What Next?

I am an odd fish, I admit. Let me explain, as much to myself as to you, my life path and where it seems to be leading next.

My Strange Career

I wanted to be a philosopher when I was 17 in Alaska. So I started as an academic and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy in 2000, thinking I would become a philosophy professor. But I decided academia was not for me—as much as I did and still do love philosophy—and decided I would try to make a living from websites starting in 1998. I had learned to play Irish fiddle a few years earlier and actually made money teaching fiddle at that point for a year or so. (I still play for fun.) But around the same time, I first made money from a website called “Sanger’s Review of Y2K News Reports,” a leading and popular summary of news about the Millennium Bug.

Wikipedia. This led me to a job with Bomis, Inc., as editor-in-chief of Nupedia, in 2000. It was while in that role I started Wikipedia. The dot-com boom turned to bust in late 2000, and while Bomis did manage to get a lucrative advertising contract, the contract disappeared in 2001, which meant they had to lay off all their new hires. The site I had started for Bomis was already taking off exponentially, but it was not making them any money, so finally I was too laid off in early 2002, a little over two years after I started working on free encyclopedias. A year later I permanently cut ties with Wikipedia over disagreements over community management.

Project leader. That early experience cemented a sort of role I was to play for the next two decades. I became enamored of the idea of using the Internet to share knowledge. I was not quite an academic and not quite a programmer. I have done both, for money, but mostly what I have done is manage projects. But I am a nontraditional project manager, because my role has usually been combined with other startup-related roles, such as writer, editor, community leader, promoter, videographer, and generally whatever needs doing. Maybe a better description is “project leader,” which is a good description of what I did for Wikipedia and most other projects I have worked on, when I was not acting as an adviser or consultant.

Educational nonprofits. Though I love startups, I am in it for the potential it has to teach the world, not for the money. So I have found myself working mostly on nonprofits and innovative educational and reference projects. I have usually led projects for other people, as when Charles Boone, an elderly philanthropist—a true philanthropist—hired me to start WatchKnowLearn and Reading Bear. (Both websites are under different ownership and control at present, so I have no control over their currently aged appearance.) I have been offered good jobs, as part of credible startups, but usually have passed them by because I was working on some (smaller) project I cared more about, one that I thought might have a chance to help the world grow in knowledge.

Homeschooling. I taught my boys to read when from age 1. They were both reading chapter books by age 3. (My successful method was what led Mr. Boone to fund Reading Bear.) So I have spent a fair bit of my time in the last 13 years thinking about and teaching my two sons. This built on a long-standing interest in developmental and educational theory—background that helped significantly with educational projects I have worked on.

Online Knowledge Organizer. After I kept doing similar kinds of projects, such as the crowdsourced news summary project Infobitt, I claimed the title “Online Knowledge Organizer.” I did not set out to become one. In retrospect, it is not surprising that I should have moved into this role, considering that my Ph.D. specialization was in theory of knowledge. My philosophical interests and my career both have been driven by a fascination with systematizing knowledge. The Internet is a knowledge delivery system—or it could be if we used it that way. The combination of cheap publishing and the social aspects of Internet software have always held out the promise of educating the world. That is what has driven me toward the string of projects I have worked on.

Programming. In 2014 or so, I had the idea that we need to build a collection of all the encyclopedia articles in the world, and have a global competition to rate them. Soon I decided that what really needs to be done is to develop a technical standard for encyclopedia articles. I worked on the idea for a couple years as CIO of Everipedia. In fact, I got so excited by this idea that I went back to studying programming (which I had done a few times before) and learned HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and Ruby on Rails. Being a programmer has helped quite a bit in project management. The idea, which I later called the “Encyclosphere,” became the Knowledge Standards Foundation, which is still under development.

What I’m Doing Now

Last January I launched Sanger Consulting with Sanger.io, and started accepting new clients. Let me share a few examples of what I have been doing for clients (who will remain unnamed), and then explain where I see this going.

Project planning with request for bids. I wrote a summary (but still fairly detailed) project plan with a request for bids for an app that a nonprofit wants to build, discussed them with multiple possible contractors (a few of which remarked on the useful detail of the document), and negotiated price reductions based on in-depth experience with this sort of app.

Market studies. For two different clients, I have prepared or am preparing in-depth written studies of markets: one, about the existing competition for a brand new kind of website (which we dub “social research”), and the other, for children’s educational apps. I can do this sort of analysis very quickly and accurately and in a way that applies directly to the project itself.

Feedback. Pretty much all my clients so far have gotten detailed and useful critical feedback on whatever they have built, whether they asked for it or not.

Study leading to video scripts. For one development shop with a very impressive app-building tool, I read about the tool, installed examples of it, and (using my handy programmer skills) set up a development environment for its use. With this study under my belt, I wrote two explainer video scripts for them to use, and our relationship continues.

White paper feedback. I gave detailed feedback on a white paper (both the text and the underlying business innovations represented in the text).

Advisory. I advised a young recent grad for a cut rate, read and gave feedback on relevant papers he wrote, and chatted about his project ideas.

New app project plan. I am mostly finished writing a project plan for an innovative news rating app that a startup wants to replace its current app with. This is a lot of fun. The document describes a plan for cheap quick tests of the idea, which is a good idea whenever possible.

What’s Next

At least one of the projects I’m helping with now will probably turn into a long-term project. But I intend to keep my hand in consulting generally, just so I have something to fall back on and so I can justify helping really interesting projects that pop up (as they seem to do quite randomly for me).

Out of all of the things above, the things I like to do most, I guess, are writing (I must like it since I do that so much for free here on this blog), giving detailed feedback on existing projects (explaining how to make them better), and developing new project plans.

I look forward to being able to spend the time developing the Encyclosphere; right now that must take a back seat to developing the consultancy. Also, eventually, I will write a proper book—not that I have not already written several book-length manuscripts. In fact, I have been working on one recently.