Rear View Mirror, 2023
From Techland™️ to Artland™️ to Social Impactland™️, here's a wrap of what DSCS did this year.
I’m writing to you from my parents’ new home in California. They moved from 30 years of life in Michigan to the slopes of Mount Diablo, swapping snow for fog. Naturally, one of the first things I did was drive them up a 3,800 foot cliff to the top of Mount Diablo for views of San Francisco, Sierra Nevada, wind farms, and vineyards.
We spent a fair amount of time reading up on the Miwok’s relationship to the mountain and its slopes. Considered the birthplace of multiple indigenous communities, over 25 tribal groups have—and continue to—call these lands their home. It turns out my parents’ home is surrounded by a new historic state park with sites that date back to human activity 7,000 years ago; active reclamation efforts will allow both the public to see this history and native communities to reclaim relationship to these lands. (Let’s see what the future holds, my fellow cautious optimistics.)
I start 2023’s Rear View Mirror here because, as I age, I’ve realized the strength and power of knowing where you are, who it knows, and what it’s seen. The land, like us, keeps the score. It keeps me grounded and gives me a direction. Funny how billions of living things live pretty well without a compass.
The land also became a through line at DSCS in 2023. We scaled down our number of clients in order to work more closely with fewer, paving the path from the ground up to the heights of their wildest dreams. It’s helped me see how DSCS is, at its core, a consultancy that scales cultural work. Design ops, community strategy, crowdfunding, editorial, communications—they’re the tools we use to ensure good work impacts more than just a few. The trail we’ve been on, it seems, led us to here all along.
Below, I’ve highlighted a few of the projects DSCS has helped scale this year. Major gratitude to our clients, our readers, and our supporters.
Folding artists and writers into social impact
The founders of GivingTuesday turned to DSCS to help sketch out the next phase of their newest initiative, Share Our America. The initiative looks to fundamentally retrain Americans’ ability to listen to and work with people who disagree with them, especially in communities with low civic health and deep divisions across race, politics, and economic opportunity.
Over the past year, DSCS reevaluated Share Our America’s internal management systems, including rebuilding their Notion, building a Hubspot, and launching a Monday.com project management system. We also reworked their external materials, website, and decks, and built a system for staffing, including pitching and hiring a Field Director and help across communications and design functions. But a personal crowning achievement to me is folding artists and writers into the work of a social impact organization. From hiring Kate Levy to craft short films on Share Our America’s work in Tennessee to Kate Bernyk building a communications plan and Blakey Bessire redesigning our deck, DSCS leveraged our network of artists and creatives to ensure the path forward is clean, direct, informed, and set for success.
Since DSCS started with Share Our America, they’ve moved from one gathering of a dozen participants in Chadron, Nebraska to over 40 across six states and a thousand participants. It’s also proven to unlock relationships and friendships that have moved policy forward. Black and Brown students in Pennsylvania and the law enforcement redefined safety, giving students a direct voice on how and if law enforcement show up on their campus; LGBTQ+ organizers in Chattanooga used Share Our America to feel heard, align, and take action in their community after a threatening year of bans; and Memphis organizers built direct connections between previously incarcerated individuals and urban developers to shuffle who has a say in urban planning. We’re looking forward to seeing who else uses Share Our America as an offering to rebuild trust and rethink policies that build a more connected and considerate world.
“Just be real”
I hosted the first Practices After Capitalism talk with Rad Pereira with Anticapitalism for Artists. Our conversation at the People’s Forum was attended by over 90 people off and online, and it’s archived over on their website in case you missed it or want to re-listen.
One of the moments that’s stuck with me was Rad discussing how they approach work that falls into the “capitalistic bucket,” like acting gigs. They recommend “just being real” when it comes to taking these types of gigs, especially if they are to pay the bills or pay for other, more radical work that builds the world we really want to live in. The framework resonates with a metaphor I’ve used at DSCS to support my work as an artist. With DSCS, I’m able to take on work across sectors—and get paid enough to invest in projects that archive the techno community’s roots and origins or revive Pagan femme holidays. It’s also about embracing the role I play as an initiator and caretaker of cultural work. That’s why, whether or not you have an ongoing art practice, support the work being made today. Donate. Invest. Ensure it flourishes. Without it, we’ll be chained to the feed forever.
AI now, AI later
DSCS tackled editorial work with Primary VC this year as founders and funders discussed the future of artificial intelligence across industries. One interview in particular has stuck with me for months between Partner Brian Schechter and Co-Founder and CEO of Fixie.ai Matt Welsh whose app is translating people’s plain language ideas to functioning prototypes with databases, mockups, and workflows.
Matt discussed how he sees AI working alongside human coders and designers—and how the two of them aren’t too different after all:
We may end up treating AI models the same way we treat the employees we hire. If I hire someone to be a UX designer on my team, or a product manager, or a salesperson, I have to assess their ability to perform certain tasks in certain ways. But do I expect them to always do it the same way? No. Do I absolutely expect [they’ll never make a mistake]? I mean, there's no way to guarantee any of these things. So instead, what you do is you build processes around that so that you hopefully mitigate the negative impact of such likelihoods. And I tend to think we're going to need to treat AI models like humans that are also themselves somewhat unreliable.
It gives me a touch of hope, I guess, to think that AI won’t be the perfect-supreme-overlord others are projecting. Nothing humans have made has ever been perfect, to be honest. We’re subject to the natural rhythm and cycle of life, so I’ll chose to be cautiously optimistic again, no matter where the road or land takes us.
Thank you again to everyone else DSCS has worked with in 2023, including:
Building websites with Tony Patrick + Continuus
Scaling editorial platforms and fellowships with Digital Counsel and Hyundai Artlab
Celebrating short films with Elise McCave + Long Story Short
Guest lecturing on artist websites with Heather Bhandari + RISD/Brown
Guest lecturing on marketing and positioning cultural work with Richard Andrews + UC Berkeley
Advising on practices, writing, and strategy with Nancy Kim, Arielle Eckstut, and David Henry Sterry
Mentoring NEW INC’s Y9 Cohort
2023 news from past clients
Testudo founders John Dennehy and Kirby Voigtman were profiled by Apartment Therapy that took a closer look at their apartment, collection, and their work at Testudo. DSCS built a strategic plan for the company in 2021, and I published interviews with them every now and then.
Kat Mustatea’s limited lifespan book, Voidopolis, is out. The book’s augmented reality app allows anyone to read it; but within a year, the app’s information disintegrates, and the book will inevitably arrive at illegibility. DSCS did an archival cleanup and newsletter reimagination for Kat in 2022.
Connor Sen Warnick was profiled by the New York Times alongside a group of Asian-American creatives working to keep Chinatown’s history and culture alive, including his upcoming film DSCS advised on last year, Characters Disappearing.
CINELOGUE’s library of film outside of the Western Cannon is out! Big congrats are due to Rehana Esmail, Ndidi Iroh, and the entire team for making this project a reality that DSCS worked on in 2022. I plan to screen a few of these at home, and/or maybe at Detroit’s very own Dawat.
Chitra Ganesh’s book Queer Power! was acquired by the Met. DSCS published the book back in 2021. I’m forever grateful for Chitra’s trust and passion to make this a reality. Maybe it’s time for another run of the books…?
The School of Lived Experience’s Podcast launched from masterminds Tony Patrick, Michelle Woo, Micheline Pierrette Berry, and Miguel Rivera. This is right up your alley if you’re seeking elemental wisdom, storytelling, and somatic practices for renewal and radical imagination.
Time listed two past clients—4 Day Week Global and Kickstarter—in their list of 100 most influential companies of 2023. Gratitude, again, for the folks at both places, especially Jon Leland and Patton Hindle, for the work we’ve done through the years at both organizations.
Thanks again for reading. I’m looking forward to 2024 with the intention to continue writing about my work—and, possibly, seeing what the next project and path will be.
Until the next letter,
Daniel
