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Ash Mann

📍 Sweden

From ideas to pilots: shaping a digital community for the cultural sector

We’re shaping a new digital community for the cultural sector, moving from identifying gaps to testing small, practical pilots.

This week's best things

Anonymous curators at Apple Music Classical, a zero-click AI vulnerability, the illusion of alignment in digital projects, crowdsourced visioning at the National Gallery, Excel as esport, and what playgrounds reveal about gender and space. Plus: shoes, stoops, and Karel Gott.

The illusion of alignment

Misalignment in digital projects often hides behind surface-level agreement. Cultural norms like politeness, power imbalance, and rushed decision-making lead to fragile consensus. Real alignment takes trust, open challenge, and shared definitions before delivery, not after.

This week's best things

Chatbots, controversy, and what a viral side project might tell us about tech and trust in museums. Plus: open working, age verification, digital experiments, and AI that browses for you. Also: I’m planning a new community space and finally started Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar.

This week's best things

Why artists matter to tech, the unexpected power of boredom, and a new AI tool made for the heritage sector. Plus: trees, cybersecurity, detox camps, and chocolate bar nostalgia. I read Wired, Heffernan, and Turnbull so you don’t have to. Also I saw a play and bought more books.

Practical habits for experimentation

Experimentation can help cultural organisations make smarter decisions, faster without big risks. This piece shares 11 practical behaviours for building an experimentation mindset, even in stretched teams with limited time, budget, or digital confidence.

This week's best things

Helsinki’s epic library, future storytellers, museum memory in wartime Ukraine, resisting busy-ness, the protective value of good ux, media’s traffic apocalypse, Medium's turnaround, foggy governance, Apple UI frost, sustainable comms, and a (new) podcast on building (real) things.

The rotten cult of busy-ness (part 2 of 2: some solutions)

A follow-up to Part 1 on the cult of busyness, this piece shares small, practical ways to push back against overload from rethinking delegation to making ‘no’ a strategic act. Cultural change starts with what we normalise, protect, and prioritise.

This week's best things

A radio station in a sauna, Google's AI future, resisting busy-ness, memory molecules, ADHD web design, disappearing content, digital burnout, cultural website sustainability, coolness decoded, AI clean-up crews, and one very 80s synthpop video.