When you’re a small but growing company, sometimes the best people to learn from are the big fish in your industry pond — the friendly ones that don’t eat you. This week Paul and Rich speak with Tracey Zimmerman, President and CEO of Robots &amp; Pencils, a digital innovation firm working on similar projects as Postlight but at double the size. They compare notes with Tracey on what makes a successful innovator, how to build the right teams for your clients, and how to scale your organizational culture. Links:

Friendly Competition: With Robots & Pencils’ Tracey Zimmerman

It’s the 300th episode of the Postlight Podcast! To celebrate, Paul and Rich talk with Steph Colbourn, founder and CEO of editaudio and producer of the podcast since early days. Steph gives the inside scoop on how the podcast gets made, what makes a great one, and the latest developments in the podcast production industry. She also shares Rich and Paul’s best (worst?) bloopers from the cutting room floor.

How It's Made: 300 Episodes of the Postlight Podcast!

As an actor and communications coach, Bill Smartt knows how to speak to the room — both in person and online. Bill has been working with Postlight for years, and this week, he joins Paul and Rich with tips on how to communicate effectively and give that presentation you’re nervous about. He breaks down how to structure your deck, shares how to make eye contact on a video call, and discusses the importance of rehearsing.

Speaking to the Room: With Bill Smartt

What's a Product Discovery Coach? This week Teresa Torres joins Paul and Rich to break down the mystique of her job title and the important work behind it. They discuss all things product development, and Teresa shares how unearthing product assumptions can help you achieve a better final outcome. Teresa also explains why you should expect your ideas to fail — and use that failure to your advantage.

Product Talk: With Teresa Torres

It’s no secret that the past two years have shaped the ways we work with others. We have a growing constellation of tools at our disposal that all orbit around our sun: Slack. But why does it still feel like none of those tools talk to one another? This week, Rich and Paul chat about that disconnect and how it affects the way we work. They also envision a more streamlined future for tools and a better way to communicate.

A Constellation of Tools: How We Work Today

In 2021, Postlight grew from a small-ish agency to a team of over 100 people. This week, Gina and Chris share how they helped scale Postlight since taking on their new roles. From establishing a senior leadership team, choosing better internal tools, and sending out employee surveys, they break down how to empower your team to help everyone (company included) grow.

Doer to Delegator: On Scaling Postlight

As Director of Product Design at HBOMax, Michael McWatters knows a thing or two about welcoming people to a service. This week, Michael joins Paul and Rich to talk about onboarding and why onboarding should actually be happening along every step of a user’s journey, not just as part of marketing. He draws some parallels between online onboarding and in-store experiences and explains why you shouldn’t be training during onboarding - show don’t tell.

User On Board: With Micheal McWatters

A couple weeks ago Gina Trapani, Chris LoSacco and Michael Shane got together on Twitter Space to chat about how people with big ideas but less authority can get buy-in and budgets for future tech projects. In the live event, Chris, Gina and Michael answer questions like, 
Who do you need to persuade to get your project going? What kind of storytelling will be the most persuasive? What will motivate executives or bosses to support the change? We show you how to talk to execs to get them to recognize the value of your project.

Securing Buy-In and Budget: Twitter Space Live Event

Gina and Chris share their favorite metaphors about running a business

In the Jungle: On Leadership Metaphors

No founder should be all-consumed with work, and that is why Head of Bloomberg Beta Roy Bahat is no longer a founder. This week Roy joins Gina Trapani and Michael Shane to discuss how workplace boundaries are becoming normalized and why providing VC support in a company’s irrational phase excites him more than a later, safer bet. He also stresses the importance of language in a large and diverse workforce and questions whether metaphors and analogies are useful or alienating.

Irrational Magic: The Trade of Making New Things with Roy Bahat

At what age should you give your kid a phone? This week Paul and Rich sit down to discuss the inevitable moment when their kids ask for a phone. They break down how it can be a tool for freedom and the many concerns that can come with kids having their own phones. Could the answer be banning content creation for kids?

Kids and Phones: On Parenting and Technology

Paul and Rich on the wealthy and their vanity projects

Vanity Purchases: On Elon Musk and Twitter

There’s nothing worse than waiting for a page to load. This week, Chris LoSacco and Gina Trapani go deep on a crucial yet underappreciated feature of digital platforms — speed. They break down how things can get so slow and share tips on how you can build for speed, from database indexing to managing how much processing is happening on the service side versus the client side. We’ve got the need for speed!

Let the User Keep Going: On Speed as a Feature

Keeping huge software projects on track is hard but not impossible. This week Chris and Gina walk us through how they come up with deadlines that work both for the client and the team. They explain what questions you should be asking to make sure nothing is overlooked in the beginning planning stages and explain what to do in that dreaded scenario when you realize you’re not going to hit your target. A good tip: Challenge anyone who says, “This should be easy.”

Shipping Earlier With Less: On Determining Deadlines

On Running Great Executive Meetings

If you’ve ever been the victim of a content management system (CMS), raise your hand. This week Chappell Ellison, Postlight’s Associate Director of Digital Strategy, joins Gina and Chris to unpack their complicated relationships with CMSs. They talk about knowing when it’s the right time to dump your current system, how you can move on from the trauma of past CMSs, and how to choose your next one.

Surprisingly Emotional: On Content Management Systems

“Move fast and break things” is a common term in tech, but is that the right way to go about product development? This week, Chris and Gina share their thoughts on when it’s okay to move fast during the product life cycle and when you should take it slow. If you’re at the beginning of the life cycle, moving fast and taking risks can be crucial for the survival of your business, but later on, taking a slower, more methodical approach can get you to the finish line.

Move Fast or Go Slow?: On the Stages of the Product Life Cycle

Reading on the internet can be tiring. There are pop-ups and ads — everything is trying to get your attention. Enter Postlight Reader, a browser extension that removes distractions from any article. This week Chris LoSacco and Michael Shane sit down with one of Postlight’s most senior engineers, John Holdun, to talk about how they developed Postlight Reader and the intricacies of developing a modern open-source browser extension.

Reading in Comfort: On Postlight Reader

The tech industry loves its jargon and acronyms, but do they help or just sow confusion? Gina and Chris discuss how acronyms can obfuscate understanding and deeper meaning for the speaker and audience alike. They share how simplifying your presentations and giving broad strokes rather than nitty-gritty details can show greater knowledge than any acronym you throw out there. After all — clarity is kindness!

Clarity Is Kindness: On the Importance of Being Plain Spoken

Audubon’s new tool, the Bird Migration Explorer, is a groundbreaking interactive map tracking bird migrations for 450 different species worldwide. “Groundbreaking” isn’t hyperbole. There’s never been anything like it, and the amount of data compiled onto one site is an enormous collaborative accomplishment. This week Postlight’s Nathan Henry and Shawn Kelly chat with Melanie A. Smith and John Mahoney from Audubon about creating The Explorer and getting people involved in birding and conservation.

Bird Curious: On Audubon’s New Bird Migration Explorer

The Postlight team deconstructs Harvard Business Publishing’s new Leader Lab tool with Laura Helliwell.

Leader Lab: Leveling up your soft skills

Over her years as Head of Product Design at Postlight, Natalie Kurz has noticed that the waterfall method isn’t always ideal for software projects. It doesn’t allow for innovation and creative problem solving. So she came up with a better way: figure out the what first instead of the how. With that method comes a lot of creative problem solving and you guessed it, rework. But rework doesn’t have to be seen as a failure, it can be a way to learn and get clarity. After all, rework is the work.

Lightbulb Moment: On Why Rework Isn’t Always a Waste

There’s nothing better than crossing something off your to-do list. This week Chris and Gina reflect on which tools are best for organizing your life and your to-do list. Their conclusion — analog is best. Gina breaks down why her bullet journal is the best option for her and why digital lists will never be as effective as writing things down on paper.

Return to Analog: On Organizational Tools

Interacting with your coworkers in person can be hugely beneficial, and while nothing can fully replace it, forcing people back into the office isn't good for the business or company culture. This week Chris and Gina discuss why return-to-office mandates are misguided and share ways to create meaningful engagement for teams both in and out of the office.

R.T.O. Battle: Is Returning to the Office Necessary?

For every tool or system we interact with, someone behind the scenes is powering it. This week, Chris Losacco is joined by Postlight’s Head of Product Design, Natalie Kurz, to discuss why you should focus not only on customer experience but how internal teams use the software. They share tips on how to know when to redesign your internal interfaces and make the case that by helping internal teams, you can reduce turnover, reduce inefficiencies, and ultimately improve your customer experience.

The Customer Pays the Price: On Fixing Your Internal Systems

Editor’s Note: Exciting changes are coming to the Postlight Podcast! We’re taking a few weeks off from recording and sharing some of our favorite episodes from the Postlight Podcast archives. We’ll have some big announcements for you soon, so stay tuned!
In this episode, get another look into how Postlight works as Chris and Gina discuss how specific training and onboarding guidelines can restrict progress and creative approaches to project delivery. Can encouraging critical thinking lead to better products and happier clients? How much freedom is too much? And do the benefits match the costs?

From the Archive: On Working With Autonomy Instead of Restrictions

Editor’s Note: Exciting changes are coming to the Postlight Podcast! We’re taking a few weeks off from recording and sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archives. We’ll have some big announcements for you soon, so stay tuned!

“Move fast and break things” is a common phrase in tech, but is that the right way to go about product development? In this episode from the archives, Chris and Gina share their thoughts on when it’s okay to move fast during the product life cycle and when you should slow down.

From the Archives: On the Stages of the Product Life Cycle

Taking a vacation can feel like a luxury, but it shouldn’t be. In this episode from the archives, Chris and Gina make the case for taking time away. Not only is vacation important to unwind and de-stress, but it can also help recenter on the “why.” It turns out that letting your brain disconnect from daily minutia can benefit both you and your work.

From the Archive: Taking a Break From Business Thrash

Self-imposed deadlines are critical. They make sure that expectations are clear and met. But how do you set realistic deadlines? How do you deal with dependencies and unknown unknowns? What happens if something unforeseen pops up? In this episode from the archives, Chris and Gina share tips on how to set deadlines that keep a project moving and work for both the client and the team.

From the Archive: Shipping Earlier With Less

What’s a good metaphor for running a business not about sports or war? Gina asked this question on Twitter some months back and got an overwhelming response. In this archived episode, Gina and Chris share the best answers that came out of this question. They explore gentler business metaphors like tending to a garden, playing in a band, or swinging through a forest.

From the Archive: On Leadership Metaphors

Pop quiz: What feature only makes it onto the feature list when it’s too late? In this archived episode, Chris and Gina chat about why speed should always be top of mind when developing a digital platform. They discuss how things can slow over time and share tips on how to build for speed. From database indexes to better search, they share how to make your platform speedy for everyone, no matter the bandwidth.

From the Archive: On Speed as a Feature

Exciting changes have arrived at Postlight, officially now Launch by NTT DATA! This week Chris and Gina are joined by Mark Orttung, President of Launch, as he shares how Launch brought together the best digital companies around and his own journey to leading the company. They discuss Postlight’s unique fit in the new firm and look towards an exciting future of strategizing, shipping, and scaling provocative digital experiences.

Launching Launch by NTT DATA: On an Exciting New Chapter

Creating change for New York City kids: this week Paul and Rich split the episode in two, with two conversations about children and learning. First they talk about their own kids’ relationships with technology and feelings about teaching them to code. Then they sit down with Colin Smith, executive director of the nonprofit Change for Kids, which works with motivated principals to help give students at New York’s poorest public schools access to pathways for success.

#0044: Colin Smith Has a Plan to Help Hundreds of NYC Public Schools

What should we make of 2016? This week Paul and Rich recap the year, with a focus on the big tech trends of the past 12 months. Topics covered include virtual and, augmented reality, Pokémon GO, Facebook’s fake news problem, Apple’s terrible wireless headphones, self-driving cars, cybersecurity, conversational interfaces, Rich’s eternal optimism, Paul’s fears for the future, and the things they’re both grateful for.

#0045: Year in Review: 2016

Why you need prototypes and Powerpoints: this week Paul and Rich talk to Prashant Agarwal, the VP of Design at McKinsey Digital Labs. They talk about his career trajectory, from studying business to co-founding a startup to product management to design, and his current role at McKinsey, where he rethinks design challenges at scale. Paul and Rich also discuss content marketing, including this podcast and their fear of small talk at cocktail parties.

#0050: Prashant Agarwal on Scaling Design

Can electrical engineers create tangible objects? Do we really need to be writing lines of code in a text-editor to be programming? Is it time for society to redefine what it means to compute? This week, Paul and Rich sit down with Bret Victor to discuss his journey from Electrical Engineer at Caltech, to UI Designer at Apple, to Creator of his ultimate vision, Dynamicland.  The building is a computer; the computer is a building: This week Paul Ford and Rich Ziade sit down with Bret Victor to talk to about Dynamicland — a non-profit that’s inventing a new computational medium, where people work together with real objects in the real world (not alone with virtual objects on screens). We chat about the tech behind Dynamicland, the importance of creating intentional communities, and how a culture of secrecy at Apple inspired a life-long vision of community computing. Bret also shares a surefire way to impress a date — bring them to GuitarCenter and show them your analog modeling synth!     3:58 — Rich: “The bureaucracy got obliterated; all the machinery that usually slows you down was gone. The parents weren’t home!” 13:14 — Bret: “I came in the first day, went ot my desk and there was an iPad sitting on my desk. This was 2007. The iPhone just had been released. The iPad was not a thing at all… and I said ‘what is this?’ and my boss said ‘well we don’t know, Steve wants a tablet’.” 16:03 — Bret: “I was starting to see that my values and Apple’s values were a bit at odds. Apple ultimately wants to enable people to listen to their music, and read their email, and watch videos, and have an entertaining digital experience. I wanted to enable people to understand things more deeply or create amazing things that they couldn’t create before.” 22:08 — Bret: “It’s hard to have the level of motivation to pull off something really huge like that, if you don’t have the right support structures in place.” 22:08 — Bret: “We want to create a medium that works for all people. So growing our community, we’ve been pretty deliberate about reaching out to people who aren’t on Twitter and who aren’t traditionally advantaged by technology.” LINKS  Bret Victor Bret Victor on Twitter Dynamicland Donate to Dynamicland Dynamicland on Twitter Alesis Ion Alesis Micron&nbsp;  The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper Edward Tufte William Cleveland&nbsp; Magic Ink&nbsp;: Information Software and the Graphical Interface by Bret Victor&nbsp; Joystick Example at Dynamicland with Paula Te David Hellman        Track Changes is the weekly technology and culture podcast from Postlight, hosted by Paul Ford and Rich Ziade. Production, show notes and transcripts by EDITAUDIO. Podcast logo and design by Will Denton of Postlight.

#0109: Computing is Everywhere : A Conversation with Bret Victor

&nbsp;  Don’t Quit Your Day Job: This week, Paul Ford and Gina Trapani sit down with Rick Webb, COO of Timehop, to discuss his 2015 book Agency: Starting a Creative Firm in the Age of Digital Marketing. Rick lays out how anybody — even someone born in a ditch in Topeka — can start an agency. He also leads a discussion about the legacy of viral marketing in his own career, and the history of the advertising mega-structure. &nbsp;       Rick — 5:55: “I think that at any moment in marketing there is some technology, craft, or medium that is the new emerging thing that’s very good for agencies to be able to make their mark in.” Rick — 7:20: “The book is really written like you came to this business as a craftsperson.” Rick — 7:50: “In the old days, an agency operated as an agent on behalf of their clients and the reason they’re operating as an agency is because they’re going to buy media… this is the classic definition.” Rick — 9:10: “That’s why they really want video ads to be a thing and they have since the early 2000s. They could just take the model they had and use them again — and they are winning. It is slowly becoming that.” Gina — 9:50: “Timehop is a great product. When it first launched […] it was something my company took a lot of inspiration from. It just let you kind of appreciate your social content in a perspective that you wouldn’t have had.” Rick — 11:15: “[Timehop uses] programmatic advertising. We don’t do data-driven advertising. Your data isn’t in your advertising.” Rick — 12:55: “There’s a business case for Timehop that’s out there, but really we took it because I believe in nostalgia. I always have. That’s why I wrote the first cheque for them. I like little simple things that are just a couple minutes of your day.” Paul — 17:40: “So we’re living in this world of giants. We scamper around in the shadows of dinosaurs as a little mouse with our firm, but a lot of the people listening to this show are people who are doing a reset of some kind in their career. If somebody wants to get into your world, what do they do?” Rick — 18:00: “I think one thing that really confounds everyone is the compensation structure of start-ups. Like there’s this widely pervasive belief you can get rich in start-ups.” Rick — 18:50: “Right now, hundreds of companies are being planned in New York. Maybe one or two will become a unicorn. […] The minute you can tell they’re going to go anywhere, everyone else can too. It’s just a waste of time.” Paul — 19:10: “Going to a late-stage start-up is just a job.” Gina — 22:18: “In the beginning, though, you have to have some resilience for feast and famine. You know, when you’re first starting out, you have to be able to take a couple of months where you’re not getting paid or getting paid very little.” Rick — 24:15: “You don’t have to quit your day job until you make enough to quit your day job.” Rick — 29:20: “Advertising is a very, very, very big part of our world and people don’t think about it. […] Mass media and technology are both primarily funded by advertising.       LINKS  Rick Webb Agency: Starting a Creative Firm in the Age of Digital Marketing The Subservient Chicken Timehop Martin Sorrell  LUMA’s State of Digital Media 2018

#131 : Getting Creative with Marketing: Rick Webb's Agency

&nbsp;  Trusting Your Gut: This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade are joined by Michael Shaoul, the philosopher-manager of Marketfield Asset Management and expert on business cycles and the convergence of world events and geopolitics. Is the cycle of commercial real estate on its deathbed? Are shoes the only thing immune to downtrodden cycles? We discuss what happens when people tell you that you’ve got it all wrong, and exactly what you should do if you see a volcano at the company party. &nbsp;       Michael — 4:15: “There are multiple cycles that you learn to pay attention to. One of the things that I say is that when you look at cycles across decades or centuries […] the nouns and the verbs are always changing. It’s always something different, but the adjectives and the adverbs stay the same.” Michael — 5:40: “Clearly we’re here in the middle of a great technology cycle. When it’s gone over its skis, when it’s no longer investible, when it’s outright dangerous, it’s a hard thing to notice. But if I went back to the early 1990s, language starts to change. Evaluation metrics start to change. You start valuing eyeballs rather than revenue.” Michael — 6:45: “I don’t think I need to apologize to my children for not owning Bitcoin, but to me that’s what the end of one of these investment cycles looks like. You look like a moron for having not put an indiscriminate amount of cash to work in the space and everybody on the outside is kind of laughing at you and trying to pull you in.” Michael — 8:20: “When I read your article on Blockchain, one of the things that really pulled it home to me because you were going back and talking about the late 1990s is how little fun is had towards the end of a cycle. It’s just miserable. There’s nothing genuinely creative going on, it’s all about the bottom line or the top line. Everybody’s expectations go beyond what is possible. It’s just a lot of stress and aggravation. Good luck keeping employees.” Michael — 12:40: “I always say to people it’s okay to do something stupid and reckless with your money as long as you follow two rules: One is you put a small amount of money […] in it. Number two is you remember that you’re doing something stupid and reckless. The mistake people make is they think that they’ve found the answer and they overcommit.” Paul — 13:00: “The people we know who are very into Blockchain who are kind of rational about it basically are like, hey, you’re going to the track. See what happens. But you don’t put your kids’ college funds in it.” Michael — 16:50: “I publish my weekly thoughts on markets. […] I put together a sort of chatty weekly piece, just saying look, this is what’s happened in the last week and this is why it matters or this is why it doesn’t.” Michael — 17:25: “[Macro] is a funny term. It’s like saying what does ‘technology’ mean? It’s a very broad term, so the way we look at it is we think at any given point in time [it is] the things which are worth focussing on. Obviously I’ll always talk about the S&amp;P 500 in my job because that’s the starting point for whether it’s been a good week or a bad week as far as most people are concerned. We’ll focus on a particular sector we think is really in motion […] and ignore things that might be interesting but we feel 25 people have already written about.” Rich — 19:45: “Technology is seeping into — or the world is seeping into — […] the formulas around valuing technology that come from really dramatically different places like foreign policy and security. If you had told me that 15 years ago that global geopolitics would affect Microsoft Excel…” Michael — 24:20: “Gatsby is still, to me, a great book about cycles. It could only get written at that point in time, it’s another cycle on top of everything else. LINKS  Marketfield Asset...

#0134: Dealing With Cycles: A Conversation with Michael Shaoul

We recently launched a huge project with New York’s public transit system, The MTA. Like the transit system the project was big and complex. This week we are joined by Product Manager Jojo Giltsoff who kept the MTA project running smoothly. She shares her tips and tools for managing big and busy teams and projects. She also teaches us how to find a healthy balance between being hypercritical and being an advocate for your team and explains why you should be writing down all the positive things people say about you.&nbsp; Links:&nbsp;

Level Up by Writing Things Down: Jojo Giltsoff on Managing Large Teams

&nbsp; Microsoft used to be all about Windows but in recent years we’ve seen a huge transformation in the company. They went from thinking monolithically to branching out and making new connections with users on several different devices. This week we break down how Microsoft’s failures and new leadership led to a more diversified list of products and how humility helped them move forward.&nbsp; Links:&nbsp;      &nbsp;

Flight Simulator: On The World of Microsoft

Industry veterans Gina Trapani and Chris LoSacco chat with their friends and team about technology, business, and leadership. Decades of experience inform their insightful discussions about what digital transformation really means. Created by Postlight, the digital strategy, product, design, and engineering firm they lead in New York City.

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