Matt Ruby on Louis CK Style Influences on Making Better Comedy Videos

In Chapter 17 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, standup comedian Matt Ruby answers "What Has Louis CK Taught You About Making Better Comedy Videos for the Web?"  Ruby notes how having full control over the creative process allows Louis CK to communicate a more personal point of view.  He notes how Louis CK is able to get more personal in his work on his show "Louie."  Ruby notes how this is also true with Woody Allen films and how the director also keeps ownership over his personal vision.  Matt Ruby is a standup comedian and comedy writer based in New York City.  He co-produces the weekly show "Hot Soup", co-hosts the monthly show "We're All Friends Here", and manages a comedy blog "Sandpaper Suit".  Ruby graduated from Northwestern University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What has Louis CK taught you about making better comedy videos for the web?

Matt Ruby: Well, I think the fact that he makes everything himself and, you know, like writes it, acts in it, edits it, directs it, and has full control over the process I think is, you know, I think you can sense it in the stuff that he makes, it feels more like something that comes from a single person’s viewpoint as opposed to so much of what’s on TV seems like it comes from a room filled with like 20 people that are all trying to agree which is cool but like a little bit more – makes stuff more homogenous and so I think, you know, part of what you see from — I’m thinking specifically the show Louis is that you can— if you do that, you can get stuff that’s sort of weirder, more personal or more—you know I think Woody Allen films have that too where it’s like, oh this really feels like it just came from one person, as opposed to like a committee decided that this was best. 

And I think it’s part of like what makes his stuff special and I think it’s something to—I don’t if I necessarily shoot for it in everything that I do but just something to keep in mind that is like, you know, oh, it’s okay to be cool or—not it’s okay to be cool—but it’s okay to be weird or to you know—sometimes his stuff will just get really absurd or just go off into some weird, you know, fantastical place and then come back to reality and, you know, sort of stuff that if you had a committee deciding on, they’d be like, no, that doesn’t make sense. Whereas like you can kind of indulge whatever your own personal vision for it is, and that’s what makes it unique to you and what you’re making is gonna be more unique.

Matt Ruby: How to Film a Web Comedy Series on a Budget

In Chapter 18 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, standup comedian Matt Ruby answers "What Has Filming a Web Comedy Series Taught You About Doing More With Less?"   Ruby talks about the importance of communicating a vision to onboard a talented team to work within budget constraints.  He notes the more you have to prove a concept, for example showing them a script, the better chance you can onboard them.  Ruby notes the importance of setting managable and realistic timeframes given the sacrifices team and crew may be making.  Lastly, Ruby notes the benefit of having budget constraints and working cheaply.  Matt Ruby is a standup comedian and comedy writer based in New York City.  He co-produces the weekly show "Hot Soup", co-hosts the monthly show "We're All Friends Here", and manages a comedy blog "Sandpaper Suit".  Ruby graduated from Northwestern University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What has filming a web comedy series taught you about doing more with less?

Matt Ruby: The biggest thing is trying to work with other people and trying to, you know, like, especially if you’re getting people to work for cheap, or free, or you know, like less than they would normally get for doing something, I think you have to kind of give them a vision for why they should wanna do—like, they should be excited for the project, you know, should be making something cool, funny, fresh, something that they wanna be part of, something that if they’re not getting paid anything or a lot right now, maybe down the road could turn into something. 

Thinking about what are their desires or goals and like how can you meet them or how can you guys meet halfway, I think it helps too, to take stuff as far as you can on your own before you bring other people in like if you’ve got scripts to show people, that’s way better than if you just have an idea for a script, and if you’ve actually shot something already, and you have that to show, that’s gonna be even better than a script, so like the more you can kind of prove the concept to people the more I think likely you are be able to get them onboard for, maybe, you know, not what their normal rate is, sort of thing. 

I think also you know you need to realize that there’s a limited window on that, you can’t just keep, you know, milking people, you know people just don’t have the time or the energy, the resources necessarily to donate, you know, all the time, so, you know, like hopefully, you know, you can have something that evolves into something bigger that does have a budget that’s more substantial. 

Also I just think people spend way too much on everything all the time. Like I’m mean, I’m a cheap bastard, so like I just sort of apply, you know, if I’m working on something, a project I conduct it the same way I do my normal life which is like I don’t spend money if I don’t have to, so like if I can use cheap props or film somewhere cheap, or you know, just I think people—when people are spending other people’s money, they spend it in a way different way than when they’re spending their own, so I think it’s just, you know, try to, you know, try to be a cheap bastard, even when you’re working on stuff—I don’t know, I just think—I think having those constraints even when you start out, like knowing, okay, we need to do this all in one location, or with these 3 actors or it needs to be 60 seconds or less, or whatever your limitations are, and be like, okay, well, that’s what it’s gotta be, so now fit into that, you know, box or perimeters, and make it work. 

And you know I think that can—that can actually—you know if you embrace that, it can actually kind of encourage creativity or take you to an interesting place as opposed to being like well, no, I need, you know, 5 locations, and dozens of extras and you know a budget of you know all this money and all that stuff. Whereas like, is that really making it funnier or better? You know I think that’s probably the bigger question is like, okay, well, if this is a little rough around the edges or you know, kind of cutting some corners here or there, is that the thing that’s really gonna make it not as good or is it just gonna make it not as polished? And I don’t always care about polish, like some rough edges are alright for me. Sometimes that’s what makes it interesting.

Matt Ruby on Blending Artistic and Financial Goals in a Creative Career

In Chapter 19 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, standup comedian Matt Ruby answers "What Part of What You Do is Art and What Part of What You Do is Commerce?"  Ruby notes how making art can become selfish if it does not have some tie back into how it pays the bills.  He notes the challenge lies in building a bridge between the artistic output and the commercial success. 

Matt Ruby is a standup comedian and comedy writer based in New York City.  He co-produces the weekly show "Hot Soup", co-hosts the monthly show "We're All Friends Here", and manages a comedy blog "Sandpaper Suit".  Ruby graduated from Northwestern University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What part of what you do is art? And what part of what you do is commerce?

Matt Ruby: Sometimes the way I feel about it is like art is just sort of the selfish, you know, like, say whatever you wanna say, or make whatever you wanna make, and don’t even worry about whether it’s, you know, gonna make you money or you know, what’s the—how does it further your career or whatever else your agenda is. Whereas the commerce-side of things would be like, alright, how am I getting paid? Because you gotta do that too. 

So I think part of the challenge is figuring out how to bridge those two, you know, if you can. Like, you know, how can you get paid or you know have a career or produce something that is, you know, commercially viable to some extent and then also how can you be making art, how can you be making something that you’re proud of or that you think is, you know, part of your vision or something that you wanted to make or see in the world. What’s the—and then how do you overlap those two, and I think, you know, that’s a spectrum that everyone can kind of choose their own point on there, like I’m—I think you—I think sometimes the worst thing you can do is sell out and not sell anything, that’s like the worst option. But, you know, just being a complete artist and, you know, just being completely selfish and no one cares at all about it does pretty bad too. 

So, you know I think having, you know, a modest amount of commercial goals, you know, with what you’re making is, in my mind the right path of like—it’s also validation that like whatever you’re doing is worth something to someone, you know, that like, oh yeah, this is good enough to either you know get paid for or you know if you’re, you know, making a show that people sell ads on or you know someone’s gonna watch it or, you know, something like that is happening to sort of encourage you to do more of it.

Simon Sinek on How to Strengthen Your Creative Skills

In Chapter 13 of 16 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, author and public speaker Simon Sinek answers "How is Your Creative Toolbox Changing?"  The more Sinek practices his creative skills, the stronger his toolbox gets.  He focuses on amplifying on his strengths and hiring out his weaknesses to both broaden and sharpen skills.  As a lover of creative people, Sinek looks to try new things such as modern dance choreography and painting to get perspective on creative process.  Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people.  His goal is to "inspire people to do the things that inspire them" and help others find fulfillment in their work.  Sinek is the author of "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action".  He works regularly with the United States Military, United States Congress, and many organizations, agencies and entrepreneurs.  Sinek is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and an adjunct staff member at the think tank RAND Corporation.  Sinek earned a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Brandeis University.

Transcript

Erik Michielsen:  How is your creative toolbox changing?

Simon Sinek:  I’m adding to it. Right? I mean, you know, I don’t think I’ve thrown anything away. I may use some things less than I used to. But the more I learn and the more I get to practice more importantly, the more tools I’m adding to that toolbox. What’s also great is some of the tools change size, in other words, there are some tools that I really like and I’m really good with, and so I use those tools because they’re very helpful to me, and there are other tools that I’ve learned that I’m really no good with and so they’re there if I need them, you know, I’ve never understood the idea of working on your weaknesses, you know, we’re always told in our performance reviews, here are your weaknesses and these are the things you need to work on to get to the next level, I’ve never understood that, the whole idea is to work in our strengths, amplify our strengths, and we, you know, hire our weaknesses or—this is the value of a team, right? What’s the point of having a team if you have to be—if you have to improve on your weaknesses?

The whole idea is we have you on our team because you’re really good at this. You know? And we found somebody else who’s really good at this, which you’re really bad at. You guys are a team. This is the value of a team. And so I think in our workplace, our companies do us a great disservice by telling us that we have to fix our weaknesses or improve upon our weaknesses to get to the next level, they should be encouraging us and giving the tool to amplify our strengths to get to the next level, that’s what they want us for, right? Otherwise, here are your strengths and here are your weaknesses, now you’re even. Wouldn’t you wanna be this? You need to be aware of your weaknesses but we need to amplify those strengths.

Erik Michielsen:  What are a couple of examples of like the creative tools that have brought that out?

Simon Sinek:  I’m a lover of creative people. And so any sort of expression of how you see the world in a—with different terminology is fascinating to me. And so even though I myself am a photographer so I have that visual aspect, I’m a huge fan of modern dance and spend a lot of time sort of with dancers and in the dance world and have, you know, tried my hand at choreography just to see, you know? I’m not good. But it—I like the idea of trying it, you know? And so for me it’s about perspective, which is when I—when you hang out with dancers and you sort of learn to dance a little bit or you learn to choreograph a little bit, or you learn to paint a little bit, you know? I’m not a painter but I painted a painting recently, you know? If you—it’s like chaos theory. Everything’s connected, right? It’s like we conveniently divide up our lives, like here’s my personal life, here’s my professional life, I’m—here’s my social life, I’m looking to find balance. It’s just you. And all the same things apply. And so if you’re good here, you can apply what you learn here to there. And so when you learn how things interconnect and people interconnect, and how human relationships work, and presence, I mean you wanna learn about presence? Take a dance class. You learn all about how to present yourself and be forwards. Take an acting class, learn how to, you know, present your speech. People say, Simon, how did you learn this? It’s like—I’m exposed to all of this. So the tools I’ve learned have just mainly been different perspectives on how other people use their creative talents to see the world in it. If I can get little pieces of those, they help me in many, many different ways.

Simon Sinek on When Your Idea is Worth Turning Into a Book

In Chapter 16 of 16 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, author and public speaker Simon Sinek answers "How Do You Take Collections of Ideas and Turn Them Into Books?"  Sinek focuses less on the collection of ideas and more on how to take an idea, attack a problem and do so by taking your readers on a journey.  Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people.  His goal is to "inspire people to do the things that inspire them" and help others find fulfillment in their work.  Sinek is the author of "Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action".  He works regularly with the United States Military, United States Congress, and many organizations, agencies and entrepreneurs.  Sinek is an adjunct professor at Columbia University and an adjunct staff member at the think tank RAND Corporation.  Sinek earned a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Brandeis University.

Transcript

Erik Michielsen:  How do you take collections of ideas and turn them into books?

Simon Sinek:  Considering that most books are probably only have enough content in them to be sort of articles, you know, to take a collection of ideas and turn them into a book, you know, an idea to be a book has to be able to advance. In other words, it has to start somewhere and go somewhere. Right? And I think a lot of books that are written have an idea that’s—it may be a really good idea but the whole book is simply case studies that prove the same idea, over and over and over again, right? And a book like in a work of fiction is a story. It has a beginning, it has a middle, and it has an end. You know, there’s a sort of an Aristotelian story arc, you know, where there’s some sort of here’s the world there is something is introduced that makes everything go wrong, you know there’s some sort of resolution and then here’s the—here’s how it looks. There’s conflict, right? So I think a collection of ideas that belong in a book, it addresses a very real problem. Here’s the way the world is. There’s a serious problem with this. Here’s the introduction of something that can help us and here’s what we could do to advance that. And there’s an arc. There’s something that holds your interest throughout the whole thing as opposed to just pick a page, start anywhere, and it’s more of the same. You should feel like you’ve missed the beginning if you start in the middle, you know? So yeah, I mean, a collection of ideas, I wouldn’t call it a collection of ideas, I’d call it, you know, a journey. That—and it doesn’t even have to be a complete journey, it has to be a journey. It has to start somewhere, and it has to go somewhere, even if it’s not a final destination.

How Design Strategist Builds Creative Skills - Ross Floate

In Chapter 19 of 20 in his 2012 interview, branding and design strategist Ross Floate answers "How Is Your Creative Toolbox Changing?"  Floate starts his career viewing his creative toolbox as the tools of his trade - for example, his computer, his Pantone books, his scalpels.  As his career progresses, his toolbox evolves based on the experiences he has inside and outside his industry.  Ross Floate is a principal at Melbourne, Australia-based Floate Design Partners.  Experienced in branding, design and both online and offline publishing, Floate and his team provide marketing services to clients seeking to better communicate business and culture goals via image, messaging, and story. He is a graduate of RMIT University.

Using Twitter to Exercise Creative Writing Skills - Ross Floate

In Chapter 20 of 20 in his 2012 interview, branding and design strategist Ross Floate answers "How Do You Use Social Media to Exercise Your Creative Skills?"  As a trained journalist, Floate uses Twitter as a creative outlet to share thoughts, connect with smart, intersting people and to work through and vet creative ideas.  Referencing his journalism experience, Floate uses what he learned to write lead sentences to write inside the 140-character format of Twitter.  Ross Floate is a principal at Melbourne, Australia-based Floate Design Partners.  Experienced in branding, design and both online and offline publishing, Floate and his team provide marketing services to clients seeking to better communicate business and culture goals via image, messaging, and story. He is a graduate of RMIT University.

How Creativity Motivates Manufacturing CEO - Richard Moross

In Chapter 11 of 17 in his 2012 interview, London entrepreneur and Moo.com CEO Richard Moross answers "What Role Does Creativity Play in What You Do As a CEO?"  Moross is driven by a need to make things.  He channels this drive in his design and manufacturing business.  Product innovation in the engineering and design continually renews Moross' purpose in his work.  Moross is founder and CEO of Moo.com and a leader in the London startup scene.  Before starting Moo.com, an award-winning online print business, Moross was a strategist at Imagination, the world's largest independent design company.  He graduated from the University of Sussex, where he majored in philosophy and politics.

Jon Kolko on How to Turn a Collection of Ideas into a Book

In Chapter 7 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "How Do You Take Collections of Ideas and Turn them Into Books?"  Kolko shares both his practical and theoretical approaches.  Practically, he simply writes and takes notes consistently and finds the notes and writings progressively congeal into a theme that then may then become a book project which then goes into the standard editing process.  Theoretically,  Kolko finds he fights himself making the decision to green light a book project and finds it happens around the 35,000 or 40,000 word mark. 

Jon Kolko the founder and director of the Austin Center for Design.  He has authored multiple books on design, including "Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving."  Previously he has held senior roles at venture accelerator Thinktiv and frog design and was a professor of Interactive and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).  Kolko earned his Masters in Human Computer Interaction (MHI) and BFA in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How do you take collections of ideas and turn them into books?

Jon Kolko: The process is pretty simple. There's probably like a theoretical answer as well as a practical answer. The practical is a little easier but my process is typically to just write; to write with no directive, no outline, no goal in mind over a process of about nine months to a year, and I write when I'm at conferences, and I write when I'm in class, and I write when I'm on an airplane. The pro tip here is the more time you spend on an airplane, the more time you have to write. And so, there is sort of a weird relationship with being in extreme physical agony on an airplane, on an aircraft and being massively productive but whatever. And then at some point, the thoughts of all of these different conferences and conversations and writing start to congeal into a theme, and usually sort of in backwards looking. It's sort of like a retrospective. It makes sense, like of course it led to this book theme. But there's never any of that sort of central plan. I've set out to write a book about a certain topic like four or five times and I've never written that book. And so it's much more of an organic process. And then once that clicks and you're like, “Okay, cool. The next book is called Wicked Problems.” Then I deal with standard editing process and outline, here's the different points I want to hit and then revise it and tear it down and write it again, kind stuff. But before that point, it really is all over the place. I'm not even sure that I'm cognizant that I'm doing it when I'm doing it. And so, like on my laptop, I have all my nice little folders and stuff, then on my desktop I’ll have little notepad snippets of just random stuff, you know 500 words, 1,000 words. At some point it all starts to make sense. The tools for this suck. There's got to be a better way to structure that in a way that can start to draw the parallels between disparate ideas more closely. But anyway, that’s the practical way of how you set out and write a book. How I set out and write a book.

The theoretical way, there are points in the process where you're like, “I don’t know if I should write this book. I don’t know if I have this book inside of me.” I've had that over and over and over and it's right around 35,000 words usually, which is kind of weird. A book is 45 to 90,000 words depending on how big it is but right around 35,000 something kick in and you’re like… it's that same old voice, right? It's like you don’t what you're talking about or you're not good enough, or this book will never work, nobody wants to read this. You could squelch that voice, right? You can shut it up. It's weird how consistently that voice shows up and it ran right around at the same point in the process.

Jon Kolko on How an Editor Improves the Book Writing Process

In Chapter 8 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "How Did You Learn to Work More Closely with Editors to Refine Your Writing?"  Kolko, who has written three books, meets an editor, Ronni, working on a book with the publisher Oxford.  His editor helps carry his voice when telling his story about design and do so in a positive way. 

Jon Kolko the founder and director of the Austin Center for Design.  He has authored multiple books on design, including "Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving."  Previously he has held senior roles at venture accelerator Thinktiv and frog design and was a professor of Interactive and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).  Kolko earned his Masters in Human Computer Interaction (MHI) and BFA in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: How did you learn to work more closely with editors to refine your writing?

Jon Kolko: So I have a great editor. I first encountered her.  Her name Ronnie and I first encountered her writing with Oxford. My second book was with Oxford and then I was like, “I'm never working with publishers again!” and the one piece of that process that I retained was hiring a professional editor. And so we were joking about this before. I submit my manuscript to Ronnie and it comes back and literally 50 percent of it is redlined out, like cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. 

In many ways, the first time I experienced that, I was extremely taken aback. It was like “Woah, wait a second, what's going on here?” But in fact, it turns out that having that sort of objective perspective is of huge importance. 

I don’t actually think I'm a writer. I think that I'm a fairly okay person at putting together a book. But I'm not a writer. I'm not a writer in a way that I think like somebody like Steven Johnson is a writer. But because I have I think a different story to tell about design and I'm an okay writer, there is something special that comes out of that but because of that, I think an editor plays a much stronger role in my process. 

Typically, an editor doesn’t give you a voice and they try not to take away your voice. I don’t think my editor gives me a voice or takes away my voice. But anything that she helps structure, what are overly argumentative reasonings into something that’s much more absorbable by someone who just isn’t in the mood to get in an argument. I feel as an academic, like I need to defend the things that I'm saying, and I think one of the big points I learned from an editor is these are your points. You don’t need to defend them. Yeah, you need an academic trail and sure you need to cite your sources but go into it assuming that your reader agrees with you rather than assuming your reader is there to disagree with you. And the book will be much more positive and strong and she’s exactly right.

How to Self Publish a Book - Jon Kolko

In Chapter 9 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "How Did You Build Upon Past Writing Projects in Publishing Your Latest Book?"  Kolko self-publishes his first book which then was picked up by a publisher, where it found moderate success.  For his second book, Kolko works through a publisher and decides for his third book he will self-publish.  He shares the various aspects of the publishing process he has learned to navigate as he goes through the self-publishing process. 

Jon Kolko the founder and director of the Austin Center for Design.  He has authored multiple books on design, including "Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving."  Previously he has held senior roles at venture accelerator Thinktiv and frog design and was a professor of Interactive and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).  Kolko earned his Masters in Human Computer Interaction (MHI) and BFA in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How did you build upon past writing projects in publishing your latest book?

Jon Kolko: I learned a ton doing my first couple of books. Some brief history, is I self-published the very first one and we printed a thousand copies and all thousand of them show up in a truck and then you sell them online, blah, blah, blah, and then that got picked up by a publisher. That was moderately successful. The next book got picked up by an academic publisher, that was not very successful. And so, I got to the point where I was like, “Alright, I'm not working with publishers anymore.” I can do all the things a publisher can do, I can do them faster, and I can do them, I think, better. Again, with a caveat maybe of editing. 

So I was able to do all of those things myself and in retrospect there's actually nothing hard about publishing a book. I'm astounded that actually a lot of the big presses are still in business at all because it is so easy. And so, again there's some really pragmatic steps like acquiring an ISBN number, getting your book listed in the various services, books in print, and on Amazon and stuff. But you can Google any of that and it's all there. The only thing that is difficult that remains is what is the book about and what does it look like. Coming soon will be in which digital formats do you support and that’s starting to start to be an issue right now. Even something as simple as exporting to an EPUB and a MOBI and stuff is a pain in the ass and it won’t be in the future. 

But for the time being, if you have a good idea and you know someone who can lay it out or you can lay it out yourself, you got a book. Your audience will find you. Long Tail or any other catchy name for it like that, that works. And so, I think what I learned from the publishing experience is that I don’t need that publishing experience. It gave me the confidence to say that old, tired machine is not for me. 

Jon Kolko: How to Use Storytelling to Improve Presentation Content

In Chapter 12 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "How Are You Learning to Give More Impactful Presentations?"  Kolko has built presentation confidence as his experience has grown and has learned to improve presentation content by using storytelling skills.  Specifically, whether it is a presentation, a keynote, or a workshop, Kolko learns not to assume audience knowledge and to use narrative tools to take his room on a ride. 

Jon Kolko is the founder and director of the Austin Center for Design.  He has authored multiple books on design, including "Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving."  Previously he has held senior roles at venture accelerator Thinktiv and frog design and was a professor of Interactive and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).  Kolko earned his Masters in Human Computer Interaction (MHI) and BFA in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are you learning to give more impactful presentations?

Jon Kolko: A lot of it has to do with doing it over and over and over. I don’t think I was like nervous of presenting but now I'm extremely confident with it. It's like anything else. It's like having a conversation. I actually don’t think too much about it but I think a lot about the content of the presentation and increasingly it seems like to reference an earlier question an argument, it seems like I'm structuring a narrative, a story if you'd like, around an endgame and the endgame is so clear to me but it doesn’t make any sense to anybody else if they don’t -- aren’t along for the journey. And so, in a typical presentation or a workshop or a keynote, it's an hour, 50 minutes. And so in 50 minutes, you got to take a couple hundred people along for this ride and there's nothing to assume. You have a wildly diverse audience. You can't assume knowledge about design, knowledge about politics, knowledge about the economy. And so, all those things have to be presented. And I think in many ways, it forces a huge amount of empathy with an audience as if they were the users of a product and you’re product. And so there has to be -- You sort of have to ease into it. I've never ever thought of myself as a good storyteller. Increasingly, I'm thinking of myself as a storyteller and that each time I craft this presentation, it's like a once upon a time. It's like a children’s novel. And everybody sort of comes along for the ride with me. There’s cute little things you can do that would be shocking, use really obtuse statistics to support your argument and juxtapose big words with scary images. And every now and then I’ll use those two just like anybody else. But I think ultimately like those are icing on a cake and if there's no cake, it's crap. And so, the substance of the thing, the content is that story.

Jon Kolko on How to Design Culturally Relevant Social Solutions

In Chapter 16 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "How Have You Learned More Effectively Across Cultures?"  Kolko notes how design work is culture-dependent.  He notes how impact-based design is local and often constrained by the cultural environment.  This often limits scalability yet allows students to better focus their solution design for the communities it will serve. 

Jon Kolko is the founder and director of the Austin Center for Design.  He has authored multiple books on design, including "Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving."  Previously he has held senior roles at venture accelerator Thinktiv and frog design and was a professor of Interactive and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).  Kolko earned his Masters in Human Computer Interaction (MHI) and BFA in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How have you learned to work more effectively across different cultures?

Jon Kolko: Design work is explicitly tied to culture and in a super nuanced way. So, a design solution that works in this particular culture may or not work in a different culture and I don’t necessarily mean country or geographic boundary. It can be culture as defined by style, as designed by fashion, anywhere there are shared values. And so, when you're dealing with design for impact, it's really, really local and micro-driven, which is directly at odds with most impact investing and a lot of the places where you will find big money like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who are looking to fund scalable solutions, solutions that aren’t going to affect 500, or 1,000, or 10,000, or even 100,000 people, that are going to affect 10 million people, 100 million people, a billion people. And I don’t claim to know if that’s a good or a bad process for them. I don’t know anything about their inner workings but for where my students are, which is nowhere near that in terms of impact, their solutions can’t, by definition, can't scale outside of a certain locale without changing.

It's not to say they can't change, but it's not a cookie cutter approach and traditionally design has been all about cookie cutter approaches. That is what design for manufacturing is about. It's about taking a single part and mass producing it exactly the same a hundred million times with no defects, shipping it all over the world. You can see where that breaks down in a really, really obtuse and dumb way with adapters on PCs that the same PC, the manufacturer has to make six or seven different ends to plug the thing in, in different countries. That has nothing to do with culture, it has everything to with these Legacy electric grids but that’s the equivalent of how prepared designers are to deal with that issue. It's like that’s all they know. Well, we got to localize it by changing the language and by using a different cord. No, no, no, it's so much deeper than that. The homeless in Belo Horizonte and the homeless in Austin, it's a different world. And to say somehow, “Yeah, I conducted a thousand hours of research with homeless in Austin and therefore my solution transfers to the middle of Brazil,” is just ridiculous. And so, I don’t know how my design work has changed as a result of that but my philosophy toward it is certainly crystallized around this idea of local design decisions being okay, that we don’t have to design for scale en-mass right away.

Jon Kolko on Teaching Venture Capitalist Thinking to Creative Students

In Chapter 17 of 21 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, design educator Jon Kolko answers "How Has Working at a Startup Incubator Taught You to Better Teach Entrepreneurship?"  Kolko shares how his experience taught him the language of business and entrepreneurship and how to talk about products and services from a venture capitalist perspective.  For example, Kolko notes venture capitalists look not only at how a product might sell, but also the product intellectual property value. 

Jon Kolko is the founder and director of the Austin Center for Design.  He has authored multiple books on design, including "Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving."  Previously he has held senior roles at venture accelerator Thinktiv and frog design and was a professor of Interactive and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).  Kolko earned his Masters in Human Computer Interaction (MHI) and BFA in Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How has working at a startup incubator taught you to better teach entrepreneurship?

Jon Kolko: It's definitely led me to understand the vocabulary around VCs and financing and how that game works around funding. It is a game and those involved in it will actually gleefully describe it is a game. And so, I think working at sort of the heart of that helps me understand both what that mentality is like and how to leverage it if you want to or how to completely avoid it if you don’t like it.

It is literally a different language and I don’t just mean in terms of vocabulary and jargon. Yeah, there's a ton of jargon and that takes a little getting used to but it's also just a very different way of talking about products and services.

And I’ll give you a very quick example. When a designer creates something new, irrespective of social entrepreneurship or anything else, they think of the value of that thing to a user. And typically, a good VC, will when they look at something new, will think of the IP value of that beyond the simple investment. Meaning yeah, that’s great. I obviously have to get my 10X return over three to five years. And then how can we continue to leverage the intellectual property that’s inherent in this invention well beyond me actually owning -- you know, having a full stake in this company because that will allow me to sort of tweak up that valuation. The notion of an invention having monetary value outside of its sales price and outside of the value for a user is 100 percent missing in the world of design, for better or worse, and I don’t really care to argue the value or non-value of IP right now. But it's just that it doesn’t cross any designer’s mind I've ever worked with in my life. And it's like the first thing that most good VCs will think about.

And so as an example then, if you're trying to teach a student how to present their work during a pitch, one of the things they need to understand is that the person looking at their thing is not thinking about how much is it going to sell for on the shelves of Best Buy, right? There's this second market of IP that they're considering which is totally in a third plane. That designers are like, “I don’t even know what words you're saying.” And that’s just an example. There’s tons of those. There’s tons of different ways of thinking about stuff.

Ask a designer what derivatives trading means. And it's not just that they don’t know because they're inexperienced. They don’t know because their brain doesn’t work that way. It's the same way when you ask somebody who’s in financial services to draw a teapot. They’ll say they can't but it's literally like their brain will not allow them yet to draw that teapot. And I think the closer, the sooner students realize that, the sooner they can decide if they want to overcome that hump or not.

What Gets Easier and What Gets Harder - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 1 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "What is Getting Easier and What is Getting Harder in Your Life?"  As a strategist working at a design company, Stallings notes how it is getting easier to bring his varied skills together to serve clients.  He notes a growing challenge is understanding that more and more of his work is different than anything done before, which pushes him to look outside his industry as he crafts client strategic plans.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia. 

How to Use Story to Frame and Solve Problems - Hammans Stallings

In Chapter 14 of 22 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, innovation strategist Hammans Stallings answers "Why Do You Believe the Best Stories Solve Multiple Problems?"  Stallings shares how story form and story end, typically resolution of a conflict, are natural ways to communicate complex problems.  He adds how story allows you to simplify complex problems and break down the story meaning in ways that can connect differently with different audiences.  This is Hammans Stallings' Year 2 CYF interview.  Stallings is currently a Senior Strategist at frog design.  Previously he worked in business strategy at Dell and investment banking at Stephens.  He earned an MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, a MS in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business and a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Virginia.

Idan Cohen on Developing a Passion for Building Products

In Chapter 8 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, Boxee co-founder and head of product Idan Cohen answers "What is the Source of Your Passion for Building Things?"  Cohen references his joy creating beautiful products or useful devices.  He appreciates a holistic product design process and compares it to the 20th century Golden Age of furniture design. 

This is Idan Cohen's Year 1 Capture Your Flag interview.  Cohen is co-founder and head of product at Boxee Inc, an online video software company.  Previous to Boxee, Cohen held telecom software innovation and developer roles at Comverse.  He was a Captain in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and graduated from Tel Aviv University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Geophysics and Art.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What is the source of your passion for building things?

Idan Cohen: It’s basically creating beautiful useful devices or products that are also—I put a lot of emphasis to how the process—what is the process like. A lot of things can look very nice from, you know, from outside or from the surface, like I really appreciate for instance, Apple for actually engineering the inside of their computers, and making them look beautiful. 

It’s magnificent when you open, like the Mac mini which is probably the most negligent product Apple is doing, but it has this beautiful thing that when you open it and when you look inside it’s just beautifully laid out, and I’m sure that they have actual people that are in charge of making that look nice, so for me, it’s all about the whole process being, you know, holistic and very aesthetically pleasing. So at the end of the process, it’s about creating something that’s functional but you really enjoy the process. 

So I like working with materials, software is somewhat of a material designed in a lot of—you know, that’s pretty great how the last 5 years were not about the actual technology, but much more about the user experience and the design, because I think that the design is much more coming closer to kind of like the golden age of furniture probably in around like, you know, the previous century, which was much more creating beautiful things, and putting an emphasis on materials. So it’s somewhere between these—and that’s what I’m attracted to, I really, really—it’s not about software, it’s not about internet, it’s about products.

Idan Cohen on How Family Supports Creative Childhood Passions

In Chapter 9 of 19 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, Boxee co-founder and head of product Idan Cohen answers "Where Has Your Family Been Most Supportive in Your Career Development?"  Cohen notes a common challenge in present day that his family does not understand his entrepreneurial product work; however, he shares experiences from his formative years where his parents encouraged Cohen to learn to use tools and pursue his passion for building and making objects.  This is Idan Cohen's Year 1 CYF interview.  Cohen is co-founder and head of product at Boxee Inc, an online video software company.  Previous to Boxee, Cohen held telecom software innovation and developer roles at Comverse.  He was a Captain in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and graduated from Tel Aviv University with a Bachelors of Science degree in Geophysics and Art.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: Where has your family been most supportive in your career development?

Idan Cohen: That’s a good question ‘cause I don’t think they understand what I do.  Maybe when I was writing more code then they could understand, I don’t think they did really always understand what products that were, you know, the result of that code, these days, I think that they don’t even understand, you know, what’s my role and kind of like how do I make things happen, and it’s a little bit sad, actually that they don’t understand that, ‘cause a lot of—I think that for a lot of people, what they do has a lot to do with kind of getting appreciation and getting the pride from their family. It has a lot to do with that.

So I kind of—it makes me a little bit sad that they don’t understand that. But on the other hand, I think that my family always pushed me to be a creator and a maker. So when I wanted a computer, when I was 6, my mother sent me to a summer camp to learn programming, and I got the computer only after that—those 2 months of learning how to write code. ‘Cause for her, you know, you—sure, this is a tool, you need to first learn how to use a tool and then you can do something with it. When I was about 10, then I went—in the steps of my brother, I went to an aero-modeling club, which is a very geeky thing, and we built model airplanes out of like wood and then more and more actually advanced technologies.

And that was for me great, it was working with my hands, for me, the way that I work with like an exact-o knife or you know, with just a—my ability to work with a knife is parallel to just—it’s like the extension my hand, and I think it’s just because this muscle memory of for years, just working with a knife and cutting things. And it’s so important to just get kids I think to create things and learn how to use tools, as a 12-year-old or 14-year-old I think, I started using a lathe to create metal pieces and for 5 years I was working part-time with someone just as an apprentice to learn how to work with metals. And for me, that was so important because today I see anything and I can—just I can know how it was machined and I can imagine how I can create something like that or I can aspire to create something like that.

And I think that’s—that was very important, so my family maybe doesn’t understand what I’m doing now but they definitely had a huge part in getting me there by just all the time giving me these tools of, you know, learn how to make things. And then you’ll get there, you’ll be able to create products or—and it’s so much more important than just being an accountant I think. Just being able to create physical objects.