Newsletter Archive

DeveloPassion's Newsletter 192 - Knowii is LIVE 🚀

Official Launch announcement for the Knowii Community

Sebastien Dubois

13 May 2025 — 8 min read

The Knowii Community is LIVE. Time to get together ❤️

Hello everyone! I’m Sébastien Dubois, your host. You’re receiving this email because you signed up for DeveloPassion’s Newsletter. Thank you for being here with me ✨

If you enjoy this, please forward it to your friends 👍. If this email was forwarded to you, then don’t forget to subscribe and become a supporter. You can also follow me on X, Bluesky, and Mastodon.

Welcome

Another week, another newsletter! I hope that you all had a great one 🤩

In the past 2-3 years, I've kept sharing my ideas around Community Knowledge Management (CKM). I've also started working on Knowii as an open source platform. Unfortunately, I had to put the project on hold because I lacked the necessary funding. Today, while I still plan to develop the full platform in the future, I'm first launching the Knowii community to create immediate value and build a foundation for everything to come.

Alright, let's gooooo 🚀

This Week's Highlights

🔄 Knowii Evolution: Why I'm prioritizing community before platform development
🏗️ Phasing: The benefits of a community-first approach
🌐 Community Structure: How the new unified community will work
❤️ Knowii as my core offer: How Knowii will change my business
🧭 Knowii Roadmap: The path from community to comprehensive platform
📅 Migration Plan: What existing community members can expect

Knowii: Platform Vision, Community First

I shared my vision for Knowii as a Knowledge Management platform for communities and individuals, with features for discovering valuable resources, sharing knowledge, but also integrating with tools like Obsidian and AI.

I still strongly believe in what could become the future of Knowledge Management, but I have to be realistic, and set goals that I can achieve in a reasonable amount of time. I'm a solopreneur with a very small business, and if I continued working on the Knowii platform, my business would have died by now. That's why I paused it, and decided to instead deliver the Knowledge Management for Beginners course.

Now that it's done, I can take the next step. After reflecting on the best path forward, I've decided to now focus on building Knowii as a community.

Why? Because...

Approaching things incrementally is the way to go
Knowledge management is fundamentally about people connecting ideas. This matters a lot more than technology and tools. It makes a lot of sense to first create a network of like-minded individuals
We already ARE a community, but we lack a shared space for thinking together
Rather than asking you to wait for the complete platform, we can start building a valuable knowledge network right away
By observing how our community naturally shares, organizes, and requests information, I'll gain invaluable insights to inform the platform's development

By creating this community hub now, we can start learning and growing together immediately, rather than waiting for the whole platform to be ready for prime time, which could take me a really long time. And I believe that the relationships we build and the insights we gather together will ultimately make the platform more successful.

This new community will of course be called "Knowii", an acronym that stands for "Knowledge, Ideas and Inspiration".

What about the other communities?

As you probably know, I have created multiple communities over the years. There was one for PKM on Slack, one for Knowledge Workers on Discord, a "Mastermind" group on Slack, a space for Zen Productivity enthusiasts on Slack, another one for Software Crafters on Slack, etc.

But due to a lack of focus and time, I let some of those die a slow and painful death. With the new Knowii community, I am going to regroup all of those in a single and well-organized place, providing more value and insights to everyone. I will also focus a lot more time and energy into building it and keeping it alive and kicking. But there's more!

Community Structure and Experience

Knowii is a public community that anyone can join for free, and it also has private and exclusive spaces with premium content, courses and products.

Here's how the community is structured:

Explorer Tier (Free Membership)

Access to general discussions
Knowledge Management guidance and tutorials
Curated content
Limited resource library access
Introductory templates
Community help for common problems
Useful links

Join now!

Knowledge Builder Tier (Paid Membership)

Live events, workshops and office hours
Access to additional spaces: AI, Knowledge Work, Systems & workflows, Zen Productivity, Content creation
Advanced workflow discussions
Deep dives on specific challenges
Expanded resource library
Priority support

Join now!

Knowledge Master Tier (Premium Membership)

Full access to all courses: Knowledge Management for Beginners, Obsidian Starter Course and future ones
All premium products included: Knowledge Worker Kit, Obsidian Starter Kit, PKM Library)
Mastermind and group coaching sessions
Priority access to new products, courses and resources
Access to all community spaces and resources
Advanced implementation guides
...

Join now!

Learn more

You can learn more about Knowii over here:

Courses & Products (Paid, one-time purchases)

There will be dedicated spaces for all my products and services, such as the Knowledge Management for Beginners course, the Obsidian Starter Kit, the Obsidian Starter Course, the Knowledge Worker Kit, etc.

Those will be behind paywalls. You will get access either by buying those in my store or directly within the Knowii community. If you have already purchased those, you will get access as soon as they are moved over (or even sooner if you reach out to me!).

Knowii as my core offer

Moving forward, if this experiment is a success, I will migrate most of my products/courses and content (apart from articles and newsletters) to Knowii. Each will have a dedicated space, and a greatly improved user/customer experience. This will enable us all to connect and exchange ideas (including product improvement opportunities), and you will also have more direct/straightforward access to me.

For now, I will keep the product landing pages/sales copy on Gumroad, and will continue to use Gumroad for sales and tax handling, but I will probably phase that out later on, and sell directly from my main Website.

My goal is to turn the Knowii community (and all of the products/courses/content it will include) into my core offer. It will be at the very center of my whole business: where I can deliver value, help people, connect like-minded people, etc. I will dedicate all my energy into making it better, day after day, week after week.

This is how I envision the future:

The backbone of my business will remain Obsidian, my single source of truth, combined with different tools such as an automation platform, an e-mail marketing platform, AI, etc. I'll continue to publish notes on my notes website, and those will continue to serve as public references I can share around and reuse for different purposes.

I will also continue publishing my articles and newsletters to my main Website, Medium (e.g., through the PKM Journal), Substack and LinkedIn (cfr My communications plan). In addition, I will also start crossposting certain pieces directly to Knowii. And I will also publish community-exclusive content within the Knowii community.

I will continue to share ideas and content on social media. But the most valuable content will be for Knowii members and paid subscribers.

Last but not least, I also intend to launch an affiliate program soon, to offer everyone a chance to help me succeed, and share the benefits.

My risky bet on Circle.so

I don't want to use Slack anymore. They're way too costly, and they remove data if you're not paying. That's completely against my vision of knowledge management. Because of their policy, we have lost tons of valuable conversations in the Knowledge Management Community. Discord is cool, but has different issues...

The problem is that most community tools focus almost entirely on conversations, which does not include knowledge management at all. Until the Knowii platform finally arrives, Circle.so feels like the best solution out there.

This is a big bet for me, because the subscription price starts at $99 per month. This will add even more pressure on my small and fragile business. I still only work part time on all this (~2 days per week), and I don't have a lot of runway available.

Moreover, I really don't know how many of you will actually join me there and how many will want to become paid members. Maybe this experiment will turn into one more ghost town that I lose a lot of money over. That's not what I want, but I would understand if you don't want to join one more app, one more space, etc.

But since I gave myself only one more year, I need to at least give this a real try. After 3 months of this experiment (thus ~$400 + time spent), I'll evaluate if it's worth going on or not.

What I know for a fact is that I do want to have a shared space where we can discuss, exchange ideas, share and accumulate knowledge, etc.

Knowii Roadmap

Phase 1: Community Foundation (Now)

Establish the Circle.so community hub (DONE)
Migrate existing community members (BUSY)
Begin knowledge sharing and resource curation manually
Collect insights on user needs and behaviors
Organize regular workshops and "office hours" sessions

Phase 2: Community Enhancement

Grow the community together
Integrate existing products more tightly with the community
Deliver additional articles, courses and products to provide more value
Prototype platform features within the community context

Phase 3: Platform Development (Returning to Original Vision)

Resume development of the open-source Knowii platform
Create seamless integration between the community and platform
Gradually transition community activities to the platform
Develop integrations with other knowledge management tools
...

Migration Plan for Existing Communities

Here's what existing community members can expect:

Content Migration (Ongoing): As part of this experiment, I'll migrate only 2 of my courses. If it's successful, I'll migrate all the rest
Early Access (Next 2-3 Weeks): Paid newsletter subscribers, and Knowledge Worker Kit members will receive the first invitations.
Community Migration (Next 1-2 Months): I'll personally invite members from all existing communities with detailed instructions on joining.

I'll send detailed instructions when it's time for you to join. For now, I wanted to share this and get your thoughts.

How You Can Help

As I prepare for this transition, I'd love your input:

Are you interested in joining this new community space?
What community features would make Knowii most valuable to you?
What resources would you be most interested in sharing or discovering?

Simply reply to this email with your thoughts – your feedback will directly shape how Knowii develops, both as a community and as a platform!

Also, don't forget to share the word around.

Quotes of the Week

That's it for today! ✨

About Sébastien

I am Sébastien Dubois. You can follow me on X 🐦 and on BlueSky 🦋.

I am an author, founder, and coach. I write books and articles about Knowledge Work, Personal Knowledge Management, Note-taking, Lifelong Learning, Personal Organization, and Zen Productivity. I also craft lovely digital products.

If you want to follow my work, then become a member and join our community.

Ready to get to the next level?

To embark on your Knowledge Management journey, consider investing in resources that will equip you with the knowledge you need. Check out the Knowledge Management for Beginners course, the Obsidian Starter Kit and my other products. These will give you a rock-solid starting point for your note-taking and Knowledge Management efforts.

If you want to take a more holistic approach, then the Knowledge Worker Kit is for you. It covers PKM, but expands into productivity, personal organization, project/task management, and more: