Agency on Record

Jay Wightman, head of digital experience at Manulife Investment Management, joins us to talk the data and product challenges of the company's digital transformation and how Maestro was a critical part of the solution. Mike and Jason want you to go to http://maestro.maark.com/.

There are many reasons to release a minimum viable product (MVP) in the software world--to hit a deadline, to test the concept on the market, to lower cost--and they're all probably wrong strategies. Mike and Jason just want you to knock off the M and V and focus on the P.

It sounds weird to say, but we've outlived Google Search's usefulness. It's full of ads, we never make it past page three of its results, it's hard to trust its objectivity, and the privacy concerns aren't going away. That means any other search engine is just as good, if not better. Mike and Jason just want to retrain the muscle memory that sends them to Google every time.

We pushed the bounds of science and bureaucracy to create a COVID vaccine in record time. But the simple online form for getting it is broken in every way despite big agencies and major companies building it. Even worse, this software fail is the state of the industry. Mike and Jason just don't want people to die from bad software.

It was fun to root for the Redditors, but the GameStop debacle shows yet again how software platforms are best at turning individuals into faceless, hysterical mobs. Mike and Jason are just sore they didn't get in when they were trading shares for old Nintendo cartridges.

Social media forces us to be emotionally attached to everything due to the social pressure to make statements or the unending need to post content. But the rabid pursuit to be "in the conversation" is exhausting and fomentative. We need more emotional impartiality. Mike and Jason are working on the self-help book: Not Caring Yourself into a Better Life.

We welcome to the podcast Cassidy Shield, VP of Marketing at Narrative Science, a company dedicated to telling engaging stories through data. We go way back with Cassidy, maybe too far back, and we get to pick his brain about who in the company should own the product vision and what the heck that even means (TL;DL: It should be Marketing).

Do we want to look back at 2020? Of course we do. It was a strange year for everyone, a tragic year for some, and--from a digital industry perspective--an enlightening year. Mike and Jason just want to record this podcast in person again.

The digital world has increased both consumption and production of both art and content to crazy levels. But has that voracious cycle caused us to lose something important? Mike and Jason just want to rehash old college dorm arguments...in the digital world.