One of the most tragic aspects of the accelerating pace of change, and rapid evolution of new technologies — is that we as humanity have lost our elders. We begin to see older generations as detached from the current world of innovation, and have to discount advice and experiences gained in an age that feels so different from our own.

Whereas prior generations could count on a world pretty similar to that of their ancestors, when we look to the future, pretty much the only thing we're sure of is that it's not going to look like the past, or even the present.

But we still yearn for some sage advice, at least I know I do. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we did have someone who could help us navigate a time of tremendous, accelerating change?

That's why I was so excited to talk to Kevin Kelly.

Kevin is perhaps the closest thing Silicon Valley has to such a sage. Someone who not only witnessed the tremendous rise of digital technology, but thought about it deeply as it was happening and developed models for thinking about it.

In 1993, Kevin co-founded the groundbreaking Wired magazine, and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years. In 1994, he wrote Out of Control, the classic book on decentralized emergent systems. In 2010 he published What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology and the complex, almost organic systems that drive it, and in 2017 he published The Inevitable, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller about the inevitable trends driving technology.

His latest book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, is an offering of 450 useful aphorisms or principles for living he's devised over his life amidst the changes.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this conversation we talk about:

• How did DIY culture shape Kevin's worldview from a young age?
• What inspired Kevin to co-found Wired magazine?
• Why does Kevin claim technology has a will of its own?
• What is his take on AI advances of today?
• Why did he decide to write a book of pithy life advice?
• What is some of Kevin's most counterintuitive advice around decision making and change?
• How can we live fully before our time is up?

My favorite piece of advice in the episode is about choosing a path of change. Without giving away the content, I'll just say I've brought it up multiple times in conversation with friends about their dilemmas, and when considering my own life decisions.

TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS

These timestaps are AI-generated and could prove inaccurate. (Please let us know if you find any issues here: [email protected] )

• Early Making and DIY Culture (00:08:17 - 00:10:16)
• The Origins of Wired Magazine (00:15:18 - 00:17:30)
• Technology's Inherent Tendencies (00:19:32 - 00:22:05)
• AI as Future Partners (00:25:11 - 00:27:02)
• Truth and AI (00:28:17 - 00:31:20)
• Advice for Living Wisdom (00:32:14 - 00:36:39)
• Giving and Getting (00:36:59 - 00:38:16)
• Learning vs "Can't Do" (00:38:57 - 00:39:42)
• Choosing Change (00:40:55 - 00:41:57)
• Embodying Your Full Potential (00:42:24 - 00:44:45)

EPISODE LINKS

• Kevin Kelly's Links:

  • Website: https://kk.org/
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly
  • Organizations: https://kk.org/cooltools/

• Books, Articles, and Resources Mentioned:

  • Wired Magazine: https://www.wired.com/
  • Out of Control by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/out-of-control/
  • What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/what-technology-wants/
  • The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/the-inevitable/
  • Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/excellent-advice-for-living/

ABOUT US

• Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePod.org
  • 🙏🏻 Rate the show on iTunes
  • 🙏🏻 Support us! Join the Podcast Member community
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• Eran Dror: EranDror.com・LinkedIn・Twitter・Medium

Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is an Israeli-born, Jewish educator, writer, and performance artist. He's the creator of Storahtelling, Inc. and the founding spiritual leader of Lab/Shul in NYC, an artist-driven, everybody friendly, God-optional, pop-up experimental community for sacred Jewish gatherings.

Amichai is a member of the Global Justice Fellowship of the American Jewish World Service, a founding member of the Jewish Emergent Network, serves on the Leadership Council of the New York Jewish Agenda, the Advisory Council of the International School for Peace - a Refugee Support Project in Greece, a member of the Advisory Council for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and is a faculty member of the Reboot Network.

Through all his endeavors, he brings a creative, inclusive, and vital energy to Jewish practice and Jewish life.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this conversation we talk about:

• How the Jewish concept of the set table served both as a happy early memory, and as an organizing principle for his later work.
• How Covid 19 made rituals and online communities more important than ever.
• His orthodox roots as the scion of an ancient and respected rabbinical dynasty, and his journey of self discovery through theater, drag, and art.
• His creation of storytelling, a way to bring to life the ancient ritual of the reading of the Torah, and the Maven Method he developed to spread the practice further.
• The emergence of Lab/Shul and the community around it.
• The power of spiritual design and a well-designed practice in transforming our lives and our communities for the better.

We also discuss:

• How is religion used as a tool in the service of humanity?
• What happens if you bring scripture to the 21st century as a performance?
• Why is the tribal wisdom of small circles within a bigger circle so important?

I've long believed that one of the most promising avenues to apply design skills and creativity to is in designing communities, social rituals, and spiritual practice that suits the modern world. And, as such, there's no one I can think of that exemplifies this better than Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie. I think this conversation, which is full of wisdom and fun, is a great introduction to exactly the type of spiritual design we need to see more of. So let's jump right in with Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie.

TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS

[3:52] Life During Covid

[10:17] The Wisdom of the Set Table

[22:31] The Birth of Storahtelling

[29:55] A Paradigm Shift from Patriarchy

[38:25] Rebirth of the Translator

[54:34] The Design of Lab/Shul

[1:00:19] Design Thinking and Virtual Practice

[1:11:54] Individualism vs Collectivism

[1:19:36] The Significance of the Tree

EPISODE LINKS

• Amichai's Links
  • 🌍 Lab/Shul
  • 🌍 Storahtelling, Inc.
  • 🌍 American Jewish World Service
  • 🌍 Jewish Emergent Network
  • 🌍 New York Jewish Agenda
  • 🌍 International School of Peace
  • 🌍 Institute for Jewish Spirituality
  • 🌍 Amichai Lau-Lavie Official Website
  • 💼 LinkedIn: LinkedIn Profile
  • 📣 Twitter: @AmichaiLauLavie
  • 📺 YouTube Channel
• Other Links
  • 📺 Bo Burnham: Inside
  • 🌍 929
  • 🌍 Design Thinking - Stanford d.school
  • 📕 The School of Life: An Emotional Education by Alain de Botton
  • 📕 Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton
  • 📕 The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker

ABOUT US

• Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePod.org
  • 🙏🏻 Rate the show on iTunes
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Jerry Colonna is the CEO and co-founder of Reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership development firm whose coaches and facilitators are committed to the notion that better humans make better leaders.

For nearly 20 years, he has used the knowledge gained as an investor, an executive, and a board member for more than 100 organizations to help entrepreneurs and others to lead with humanity, resilience, and equanimity. He's been called the CEO Whisperer and the Coach with the Spider Tattoo, and has taken refuge in the Buddhist dharma tradition.

Previous to his career as a coach, he was a partner with JPMorgan Partners (JPMP), the private equity arm of JP Morgan Chase. And before that, had launched Flatiron Partners with partner, Fred Wilson. Flatiron became one of the most successful, early-stage investment programs in the New York City area.

Today, he lives in Boulder, Colorado.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this conversation we talk about:

• COVID, and how it exposed the interdependence, but also the inequality of American society.
• Leadership in the context of the Ukraine war, and how when leaders don't address their vulnerable and wounded parts, that expresses itself in violence. We discuss that in the context of malignant narcissism with Putin, and also with Trump.
• His childhood, and how he became keenly aware of how people around him are feeling.
• His career in venture, and how he veered from that into coaching.
• My therapy session, where he points his radical inquiry, his coach mind, at me.
• My tendency to hide, to not want to be very active on social media, at least not publicly on Twitter.
• My fear of being judged, and my fears of not being seen or appreciated.
• What it means to bring your whole self to every challenge in your life, at work, and at any other moment.
• How everything is an opportunity for self growth, and to practice that.
• His reboot system and method, and his book.
• How everybody in life is basically looking for love, safety, and belonging.

We had this conversation in mid-March 2022, and that was two years into the worldwide outbreak of COVID, and a couple of weeks into Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I was excited and nervous to talk to Jerry, who's famous for making podcasters cry. We also had a brief chat months before preparing for this interview and I already had a taste of his radical inquiry approach to coaching.

So as expected, this did not end up being a regular interview. While we got to explore his history and his ideas and his childhood a little bit, Jerry turned his radical inquiry on me as expected. And you'll get to hear a pretty detailed coaching/therapy session on this podcast and dive deeper into my fears and insecurities along the way. I have to say, I found it deeply therapeutic, both at the time, and now weeks later when I relisten. This was a very different, very meaningful process for me, and I hope that you'll find it beneficial as well. It definitely affected the way that I approach putting myself out there and allow myself to be more visible on social media.

Shortly after this interview was recorded, I definitely did start being more vocal and an amazing thing happened. As I started being more vocal on Twitter and other platforms, we got more and more downloads for this podcast and the podcast started growing very, very rapidly. And so I owe a big thank you to Jerry for challenging my assumptions and helping me pinpoint these insecurities. Jerry assured me that this is helpful to other people to hear. So I really hope that will prove true, and that you'll find this episode really helpful to you in your journey as well.

This conversation with Jerry is one of a dozen or so weekly conversations we already have lined up for you with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, philosophers, entrepreneurs, and investors who are working to change our world for the better. So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to remakepod.org to subscribe.

And now let's jump right in with Jerry Colonna.

TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS

[6:58] Life During Covid

[13:23] The War in Ukraine

[20:51] Early Childhood Empathy

[24:25] A Journey to the Venture World

[32:54] A Therapy Session

[52:17] Business as a Tool for Growth

[57:44] Bringing Your Whole Self

[1:00:20] The Reboot Approach

[1:05:01] A Short Sermon

EPISODE LINKS

• Jerry's Links
  • 🌎 Reboot.io
  • 📘 Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up
  • 💼 LinkedIn: LinkedIn Profile
  • 📣 Twitter: @jerrycolonna
  • 📺 YouTube Channel
• Other Links
  • 🎧 SquadCast
  • 🏙️ Flatiron Venture Partners
  • 📕 The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake
  • 📕 The Lord of the Rings
  • 📕 This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See by Seth Godin
  • 🌎 Wikipedia
  • 📕 The Politics of the Brokenhearted: On Holding the Tensions of Democracy by Parker Palmer
  • 📕 When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön
  • 📕 Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience by Sharon Salzberg
  • 📕 Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer
  • 🎤 TED Talk - Alain de Botton

ABOUT US

• Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePod.org
  • 🙏🏻 Rate the show on iTunes
  • 🙏🏻 Support us! Join the Podcast Member community
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• Remake Labs: RemakeLabs.com・Medium・LinkedIn・Community・Twitter・Facebook・Instagram
• Eran Dror: EranDror.com・LinkedIn・Twitter・Medium

TODAY'S GUEST

Kathy Davies wears many hats - she's a Design Lecturer at Stanford University. She's the Managing Director of the Stanford Life Design lab, where she and her team have trained 150 universities globally to use the life design processes on their campuses to help students design, prototype, and test the right career paths for them.

She is also a Cofounder and CEO at DYL Consulting where she uses design thinking and life design principles to build a better world.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode we discuss:

• [02:56] Challenges during the pandemic, transitioning into virtual classes and workshops.

• [18:34] Kathy's early desires to connect, and to combine science with art in her work.

• [29:23] Kathy's engineering experience.

• [33:14] Getting into Design Thinking at Stanford.

• [48:59] The journey into Life Design.

• [1:02:22] Why is it so hard for us to figure out what we want to do in life?

• [1:07:31] The Life Design process.

• [1:19:39] Life Design for women.

• [1:30:02] The future of Life Design, and its impact.

EPISODE LINKS

• Kathy Davies' Links
  • 🌍 Stanford Life Design Lab
  • 🌍 DYL Consulting
  • 🌍 Stanford Product Design Program
  • 📘 Designing Your Life Book
  • 🌍 Designing Your Life for Women
  • 🗓 Designing Your life for Women Event Page
• Other Things Discussed
  • 🌍 Seth Godin's Akimbo Workshops
  • 📺 How to Make Hard Choices, TED Talk by Ruth Chang

ABOUT US

• Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePodcast.org
  • 🙏🏻 Rate the show on iTunes
  • 🙏🏻 Support us! Join the Podcast Member community
  • 💌 Share your thoughts: [email protected]
  • 👉 Subscribe to the show: Apple Podcasts・Google Podcasts・RadioPublic・Overcast・Stitcher・PocketCasts・Castro・SoundCloud・Spotify・YouTube・Deezer
• Remake Labs: RemakeLabs.com・Medium・LinkedIn・Community・Twitter・Facebook・Instagram
• Eran Dror: EranDror.com・LinkedIn・Twitter・Medium

Vicki Tan is a Product Designer, a public speaker, a student of Behavioral Psychology, and a dog mom based in Brooklyn. She currently works at Spotify, and has previously worked at Headspace, Lyft, and Google. She cares deeply about the human aspects of design, and the insights that data cannot provide. In her spare time, she's working on an illustrated book on cognitive bias.

We spoke in mid-July 2022, and I was excited to talk to Vicki because she's been at the center of designing some really delightful digital experiences in Headspace, Lyft, and Spotify, and has given interesting talks on the complex interactions of data, logic, and creativity.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this conversation we talk about:

• How Vicki got into design by forging notes for school.
• Studying Behavioral Psychology, and using that lens in design.
• Her early work in psychological research.
• How she found her way into Google.
• The importance of cognitive ability in hiring practices.
• The unique culture at Headspace.
• The challenges of designing a meditation app.
• The role of intuition in design and our overreliance on data.
• What finding umami means to her.
• Her book in the works on cognitive bias.
• Self-coherence as a way to help our own cognitive bias.
• And dreams as a blueprint for reality.

One of my favorite things about being a product designer is meeting other product designers. There is something about the open-mindedness, mindfulness, optimism, and interdisciplinary interests that seem to be a recurring pattern and which make the best product designers a real delight to talk to. And Vicki is no different.

This conversation is one of a dozen or so weekly conversations we already have lined up for you with top designers, thinkers, makers, authors, and activists who are working to change our world for the better. So please follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to RemakePod.org to subscribe.

And now, let's jump right in with Vicki Tan.

TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS

[4:18] Life in the Present

[8:35] Childhood Rebellion

[12:17] A Journey to Behavioral Psychology

[15:15] A Career Path

[19:02] Hiring Decision Factors

[21:38] A Pivot to Designer

[25:35] Lyft, Headspace, and Spotify

[29:25] The Culture at Headspace

[37:04] Designing With Intuition

[40:23] Finding Umami

[47:52] Gentle Chaos

[56:47] Cognitive Bias

[1:05:20] A Short Sermon

EPISODE LINKS

• Vicki's Links
  • 🌎 Vicki Tan Website
  • ✍️ Vicki Tan – Medium
  • 🌎 Google
  • 🚗 Lyft
  • 🧘 Headspace
  • 🎧 Spotify
  • 💼 LinkedIn: LinkedIn Profile
  • 📣 Twitter: @vickiheart
• Other Links
  •  Apple
  • 💻 HP®
  • 📷 Adobe Photoshop
  • 💻 Microsoft
  • ☕ Folgers® Coffee
  • 🏰 Disneyland®
  • 🌎 Adobe Illustrator
  • 🌎 Keynote
  • ❤️ Hinge
  • 🎤 TED Talk - Matt Ridley: When Ideas Have Sex
  • 📕 The Book of Hard Truths: 16 Facts of Life We Should Learn to Accept by Eran Dror
  • 📕 Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp
  • 🎥 TikTok
  • 📷 Instagram
  • 🎤 TED Talk - Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0

ABOUT US

• Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePod.org
  • 🙏🏻 Rate the show on iTunes
  • 🙏🏻 Support us! Join the Podcast Member community
  • 💌 Share your thoughts: [email protected]
  • 👉 Listen or Subscribe to the show: Apple Podcasts・Google Podcasts・RadioPublic・Overcast・Stitcher・PocketCasts・Castro・SoundCloud・Spotify・YouTube・Deezer
• Remake Labs: RemakeLabs.com・Medium・LinkedIn・Community・Twitter・Facebook・Instagram
• Eran Dror: EranDror.com・LinkedIn・Twitter・Medium

Dr. Geci Karuri-Sebina is a futurist, urban planning thinker, and the author of Innovation Africa: Emerging Hubs of Excellence. She's a faculty member at Singularity University South Africa with a focus on urban futures, including smart cities, networks, urban planning, governance and development, and innovation systems. She's an associate of The South African Cities Network and had worked with The National Treasury, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, and the University of California, Los Angeles Advanced Policy Institute.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this conversation we talk about:

• The value and importance of speaking your truth, and how she learned that in childhood.
• Her journey from Kenya to the United States, and then to South Africa.
• Her experiments with architecture, physics, and computer science.
• Why urban planning was more appealing to her than architecture.
• The issues that architecture doesn't address.
• Her approach to foresight and future thinking.
• Smart cities, and what constitutes bad urban design.
• Her work with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe.
• And decolonizing our knowledge and ways of knowing.

I loved hearing about Geci's use of different foresight practices to imagine different futures and different possibilities for the future. But what really stayed with me is how dire the situation is — with urbanization outpacing our predictions and our ability to plan, and giving rise to shortages and unplanned solutions that may be less than ideal. We need every tool in our creative toolbox to make sure our cities grow to be a place of diversity, creativity, and opportunity, rather than their opposite.

This episode is especially rich with resources and references, so I wanna encourage everyone listening to check the show notes. We are fairly meticulous at listing and providing links to every article, book, person, or resource mentioned in the episode.

We have close to a dozen weekly episodes already lined up for you with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, and entrepreneurs who are working to change our world for the better. So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to RemakePod.org to subscribe.

And now, let's jump right in with Dr. Geci Karuri-Sebina.

TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS

[4:24] Life in the Present

[7:05] Early Childhood Lessons

[10:02] An Intercontinental Journey

[13:58] A Sense of Dismissal

[16:59] A World of Futures and Foresight

[19:21] Creating a Culture of Futures Thinking

[23:32] An Unpredictable Future

[26:22] An Appreciative Practice

[34:33] What Does Good Look Like?

[37:18] Smart Cities and Design Thinking

[41:44] Capacity to Decolonize

[47:09] A Poetic Collaboration

[50:50] A Short Sermon

EPISODE LINKS

• Geci's Links
  • 🏫 Coe College
  • 🏫 UCLA
  • 🏫 SingularityU South Africa
  • 💰 The National Treasury
  • 🔬 Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
  • 🌎 Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa
  • 🌎 New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)
  • 🌎 The Millennium Project
  • 🌎 Southern Africa Node - The Millennium Project
  • 🌎 The Global Millennium Prize Project
  • 🌎 Capacity to Decolonise (C2D)
  • 📘 Innovation Africa: Emerging Hubs of Excellence
  • 🏙️ The South African Cities Network
  • 💼 LinkedIn: LinkedIn Profile
  • 📣 Twitter: @geci
• Other Links
  • 🌎 UNESCO
  • 📕 Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century by Riel Miller
  • 🎧 Eddie Obeng Interview
  • 📝 Regularising "informality": turning the legitimate into legal? by Paul Jenkins
  • 🏫 Stellenbosch University
  • 🌎 Seeds of Good Anthropocenes
  • 🎧 Bayo Akomolafe Interview
  • 🎤 TED Talk - Alain de Botton

ABOUT US

• Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePod.org
  • 🙏🏻 Rate the show on iTunes
  • 🙏🏻 Support us! Join the Podcast Member community
  • 💌 Share your thoughts: [email protected]
  • 👉 Listen or Subscribe to the show: Apple Podcasts・Google Podcasts・RadioPublic・Overcast・Stitcher・PocketCasts・Castro・SoundCloud・Spotify・YouTube・Deezer
• Remake Labs: RemakeLabs.com・Medium・LinkedIn・Community・Twitter・Facebook・Instagram
• Eran Dror: EranDror.com・LinkedIn・Twitter・Medium

Dan Formosa consults with companies and organizations worldwide on design and innovation. He was an early proponent of "design for all" (a.k.a. Inclusive Design). He lectures internationally on design, research, and the future of design, and is the recipient of numerous design awards.

Dan holds degrees in product design, ergonomics, and biomechanics. He co-founded the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He is the host of the very successful YouTube series Well Equipped, produced by Epicurious for Condé Nast, critiquing in a semi-serious way the design and usability of various kitchen gadgets.

He also co-founded 4B Collective, a group focused on design and gender, and recently established ThinkActHuman to reflect his goal of design for a better world.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this conversation we talk about:

• Growing up in the 1950's in the US, and seeing segregation and the opposite of inclusion.
• The superficial design of the television era — designing to increase perceived value, and to increase purchases based on looks.
• His experience designing on a computer in the 70's.
• Designing kitchen gadgets.
• The need for multidisciplinary thinking, ergonomics, psychology, and other fields of knowledge.
• What makes a good designer?
• The importance of asking questions and being uncomfortable.
• The connection of design and religious studies, with meditation and mindfulness as tools for a designer.
• Design and inclusion.
• The 4B Collective — gender and design.
• The model of collective versus agency, and the difference between a process-based approach versus a knowledge-based approach in design.
• Qualitative versus quantitative metrics.
• And the death of the brand.

We talked in the middle of April 2022, and I was looking forward to chatting with Dan when I watched his hilarious and informative product review videos he's done with Epicurious, where he takes a kitchen gadget and critiques every aspect of its design, ergonomics, and function. We also had a short prep call before the interview, where it became clear to me what a serious design thinker he is, and how much we can all learn from him. It was really a joy to talk to Dan and explore his way of seeing the world and his unique approach to design.

This conversation with Dan is one of a dozen or so weekly conversations we already have lined up for you with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, entrepreneurs, and investors who are working to change our world for the better in some meaningful way. So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to remakepod.org to subscribe.

And now, let's jump right in with Dan Formosa.

TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS

[5:15] Life in the Present

[6:45] Early Childhood Driving Forces

[9:39] A Journey to Design

[16:46] The Joy of Design

[20:18] A Glimpse Into a Designer's Mind

[21:57] What is Design?

[24:27] A Superficial View of Design

[28:06] Ergonomics and Biomechanics

[31:51] Other Types of Knowledge

[33:02] What Makes a Good Designer?

[43:24] The 4B Collective

[53:24] Quantitative Versus Qualitative

[57:49] Death of the Brand

[1:02:13] A Short Sermon

EPISODE LINKS

• Dan's Links
  • 🌎 Dan Formosa Website
  • 🏫 Syracuse University
  • 🏫 Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts
  • 📺 Well Equipped by Epicurious
  • 👩 4B Collective
  • 🌎 ThinkActHuman
  • 🎤 TED Talk
  • 💼 LinkedIn: LinkedIn Profile
  • 📣 Twitter: @danformosa
  • 📺 YouTube Channel
• Other Links
  • 🚗 BMW
  • 🧑‍🍳 Epicurious
  • 🌎 Condé Nast
  • 🏫 Stanford d.school
  • 📺 Mad Men
  • 📺 Inside by Bo Burnham
  • 🎤 TED Talk - Alain de Botton

ABOUT US

• Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePod.org
  • 🙏🏻 Rate the show on iTunes
  • 🙏🏻 Support us! Join the Podcast Member community
  • 💌 Share your thoughts: [email protected]
  • 👉 Listen or Subscribe to the show: Apple Podcasts・Google Podcasts・RadioPublic・Overcast・Stitcher・PocketCasts・Castro・SoundCloud・Spotify・YouTube・Deezer
• Remake Labs: RemakeLabs.com・Medium・LinkedIn・Community・Twitter・Facebook・Instagram
• Eran Dror: EranDror.com・LinkedIn・Twitter・Medium

Greg Hoffman is Nike's former Chief Marketing Officer, a global brand leader, advisor, and speaker, and the author of Emotion by Design: Creative Leadership Lessons From a Life at Nike.

In his book, Greg shares lessons and stories on the power of creativity drawn from almost three decades of experience within the company. It's a celebration of creativity and a call-to-arms for brand-builders to rediscover the human element that makes consumer bonds.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this conversation we talk about:

• How he developed his love of art and design sensibility.
• Growing up in branding inside of Nike, until eventually becoming Chief Marketing Officer.
• The importance of emotion and storytelling.
• On authenticity, and why chasing cool is a bad idea.
• On creativity as a team sport.
• And on the importance of courage.

We talked in mid-June 2022 and I was looking forward to talking to Greg because Nike clearly is doing some amazing work around branding and brand values, and is able again and again to create authentic connections at scale.

I'm a latecomer to the world of branding. For much of my life, I was an avid product person and saw the brand as an afterthought. It's only in recent years that I understood the extent to which our lives, our thinking, and our decisions are driven by the stories we tell, and the emotional associations we make.

The art of doing that well is branding. And it can be used for good or evil, and is just as important in non-profits and political organizations as it is in business.

I really enjoyed the stories of some of Nike's iconic campaigns. Digging in to find compelling ways to tell stories that illustrate and support your values in a real way, feels like a very human way of crafting a brand that people can believe in.

I've counted the episodes that we already have recorded and edited for you, and it's currently eight episodes. There are famous designers like Vicki Tan and John Maeda, authors like Susie Wise and Ashish Goel, and the most connected man in the world, Chris Dancy, among them. We release conversations weekly with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, entrepreneurs, and activists who are working to change our world for the better. So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to RemakePod.org to subscribe.

And now, let's jump right in with Greg Hoffman.

TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS

[4:39] Life in the Present

[5:38] Early Childhood Driving Forces

[7:29] An Age of Color Blindness

[9:18] The Power of Drawing

[12:52] Joining Nike

[16:27] What is Branding?

[18:12] The Importance of Emotions

[23:57] Crafting Authenticity

[32:44] Developing a Culture of Risk-Taking

[35:19] Find Your Greatness

[38:06] Believe in Something

[41:04] Designing Dreams

[45:52] A Short Sermon

EPISODE LINKS

• Greg's Links
  • 👟 Nike
  • 📘 Emotion by Design: Creative Leadership Lessons From a Life at Nike
  • 🌎 The Modern Arena
  • 🏫 Minneapolis College of Art and Design
  • 🏫 Lundquist College of Business - University of Oregon
  • 🎤 "Capturing Imagination Through Brand Storytelling" Talk
  • 💼 LinkedIn: LinkedIn Profile
  • 📣 Twitter: @g_hoffm
• Other Links
  • 🌎 Google
  • 🌎 Facebook
  • ☕ Nespresso
  • 👟 Nike Air Force 1
  •  Apple
  • 🥤 Kendall Jenner Pepsi Commercial
  • 🏀 Michael Jordan "Failure" Commercial
  • 📺 Nike "Find Your Greatness" Commercial
  • 🏈 Nike "Believe in Something" Commercial
  • 🏈 Nike Stand Up Speak Up Campaign
  • 📺 Nike Equality Campaign
  • 🤺 Nike Pro Hijab 2.0
  • 🎤 TED Talk - Alain de Botton

ABOUT US

• Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePod.org
  • 🙏🏻 Rate the show on iTunes
  • 🙏🏻 Support us! Join the Podcast Member community
  • 💌 Share your thoughts: [email protected]
  • 👉 Listen or Subscribe to the show: Apple Podcasts・Google Podcasts・RadioPublic・Overcast・Stitcher・PocketCasts・Castro・SoundCloud・Spotify・YouTube・Deezer
• Remake Labs: RemakeLabs.com・Medium・LinkedIn・Community・Twitter・Facebook・Instagram
• Eran Dror: EranDror.com・LinkedIn・Twitter・Medium

Today, I'm speaking to Richard D. Bartlett, aka Rich Decibels.

During the Occupy movement in 2011, Rich caught a glimpse of a different way of being together — more compassionate, more intelligent, more creative, inclusive, and animating than he'd experienced as a student worker or citizen up to that point. Since then, he's been on a mission. In 2012 he co-founded Loomio, a digital tool for deliberation and decision-making in groups of 3-300 people.

In 2016 he co-founded The Hum, a management consultancy for organizations without managers. The Hum has recently published an online training course that shares what they know about working in highly decentralized organizations. Rich is also a Director and longstanding member of Enspiral — a network of people supporting each other to grow up and to get paid for doing meaningful work.

Rich has a daily writing practice. He writes about how people work together, at any scale, from relationships, to organizations, to social change, and he's prolific on Twitter and on Medium. His fascinating book (currently in beta) is called Patterns for Decentralized Organizing and can be downloaded from Leanpub.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this conversation we talk about:

• How growing up in a strict fundamentalist Christian upbringing, and decoupling from that, shaped his outlook.
• His complex relationship with atheism and religion today.
• How he discovered love and solidarity in activism.
• Technologies of organizing.
• Forming decentralized decision-making processes.
• Nihilism in the face of dysfunction as a form of cowardice.
• Loomio, and collective decision-making software.
• Status and hierarchy.
• Shifting culture through fermentation.
• And the concept of stewardship.

We spoke in mid-June 2022, and I was excited to talk to Rich since he's been introduced to me by Daniel Thorson, whom I interviewed here in episode 10. I've been following his writing on Twitter and find the idea of decentralized work and collaboration fascinating, exciting, and challenging.

It's perhaps the greatest question of our time: now that we're all connected and have incredible tools of self-organization, how can we make better decisions together? How can we outcompete centralized organizations? And how can we benefit from the wonderful richness of so many brains without descending into chaos, nihilism and mob rule?

This conversation is one of a dozen or so weekly conversations that we already have lined up for you with thinkers, designers, makers, authors, entrepreneurs, and activists who are working to change our world for the better. So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to RemakePod.org to subscribe.

And now let's jump right in with Richard D. Bartlett.

TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS

[5:23] Life in the Present

[8:07] Early Childhood Community

[10:33] A Complex Religious Journey

[18:37] The Occupy Movement

[23:45] A Transformational Insight

[28:21] Cowardice and Courage

[30:40] Membership Groups

[35:16] Intersecting Communities

[41:06] Status and Hierarchy

[44:35] Fermenting the Right Culture

[48:21] The Stewardship System

[51:58] A Short Sermon

EPISODE LINKS

• Richard's Links
  • 🌎 Richard D. Bartlett Website
  • 🌎 Loomio
  • 🌎 The Hum
  • 🌎 Enspiral
  • 📘 Patterns for Decentralised Organising
  • 🎤 TED Talk
  • 💼 LinkedIn: LinkedIn Profile
  • 📣 Twitter: @RichDecibels
  • 📺 YouTube Channel
• Other Links
  • 🎧 Daniel Thorson Interview
  • 🌎 Facebook
  • 📣 Twitter
  • 🏜️ Burning Man
  • 🏜️ Midburn
  • 🎤 TED Talk - Alain de Botton

ABOUT US

• Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePod.org
  • 🙏🏻 Rate the show on iTunes
  • 🙏🏻 Support us! Join the Podcast Member community
  • 💌 Share your thoughts: [email protected]
  • 👉 Listen or Subscribe to the show: Apple Podcasts・Google Podcasts・RadioPublic・Overcast・Stitcher・PocketCasts・Castro・SoundCloud・Spotify・YouTube・Deezer
• Remake Labs: RemakeLabs.com・Medium・LinkedIn・Community・Twitter・Facebook・Instagram
• Eran Dror: EranDror.com・LinkedIn・Twitter・Medium

Irene Au is Design Partner at Khosla Ventures, where she works with early-, mid-, and late-stage startup CEOs. She is dedicated to raising the strategic value of design and user research within software companies through better methods, practices, processes, leadership, talent, and quality. Irene has unprecedented experience elevating the strategic importance of design within technology companies, having built and led the entire User Experience and Design teams at Google, Yahoo!, and Udacity. She began her career as an interaction designer at Netscape Communications, where she worked on the design of the internet's first commercial web browser.

Irene also teaches yoga at Avalon Yoga Center in Palo Alto where she is among the teacher training program faculty and is a frequent author and speaker on mindfulness practices, design, and creativity. An adjunct lecturer at Stanford University, she teaches product design in the mechanical engineering department. Irene also serves as a trustee for the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design.

Irene authored the definitive O'Reilly book, Design in Venture Capital, and her popular essays can be found on Medium. She has been featured in WIRED magazine, Fast Company magazine, CommArts magazine, and on the cover of Mindful magazine.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this conversation we talk about:

• Developing listening skills as an introspective child, and how feeling like an outsider helped her develop those skills.
• Her electrical engineering studies, and her transition into looking at how technology influences society and people and how we live.
• Her time at Netscape, and tying together the products for a consistent look and feel across a suite of products that came out at the time called Netscape Communicator.
• Her move from Netscape to Yahoo!, and what went wrong for Yahoo! as a company trying to find its way.
• Her time at Google as we look at it from all angles. What was the state of design at Google before she joined and what were the changes she tried to implement as she brought human-centered design and practices to Google?
• Hiring strategies, staff training, and how design workshops ultimately became the Design Sprint at Google.
• What is design and what is a designer?
• And the role of the designer in venture capital.

I think my greatest takeaway from this interview is this sense of hope that someone like Irene is able to walk into these very "techy" cultures and produce real change. And all it takes is really showing the value of the work and being willing to engage and promote better practices. I think Irene will be an inspiration to many non-engineers who find themselves in heavy engineering cultures and want to make a contribution.

This conversation with Irene is one of many weekly conversations we already have lined up for you with thinkers, best-selling authors, designers, makers, scientists, impact entrepreneurs, and others who are working to change our world for the better. So please follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app, or head over to remakepod.org to subscribe.

And now, let's jump right in with Irene Au.

TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS

[5:54] Life in the Present

[7:08] Early Childhood Driving Forces

[9:40] A Journey to Design

[13:20] Entering Netscape

[16:00] The Challenges of the Early Internet

[19:23] A Transition From Netscape to Yahoo!

[22:58] The Infrastructure of Yahoo!

[30:14] Good Design Versus Bad Design

[34:04] The Winners and the Failures

[39:48] Infusing Design With Google

[45:55] Design Thinking Workshops

[52:13] A Sideways Career Move

[58:35] What is Design Today?

[1:05:26] The Human Meaning of Design

[1:08:58] A Short Sermon

EPISODE LINKS

• Irene's Links
  • 🌎 Irene Au Website
  • 🌎 Khosla Ventures
  • 🌎 Netscape Communications
  • 🌎 Yahoo!
  • 🌎 Google
  • 🌎 Udacity
  • 🌎 Trinity Ventures
  • 🏛️ Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
  • 🏫 Stanford University
  • 🏫 University of Illinois System
  • 📘 Design in Venture Capital
  • 📄 Irene Au Medium Essays
  • 🎤 TED Talk
  • 💼 LinkedIn: LinkedIn Profile
  • 📣 Twitter: @ireneau
  • 📺 YouTube Channel
• Other Links
  • 📕 Engineering Psychology and Human Performance by Christopher D. Wickens
  • 📕 Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach by John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson
  • 📕 The Psychology Of Everyday Things by Don Norman
  • 🌎 IBM Research
  • 🌎 NCSA Mosaic™
  • 🌎 Microsoft Windows
  • 🌎 UNIX
  •  Apple Mac
  • 📄 Microsoft Office
  • 📞 411
  • 🗣️ Facebook
  • 🥅 ESPN
  • ❤️ Match
  • 📺 WarnerBros
  • 🏠 Airbnb
  • 🌎 Google Chrome
  • 🌎 Notion
  • 📄 Coda
  • 🏫 Carnegie Mellon University
  • 🌎 IDEO
  • 🌎 Intuit®
  • 🎧 Jake Knapp Interview
  • 🎧 John Zeratsky Interview
  • 📕 Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz
  • 🌎 LINE Corporation
  • 🌎 GV
  • 🏫 Stanford d.school
  • 📺 Project Runway
  • 🌎 Oracle
  • 🌎 Gusto
  • 🌎 Salesforce
  • 🎵 The Cure
  • 🎤 TED Talk - Alain de Botton

ABOUT US

• Remake Podcast: Visit us: RemakePod.org
  • 🙏🏻 Rate the show on iTunes
  • 🙏🏻 Support us! Join the Podcast Member community
  • 💌 Share your thoughts: [email protected]
  • 👉 Listen or Subscribe to the show: Apple Podcasts・Google Podcasts・RadioPublic・Overcast・Stitcher・PocketCasts・Castro・SoundCloud・Spotify・YouTube・Deezer
• Remake Labs: RemakeLabs.com・Medium・LinkedIn・Community・Twitter・Facebook・Instagram
• Eran Dror: EranDror.com・LinkedIn・Twitter・Medium