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. Show Notes The Power Law Curve, an essay by Clay Shirky The Magic Middle, a term coined by Dave Sifry The Long Tail, an article and book by Chris Anderson

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. Sponsors 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 newdisrupt.org. Show notes Ken Finney's Narwhal app Knitter Sam Barsky

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! Show notes Alaska Robotics Gallery is both a physical place in Juneau and an online store Pat's I Voted stickers made a splash The Alaska Robotics Comics Camp Marian's Firefly album that helped start it all Marian's Bandcamp page The interactive Casablanca experience in Juneau If you don't know Kate Beaton's work, please seek it out Enneagrams Pat's shop was nominated for the 2019 Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award

What's Your Latest with CW&T: Chi-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy (Episode 111) 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!

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!

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.” (Glowforge did sponsor an episode earlier in the current season; this episode was entirely my idea and no money changed hands. However, if you're thinking about buying a Glowforge, you can use this referral link and get $100 to $500 off purchase price depending on the model. I receive the same amount as a referral fee, which helps support the podcast.) Patrons This episode is also brought to you in part by Disruptor-level patrons Bob Owen, Garrett Allen, Michael Warner, Nick Hurley, and Nicholas Santos. 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! 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. Show notes Service bureaus for 2D cutting and 3D printing abound. Ponoko is a well-known one for cutting and engraving, and Shapeways for 3D printing. Nick Benson, part of a great family of artists and a descendent of stone carvers, has an amazing Instagram account The ansible, a sci-fi solution for instantaneous communication Graw! Studio Neat episode of New Disruptors in which they talk about their tiny lathe Anna Robinson, my collaborator on the Tiny Type Museum, makes spoons

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 on a one-time or recurring basis, and get rewards like an exclusive enamel pin and being thanked in this fashion! Show notes: We talk about a lot of concepts and old tech in this show, so the notes are a little more extensive to help you understand some of the things we mentioned just in passing: SVC is the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle, where Jenny Wilkson runs the letterpress program. It's a for-profit analog and digital design school, teaching letterpress, UI/UX, graphic design, copywriting and more. It's where I had my 2017 design residency, too! Demian has a 10x15 Chandler and Price (C&P), which is a workhorse press, manufactured from 1884 to 1964. Stern & Faye: Jules Remedios Faye and Chris Stern ran this press together for decades. Jules continues to print and bind, and handbound my book, Not To Put Too Fine a Point on It (copies still available). The C.C. Stern Type Foundry, a working museum in Portland, Oregon, is named for Chris and features a lot of Jules and Chris's casting equipment. “dissed type”: Type distribution is an incredibly tedious part of hand setting type. Each character you pull out of a type case has to be “distributed” back into its original compartment in the case when you're done with a printing job. Ruling pens: These pens were used for making lines, or “rules,” and hold ink in a reservoir between two jaws. The gap of the jaws can be adjusted to create lines of different thickness. Plates: Printing plates are solid sheets of metal or plastic made from source material and intended to be printed as a full sheet, sometimes including dozens of pages. Starting in the 1800s, printers would cast metal plates (called “stereotypes”); in more recent decades, printers rely on a rubbery plastic called photopolymer that's light sensitive. Digital files can be output to high-contrast film and exposed to the plastic plastic, and make a letterpress-printable plate. Carl Montford: a local renowned wood block engraver, who has taught thousands of people how to carve linoleum blocks and hundreds how to carve in wood. Linoleum blocks: These are really just pieces of linoleum glued to a wood base. A designer carves the linoleum to leave high areas to receive ink. Type high: The exact height needed for type and other material on the “bed” of a press to be inked by rollers and press exactly at the right distance into paper. It's 0.918 inches in America and England. Touche plate: This may have been a regionalism, but a “touche” (French, pronounced toosh) is a touch-up plate used to fix an error in offset printing. Reduction cut: On a block, you engrave a starting image that prints in the lightest color, carve away details, print the next-lightest color, and so forth. The block is creatively destroyed in the process. A “kiss” impression Vandercook cylinder presses are the hot thing in letterpress today, originally designed largely as a “proof press”: to pull a copy of a section of text for proofreading, layout, and evenness, before it went on a real press. Printing the Oxford English Dictionary (YouTube) “Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu”: The last day of hot-metal Linotype typesetting at the New York Times The quote I was trying to recall was from A Short History of the Printed Word, written by Warren Chappell and, in a second edition, updated and extended by Robert Bringhurst. Bringhurst wrote the following devastating sentence about the entire era following relief printing: In the 1970s and 1980s, the practitioners of photocomposition and offset printing were, like Gutenberg, engaged in a simultaneously innovative and imitative act. But they were not imitating writing; they were imitating printing—and were doing so in a world where reading had become, for most, a passive, cerebral act, unconnected with any physical sense of the making of letters, and unconnected with any sense of the intellectual urgency of publishing.

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. Thanks & 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!

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! Show notes Walt's stories at Business Insider, FiveThirtyEight, and Insider Numlock News Open Secrets Sabermetrics Money Ball My story on gendered rejection of technology for The Ringer Walt's Best Stuff page How much cod does Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson eat? Ben Thompson's Stratechery Jessica Lessin's The Information Substack, the company Hickey uses for his newsletter and collecting subscription fees

“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, and Chris provided a list of some of his patents: Counter (via Frank E. Northrup) (1931) Odometer (1934) Counting Device (1936) Counter for Machines (1937) Counter (1939) Do you have a grandparent or beyond who invented something still in use in some form? Contact me and we'll set up an interview. Thanks & 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!

Dave Kellett is the guest on my latest installment of the podcast-within-the-podcast, “What's Your Latest?” I talk to experienced creators about their latest project. For Dave, that's the second volume (“Act Two”) of his Drive webcomics series that will ultimately span 1,000 pages and four or five print volumes. Dave is a cartoonist, podcaster, and co-director of the comics documentary Stripped. His strip Drive is almost a decade old, and Sheldon is at its 20th birthday. He also runs multiple Patreons, co-hosts ComicLab (a podcast on making comics and the business of comics), and has run lots of crowdfunding campaigns and produced piles of physical goods. 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!Show notes Drive Act Two Kickstarter campaign Read the Drive and Sheldon webcomics Do you like pugs? The Stripped movie about the history (and future?) of comic strips is fantastic, and you can buy it for as little as $5 directly from Dave and his co-director, plus a lot of other options. You can also watch it on Kanopy if your library offers that service. My favorite practical podcast, ComicLab, has a Patreon to offer support and get extras Friend Dan Moren's Caledonian Gambit also has empires that span solar systems with a little James Bond and a little sass Dave has as upcoming guest artists on Drive the two-person team Gurihiru

Shing Yin Khor is a multi-dimensional artist, almost literally. She's a cartoonist, illustrator, sculptor, and installation and experimental artist. She works across many media, technology, and ideas. She says she's entered a new phase of her career over the last five years, and we talk about her work, empathy, and how she got here. Sponsors This episode is brought to you in part by Disruptor-level patrons Chris Higgins, Marcin Wichary, Kim Ahlberg, Pete Burtis, and Jon Mitchell. 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! The New Disruptors is also back on the virtual air thanks to Glowforge, a “3D laser printer” that can cut wood, paper, acrylic, leather, and more, and engrave metal, glass, and other materials. It's a laser printer for depth. Listeners to New Disruptors can get a discount from $100 to $500 on a new Glowforge. Show notes You should definitely follow Shing on Instagram, visit her Patreon, and read her on Twitter Jim Woodring, a cartoonist with a comprehensively different world, also created a 7-foot-pen Does it require 10,000 hours to master something? Not really. The Center for Otherworld Science Portal's protagonist is a woman The Blue Ox Bar at the XOXO Festival The Popeye movie was filmed in Malta, and the former sets were turned into a peculiar theme park The Harry Potter “Warner Brothers Studio Tour” outside London is actually a celebration and explanation of all the beautiful craftwork that goes into making those films Resistance Cranes raised $10,000 in October 2018 to aid refugees and immigrants

Welcome to a mini episode of The New Disruptors, “What's Your Latest,” in which I ask creators just about the most recent thing they made. Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt are Studio Neat, independent industrial designers and app developers for nearly a decade, and an early Kickstarter success. Their latest product is the Mark One, an all-metal retractable pen with a simple exterior that masks the complexity of how pens click. They went to Kickstarter as they almost always do to launch the product, and raised over $230,000 towards a $30,000 goal. We talk about the challenges of design and manufacture, and how this pen was designed and how it's being made even as we spoke. Listen to more of Dan and Tom's conversations about independent product development on Thoroughly Considered, a podcast on the Relay network, in which they talk at intervals with host and Relay co-founder Myke Hurley. A 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. Read more about supporting the podcast.

Jesse Genet and Stephan Ango co-founded Lumi almost a decade ago. It first made wallets and prints and dyed material, then developed and distributed a light-sensitive fabric ink. Now it's a company that manages the production and ordering of packaging supplies. This might sound unrelated, but it's a natural transition resulting from interrogating one's interests, figuring out what your real business is, and learning new things. We talk about Shark Tank, fulfilling one's dreams, and why 10,000 shipments a month is small potatoes in the packaging world. Sponsor: Community Theatre This episode brought to you by: The Concept of Local Community Theatre! Our Sponsor-level crowdfunding backer for this episode has donated his sponsorship message to encourage you to see comedy and drama and musicals staged in your area by community theatres! Check out the listings online and in your local papers today! 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. Read more about supporting the podcast. Show notes: Inkodye Jesse's Shark Tank appearance The accidental invention of lithography by Alois Senefelder Lumi at Y Combinator The Queen Mum told Graham Chapman to tour with Monty Python Studio Neat's book, It Will Be Exhilarating Glenn appeared twice on the Internet History Podcast: Amazon's early days (Feb. 2015) and Amazon's myths and work culture (Aug. 2015). Also buy host Brian McCullough's book developed from the podcast! Lumi visits a corrugated box factory The Lumi podcast, Well Made The super beat-up box that arrived at my house

In this inaugural episode #100, the return of the podcast to regular production, I'm pleased as punch to have C. Spike Trotman as my guest. Spike founded Iron Circus Comics in 2007, and it's risen through her hard work and excellent curatorship to become the Chicago area's leading comics publisher. A cartoonist and writer herself with a long-running series, Spike has raised over a million dollars through Kickstarter across more than a dozen projects, and created a sustainable and repeatable funding method. (You can read her book on Kickstarting comics for advice!) For her success, she was named one of Kickstarter's Thought Leaders. 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. Support the podcast here! Show notes: Spike suggests you watch the movie E-Dreams (2001) about Kozmo.com. Boy, do I miss Kozmo. Randy Milholland, Something Positive Lucy Bellwood, adventure cartoonist, and our live bookstore podcast episode Spike's first Kickstarter, Poorcraft MC Frontalot's “Indier Than Thou” Girls with Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto Pictures of Danielle in her garage with a zillion of her books Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

We're still raising funds to restart The New Disruptors! At this writing, we're over 55% of the way there with a couple weeks to go! Visit our Kickstarter and back at any level. In this special bonus pre-reboot Episode 99a of The New Disruptors, I'm in conversation with Lucy Bellwood, Adventure Cartoonist!, at Brick & Mortar Books in Redmond, Washington, in front of a live audience. She and I talked about creativity and independence, and about our latest books: hers, 100 Demon Dialogs; mine, London Kerning. Lucy is an adventure cartoonist who I first interviewed in episode 82, almost four years ago. Since then, Lucy has had two more successful Kickstarter campaigns to fund books, taught cartooning in Denmark, sailed tall ships, had an artist's residency on the R/V Falkor oceanographic research vessel, and became a finalist in the New York Times 52 Places correspondent search. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support! A few links from the talk: The Revenge of Analog by David Sax "1,000 True Fans" essay by Kevin Kelly, which has his updated version and the original one My 2014 interview with Kevin Kelly, Episode 62 of this podcast

Welcome to the New Disruptors, the podcast that says the best ideas come when you're not looking straight at them. You haven't heard from The New Disruptors for a while, but I think the time is ripe to bring back the podcast—with your help. I stopped producing it reluctantly, a combination of available time, a drop in sponsorship, and a need to focus on different parts of my working life. The tl;dr? I've launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new season. Read more at the campaign.

Jen Bekman, Zoë Salditch, and Mike Merrill were our guests live on stage at the XOXO 2014 festival in Portland, Oregon, as part of the Story evening that also featured Hrishikesh Hirway's Song Exploder, featuring a song by The Thermals; John Roderick (The Long Winters) interviewing Chelsea Cain; and Harmontown with Dino Stamatopoulos.Jen Bekman founded 20x200 in 2007 to provide art at accessible prices. She spoke about her in work in 2012 at XOXO. Then she had a terrible, no good, very bad year. For a lot of reasons, she can't discuss the particulars of what happened, but she had to reboot 20x200: its site, its technology, its art, and its trust with existing customers.If you have beautiful digital art, you need a place to display it. That's the idea behind Electronic Objects, a massively funded Kickstarter project from a month ago. But Zoë Salditch's interest is less in the technology than the uses to which people will put it. In the midst of producing their EO1 model, they have artists in residence working on concpetual ideas and are considering one future for their hardware as a platform for art — maybe 20x200 and EO have a lot in common?With most people, saying "I can buy and sell you" is a boast about one's own ostensible net worth. With Mike Merrill, it's the literal truth. Mike is a publicly traded company, and shareholders can vote on the course his life takes, including how he pursues romantic interests. Shares in KMIKEYM have traded as high as $25 and typically change hands in a band of $5 to $10. Volume is low.This is our last regularly scheduled episode as we go on hiatus and consider a path forward. Keep watching this site and @newdisruptors for news about future projects.Sponsors and patronsThis podcast has been made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons.gifpop, the makers of physical renditions of your animated GIFs through the scientific magic of lenticular printing! Take a GIF with up to 10 frames and receive a version that you can tilt for animation, or buy a design from featured artists who receive 80% of the purchase price — or even submit your own work for consideration for sale. Listeners get 10% off a gifpop order by using coupon code DISRUPT during checkout.99designs: Have dozens of designers from the over 310,000 that are part of 99designs's network submit ideas for your logo, Web site, T-shirt, car wrap, or other design project, then pick the best and have a finished, professional result in a week or less for a flat price. Our listeners can visit this special destination page to get a $99 Power Pack of services for free!Thanks to our Patreon backers for all their support! Bryan J. Clark, Pasha Alpeyev, Andy Baio, Matthew Blai, Alex Bond, Henry Brown, Anirvan Chatterjee, Ready Chi, Jordan Cooper, Craig, Tarun Gangwani, GravityFish , Accounting Guy, Gregory Hayes, Brian J. Geiger, Jonathan Mann, Mike Mansor, Kris Markel, Roman Mars, Andrei Matetic, Gordon McDowell, Andy McMillan, Rönne Ogland, George OToole, Elliott Payne, Garry Pugh, "r," Neil Richler, James Robilliard, Kay Schumann, Jonathan Stark, Kyle Studstill, Ted Timmons, CJ Tully, and Ben Werdmuller.(Photo by Brad Dowdy.)

Andy McMillan makes things that bring people together: the Build conference, the XOXO festival, and The Manual, a series of books with thoughtful essays about design. After producing three print volumes of The Manual, he's trying to take it to the next level, and produce something openly, broadly available across many media, that's a collaboration with those who want to make it happen — and is funding it on Kickstarter. We'll talk books, ebooks, community, and hugs and kisses. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. 99designs: Have dozens of designers from the over 310,000 that are part of 99designs's network submit ideas for your logo, Web site, T-shirt, car wrap, or other design project, then pick the best and have a finished, professional result in a week or less for a flat price. Our listeners can visit this special destination page to get a $99 Power Pack of services for free! Thanks also to our Patreon backers Gordon McDowell, Ready Chi, and Bryan C. Clark for supporting us directly. Photo by Ian Linkletter.

Mara Zepeda is the co-founder and CEO of Switchboard, a site that lets you ask for what you need and offer what you have within a trusted community. It's a way to more efficiently interconnect generosity, and is sometimes described as Craigslist without the creeps. I'm used to reading personal histories that have windy roads, but Mara's can't be summarized. Suffice it to say that she's a writer, calligrapher, entrepreneur, and student of knowledge who has worked as a reporter and teacher. We recorded at her offices in Portland, at Wieden+Kennedy's Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE). Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. 99designs: Have dozens of designers from the over 310,000 that are part of 99designs's network submit ideas for your logo, Web site, T-shirt, car wrap, or other design project, then pick the best and have a finished, professional result in a week or less for a flat price. Our listeners can visit this special destination page to get a $99 Power Pack of services for free! Thanks also to our Patreon backers Ben Werdmuller, Bryan Clark, and GravityFish for supporting us directly. Show notes Bay Bucks: business-to-business barter The Sharing Economy cover story at The Economist Lloyd Reynolds and then Robert Palladino used calligraphy as a teaching tool at Reed for the human condition Linda Stone coined the terms email apnea and continuous partial attention. A Pattern Language The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Sara Benincasa is an author, comedian, writer, and outspoken advocate of LGBTQ youth, among many other hats she's worn. She is an expert impressionist and parodist of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Sara is the author of the novel Great and the memoir/confessional, Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom, and her third book, the novel Believers, is due out in early 2016, while a fourth book is already underway. She's interviewed Reggie Watts and Amanda Palmer in her bathtub, and posed as a nun with adult performer Stoya. We spoke in person in Seattle when she was visiting during This Tour Is So Gay, recently funded on Kickstarter. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. 99designs: Have dozens of designers from the over 310,000 that are part of 99designs's network submit ideas for your logo, Web site, T-shirt, car wrap, or other design project, then pick the best and have a finished, professional result in a week or less for a flat price. Our listeners can visit this special destination page to get $99 Power Pack of services for free! Thanks also to our Patreon backers Ben Werdmuller, Bryan Clark, and GravityFish for supporting us directly. Show notes This interview was conducted at The Office, a co-working space above Ada's Technical Books and Café; the owner, Danielle Hulton, was a previous guest of the show.

Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt are Studio Neat, a small design and software group that produces nifty products. They began with the Glif, and when I talked to them last over a year ago, they had launched their second software product and were deep in planning on a new, more complicated item: the Neat Ice Kit. They funded the kit on Kickstarter in September 2013, raising $156,000 against a $50,000 goal. We talk through the challenges of fulfilling that campaign, more lessons learned, and their recently launched follow-up, the Simple Syrup Kit. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. 99designs: Have dozens of designers from the over 310,000 that are part of 99designs's network submit ideas for your logo, Web site, T-shirt, car wrap, or other design project, then pick the best and have a finished, professional result in a week or less for a flat price. Our listeners can visit this special destination page to get $99 Power Pack of services for free! Thanks also to our Patreon backers Ben Werdmuller, Ready Chi, and GravityFish for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can help keep this podcast going for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Recent interview with Garrett Murray about the difficulty of surfacing apps at iTunes. "bunnie" Huang interview last year about shopping in Shenzhen and Chinese electronics manufacture.

Jesse Thorn is a polycast — a polymath of podcasts. He helped define the form by taking a show that he developed with others on a college radio station and making it into a podcast in 2004. That show, the Sound of Young America, now called Bullseye, focuses on interesting cultural trends and sports in-depth interviews, and is distributed by NPR as of last year. He also hosts and produces Jordan, Jesse, Go with Jordan Morris, co-hosts and produces Judge John Hodgman, owns the site Maximumfun.org, produces and contributes to the men's style site Put This On, run a cruise and a conference (MaxFunCon). Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. 99designs: Have dozens of designers from the over 310,000 that are part of 99designs's network submit ideas for your logo, Web site, T-shirt, car wrap, or other design project, then pick the best and have a finished, professional result in a week or less for a flat price. Our listeners can visit this special destination page to get $99 Power Pack of services for free! Thanks also to our Patreon backers for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can help keep this podcast going for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes We talked about a number of things, of which here are some: Personal Audio 99% invisible A Prairie Home Companion Bootsy Collins Andrew W K and his Village Voice advice column Museum of Jurassic Technology The New Sincerity Saved by the Bell Vulture Pop Culture Happy Hour Stephen Soderbergh Steve Albini Make Your Thing talk Seth Godin Grantland Boing Boing Adam Lisagor Intervention Brooklyn Beta

Garrett Murray is the founder and creative director of Karbon, an app-development firm. But software isn't his whole life; he also happens to be an award-winning filmmaker. His firm developed the apps Scratch, a quick-input notepad for iPhone, and Ego, for tracking all your Web status in a single glance. Actor Tom Hanks just singled out the app Karbon designed and built for Uncrate as one of his two favorites apps. We'll talk about the windy road to app nirvana. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. 99designs: Have dozens of designers from the over 310,000 that are part of 99designs's network submit ideas for your logo, Web site, T-shirt, car wrap, or other design project, then pick the best and have a finished, professional result in a week or less for a flat price. Our listeners can visit this special destination page to get $99 Power Pack of services for free! Thanks also to our Patreon backers for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can help keep this podcast going for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts!

Phillip Ross is one of the fellows behind Metrofiets, a company that makes cargo bikes — a kind of transportation vehicle developed in the Netherlands, and known as bakfietsen there. He and his partner James Nichols build their bikes in Portland, Oregon. Phil helped bring Critical Mass to Portland and is the co-creator and producer of the Pedal Powered Talk Show and literally the engine that makes it go. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. 99designs: Have dozens of designers from the over 310,000 that are part of 99designs's network submit ideas for your logo, Web site, T-shirt, car wrap, or other design project, then pick the best and have a finished, professional result in a week or less for a flat price. Our listeners can visit this special destination page to get $99 Power Pack of services for free! Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which is helping underwrite our indie ads. CAH just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity. Our indie advertisers this week are: App Accomplished, a book that guides you step by step through turning your idea for an app from a set of requirements through hiring a developer and into a released piece of software. FoxyCart, the most flexible way to add ecommerce to your Web site. Thanks also to patrons Ben Werdmuller, Alex Bond, and Andy McMillan for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Our two cargo bike articles in The Magazine were Hub and Spoke and A Bicycle Built for Six. The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites How It Works television series

Nicole Dieker wears a lot of hats, as well as a brown coat. She's a freelance copywriter and ghostwriter, pens fiction, and writes essays. She's also a musician who bootstrapped herself out of a convention to which she returns every year, a rock climber, a Firefly fan, a whiskey drinker, and much more. Nicole wears her earnings on her sleeve, too: she discloses in regular posts precisely how much she's made in her freelance career. Sponsors and patrons Our show is made possible through the generous support of sponsors and patrons. We're sponsored this week by: 99designs: Have dozens of designers from the over 310,000 that are part of 99designs's network submit ideas for your logo, Web site, T-shirt, car wrap, or other design project, then pick the best and have a finished, professional result in a week or less for a flat price. Our listeners can visit this special destination page to get $99 Power Pack of services for free! Harry's: Disrupting the conventional razor piece, Harry's bought a 93-year-old German factory to produce its high-quality razor blades, which it delivers straight to your home at a fraction of the cost of cheaper blades you purchase at retail. For $15, get a set with a handle, three blades, and shaving cream. Use coupon code DISRUPT for $5 off your first order! Thanks also to our patrons Ben Werdmuller, Bryan Clark, and Tarun Gangwani for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Blues Brothers "writing a check" scene Marian Call, a previous guest on the show Intervention convention; the organizers are previous guests on the show The Rutles Chris Hawker invented the PowerSquid and was a previous guest on the show Mink Car Cover project Slash fiction The Dashcon debacle Nicole's Boing Boing article about her game idea Slash: Romance without Boundaries Games by Play Date

Giant Spacekat, founded by Brianna Wu and Amanda Warner, released their first game today: Revolution 60. It's a cinematic-style, live-rendered game with rich dialog and interaction that employs strong female characters. Brianna is also a co-host of the Isometric podcast. We talk about illustration, independence, and meeting (and exceeding) expectations. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. Swiftly.com, a new service of 99designs.com, gets small design jobs done fast. For just $19, they match your small design job with a professional graphic designer and complete it in less than one hour. All designers handpicked from the talented community at 99designs. Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which is helping underwrite our indie ads. CAH just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity. Our indie advertisers this week are: Casterly, a podcast app released today that combines discovery of episodes through your Twitter feed alongside support for regular subscriptions. How To Create an Ebook, a video course that teaches you the simplest way to create and publish an ebook using iBooks Author. Thanks also to patrons Kay Schumann, Ted Timmons, and Mike Mansor for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Unreal Engine Quantum Dynamics makes Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls among other games Wanted* is the film with some wicked bullet action "Choose Your Character" appeared in The Magazine as well as in our book The Revolution 60 Kickstarter Feminist film theory related to the male gaze The Hawkeye Initiative Assassin's Creed Gaymer X giant black box cosplayers The epic attempt to cancel Comcast service Peppermint bark

Oni and Harknell founded Intervention (Internet + Convention) after constantly fielding questions from creators looking for advice; it's now in its fifth year. The partners created the event aimed at people trying to make their own opportunities to express creativity, often with a commercial angle as part of a career, while keeping it affordable, accessible, and inclusive. It's grown from a surprising 500 participants in its first year to over 1,000 attendeees expected in 2014. They're launching a second event, a Doctor Who fan event called (Re)Generation Who, in 2015. We talk about creating an event, serving an audience, and building a community. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. Swiftly.com, a new service of 99designs.com, gets small design jobs done fast. For just $19, they match your small design job with a professional graphic designer and complete it in less than one hour. All designers handpicked from the talented community at 99designs. Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which is helping underwrite our indie ads. CAH just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity. Our indie advertisers this week are: Bee, an issue tracker and timesheet app for the Mac. Nearly Impossible, an event for people who make and sell physical products. Thanks also to patrons Andy McMillan, Ready Chi, and George O'Toole for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes In a surprising move, no show notes are needed for this episode, as all the references are self-contained or in the introduction above!

Lucy Bellwood is a Portland cartoonist who started her working life with a crowdfunding campaign. She's a member of Periscope Studio, a loosely affiliated working space and collective of which I've interviewed other members. True Believer was the outcome of her Kickstarter project, and she's built a career from there. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. Swiftly.com, a new service of 99designs.com, gets small design jobs done fast. For just $19, they match your small design job with a professional graphic designer and complete it in less than one hour. All designers handpicked from the talented community at 99designs. Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which is helping underwrite our indie ads. CAH just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity. Our indie advertisers this week are: Bee, an issue tracker and timesheet app for the Mac. A History of the Future in 100 Objects by Adrian Hon, a look at objects that will define the 21st century. Thanks also to patrons Ben Werdmuller, Alex Bond, and Garry Pugh for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Jony Ive in an interview with the New York Times: "We all see the same physical object. Something happens between what we objectively see and what we perceive it to be. That's the definition of a designer – trying to somehow articulate what contributes to the way we see the object." In Tom the Dancing Bug, Pablo Picasso is told to stick to his popular clown paintings. Lucy's mentor during her formative pre-college years was Eben Matthews. Erika Moen's mentor was Lin Lucas. Erika appeared on Strip Search, a reality web TV show created by the folks behind Penny Arcade. The monthly comics newspaper Funny Times was an awesome window for decades for me into all the cartoons published independently, in alt weeklies, and beyond. It's where I first read Alison Bechdel's Dykes To Watch Out For, long before her Bechdel Test had become a popular trope. Savannah College of Art and Design offers a sequential art program that Lucy considered attending. She went to Reed College instead. We also talk about the Independent Publishing Resource Center's Certificate Program in Comics and Independent Publishing and her attendance at the Center for Cartoon Studies summer session. Here is my obligatory link to Kevin Kelly's "1,000 True Fans" essay. He and I had a great talk for this podcast in February 2014, of which there is a complete transcript. You can find Lucy's talks on cartooning in audio form on SoundCloud.

Jamie Wilkinson is the co-founder and CEO of VHX, a service that delivers movies online to the customers of filmmakers. They exist in sharp contrast to many video sites — operated by the likes of Amazon, Apple, and others — in that they only deliver films free of digital rights management, take a sliver of the purchase price, and truly facilitate filmmakers reaching their audiences. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which is helping underwrite our new indie ads: inexpensive, short advertisements designed for independent artists, makers, programmers, and others. Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity. Our indie advertisers this week are: GaymerX, the inclusive gaming conference for everyone, celebrates the diverse culture and history of gaming. Get $20 off registration with the code "newdisruptors." Pixelwits: hand-crafted pixel portraits. Listen later in the show for a chance to win a custom portrait. DrinkControl helps you to keep track of moderate drinking and your drink expenses. And an ebook novella, Scolding the Winds, is currently being funded, and you can help make it happen. Thanks also to patrons Ben Werdmuller, Alex Bond, and Garry Pugh for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Alex's co-founder is Casey Pugh. He directed Stars Wars Uncut with which Jamie was deeply involved. Jamie also built the Know your Meme system. Chris Anderson's The Long Tail mentions how many screens on which movies are shown when they are in wide release. The number of movie screens in America has increased in recent years! Andy Baio is one of the guys behind XOXO, which just announced its 2014 line-up and registration. Dave Sifry coined the phrase, "the Magic Middle." Shane Carruth shoots sometimes on inexpensive gear. I and Jamie mentioned the Red camera and Black Magic Camera. Julian Velard used PledgeMusic to fundraise for a recent album. Jack Conte of Pomplamoose explained how poorly YouTube pays even with massive traffic in his talk at XOXO 2013. Louis CK solid a concert for $5 and changed the economics of that forever. I spoke to Adam Cornelius and Chris Higgins about their movies The Tetris Masters (2011) and Coined (upcoming) in last week's episode. Lisanne Pajot is the co-creator of Indie Game: The Movie. Aziz Ansari handled his comedy concert with VHX. Kickstarter has started to produce reported features on creators, starting with this terrific one about Max Tempkin, friend of the show and one of the creators of Cards Against Humanity. Jamie and I compared notes about the movie Stripped, which used iTunes, VHX, and Google Play during its launch. The creators of that film were guests on this podcast a few weeks ago. The redemption process for the Veronica Mars movie was kind of a mess, but it all got worked out. They relied on Ultraviolet. VHX posted a case study called "Stripped and the Power of Bonus Content."

Adam Cornelius and Chris Higgins are making the film Coined, about the rise of cryptocurrency. They previously worked together on Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. Adam is a documentary filmmaker; Chris, a journalist. They've just launched a Kickstarter to fund Coined, and have shot quite a bit of footage already. We talk about what they learned on the last film and how they plan to make the next one. Sponsors & patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which is helping underwrite our new indie ads: inexpensive, short advertisements designed for independent artists, makers, programmers, and others. Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity. Our indie advertisers this week are: In Flux, a new compilations album from Brave Wave by video-game composers. Get 10% off with coupon code DISRUPT. Storming Mortal, an interview podcast with technological celebrities Rainblocks, a fast-paced iOS puzzle game featuring charming pixel art Bee, an issue tracker and timesheet app for the Mac Chroma Videos, a professional promotional video service for Mac and iOS app developers Wordundrum, an iOS game that's like Sudoku with words The Novelist, a quiet introspective game, currently 50% off Thanks also to patrons GravityFish, Mike Mansor, and George O'Toole for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that "forked" from Bitcoin, and uses the same open-source underlying code. It was meant as a bit of a joke, and now represents a somewhat illiquid equivalent of tens of millions of US dollars. The Dogecoin community, highly active on Reddit, threw a party in New York in February that Adam and Chris attended to film. Billy Marcus forked Dogecoin. We talked about a bunch of documentaries: Word Wars, about Scrabble Wordplay about crossword puzzles The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters about competition for top scores among videogamers Indie Game: The Movie Spellbound about spelling bees Citizen Koch on the Koch brothers influence on American politics Rivers and Tides, a film about artist Andy Goldsworthy The inimitable Jason Scott documents (in NSFW language) the extent to which King of Kong was problematic in its narrative and treatment of its subjects. A Harper's article about the controversy is locked in its archives. Twin Galaxies, the definitive video game achievement site, is currently up! Adam Cornelius not only made a movie about competitive Tetris, he co-created the Classic Tetris World Championship, which returns for its fifth iteration in Portland this October. Chris wrote an article for The Magazine, "Playing to Lose," about the event. Dogecoin has a tipbot on Reddit that makes it easy to be generous. Berkshire Hathaway is $190,347 a share at this writing (for its "A" shares; its "B" tracking shares are $127 each). When Dogecoin's "reward" — the coins received for mining — halves, it's called the Halvening. Creativity, Inc, a great book by Pixar co-chief Ed Catmull about dealing with failure, documents how the animation studio nearly lost all of Toy Story 2 because of a failure to have good backups. VHX works with filmmakers to distribute their work digitally. Next week's episode (81) of The New Disruptors is an interview with co-founder and CEO Jamie Wilkinson. A monopsony is a market in which there is a single buyer for goods or services that can dictate terms to sellers. This is like Amazon being the dominant seller of DVDs and Blu-Rays on line holding Warner Home Video over a barrel (as it is now) to negotiate prices. Humble Bundle creates packages of digital media (games, books, movies, and more) and lets buyers set their price, a portion of which goes to charity. If one pays above the average price, one gets additional parts of the bundle. Lisanne Pajot, the co-creator of Indie Game, recently was hired by VHX as its filmmaker ambassador. She and James Swirsky, her partner on the film, finally had the time to get married after years of constant work on the movie! Just Married!!! http://t.co/q3bfqfdiSf— Indie Game:The Movie (@indiegamemovie) April 12, 2014 Sara Benincasa is nearing the end of her Kickstarter for her "This Tour Is So Gay" project, which is a live storytelling show.

Gary Chou launched Orbital Boot Camp to accelerate people's product ideas into reality in a 12-week intensive session. He knows from startups from his work at Union Square Ventures and The Product Sessions, but his particular interest is making sure that people with traditionally fewer opportunities are included. Sponsors & patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which is helping to underwrite our new indie ads: inexpensive, short advertisements designed for independent artists, makers, programmers, and others. Thanks to Cards Against Humanity, which just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity. Our indie advertisers this week are: The Cotton Bureau, enablers of well-designed screenprinted shirts. The Velocity app for faster reading — up to 1,000 words a minute! Ensembles, a Core Data sync framework, which works with iCloud and Dropbox, and is extensible Games by Play Date, an indie tabletop game development studio supporting their new game, Pack the Pack Sparkle, a Mac app for painless Website creation Promoter, a Web service for indie game developers — get 10% off by following the link Hey, Cotton Bureau has a special one-day sale, its first, on June 12: $4 off every shirt on its site! And, from June 12 to June 18, New Disruptors listeners can be entered for a drawing by tweeting #disrupt to @cottonbureau. Five winners will be picked on June 19. Thanks also to patrons Alex Bond, Rönne Ogland, and Andy Baio for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Gary taught a School of Visual Arts with Christina Cacioppo, once a colleague from his venture capital days. Here's a picture of the old Kickstarter offices that Gary's occupying. Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn is a favorite title for understanding the utility and drawbacks of informal and formal spaces, told through the lessons of how buildings evolve over time. Gary posted information about the breakdown of applicants that shows he met his goals for inclusiveness.

Matt Haughey founded MetaFilter, a well-moderated forum for discussions about interesting things that expanded to also answer questions. At just a few months over 15 years old, it's a veterans of many Internet lifecycles. In the last couple of years, however, MetaFilter began to face an existential challenge, which we'll talk about in this episode, along with its history, nature, and future. Sponsors & patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. Thanks to our sponsor, Harry's: A great shaving experience for a fraction of the price of its competitors. $15 gets you a set that includes a handle, three blades, and shaving cream shipped to your door. Use coupon code DISRUPT for $5 off your first order. We've started a new kind of ad: "indie ads"! If you're a solo creator or small firm, we're offering discounted short ads with the kind underwriting of Cards Against Humanity. (CAH just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity.) Thanks also to patrons Bryan Clark, Rönne Ogland, and Mike Mansor for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Atex was the first digital composition system, used widely in the newspaper and magazine world into the 1990s, when PageMaker, QuarkXPress, and other software superceded it. Matt worked at Pyra Labs on Blogger for a short stint in its early days with Ev Williams, Meg Hourihan. We mention Tim O'Reilly, a publisher and thinker who invested in Blogger and a number of other interesting early-stage ventures. He founded Global Network Navigator (GNN) in 1993, which was sold to AOL in 1995. He is part of O'Reilly Alphatech Ventures. David Carr, the New York Times' media critic, used the terrible, terrible term platisher to refer to Medium, which is a combination of a platform and a publisher in a recent article. An OC-12 line is up to 622 Mbps of throughput. MAE-West was once the major interconnection point for ISPs on the west coast. The MAE stands for Metropolitan Area Exchange. In 1995, I wrote "The Experiment Is Over," about the how the National Science Foundation was shutting down its contracts for NSFNet, because commercial organizations could now directly operate the Internet backbone. A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a virtualized instance of an operating system running on a host alongside potentially many others, each of which is allotted guaranteed amounts of CPU usage, storage, and the like. VPSes are just like running a virtual machine on one's own computer, but designed for efficiency and reliability. Glenn uses Linode, which recently switched all its drives to SSDs and doubled many system parameters. Digital Ocean is slightly cheaper (it used to be much more so). Amazon EC2 is another alternative for rapid scaling. After years of pictures of cats in scanners, MetaFilter set up cat-scan.com to house those and its memories. BREAKING! Cat-scan is dead and its file lost forever! BREAKING! File were found and it's fixed. As you were. The community at Ask MetaFilter produces some remarkable answers. A poster asked for help deciphering coded messages her grandmother on index cards before she died in 1996. Within 15 minutes, there was an answer. Andy Baio asked about an image he used a decade ago for the soon-to-be-revived Upcoming, and Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza had an answer four minutes later. Einstein probably didn't tell a story about "no cat," but it's an interesting history of where the apocryphal quote came from; and my original Google Answers query, for which I was willing to pay $15 if someone had an accurate reply. Jessamyn West is part of the lifeblood of the interesting part of the Internet. Matt blames his PVRblog for the rise of content farms. On Medium, Matt explained MetaFilter's Google search and AdSense predicament. But the good news is that even after we recorded this episode, donations continued to pour in. They've now received about $40,000 in one-time donations and a commitment of $10,000 per month in recurring ones. That monthly figure is about one-third of the site's Google ad revenue, and thus a good cushion against future drops. (Photo by Chris Ryan.)

Ariel Meadow Stallings is the proprietor of several "offbeat" sites about weddings, home and life, and families under the rubric Offbeat Empire. She started the wedding site in 2007 to promote a book on creative alternatives for brides, which built an audience hungry for much more of the same. She obliged and has been building her empire full-time since 2009. Sponsors & patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. We've started a new kind of ad: "indie ads"! If you're a solo creator or small firm, we're offering discounted short ads with the kind underwriting of Cards Against Humanity. (CAH just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity.) Our indie advertisers this week are: Heat, a new card game by Dave Chalker that's quick to learn and takes about 15 to 30 minutes to play. Players plan heists and try to keep the "heat" off themselves. It features snazzy art and is being funded on Kickstarter. Visit the campaign for more details. The surreal and sublime Andrew Ferguson. He has no product to sell you and he has no URL for you to visit. Thanks also to patrons Bryan Clark, Rönne Ogland, and Mike Mansor for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Teresa Valdez Klein and Noah Iliinsky met through Ignite Seattle and got married during an event in May. My wife, Lynn, and I were married in a chapel at Fort Worden and had our reception in a former dirigible hangar (now a theater). Ariel's book is Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides. My Economist article about people who leave the 3,000th review on a popular book or item. Facebook's director of product ranted about the trivialization of news. Marisa McClellan runs the Food in Jars blog, and found her following of nearly 150,000 "likers" on Facebook resulted in 80 people seeing a recent post. Huh. She and I spoke last summer for the podcast. The Oatmeal is a popular webcomic; its creator is based in Seattle. Offbeat Bride covered a wedding at reBar in Brooklyn, which shut down shortly afterwards. The article went up after its owner had been charged with tax evasion, and the site dealt with criticism rather superbly in the comments. We ran an article in The Magazine about BuzzFeed's use of images that they often don't license, and discovered that their methods likely fall within fair use. Co-working has become hot again. In Seattle, Office Nomads is the veteran shop and is expanding. Ariel and I met at We Work, a new high-end space for startups that's quite affordable given the amenities. I'm looking into co-working at Ada's Technical Books and Café, the owner of which I interviewed in a podcast not long ago. (Photo of Ariel by Jenny Jimenez for Tugboat Yards.)

Katie Lane is an attorney who writes a blog called Work Made for Hire. She advises creative freelancers and artists on how to protect their rights and get paid fairly for their work. She recently took the plunge herself, going full-time as a self-employed person. We'll talk about what led her into this specialized career and the kinds of things that people who want to or are pursuing work on their own should consider. We take a brief, deep dive into copyright, too. Sponsors & patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. We're sponsored this week by Cards Against Humanity, which just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity. Thanks to patrons Bryan Clark, GravityFish, and Brain Rutledge for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes The US Copyright Office has a circular that defines work-for-hire rules (PDF). Katie notes that regardless of what contract you sign, you can reclaim rights after 35 years. It's a very specific process. This has been an ongoing issue with the rights related to early creators of well-known comics characters, like Superman. The phonogram right is a set of audio rights separate from copyright. I explain it at length at the Economist. For extensive and interesting details about the duration of copyright in America, depending on what kind of thing is under discussion, when it was created or registered, and other factors, consult this chart by copyright guru Peter Hirtle at Cornell University's site. I wrote a pile of words on the tax and licensing issues (in America) around crowdfunding. You can apply for and receive an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS through a simple online process -- no, I'm not kidding! It's great! The @for_exposure Twitter account is a riot, posting messages about people asking for work from others for free. Katie recommends taking a look at these sites: Zencash: Helpful best practices (and a service) for getting paid and on time. Docracy: An open-source contract site, where you can examine others' contracts and upload your own. Shake: It's a way to create, sign, and send legally binding agreements via an iPad or iPhone. Contract Creator: A tool from the Freelancers Union that guides you through creating a model for most or all of what you need.

Listen in as The Doubleclicks, a geeky two-sister band, perform four songs, and four authors read parts of their reported features from The Magazine: The Book at our last live book event in Portland, Oregon. The event was held at Reading Frenzy, and features John Patrick Pullen, Alison Hallett, Chris Higgins, and Elly Blue. Sponsors & patrons We're sponsored this week by Cards Against Humanity, which just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity. Show notes Chloe Eudaly owns the bookstore Reading Frenzy. It raised over $50,000 via Kickstarter to move its store after losing its downtown lease and then having a space fall though. If you visit Portland, you have to stop by. Andy Baio is one of the fellows behind the XOXO festival, and is in the middle of fundraising the return of Upcoming, a site he co-developed, sold to Yahoo, and recently bought back. John Patrick Pullen read from "Beacon of Hope." Alison Hallett read from "What Lies Beneath." Elly Blue read from "Hub and Spoke." And Chris Higgins read (the footnotes) from "Playing to Lose." The Doubleclicks performed four songs for us: "Worst Superpower Ever," "Oh, Mr. Darcy," "Impostor," and "Velociraptor." They were guests on this podcast in February 2014.

Greg Wohlwend developed the popular game Threes with his colleague Asher Vollmer. Greg is a games illustrator and designer who was part of teams that made Hundreds, Gasketball, Solipskier, and Ridiculous Fishing. Threes is his breakout game — and has inspired lots of admiration, frustration, and imitation. He and I talk in this episode about the joy of success, the burden of being independent, and the problems with parasites. Sponsors & Patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. Thanks to patrons George O'Toole, Jonathan Mann, and Sean Wickett for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes The Oatmeal's Matthew Inman was nominated for two 2014 Eisner Awards. Greg wrote this post to the hobbyist on the ledge. Greg designed the logo for Indie Game: The Movie; the creators of that film are two-time guests on the show, first in December 2012, and then a year later for a check in. The money in Minecraft is in YouTube videos of people playing through levels. We ran a story about this in The Magazine. The Scratch programming language leads to the Pencil programming language which led to JavaScript for my older son. CoderDojo uses Scratch to mentor kids in programming. Max Temkin baited a Los Angeles Times reporter who wrote an uninformed piece about the Threes ripoff 2048. The extended account of Threes development reveals the exhaustive and useful process of iteration, testing, and killing one's darlings. The Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast had a very nice discussion at the end of an episode where one panelist recommend 2048, and another explained kindly that Threes was the original and the thing to which one graduates as it's tougher. (Listen around minute 37.) Greg recommends the Indomie brand of ramen.

Maggie Vail and Jesse von Doom are the co-executive directors of CASH Music (Coalition of Artists and Stakeholders) a non-profit organization that brings an open-source approach to music distribution and production. CASH focuses on educating around those ideas through online resources, stakeholder events, and face-to-face workshops, as well as offering a software platform. Sponsors and patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. MailRoute filters your mail, quarantines any suspicious mail offsite, and delivers only clean mail to your mailboxes. With one simple click, your domain, mail server and other precious resources are protected. For 10% off the lifetime of your account, and a free 15-day trial, visit mailroute.net/disrupt! Thanks to patrons George O'Toole, Jonathan Mann, and Sean Wickett for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts. Show notes Maggie mentioned two early groups that helped independent artists and labels handle digital distribution: the for-profit Merlin and the trade group A2im. Maggie worked with bands at Kill Rock Stars for 17 years before becoming the co-head of CASH. Jonathan Coulton is on CASH's board, and I spoke to him about his career in "Baby Got Back Catalog," March 2013. Back in 2000, Courtney Love explained how the sausage of music-industry accounting in big labels is designed to rip off artists. I visited the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in 2012, and wrote "The Sound of Silence" for The Magazine about the issues of preservation and rights. Pandora has a good explanation of how music rights have to be licensed in America. Jesse received a fellowship from the Shuttleworth Foundation, which has freed them a bit from the endlessly cycle of fundraising to move forward and grow the staff. Dan Sinker is in charge of the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews project for the Mozilla Foundation, and the founder of Punk Planet, an underground culture magazine.

Henry Smith is a games app developer, and the evil genius behind the addictive multi-player app Spaceteam. Spaceteam won oodles of awards, and it has the added benefit (or problem) of being free. Henry has an active Kickstarter to fund future development of free work over the next year. Sponsors and Patrons New Relic helps everyone's software work better, and if you're in any business today, you're in the software business. Software powers our apps, runs our databases, manages our accounts, and runs ecommerce sites and email programs. New Relic monitors every move your application makes, across the entire stack, and shows you what's happening right now. Visit newrelic.com/disruptors to find out more. MailRoute filters your mail, quarantines any suspicious mail offsite, and delivers only clean mail to your mailboxes. With one simple click, your domain, mail server and other precious resources are protected. For 10% off the lifetime of your account, and a free 15-day trial, visit mailroute.net/disrupt! Thanks to patrons Andy Baio, Jonathan Mann, and Abraham Finberg for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts. Show notes Watch for an upcoming interview with Greg Wohlwend, the developer of the app Threes. Henry shares details openly about Spaceteam's downloads and revenue. He wrote a post summing up all the money that's come in, including commissions and prize winnings. Henry's Spaceteam Manifesto is a more formal expression than this podcast of a lot of the principles driving him. Greg Knauss talked about exiting a long-time job, some of the paralysis that followed, the fear and reality of failure, and finding a path forward in "Falling Upward" (Episode 63).

Elly Blue is a bike activist, writer, and publisher, and has run more Kickstarter campaigns than nearly any other person or group. She is fiercely in favor of using bikes as a necessary mode of transportation — though it is not necessarily the ideal — and describes herself as a feminist bicycle activist. We talk funding, publishing, and persistence. Sponsored by: New Relic helps everyone's software work better, and if you're in any business today, you're in the software business. Software powers our apps, runs our databases, manages our accounts, and runs ecommerce sites and email programs. New Relic monitors every move your application makes, across the entire stack, and shows you what's happening right now. Visit http://newrelic.com/disruptors to find out more. Abraham Finberg, CPA: From dealing with those pesky 1099Ks to complex accounting needs, go to http://finbergcpa.com for all your financial support. Services can be as simple as a 15-minute phone consultation session all the way up to outsourcing your whole internal accounting office. Use promotion code DISRUPT to get a free phone consultation today!

Chris Yates is a polymath. A sculptor, artist, woodworker, cartoonist, entrepreneur, dog-kennel assembler, musician, and more. He's best known now for his handmade jigsaw puzzles. He's on the show to talk about his zigzag path to making a niche for himself. Sponsors New Relic helps everyone's software work better, and if you're in any business today, you're in the software business. Software powers our apps, runs our databases, manages our accounts, and runs ecommerce sites and email programs. New Relic monitors every move your application makes, across the entire stack, and shows you what's happening right now. Visit newrelic.com/disruptors to find out more. What do Lil Wayne, Black Girls CODE, and Humans of New York have in common? They've all raised funds on Indiegogo! Indiegogo has hosted over 100,000 campaigns since 2008 and distributes millions of dollars every week around the globe. There is no application process or waiting period associated with launching a campaign; individuals can start raising funds immediately. Listeners visit tnd.indiegogo.com to receive a 25% discount on fees. Abraham Finberg, CPA: From dealing with those pesky 1099Ks to complex accounting needs, go to finbergcpa.com for all your financial support. Services can be as simple as a 15-minute phone consultation session all the way up to outsourcing your whole internal accounting office. Use promotion code DISRUPT to get a free phone consultation today! Show notes Chris displayed with Topatoco at Emerald City Comicon recently; he works a lot of conventions. He created 50 Comic-Con Questions as a tongue-in-response to what people ask. Chris is almost sui generis. The "Quilt of No Return" has a difficult rating of 9.3 out of 10. Chris's cartoon, Reprographics, ran from about 2004 to 2013. Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics is possibly the nicest guy in the world, based on his reputation. David Lynch did Angriest Dog in the World for quite a while. xkcd by Randall Munroe turned not being able to draw into an asset. Chris worked early on with David Malki, interviewed on New Disruptors in September 2013. Ceaco sells mass-produced versions of Chris's invention.

Dylan Meconis is a prolific cartoonist who lives in Portland, Oregon. She constantly labors away at a mix between her solo work and projects in collaboration with others, including writing the script for Scott Kurtz's popular PvP webcomic. She is part of Periscope Studio, which we've talked about in previous podcasts. We talk about building a career and learning from mistakes while keeping all the plates spinning. Sponsors New Relic helps everyone's software work better, and if you're in any business today, you're in the software business. Software powers our apps, runs our databases, manages our accounts, and runs ecommerce sites and email programs. New Relic monitors every move your application makes, across the entire stack, and shows you what's happening right now. Visit newrelic.com/disruptors to find out more. Creative VIP is the exclusive membership club for creative professionals, writers, and designers. Membership includes discounts on world-class online services and apps, and access to a growing library of graphics, vectors, icons and themes. You can also get a regular goodie bag on your doorstep. Save 25% on your membership, forever, by visiting http://creativevip.net/disrupt What do Lil Wayne, Black Girls CODE, and Humans of New York have in common? They've all raised funds on Indiegogo! Indiegogo has hosted over 100,000 campaigns since 2008 and distributes millions of dollars every week around the globe. There is no application process or waiting period associated with launching a campaign; individuals can start raising funds immediately. Listeners visit tnd.indiegogo.com to receive a 25% discount on fees. Show notes Dylan's books include Outfoxed, Bite Me! (a vampire farce); Family Man, a graphic novel being told pages at a time, and then collected into volumes; and Danse Macabre 2.0. My friend Alison Hallett recommended Dylan's work and the Bone series by Jeff Smith. Dylan mentioned the artist Ivan Bilibin as an inspiration for Outfoxed. Portland has a ton of creative people of all sorts, and cartoonists and comic-book artists rank high among them. Both Dark Horse Comics and Oni Press are based there. Erika Moen, a Periscope Studio participant, was on this show in August 2013. Bill Amend (Foxtrot) became internet famous. Dylan's Kickstarter campaign was successful, but she hit a bunch of snags we discuss. Her wife, Katie Lane, is a lawyer who advises freelancers at Work Made for Hire on making good decisions about their work and rights! Katie performs legal work for cartoonist Matt Bors, a previous guest on this podcast. I and Dylan listed off an oodle of conferences, which include Gallifrey One, Rose City Comic Con, Emerald City Comicon, PAX, the XOXO conference, MaxFunCon, and JoCo Cruise Crazy. Erika Moen is using Patreon to fund each cartoon she creates.

Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder created the movie Stripped about the past, present, and future of comic strips and their creators. Dave is the creator and cartoonist of two webcomics titles, Sheldon and Drive, and the co-author of How To Make Webcomics. He is one of a small but growing group of webcomics artists who are self-sufficient. Fred is a veteran cinemographer, nominated for Best Cinematography at Sundance for his work on Four Sheets to the Wind. He has been shooting commercials for much of his career. Together, they matched Fred's filmmaking skills with Dave's personal knowledge of the field and his contacts to create the first feature-length documentary on the topic, funded in part through two Kickstarter campaigns. They don't pull punches about the difficulties of being a comic-strip artist, but they show all the joy and love that goes into the work along with many potential bright lights already illuminating parts of the field and shining on the horizon. This episode is sponsored by: Media Temple: Web hosting for artists, designers, and Web developers since 1998. World-class support available 24x7 through phone and chat—and even Twitter. Sign up with coupon code "tnd" to get 25% off your first month of hosting. Creative VIP is the exclusive membership club for creative professionals, writers, and designers. Membership includes discounts on world-class online services and apps, and access to a growing library of graphics, vectors, icons and themes. You can also get a regular goodie bag on your doorstep. Save 25% on your membership, forever, by visiting http://creativevip.net/disrupt Abraham Finberg, CPA: From dealing with those pesky 1099Ks to complex accounting needs, go to finbergcpa.com for all your financial support. Services can be as simple as a 15-minute phone consultation session all the way up to outsourcing your whole internal accounting office. Use promotion code DISRUPT to get a free phone consultation today! What do Project for Awesome, the world's most compact e­vehicle, and a baby have in common? They've all been crowdfunded on Indiegogo! Indiegogo has hosted over 100,000 campaigns since 2008 and distributes millions of dollars every week around the globe. Individuals can start raising funds immediately. Listeners visit tnd.indiegogo.com to receive a 25% discount on fees.

Danielle Hulton of Ada's Technical Books not only opened a bookstore in Seattle in 2010, but recently dramatically expanded the size of the shop by moving to a new space. What led her to leap where others feared to tread, and how do you keep a bookstore current when ebooks seem to sucking readers away? Expertise, instant availability, and many lines of business are all part of the process. This episode is sponsored by: Mailchimp helps more than five million people and businesses around the world send email newsletters. Mailchimp sent 70 billion messages on their behalf in 2013! They also have hats for cats and small dogs. Media Temple: Web hosting for artists, designers, and Web developers since 1998. World-class support available 24x7 through phone and chat—and even Twitter. Sign up with coupon code "tnd" to get 25% off your first month of hosting. What do the Nikola Tesla Museum, the film that won this year's Sundance Film Festival, and a baby have in common? They've all been crowdfunded on Indiegogo! Choose Flexible Funding to keep all the funds you raise even if you don't meet your goal. Listeners visit tnd.indiegogo.com to receive a 25% discount on fees.

Joshua Lifton is one of the founders of Crowd Supply, a company that crowdfunds around products. They take a very different approach to preparation, funding, and follow-up than Kickstarter. Kickstarter just announced that it had crossed $1bn in pledges in its five-year lifetime. Of that, it's disbursed nearly $850m. It's on track to facilitate perhaps half a billion in 2014 alone. The name Kickstarter may be used interchangeably with the term crowdfunding, and it is the 800 lb. gorilla in the space. (Watch out for the shipping charges on that gorilla, especially internationally.) But in its wake, hundreds of millions of dollars are being raised from all sorts of other sites which fill in important aspects of ecosystem, and Crowd Supply is one of them. This episode is sponsored by: Mailchimp helps more than five million people and businesses around the world send email newsletters. Mailchimp sent 70 billion messages on their behalf in 2013! They also have hats for cats and small dogs. Media Temple: Web hosting for artists, designers, and Web developers since 1998. World-class support available 24x7 through phone and chat—and even Twitter. Sign up with coupon code "tnd" to get 25% off your first month of hosting. What do the Nikola Tesla Museum, the film that won this year's Sundance Film Festival, and a baby have in common? They've all been crowdfunded on Indiegogo! Choose Flexible Funding to keep all the funds you raise even if you don't meet your goal. Listeners visit tnd.indiegogo.com to receive a 25% discount on fees.

Jane Friedman and Manjula Martin founded Scratch Magazine, a born-digital publication that tells writers what they're worth and how the publishing industry sausage-making factory actually works. Jane has an extensive background as an editor, and may be best known for her decade at Writer's Digest. Manjula is a freelance writer, whose work has appeared widely in places like Modern Farmer, San Francisco Weekly, and our own The Magazine, in which she wrote about musician and producer John Vanderslice. Sponsored by: TypeEngine: From the passionate indie publisher to the multi-publication agency, TypeEngine is the beautifully simple publishing platform to deliver your works digitally. Publish long-form content, photos, and rich media. Media Temple: Web hosting for artists, designers, and Web developers since 1998. World-class support available 24x7 through phone and chat—and even Twitter. Sign up with coupon code "tnd" to get 25% off your first month of hosting.

Angela and Aubrey Webber are the musical group The Doubleclicks, bringing geeky music to nerdy folk. The sisters never intended to form a band, but when Aubrey joined her sister Angela in Portland a few years ago, her cello coupled with Angela's singing caused enough of a stir for them to join forces and write songs about Dungeons & Dungeons, the Curiosity rover, and not dissing the geek girl. We talk about all this and their absurdly successful Kickstarter campaign that just closed. Sponsored by: lynda.com: Over 2,000 high-quality and engaging video courses taught by industry experts — with new courses added daily. Listeners get a free 7-day trial with full access to all content by visiting lynda.com/tnd and signing up. Vimeo: If you upload a lot of videos, Vimeo Plus and Vimeo PRO let you add 20 GB a week with no ads slapped on top. Get 10% off with the code DISRUPT. (Coupon expires 4/30/2014. Renewals are at full price.) Media Temple: Web hosting for artists, designers, and Web developers since 1998. World-class support available 24x7 through phone and chat—and even Twitter. Sign up with coupon code "tnd" to get 25% off your first month of hosting.

Greg Knauss is an independent software developer who created Romantimatic, a reminder program for absent-minded sweethearts. You may know him from the early 2000s: from Suck.com and Metababy and Rainy Day Fun and Games for Toddler and Total Bastard, a collection of stories he promoted on what was arguably the first digital book tour. Then for a decade he toiled behind the scenes until he went out on his own. We'll talk today about his expectations, the reality, and fear of failing--and of succeeding! Sponsored by: lynda.com: Over 2,000 high-quality and engaging video courses taught by industry experts — with new courses added daily. Listeners get a free 7-day trial with full access to all content by visiting lynda.com/tnd and signing up. Media Temple: Web hosting for artists, designers, and Web developers since 1998. World-class support available 24x7 through phone and chat—and even Twitter. Sign up with coupon code "tnd" to get 25% off your first month of hosting. Vimeo: If you upload a lot of videos, Vimeo Plus and Vimeo PRO let you add 20 GB a week with no ads slapped on top. Get 10% off with the code DISRUPT. (Coupon expires 4/30/2014. Renewals are at full price.) BackersHub.com: BackersHub is a daily deals Web site that rewards people who have backed previously successfully Kickstarter campaigns with exclusive discounts.

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools re-imagines the Whole Earth Catalog, of which he was an editor and publisher, for the Internet era: crowdsourced, crowdmade, crowdmanaged. He's been on the Internet for as long as there's been an Internet for all us to get on. He was part of the founding team of Wired magazine, and the author of many inspiring books and essays about technological change and self-empowerment, including "1,000 True Fans." We talk about collaboration, old and new technology, and making books. We had a full transcript of this interview made, which also has sources linked in for further reading. Sponsored by: The Fog Horn: A new short fiction magazine for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Four stories a month, 12 issues a year from exciting Hollywood writers and new voices. Free 7-day trial. lynda.com: Over 2,000 high-quality and engaging video courses taught by industry experts — with new courses added daily. Listeners get a free 7-day trial with full access to all content by visiting lynda.com/tnd and signing up. Media Temple: Web hosting for artists, designers, and Web developers since 1998. Media Temple hosts beautiful websites and great ideas. Use code "tnd" to get 25% off your first month.

Maxwell Salzberg of BackerKit knows what it's like to have a lot of people giving him money who want something in return: he and three colleagues credited the Diaspora project, one of Kickstarter's early blockbusters. He co-founded BackerKit with Rosanna Yau to help people with the problem of managing crowdfunding backers' responses and expectations. This episode is sponsored by Media Temple: Web hosting for artists, designers, and Web developers since 1998. Media Temple hosts beautiful websites and great ideas. Sign up with coupon code "tnd" to get 25% off your first month of hosting. We're also sponsored by Born SQL, who can help small- and medium-sized businesses who use Microsoft SQL Server without a dedicated database administrator. New Disruptors' listeners can get a Cdn$750 discount on Born SQL's analysis report, which examines your instances and provides extensive, implementable recommendations about making improvements.

Dan Shapiro created the game Robot Turtles out of scissors, clip art, and a printer to offer asymmetric play: kids and adults can play together and both can enjoy the experience. He brought it to Kickstarter to sell a few hundred copies, and wound selling over 25,000. In his workshop, Dan explains how the game developed, the Kickstarter proceeded, and how he's fulfilling it. This episode is sponsored by Media Temple, where New Disruptors listeners receive 25% off their first month of hosting with the coupon code "tnd". And by Audible.com, where you can get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial by visiting http://audiblepodcast.com/disruptors.