I’ve considered how much to share on all of the cool things and people I learn about relevant to object design and engineering in this space for my writing. Seems like it’d be too noisy to share things I just discovered that don’t require much of my own editorialization. So, I made OBJECTS Forum, a corner on the web for the world of designed physical objects and the people, tools, and materials behind them. A little bit on why a forum too below.
You can sign up, read, and post here: forum.objects.foundation
One of the product form factors I’ve been revisiting in recent years is the forum. Much of the web we know today owes much gratitude to them a la Eternal September. Facebook News Feed and its derivatives have brought many of us online but the dedicated spaces of people talking about topics in ordered public/semi-public threads are still holding strong (some being older than me and with many broken links to their past references). I won’t link out to any specific ones to keep them in the shadows but they aren’t hard to find if you care deeply about anything. OBJECTS Forum is broken down into two categories for now: Making Objects and AI & Software. This creates a neat physical <-> digital divide but adaptable enough to fit anything from designer profiles to CAD kernels which I was having a hard time finding on the web beyond tuning my feeds or hopping into chats.
Few things I like about the form:
- Highly searchable and categorized
- Async and collaborative since anyone with an account can catch up and post on a shared topic even years later
- Can be built on .md files
- Long legacy on specific topics with even notable figures being regular visitors
- Slower and more intentional than algo media which attracts subject matter experts and enthusiasts
- I think it’s good for SEO and GEO/AEO (however answers show up in your agent of choice)
- Megathreads create cool discovery jump off points for other parts of the forum, web, or whatever the topic is
Forums aren’t a place to go viral but they create a strong foundation for communities. Fitting for a word that we can give much thanks to the Romans for. Revisit the obvious or learn about the experimental. It’s all there.
from Montez ★