How I Failed in 2023 ... and What I Learned about Being a Creator in an AI World

For me, it's all about bold experimentation.

Image created by Dall-E.

If I'm honest, I'm a bit bored by the highlight posts, best of, and look backs for 2023 scattered across the internet.

For me, the successes of the year are not the most interesting; it's the failures.

As creators, writers, and educators, our journey is defined not by our successes, but by our failures. But these are often invisible because we tend to leave these failures behind as we find things that work.

If you haven’t heard the phrase “creator economy,” it simply refers to an new economy being driven by people creating useful content direct to audiences without publishers or big media outlets. It has grown 50% every year since COVID.

So I want to take a moment here at the end of 2023 to reflect on what didn’t happen for me.

Yes, I do consider myself a creator. In fact, I believe scholars are (and always have been) creators. Whether we make that accessible to the public is another matter.

I believe that public engagement should be one of the pillars of academic life: research, teaching, service, and public engagement. And perhaps, soon it will be, given the changes the creator economy is bringing to this world.

(For those non-academics, most institutions divide academic work among the first three … but usually value research over anything else.)

I started writing online to expand my audience … I call it, “researching out loud” … and also, to support my explorations into AI and professional writing technologies.

(North Carolina law does not allow my university to support this kind of research. That’s a whole different story.)

So this post is a candid reflection on my missteps, miscalculations, and the lessons I've gleaned from 2023, set against the backdrop of the rapidly evolving creator economy in an AI-dominated world.

My Best Failures of 2023

The creator economy is always changing, requiring us to be nimble and adaptable. The platforms we use can change at any moment. Think here Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.

In fact, the tools and platforms I use to create for my audiences changed vastly over the course of 2023, but that is for another post, perhaps.

As I immersed myself deeper into the world of AI, it became apparent that AI was not just a new tool in the creator's toolbox, but a fundamental shift in how we think about and produce content.

To thrive in this AI-dominated landscape, I had to adapt, experiment, and learn from my failures.

My journey through 2023 has been as much about the broader shifts in the creator economy as it has been my personal exploration and understanding of AI.

The surge of AI in 2023 was a pivotal moment for creators and educators alike. You can’t be either one and not think about AI.

Having spent years writing about AI, I wanted to actively engage with this technology, to experiment, and to learn from the ground up as a community.

I honestly believe that understanding and using AI is best done collaboratively … just like the best writing and research.

I also believe that most successful creators build community … not just content, making the creator economy the perfect place to bring diverse minds together to think about AI and make it accessible to more people.

So my first thought was to build a community on Circle, a dynamic community platform for creators. It offers a single space where creators can build their community, facilitate discussions, and share their content.

I was already experimenting with using Circle for my classes as I reimagine the college classroom from a creator perspective, so why not see what I can do with it in the AI space?

My initial plan was to create a community centered around the practical applications of AI. However, the task proved to be more daunting than anticipated. Several such communities already exist and the workload was way too much for a professor with a full-time gig.

(Yeah, one reality check of 2023 was realizing how much creating I can reasonably do while still protecting my time.)

So I went with a different approach, and tried to build a community around prompt operations. While my content was well-received, few people were interested in signing up for another course or subscription.

One of the most pivotal decisions of my 2023 journey was moving my operations from Circle to Substack (still in progress). Substack is simply a platform for newsletters, if you don’t know what that is. That’s how you are reading this.

Previously a Substack naysayer, I’ve been quite impressed by how Substack has been building their platform around community, instead of algorithms. Many of the affordances of Circle are now available in Substack, if you use their website.

The Lessons I Learned

What I learned from these failures guided me to several successes.

Through these experimentations, I was able to further define my approach to AI and how my expertise as a rhetorician can bring value for both educators and content developers.

Moving to Substack allowed me to better communicate this in just one place. It is not just a newsletter platform, but a website builder and discussion space. Soon I will start building courses here and delivering more media content like tutorials and podcasts.

But you only have to login once. 😆

Since making these changes, my subscription base has grown over 100 every month (without any viral moments), so there is one success for you.

These experiences also reiterated for me the importance of understanding your audience. In the creator economy, you can’t just create content … you have to create value … and you have to make it as easy as possible to access.

My community on Circle is actually starting to thrive … but it has nothing to do with AI.

I run a publication on Medium for educators who want to start writing online. Medium is a blog publishing platform that pays writers for reader engagement. My secret passion is to get more educators sharing their knowledge and expertise with new audiences … and get compensation for that value.

Let’s be honest, our society undervalues expertise … especially those cutting educator paychecks. The creator economy is our chance to change this.

Medium recently made me a boost nominator, which basically means I can help give educators an algorithmic boost … which increases their visibility and potential earnings.

This gives me the opportunity to give real value to my community.

Medium’s platform is a terrible place to help people with their writing … but Circle is great for this. I’ve been doing this for my classes for over a year now.

By the way, if you want to try writing online, feel free to check out my publication, EduCreate.

Amidst all of this, I also had a lot of fun pushing the boundaries of how AI can work in the writing and content development process.

Did all of those experimentations work? Not really. But to truly understand what AI is going to do to writing and content work, we have to do more than just talk about it.

We have to experiment with it in the open.

And that’s what I’m doing here on iSophist, and I am very pleased that you are coming along for the ride.

AI is not just another tool; it's a transformative force that's reshaping the way we create and consume content. As creators, writers, and educators, our challenge is not just to understand AI, but to figure out how to leverage it in ways that add value to our audiences and enhance their experiences.

The creator economy is the new rhetorical playground. Rhetoric thrives when new technologies arrive on the scene, whether its speeches, writing, the printing press, or the internet.

So, what’s on the horizon for iSophist in 2024? Here are a few things to look forward to:

• A video course on prompt operations for tech writers on Firehead digital communications

• A more general prompt operations course for paid subscribers here on Substack

• Explorations into AI automation with video tutorials, especially around project management and writing

• More media like video tutorials and podcasts

• Deeper dives into attitudes and beliefs about AI

• A growing community of educators creating online

As we venture into another exciting year of creation in an AI-driven world, the journey continues. And with every failure that may come, there will be invaluable lessons to learn and share.

Stay tuned as we build this new world together!