The New Disruptors

In this episode recorded in early April 2020, Dan Frommer (Twitter) of The New Consumer joins host Glenn Fleishman. Dan is a long-time journalist. He’s been the editor in chief of Recode at Vox Media, an editor and writer at Quartz, and helped create Business Insider.

The New Consumer is a subscription newsletter and site that charges a fee for access to keen insights by Dan about the shape and changes in the retail economy. Dan started the site a year ago, long before a pandemic was even suspected, and he’s well poised to document the massive upheaval happening now.

While paid newsletters aren’t new, Dan is part of a small but growing number of people who have built expertise and audiences who then turn to direct support as a way to create their work solely for subscribers. This keeps them independent of advertising and the vagaries of employers’ changing priorities.

Jaimee Newberry is the co-founder of Picture This Clothing. Draw a picture or take a picture and get it put on a dress or a T-shirt. It’s that simple — well, it’s that simple for the maker, which is what Jaimee is all about. She and her partner fell into the business through a tweet. Three years in, there’s no sign of it slowing down.

Patrons: This episode is brought to you in part by Disruptor-level patrons Wil Macaulay, Raymond Kloss, and Andrew Fisher. Thanks for your help in bringing this show back on the air. You can find back episodes and spread the word at https://newdisrupt.org/support/

Musician Marian Call appeared on New Disruptors back in October 2013. Her home was in Alaska, but she spent a lot of time away from it touring. With six more years under her belt, she’s trying to stick closer to her community in Juneau. One of the reasons? Her husband Pat Race, an illustrator, gallery owner, videographer, filmmaker, and part-time adult camp operator.

We talk about their independent careers and where both find themselves—besides in Alaska—and how they converge and diverge with their work. Also, we learn just how hopping a town Juneau is for creative people!

Marian on the universe of entertainment now available and what we contend for as artists: “I can’t place too many demands on people’s attention knowing they have all the options in the world.”

Find them both on Twitter: @mariancall and @alaskarobotics.

Patrons: This episode is also brought to you in part by Disruptor-level patrons Charles Arthur, M. E. Achterman, Nic Barajas, and Dylan Wilbanks. You can become a patron of the show on a one-time or recurring basis, and get rewards like an exclusive enamel pin and being thanked in this fashion! https://newdisrupt.org/support/

CW&T is Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy. They combine art, technology, design, and manufacture into everyday objects that have nothing everyday about them, as well as unique expressions of industrial design that can’t be compared with anything else. In this episode, we talk about one of their latest endeavors, Time Since Launch, a single-use launch clock that counts indefinitely into the future.

I first spoke to Che-Wei and Taylor in 2013 about the Pen Type-A, their first highly funded project and one that had a lot of complexity. They appeared with me on stage at the Nearly Impossible conference with other makers later that year to talk more broadly about creating. (You can now purchase both Pen Type-A and Pen Type-B.)

Six years later, the couple has completed dozens of projects of different scales and natures, moved from New York to Massachusetts and back again, and 3D printed two humans.

Make sure and follow them on Instagram to see their latest experiments, process photos, and new projects.

Thanks to you and help support the show: The New Disruptors is back on the air due to patrons and sponsors! You can become a patron of the show on a one-time or recurring basis, and get rewards like an exclusive enamel pin and being thanked in this fashion! https://newdisrupt.org/support/

Benn Bollay remembers that he knew as a kid that his grandfather was an early researcher into weather forecasting. But it turns out that Eugene Bollay was one of the founders of the field of meteorology and television weathercasting! He even preceded Pat Sajak in a TV weatherman job. Benn tells us about his grandfather's literal study (in his house) and his study (his work). (Eugene Bollay recorded an oral history back in 1987.)

Benn was always struck that his grandfather was seen and respected as a person of science. This helped lead him on his path as a programmer, entrepreneur, and researcher, currently pursuing directions in AI at the Paul Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

This episode is part of the “Grand Inventions” micro-series within The New Disruptors in which I talk to people whose grandparents or other ancestors invented something that’s still current or in use today. Do you have a relative back a generation or three who fits the bill? Contact me and we’ll set up an interview.

Thanks to you and help support the show: The New Disruptors is back on the air due to patrons and sponsors! You can become a patron of the show on a one-time or recurring basis, and get rewards like an exclusive enamel pin and being thanked in this fashion! https://newdisrupt.org/support/

This episode is recorded live at Glowforge, makers of a 2D laser cutter—but it’s not a sponsored episode and we don’t talk about the hardware much at all. Instead, it’s conversation about what people are trying to make and how to get started as a creator.

I talk with Glowforge founder (and my friend) Dan Shapiro, and the company’s two content designers, Shell Meggersee and Nick Taylor, who spend a lot of their time talking to new and experienced makers as they work with their laser equipment. They offer some great insight and a lot of encouragement.

A few lovely quotes that struck me on listening to the recording afterwards:

Nick: “I wonder if we’re teaching them how to fail gracefully, rather than how to be successful?”

Shell: “There’s some subtle psychology in the fact that, ‘Oh, the machine messed up! Oops! It wasn’t me!’”

Dan: “Tools that help you become an amateur are so wonderful…it gets you to that point where you have some small degree of self-sufficiency and creativity.”

Patrons

Thanks to the patrons in the crowdfunding campaign who brought the New Disruptors back, and these Disruptor-level backers in particular: Bob Owen, Garrett Allen, Michael Warner, Nick Hurley, and Nicholas Santos. You can become a patron of the show and get a special pin and be thanked on the air, too, at newdisrupt.org/support

Guest biographies

Dan Shapiro sold his last company to Google. His last side project was Robot Turtles, the best-selling board game in Kickstarter history. He builds drones, authored Hot Seat: The Startup CEO Guidebook, and his seven-year-old twins regularly beat him at the game Werewolf. You can listen to the New Disruptors episode on Robot Turtles (episode 59, January 2014).

Shell Meggersee has worked in film, TV and video games, bringing everything from giant 3D monsters to well-known cartoon characters to life. At night, you might find her designing anything from vinyl toys to couture bedding fabric to intricate wedding invitations.

Nick Taylor has spent the last 12 years completing hundreds of projects including custom headphones, bespoke bicycles, desktop furniture, and lighting. Before joining Glowforge, Nick spent 5 years at Apple and ran his own company making artisanal leather goods.

My love of letterpress printing is no secret, and in this episode, I speak to two designers who devote parts of their working lives to modern letterpress. This episode was taped live at Ada’s Technical Books and Café in Seattle on January 23.

Printing didn’t change much from about 1450 to 1950. It became faster, motorized, and blew up to industrial scale, but it was only when the “relief” (or letterpress) method of printing—putting ink on a surface and then pressing paper onto it—was replaced with offset lithography, which relies on flat printing plates and thin films of ink, that everything changed for good. Letterpress printing has remained as a craft, though, and it has thrived in the last 20 years as it’s been rediscovered and taught fresh to new generations.

Two Seattle practitioners have deep ties to this great resurgence of letterpress. We talk about how they got sucked into an old-school printing method and how the medium affects their design and vice-versa.

Sarah Kulfan is a visual designer, illustrator, and letterpress printer. She is the proprietrix of Gallo Pinto Press and Beans n’ Rice where she respectively prints limited edition prints and runs her freelance graphic design business.

Demian Johnston is the Designer and Pressman at Annie’s Art & Press, a letterpress shop in Ballard. At SVC, he teaches both introductory and advanced classes in the letterpress program. His design and illustration work has appeared in The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, City Arts, and Beer Advocate.

Sponsors

Thanks to the patrons in the crowdfunding campaign who brought the New Disruptors back, and these Disruptor-level backers in particular: Elliott Payne, my friends at Lumi, Kirk McElhearn, Kuang-Yu Liu, and Marc Schwieterman. (Marc, and another Disruptor backer, Kim Ahlberg, attended the taping!) You can become a patron of the show and get a special pin and be thanked on the air, too, at newdisrupt.org/support

Dave Hamilton’s grandfather invented the ubiquitous coin-operated binocular viewer you see at monuments and viewpoints worldwide, the Tower Optical Binoculars. Dave, an entrepreneur, writer, musician, and founder of The Mac Observer, joins host Glenn Fleishman to tell of days spent with his grandfather and his “Big Fish” stories that turned out entirely true.

This episode is part of the “Grand Inventions” micro-series within The New Disruptors in which I talk to people whose grandparents or great-x-parents invented something that’s still current or in use today. Do you have a grandparent or beyond who fits the bill? Contact me and we’ll set up an interview.

Support the podcast:

The crowdfunding campaign brought back The New Disruptors, but I could produce more episodes and keep the show running after July 2019 with your help! You can contribute monthly via Patreon or become a yearly subscriber directly on this site—and get nifty bonuses and rewards. https://newdisrupt.org/support

Walt Hickey is a data journalist who launched a newsletter for numeric nerds several months ago. He’s worked for Business Insider, FiveThirtyEight, and, currently, Insider (a sister company to BI), often writing about the intersection of culture and data: How we can understand movies, books, and social trends better through a filter of numbers, or how numbers help us understand the world around us better.

Numlock News is an outgrowth of something he did at FiveThirtyEight, giving him a leg up—with that publication’s support—in creating a freemium newsletter with bite-sized nuggets delivered daily to everyone, while paid subscribers get a weekly extra. We talk about his approach and the tools he uses.

Sponsors:

This week’s episode sponsorship was donated by Filip to support refugee relief. At a time when tens of millions of people have had to flee their homes, the greatest number since World War II, refugees need your help. To find the best-run groups offering direct aid, consult Charity Navigator. To assist Syrian refugees and others in the region, consider giving to the International Rescue Committee (rescue.org), Oxfam America (oxfamamerica.org), Doctors Without Borders (doctorswithoutborders.org), Save the Children (savethechildren.org), and Mercy Corps (mercycorps.org).

This episode is also brought to you in part by Disruptor-level patrons Philip Borenstein, Rob McNair-Huff, Bryan Clark, Ready Chi, and Patrick Weyer. You can become a patron of the show on a one-time or recurring basis, and get rewards like an exclusive enamel pin and being thanked in this fashion! https://newdisrupt.org/support

“Grand Inventions” is a new micro-series within The New Disruptors in which I talk to people whose grandparents or great-x-parents invented something that’s still current or in use today. Two things sparked this micro-series idea for me. First, my grandfather’s stories of making a suggestion during WWII at an IBM wartime manufacturing plant that led to improved impeller productions; second, how invention and entrepreneurialism spans generations.

Joining me for the first episode is Chris Higgins, a documentary filmmaker and writer, whose great-grandfather invented a variety of geared devices that counted things like fuel and people and more, and ultimately became CEO of Veeder-Root. Chris’s great-grandfather was H.L. Spaunberg.

Support the podcast:

The crowdfunding campaign brought back The New Disruptors, but I could produce more episodes and keep the show running after July 2019 with your help! You can contribute monthly via Patreon or become a yearly subscriber directly on this site—and get nifty bonuses and rewards. https://newdisrupt.org/support