The Impossible Network

Katz Kiely

Katz is an award-winning digital pioneer, transformation leader, and systems thinker. She has a proven track record of delivering strategic cultural and operational programs that have led to measurable improvements in Employee Experience, employer brand, and operational efficiency.

She has supported some of the world’s traditional organizations through change, including the first Open Innovation Platform with HP Labs, rearchitecting the way the UN does business, and designing a city-scale behavior change platform with Intel and the GLA.

She is passionate about using design thinking and digital tech to unlock the full potential of people, judges for digital awards, writes for b2b publications, and regularly shares her vision of a more human-centered Future of Work at conferences, including twice at TEDx

She believes that doing good is good business, is the Founder, Chair of Trustees for Frontline.Live and a proud ambassador of the Burning Man Foundation.

What We Discuss 

• (3.00-8.00) Katz discusses who she is and what made her.
• (9.30) - Self-diagnosed with ADHD 
• (12.50) Getting Pregnant and having a child while at University 
• (14.15) How her tenacity manifests 
• (16.10) Dealing with fragility and doubt 
• (18.00 - 22.00) Her gifts and talents and what she is complimented for 
• (26.30) How she fell in love with digital and formed her first start-up Between working with the BBC
• (31.27 -35.00) Katz explains her Greatest Show for Earth Idea for innovation
• (35.20 - 39.00) Driving digital transformation for the UN and ITU through design thinking 
• (42.20-47.00) BEEP 
• (48.20-56.00) The need to use technology to bond and break tribalism 
• (1.01.30- 1.04.00) CREAT Leadership Framework 
• (1.07.40-1.12.00) Applying the framework while Running a co-creation design thinking workshop with school children and we discuss education and the need for system change 
• (1.15.00- 1.19) Katz explains how she created Frontline.Live 
• (1.21.00 - 1.26.00) How she is pivoting the platform to support Ukraine and the changes she is having to make to the tech platform, and the reality of dealing with international NGOs
• 1.29.00 - Katz’s ambition for the open source value and application of the BEEP platform

Social Links 

Katz's Site 

Katz TedX Talk 

Frontline.Live Ukraine 

Frontline Live map

Twitter

Linkedin

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Here are seven minutes of soundbites from my storyteller series of interviews with guest Jennifer Hutchins - award-winning Hollywood TV and film producer and now Austin-based Founder of All Entertainment Business, the fast-growing entertainment industry networking event series. 

Social Links 

Austin Entertainment Business 

Jennifer Hutchins site

Linkedin 

Instagram 

Twitter

Facebook

Links in the show 

Robert Rodriguez 

Richard Linklater 

Suzanne Lyons 

Barbara Doust 

Michael Blum 

Dr. Merritt Moore 

Hopefully Sow

Steve Jobs - The Man Who Thought Different 

Neeva

Descript - Our edit tool for the podcast 

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Jennifer Hutchins - award-winning Hollywood TV and film producer and now Austin-based Founder of All Entertainment Business, the fast-growing entertainment industry networking event series. 

Key sections

• Jennifer’s reason for pivoting from Journalism to Hollywood to tell stories  
• The rollercoaster ride of working and competing in Hollywood,
•  Breaking her neck and ribs in a car accident - 28.40 
• Finding herself working 20 hours plus on Dr. Phil while pregnant, knowing something was not right 
• As a single mother being drawn to Austin and the realization that Austin was calling her (39.30) 
• The genesis of the Austin Entertainment Business and how Jennifer grew the network to over 10,000 by cultivating a culture of abundance and building the event she always wanted (43.00- 52.00)
• The serendipity of events that led her to achieve her goal of working with Richard Linklater and Bill Guttentag
• How she pivoted the event during Covid to All Entertainment Business by embracing Zoom and opening it to the world (57.00)
• Her global mission and ambition for All Entertainment Business and to discover and support the underrepresented 59.00-1.05 
• Jennifer describes her natural gifts as an example of her ability and tenacity to bring ideas to life (1.08.00) 
• Dealing with fragility and doubt (1.11.30)
• The importance of dependability 1.13.00
• Jennifer's three pieces of advice (1.15.30-1.17.30)  
• The power of affirmations (1.18.00)
• The importance of belief, desire, and taking action 
• Her advice on people wanting to get into the industry 1.22.00
• The change she would like to see in the world 1.28.20
• Jennifer asks for a financial partner to support her and allow her to grow her global team. 1.34.00

Social Links 

Austin Entertainment Business 

Jennifer Hutchins site

Linkedin 

Instagram 

Twitter

Facebook

Links in the show 

Suzanne Lyons 

Barbara Doust 

Michael Blum 

Dr. Merritt Moore 

Hopefully Sow

Steve Jobs - The Man Who Thought Different 

Neeva

Descript - Our edit tool for the podcast 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s been 7 months since our last drop and four years since I began the podcast. So before season 5 kicks off, I wanted to explain the changes to the type of guests we will interview and the outcomes we are hoping to effect. 

Back in July last year, I paused the podcast, and during this hiatus, I worked with creative elder, coach, mentor, and award-winning ex-ad guy, Paul ‘Nobby’ Davies on my underlying mission and vision for the Impossible Network. 

During one of my Creative Coaching calls, I recounted how a previous pod guest Jeremy Hymans in his book New Power, co-authored with Henry Timms, stated that the event series TED had cornered ideas worth spreading. But what we need in the world are people focused on the problems that need solving. Now, if there is one thing I have learned over the years is that when all great problems were solved, serendipity played a part. 

This got me thinking, let’s make the podcast a genuine serendipity experiment. 

So I started with this question. If we have all these problems that need solving, instead of think tanks publishing papers on possible solutions, surely we should have Action Engines doing real work to solve the problem? And could the Impossible Network Podcast play its part and be a catalyst for creating Action Engines to accelerate problem-solving and progress? 

Why not try?

So here’s what we’ll do. 

We will interview three types of people - what we are calling 

• The Difference Makers - Those on the ground change agents working to make an impact on a particular social problem 
• The Domain Experts - respected people of authority with specialist knowledge or skills whose ideas could have value in finding solutions to problems.
• The Storytellers - creative folk, those able to shape or change attitudes and behavior through the compelling or emotive stories they tell, committed to improving the world in which we live. 

• Then every two to three months, we will create Action Engine events where we will challenge these guests to collide with each other, those with different perspectives, skills, and experiences in what we are calling Random Collision interviews and participate in structured design thinking workshops where we will explore alternative ways to solve the problems they care about. For example, educational innovation, criminal justice reform, mental health, decarbonization, transportation, electrification, food insecurity, homelessness, artificial intelligence risks, or building sustainable cities.

• And finally, we will build an Action Engine community and database. A place to easily discover and connect with change-makers, domain experts, and storytellers, filterable by experience, skills, and areas of focus.   

It might sound like a crazy experiment, but I think it’s going to be a blast. 

Ok. Let’s get started. 

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To say that Robert Hansen, aka RSnake is a man of impact is an understatement. 

Robert is on a journey to positively impact a billion lives and to leave the plant slightly better than when he arrived. 

This is a long episode, but it’s an important one for anyone concerned about the threats and risks we face in today’s world. 

We cover: 

• Robert’s serendipitous start to developing his hacking skills
• Building a hacker alliance to take down Paedophile groups
• His philosophy and approach to solving problems at the architectural level.  
• Robert’s perspective on online security, risks, and privacy 
• We discuss the potential damage from insulting children from risk, 
• The threats posed by China’s CCP, their Thousand Grains of sand strategy, and their creeping social credit system, their growing threat to western security from the power of the CCP, the threat of hypersonic missile technology and quantum cryptography
• Robert describes his top three existential threats, risk of AI
• And I seek Robert’s perspective on guns. And the historical context of the 2nd amendment and Americans’ s right to bear arms and emerging solutions to gun violence. 
• On a very personal level I also ask how he overcame depression in his twenties. 

For anyone interested in gaining deeper insights into our fractured world and the risks we face, this episode is unmissable. 

Social Links

Linkedin

Podcast - The RSnake Show 

Instagram 

Links In The Show 

Tenable 

White Hat Security 

Jeremiah Grossman 

Chinese CCP 

Thousand Grains of Sand 

Hypersonic Missiles

China’s Social Credit System 

1980’s Fairness Doctrine

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Dina Lovinsky is a Russian-born, SF-based writer. She is also the ghostwriter of the recent NYT and WSJ bestseller Tony Fadell’s, Build - An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making.

This is a fun episode.  

We discuss 

• Dina discusses being born in St Petersburg, Russia before moving to the US and growing up in Boston.
• Being conditioned by her parents with a sense of invincibility. 
• She discusses her parent's experience of being Refusniks in Soviet-period Russia.
• Her father's experience working for the Mafia.
• She describes her Star Trek life lesson and developing her superpower to never blame others for how she feels.
• We discuss how two scientists produced a child with a talent for the arts and English. 
• Dina explains how she developed her love of reading and developing her curiosity.
• She discusses her school life and not working hard. 
• Dina explains how her path led her to San Francisco to a job in publishing before moving into product management in tech startups. 
• She explains how her focus shifted to writing all content for the companies she worked. 
• We discussed how she developed her copywriting skills.
• Dina explains her approach to writing, her disorganization, and procrastination.
• Dina describes her work with Tony Fadell and how she came to ghost-write his book Build, 
• She explains how she and Tony arrived at the structure and wrote the book during the pandemic.
• Dina describes how people can use the book as a mentor in a box. 
• We discuss the emergence of AI and the impact and threat to writers 
• Dina describes her hopes for the next ten years
• She answers the quick-fire questions

Social Links  

Linkedin 

Links 

 Build - An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making.

Star Trek   

Refusniks 

Tenth of December George Saunders

Swim In The Pond In The Rain 

Kurt Vonnegut 

Gary Shteyngart

Super Sad True love Story

GPT3

Jasper AI

Severance 

Radio Lab 

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​​Negar Tayyar is a philanthropic refugee rights advocate, life coach, and co-founder and director of the Global Whole Being Fund (GWBF), an international fund supporting the humanitarian and long-term needs of forcibly displaced people. 

We cover a lot in this episode from Negar’s early memories of growing up in Iran, her parents being civil rights activists, which resulted in them fleeing Iran, moving from country to country, and relying on the kindness of strangers before arriving and settling in Germany and the challenges she and her parents experienced in an alien culture. 

Negar discusses in detail the global scale of the refugee response crisis, the vision and mission of GWBF, and how its focus on grassroots ecosystems and holistic approach enables more equitable solutions and empowers displaced people to claim their voice. 

Negar is not only a powerful advocate of the rights and well-being of displaced people, but she is also reframing the narrative and mechanisms of how philanthropic grants work and changing operational control to encourage refugee-led organizations to flourish.  

While our news feed may be filled with stories of despondency and desperation, hearing Negar’s vision and vitality is a timely antidote and much-needed boost of optimism. Please Enjoy. 

We cover

• The challenging experience of seeking safety by crossing many borders. 
• Arriving and settling into Germany and witnessing the toll it took on her parents, who shaped her worldview and sense of self. 
• We cover the transitional fabric of German society and the impact of migrants.
• Her childhood memories and the precious generosity of people.
• We discuss the work of the Global Whole Being Fund (GWBF), its focus on local ecosystems, and asset-based grant-making. 
• Negar touches on the Ukraine refugee crisis highlighting Choose Love’s Ukraine Campaign supporting people seeking safety. 
• She explains the imperative to prioritize resourcing dignified approaches to support people seeking safety as we face more displacement in the years ahead. 

Links in the Show

Global Whole Being Fund

Choose Love  

Resonance Coaching

Mo Gowdat

Fast Forward 

Asylum Seekers Advocacy Project 

MaKenzie Scott

Mans Search For Meaning

Myriad Intimacies Lata Mani

Stewarding The Earth 

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Born and raised in Venice Italy, Matteo Vianello is a Creative and Design leader who has led an extraordinary and varied life channeling his curiosity and expressing his rich creative talent in building brands, launching products, and designing high-performing teams, from design companies to global ads agencies to silicon valley start-ups. 

Key discussion points: 

• Matteo discusses the impact of growing up surrounded by art in Venice
• The expectations his parents placed on him to be happy     
• His Father’s impact on his worldview and his creative identity 
• Matteo discusses curiosity and the generative nature of creativity 
• We discuss his traditional early education and his Math focused secondary education
• How he entered graphic design via a connection with David Carson  
• Matteo discusses his growing interest in graphic design 
• Hustling his way into Fabrica Benettons in-house design agency  
• The serendipitous experiences resulting from opening all doors 
• Matteo discusses Benetton's creative output under Olivero Toscani
• The changing nature of creativity 
• The strategic competency of design 
• The curse of competency 
• The synergistic impact on inhouse creative departments 
• The need for more design thinking to solve world-scale challenges
• The evolution of agencies and agility  
• His new agency Squero
• His answers to the quick-fire questions 

Social Links 

Linkedin 

Squero Studio

Instagram 

Art site 

Links in show   

Raygun

Wired 

Tadao Ando

Bruno Munari    

Gilla Dorfles  

Minjin Lee Pachinko

Oliviero Toscani

Tony Fadell 

Dina Lovinsky

Build By Tony Fadell -

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Chris Debiec is an award-winning writer/producer/executive with a thirty-plus-year track record of producing film and tv series, working with icons across all aspects of the entertainment industry.

Chris recently moved from LA to Austin, and as a result of a serendipitous connection, we sat down to discuss his insights and experiences across his inspiring career. We cover a lot of ground in this interview. But what stood out to me was the combination of his willingness to take risks, to trust in his instinct, his fastidious attention to detail, a hard work ethic, and his brutal candor. 

• Securing a place in Disney’s Management Training program.
• How his free thinking led to his removal from the program.
• Chris explains how his brutal candor, combined with his hard work ethic, secured a position in Disney Film and Tape and craft service. 
• The serendipitous encounter with Martin Baker that set his future path through film and TV.
• Discussing why production is a combination of economics and creativity.
• The trauma of working on the set of the Crow when Brandon Lee was killed. 
• Chris describes why he left Disney to build a career in Hollywood. 
• Chris explains the work he did working with James and John Cameron on Cameron’s underwater adventure films. 
• We discussed the pivot during Covid when he and John Cameron supplied the film industry with PPE and protocols to enable production to occur.
• We discuss the importance of curiosity and creativity for producers.
• Where we will be in 10 years.
• His principles. 
• His advice to ambitious wannabe producers.

Social Links 

Linkedin 

Instagram 

Show Links 

Lou Wasserman 

Disney MGM studios

Michael Eisner  

Jim Henson

Screen Actors Guild

James Cameron

Human Health Organization 

Civilized Entertainment

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This week's guest is Michael Plitkins, co-founder and Co-Der of Spatial Inc - the  Immersive Audio start-up that redefines the human experience by creating virtual soundscapes where you work, where you play, and where you stay. 

In this interview, Michael takes us on a serendipitous journey through his life; a life defined by his willingness to embrace challenges, the courage to confront uncertainty, and trust in his ferocious independence. 

We discuss the trajectory of his fascinating career in Software Engineering, his appreciation for, and experience in design, how that opened the doors to his first role as an engineer,  working across some groundbreaking technologies in VR and voice space, at iconic companies from Netscape to Nest. 

At 27 min Michael discusses the genesis of his idea for creating Spatial when he discovered no immersive audio solution existed to deliver the experience he sought.  

Micheal describes how he and his team are breaking down traditional audio barriers, taking audio to a new level, and allowing a community of creators to use Spatial tools to unleash their creative soundscapes as part of their designs, Michael and his team are poised to reimagine immersive audio that will change how we experience community spaces like retail, hospitals, entertainment spaces and even the office. 

Thanks to past guest Walter Werzowa for the recommendation

Now on with the show

• His early years and expanding world view from living in the UK and traveling Europe in his youth. 
• The influence of his father and mother 
• The serendipitous impact of discovering the Apple2 computer
• Having the confidence to carve his own path without the traditional education trajectory
• Early career path 
• Discovering the need to build immersive audio to scratch his own itch. 
• The commercial applications of Spatial
• His quick-fire answers 

Social Links

Spatial Inc

Instagram

Twitter 

Linkedin 

Links in the show

IBM 

Paper Software

Apple II

Netscape 

Tony Fadell

Silicon Graphics

Tell-Me Networks

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