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4 episodes with Webstock
2 episodes with Webstock
2 episodes with Webstock
2 episodes with Webstock
În loc de back to school azi avem un episod de back to self despre regăsire după experiența de a deveni mamă. Deși o știam pe invitata mea de dinainte, am cunoscut-o mai bine în programul de Life Design din toamna trecută și sunt mândră că a ales să își spună povestea în podcast unde multe femei devenite mame (sau viitoare mame) se vor bucura să o asculte. Când nu petrece timp cu fiul ei, Ana acordă atenție altor roluri importante din viața ei printre care cel de femeie, de Country Manager la Freywille sau cele de Women Leadership Program Manager și board member în Business Women Forum Romania. A venit la fix episodul pentru tine? Spune-ne ca să ne bucurăm și noi și îți mulțumim dacă îl și dai mai departe. Pe Ana o găsești pe LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-maria-genoveva-m-bab0581a6/. Dacă și tu te simți confuză, rătăcită într-o viață care uneori pare că nu e a ta, dacă vrei să te (re)descoperi și să (re)devii importantă în viața ta, te aștept să ni te alături în programul de Life Design. Te poți înscrie până pe 18 septembrie aici: https://www.cristinaotel.ro/life-design/
Mike Monteiro is a designer and the author of Ruined By Design, You're My Favorite Client, The Collected Angers, and the newly-revised Design is a Job. Listen to learn about: Mike's book, Design is a Job Ethics in design Designing society so that ethical behavior becomes the norm Our Guest Mike Monteiro is the co-founder and design director of Mule Design. He mostly writes these days. His latest book is the second edition of Design Is a Job. Show Highlights [00:39] How Mike got into design during graduate school. [03:54] His first job in desktop publishing and printing taught him to measure work in 30-minute increments. [06:04] Moving into writing books. [07:32] Mike's book, Design is a Job, was written to help designers with the ins and outs of being a professional designer. [10:57] Why Mike felt it was time to revise the book. [13:23] The “revised” edition changed so much, it's basically a different book. [14:33] Mike talks about some of the new ideas in the revised edition. [15:12] Designers moving from contractors to employees. [18:02] The importance of ethical behavior and ethical decisions. [18:15] Mike's butcher metaphor. [24:35] What companies and society can do to create an environment that encourages ethical behavior. [26:52] The first steps on the path to a more ethical world. [30:58] Finding his place in the semi post-pandemic world. [34:13] Knowing when it's time to get off the stage. [35:48] Speaking only if you can improve the silence. [37:05] Getting older and realizing the value of listening. [38:34] How do we redesign power so that it can inoculate itself against power's darker aspects? [42:14] The messiness of the world today, and how should designers work within that world to make it a better place? [45:07] There is always a cost to the ethical choice. Links Mike on Twitter Mike on Medium Mule Design Mule Design on Twitter Ruined By Design Creative Mornings Podcast, F*ck You, Pay Me with Mike Monteiro Creative Mornings HQ: Let's Make Mistakes Intercom: Mule Design's Mike Monteiro on responsibility in experience design Invision: Mike Monteiro: Design is Political Creative Bloq: Why designers need to stick to their guns Webstock ‘13: Mike Monteiro - How Designers Destroyed the World Interview with Mike by Clearleft Books By Mike Monteiro Design is a Job You're My Favorite Client Ruined By Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It The Collected Angers Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like Designing Culture at Work + Social Innovation + Necessary Disquiet with Lauren Currie — DT101 E29 Design for Good + Gut Checks + Seeing Power with George Aye — DT101 E50 Cognitive Bias + Ethics + Dreaming the Future of Design with David Dylan Thomas — DT101 E112
Mike Monteiro is a designer and the author of Ruined By Design, You're My Favorite Client, The Collected Angers, and the newly-revised Design is a Job. Listen to learn about: Mike's book, Design is a Job Ethics in design Designing society so that ethical behavior becomes the norm Our Guest Mike Monteiro is the co-founder and design director of Mule Design. He mostly writes these days. His latest book is the second edition of Design Is a Job. Show Highlights [00:39] How Mike got into design during graduate school. [03:54] His first job in desktop publishing and printing taught him to measure work in 30-minute increments. [06:04] Moving into writing books. [07:32] Mike's book, Design is a Job, was written to help designers with the ins and outs of being a professional designer. [10:57] Why Mike felt it was time to revise the book. [13:23] The “revised” edition changed so much, it's basically a different book. [14:33] Mike talks about some of the new ideas in the revised edition. [15:12] Designers moving from contractors to employees. [18:02] The importance of ethical behavior and ethical decisions. [18:15] Mike's butcher metaphor. [24:35] What companies and society can do to create an environment that encourages ethical behavior. [26:52] The first steps on the path to a more ethical world. [30:58] Finding his place in the semi post-pandemic world. [34:13] Knowing when it's time to get off the stage. [35:48] Speaking only if you can improve the silence. [37:05] Getting older and realizing the value of listening. [38:34] How do we redesign power so that it can inoculate itself against power's darker aspects? [42:14] The messiness of the world today, and how should designers work within that world to make it a better place? [45:07] There is always a cost to the ethical choice. Links Mike on Twitter Mike on Medium Mule Design Mule Design on Twitter Ruined By Design Creative Mornings Podcast, F*ck You, Pay Me with Mike Monteiro Creative Mornings HQ: Let's Make Mistakes Intercom: Mule Design's Mike Monteiro on responsibility in experience design Invision: Mike Monteiro: Design is Political Creative Bloq: Why designers need to stick to their guns Webstock ‘13: Mike Monteiro - How Designers Destroyed the World Interview with Mike by Clearleft Books By Mike Monteiro Design is a Job You're My Favorite Client Ruined By Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It The Collected Angers Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like Designing Culture at Work + Social Innovation + Necessary Disquiet with Lauren Currie — DT101 E29 Design for Good + Gut Checks + Seeing Power with George Aye — DT101 E50 Cognitive Bias + Ethics + Dreaming the Future of Design with David Dylan Thomas — DT101 E112
Abby Covert is an information architect, writer and community organizer with two decades of experience helping people make sense of messes. In addition to being an active mentor to those new to sensemaking, she has also served the design community as President of the Information Architecture Institute, co-chair of Information Architecture Summit, and Executive Producer of the I.D.E.A Conference. Abby is a founding faculty member of School of Visual Arts' Products of Design graduate program. She also managed the team that helped Rosenfeld Media to start both the Design Operations Summit and Advancing Research Conference. Her most proud achievement is having come up with the idea for World Information Architecture Day, bringing accessibly priced education to thousands in their local communities annually. In addition to running events, you may have seen her presenting her work on stage at: Blend, Business to Buttons, Confab, Creative Mornings, Designing for Digital, EdUI, EMACTL, EuroIA, Generate, GIANT, IA Summit, IA Conference, Italian IA Conference, Interactions, Midwest UX, Mind the Product, Momentum, Plain Language Summit, SearchLOVE, STC Summit, TalkUX, UI21, UI22, UX Cambridge, UX Ottawa, UX Lisbon, UX Tokyo, UX Week, Webstock, Wharton Web Conference, World IA Day Abby has written two books for her students. In 2014 she published How to Make Sense of Any Mess, a book to teach IA to everybody. In 2022, she released her much anticipated follow-up, Stuck? Diagrams Help. She currently spends her time making things that help you to make the unclear, clear, many of which she makes available for free on her website abbycovert.com or at accessible price points in her popular Etsy shop AbbytheIA. Abby lives and writes from Melbourne, Florida where her most important job title is ‘Mom'. Episode Notes Products & Guides for SensemakersHow to Make Sense of Any MessSTUCK? Diagrams HelpMy Monthly Email List Related Episodes Episode #223: Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic Episode #203: Alli Torban Episode #198: Scott Berkun Episode #145: RJ Andrews Episode #2: Dear Data iTunes Spotify
How does an architect end up working on Obamacare? What are the differences between designing with data and physical materials? Why does the government need more designers? Sha Hwang is COO and co-founder at Nava, a public benefit corporation working to make government services simple, effective, and accessible. Founded as a part of efforts to help fix HealthCare.gov, Nava now works on projects across Medicare, Department of Veterans Affairs, and at the state level on large efforts to improve government digital services. A failed architect and accidental entrepreneur, Sha has worked with clients such as the New York Times, the Harvard Library Lab, CNN, MTV, Flickr, and Adobe. Prior to Nava, Sha worked at Stamen Design and later co-founded the company Movity, which was acquired by Trulia. Sha has spoken frequently at events including the White House Datapalooza, Webstock, Eyeo Festival, and Visualized. Follow Sha Hwang: Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram Follow Nava: Twitter | LinkedIn Episode website link: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/shahwang More episode sources & links Sign-up for Design Lab Podcast's Newsletter Newsletter Archive Follow @DesignLabPod on Twitter Instagram and LinkedIn Follow @BonKu on Twitter & Instagram Check out the Health Design Lab Production by Robert Pugliese Cover Design by Eden Lew Theme song by Emmanuel Houston
Named “one of the most creative people in business” by Fast Company, and “one of the most influential designers working today” by Graphic Design USA, Debbie Millman is also an author, educator, curator and host of the podcast Design Matters. Debbie's podcast, Design Matters is one of the first and longest running podcasts, and as host and founder, Millman has interviewed nearly 500 of the most creative people in the world over the past 17 years. Design Matters won a 2011 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, in 2015 Apple designated it one of the best overall podcasts on iTunes, and in 2021 designated it one of their “All Time Favorite Podcasts.” In addition, the show has been nominated for six Webby Awards, and has been listed on over 100 “Best Podcasts” lists, including one of the best podcasts in the world by Business Insider and Vanity Fair. Debbie is the author of seven books, including two collections of interviews that have extended the ethos and editorial vision of Design Matters to the printed page: How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer and Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits. Both books have been published in over 10 languages. Her most recent book, Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People, will be published by Harper Collins in Fall 2021. She is also the co-owner and Editorial Director of PrintMag.com. Debbie co-founded the world's first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2010. Now in its eleventh year, the program has achieved international acclaim. The inaugural class wrote and designed the Rockport book Brand Bible: The Complete Guide to Building, Designing and Sustaining Brands, in 2013 the students created branding for the Museum of Modern Art's retail program, Destination: New York, the class of 2015 worked to reposition a Kappa Middle School in Harlem, the class of 2016 rebranded Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation, the class of 2017 worked with Kholsa Ventures, Performance Space New York and Chobani Incubators, and the class of 2018 worked with Brian Koppelman to design a logo for the television show Billions. The class of 2021, along with selected alumni, created the most recent design of the Sundance Institute Film Festival. For 20 years, Debbie was the President of Sterling Brands, one of the world's leading branding consultancies. She arrived in 1995 when the company was two years old and had 15 employees in one office. Under her leadership, Sterling grew to 150 employees in five offices and she was instrumental in the firm's acquisition by Omnicom in 2008. Omnicom is one of the world's largest holding companies. While there she worked on the logo and brand identity for Burger King, Hershey's, Haagen Dazs, Tropicana, Star Wars, Gillette, and the No More movement. Debbie's writing and illustrations have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Print Magazine, Baffler and Fast Company. She is the author of two books of illustrated essays: Look Both Ways and Self-Portrait As Your Traitor; the latter of which has been awarded a Gold Mobius, a Print Typography Award, and a medal from the Art Directors Club. Her artwork is included in the Boston Biennale, Chicago Design Museum, Anderson University, School of Visual Arts, Long Island University, The Wolfsonion Museum and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art. She has been critic-in-residence at Cranbrook University, Old Dominion University and Notre Dame University, and has conducted visual storytelling workshops all over the world. Debbie is also President Emeritus of AIGA, one of five women to hold the position in the organization's 100-year history and was awarded a lifetime achievement award from AIGA in 2019. She is a frequent speaker on design and branding and has spoken at TED Women (her talk was one of the Top Ten most popular talks of 2020), moderated Design Yatra in India, presented keynote lectures at Rotman School of Management, Princeton University, Michigan Modern, the Hong Kong Design Association, the Melbourne Writers Festival, Design Thinkers in Toronto, the Festival of Art and Design in Barcelona, Webstock in New Zealand, QVED in Munich, ING in Dubai, ND2C in Pakistan, PS One in China, Web Summit in Lisbon and many more. She has been a juror for competitions including Cannes Lions, The Clio's, the One Club, the D&AD awards and many, many more. Debbie is currently working with Law & Order SVU actor and activist Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation to eradicate sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse and the rape-kit backlog. On this episode, Debbie shares her one way ticket to the few minutes before the “Big Bang”. She also talks podcasting, branding and her fabulous new book, Why Design Matters: Conversations With the World's Most Creative People. Debbie is just one of the engaging personalities featured on The One Way Ticket Show, where Host Steven Shalowitz explores with his guests where they would go if given a one way ticket, no coming back. Their destinations may be in the past, present, future, real, imaginary or a state of mind. Steven's guests have included: Nobel Peace Prize Winner, President Jose Ramos-Horta; Legendary Talk Show Host, Dick Cavett; Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz; Fashion Expert, Tim Gunn; Broadcast Legend, Charles Osgood; International Rescue Committee President & CEO, David Miliband; Former Senator, Joe Lieberman; Playwright, David Henry Hwang; Journalist-Humorist-Actor, Mo Rocca; SkyBridge Capital Founder & Co-Managing Partner, Anthony Scaramucci; Abercrombie & Kent Founder, Geoffrey Kent; Travel Expert, Pauline Frommer, as well as leading photographers, artists, chefs, writers, intellectuals and more.
Axel Schultze started and successfully exited 4 companies, the biggest reaching $5 Billion in revenue, the second close to $1 Billion. Axel is a published author, patent holder, 2015 listed in the global 100 most influential startup accelerators, 2008 won the SF Entrepreneur Award, 2006 chaired the SaaS Channel Committee at the SIIA, 2003 early adviser of LinkedIn. 2001 Founder & CEO of Silicon Valley based BlueRoads a partner management software. Initially funded by The Angels Forum, then venture funded by Eldorado Ventures, Cardinal Ventures and Arrow Path. Named most successful channel management company in 2006. Exit in 2007. 1997 Pioneered equity based crowdfunding - Sold it in 2001. 1996 Founder & CEO Infinigate, Leading European IT security provider. Funded through private placement on Webstock. Today over $600 Million in revenue. 1983 Founder & CEO Computer 2000 a $5 Billion high tech distributor. With a highly disruptive business model bypassed 8,000 tech distributors and became the third largest in the world. VC Funded by Deutsche Bank WFG. IPO in 1996. merged with Tech Data at $5 Billion in revenue in 1998. We Talk About What questions should one ask themselves or brainstorming should be done before starting a company? What is the best advice for someone is plans on starting and growing a billion-dollar company with their significant other? Why does brainstorming to create a billion-dollar idea seem to fail when it is done in a corporate setting, but succeed when it is done by a startup? Connect with Axel Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/axelschultze/ Website https://bluecallom.com/ CONNECT WITH SHAWN https://linktr.ee/ShawnflynnSV Shawn Flynn's LinkedInAccount Silicon Valley LinkedInGroup Account Shawn Flynn's FacebookAccount Email Shawn@thesiliconvalleypodcast.com
Episodul de azi e unul special, de sărbătoare pentru că Podcastul Neascultătorii a împlinit 1 an! Nu pot să cred că a trecut deja 1 an de când lansam foarte timid primul meu episod. Nu știam ce o sa fie, dacă o să mă descurc, dacă o să fie conținutul bun. Am avut o tona de emoții, dar uite că în timp mi-am găsit vocea și mi-am dat seama că îmi place extrem de mult să produc acest podcast, mai ales că primesc atât de multe mesaje și feedback încurajator de la voi. Așa că voi continua cu episoade cât mai multe și mai faine, din care să învățăm împreună ce înseamnă să construiești un startup de succes, de la antreprenori care au reușit. Cireașa de pe tortul aniversar a fost că am câștigat, exact la împlinirea unui an de podcast, premiul pentru Best Marketing & Tech podcast la Webstock! Vă mulțumesc tuturor celor care ați votat și celor care sunteti Neascultători, pentru că fără voi nu aș fi putut obține o asemenea recunoaștere. Mă onorează și apreciez foarte mult primirea acestui premiu.Episodul de azi va fi un BEST OF, în care am selectat câte un fragment de câteva minute din fiecare episod, cu cele mai bune momente din discuțiile avute cu invitații mei. Azi vom avea momente de la primii 10 invitați, urmând ca următorul episod să fie cu cele mai bune momente ale următorilor 10. În fiecare discuție cu invitații mei am avut parte de povești frumoase și de câte un ”a-ha moment” sau un sfat sau un insight, pe care am vrut sa le împărtășesc cu voi, așa că sper să vă placă acest Best Of și să regăsiți momente interesante din discuțiile cu Neascultătorii mei. În episodul de azi îi veți auzi pe:Sebastian Dobrincu, StoryHeapPaul Apostol, Digital NationAlexandru Lăpușan, ZitecBogdan Colceriu, FrisboVladimir Oane, DeepstashSandu Băbășan, BlugentoAnda Gânscă, KnotchFlorin Grozea, MOCAPPGeorge Haber, CrestafundAndrei Dunca, LiveRail/Facebook---Stiudiu StartupsAstept răspunsul vostru pe sergiubiris.ro/studiu , dacă aveți un startup tech sau v-ați hotărât să porniți unul.
The Green Room Episode: Public Speaking, Green Rooms, Quiet Before 15, School Announcer, DEFCON, Jeff Moss' Room, Webstock, XOXO, SXSW, Confrontations, A Long Overdue Hug. This episode comes from an idea by Chris Erlanson.
Episodul acesta este o înregistrare live de la evenimentul Webstock. Un eveniment dedicat comunității de online, oameni de social media, creatori de conținut și online marketing manageri. În prezentarea mea am arătat studii de caz cum poți să faci prin content marketing să atragi mai multe vânzări unui produs sau servicii care sunt vândute fie... The post Content Marketing Poate Vinde Orice | Webstock 2019 appeared first on Katai.
Pe Irina Rusu am cunoscut-o prima dată la Webstock. Era curioasă și interesată de industria social media și în special Instagram. Așa că i-am cerut să scrie un material pentru Instagramology despre profilul nou de business pe Insta De-atunci lucrurile au evoluat. Irina azi e graphic designer, content creator pe Instagram, weekly vlogger și antreprenor... The post 62 Irina Rusu (Coffentropy): Audiența are un radar pentru bullshit appeared first on Katai.
Money Flows, Workplace Tokenism, Puzzle Games, and More Welcome to the Process Hacker News, your weekly roundup of useful news and updates from Process Hackers who have been guests on Hack the Process with M. David Green. This week we’ve got money flows, workplace tokenism, puzzle games, and more. For all the links, check out the show notes at https://www.hacktheprocess.com/money-flows-workplace-tokenism-puzzle-games-and-more-in-process-hacker-news/. Enjoy! Events Compass Rose, the lateral-thinking puzzle game created by Pace Smith is now officially out! Check out the Compass Rose trailer to see what it’s all about. Attend the fifth Content Marketing Conference, which happens from April 16 to 19 in Boston, to hear what Sarah Cooper and others have to share about content marketing and how it’s evolving. On April 17 in New York, you can join the Learning by Making Series for free to discover strategies that can make today’s learners competitive. Sasha Ariel Alston will be speaking about introducing STEM to kids. Veteran’s PATH, where Bill Duane serves as Vice Chairman of the Board, is inviting women veterans to the CenterPoint OEF/OIF Women Veterans’ Retreats from May 12 to 17 in New Mexico to help them heal from PTSD and re-adjust to civilian life. Media Listen in as Tiffani Bova shares about sales leadership and personal growth in her interview on the Selling with Social Podcast. On $100MBA Podcast, Omar Zenhom breaks down the lessons from the book Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi, touching on online marketing, search engine optimization, social media, and more. After months of hiatus, Hampton Catlin and husband Michael Lintorn Catlin are back with a new episode of the We Have A Microphone poscast. Hear them kick back, drink a Laura Palmer, and chat for forty minutes about Brexit, British Prime Ministers, and a whole lot more! Writing Michelle Kim sent out a love letter to underrepresented people in the workplace who might be experiencing tokenism and isolation, as a reminder that even if you think you’re all alone in the workplace, you’re not. What’s it like to grow up between two cultures? Ricky Yean shares his experience of what it’s like to be Asian American in his latest Medium post. Recommended Resources Catch Amy Hoy and other digital thought leaders at Webstock 2019 in New Zealand. The conference, which runs from June 26 to 28, will gather folks to explore the present, the future, and the potential of the web. Both Brennan Dunn and Alex Hillman mentioned Amy in their Hack the Process interviews. Seth Godin, whose work made an impact on Alex Cespedes, Tara Byrne, and Tiffani Bova, uses the latest episode of his Akimbo Podcast to remind us that money flows, and even though monetary value is everywhere, it does not necessarily translate to the value of your work. Kerwin McKenzie lives in airplanes, travels the world, and epitomizes the digital nomad lifestyle. Hear his travel hacks, how he runs two websites while traveling, and how he affords his lifestyle in an interesting chat on the Yaro blog with Yaro Starak, who was mentioned by Michelle Dale. Thanks for checking out this Process Hacker News update from Hack the Process. If you liked what you saw, please leave a comment to let us know what processes you’re hacking.
Editia asta este facuta inainte de Webstock Awards unde am fost nominalizati, lucru care ne era un vis indepartat, aproape inexistent. Pandutzu ne trece pragul, se descalta frumos inainte de a intra si ne povesteste despre primul sau scurtmetraj, ne destainuie povesti din anii fragezi de blogging si multe altele
Natasha Lampard is a major reason Webstock is one of the world’s top design and tech conferences. She explains how her passion for the web intersected with her childhood fondness for throwing parties to create a festival that attracts the most talented, inspiring leaders in the industry to come from around the world to New Zealand to share their expertise and their stories. Full show notes and links available at AlchemyPodcasts.com
We made it to Episode 10, y’all! That’s a wrap on Season 1! Who better to close out our first season than an engineer, entrepreneur, and general superstar we’ve loved for, like, a full decade? Yep, our guest today is Leah Culver, the co-founder and CTO of Breaker, a social podcast app that we’ve all just started using (if you have an iPhone, check it out. Android is coming soon). > I can only do the things I can do. I can keep trying to get better, but I can’t beat myself up about not being like someone else. I just have to sort of be myself and work with what I have and take it to that—that next step. > —Leah Culver, CTO, Breaker But Breaker’s not the first startup Leah’s co-founded—in fact, Jenn fell hard for her very first company, Pownce, a microblogging platform that launched way back in 2007. We talk about that journey, plus: The future of podcasting—like Chompers, a podcast on Alexa kids can brush their teeth to. Women in tech, women in podcasting, and the fact that more women than ever are listening to podcasts, according to the 2017 podcast consumer report from Edison Research. Financing a new laptop as a young programmer by selling laser-etched advertising on it back in 2006. Getting into Y Combinator, an accelerator program for early-stage startups. What Leah’s listening to right now (it’s Modern Love, which you can get on Breaker, of course). Interviewing for 30 jobs, what a company’s snacks say about its culture, and why Leah wants you to stop judging her love for Diet Coke. Also on the agenda: letting people carry things for you (literally and figuratively), peeing with your therapist (no, really), and all the “tiny revelations” we’ve had this season. Thanks so much for joining us for Season 1! We’re taking a couple weeks off, but we’ll be back strong with Season 2 starting April 17. In the meantime, make sure to sign up for the new NYG Newsletter, coming April 20. Sponsors This episode of NYG is brought to you by: Shopify, a leading global commerce platform that’s building a diverse, intelligent, and motivated team—and they want to apply to you. Visit shopify.com/careers to see what they’re talking about. _WordPress—the place to build your personal blog, business site, or anything else you want on the web. WordPress helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you. _ _CodePen—a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases, and find inspiration. _ Transcript Katel LeDû Shopify is on a mission to make commerce better for everyone. In fact, they’re the leading global commerce for entrepreneurs. And did you know that they’re hiring? That’s right! And they don’t just want you to apply to them, they want to apply to you. Join a diverse, intelligent, and motivated team where you’ll get shit done. Visit shopify.com/careers to see what they’re talking about. Jenn Lukas Welcome to No, You Go, the show about being ambitious—and sticking together. I’m Jenn Lukas. KL I’m Katel LeDû. Sara Wachter-Boettcher And I’m Sara Wachter-Boettcher. JL Hey! It’s Season 1 finale time! How did we make it through 10 episodes? Well it certainly helps to be working on something that we all love. That concept’s no stranger to our guest today, founder Leah Culver, currently CTO of Breaker, a social podcast app. We’ll also talk about tech today versus 10 years ago, using an accelerator application to let you know if you’re ready to leave your job for your startup idea, and the importance and difficulties of self-evaluation. Dun dun dun. But first! How about we check in with ourselves? How y’all doin’, ladies? KL Doing alright. Doing good. How about you? JL I’m—do you ever feel like sometimes you just sigh? But you know what? I read a study one time that sighing is actually healthy for you, so that’s ok. I’m doing ok. I’m doing ok. SWB It was funny, my husband was just telling me that his barber that you shouldn’t sigh because a monk told her not to once. And so I think about that sometimes when I let out a big sigh but I’ve been sighing a lot recently. Like, in fact, kind of a bummer couple of weeks, you know? I uh I tore my ACL which is a little unpleasant. And Jenn and Katel know this because they’re constantly offering to like carry things for me up the stairs such as like glasses of wine, my laptop— JL But we only barely know this because Sara would try as much as she can to hide this fact from most of us. You could barely tell based on your attitude and uh go—go-get-em-ness. KL Yeah and in fact I think we ran on your bad ACL a couple times. So. SWB Actually, they think my ACL has been torn for 14 months and I didn’t know it until I uh twisted something and actually injured myself because the ACL was unstable. And so it’s probably a little bit more torn now. And you know, it really took me out there for a couple of days and then for the past couple of weeks I’ve just been adjusting to what’s essentially like a long-term pre-op lifestyle. Like I have to get surgery. It’s probably not going to happen until September because of a lot of other stuff going on in the meantime—and so I’m at this place where it’s like I’m ok but I can’t do certain things. And some of those are things that are—are really bumming me out. Like I can’t run. And that is a major way that I organize my weeks and think about my time and so I’m kind of adjusting to a lifestyle where I—you know, have to be very careful about certain stuff and I have to wear a brace when I’m out walking for any length of time or trying to do anything physical. And I have to just kind of accept a slower pace, like literally a slower pace! [Mm hmm] And the kinds of stuff that I thought I could do really quickly like, “Oh I’m just going to pop downstairs in between these conference and grab something to drink,” is no longer so quick feeling. And like that is very difficult for me. And I’ve been thinking about like, “Damn. This is going to make me learn some lessons, huh?” Like not just the lessons of, you know, like trying not to injure yourself but the lessons of like, “It’s ok to move more slowly,” and like, “It’s ok to have people help you.” I don’t want to. I don’t want to learn any of those lessons! I’m sorry I don’t want to, I’m sorry I don’t want to learn them at all. They just suck! JL It’s hard, you know, we’ve talked about this on the show before but asking for help is—is really difficult. And even, you know, just something like, “Hey, could you carry this for me?” A few days before I found out I was pregnant, I was in a bike accident and broke my elbow and my ribs, and uh so I had broken ribs, broken elbow, pregnant, and I had to be like, “Hey, can you carry my laptop?” Like everywhere I went because I couldn’t pick up anything. And it was really difficult but I mean I was at the point where, you know, Sutter had to wash my hair because both my elbows… and so I mean you know it’s like—I had not choice but to ask for help. You know, there’s a lot of things as like, you know, generally able-bodied women that, you know, you—you don’t think about. And, you know, you go through life, you’re going, ok, you know, “I’m brushing I’m teeth. I’m able to brush my teeth.” And then all of a sudden you can’t. And it’s so hard! I’ve read a lot about how people with disabilities live their day-to-day lives and go through routines of things that, often, you know, we don’t think about. And when you’re faced with a temporary physical state in which, you know, you can’t do things as fast as you want to. You know, all of a sudden, your world is sort of like turned upside down. You can’t really figure out what’s what and how to get through your day. [5:07] SWB And I feel like, you know, and I mean it’s also, change is just hard for anybody. And I think that what you realize is both how badass people are who, like, figure out how to get through stuff that’s really hard, whether it’s physical or otherwise, and then you also think about how adaptable, in a lot of ways, people are. Right? Like you really can adapt to a lot that you didn’t necessarily realize you could adapt to. And, you know, something that—that I’ve also really been thinking a ton about is the way that—we have talked about sort of like the highs and lows or the peaks and valleys of work and of life, but like, that often that those things are happening at the same time. Like this has been a really good year so far in some ways, for me at least. Where it’s like I’ve got this fucking podcast and it’s going really well and I’m excited about a lot of the stuff that I’m working on and—and at the same time, like not only did I tear my ACL, like I had a pet die earlier this year and it was really hard. Like it was crushingly difficult for me, and I wanted to talk about it on the show, but it was like such a tremendous fresh wound, I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t do it in any way where I could like get through it and out the other end into something anybody would want to listen to. I mean, 45 minutes of ugly crying is fun, I guess, for some people, but like I didn’t—I didn’t want to subject people to that, especially not, like, Episode 2. KL I think it’s really helpful to hear both of you talk about just kind of figuring out how you’re going to move around these things that, you know, become a challenge, right? Or just completely throw you off the way that you think you’re going to get through a day. And I feel like, I mean I’ve struggled with depression my entire life and, I think, over the last year I’ve gone through sort of peaks and valleys, just in that alone, you know? Along with sort of day to day life stuff. And sometimes I—I worry because I feel like not being able to cope, let’s say, on a certain day because of, you know, something that is—just isn’t working right in my brain chemistry or I, you know, just haven’t been able to—to rally around the thing I’m supposed to do that day, is—is really difficult to kind of put a structure around that and to say, “I just need some help today,” or, “I just need to like find a different way to do this because it’s so intangible.” JL And—and it’s interesting like when you hear, you know, “I just need some help today.” Or like Sara, you know, there’s times where like the few times you’ve let us help you carry [chuckling] things up the stairs, on my end, like, it feels good to help. Like [KL absolutely] I want to help. And I think that’s the thing that we sort of have to think of, like the times that I mean you both have helped me on countless situations, I mean like … it feels good to help your friends and, I think, sometimes that makes it easier for me to ask for help [KL definitely]. So think about the fact that like we want to be there and support each other. KL Yeah. And I think that is—that is ultimately—that is the absolute silver lining because I think about everything we’ve just been talking about and the fact that like, Jenn, when you were, you know, saying we want to help Sara carry stuff up the stairs. I’m like, “Oh my gosh! This is all I want to do!” Right? I’m like, “If she needs help doing stuff because she tore her ACL,” I’m like, “You better tell me when you need something because I’ll be at your house the next day.” And I think that we all feel that way. And we all have a lot more people in our lives that—that are willing to do that than we think. And we just have to accept that and ask, you know? JL And I think even like, you know, there’s big things like I—I couldn’t type for a little bit so I had people that would have to like dictate for if we were trying to get stuff done. SWB Would people dictate—like you would dictate code to people?! JL It was like the most intense pair programming. KL You’re like, “Div—no, div!” JL So I mean, you know, but there were small things too like I would be really thirsty and I couldn’t carry like a container of water and like my coworker was like, “Let me get that water for you,” you know? It wasn’t like I was like, “Buy me water!” I just needed someone to just— KL “Just, like, hand it to me!” JL —carry it. KL It’s silly the things that we, you know, don’t think about asking for help or think are too small or whatever. I mean just today, this morning, I was uh at therapy and I was sitting there and I had been thinking for the last five minutes how badly I had to pee and I had the thought, “You can just get through it for the next half hour, it’ll be fine. Like, don’t bother anyone.” JL Half an hour!!! KL I know! And then I was like, “No, I can’t—I can’t even concentrate like this is—this is so dumb. I’m like—I’m not going to get out what I need to get out of the session just because I have to pee.” So I finally, said, “I’m so sorry, I just—I really have to pee all of a sudden. You know, do you mind if I just go?” And she was like, “Oh yeah, you know, of course!” And she kind of paused and she’s like, “Do you mind if I go with you?” And I was like, “Of—of course. Sure!” And she was like, “I’m so sorry. I really have to pee too.” And we just both felt so overwhelmingly like, you know, embarrassed but also relieved and so we did and we moved on and it was great. We both like came back to the session. We were like, “Ahhh!” [10:30] SWB I mean it’s funny though because it’s like there’s little things and that’s—I mean I feel like that could be a metaphor for a lot of parts of life where these little things that sometimes you deny yourself because you’re worried that, I don’t know, you’ll make somebody else like think something weird about you or that somehow it’s more important that you pretend like you’re this perfect … stoic, non-peeing person. I don’t know what that means but— KL Or that you—right, that you can just do everything and carry everything and— SWB Right and like that you never have to make space for your own needs, right? That you can always sandwich your needs into like some other time nobody cares about and that whenever you have to like be like, “Actually, I’m going to raise my hand and say, ‘I need a thing right now,’” that’s uncomfortable and, I don’t know, like uh I think that you should be able to pee when you want to. JL I used to feel that way a lot, too, about like personal things. I would be like, “Well,” I think it’s because I was—I was an on-site consultant for so long that I had to keep my personal stuff a little bit away and now I’m full-time at Urban and I think one of the things is I still felt like, “Oh I can’t tell you what’s going on.” And last week, my son had to have surgery for um—it’s a common surgery, it’s ear tubes, but, you know, he’s a year and it’s anesthesia and there’s a lot of risks and it was scary. And normally I would never tell the to anyone. I would keep that inside, and keep that anxiety and nerves, and like to myself and then I—I’ve been trying something new recently which is where I tell people these things when I’m thinking like, “What’s going on?” And so you know, I’d just be like, “Oh I won’t be here on Friday.” I would just leave it at that. And now I’m like, “My son’s having surgery.” And like not because like I want people’s pity, or I want them—and I think that’s sort of why I never really said anything because it’s like, “Oh, you know, feel bad and worry for me!” It was like, “No, I just want you to know what’s going on in my life because, you know, I’m not going to be able to answer emails because my mind is someplace else right now.” KL Right. And you care deeply about this thing that’s happening and the people you’re telling probably do too because they care about you. SWB And also like you’re a person working with other people. And I think—I think there’s a lot about work culture that encourages us to not come to work as humans and to come to work as workers. And I’ve realized that that doesn’t serve anybody very well. And like I’m still a person when I’m working and—and I even like I’m a consultant still and I—I find myself being much more kind of open about who I am and things I care about. Obviously, you know, you put boundaries around stuff, for sure, but I, you know, like I was talking to a client today about like, “Yup, ACL is torn!” And I was describing like, you know, “I’m really bummed about not being able to run. But, you know, here we are.” And—and then, you know, this client started talking to me about how they just had MRI as well, they have a different knee problem, and it’s like—it’s kind of nice to—you know, you don’t want to necessarily say everything about everything but to be able to bring more of yourself to work. I mean we talked to Stevie last week, I think that was one of the things that they really were communicating was like how wonderful it is when you find a place that wants you to bring more of yourself to work. And that recognizes that there is value in being a human at work. And I think it is valuable to think about like, “Yeah, real people have kids who have to go through surgery like all the time. It happens to people.” And it’s ok. And you’re still awesome at your job. [14:00] JL So I’m really glad you said that about how our workplace, you know, isn’t just about us being workers, it’s about us being people. And I think that our guest today has a lot of great things to say about that. Not just as being the founder of a company like Breaker and a CTO but also as someone who hires for the company and has interviewed at a lot of places, and has had a lot of thoughts about what it’s like to find a good culture fit, and being comfortable at where you work. So I’m really excited to get to our interview with Leah. [Music fades in.] Sponsors JL Today’s show is brought to you by CodePen, a social development environment for frontend designers and developers. Ever want a place to share code with co-workers? Maybe even a potential employer? Your profile on CodePen is like your front end development portfolio. And if you love it like I do, be sure to check out CodePen Pro. With a Pro account you can upload assets like images to use in your code, you can create private Pens, and you can even see changes as you build them with Live View. That’s soooo awesome! There’s also a really cool professor mode for teaching and working real time with your students. Pro accounts start at just nine dollars a month. Learn more at codepen.io. That’s C-O-D-E-P-E-N-dot-i-o. [15:10] SWB Did you know that nearly 30 percent of all websites run on WordPress? True story. And that includes our site, noyougoshow.com. We love WordPress because it’s easy to set up, has great support, and allows us to create pretty much whatever we want. Whether you’d like to build a personal blog, a business site, or both, creating your website on wordrpress.com helps others find you, remember you, and connect with you. Plans start at just four dollars a month, and 24/7 support is always available. Start building your website today. Go to wordpress.com/noyougo for 15 percent off any new plan purchase. That’s wordpress.com/noyyougo for 15 percent off your brand-new website. Interview: Leah Culver JL I first became familiar with Leah Culver around 10 years ago when she brilliantly financed her new MacBook by selling ad space laser etched on it. I then became a super fan when she co-founded the social media site Pownce. Those who knew me then know how much I loved the micro-blogging platform and one thing I thought was so, so cool about it was that one of the founders was a woman and she was an engineer. As a developer, it was inspiring to see the awesome projects Leah was creating. Since then, she’s authored the OAuth and OEmbed API specifications and has gone onto found Convor and Grove, real time chat programs, and is now the CTO of Breaker, a social app for listening to podcasts. I’m thrilled to have her here to talk with us today. Welcome to the show, Leah. Leah Culver Hi! Thank you so much for having me, Jenn. JL Yeah, as I mentioned, it’s like such an honor for us to have you here. I’m a big fan of the work that you’ve done so far which, speaking of, I’d love if you tell us a little bit about Breaker, how it came to be, and what makes it so awesome. LC Sure! And I’m actually a fan of yours too. So this is—this is a pretty fun interview to do. JL Ah thanks! Podcast high five! LC Awesome! The idea behind Breaker was really—I started to get into podcasting a couple years ago um when Serial came out. I don’t know if you guys all listened to Serial. JL Yup, definitely. LC The biggest podcast to ever come out, right? As basically the “hit show” of podcasting. But I hadn’t really been into podcasts before that. I had maybe listened to an episode or two on my computer when someone sent me something. But it wasn’t like I was a regular podcast listener. But I started listening to Serial and I was run—I was training for a marathon at the same time. So, I would listen to episodes when I was training, and I wouldn’t let myself listen to any episodes when I wasn’t running, so it like actually kind of motivated me to get my butt out the door. JL That’s awesome. LC —and do my running. Yeah. So it was great but then when the season ended, I didn’t really know what else to listen to. Or I wanted to listen to other things that were like Serial. Like high-quality podcasts as opposed to, you know, two people chatting and the audio quality being bad and things like that. I was like, “Where can I find really great podcasts?” So I tried like the Apple charts. So I was using the Apple Podcast app on my phone. And I tried looking at the charts, and I didn’t have a ton of success because I didn’t really know how—like I knew that someone picked these shows and these episodes but I didn’t really know how. You know? Like what they caught their eye and like what about them was good. JL Yeah. LC So that’s how I kind of got the idea behind like, “Hey, there could be something better here.” Like I wanted a player where I could also see like—like similar to like Spotify or YouTube. Like how many people are liking this thing? What are the comments on it? You know sort of what’s going on around this content. And that was the idea behind Breaker. JL I love that you found an interest in something and were like, “Well, there’s a gap, there’s something missing that I want.” And instead of just being like, “Well, this sucks. This doesn’t exist,” you created it. LC Yeah! I think that’s the power of being a developer, a designer, or someone that makes things is when you find something in a space that you’re like, “Hey, this thing should exist,” and then the next thought might be like, “Oh. I can make that exist.” JL That’s so cool. So how has it been like has the shift in focusing on podcasting, are you now finding yourself completely involved, not just in running the company of Breaker, but like the podcasting culture? LC Yeah, it’s —it’s been super weird. I’m trying to keep like my Twitter feed non-podcast people so I have like a good sense of how popular podcasting is and it seems like it’s on the rise, even amongst people who haven’t been in the industry a long time, but it’s also getting into that podcasting use has been really interesting. It’s a really old medium, right? Like podcasting has been around since there was—probably like forever, if you think radio. But sort of in its current incarnation of like mobile devices and sort of since the iPod, 2006. But I think it was so difficult then to sort of have like a podcast app or to make it easy to listen, like you had to like download files on your phone and things—that really there was this big opportunity to make things better and I don’t think it’s changed a ton since then. I mean only within probably the past year or two, maybe three years, had there been any new companies in the space. JL Yeah, speaking of the last few years, there’s been quite a few articles that have come out about the lack of diversity in podcasting. Have you found the numbers for women and other minorities in podcasts to be growing? [19:59] LC Yeah! Well, I hope so. I’m pretty optimistic about it. I do see a lot of podcasts and a lot of them still are, you know, two guys discussing a topic. And, actually, that’s my favorite search term to use to get like a lot of results is like podcasts called “Two Guys” dot, dot, dot. But you know I think there are many more women podcasters and I think there is a desire in our culture to hear from voices that aren’t, you know, straight white men, right? So I think there’s a desire for that content. And so I think those are actually like the hottest areas of podcasts to go into. And I wanted to bring it up just because it’s recent news: Edison published The Podcast Consumer 2017 and it’s about podcast listeners, specifically, not podcasters and, overall, the monthly podcast listening for men has not grown at all in—from 2017 to 2018 but podcast listening from women has gone from 21 percent to 24 percent of women listening to a podcast every month. So all of the recent growth in podcasting, you could say, has been attributed to women which I think is great. JL Wow. LC Yeah. JL Yeah that’s amazing. LC Yeah in terms of listenership and I think in terms of content production, we’re seeing the same thing as well. JL What do you hope to see happen in the podcasting industry over the next year or two years or five years? LC Yeah, I just want to see more good content, more great shows. I think it’s still really early days and so there’s a lot of opportunity to really build amazing quality content on a sort of new platform in a sense. And I don’t think that all the experimentation has been done yet, right? So there’s things like smart devices, for example, Gimlet which is a podcast producer, just came out with a new show for the Alexa. Like a show specifically made for that device [hmm] and it’s—the idea is like to get kids to brush their teeth. So it’s like a two-minute long podcast and you say, like, “Alexa, you know, play this podcast.” And it’s such a—I don’t have kids so I haven’t even tried it yet but it’s such like a interesting concept that, you know, we have these new devices that can do things with audio that we couldn’t do before. So I’m—I’m curious about that. I’m curious about audio in cars. Headphones. There’s a lot of stuff that’s going on in the technology space, in like the hardware space that makes podcasting really exciting. JL Yeah wow that is—that is so cool. My son’s one, so we are now brushing but eventually, I think that’s a brilliant idea. LC But yeah, yeah so there’s a lot of—I think there’s a lot of opportunity driven also by the hardware that’s—that’s coming up now and sort of how we’re thinking about our daily activities and how we interact with media. JL That’s so neat, I think a lot of times people get discouraged to try something new like a podcast or writing or anything because they think everything’s been before. So I love this idea of looking at it in a completely new way. LC Oh no. It’s still so early days for podcasting. You—I mean, I feel like back in the day it was like, “Let’s start a blog for this topic,” or, “You should start a Tumblr on this topic.” And now it’s like, “Oh you should do a podcast!” JL Yeah. I’d love to know your opinion is on like podcasting versus vlogging or any sort of video news. LC Uh so I’m actually not much of a video watcher myself. I always like to be doing things and be on the move. Like it’s hard for me to like focus on even watching like a TV show or a movie. Like I listen to podcasts when I’m doing something else, right? So I’ll be cleaning my house, or going for a run, or walking someplace. Like I don’t drive but I would listen—I do listen to podcasts when I do ride in the car which is very rarely. For me it’s about the ability to be like multitasking. So that’s why I’m a little I guess biased against vlogs or video podcasts is I just feel that they don’t feed the same need for me, personally. JL Yeah that makes sense. Yeah I listen to them sometimes when I’m in Lyfts, sometimes because I’m really into something, or sometimes just to avoid awkward driver conversation, but and then also, yeah, when I’m doing stuff around the house. So I’m totally with you on that. So with Breaker, you started that at Y Combinator, along with Convore, can you give our listeners an overview of Y Combinator and what that is and how it helped you get started? LC Sure! Uh so Breaker was my second time doing the Y Combinator program. They offer a three month program twice a year to entrepreneurs, you apply, and hopefully get accepted, and then get to go to Mountain View for three months, and work with the partners there who are a team of really, really smart people. And I was lucky enough to do it back in 2011, for my second startup, and then I purposely sort of applied again for my third startup because I thought it was such a good experience, I think all the partners are really smart, and it’s really nice to have a connection with a lot of founders. It really is like a good network. I think that’s the—the thing that’s most surprising after joining Y Combinator is how much of the value of the program is more from the network than anything else. JL What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about applying but unsure if they should, you know, go all in with their idea for a program like that? [24:48] LC So an interesting thing lately is Y Combinator has been a little more intern—they look for smart founders but they also kind of look for commitment to ideas. So I’d maybe wait til you were pretty sure that you wanted to do it as a startup. We were kind of at the point where we switching from Breaker being a side project and a hobby project, which we actually ran it as a hobby project for about nine months. And then switched over to being full-time just before we were accepted to Y Combinator, we kind of both quit our jobs. So, lucky we got in. But we probably would’ve done it anyways. And I think that’s sort of what they’re looking for is like, “Hey! It’s something I’m really excited about and committed to,” because if you end up doing a startup, you end up kind of doing it for life. But beyond that, it’s good to just fill out the application with yourself and your cofounders because there are a lot of questions in there, in the application itself, that are very clarifying. Like they ask, “What is your equity split?” And they ask things like, “Where will you live?” And then more complex questions like, “Who are your competitors?” And, “What are you afraid of?” And sort of really gets into all sorts of aspects of really early stage startups that are—you know it’s valuable to ask yourself those questions, even if you don’t end up submitting the application. I’d encourage anyone just to fill it out, submit the application, it never hurts, like nothing bad happens if—if it doesn’t get accepted. It doesn’t mean anything. There are so many great companies that are rejected from Y Combinator, because they get thousands of applicants, right? Like they can’t give every single great company—and oftentimes they’ll see a company apply in a year and not get accepted and then they’ll be accepted the next year or the next—in the next six months, you know? JL Yeah, I love that. I think that people are so scared of rejection sometimes that it’s really—it makes it hard to put yourself out there. LC Yeah, I agree and what’s funny is being on the other side of it. So running a startup now I’m hiring people and for me that’s weird because I’m like, “Oh! Sometimes the hiring decision—” that we’re like, “Oh! We’re not hiring right now.” Or, “Oh! You’re not right—quite the right fit.” Really has nothing to do with them as a person. It could just be like the stage our company is at or, you know, something totally out of their control that has nothing to do with the quality of their work. Or the quality of them as a person. So it’s like it’s been very comforting to me, knowing that—so the last time I applied for a job, I applied for 30 different jobs [oh wow!] which is a pretty—yeah it was actually great but I didn’t have that fear of rejection and I actually rejected companies. I actually went in—I actually walked out of two interviews. JL Yeah. Wow. Good for you! LC Because I just—I, you know, I did it because I wanted to save their engineers time. Like they were interviewing me and it was, you know, I didn’t want to waste their time if I didn’t think it was a good fit for me. And I think a lot of the times getting into the company, like visiting their space, having lunch with the team, things like that, really get you that really quick, “Hey, is this the right place for me?” And in this particular case—when I just remember I went in and talked to someone on their product team and I was like, “I just don’t really feel this product vision.” And I was like, “You know I don’t think if I feel the product vision I could be into working here.” Um so it was nothing personal, it was just like, “Uh, I don’t think this is the right fit for me.” JL I love this idea of, you know, I people are like, “Oh I don’t know if I can apply to this job.” And it’s like, “Well, why apply for one? Apply for 30”. LC Yeah definitely! JL I mean I love—I love it. LC And then if you don’t get it, if you don’t get one, it doesn’t really matter because you have 29 more! KL I love that too and the idea that, you know, there is—there is actually room to interview the company that’s hiring. I mean I think a lot of people just don’t even think that that’s a thing that they can do and it absolutely is. It’s something that you should do when you’re trying to feel out what you’re going to do next. It’s like—it’s a big change. LC Yeah and oftentimes in a interview, the interviewer will ask you, “Hey! Do you have any questions about this company?” And like you should have questions, you know, and hard questions. I don’t think anyone gets offended if you’re really evaluating them as well. You’re right. You’re totally right. JL Do you have any favorite questions that you like to ask? Well I mean when you were interviewing, now you’re doing the interview on the other side. LC This is going to sound so petty, but I always wanted to know what their food situation was like because I thought it said a lot about the culture. So I’m a Diet Coke addict, I absolutely love Diet Coke. And it’s super unhealthy, right? Like no one’s going to be like, “Oh yeah, Diet Coke should be in every corporate office.” But I did judge companies based on whether they stocked Diet Coke or not because I would go to interview at some place and they’d be like, “Oh we only do healthy snacks.” But they’d have like really sugary like fruit bars and stuff. And I was like, “Really?” Like snacks are just, you know, such like a privilege anyways. It’s just such like a silly—a silly thing to look at a company for but because of that I think it really is telling in how—how much independence they believe you have as sort of an employee. JL Yeah. I think that’s—I think it’s really neat. I think snacks, the office space, the office space, and like how people are set up and where they’re—like their seating situation. There’s just a lot you can tell with like things you might not think of. Are there windows? LC Yes! Yes! I went to an interview at a major company, I will not tell you which one, and I walked in—and it was for a role that was not like one of their core products. And I walked in and the room—it was freezing cold, there was no windows, and everyone was working in tiny offices like all sectioned off from each other and I knew immediately. I was like, “This is not the job for me.” So yeah I think it all matters. [30:07] JL We mentioned that Breaker was your third startup. Your first was Pownce, which you founded soon after college. What was it like to have big early success like that and, you know, eventually you were acquired by Six Apart. So what was it like to have that success and then letting go of what you made with your first big—big product? LC So I started when I was 24, fresh out of college. I had worked a couple programming jobs in the Bay Area before then. I had moved to the Bay Area because I didn’t like Minnesota winters but also just to have this new opportunity. To be away—none of my family lives in the Bay Area, I didn’t know anyone, it was a chance to be doing something new. And I loved programming. I wanted to do the best I could do. And I felt like that was in the Bay Area and what happened was I met my co-founders Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka and they said, “Hey, we’re thinking about doing this project but we need someone to build it.” Kevin’s a business guy and Daniel’s a designer, and they wanted someone to write the code and I had never built anything of substantial or like a completed app or anything like that. And I just said, “Ok. I’ll do it.” And I think that—I actually remember exactly where I was when I said, “Yeah I’ll do it,” I was in a cafe in Potrero. And I remember saying like, “Yeah, I can do this,” and being like, “I don’t know that I can actually do this.” But I did! I just built it and everything I didn’t know how to do, I looked up on the internet or asked someone else for help. It’s so funny because I was asking all these Django developer—this was the early days of the Django web framework in Python and all these Django developers, I was asking them questions, I was asking them the weirdest questions. Like, “How do I do this like very particular thing?” And they’re like, “I don’t think you need to do that unless you’re building like, I don’t know, like some big site. Like what are you—you know like why do you need to know how to do this crazy, you know, social networking concept?” Like at the time there was really only like Facebook. So it’s like, “Why do you need to know how to do this?” And it’s funny to look back later and I ran into someone and they were like, “Oh, that’s so funny that you said that.” And I ended up building Pownce and I was way in over my head, I had no idea what I was doing, and because Kevin was so popular, he was running Digg at the time. So he was a founder of Digg. He had a ton of followers and people paying attention to him and so he announced, “Hey! Here’s my new project,” and we got hundreds of thousands of new users instantly. And we had an invite-only system and people were selling invites on eBay, and like the whole thing was just weird. And the whole invite—like I had written the whole invite system, so I was thinking, like, they’re selling something on eBay that’s my code, you know? It’s so weird. It was so weird to me but it was such a great experience. What’s funny is I think it has really shaped my whole career in terms of—since then I’ve always been someone who just loves to ship things and get things done and figure it out as I go and I don’t think that would’ve been the case if I hadn’t done Pownce. I probably would’ve followed a more traditional engineering path. JL We’ve talked about this a little bit with Katel, with her role at A Book Apart and sort of saying yes to things even if you’re like, “Well, I haven’t done it before but I’m pretty sure I can do it.” KL And then you’re like, “What the hell?” LC Yeah! Yeah but then you’re like, “Well I could really do anything.” JL Yeah. LC You know? Like once you do the thing, you’re like, “Oh! Well that wasn’t so bad.” KL Yeah. Totally. It’s true. I feel like you—you learn a lot about yourself in a very short amount of time, and I—I definitely wasn’t expecting that. So, I mean, that was a great outcome. LC That’s amazing. JL I love that too like the um—like the retrospect of it in that like, “Well, if—if I went through this, I can do anything.” I was thinking today, I was like, “Ugh, you know I haven’t had much sleep,” and I was like, “Ah I gotta do this podcasting thing,” and I was like, “Well, you know, I also got thrown up by my—by my one-year-old all last night, and if I can do that, I’m pretty sure I can do anything.” KL You survived it! LC This is way less disgusting I hope! Much less! JL Yes. It is much less. So thank you. So Pownce was acquired by Six Apart, what was that like? LC It was an interesting time. I think it was sort of during the sort of tech downturn in 2009. A lot of companies were being acquired or shutting down, and I—when we were acquired I didn’t know they were going to shut down Pownce but they ended up closing down the site, which for me was pretty sad, but I didn’t feel… I was so—I wish I had then felt like I had more control over it. I didn’t feel like I had a ton of control over the acquisition or what happened. I had two co-founders, I was a little bit in over my head, and I think things are much different now. One of the things I’m starting to learn is that a company is more about the longevity. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint” is probably the cliche way to say it, but yeah if companies—I draw a lot of inspiration from companies like VenMo, where the company had been around for years and years with no success or with little success and then managed to blow up and become a whole thing and a household name and things like that. And to realize that success isn’t instant and at Pownce I felt very lucky that we did have a lot of success but we didn’t have enough instantly for I think our team to really—to raise money and to feel like it was going some place, and there were a lot of other pressures going on, and I wish I had had the confidence then in what I know now is like, “Oh, hang in there. Keep going.” Then I learned a little bit more with my second startup as well. I was way in over my head, I was the only person working there, and I didn’t feel like I could fundraise. I didn’t feel like I could raise money, even though the product was making money, I didn’t know how to hire, I didn’t know how to do all these things. So, with Breaker, I feel like I’m really getting that third chance but I feel much—I think this time I have that patience and that commitment to sticking through with it for a long time, which before, I think, when you’re an engineer, you’re just like, “Ah! I’ll just move on to the next project or do the next thing,” is very tempting. [36:02] JL Yeah that’s such a—it is such like a complete mindshift as like you mentioned that I can say, and I think that’s one of the things that I always love about being a developer is I have uh started and abandoned many a projects. I have—I own many domain names and then I’m like, “Well, I’ll just let that one go.” So I love it that like you have to make this shift and to run a startup you have to really see it through. LC Yeah and I think the moment that we ended up, you know, really converting it to a company as opposed to a side project for Breaker was the moment it was like, “Ok this is really happening. We’re going to be in this for a long time.” And I feel so lucky because it’s so nice to make a podcast listening app, like, it really is enjoyable. It’s not a painful product to work on, it’s really great. Like I use the product all the time. So it’s really easy. JL So what you’re saying is make something that you love, if you’re going to do it. LC Oh, absolutely. Or something that you care about. You know if it’s a—a cause that you’re passionate about, or if it’s an area that you’re very knowledgeable in, I mean it doesn’t have to be—I’m partial to social networks and communication. So anything about media, communication, social networks is really my wheelhouse. But I think each founder has their own like passion and the thing that they love to do. JL So you are also an author of the OAuth and OEmbed API specifications, which I just think is so cool. So I’d love if you could talk to us a little bit about that and sort of explain to our listeners what that is. LC Sure! So OAuth, the easy way to explain it is: if you every click “Connect with Facebook” to login with a site or “Connect with Twitter,” you’re using OAuth, that’s the backend technology for it. I got involved with helping to build it—it’s actually like, I was one of the original like 12 authors, something like that, of the first specification and I got involved through working on Pownce. We needed a way to authenticate and authorize users to use our API. And through that it’s just become something almost completely different from what it was intended for. It was really intended for API access and now it’s just sort of been this defacto way to like quickly login on the web which I think is fantastic. It’s really cool. It’s like a really interesting turn and one of the things I’m most proud of is helping to come up with like sort of that user interface flow that really I think enable it to become this huge thing. So if you’re going to talk about like, “Oh it’s like the coolest thing that you probably like worked on that, you know, people would actually know,” it’s probably, you know, “Login with Facebook.” My dad said recently, he was like, “Oh you always wanted to be an inventor when you grew up, what happened to that?” And I was like, “Have you ever clicked ‘Login with Facebook’ on a website?!” Yeah but it’s so cool. It’s such a little thing, too, in the whole scheme of the web, it’s so cool to think that like developers have these small like little claims to fame on the web, that’s something that like outlives you and continues on is pretty cool, and I just feel so lucky to be like such a small part of that history. JL That’s really neat. I love that. And then, you know, I also like—I feel like if your—if your dad was like, “Oh yeah, wait! I’ve clicked that!” And then I don’t know, it’s such like, it’s a feel good moment. LC Yeah, yeah. That was pretty funny. JL So before Pownce and before OAuth, one of the things that I think was so cool that you did is similar to, if those that remember the million-dollar website where people had sold pixel space for an advertisement, or some people sold tattoos on their body for funding, but what you did was a lot smarter! I’d like to say, in that you raised money for a new laptop by selling advertising space on it. And I just remember thinking that was so cool and such like an innovative way to use the internet and get social funding for your new laptop. And one of the things I was looking at when I was just researching is that I found some of the articles from then and some of them were like, “Cute Girl Sells Laser-etched Macbook Advertising.” And I was like, wow! I was like, I forgot that that existed. [39:49] LC Yeah, the internet was a different—it was a different time and a different place back then. What’s really interesting is I got started in that project because the company I was working for at the time is Instructables and they had a laser etcher and so the idea was—So I had a really old computer and all of the people that worked at, you know, Squid Labs and Instructables at the time had these like newer laptops and they were all etching them with this laser etcher but I didn’t even have a laptop. So that—the idea came pretty easily. It was like, “Oh! I don’t have a laptop but I have a laser etcher and everyone is etching stuff onto their laptop,” so it really was not like the most genius plan. It was sort of a circumstantial thing but I mean it was really an interesting exercise in marketing more than anything else. I had never really done any marketing on the internet or really been out there at all. I don’t even think I had a blog. I had like no internet presence. There was no such thing as Instagram and Twitter. So really I wasn’t on the web at all and I think what you brought up about sort of the way the media portrayed it is so different than how it would be done today. It’s so—it’s so funny. Like, “Young Cute Girl Does Something on the Internet” like you’d never see that anymore. JL Oh, thankfully. LC It’s probably a good thing. Yeah. Yeah yeah but it wasn’t just that, there were like these “Sexiest Geeks” lists and things like that, and it just would not fly nowadays. JL I mean—I know that we still have like a lot more work to do in terms of, you know, equal pay and equal representation but at least we have made it past some of these. LC Yeah. One of the things I’m actually kind of bothered by recently is I—I’m all for the #metoo movement, but I think what’s kind of slightly disturbing to me about is that we want—I think there’s this desire to talk about workplace inequality and the fact that it kind of gets turned into something sexual or has like this focus on sexual assault. It’s like, “Well, can we make the conversation a little broader?” Like can we talk about power dynamics and women in leadership? And we do but I think it’s less salacious and it doesn’t get as much media attention. And so I’m a little disappointed in that angle of it but hopefully we’ll get there. JL Yeah it’s like there are so many battles—there are so many battles to fight. LC Yeah! Which one? Yeah you know? JL I know it’s like I can—I can like only laugh at it because otherwise I just like, my sighs, sometimes my sighs are so loud. But I just like what are we— LC Yeah so it’s—you’re right. I think maybe it is good to just focus on one bat—one battle at a time but also to have like tangible goals. Like what is the tangible goal of a certain movement? And I think movements are most effective when they have like a piece of legislation you can pass or you know some rules that companies now enact. I think people want simple solutions for complex problems and I think bridging that gap is something that’s really difficult to do. JL Yeah, that is a hundred percent accurate. I think sometimes when we can’t find those solutions, then we feel a little hopeless and I think hopefully though the more that—more people put their heads together about it, the more that those solutions will come. LC And everything changes, and everything gets better. I just listened to an episode of The Modern Love podcast, reading an essay from 2012, which I totally recommend people go check out the latest episode of Modern Love podcast. But it was basically a father talking about his gay son and his gay son’s desire to marry his partner and the essay just feels dated. And it’s not that old. You know? And I think that’s so shocking: how fast things change. And for the better. I mean it’s a good thing. It made me sad and hopeful at the same time. JL So, speaking of getting along and, you know, optimism and productivity, before your role now at Breaker, you were an engineer at Dropbox working on engineer productivity and happiness, which I think just sounds amazing. Can you tell us more about your role there? LC So at Dropbox I ended up working on the engineering product design team, helping—basically helping engineers and designers throughout their lifecycle at Dropbox. So from the time they first joined Dropbox in their first day through moving around between teams or moving up to become a manager or they’re at sort of the exit interview, if they left Dropbox. And it was pretty interesting. So I ended up on that team because I helped build an internal tool for Dropbox, actually a framework for hosting internal tools called AppBox. And I built it sort of during Hack Week, we had these—Dropbox has these like Hack—Hack Weeks where you can work on anything you want and a lot of the times what people work on is stuff for Dropbox. So, you know, a lunch menu, or a seating chart, or all these tools that people at Dropbox use all the time that aren’t, you know, readily available. So their priority tools are—you want to build with like a special sort of like internal company feel to them. So I built this platform for building new tools on top of and then recruited engineers during these Hack Weeks to like build new tools on top of it. So that’s actually what most of what I did was run that project so I can talk about internal too—we didn’t have like an internal tools team, we had like an internal developer tools, sort of more focused on build process and things like that. But what I was working on was more social, and so it didn’t quite fit into that space. So I ended up on this team that worked on the entire engineer’s life cycle which was super interesting. It’s like an interesting problem to think about. [45:10] JL Yeah, I love that. We are constantly trying to figure out how, I mean day one of someone starting new I feel like is one of the most difficult things to work with, starting from like, “Ok, let’s make sure we—they have a computer.” So you’re actually joining us today from New Zealand and you were recently a judge at Webstock. Was that totally awesome? LC Yes! It was so fun. I loved Webstock. It was great. It was the first one I’d ever been able to go to because it’s in New Zealand. And I basically said, “Hey! I’m going to be in New Zealand. I didn’t know Webstock was happening at the time, is there anything I can do to help?” And they were like, “Oh, come be a judge for our startup competition.” I thought that was so great and such an honor. It was really fun. JL Is it hard as a judge to give feedback to others about their products? LC Absolutely. I think it’s hard because I see it from their side, right? Like I’ve done three startups. I’ve done startup competitions. You know, I’ve gone to hackathons and competed and submitted my projects before judges. And, like I said, I think on the hiring side of things it applies here as well, on the judging side, it’s like I think so many of the decisions are just arbitrary. Like you happen to answer a question in the particular right way that the judge wanted to hear, you had like a good looking slide that got people’s attention. Like it seems—it just all seems so arbitrary and all of the competitors this year at Webstock and the BNZ startup competition were all just fantastic. And so it was really hard to say like, “This company is better than another company,” because it’s just—that’s not the way it is. They are just very different. And, like I said, they were all really good. JL So for something like that, what do you find the best way for feedback—like do you find like the line it’s hard to like discourage people because like their project is great but they can’t all win? LC Yeah! I actually went up to most—I tried to make a point to go up to most of the folks who didn’t win and talk with them about their projects just to, you know, I think what matters when you’re building a company is it’s always nice to see someone who cares, who paid attention, and knows what you’re doing, and has follow-up questions, and—and I saw this as well with the other panelists and judges they actually offered to help companies. Like, “Hey, you know, BNZ you didn’t win the competition but how can we help you? Who can we connect you with to take you to that next step?” Because startups, it’s not like you win or lose, it’s like always a constant journey, right? Like even—even when you’re a giant company, you’re not always winning. It’s this constant process. So I think a lot of it is asking those startups, “Hey, how can we help and how can we take you to that next level?” And sometimes that pride of winning the prize matters and sometimes it doesn’t. One of the judges actually lost the same competition she had entered years before and had lost and came back as a judge and has a successful startup here in New Zealand. So— JL I think it’s so important, again, you know we’ve talked about this a lot is like how to keep going with these like products that you obviously love because you’re working on them and putting your heart into and so just wrapping up here: I’d love to hear more about your approach at looking at your work and looking back and saying, “What am I doing right? What are things I wish I’m doing differently?” And like how—how you handle that. LC I actually spend a lot of time doing self-evaluation. And I think mostly because I’m kind of someone who worries a lot. So I’m always sort of thinking about, “Hey, could I be doing this better?” And sometimes I have to sort of almost take that pressure off of myself. One of the things I struggle with personally is that I don’t feel like I act or look like other founders, especially in my attitudes around building product, getting users, things like that. I don’t think I’m completely like your typical startup founder and I have to sort of talk myself into, “You can only be the best person you can be.” And this is like kind of the thing I get pumped up about. I’m like, ok, I can only do the things I can do. I can keep trying to get better, but I can’t beat myself up about not being like someone else. I just have to sort of be myself and work with what I have and take it to that—that next step. So that’s—that’s sort of what I’m always thinking about in terms of self-improvement. And there are definitely things I’m working on right now. I’m working on giving better feedback. That’s something I’m always working on is how can I give feedback well and really help other people as opposed to just like saying what I think which I think is always a struggle. KL Yeah. We’re dying to know. JL That’s great. When you find an answer, please let us know. [49:35] LC I think—yeah I don’t know. I don’t know. I think one of the things I’ve learned is like give feedback in—or, give criticism in private, give praise in public. Really work on how to articulate how I feel about something or think about something. A lot of times I just assume other people think the same way I do which is not true at all, right? Like we think everyone’s like us and our reaction to something is going to be the same reaction that everyone has to that thing and that’s not true. So it’s like how to explain like—like just today I gave feedback on like sort of an unread count of something and I had to say, “Hey, I’m the kind of person where I see an unread number and it makes me anxious and x, y, and z and blah blah blah blah.” And I wasn’t actually complaining about the teacher, I think the teacher’s great, but it was like, “How can we make this a comfortable process for people who are—people who like to check things off their inbox and have everything be done versus someone who just kind of lets things go and doesn’t really care about that. I think those are two very different personality types and so I think a lot of the struggle is like realizing what type of personality I am and how to express that as a user and then looking at other personality types. Like how do users who care about personal stats treat like a product? So I’m not someone who cares about every single stat, about what episodes I listen to or like, or things like that. Like they’re kind of fun to me, I’m like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” There’s some people who are like—coming at this whole game like, “Hey, I want to listen to more episodes of a podcast this week than I did last week.” And so how do put myself in their shoes or like understand that we have users that are—have different mindsets than myself. So that’s—I’m kind of working on that as well. JL That’s awesome. I think those people would not like my 35,000 unread email messages bubble. That’s the thing. LC As long as you’re ok with it. As long as you personally— JL Thank you! It does not bother me. LC I’m so glad I don’t work on email. That’s like the one communication tool I’m like, I say this now, and like say in 20 years, we forget about email. It’ll just be like, “Oh god, ok yeah.” JL Well, I hope we get to have you back on the show then to talk about your new email project so— LC Oh my god no. JL Leah, anything else you’d like to share with our listeners uh today? LC I guess what I’d like to say is definitely check out Breaker, let me know what you think. I actually read every single feedback email people send us, I may not reply personally, but I definitely read them. So if you have feedback uh let us know, we’ve actually really worked hard to create a company based on user feedback because we understand that not everyone is like ourselves. So you could listen to the next episode of this podcast on Breaker. Let us know what you think. JL Well, Leah, thank you so much for joining us today. It was super awesome. LC Thank you so much for having me. Fuck Yeah of the Season: Tiny Revelations SWB So usually, right before we wrap up, we have our Fuck Yeah of the Week. And that’s something or someone we’re super hyped about during that given week. But here we are, this is Episode 10, and we’re taking a couple weeks off after this. And so I think it’s appropriate to not just have a Fuck Yeah of the Week, but to have a Fuck Yeah of the Season because it’s been kind of a badass season for us here at No, You Go. So I’d like to give a big Fuck Yeah to all of the people who have shared their ideas with us and have been so generous with their time and so many of them have given me what I’m calling, like, tiny revelations where they said something kind of off the cuff, they said this one little sentence, and I find it, like, sticking in my brain and I think about over and over and over again and I think we should take a couple of minutes and talk about what some of those are. Katel, what’s your tiny revelation? KL Yeah. Gosh. I think a really recent episode we did with Stevie where they talked about the sentiment of the practice of allyship, has just stuck with me so much and just the idea that we can constantly be working on this, that we can constantly practice being better to each other, being better supporters of each other, and just that it’s a work in progress. I think that that is so important and something that we can all think about and do in very little ways that amount to something much bigger. JL Yeah, that was a great one. Oh, there are so many great ones. One of the ones that really sticks with me is I loved Sara Chipps’ interview. And one of the things Sara said was, “Everyone has a good idea, right? But how do you—how do you get that started?” And she said, “Ideas are worthless unless it’s something that gets made.” So you know if it’s going to take a thousand baby steps then if you start today you’ll only have 999 left. But if you don’t, then it’s never going to happen. And I love that. You know I’ve talked about this before, I’m a really big fan of the—of, you know, the getting things done method and how you go from idea to really getting it somewhere and we talked about that with Leah today and I also loved so many things that Leah said about this, because I feel like I always have so many ideas in my head and I want to be able to take them from that into something tangible and so I loved the advice that Sara had about how to get your product out and running. I just think it’s so cool. KL Sara, what about you? [54:30] SWB It’s really hard to pick because there’s so many things that I find myself returning to but one of the ones that has sort of lodged itself in my brain where like sometimes I’ll literally be in the middle of working on something, or I’ll be like getting ready for bed, brushing my teeth, whatever, and I find myself thinking it is what Eileen Webb said way back in episode two. She said, “Why should my work get all of my best brain?” And I think what made me really get stuck on that was how much it upended assumptions that I had that I didn’t know that I had about work. Like, that I’d always sort of assumed that spending my best brain, like the—the—the parts of the day where I feel the smartest and most competent, spending the bulk of my time on my work was like inherently good. And an inherently like
Rod Drury (Xero) and Lillian Grace (Figure.NZ) join Paul Spain to discuss taxing Robots, Webstock, Uber’s latest drama, Orion and Xero go Amazon Web Services (AWS), GM and Lyft autonomous car trial, Google Loon, Sonos, AirPods, home WiFi and more.
The O’Reilly Security Podcast: Designing for security and privacy, noteworthy tools, and the real-world consequences of design.In this episode, O’Reilly’s Mary Treseler talks with Ame Elliot, design director at Simply Secure. They discuss designing for security and privacy, noteworthy tools, and the real-world consequences of design.Here are some highlights: Designing for usable security and privacy Privacy and security are tightly interrelated. Privacy, or confidentiality, is one technical goal of security. Other technical goals of security include integrity and non-reputability. As a UX designer, I’m coming at this from a human-centered design perspective. I care about what end users experience, and privacy feels like the quality that people are looking for in an interaction. I would like to see designers working together with some of the fantastically talented cryptographers to make security usable and delightful so that end users can experience privacy. In order to do that, there's a real need to help users understand that privacy and security aren't necessarily the same. There can be opportunities for new interactions and new product messages to make it clear to end users who is accessing their data and to what purpose. That could be everything from privacy being a feature that a cloud service company promotes, to a secure system for end-to-end encryption in a messaging application. I would like to see a new class of interfaces that give people confidence and power about how their data is accessed and used. Promising open source options and other tools Right now at Simply Secure, we're choosing to partner with open source development efforts. There are a lot of things that are special and exciting about open source. I think designers who take a human-centered approach can benefit by being empathetic with their partners and empathetic toward the other people in their efforts, so it's not just a matter of how you can understand the needs and priorities of end users, but how you can understand the needs and priorities of the teams that you're working with so that you can come together toward a common goal. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a score card out right now around secure messaging. There are some tools on there that are very rightly being called out and celebrated. For example, the Signal iOS app has been recommend by Laura Poitras, Citizenfour, and The Wall Street Journal. I have a ton of respect for what the Open Whisper Systems team is doing, including integrating into WhatsApp. I'm also just excited about mass market tools. Apple's iMessage is doing some really interesting things. The hope in using a variety of tools is that we can come up with solutions that are globally inclusive and can give a huge mass of people worldwide the ability to communicate securely and privately. Design has real-world consequences I've learned a lot from successes in health care and banking, and in transforming previously complex, off-putting, technical, irrelevant information into exciting and actionable information for end users. The thing that unlocked that change was design. I am optimistic about the role design can play in solving similar systematic challenges, like those found in security and privacy. One of the things that really influenced me in my journey toward working on security and privacy was Mike Monteiro’s 2013 Webstock talk, How Designers Destroyed the World. He gave examples of the ways Facebook users can make decisions that have drastic, real-world consequences to people's lives. That was pretty eye-opening for me and made me think, ‘Hey, these aren't just pixels on a screen. There are people behind these systems, and where designers are making questionable choices, there can be drastic consequences.’ I think designers do have a responsibility. User experience is critical. Design leadership needs to empower designers so they feel they have a voice and the agency to change the shape of a product and get the right values out in the world.
The O’Reilly Security Podcast: Designing for security and privacy, noteworthy tools, and the real-world consequences of design.In this episode, O’Reilly’s Mary Treseler talks with Ame Elliot, design director at Simply Secure. They discuss designing for security and privacy, noteworthy tools, and the real-world consequences of design.Here are some highlights: Designing for usable security and privacy Privacy and security are tightly interrelated. Privacy, or confidentiality, is one technical goal of security. Other technical goals of security include integrity and non-reputability. As a UX designer, I’m coming at this from a human-centered design perspective. I care about what end users experience, and privacy feels like the quality that people are looking for in an interaction. I would like to see designers working together with some of the fantastically talented cryptographers to make security usable and delightful so that end users can experience privacy. In order to do that, there's a real need to help users understand that privacy and security aren't necessarily the same. There can be opportunities for new interactions and new product messages to make it clear to end users who is accessing their data and to what purpose. That could be everything from privacy being a feature that a cloud service company promotes, to a secure system for end-to-end encryption in a messaging application. I would like to see a new class of interfaces that give people confidence and power about how their data is accessed and used. Promising open source options and other tools Right now at Simply Secure, we're choosing to partner with open source development efforts. There are a lot of things that are special and exciting about open source. I think designers who take a human-centered approach can benefit by being empathetic with their partners and empathetic toward the other people in their efforts, so it's not just a matter of how you can understand the needs and priorities of end users, but how you can understand the needs and priorities of the teams that you're working with so that you can come together toward a common goal. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a score card out right now around secure messaging. There are some tools on there that are very rightly being called out and celebrated. For example, the Signal iOS app has been recommend by Laura Poitras, Citizenfour, and The Wall Street Journal. I have a ton of respect for what the Open Whisper Systems team is doing, including integrating into WhatsApp. I'm also just excited about mass market tools. Apple's iMessage is doing some really interesting things. The hope in using a variety of tools is that we can come up with solutions that are globally inclusive and can give a huge mass of people worldwide the ability to communicate securely and privately. Design has real-world consequences I've learned a lot from successes in health care and banking, and in transforming previously complex, off-putting, technical, irrelevant information into exciting and actionable information for end users. The thing that unlocked that change was design. I am optimistic about the role design can play in solving similar systematic challenges, like those found in security and privacy. One of the things that really influenced me in my journey toward working on security and privacy was Mike Monteiro’s 2013 Webstock talk, How Designers Destroyed the World. He gave examples of the ways Facebook users can make decisions that have drastic, real-world consequences to people's lives. That was pretty eye-opening for me and made me think, ‘Hey, these aren't just pixels on a screen. There are people behind these systems, and where designers are making questionable choices, there can be drastic consequences.’ I think designers do have a responsibility. User experience is critical. Design leadership needs to empower designers so they feel they have a voice and the agency to change the shape of a product and get the right values out in the world.
The O'Reilly Radar Podcast: UX for security, architectural inspirations, and problem finding over problem solving.This week's episode is a cross-post from the O'Reilly Design Podcast. O'Reilly's Mary Treseler chats with Ame Elliott, design director at Simply Secure. They talk about security and privacy design, with a focus on the end user experience, and how to give designers a voice in changing the shape of a product and getting the right values out in the world. Elliott also talks about how architecture inspires her work and why problem finding is a better approach than problem solving.Here are a few highlights from their chat: Problem finding What makes architecture interesting are some properties of what are called 'wicked problems.' A professor in the architecture department at UC Berkeley before my time had a whole lot of things to say about why defining the problem is really congruent with solving it. What that means is by the time you completely write an exhaustive, functional specification for something, you're describing the solution in such a way that it makes a universe of one. There's a lot of really great thinking around in the built environment, "No one has put a building on this particular site." This design problem is a universe of one. I think that there's a bunch of systematic things around ways in which knowledge we use versus what's specific and particular to this problem that's really pretty interesting. By 'problem finding' I mean that it's less about coming up with a right answer and more about bringing multiple voices into the question—let's work together as a group to find a problem and define the problem, and then work together on making that better. Technical depth and UX Being explicitly collaborative, I think, has shaped me in some pretty clear ways, too. I could also go further back in my background, when I was a research scientist. Collaboration is really important. The same impulse that drew me to some abstract technology projects like image processing and machine learning—it's the same impulse that draws me to security and privacy. I see there being a really exciting tension between technical depth and user experience, and how you get the right team together to move forward. Make security usable and delightful Privacy and security are tightly interrelated. Privacy or confidentiality is one technical goal of security. There are other technical goals of security—integrity, non-reputability, and other kinds of things. Coming at this from a human-centered design perspective, I'm a UX designer, I care about what end users experience, and privacy feels like the quality that people are looking for in an interaction. It's less about what's tougher. There's plenty of tough to go around. Really, what I would like to see is designers working together with some of the fantastically talented cryptographers to make security usable and delightful so that end users can experience privacy. In order to do that, there's a real need to help users understand how privacy and security aren't necessarily the same. There can be opportunities for new interactions, new product messages to make it clear to end users who is accessing their data and to what purpose. That could be everything from privacy being a feature that a cloud service company promotes, to a secure system for end-to-end encryption in a messaging application, for example. ... What I would like to see is a new class of interfaces that give people confidence and give people power in how their data is accessed and used. Getting the right values out in the world One of the things that really influenced me in my journey toward working on security and privacy was Mike Monteiro's talk at Webstock in 2013 called, "How designers are destroying the world." It's a provocative title, but I think it was pretty eye-opening for me. He used an example of ways in which the users of Facebook can make decisions that have drastic, real-world consequences to people's lives. That was pretty eye-opening to me to think, 'Hey, these aren't just pixels on a screen. There are people behind these systems, and where designers are making questionable choices, there can be drastic consequences.' Surely, we in a way see this now in a Simply Secure context, where we're looking at things like human rights violations, and globally everything from groups that are working to report evidence of atrocities and sexual violence to the international criminal court, and all the way down to activists and journalists who are trying to make sure that their communications are protected so they can participate in some of the systems that help people get information about the world around them. Beyond that I think designers do have a responsibility. User experience is critical. I think that design leadership is the piece for unlocking that so designers feel they really have a voice and an agency in changing the shape of a product and getting the right values out in the world.
The O'Reilly Radar Podcast: UX for security, architectural inspirations, and problem finding over problem solving.This week's episode is a cross-post from the O'Reilly Design Podcast. O'Reilly's Mary Treseler chats with Ame Elliott, design director at Simply Secure. They talk about security and privacy design, with a focus on the end user experience, and how to give designers a voice in changing the shape of a product and getting the right values out in the world. Elliott also talks about how architecture inspires her work and why problem finding is a better approach than problem solving.Here are a few highlights from their chat: Problem finding What makes architecture interesting are some properties of what are called 'wicked problems.' A professor in the architecture department at UC Berkeley before my time had a whole lot of things to say about why defining the problem is really congruent with solving it. What that means is by the time you completely write an exhaustive, functional specification for something, you're describing the solution in such a way that it makes a universe of one. There's a lot of really great thinking around in the built environment, "No one has put a building on this particular site." This design problem is a universe of one. I think that there's a bunch of systematic things around ways in which knowledge we use versus what's specific and particular to this problem that's really pretty interesting. By 'problem finding' I mean that it's less about coming up with a right answer and more about bringing multiple voices into the question—let's work together as a group to find a problem and define the problem, and then work together on making that better. Technical depth and UX Being explicitly collaborative, I think, has shaped me in some pretty clear ways, too. I could also go further back in my background, when I was a research scientist. Collaboration is really important. The same impulse that drew me to some abstract technology projects like image processing and machine learning—it's the same impulse that draws me to security and privacy. I see there being a really exciting tension between technical depth and user experience, and how you get the right team together to move forward. Make security usable and delightful Privacy and security are tightly interrelated. Privacy or confidentiality is one technical goal of security. There are other technical goals of security—integrity, non-reputability, and other kinds of things. Coming at this from a human-centered design perspective, I'm a UX designer, I care about what end users experience, and privacy feels like the quality that people are looking for in an interaction. It's less about what's tougher. There's plenty of tough to go around. Really, what I would like to see is designers working together with some of the fantastically talented cryptographers to make security usable and delightful so that end users can experience privacy. In order to do that, there's a real need to help users understand how privacy and security aren't necessarily the same. There can be opportunities for new interactions, new product messages to make it clear to end users who is accessing their data and to what purpose. That could be everything from privacy being a feature that a cloud service company promotes, to a secure system for end-to-end encryption in a messaging application, for example. ... What I would like to see is a new class of interfaces that give people confidence and give people power in how their data is accessed and used. Getting the right values out in the world One of the things that really influenced me in my journey toward working on security and privacy was Mike Monteiro's talk at Webstock in 2013 called, "How designers are destroying the world." It's a provocative title, but I think it was pretty eye-opening for me. He used an example of ways in which the users of Facebook can make decisions that have drastic, real-world consequences to people's lives. That was pretty eye-opening to me to think, 'Hey, these aren't just pixels on a screen. There are people behind these systems, and where designers are making questionable choices, there can be drastic consequences.' Surely, we in a way see this now in a Simply Secure context, where we're looking at things like human rights violations, and globally everything from groups that are working to report evidence of atrocities and sexual violence to the international criminal court, and all the way down to activists and journalists who are trying to make sure that their communications are protected so they can participate in some of the systems that help people get information about the world around them. Beyond that I think designers do have a responsibility. User experience is critical. I think that design leadership is the piece for unlocking that so designers feel they really have a voice and an agency in changing the shape of a product and getting the right values out in the world.
This week we share a tech oriented episode of NZ Business Podcast with NZ Tech Podcast listeners. Paul Spain spoke with the founders of a number of exciting tech start-ups who were finalists in the BNZ Startup Alley event held recently during Webstock. Running time : 0:25:12
Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Discussion Have 3-6 months of expenses in an emergency fund. Manage Expenses Evaluating Purchases Place large purchases on a wishlist, wait before purchasing. Deposit to emergency fund to cover large costs that are on the horizon. Personal Finance Management Give yourself an allowance. Retirement Investing Dave Ramsey Put away a small amount each month for taxes. Determining the size of your emergency fund. Writing off business expenses when there is personal activity included (check with your tax accountant). Picks Scared Shitless - Merlin Mann, Webstock 2011 (Eric) Air Compressor (Chuck) Hydraulic Jack and Jack Stands (Chuck)
Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Discussion Have 3-6 months of expenses in an emergency fund. Manage Expenses Evaluating Purchases Place large purchases on a wishlist, wait before purchasing. Deposit to emergency fund to cover large costs that are on the horizon. Personal Finance Management Give yourself an allowance. Retirement Investing Dave Ramsey Put away a small amount each month for taxes. Determining the size of your emergency fund. Writing off business expenses when there is personal activity included (check with your tax accountant). Picks Scared Shitless - Merlin Mann, Webstock 2011 (Eric) Air Compressor (Chuck) Hydraulic Jack and Jack Stands (Chuck)
A special NZ Tech Podcast edition focussing on interviews carried out during Webstock 2012. Guests include Raffi Krikorian (Twitter), Scott Hanselman (Microsoft), Derek Handley (The Hyperfactory) along with Tim Fraser and Jeremy Geros (GoVocab). Running time : 01:01:17
Scott is in New Zealand this week speaking at Webstock and spoke to the 2011 Arthur C. Clarke award winning author of "Zoo City," Lauren Beukes. What's her process? How does she keep it all straight and how do you know when to stop? Lauren shares how she works, how she thinks and discusses her upcoming projects as well as writing for comics.
Topics covered this week include the NZ launch of RDIO’s music streaming in NZ, Twitter censorship, Webstock, Fusion Audio, Bluetooth car stereos, new 2degrees $19 mobile plan, Facebook’s $100 Billion IPO and a call to boycott Apple products. Running time : 00:53:47
Fresh from Webstock in New Zealand, Marco Arment returns to talk with Dan Benjamin about the recent In App Purchasing situation, the iPad 2, Light Peak (aka Thunderbolt) ports on the upcoming MacBooks, and more.
With John Gruber at Webstock in New Zealand this week, we dug into the annals of The Talk Show to find the best moments and brought them together into an hour-long, totally epic episode.
http://shadowfoot.com/podcasts/BJar_090712_Episode_3.mp3My third podcast episode. Show Notes Espressoholic Supermarket shoppers Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds at Webstock
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