What we did in July and August

Hello everyone, how are you doing? Our summer has flown by. Here's your semi-regular recap of all we've been up to.

New blogs

Emma wrote a deep dive on the trials and tribulations of juggling accessibility in complex client projects.

Accessibility: complexity and contradictions in graphic design

Accessibility is a vital and increasingly recognised component of all design practice. But what does accessibility actually mean, what happens with accessibility requirements contradict one another, and how can graphic designers learn about accessibility implementation?

Geeks for Social ChangeEmma Charleston

Kim published two pieces, one about their experiences as an activist using consensus decision making, and another about their life in music and how they finally cancelled their Spotify subscription.

Consensus decision making sucks

Oscar Wilde once wrote that “the problem with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings”. Possibly there is no greater culprit for these lost evenings than the scourge of consensus decision making, Kim vents.

Geeks for Social ChangeDr Kim Foale

Out, damn Spotify!

Much like Lady Macbeth, Kim has found herself sleepwalking in her enormous castle unclear how she ended up covered in blood (by indirectly funding a military drone company). Read on to discover how she rid herself of Spotify and rediscovered her love of music, albeit with a distinct lack of witches.

Geeks for Social ChangeDr Kim Foale

We also met a new author, Ava!

Hello, I’m Ava!

Meet our newest author, Ava. She can solve a Rubik’s cube in under a minute, host a comedy show, and have an anxiety attack on demand. However, the Labour party’s anti-trans moral crusade means she is planning on emigrating with these in-demand skills and starting a career as a developer.

Geeks for Social ChangeAva Riverside

Finally we interviewed Andy from the Mastodon Foundation about the Fediverse's poster child. Do you have a project you'd like us to profile? Do get in touch!

Community Spotlight: Mastodon

Kim caught up with Andy, Mastodon’s new comms lead, for a chat about the Fediverse’s poster child. Find out more about the future of the project, how they feel about Bluesky, and how you can get involved.

Geeks for Social ChangeDr Kim Foale

Livestream and podcast

Sean and Kim hosted our second livestream on the history of PlaceCal, which is now up on our YouTube! If you use YouTube and are able to give us a subscription that would be a huge help, a lot of YouTube's features only unlock at 100 subscribers and we are a fair way off.

We've also uploaded this as a podcast to most major podcast platforms, just search "The Geeks for Social Change Podcast", or find the link to Spotify below. We'll be adding more episodes in the coming months.

While we were here we also uploaded our section of The Tech People Want conference to our YouTube.

Website updates

Various people told us it wasn't clear that we were looking for donations, where they go to or what we do, which, fair enough!! We've now set up a dedicated page for this explaning more about our mission and current financial picture, and updated our About Us page with our interim structure. Needless to say we are currently entirely reader-supported so if you enjoy this content and want to keep it coming please do consider a one-off or regular subscription.

Thanks everyone for reading, until next time!

Kim and the GFSC team

PS. Petra has released an entire free video art summer school on their own website – go and check it out!