I'm sure it's better not to play favourites with the work you create, but what does it say if every digest we publish becomes my new favourite?!

It felt important to write a quick memo on the latest digest (#15) because it came about in 6 hours flat yesterday. And it is VERY good.

What had happened was…I have been working on a digest all month. It's on women's barriers, and the data is HARD to interpret and translate into real-world application. I am literally still deciphering it, but needed to publish something else instead, as we operate on a one-research-digest-a-week routine which cannot lapse.

It has coincided with a pretty complex work month - we have a compliance issue on the MSc unit I lead at work, which needs a lot of attention. Plus, I have TWO illustration commissions for wonderful clients on the go, too.

To be honest, this month is the first month I dreamed of having a co-founder, or perhaps considering if I can recruit a volunteer community manager or something similar. I have ethical reservations about asking people to work for free, so I quickly shelved this idea, but honestly, I seriously need help with Reconcile. & It isn't a project that should be built solo. It needs communion & collectivism.

Anyway, today is all about process. What is the formula for creating a digest so it can become systematic and replicable?

So as I said, yesterday's digest took me ≈6 hours to translate, edit and create from start to finish. This is tight, and I would never usually post it within a day of completing it, as the communication can always be clearer. Every time you revisit it, wording changes and sentences become easier to read. The problem is that the digest draft bank is empty. whereas I usually try to have about 3 drafts ready to go at any given moment.

If we work with a 6 hour time limit + 1-2 hour on a subsequent day to revist, edit and draft on the site, what is the process? Documenting here for future reference, so future researchers/collaborators/guest editors might have a template for what the building process could look like.

PRETASK: Choose your paper. One you have written and published yourself, or a favourite/interesting paper already published. A paper you feel should be communicated for the greater good of knowledge creation, imagination and understanding

TASK 1: Read the paper, underline, and annotate with any paraphrasing/explanations that come to mind as you read

TASK 2: Open a Word document, and type out the core elements of each research section. Go back over and get rid of any information that is unnecessary or confuses the digest

TASK 3: Open our Canva Reconcile template and use font presets to start forming the digest. Here is the design guide with fonts, colours etc, published in Nov 2025.

Notes for Bounce back or adapt

TASK 4: Keep an intuitive eye out for cues that indicate what visual direction we should go down. E.g popular culture/well-known groups of people to go with research on Group dynamics.

TASK 5: Edit, edit, edit. Perfect the digest, proofread, and sense-check. Consider the design in terms of access and visibility (e.g. not too much text per page, adequate spacing between lines). Review language to remove any nods to colonial or exclusionary terminology, editing for a layperson.

TASK 6: Transfer into a draft post on our site, write out an introduction, create a thumbnail and associated social visuals, and proofread one more time.

TASK 7: It is ready to post!

A formula makes it clearer

Connected, I created a formula for what goes into a research digest last month. This forms the basis of the submission form we will soon open, which I'll chat about more in a future memo. In the above list, using the formula would likely come between Task 1 & 2, and would be done by the researcher/contributor. As the editor, I would come in from Task 3 onwards, designing and editing the research for publication.

This formula is the step-by-step process for translating a multi-page research paper into an accessible but academically rigorous Reconcile Journal digest, and is a huge development for us in systems building!