Kristi Çunga 🍵

Designer and art director. BA in Physics. Political and media activist. FLOSS enthusiast. AI critic.

LinkedIn has never been a place for creatives. Dribbble and Behance are not what they used to be. In a world where digital transformation is affecting every domain of life, your portfolio cannot remain unchangeable.

Following are several new tools – innovative, trendy, and tried and true — to keep your job level up and updated.

# 1 Create a mindful professional profile on Read.cv

Read.cv ( or CV, occasionally) is an ultra-minimalistic platform for bold professionals who want to be known not only for their job. Beyond work experience, education, and other professional achievements, on Read.cv you can show some cool stuff like the projects you are proud of, your personal side projects, articles you've been featured in, talks, etc. Since Read.cv is created for creatives, it couldn't be complete without a session of exhibitions you've visited. From my experience, CV has a significant advantage in good visual design and simplicity of use, which can make your profile stand out. So you can scrutinize Read.cv right now on your own.

# 2 Explore, research and find some inspiration with Are.na

Are.na is a typical social network for creatives, makers, and even engineers. It is a sleek model of add-free and self-sustainable platforms. Are.na is backed by the community and its existence relies directly on the users. Are.na's finances are transparent and open to anyone. There is no coincidence why Are.na is known as a vehicle for conscious Internet browsing, playlists, but for ideas, and a toolkit for assembling new worlds.

# 3 Make Layers your new home

Layers reminds me of Dribbble in the early stage when the state of digital design was far different from today: a community of designers who show and tell their best shots, share inspiration, and occasionally get inquiries. Over years, design and technology changed a lot, designer communities changed a lot, and eventually, Dribbble couldn't be the same. Now Dribbble gives you more opportunities for sharing, connections, marketplace, and monetization, but sometimes it looks too much. If you want to be part of a small and strong community of excellent designers, you have to consider Layers. The platform is still in the beta phase and it works with waitlists. So, you are in time to set up your profile.

# 4 Express yourself with Polywork

For creatives, makers, multitaskers, and those who make multi-hyphenated work, Polywork is here. Early users are largely people who work in technology full-time and want to diversify their side hustles as angel investors, podcasters, newsletter writers, etc. In other words, it's like LinkedIn, but cooler, with a more interesting user journey, and gives you the opportunity of creating a poly-talented professional network. It is (still) free and waiting for you to join the board.

# 5 Keep all your stuff on your Bento

One of the effects of social media rise has been the importance of the link in bio. Those who do not maintain a personal website, or just want to change the URL of the link in their bio, can just use a social media reference landing page. Today you can find a dozen of link in bio services, but Bento stands out. You can put all the things you make and all the things you like, and it will look perfectly fine in the Bento layout. Since it is (still) free, you have to take your spot on Bento. ___

CC BY-SA 4.0

Written with ♥ for a positive work culture.

(\ (\ (•.• ) 🥤⊂ )

Thank you for reading. If you want, you can buy me a coffee.

➡ Let's get connected somewhere ___

#CV #resume #network #portfolio

If privacy violation 'is not enough' to break up with the big tech hegemony, can patriotism be a good reason?

A few days ago, when I was scrolling my Twitter feed I noticed a very interesting tweet: it was about a petition in Change.org directed to Apple Inc. It is very worrying that Kosovo is not shown on Apple Maps. You can hardly see its borders and the worst thing is that it is shown as a part of Serbia. This needs to change ASAP because Kosovo has been an independent country since 2008 — is written in the description of the petition. I signed and shared it immediately and checked out if Kosovo was in Google Maps, too. The results were the same: according to Google Maps, Kosovo is part of the Republic of Serbia despite the fact Kosovo is an independent country for more than a decade (also, Kosovo has got an amazing football team). In less than two weeks the petition has gained more than 165K supporters, which is good news and shows us the importance of this issue.

The call of to put Kosovo in Apple Maps is recently echoing in social media and is provoking once again one of the hottest debates in the Balkans: what is Kosovo¹? But more than the ethnocultural and patriotic part, the aim of this blog post is to pay some attention to the problem of the big tech centralization in a bigger picture. The case of Kosovo is not particular at all. Another hot topic is even the erasure² of Palestine from Google Maps and Apple Maps. But why does it happen?

Apple and Google are the Leviathans which control³ total domination of the digital market. More than rivals, they are partners in a small monopoly club, where there's no place for you (FYI Apple pays Google 3B USD per year for Safari to keep Google as the first browser⁴). In their terms, 165K supporters of the petition which simply asks Apple to put Kosovo on the map, are nothing more than an H2O molecule in their ocean of wealth. Nor 500K supporters, 1M, nor 5M could not do any significant difference for Apple. The number of petition supporters will always be just symbolic if they still remain users of those maps. Also, a gentle reminder to all petition's supporters: if Apple doesn't⁵ give a ƒµȼЌ about the Hong Kong protesters, what makes yy think that Apple will listen to this petition?

Our common mistake is considering tech as a neutral subject. But it isn't. It isn't just tech, but it is the big tech that has shaped the hegemony to make us think we cannot live without it. The big tech is always lining up on the strongest’s side. In this way their profit is safe. Their ethics is a myth. They don't care about us. They never did, but now they don't care even to hide the fact that they don't care. Who is really insulted by the fact that Kosovo is mapped as a Serbian territory in Apple Maps, should do something more than just a petition subscription and share? Apple Maps must be boycotted! Google Maps must be boycotted, as well! Yeah, I know I should be realistic. I know it's not easy to live without those platforms⁶, but their maps are easily replaceable. This is another reason to replace them with OpenStreetMap.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a map that is maintained voluntarily by the contributors. Thank them, OSM is improved⁷ in an unpredictable level in recent years. Back to our main issue: the Republic of Kosovo is in OSM and its borderline with the Republic of Serbia is not just a dashed line. Also, you don't need to sign a petition towards OpenStreetMap. If you identify anything wrong with the map, you have all the opportunities to edit it by yourself. That's what you have to do, it's easier than you think. Just imagine if everyone who has signed the petition, makes only one contribution to OSM: it means165K contributions!

So, if you are offended that Apple Maps and Google Maps doesn't recognise Kosovo as an independent country but you still use Apple Maps and Google Maps instead of alternatives like OSM [because it's cool to use Apple Maps and Google Maps], you shouldn't be offended if I call you ‘ʝεᖇҡ’.

___

CC BY-SA 4.0

Written with ♥ for open source culture.

Email: kristicunga@protonmail.com Mastodon: @kristicunga@freeradical.zone Twitter: @kristicunga ___

References:

[1] Why “Kosovo i Metohija” offends [2] Activists: Google, Apple ‘Erasing Palestine’ from Geographic Apps [3] New survey says Google Maps favored by nearly 70 percent of iPhone users [4] Thousands of Reddit users are trying to delete Google from their lives, but they're finding it impossible because Google is everywhere [5] Is a Tech Company Ever Neutral? [6] I Cut Google Out Of My Life. It Screwed Up Everything [7] Why would you use OpenStreetMap if there is Google Maps? ___

#AppleMaps #GoogleMaps #OSM #OpenStreetMap #bigtech #Kosovo

And the new beginning at McCann Tirana

After one year full of adventures, hard works and fantastic experiences at tech consultancy team Collective68, I'm very excited to share that last month I've joined the office of McCann in Tirana. This is going to be significant growth for my career in the creative industry — working in the role of jr art director in large projects with professionals in design, marketing, and communication. A job in advertising agencies is a dream job for lots of designers. It is a great opportunity for learning new things, creating a network and exposing the best of you. Moreover, when you have to work for one of the top 4 marketing and advertising agencies in the world, with a presence in 120 countries, it is a very special feeling.

My last experience, at Collective68, was the first step toward very productive work. There I used to work with some talented, energetic, highly-skilled and ambitious young folks. I'll be forever grateful to them for the work culture they shared with me.

Due to that work culture, I learned at Collective68, I left behind my comfort zone of working individually from the cosy corners of my favourite bars. There, I've been engaged in several projects, where the most interesting ones remain Social Good Summit [1], Open Data Portal in Korça [2], and of course, our product Collective68 Cloud — a ready2use open source cloud infrastructure which provides 12 encrypted instances for SMEs like task management platform, event organising platform, office platform, blogging platform, etc. (𝓈𝑜𝓇𝓇𝓎 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓂𝓎 𝑔𝑒𝑒𝓀𝓎 𝓈𝓁𝒶𝓃𝑔.)

When looking back, in one year as a lead interaction designer I've been skilled softly not only in design works. I am proud of many achievements like the acceleration of my technical and soft skills: the consultancy in open source software, the open source design, the culture of git [3], the sharpness of writing blog posts, and the meaning of being part of a FLOSS community [4]. I'm confident in doing a qualitative work with open source software and I am aware that only the small technology [5] can shape a new better world, NOT Silicon Valley. And it cannot be possible without open source culture.

But let's get back to what I can do best: Design. I'm thankful to McCann Tirana team (especially, to the creative director Gazmend Pinjolli) for their invitation and their trust on me, to work with one of the top brands of advertising. Now, it's the perfect moment to use in the upcoming projects all that I've learned from my last experience and go beyond it.

Despite my commitment of doing my best job for the new adventure at McCann Tirana, I'm pretty sure for two things: I will always be contributing to open source projects and I will always advocate the importance of open source technology. Let's hope the day of unethical tech abrogation is near, and everything is going to be open by default. Even in advertising, why not?

___

CC BY-SA 4.0

Written with ♥ for open source culture.

Twitter: @kristicunga ___

References:

[1] More accessibility at Social Good Summit 2018 [2] The multidimensional importance of local open data [3] 8 Secrets Of GitLab’s Remote Work Culture [4] How to build an open source community [5] Small Technology ___

#advertising #opensource

We demonstrated that the Web had failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done, and failed in many places.

— Sir Tim Berners-Lee

This March, the World Wide Web made 30 years from its establishment, and it ain't seem to be as Sir Tim Berners-Lee wished: universal, decentralized, free and open to everyone. “What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms [...] This concentration of power creates a new set of gatekeepers, allowing a handful of platforms to control which ideas and opinions are seen and shared [...] We demonstrated that the Web had failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done, and failed in many places”, argued Berners-Lee in an early interview. The commercialization of content, the rise of surveillance, fake news emissions, and electoral interventions from and in countries like USA and Russia, make World Wide Web a dystopian place caused by big corporations, and unsafe for humans.

On the other hand — as so far problems aren't enough — the European Parliament is serving the censorship as the ultimate solution. On Tuesday 12 March 2019, MEPs voted in a 348-274 vote in favour of the cybersecurity act which aims to improve the European response to the increasing number of cyber threats by strengthening the role of the European Agency for Network and Information Security (Enisa) and establishing a common cybersecurity certification framework, is written. Meanwhile, hundred thousands European activists and citizens filled the streets of EU countries, protesting against the Copyright Directive, and asking their local MEPs to vote against the directive. Although the Copyright Directive is voted in the European Parliament, they are encouraged to stop this resolution in every possible democratic method, in coming sessions.

But, what does this resolution mean?

Long story, short:

According to the Article 11 of this resolution, the member states of EU have to establish a whole new law for intellectual property; whereof for any link you use in the website will have to get a license. This is non-sense for any sort of wiki, and entirely inconsistent with the principle of open knowledge.

According to Article 13, the websites are directly liable for the content what they are sharing, punishes any site that fails to block copyright infraction. In other words, this article makes companies directly liable for the content of their users. Therefore, this resolution will push the companies to censure their users, otherwise, the companies will be fined. The instruction of this article for prevention of the copyright is obviously absurd: an intelligent machine which can select the material before it is uploaded(!) The implementation of this article will have catastrophic consequences for small businesses and startups around Europe, and it will empower the big corporations like Google and Facebook [since only them have the resources to build] to make “better their own duty”: surveillance of a limitless amount of personal data.

I am convinced that whatever happens, Google and Facebook would not be driven out of business by #Article11 and #Article13. But their smaller competition, the many platforms that make the Internet a medium of many-to-many communication, very well might. I don’t want to lose them.

— Julia Reda

Now, there are millions of subjects against Article 11 & 13, and more than 240 businesses who have joined the initiative of Nextcloud to sign an open letter against this spiteful resolution. Article 11 & 13 are extremely problematic by design. They cannot improve the environment of WWW; in contrary, they will be the last nails on the WWW's coffin. Also, there are a lot of preventative measures for a better WWW, but Article 11 and Article 13 of Copyright Directive aren't ones. The fight for an open web for companies like yours and ours continues!

What's next?

On 15 April, the text of Copyright Directive (Now Articles 11 and 13 are Articles 15 and 17) — are voted by the Council in Ministerial level with 6 countries against, 3 countries obstained, and 19 countries for (including Germany). But hope is still there. For EU voters, it's the moment to penalise by popular vote on 23−26 May those parties who signed the destruction of internet freedom. Since this directive is not objected by the vote of the Council, then, we will have to protest, agitate, raise awareness and fight with every democratic instrument to abrogate the Copyright Directive for two years, until it will take the power of official law. Obviously, a hard long struggle for a World Wide Web as Sir Tim Berners-Lee predicted, awaits us ahead.

___

CC BY-SA 4.0

Written with ♥ for open source culture.

Initially published on blog.collective68.tech (edited).

Twitter: @kristicunga ___

#CopyrightDirective #FreeInternet #Article11 #Article13 #Article15 #Article17

Medium is an online publishing platform for writers and readers. Its nice interface, intuitive user experience, easy access on metrics for blog posts, the mix of collaborative software and reading experience, or the potential for high traffic, make Medium preferable for first-time bloggers and brands which are looking to expand their reach to a built-in audience. As a dedicated reader [and less as a writer], for a few years, I've been really enjoying the free content offered in Medium. A lot of writers and publishers have appreciated Medium, too. But apparently, it's not happening anymore.

Now, Medium is paying higher attention to their membership feature. Every day, Medium is becoming more commercialized and centered around blog stars and influencers. There's no place for indie publishers and communities in Medium. The platform is going to be divided into two main categories: the well-branded writers and readers who have to pay for what they read.

The content about design seems to be the most affected by this alteration. The overwhelming part of all design content is written on Medium, and they have slowly pushed everybody behind their paywall. Therefore, you cannot find free qualitative design content online, anymore.

Medium has basically swallowed up 90% of all writing about design like a black hole, and over the past couple months they’ve slowly pushed everybody behind their paywall. The result is that they’ve basically killed freely accessible design writing on the web.

— @SachaGreif

The big losers

Since the content of writings is purely commercialized via paid membership policies, writing on Medium does not have the same worth, as it used to be. I am one of million users who has enjoyed the experience on Medium, but I don't like to be forced to pay for articles I read, I don't pretend to earn money for what I write, and I don't think that paying and claps make an article great. It's OK to earn from your writings, but you can find a lot of free and open source thingies online, which are great too.

A business model like Medium creates a perception on writers that if they are good enough, they have to be monetarily rewarded. Unfortunately, this benevolent premise works only on paper. Once the readers are forced to pay for what they read, they will consider leaving Medium. The decrease of readers' number on Medium will directly affect the blog post's metrics, which in long term will shrink the success of the authors. Also, you have to keep in mind, that a successful writer is not always the one who earns from what they writes, but the one who is read and popular by everyone, even by them who are excluded by membership policies of Medium.

The sad truth, is that Medium is just another San Francisco tech darling that’s taken millions of dollars in funding and is now accountable to their shareholders rather than its community and what do shareholders want? Growth. And growth is a tricky thing to manage. This fact is further compounded because growth itself and building community are often at odds with each other, sometimes even incompatible. In other words, Medium is growing so much that it’s starting to eat its own tail.

— Conor

Apart from being a good tool for promotion, currently, the problem with Medium is a problem with proprietary platforms in general: in early stages of funding from venture capital, those platforms tend to create the community of users, and while they achieved optimal growth, they recall the community that it is not needed anymore. This mantra of open source culture is recently noticed even by Hacker Noon and Signal v Noise — two of lots well-known publishers which are leaving Medium.

New alternatives: self-hosted and open source platforms

Ghost is a wonderful open source suite of publishing tools with a fully managed PaaS and stewarded by a non-profit organisation. It is used by some prominent costumers like DigitalOcean, Mozilla and DuckDuckGo (ough, migrated from Medium). We are more than happy with Ghost for the opportunities we have to publish and focus for creating content, and we suggest it to every business or organisation which is looking for a blogging platform to launch their statements, thoughts or ideas. The variety of the nice themes and the simple CMS, make Ghost accessible by everyone.

Write.as is an other open source, minimalist writing platform, oriented on privacy. The shortage of notifications, streams, likes, and commentary makes readers to focus on words. All you need is just a clear mind and a beautifully simple space to write your thoughts on Write.as. Differently from Ghost which fits perfectly for brands, Write.as is heavily focused on personal blogging. It is a great tool for journalists, writers, bloggers and content creators who need a truly independent place for their articles.

Through our collaboration platform, we can help SMEs and organisations to be independent of the big tech monopolies using Ghost or Write.as, as their main blog platform. Indeed, this service is not free, but we at Collective68 have discounts for people from Medium who are looking for a new independent home, and free and open source initiatives. Together we can properly create a sleek online environment and a World Wide Web as it supposed to be — free and not centralised. Ghost and Write.as have given us a good example, now it's our turn to help you and your organisation to get self-hosted and open source blog platform.

___

CC BY-SA 4.0

Written with ♥ for open source culture.

Initially published on blog.collective68.tech

Twitter: @kristicunga ___

#opensource #blogging #publishingtool #Medium #WriteAs #Ghost