I am more bullish about this.
I think for distill to succeed it needs to have at least two full time editors committed to the mission.
Managing people is hard. Managing people, training them and making sure the vision of the project is preserved is insanely hard—a full time job for at least two people.
Plus the part Distill was bottlenecked on is very high skilled labour, which needed a special aesthetic sensitivity and commitment.
50 senior hours per draft sounds insane—but I do believe the Distill staff when they say it is needed.
This wraps back to why new journals are so difficult : you need talented researchers with additional entrepreneurial skills to push it forward. But researchers by and large would much rather just work on their research than manage a journal.
Note: I think what was meant here was “bearish”, not bullish.
I am more bullish about this. I think for distill to succeed it needs to have at least two full time editors committed to the mission.
I think what you’re saying is you’re bearish or have a lower view of this intervention because the editor/founders have a rare combination of vision, aesthetic view and commitment.
You point out this highly skilled management/leadership/labor is not fungible—we can’t just hire 10 AI practitioners and 10 designers to equal the editors who may have left.
You point out this highly skilled management/leadership/labor is not fungible
Yes, exactly.
I think what I am pointing towards is something like “if you are one such highly skilled editor, and your plan is to work on something like this part time delegating work to more junior people, then you are going to find yourself burnt out very soon. Managing a team of junior people / people who do not share your aesthetic sense to do highly skilled labor will be, at least for the first six months or so, much more work than if you do it on your own.”.
I think an editor will be ten times more likely to succeed if:
They have a high skilled co-founder who shares their vision
They have a plan to work on something like this full time, at least for a while
They have a plan for training aligned junior people on skills OR to teach taste to experts
On hindsight I think my comment was too negative, since I would still be excited about someone retrying a distill-like experiment and throwing money at it.
I am more bullish about this. I think for distill to succeed it needs to have at least two full time editors committed to the mission.
Managing people is hard. Managing people, training them and making sure the vision of the project is preserved is insanely hard—a full time job for at least two people.
Plus the part Distill was bottlenecked on is very high skilled labour, which needed a special aesthetic sensitivity and commitment.
50 senior hours per draft sounds insane—but I do believe the Distill staff when they say it is needed.
This wraps back to why new journals are so difficult : you need talented researchers with additional entrepreneurial skills to push it forward. But researchers by and large would much rather just work on their research than manage a journal.
Hi, this is another great comment, thank you!
Note: I think what was meant here was “bearish”, not bullish.
I think what you’re saying is you’re bearish or have a lower view of this intervention because the editor/founders have a rare combination of vision, aesthetic view and commitment.
You point out this highly skilled management/leadership/labor is not fungible—we can’t just hire 10 AI practitioners and 10 designers to equal the editors who may have left.
Oops yes 🐻
Yes, exactly.
I think what I am pointing towards is something like “if you are one such highly skilled editor, and your plan is to work on something like this part time delegating work to more junior people, then you are going to find yourself burnt out very soon. Managing a team of junior people / people who do not share your aesthetic sense to do highly skilled labor will be, at least for the first six months or so, much more work than if you do it on your own.”.
I think an editor will be ten times more likely to succeed if:
They have a high skilled co-founder who shares their vision
They have a plan to work on something like this full time, at least for a while
They have a plan for training aligned junior people on skills OR to teach taste to experts
On hindsight I think my comment was too negative, since I would still be excited about someone retrying a distill-like experiment and throwing money at it.