For most of our team (jealous of our Californian) it's been getting colder and the fragility of the world is coming into focus as we watch the trees turn a rainbow of beautiful colors. At the same time, we've had a few reminders of the fragility of technology too: October's massive AWS outage brought down Facebook, Snapchat, and many others as well as services including the operations of major airlines. Economists estimate the outage cost billions of dollars in lost productivity and delayed transactions. Right this moment, Cloudflare is experiencing major outages. In good news, only one of our sites has gone down (yet) with this morning's outage and that one is back up. We're keeping an extra close eye on all of them right now.

 

The truth is, we're becoming more and more reliant on a global web of technology that is increasingly fragile, increasingly reliant on single sources of infrastructure where one mistake by one human or one point of failure can spur global chaos at any time. With the exception of cataclysms such as the Great Permian Die Off, nature is much more forgiving. 

 

And so, as we look towards the end of the year, the transition of the seasons, and the continued unpredictability of our global infrastructure, stop and think about what you can do to reduce chaos in your life. From a technical standpoint, we know we can't control a random outage from Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, or Google. We can control whether we have offline backups of our content, whether we have redundant systems to ensure continuous operations in case a team member is unexpectedly out, whether we have emergency candles at the ready in case the power goes out. Let's take care of ourselves and each other as best we can.

With love and gratitude, 

I talked tech (and got a little personal!) on the Changelog podcast. During my conversation with Birgit Pauli-Haack, we covered the latest updates to WordPress and Gutenberg—as well as how WordCamps shaped my tech journey, the lessons I've learned from my agency work, and how I’ve grown as a developer through a series of challenges. 

Just months before the 2024 elections, we collaborated with New Era Colorado Action Fund, a political organization building youth political power across the state, to create a reimagined digital home for their critical work and educational materials.

 

This was about more than building a website: Our team had to iterate and refine functionalities for candidate scorecards, revolving layouts for different election years, and, most importantly, translate NECAF’s eye-catching voter guide into virtual space. That meant rethinking how their content was organized, re-mapping the user experience, and integrating accessibility tools for full impact.

 

That year, NECAF’s virtual Voter Guide was viewed 52,073 times — and the organization saw victories across the state and a massive turnout among their base.

Our team came to tech from work in social justice organizations, cultural and educational institutions, and even government. Now, we want to use our expertise to champion our values — and support organizations making a real impact.

 

Let's do the work together. We’ve got availability to take on new projects in the coming year, and we specialize in work for cultural institutions, nonprofit organizations, educational programs and social entrepreneurship. 

Canva has released an all new version of Affinity, promising a free professional-grade design app moving forward.

 

We came across an oldie, but goodie: a paper from Harvard on the benefits to all from “a design process that centers the most impacted and marginalized users from ideation to production.”

 

We always love a technical thing illuminated by history. Didn't you know you needed to read a history of domains? Me neither. 

 

AI systems are trained by humans and humans are inherently biased. Thank goodness this kid in Baltimore was OK after an AI gun-detection system misidentified his snack.

 

But don't worry, AI bots misinterpret questions about the news too! From a European Broadcasting Union study: “AI’s systemic distortion of news is consistent across languages and territories.”

 

Just a teeny more background on that giant October AWS outage, in case you are curious!

If you’ve ever perused a Bethink team member bio, you know we’re a team of year-round tea-drinkers. As things cool down this season, here’s what we’re sipping:

 

Stacy and Kayla are both keeping mugs of sweetened green tea on their desks these days. (Stacy adds Stevia; Kayla is opting for a Strawberry variety sweetened with local, raw honey.) Beth is drinking the more classic Sonnentor English Breakfast. A Nutty Pumpkin Latte with oat milk has been George’s jam. 

 

And Courtney is throwing us all for a loop: She’s currently obsessed with drinking adaptogenic mushrooms + caffeine in the morning… and trying really hard to convince us MudWtr tastes good.

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