We seek a part-time, limited-term ensemble member to help us produce The Season of Grief and Gratitude.
Summary
Okay Then is preparing to publish two books by Hanna du Plessis—The Grief Essays and The Gratitude Essays. But we don’t want to simply publish books. We want to help Hanna’s ideas and invitations come to life for people, groups and organizations. So we plan to also produce:
– A subscription site for the essays
– Ways for the community of readers to contribute their writing
– Supplements (print, audio, and…?) to the books that serve as scaffolding for group conversation and support for leaders
– An edition of the books that includes community voices
We seek a part-time, limited-term ensemble member to help us produce The Season of Grief and Gratitude.
– Work with Marc Rettig and Okay Then advisors to strategize and design
– Implement the subscription site
– Support audience development and communication
– Potentially help host the community of readers
We expect this engagement will last about three months, starting with one day a week or less to more intense involvement during development, then tapering off. The specifics will unfold as we work together.
Background: a project that springs from two series of essays by Hanna du Plessis
This Fall, we are making a series of media and experiences based on two essay series by our featured voice, Hanna du Plessis. The first is a set of forty essays on grief, written after Hanna’s miscarriage in 2021. The second is a series on gratitude. Partway through that writing, Hanna was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal disease. Yet she continued writing on the theme of gratitude, producing another forty essays altogether.
Hanna has a remarkable way of connecting personal grief to community and societal grief, with a generosity of spirit and depth of language that has already helped many readers. Her essays, along with her illustrations and photographs, are the core of the project we are undertaking in 2024. We are proceeding with urgency, knowing that Hanna may be reaching the end of her life.
Preliminary book covers for the Grief and Gratitude essays
Intended outcomes: community, books, and more
We are going to do more than simply publish two books. We aim to engage a community of readers, and so that some of the books’ form, content, and supplements emerge from that community. We anticipate producing a set of audio episodes—”podcast episodes without the podcast”—as supplements to the books.
The work: big picture and details, concept to pixel-pushing, people and media
We hope you’ll be able to help with all these aspects of the work:
Audience
Building an audience for The Season of Grief and Gratitude through list development and early promotions.
Subscription site
Developing a subscription site, collaborating on the content and experience plan then implementing it on a platform like Substack or Ghost.io.
Content production
Adding content to the main Okay Then site, including free “gifts” spun off from the subscription site. Also developing the content and experience for a set of “kits” that provide scaffolding for leaders, groups and organizations who want to use the conversations and practices that come from the Season of Grief and Gratitude.
Social media
Taking point on a social media presence for The Season—establishing accounts, inviting people to join, and sending out ongoing news and gifts.
Online events for a community of readers
Supporting a community of reader/contributors from which the final content of Hanna’s books will emerge.
You might love this and be great at it if you...
- Like making web stuff. Specifically Wordpress and either Substack or ghost.io. Actual Wordpress experience is important. But I think anyone who has tinkered much with such things can figure out the others pretty quickly. Extra credit if you can prepare images for the web, and are confident in Adobe suite.
- Like supporting people’s learning, engagement, and conversation
- Feel a connection with “soulful” topics like loss, grief, and gratitude
- Have experience with WordPress, subscription sites, popular social media platforms, etc., and like learning and applying new web tools
- Are comfortable co-creating through the design process, working through the uncertainty of early stages, evolving results through iteration
- Want to support the early steps of a new purposeful organization!
Expectations
Team
You will work closely with Okay Then founder Marc Rettig
Location
We prefer someone who lives in Pittsburgh, but will happily consider remote collaboration.
Schedule
Our ambition is to start this work in early September, launch the subscription site in late October, and hold at least one community event before the end of 2024.
Commitment
We anticipate about a three-month engagement with time commitment at first less than one day per week, building in intensity, then falling off once the subscription site is launched. It’s reasonable to expect an average of two days per week.
Compensation
As a bootstrapped early-stage new venture, we should let you know up front that compensation must unfortunately be below market rates. Let’s talk.
The start of something good?
While we are open to this being a one-time engagement, we hope that this work could lead to longer term collaboration as Okay Then’s business grows.