Dispatch #5

We started our previous class with a discussion on “taste.” For some students, this word felt loaded, as it’s often talked about in terms of either “having it or not.” After listening to Kyle Chayka’s episode on the Ezra Klein podcast, we discussed whether taste might simply mean having an opinion informed by your own curiosities, which can be strengthened. We talked about why this word continues to trend online, and about replacing it with something else — “intuition,” as Damien Correll recently quipped on LinkedIn, or “sense of humor,” as one student offered.

The first project was due in class. The assignment was to research a previous Index Space event (our partner for the final project), considering the audience, what it responds to culturally, and identifying themes within Index’s programming. The goal was to look at individual events and then map them as a class to better understand the type of work Index supports.

This activity helped introduce students to Index’s collaborators (who often have compelling practices in technology & publishing), while also practicing research techniques. The assignment required a lot of internet sleuthing, which is a useful skill for writers, researchers, and designers. For example, it can help find new people to interview or surface current discussions as examples of how audiences are communicating online. (We also talked about being mindful with this type of research — maybe not like Sydney Sweeney in the SNL detective skit. And also as a reminder to review what you’ve posted online.)

Initially one student asked for help finding documentation from her event, saying she was having trouble finding much. I suggested she lean into what initially interested her about the topic, which was called “In Your Feelings? The Future of Yearning," and look across social media. Together we looked at the event page, the speakers’ websites, and ran an advanced LinkedIn search for the event, filtered by posts.

The student came back with an inspired presentation full of rabbit holes she followed about yearning, as well as imgs from this event. Through a deeper look on social platforms, we located a thoughtful 1-person recap of the event and a post-event microsite that had a playlist, links to some of the panelists’ other works (like Tamika Abaka-Wood’s “Dial an Ancestor” that our class loved exploring), and mementos participants made during the event. She also reached out to some of the presenters and talked to them.

The student shared she was initially skeptical about my suggestion to use LinkedIn as a research avenue, and we circled back to the idea of “taste” and bias — how perhaps it’s not about ranking things, but expanding the scope of viable options and being open-minded about what you can find and what they say. I think part of “having taste” is developing an internal compass from paying attention, and finding connections between different interests.