Bookmarked!

Hello, incredible human! 

Dark pink line icon of a monster with a big grin, spikes on its head, seeming to waveYou are here because we met somewhere out in the real world (TED, perhaps?) and I, Becca Williams, shared a connected bookmark with you (or somehow you stumbled upon this page thanks to a crawler bot and SEO). Over the last few years, I’ve accumulated a pile of doodles and paintings. We’re almost out of wall space now and are actively collecting dust in our rural Colorado home, so I decided to redistribute these doodles in pieces as bookmarks out in the world to spread a little joy.

Here’s the whole family:

A spread of handpainted bookmarks on a patterned rug

If you’d like to stay in touch, let’s:

  • connect on LinkedIn
  • Twitter (maybe I’ll tweet again one day)
  • check out beccawilliams.xyz (you’re here and there’s more to explore!), metopause.com (where I’m running an experiment to see if people navigating perimenopause might join me in a Web3 community), likeheartslab.com ( a sustainable, accessible mixed-use real estate concept I worked on for four years as a side project and will revive one day), and thoughtdistillery.com (the home of my former tech consulting small business’ content)
  • add me as a friend on Discord (@buenaverse) or send me a note on Telegram
  • Emails are great, too

My process, in case you’re curious…

It started with taking a deep breath and tearing up my art pieces into bookmarked-sized chunks. I sealed them with Mod Podge so the gouache, alcohol inks, paint markers, acrylics, and gel pens that adorn the thick watercolor papers don’t rub off onto your book pages. 

I ordered these NFC tags. I downloaded the NFC Tools app (free) and almost immediately decided the $2.99 to access additional features like storing a url would be worth it, with more than 50 bookmarks ahead of me to program. I wrote the link data to a test tag (up and running in a couple of steps), ran a tap test, covered the tag with another layer of paper, ran another tap test, stuck it to a prototype bookmark, stamped a symbol or word on the decorative paper to indicate where to tap, glued around the tag with Uhu stic, and added a cover sheet of decorative paper on the back, before running a final test. Rinse and repeat. It felt like magic every single time. Seriously. My nerdiest celebratory self showed up again and again. I’m still giddy about it the next morning as I write this.

NFC tags have endless use cases. I quickly decided to order another 50 stickers so I can keep playing with this. While this can seem like an intimidating thing, these were actually incredibly easy to program using the app above. Give it a try! 

More about me, in case you’re still curious…

I am a multi-hyphenate technologist, which means mostly product lead and project manager (B2B SaaS primarily), occasional Scrum facilitator (not dogmatic about it), and Agile coach, once-in-a-while UX researcher, business analyst, and frequent Web3 learner.

By day I work for a design and engineering consultancy called Method (all opinions represented here are my own.) Method is a child company of GlobalLogic and a grandchild company of Hitachi. I won’t put too much of a sales pitch here, but Method does incredible work in product design, strategy, and management, organizational/business design and management consulting, data design, and engineering. I’d love to connect you if you have needs in any of these areas. </pitch>

I have two tween sons, am partner and wife to a talented writer/podcaster/photographer/artist named Adam Williams, and I love to refill my creative and emotional bank out on nearby trails.

I have a more extended intro on the home page.

Thanks for stopping by!

Photo by Catalin Pop on Unsplash