Strategy and Comms Plan
Strategy and Comms Plan
This is about creating a plan to complete the plan i.e. the strategy and roadmap for 2026 (and beyond) 😉.
S: Strategy work is in progress
C: it's unclear what "done" means. Difficult to define done by deliverables (as can keep evolving)
H: define done as "answering the issue tree" and/or questions answered – when we can answer the key questions, it's done.
Scope
Two related but distinct bodies of work:
- Overall strategy — Life Itself 2026 and beyond (lives in tao)
- Comms strategy + content roadmap — how we communicate (may live in comms repo)
Clarify which repo the comms work lives in before starting.
Proposed approach
- Review existing SCQH/motivation doc in strategy folder
- Build out the issue tree properly (don't skip this)
- Use issue tree to order and prioritise all remaining work
- Surface and prioritise collected FAQs
- Define the key questions the strategy must answer (these become acceptance criteria)
- Draft overall strategy (2026+)
- Draft comms strategy
- Draft content roadmap
Acceptance criteria
Work is done when we can answer these questions (to be refined):
- What is Life Itself's overall strategy for 2026 and beyond?
- What are the key comms priorities and why?
- What content should we produce, for whom, and in what order?
- What are the FAQs and what are our answers?
Appendices
Existing materials
What exists in comms/strategy/:
- motivation.md — solid SCQA with Q0/Q1/Q2 and a full Q&A appendix
- FAQs.md — 12 answered questions, mostly architectural (why 2R, what happens to X)
- README.md — status tracker; strategy described as "largely settled"
- plan.md — sequenced action items but no "done" criteria
- second-renaissance-strategy.md, life-itself-daily-strategy.md, podcast-consolidation.md — detail docs
What's missing per README:
- Channel consolidation SCQA (Substacks, YouTube, DevSpaces cluster)
- Content strategy for secondrenaissance.is (format, cadence, voices, timeless vs responsive)
- Visual branding brief
- Comparable accounts research
- 30-day action plan with owners + dates
On your "done = answerable questions" framing — I think that's the right lens. The existing FAQs are mostly architectural (what goes where, who owns what). What's missing are operational questions:
- What does a week of 2R content look like?
- How do we decide what to post vs what to hold back?
- What does success look like in 3 months? (metrics, even loose ones)
- What's the one thing YoYo/Sylvie should do first thing Monday?
On the issue tree — the SCQA in motivation.md gets to Q1 (architecture) and Q2 (identity). The issue tree branch that's underdeveloped is Q3: execution — once we know what 2R is and what channels it uses, what do we actually produce and at what cadence?
Prior strategy work: v3 SCQH (2022)
SCQH for v3 strategy - why do the revision is the closest prior analogue to this doc — same structure (SCQH + issue tree) applied to the v3 strategy revision. Worth reviewing before building the issue tree for 2026.
Key points from that doc:
- S: post-2020 strategy was Hubs + catalysing big vision conversations
- C: too high-level in brand and offer; audience not specific enough; hubs not working
- Q: What is our new strategy?
- H: high-level unchanged from 2021 SCQH; meso/micro significantly updated (see Big Strategy mid-2022)
Unfinished 2026 strategy doc
There is a full draft strategy doc for 2026 written earlier this year — unfinished and possibly over-ambitious. Should be reviewed and either completed, scoped down, or used as raw material before starting fresh.
Inbox items to file
- History/timeline of Life Itself strategies — short overview doc tracing the arc from v1 through v3 to 2026. Useful orientation doc and good forcing function for seeing what's changed and why.
- Export/present 2025 plan — get a clean export of the 2025 plan plus all supporting materials, possibly presented as a video or script. Good record and potential comms asset.