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Ash Mann

📍 Sweden

The rotten cult of busy-ness (part 1 of 2: the problem)

Why are we always so busy and when will it stop? This reflection explores the cultural, structural, and personal dynamics that sustain busyness in the cultural sector, and the cost of never having time to think.

This week's best things

Community-building for digital folks, responsible AI, magical summer questions, learning from failure, the future of essays, Greg’s fridge, Art UK’s quiet triumph, knowing machines, Glastonbury at scale, r/preformances, and Wiki Radio.

Rewatch Beyond the Promise webinar #3 - building a culture of reflection (with Tash Willcocks)

This final session brings the series to a close by focusing on how teams learn from failure.

This week's best things

Influencer-led accessibility stories, the end of onedayism, hoarding pre-AI content, mobile vs TV, quitting wisely, AI’s brain impact, hybrid theatre, monopoly inertia, team tools, digital readiness, arts pay, and a brutal 1910 Tour de France, plus books, podcasts, and Anohni.

Thinking about a new community for people doing digital work

Is there value in an interdisciplinary digital community for the cultural sector? I hosted a session to find out. Here’s what we learned and where it might go next.

Three types of hybrid experience

A simple framework for understanding and talking about hybrid cultural experiences: Simultaneous, Layered, and Embedded. And why shared language helps teams be clearer about what they’re really trying to create when blending digital and physical elements.

Rewatch Beyond the Promise webinar #2 - looking at digital readiness (with Chris Unitt)

In this session, we dig into what it really means to be digitally ready and why that readiness matters more than any single tool or tactic.

This week's best things

AI-friendly Hollywood, Artists as strategic hires, questioning funding models, fixing team chat, phones without the internet, Brazil’s data rights experiment, Japan’s ‘system of systems,’ lawyers still trusting ChatGPT, decoding CEO AI hype, digital readiness webinars. Sent from the past.

Rewatch Beyond the Promise webinar #1 - exploring the report's key findings and recommendations

The first in a series of three webinars which aim to unpack the findings of the Beyond the Promise research into digital failure. In this session I explained the background and context for this work, the main findings, introduced the tools I have developed, and shared six recommendations for better