In last week’s newsletter, the first after a month’s hiatus over the summer, I asked the 1,500+ subscribers to Thought Shrapnel’s if they’d send me answers to the following:

  1. What do you really like about Thought Shrapnel in its current format?
  2. What do you dislike about it?
So far, six days later, I've received 15 responses, which represents 1% of the subscriber base.

Here’s an anonymised sample of what they said:

  • "I like the diversity of links and ideas that you provide. Not sure if that helps."
  • "I don't dislike it, but some of the more technical stuff -- blockchain -- is less interesting to me than the educational stuff."
  • "You remind me of myself 40 years ago. Thank you."
  • "In it’s current format, it’s hard to save to Pocket for offline reading on an airplane (or someplace else without an Internet connection."
  • "I most appreciate your insight and perspective in these informational sources. That is to suggest...that I for one value when you provide context about the stories you're sharing. Furthermore, you dig in a bit deeper and educate about the nuance involved...but also the larger impact of this news."
  • "I’m happy to support the continuing collation of, and reflection on developments. Your thinking touches on multiple fields, and this is something I find particularly valuable."
  • "For me it's a better way of keeping up to date with what you're posting rather than getting notifications of each individual post through other channels."
  • "I also like how you point to new robust technologies which I’m on the lookout for."
  • "There's not much I don't like and, to be honest, I'm happy to skip the parts each week that aren't particularly relevant to me."
  • "I don't know Google's parameters for clipping emails, but I do know that I can click the "view full email" option to see it all, but I usually don't."
It's always nice to see kind words written about your work, which I obviously appreciate. The main thing it would seem that I need to change is that the newsletter gets 'clipped' by GMail and other providers. In other words, I need to make it shorter.