The Best of Postlight in 2020

A lot happened in 2020. A. Lot. Thankfully, we’re here to look back only at what happened at Postlight in 2020. Our whole staff went remote — and, like so many others, our daily office interactions were replaced with the Zoom grid. We pledged $300,000 to three incredible anti-racist organizations and six voter orgs. We turned 5! And, as always, we’re growing. (And hiring!)

We always love sharing what we’ve learned along the way. Postlight publishes weekly articles from across our digital strategy, product management, product design, and engineering groups. We put out new episodes of our podcast every week. And we ship fun experiments and modern digital tools and products under the banner of Postlight Labs. 

As the year comes to a close, we’d like to share some of our best and most popular articles, episodes, and Labs projects of 2020.

A New Whitepaper: Catalyst

A few months back, we released Catalyst: 52 pages of practical advice for digital leaders who need to make change happen in their organization. This plain-English whitepaper packages up decades of experience building digital platforms that serve millions of people inside the world’s biggest organizations. You can download a free copy now, listen to why we made Catalyst, and catch up on the first Catalyst live event, where we discuss the importance of defining your mission. 

2020’s Top Articles

Paul Ford makes the case for driving development and product decisions around the one thing your boss will always care about: the dashboard.

Looking back, it will be hard to talk about 2020 without talking about the pandemic. Liz Tan shares a candid view of what happened to her work and home life when the pandemic hit. 

Rich Ziade examines the problems of current workflow tools and where the work lies for improvement.

Paul follows up an article in Wired to unpack consumer and enterprise codeless tools, including why Postlight loves where codeless is taking us.

Postlight partners with organizations of all shapes and sizes, but when it comes to product development, things tend to go wrong in similar ways no matter your size. Chris LoSacco highlights six common mistakes we see product teams making, and what to do about them. (If you’d like to dive deeper, you can also listen to Paul, Rich, and Chris discuss the six mistakes in a three–part podcast.)

2020’s Top Podcast Episodes

Paul, Rich, and Gina Trapani discuss the different needs of management and staff, plus what makes a good leader. 

From simple to complex, Paul and Rich share the top five tools that keep them in control and productive at work.

When building a product, it’s tempting to try to do everything at once. But whenever possible, the brand should come first.

Rich and Paul share their thoughts on the RFP process, and suggest a more genuine and empathetic approach to sales.

For better or worse, the slide deck is often your most powerful tool for moving work forward. Gina and Rich discuss what makes an effective and persuasive deck.

2020 at Postlight Labs 

2020 was the year of remote work, much of which happened in Slack. Textmoji makes it quick and easy to create custom emoji for your Slack workspace, keeping 2020’s de facto watercooler fun and fresh.

TinyMonth is a lightweight set of dates that’s shareable, remixable, and private.

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In the meantime, happy holidays. 2021, we’re counting on you!

Adam Pash is a Director of Engineering who heads up Postlight Labs. Drop him a note: adam.pash@postlight.com.