What is a bucket

Buckets. Every bucket is a topic to be explored later by someone working on a “Seed”. I’ve created a few to start based on the discussions that happen on the recurrent calls, but there’s no limit here. Buckets require no maintenance per say - all that is desired is that people throw in there anything interesting that is in some way related to the topic.

Everyone can and should create buckets, let’s not worry about figuring out the typology of this right now, just be immediate and impulsive. Saw something interesting? Throw it in a bucket.

We want the hoarders to shine here, in opposition to the librarian or the archivist. Don’t worry about categories or organising anything, just feed the machine. Be greedy and collect all that catches your eye. Anything can spark something.

What goes in a bucket

Tweets of yours or others, screenshots, recorded rants, links, entire movies, songs, illustrations, pdfs, books - whatever can help the future content on that topic be developed, goes. Past or present, the goal here is accumulation.

Forming Seeds (Longform content)

Produce a longform piece. → Must contain a thesis that advances the issue.

(Not cause it’s called “long” doesn’t mean boring or too long.)

This piece doesn’t necessarily need to be posted. It becomes a springboard for the formation of derivative pieces of content addressing the same topic. It acts as a seed to be mined until its insight has populated the funnel and its resulting engagement, conversations and conversions (or possible backlash) have been analyzed and understood. Then, the seed can and should be expanded.

A finished Seed is a piece of longform content, most often text, that contains a defined thesis. It’s not necessarily meant for posting in its entire form, but it anchors the result of the work on a topic. It can keep growing, dynamically as the topic gets explored - as a “topic bible”.

It can become a form of cataloguing a debate - honestly, as long as impulse is processed into some form of expressed fact, we are already winning.

Let’s imagine that we’ve accumulated a lot of call recordings, articles, screenshots, memes into a topic bucket called “The Future of Development Teams” and from there one Bard facilitate creation of a Seed, meaning a longform piece of text of an organised, sensical thesis of how RaidGuild believes devs can survive and thrive in the age of AI.

With that finished Seed in hand, the bards now have a new beginning. It’s time to get things ready for prime time.

How to work on content

Here’s a little fractal we want to abide by:

Identify the benefit -> Frame the utility -> To whom/where/when -> Express it as simply as you can.

This applies to every piece, but also to every paragraph or unit of expression that forms a piece.

Basically the idea here is that, at the beginning of the process and also at any point that things feel lost you can rely on this simple structure to guide the creation steps. Or the untangling of a confused piece.

The same can apply to briefing, planning or requesting the creation of a piece of content. Let’s say a duck is walking by and needs something done. If he can put his needs as clearly as this:

Help Devs Survive in the AI age -> An Article that collects useful resources -> Newsletter readers / ex-cohortees

Not only it becomes much easier to take the next step, it clearly differentiates THAT piece from this one:

Help Devs Survive in the AI age -> What we experienced in the day to day as an AI-filic devshop -> A 20m keynote to be delivered IRL

Which is also noticeably different from:

Help Devs Survive in the AI age -> How tooling affects optimal team setup and Raid Formation -> A 2h seminar and workshop for Cohort members.

And from all of these someone even came by and made a…

Help Devs Survive in the AI age -> How to combine 5 tools that make your output 10x higher -> A 30m Video lesson that can be downloaded via e-mail sign up to the Guild’s Newsletter.

This can go on, believe me. The fact that the benefit is isolated and made clear creates an engine of creation because each piece has a sender and a receiver - this tension allows us to shoot arrows that hit targets.

Don’t let your content be… a limp biscuit. Once we decide on a clear what, how and to whom, we’re cooking with gas.

Notice that as “Seeds” become other pieces, they are in themselves also “Seeds” in their own right.

Spinning off for Volume, Distribution and Magnetism.

Bro, you’re killing it with the main-course. But every meal needs its appetizers. In the stigmergy game, it doesn’t matter how good your traces are if no one gets on the path. As a rule of thumb every piece needs at least one spin off teaser or “pill” on each of the other “top of funnel” channels.

Please take into account always:

• Twitter
• Newsletter Section
• Discord message
• Short form video

People not only judge a book by its cover. Most people will only ever see the cover. Powerful people have to live significant portions of their lives based on “cover judgements”. As a default filter they use heuristics to absorb what’s relevant to their role and make decisions with incomplete understanding. So please, put the benefit first. Then… offer avenues to deepen the context and drive them down the funnel.

Its core message as directly as it can to its laziest reader first.

Then… offer avenues to deepen the context and drive them DOWN the funnel.

Objective:

• Educate!
• Entertain!
• Elevate!

\Nothing else matters. Ignore parentheses and side quests.

Isolate the Value
Frame the Utility
Deliver it to someone
Making the consumption easy / desirable (format or channel accessible)

Every tagline, every paragraph, every piece of content or proposal should communicate its core message as directly as it can to its laziest reader first.

Content Lifecycle

Production Process

Seeds
→ Early tweets
→ Invitations / conversations
→ Long form published (article / video)

From long form → Polished shorts (tweets / video)

Polished collaborations:

• Talks – events
• Product offers
• Education offers

Produce (free or paid) → Qualified leads

The “Funnel”

Spinning off, harder.

Have what now?

• Tweets
• Video long
• Video shorts
• Spaces & other online events
• IRL talks and broadcasts
• Plenums and symposiums
• Further conferences or hackathons
• Actual offers or products

Produce (free or paid) → Qualified leads

Value → Utility → to someone → expressed as simply as you can

Summary

Bucket fragments → Long-form Seed → Distribution Derivatives → Offers → Qualified leads.

Start with a topic or theme.

Collect:

• Observations
• Research
• Ecosystem signals
• Audio, video, DAO discussions

Store it in a topic bucket.

From there:

Produce one long-form piece with a clear thesis that advances the issue.

This long-form piece is not the goal.

It is the seed.

The seed generates:

• Tweets
• Shorts
• Threads
• Spaces
• Talks
• Events
• Offers
• Products

The seed is mined until insight has populated the funnel and generated:

• Engagement
• Conversations
• Conversions
• Feedback

Go forth and multiply.

There's more:

bardschool.