Orbital Explore: Design Kickoff

Afterthoughts from Re-wiring Distribution Networks

Last week, I had the privilege of joining my friend Karin Chien in a conversation on "Re-Wiring Distribution Networks" hosted by The International Documentary Association as part of their Getting Real Now summer series. I'm excited to join my friend + award winning independent producer and distributor

Creative Friction

There's a pattern that I've seen show up again and again in pretty much any creative process—whether it's in startups, education, or my own collaborative work—which can be somewhat counter-intuitive. That, when you hit a point of friction, you need to keep

Progress vs. Feeling Better

There've been no shortage of ad-hoc mentorship programs and opportunities being created by companies and brands all in the service of helping to level the playing field. They're very much well-intentioned, but context really matters here. If you're a solo individual who is offering

The World is Two-Way

One of the trends that began to emerge close to a decade ago was the notion of the mission-driven tech startup. These startups weren't "boring" enterprise software companies, they were somehow having a social impact, broadly defined. Meaning they were elevating quality of life, unlocking new

Getting Back in the Saddle

This is going to be more of a personal update than a true "note", but I wanted to get back into the swing of publicly blogging again, as I've only posted twice in the past month. So, I thought I'd start by explaining how

100,000 Lives

As we near 100,000 lives lost due to COVID19, and the New York Times marked the milestone by remembering 1,000 of those lives in their print edition: There's an online version as well.

New and Different

When you're creating a product or service that is not only new, but different from the norm, you'll find yourself bouncing back and forth between a variety of cascading design tradeoffs. On the one hand, you need to be careful about letting your practical sense regarding

iPad, Pencil and Paper

I've been deep in ideation for the past two months, and have been using that opportunity to try out a bunch of new software tools. By far, the tool that has been the most useful during this process has been the combination of the iPad, Apple Pencil and

Teaching People to Work in Public

The topic of Working in Public came up recently on Twitter and it's timely given some of the things I've been working on, so I thought I'd walk through a few observations and lessons learned from attempting to teach people to do this. First,

Getting Unstuck

When you're working through new ideas, inevitably you'll reach a point where you get stuck.  Left unchecked, you'll start thinking in circles until you reach exhaustion and then stop moving altogether.  Moreover, you start to waste time.   Here's what I've

Investing in Alumni Networks

I wrote previously about Pandemic Entrepreneurship—ways in which people have been forced to change in order to adapt to the new world we live in, and I don't think there's a better example of it than the restaurant industry. Carbone (nyc restaurant) seems to have

Work, Learning and Support

As previously mentioned, I've been researching successful models of both remote working and remote learning, and have found a common theme to be designing asynchronous interaction models from the group up vs. simply copying what you do in-person to an online medium. This is why you're

Last Lecture

It's May, which amongst other things means that we're in "last lecture" season. For teachers, it's an incredibly special moment—you're in the home stretch of the semester and there's an extra energy boost you get in terms

Shedding your Defaults

One of the hardest parts of working in a new domain is that it takes time to figure out what will remain useful from your past experience vs. what no longer applies vs. what will lead you astray. This is a significant problem when you transition from a world where

Being Fair vs. Being Right

One of the challenges of being in the idea phase—where you're considering a number of options and attempting to find the path forward—is that there's a pitfall in rushing to an answer. This manifests in two ways.   Sometimes there's a tendency to

Asynchronous Interaction Design

A few months ago, as cities began going into lockdown, I started researching best practices in working with distributed teams. There were a plethora of experienced managers hosting webinars and sharing their lessons learned over the years. Here are a few of the things I learned along the way: * 3/

Making Sense of the Data

There's been no shortage of data flying around to help characterize what's happening right now.  None of it is really a huge surprise, but it's helpful to look at these different charts as a way to internalize the severity of the dislocation happening. At

Inbound vs. Outbound

While I've been working on next steps, I've also been plugging away at redesigning the underlying infrastructure and processes around how I communicate with people: family and friends, followers and friends on Twitter, various networks that I'm a part of, communities that I'

Words and Metaphors

One undercurrent of the work I'm doing has been an iterative process of figuring out the right words to use for the various projects I'm considering.  This comes up not just in how we name projects, but also the processes and phases contained within it. Particularly

The Half of It

Alice Wu's first film in 15 years, THE HALF OF IT, came out on Netflix last Friday, and I tweeted about it, along with some profiles on Alice, here: 🙌 Tonight's the night! 15 years after her first feature—the groundbreaking and iconic film Saving Face—@thatalicewu

Weekly Reflection Ritual

For the past few months, I've largely been in an iterative explore loop rehashing the possibilities of what I'd like to work on next. I've been considering a pretty broad range of options, almost too broad.  However, this past week felt like an inflection

Time to Next Iteration

Over the past two months, I've been working with my friend Warren on untangling the past 6 years of Orbital into a smaller set of paths worth exploring. It's been a fun process to learn how to collaborate remotely during a pandemic, all while you'

Pandemic Entrepreneurship

The past two months have been particularly hard on the food and beverage industry, everyone from restaurants and bars to the distributors. With a relaxation in regulation, bars have started selling to-go cocktails and breweries are now doing residential deliveries.  Many restaurants have completely overhauled their menus for to-go orders,

Program Design

Whereas the early part of my career focused on the design of software products—everything from how a user accomplishes a task through the features and functionality of your product, to how you incentivize and constrain certain behaviors as users engage with others—most of my work in the past