Edit: I’ve moved on to a different server (come say hi!), but recommend folks who are interested in personal knowledge management or Obsidian to look for tags like #pkm for conversation.

Much has already been said about Twitter’s meteoric free fall. For all the harm that has happened on that social media network, I’ve also found it to be a place where I’ve formed new relationships, rekindled old friendships, followed engaging and interesting design and historical content, and use it as a tool to stay current through curated media feeds.

Over the past 18 months, it’s also been a lovely chance to engage with the personal knowledge management (PKM) community… not just folks using Obsidian, but just broadly. I love the conversations that pop up about knowledge management and design, and it’s always interesting to see how the wealth of tools available are being used to write, create, research, and explore.

Nicole van der Hoeven and Marcus Olsson recently created a Mastodon server called PKM.social, and it’s been a continued conversation about how folks organize and create with their knowledge systems. I’m there (edit: I was there… I’ve moved), as are others in the community, just so we have a place to keep connecting and sharing as Twitter continues to erode.

While this post was intended to be about a new Mastodon community related to PKM, I wanted to share one podcast I recently listened to. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Fifth & Mission podcast recently focused on former Twitter employees caught in the crossfire of mass layoffs and immigration. While I feel for anyone impacted by layoffs, my heart especially goes out to those living with the added stress and uncertainty of looking for a new job in a closed market, while on a 60-day countdown to leave the country and your life as you know it. I’ve been there, literally.

It’s an experience I hope you never face, but having faced something very similar (different visa, different layoff cycle, not in tech…), I thought it was worth sharing.