On Bringing New Audiences | Saturday 20 September 2025
Writing accoutrements: a refurbished woollen rug rescued from a charity shop for ten pounds. Comfortingly heavy and soft it has a few holes through use, and a tiny printed name label - A D Wells - in red letters on a white ground, carefully sewn in one corner. My Waterman fountain pen from 1986.
It's an autumnal September day, overcast, slight drizzle, English weather. I suspect it is warmer out than in. I fancied a steak dinner - unusual for me - and I'll break into my £105 savings from my hearthealthy no-buy month to finance it.
I'm testing out my Waterman fountain pen, bought for me as a present in December 1986 - I have the certificate. It's languished for years in my writing case, but finally, this week, I found a UK supplier of the necessary short International Ink cartridges. I bought blue and Intense Noir, and a bottle of Mysterious Blue ink for good measure.
Handwriting slows you down and that's just what I needed today, my head agog with tender proposals for the Expert Reference Group and the Workforce Development Strategy. Time for some calming down and creative distraction.
Finally, this week (obviously a week for getting things done), I set up my three new Hive accounts, ready for the next stage, after I retire in six weeks from now.
The idea behind all three is to create outward facing content to attract an audience from outside Hive.
(Hivers may support me, I am not proud - but the idea is to create content that attracts consumers who come for the content primarily, rather than the crypto).
I will create a landing page for each one (a 'welcome' page with an introduction to the content, how to navigate and near the bottom a section about Hive, why I chose it as the platform and how to become involved).
I'm hoping @ meno with the @ snapie account and app will crack the riddle of an easy access to Hive for commenting and voting without (immediately) having to take on the whole of Hive or feeling compelled to be a creator.
There will be a QR code for each landing page, which I can have printed in material form, probably on an A6 postcard, and can distribute freely as I go about my everyday life.
There might also be stickers, I haven't decided yet.
The accounts:
@over60health - lifestyle medicine - this has grown out of my recent hearthealthy no-buy month challenge.
@mortgagedland - fine art practice - growing out of my interest in psychogeography and flaneurie, and my current obsession with Chistopher Marlowe and Deptford Strand. Sketchbook and portfolio.
@taintedlove - fragments and essays, writing, maybe stories, spontaneous prose, prose poetry and creative non-fiction.
I've kept the same banner and avatar across the three accounts and this one: @mortgagedland and @taintedlove might have a crossover.
Once this year is over, and the crypto cycle has settled down, I'll finish funding them and start to add work.
Three pages: that's enough!
Curiously, I found myself wanting to comment and annotate as I was transcribing. It could get very meta.
The first post in this series:
On Liminal Spaces | Saturday 13 September 2025
I love the idea! The Art piece that I will putting in a gallery next week has two qr codes that link back to hive for the thought process and methodology that went into the piece, because part from the inside of my head, hive is where I do, and document a lot of my thinking.
That's a great idea - it starts to be an interative process!
Then there's the final post about the presentation of the work in the gallery - which I am working on now, and will go live on the day the exhibition opens. :)
Regarding the management of your accounts - you can set the other accounts to proxy back to your main account, so when you change witness / DHF votes and do other governance activities, all your account power moves as one.
You can do that in keychain.
I feel like I have been retired since April this year, but that's just unemployment. :P I've still got a few years of work ahead of me, if all goes well.
Yeah, the whole process!
Governance - already set up. I'll have the power of the Hive Power, if nothing else! 😂
Hope it does go well. I've been waiting a long time.
Looking forward to seeing what you do with it. Once we're done with work (or are able to take a break), my wife and I will be London bound, I must go back to the TATE Britain to see the Pre-Raphaelites before I die.
We were going to honeymoon there, but covid stuck a fork in that plan, and we renovated the kitchen with the funds instead. :D There are so many awesome people from the UK on Hive.
😁
I've had two great conversations with starkerz and guiltyparties. They both seem to think Snapie can be part of that win for us. Starkerz is going to help us incorporate video uploads with 3speak directly into Snapie, but using a S3 bucket for reliability (more like youtube) in the middle. And gp is talking about making an onboarding mechanism with Snapie: Snap a QR, creates your account, downloads Snapie - that sort of thing.
So... I think the planets are being aligned as we speak.
Fab, and looks like it will be perfect timing. Snapie is so easy to use.
I have no idea what a S3 bucket is 😂
If you are curious... but TLDR: Amazon storing the video files for us.
lol - that's all I needed to know, thank you.
I love things like that. Even just holding them in my hands and looking closely feels special. It’s like they carry the energy collected over the years — from people, time, or the weather... ✨
And those are some great plans and ideas for developing the Hive network for retirement! I hope to learn something from you in the future — if you manage to pull it off. And I’m sure you will! 🙌
Hello, how lovely to see you! How are you?
Yes, six weeks until retirement, so happy! 😍
The way you're talking about the pen is how I feel about the blanket from the charity shop, I feel it's probably older than my pen 😂
Hi — glad I’m still remembered 🙂 I’m slowly coming back to Hive and once again realising how much I missed you all... For now I’m commenting, but posting will be the next step. I think it’ll happen soon.
Oh yes, that can happen with anything that catches your eye at first glance and then sinks into your soul after just a few seconds of using it. 🙂
👍
Love the concept of creative distraction. Using the hands as a vessel for creativity. I resonate well with the feeling of hand writing thoughts down on a piece of paper, letting the process out, step by step. Very tangible and fulfilling compared to writing on a device :)
Yes, and quite tiring, so you sort your thoughts out. Typing there is so much opportunity for revisions. Will you try the handwritten community? 🙂
Yes, I'll join the community and give it a try. Thanks!
Well, you've got me hooked. And I've just started following one of your three new accounts. I like people who have ideas about Hive, especially because for some of us it can be “complicated” to navigate this terrain and we've had to learn through the prehistoric “trial and error” method. Oh, writing by hand not only relieves stress, it also helps us commit things to memory better: an exercise in memorization. Best regards and good luck. I'll be keeping an eye out.✍🏻
Oh, that will be a strange novelty have people in my following list who are here on Hive and active 😂 I hope you enjoy! 😍
That is one fine pen! a bit more refined than the simple black gel pen I carry.. :P
I love gel pens! They must be my favourite, but I thought I should use the fountain pen as I had it. How are you?
all good. :) I used to carry a tactical pen around and even held it threateningingly once..
Oh my!
:P I didn't use it. just held it. :P
😂
I'm well jeal that you are retiring .Best of luck with it. Best of lucj with the 3 accounts. for the @over60health. Check out "why frozen bread is better for you" 😃
Yeah, I haven't got out the door yet 😂
Frozen bread - is that about resistant starch or something?
It changes the composition of the bread to make it healthier . Had this posh health check done the other day and it’s the first I heard of it but it’s a thing
posh health check? I have the run of the mill nhs ones and I have to say they've gone downhill. Used to get half an hour with a nurse with lots of advice. Now it's a phone call from a pharmacist saying we want to put you on drugs.
I'll remember the tip about freezing bread!
Look up mareto 80/20 Cashel . It would be worth the hop over the pond . 😀
It would be great to propose bringing in people who consume our content. I support your project and wish you great results. I love your pen; it's too old for me, hehe.
I am learning to handwrite again!
Súper
Very, very nice! I actually read this a couple days ago and didn't have time to respond. The real world can keep me busier than I like at times. Congratulations on the impeding retirement, that's quite an accomplishment!
Waterman makes great products, I own a couple myself although I don't use them much anymore. Like most people my handwriting has skills have gone downhill thanks to keyboarding and voice recognition. But you are correct, it makes you slow down and think more clearly when you write things out. I often find keyboarding that my fingers get ahead of the brain... Must be dementia setting in!
Those tree projects are admirable and I hope it helps attract more people for content. There are a lot of us here for the crypto side, but it would be nice to have some new creators with new content! It's always a challenge to onboard new folks, starting here is very hard because you don't earn much at the start. If I can help out in any way feel free to ask!
It's more about attracting consumers - people who enjoy content but don't necessarily want to do more than comment (or just read). They could invest, maybe the price of a paperback book once a month, and earn through consuming/curating. Most of us don't write for external audience, we're only talking to each other.
That would involve changing writing styles to be more non specific which is very doable. We do tend to write toward a Hive specific audience, I do agree. The content would have to fit into those three categories, which are broad enough to gain an audience. The trick will be getting to that external audience, that sounds like a fun challenge!
The trick my be getting enough creators focusing out side of Hive, as some posts may not earn as well with the run of the mill Hive community. I could contribute with lifestyle medicine, I've just found when I've done more medical related posts they are pretty much ignored. Which is why I haven't gone back to those in some time!
Yeah, I guess more non Hive-specific 😍
The arty ones are for me anyway, if anyone reads them that would be a bonus 😂
But the over60health I think there might be an audience for and I can see myself going back to being a softsoap outreach worker as my friend called me years ago.
But it's all an experiment, so we'll see.
I'm going to have to have a read of your old posts now!
Thank you for the support, appreciated!
I did scroll back in your profile looking for medical posts but it must have been a long time ago! What sorts of things were you writing about?
I tried a couple of subject, but not on a technical medical side, more personal. I could definitely write up some things about subjects that would interest older readers. The sad part is I'm one of them now too... I like your idea, and I think sharing some material that's easily understandable to an outside audience is not only a good idea, but a great one. I'll be glad to help out and see how I do. I'm more established now in Hive so I may get more support this time around with a change in focus on some posts!
Cool. I'm working on the tagging architecture so that it should end up a useful, searchable repository. I'm thinking I might look at using the curation tool as a search tool on the blog, because you can have more than one variable. It's a while since I followed that up, so I need to check the latest state of play.
Keep me updated, I'll start brainstorming some topics and writing them down!
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I saw taintedlove and immediately Soft Cell and Marc Almond popped into my head. Thank you Shani I have my inspiration for my threetunetuesday post.
That is fun and I like your thinking. It is fun writing for a non Hive audience, but the engagement isn't there for me, nor votes if truth be told on Hive.
Great to see you getting loaded up for things to do in 6 weeks!
Tainted Love is a great song, I looked up its evolution, there were several between the original and the Soft Cell definitive version.
I understand what you are saying about engagement, but if we keep doing same old, same old, nothing is going to change. We're just going to keep talking and voting for ourselves and Hive will stumble along. It's a version of "taking in each other's washing". Somehow, we have to find ways of bridging the structural holes between different networks and communities of people. It's in those spaces, in the interstices, that creativity generates new wealth.
And anyway, I'll still have this account and will go on sporadically publishing. 😁
From what I have observed in 4 years on Hive, the powers that be do want any change!
We are putting together channels and accounts for Mrs T about yarn and being American in the UK etc... we were generally chatting and I asked about the Hive account. She said why should she? I actually struggle to give her one positive reason, apart from that it would give her practice creating content. That is the problem for retaining users.
That's fine, there's some people it won't appeal to or who don't have any need for it. Is it critical or necessary to have a censorship proof account or to own your data to write about being an American in the UK? Possibly not, and I expect a lot of people will feel like that. That's okay, too.
Yes its horses for courses and all that. As long as people have fun doing whatever they do wherever they do it.
Hello, @shanibeer
The image of your Waterman fountain pen caught my eye, as I also have a similar one that I haven't used yet. Yours is red and black lacquer, while mine is emerald green and black.
I haven't written by hand in a while. Everything seems to be digital these days. I'll most likely follow your example and de-stress with recreational handwriting.
On the other hand, I'm confident you'll have great success with your new Hive accounts to promote the ecosystem beyond rewards.
Greetings.
Fabulous! What date do you have on your certificate? Mine is 18 December 1986. I have found handwriting so interesting for ordering your thoughts. Do you think writing by hand would make a difference to your story telling?
When I bought it, almost two decades ago, I didn't have the seller fill out the fountain pen certificate. So I couldn't tell you the year of manufacture, but I suspect it's only slightly newer than yours.
I have several American fountain pens: Parker, Cross, and Sheaffer. As well as European ones, such as Montblanc and Lamy. Before I retired, I always carried one of them around. Back then, I was seen as a weirdo, since most people used cheap, corporate-style pens. Now that I'm at home most of the time, the keyboard has become the preferred writing interface. I've even considered dictating the fictions I usually share on social media into my smartphone, but I'm still very hesitant.
Would writing by hand affect my current writing?
It certainly would. Perhaps, at first, it would slow down my pace, but I sense that, like a chess player, each letter, word, and paragraph would acquire greater quality. Of course, in the end, I'd have to rewrite it or scan it with an OCR and edit it to avoid errors in the process. Well, with good, clear handwriting, that wouldn't be a problem.
Going back over the steps doesn't sound bad at all!