I’m going to start publishing a weekly digest post that will come out on Sunday mornings. The post will be an attempt for me to make sense of some of what I’ve read during the week. It will likely have a strong focus on generative AI and language models as well as other topics related to artificial intelligence, as well as more general higher and professional education topics.
I’ve tried publishing weekly digests in the past but have always let the idea go for one reason or another. My earliest attempt was ‘no-friction’, and was basically an automated process for aggregating everything I’d tweeted that week (example). I stopped doing that when it started feeling like I was spamming my followers with low-value information.
More recently I tried a higher-friction approach, where I manually wrote the post in WordPress, adding content to the online draft as I came across it. At the end of the week I’d include an excerpt and a comment (example) before posting. But this was inconvenient and sustainable. It also felt a bit arbitrary, like a disconnected list. Which, I suppose, it was.
But I still like the idea of collecting things and trying to make sense of them, so this is what I’m trying now. During the week I’ll capture short pieces in my daily notes based on reading or activity from that day. And the end of the week I’ll review some of what I’ve collated and write a narrative around it, trying to make sense of it in my own mind. The post may include stuff I’ve already posted, either as a full post or a comment in the stream, but in these cases I’ll try linking it to a broader context so that it’s not just a duplicate entry.
The first digest post is scheduled for tomorrow morning. If you like the idea, consider subscribing to the blog. If you read it and find that it’s useful, please let me know in the comments.