Security
And the freedom of trust
I’m building the first version of the The Forest with Obsidian Publish. This tool doesn’t come with fancy membership options or individual logins or anything. Instead, I plan to set one global password. Anyone who has the password, regardless of whether they’re a customer or not, will be able to enter my magical garden of true fan goodness. In other words, the security around said garden will be pretty chill, and there’s potential for way more people than customers to get in.
A few years ago, this would have driven me crazy. To alleviate the anxiety, I would have spent days, weeks, months researching ways to make it more secure and impermeable. I would have gone down the rabbit hole of self-hosting my Obsidian vault, integrating it with a custom membership tool, and setting up all kinds of integrations and automations in the background to make it work with my existing tech stack. It would have been tedious and complex and time-consuming, but I’m sure I could have turned The Forest into a digital Fort Knox, had I wanted to.
But I don’t want to. Because I trust my customers. Fully and unequivocally. And because I trust the great unfolding of life. On the off chance someone shares the password, or posts it somewhere where hundreds or thousands of non-customers can access it, then it’s meant to be. I will welcome those digital refugees into the garden with open arms, and invite them to build a more beautiful internet alongside me and the Ungated community. And, if they feel moved to become a customer after experiencing The Forest for themselves, they will always be able to join The Frontier or buy me a burrito. This is not a short-term game. Nor is it zero-sum.
It’s wild how defaulting to trust has simplified a great many things in my business, and created a sense of peace that’s far more delicious than anything I ever achieved through prioritizing security. Go figure. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Rob's Daily Invitation
I've made so much progress on The Forest this week, and holy shit am I excited. I suspect this is going to be something special that creates new possibilities, and new lives, for people who enter with an open heart. It may also change the very fabric of the internet, and lead to a more beautiful digital world. Wanna join me?