DeveloPassion's Newsletter #174 - Aftermath
Sébastien Dubois
I help pros turn information into insight, freeing up 10+ hours/week. Trusted by 1,000+ happy customers ❤️
Welcome
Another week, another newsletter! I hope that you all had a great one 🤩
This week I've resumed my Knowledge Management coaching sessions, and it's been a blast. I always have a ton of fun exchanging ideas, tips, and tricks about PKM and Obsidian.
I've also had fun launching the Obsidian Starter Kit on Product Hunt. More on this in The Lab section!
Alright, let's gooooo 🚀
The lab 🧪
As I've announced before, last week I launched the Obsidian Starter Kit on Product Hunt. It was my first launch, and even though I didn't make it to the top of the ladder, I think I did all right.
I did my best to promote the launch everywhere I could:
In total, we managed to 57 upvotes and 18 comments/testimonials:
Since the launch, we have now reached 92 followers, and 15 reviews:
Launching on Product Hunt had a positive impact on different levels:
Moreover, the product page will remain online on Product Hunt's Website:
This is also interesting, because it will continue to drive traffic to the product, and to my own website. That's a long-term SEO benefit.
Last but not least, it's possible to launch the same product multiple times on the platform, meaning that I could try it again later (e.g., after each major release).
I've learned a few lessons with the first launch. I shared those on X:
PS: The launch promotion will remain active until the end of August. You can get a 25% on the Obsidian Starter Kit, using the following code: xorertt 🎉🎉🎉
Business
No real progress since the last edition. We're still at $112 per month:
You are 19 paid members out of 1701 members. And you guys are my real true fans, then top 1% ❤️.
If you care about what I do, then don't hesitate to show it.
New articles
I've published a short piece about how to assemble new pieces of content by reusing your existing notes:
It's a really straightforward process. The more notes you have at your disposal, the more pathways there are through your knowledge base, and the more content you can create.
Notes of the week
I've started centralizing information about Obsidian on the following note:
My goal is to create a hub of information about Obsidian, sharing useful links, recommendations, and best practices.
I've also published various other notes this week, for instance about learning curves, the forgetting curve, the spacing effect, and spaced repetition.
Quotes of the week
Recommended by LinkedIn
Thinking and learning
If you're new to Knowledge Management, then you might be interested in my recent thread:
I stumbled this interesting taxonomy for tracking people using Obsidian:
It's something that I do heavily in my own vault and in the Obsidian Starter Kit, but I could probably take a few ideas out of that article to improve my approach.
I currently distinguish between "persons" and "contacts", because contacts are people I actually know, meet, and exchange with. As such, I record more information about them (both personal and professional). I'm okay publishing notes about persons, but I keep contact notes to myself.
Some ideas: track interactions with contacts, and add reminders to re-engage with contacts, for birthdays, special occasions, etc
The "Folders vs Tags" debate will never end:
I'm still in love with the Johnny Decimal system. I'm not a zealot, but seeing neatly organized folders everywhere makes me feel good:
Bob Doto's explanation of what permanent notes are:
I deeply agree with the following article. More people should use Markdown:
Is progressive summarization as recommended by Tiago Forte, good or bad?
Fun stuff
I've decided to add this section to discuss a bit more about my learning experiments...
This week, I've started exploring FLUX.1, a new image generation model developed by Black Forest Labs. It's able to generate amazing and hyper realistic images. Interestingly, it's also capable of generating text much better than other models I've tried before. Last but not least, it can be fine-tuned to generate very specific images (e.g., pictures of you doing various things in various places 😂)
For this experiment, I've decided to use Replicate.com, and their JavaScript/TypeScript API, as shown in this example. The end result is a React/Next.js/Prime React/Tailwind application that I have deployed on Vercel:
This application enables me to generate images using the FLUX.1 model through Replicate's infrastructure. The source code is available on GitHub, but I wouldn't say that this is a good example 😂
Next up, I plan to create an Obsidian plugin for Replicate. My idea is to make it a breeze to generate images (or text) using different models, right from Obsidian, for instance by selecting a line of text in the editor and by invoking a command or context menu entry 🚀.
I also want to create fine-tuned versions of the model for my own needs, following this tutorial:
About Sébastien
I am Sébastien Dubois. You can follow me on X) 🐦
I am an author, founder, and coach. I write books and articles about Knowledge Work, Personal Knowledge Management, Note-taking, Lifelong Learning, Personal Organization, and Zen Productivity. I also craft lovely digital products . You can learn more about my projects here. If you want to follow my work, then become a member.
Ready to get to the next level?
To embark on your Knowledge Management journey, consider investing in resources that will equip you with the tools and strategies you need. You can start by exploring the concepts and best practices with my Knowledge Management course 🔥.
Then, check out the Obsidian Starter Kit and the accompanying video course. It will give you a rock-solid starting point for your note-taking and Knowledge Management efforts.
If you want to take a more holistic approach, then the Knowledge Worker Kit is for you. It covers PKM, but expands into productivity, personal organization, project/task management, and more:
If you are in a hurry, then do not hesitate to book a coaching session with me: