Later today (fingers crossed) I’ll be “officially” announcing Hub, which is (maybe) this thing:

Root Hub Concept Sketch

Conceptual sketch of Hub and Hub Storage, not the actual device

So why the teaser and not just spitting it out already?

Well, it’s related to the reason that I promised announcements (plural almost two weeks ago and am only just now getting words on a page:

I’ve been thinking about how to address “us”.

This is such a diverse group with diverse needs. Some of you I know personally, other I don’t. Some of you are full-time Moms, others are business owners. We have a few gamers and tinkerers too.

With all that in mind, it’s been hard to write a message out to everyone. I’ve had trouble finding my voice.

I’ve been trying to figure out who “we” are - what it is that binds of together.

This week someone asked me, for about the eleventieth time, “but how will you compete against cloud storage?” - and then I finally had a Eureka moment:

We Are Owners, Not Renters

The answer to the question above is as obvious asking how apartments compete against houses - they don’t. It’s a different set of people with a different set of circumstances and needs.

Most of us don’t lack resources to pay a few hundred bucks to rent online storage each year, we simply don’t want to. We don’t feel good about it - because we’re owners, not renters.

We’re owners because we’re creators, collectors, teacher, and entrepreneurs - the type of people that want control and hate the idea of paying ransoms to “the cloud”.

We have special memories, curated media libraries, and we own our stuff and we enjoy it. The one-size-fits-all cloud rental model doesn’t jive with or work for us.

We are owners.

Can I Get An Amen?

Hopefully I hit the nail on the head and I’m getting some head nods.

If not, I’d be really interested to hear why you’re interested in ppl and what it means to you.

If so, please share with your people to help us build our community. We just published a new version of the website (https://rootprojects.org) and created a Facebook page (https://fb.me/rootprojects.org).

I don’t promise that I’ll actually be better about updates, but I do promise that I’ll try to be, now that I believe I’ve got a better frame of reference.