fact history suggests the opposite.

A couple of months after I posted that screed about running events, I had a good idea which led to another good idea which led to me building a podcast hosting platform (yes I’m banging on about that again, but not for long, I promise).

I really don’t know why it succeeded. It was a good idea, but also the climate was right. It was disruptive enough at a time when there was a small community that word could get around.

I took it as far as I could and then I had a string of ideas I thought would be just as good. One of them turned out to be a pretty bad idea, and I’m wearing it like a badge of shame… hence hiding from LinkedIn.

You see, I had a plan

Some time in February I was watching a TV show where a special, non-celebrity guest gets picked out and given a stage to perform on. This person ran a community choir but had never made it as a singer.

I long ago abandoned any hopes of becoming a successful musician (I’m OK, I just don’t have what it takes), but I did think that running a little choir of sorts would be fun, and just the right sort of community project I‘d been searching for.

Within a few hours a new idea was born. It was a good one, but completely unproven.

Part of it hinged on the creeping notion that the unhappy state of the world was due in large part to a lack of connection. The pandemic had snuffed out my desire to be in meat space, and my podcast hosting business served people around the world, so “local” held no interest… nothing happens in Birmingham, anyway. At least, that’s what I’d decided.

Let’s put a pin in that and talk about my day job

Since the sale of my podcast hosting company I’d been eking out a living – and I do mean eking – as a podcast editor, producery, consultantish coachlike sort. I got – and get – to work with lovely humans who are trying to help other humans.

I’m pretty detail-focused as an editor, and it’s not easy work. It’s tough on the eyes (as it involves messing with transcripts) and it can be draining on the brain. OK it’s really not digging a ditch, but it’s long and laborious work, because the style of editing I do is quite detailed and unlike a lot of work of its kind.

And if I’m completely honest, it’s not the direction I expected my long-term career to be going. I felt not quite like a craftsperson, but not a mercenary either.

So, this plan then

The idea for the singing group led to a wider sense of purpose. I remembered how much the world outside had to offer. Yes there be dragons, yes there be disappointment and heartbreak and awkward conversations and coffee stains and late arrivals and sweaty palms.

But also you can’t box up the feeling of connecting with an audience or a group of people and share it via Zoom.

So I started plotting a course back to my roots as someone who built stuff on the Internet, for people who did stuff in the real world. It’s what I did for a good chunk of my pre-freelance life, and it’s something that gave me a sense of joy and purpose.

And then I got this email.

It came from a long-ago acquaintance and it came off the back of some concerning thoughts I’d been having about the viability of this plan.

You see, in the time that I spent away from building WordPress and Django websites for venues, radio stations, and other community projects, the landscape had shifted, and is still shifting.

I’m seeing more and more organisations move away from custom-built websites where all the tech is manually tied together with handwritten code, and to platforms where the underlying tech is all taken care of.

And to be honest, that’s probably how it should be. It’s 2025; we don’t need to reinvent the universe every time we want to help a theatre shift tickets.

Now, I’m not saying custom websites are dead and everyone’s off to Wix. But I am thinking I don’t want to be the guy who just got good at selling pagers the day the first iPhone launched.

I’m also throwing no shade on any agencies that do this work, nor am I suggesting they’re not long for this world. They’ll do fine; it’s just tougher trying to jump back into this industry as a freelancer when you’ve been away for so long, and I do think the ground is shifting. Slowly, but it is shifting.

So we have a new problem

The trouble with a bunch of the ideas I’ve had since selling my podcast hosting business was that I wasn’t really customer #1 for those seemingly good ideas.

I started teaching people to podcast but I didn’t need my services, and I’m better at building and running platforms than I am at making content.

I started another podcast hosting product (and got called a “fucking idiot” by someone in the press, for reasons that are now all too clear), but I spread myself too thin and build too many features to 80% completion which meant I sort of hated using my own creation.

But in running C90 (my 90s-themed singing group – I told you I have good ideas! 😉) I hit on a number of problems, but one really big one, which takes us back to my original post from 2016.

It’s hard enough to get people to come to an event. But getting them to come back is a goddamn nightmare.

Reading that 2016 post back, I have compassion for the hurt 33 year-old who wrote it. He was being a self-pitying pillock, but he wasn’t entirely wrong. It’s really hard to get people to come to stuff even if they’ve come before, but it has nothing to do with cliques or algorithms, it’s because most of us aren’t good at building audiences and talking to them when we’re not running our things.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my last few years it’s how important that stuff is.

So now what?

A couple of weeks ago I took to my terminal to start work on a new coding project, and I’m building it for me: the guy who’s organising a weekly singing group and is battling with simple questions like

• Who’s coming this week?
• How many people get tickets but don’t show up?
• Of those who do show up, how many am I in contact with?
• How do I get in touch with people who might want to come at some point?
• How can I let interested people know what’s happening this week?

The current system I’m using – which you know and have almost certainly used – doesn’t make answering these questions as easy as it might, because it, and systems like it, aren’t really geared up for the way I think about community-driven events.

And by “community-driven events”, I could be talking about open mic comedy nights, walking tours, running clubs, support circles… the high-and-mighty, and the low-and-raucous.

I’m excited again. I’m excited to commit code to my repos. I’m excited to think about new ways the thing I’m building can be set apart from the competition. I’m excited to start migrating my community onto it, to press buttons and see what breaks in production.

But I’m scared

I’m scared about what people will think of “yet another pivot from Mark”. I’m scared of how much I care but how little I really know about this space. I’m scared of how long it’ll take to build up a user base, much less one that’ll pay to use it once they’ve hit the freemium limit.

I’m scared that my rationale (build the job you want since you’re unlikely to find it in this current climate) is just an excuse to bury my head in code, because I’d rather feel comfortable doing what I’m good at.

I’m scared that I’ll give up on this and I’ll end up back at square one, with not enough money and no real sense of my future.

I’m scared you’ll think I’m silly.

Some things I’m sure of

As scared as I am, I know I can code like a motherfucker. I also know that, in C90, I’ve built something people want to come back to. It took a little swallowing of pride and sucking up to the Instagram algorithm (and playing a little of the Meta ads game) to get it started, but I still get to do it on my terms, and so far it’s working – people are having a great time and I’m actually helping people.

I’m pretty sure I can build something I’ll enjoy using as the organiser of C90, and if I have a good time with it and can communicate that to others, chances are they might have a good time too.

But man there’s a lot of uncertainty. It’s a weird time to be doing anything right now. But I’ve got to do something.

So, like I say, follow along and I’ll tell you what I’m working on, what I learn, what I’m worried about, what I’m excited about. I had some really good ideas about how to market this product – it’s called Flurry, by the way – but I can’t do those and write the code and service my wonderful, patient clients and record audio guides for C90 and make sure people keep turning up and and and…

So for now I’m doing what I can. If you think anyone you know would be interested in this ramble, please do send them here… that’s probably the only way this thing’ll work.

You’re doing great. Speak soon.