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March 31, 2018
2

Announcing The Krishnamurti Total Freedom Podcast

By | Blog, Mindfulness, Uncategorized | No Comments

After reading Jiddu Krishnamurti’s book, Total Freedom and being an avid dog-earing note taker I have decided that instead of just keeping these highlights to myself and in my Moleskine it would be a fun exploration to try out podcasting. It is not a podcast with any interviews and is simply me reading and talking about small excerpts of my favorite parts of the book.  I am trying it out and I think that it is very helpful for me to put these notes out into the world and to speak about my thoughts around the writings and how I connect to them.

I have reached out to the Krishnamurti Foundation and have no plans of monetizing this, I simply hope to share his teachings with anyone who is interested.

See the episodes here

Total Freedom Podcast
December 26, 2017
3

Year in Review: 2017

By | Blog, Life Optimization | No Comments

2017 Year in Review

Also very noteworthy items that didn’t make the infographic are becoming a Godfather and deleting Facebook.

The ending date for the above metrics is December 26th.

Thanks to the data resources and software companies:

  1. Suunto
  2. Strava
  3. VeloViewer
  4. Relive
  5. Insight Timer
  6. Headspace
  7. Goodreads
  8. Way of Life

Icons provided by The Noun Project and the Creative Commons:

  1. Agave By Erick Miranda Vazquez
  2. Coconut By Royyan Wijaya, ID
  3. Teotiqucan icon by Denis Sazhin
  4. Mexico City, Jerusalem, By Befoolish
  5. Aspen Leaf By anbileru adaleru
  6. Bike by Karlina Bueno
  7. Mountains By Adrien Coquet

Influenced by The Feltron Report 

Velo Viewer Bike Infographic

Relive ‘Whale of a ride’

Relive ‘Shredspedition SF 2017’

December 5, 2017
4
4 Things That You Need to Know About the Head of Growth Role in Startups

4 Things You Need to Know About the Head of Growth Role in Startups

By | Blog, Product, Sales | No Comments

The first hires in a startup are almost like founders, they shouldn’t be seen as people you have to manage but rather they should be seen as a critical piece to building the foundation and future success of your company. So, at what point does the founder who is the visionary and the leader realize that they should bring someone else in who specializes particularly on growth? I have outlined four topics to consider if you are an aspiring Head of Growth marketer or an early stage founder to help think about this burgeoning new role in organizations.

1-Inflection and  Inertia

I think that there is an important inflection point between requiring growth when the company has positive energy and when it doesn’t, meaning that a company could hire a Head of Growth when everything is going right, or when everything is stalling. The problem here is that naturally, the leader of the company will not think it necessary to bring someone else in if there is a consistent forward trajectory, and so more often than not, the Head of Growth typically comes on board because the founders have yet to find sustainable recurring revenue or the right product-market fit that matches the existing business framework. The Head of Growth sometimes needs to act as the buffer between the founder’s extreme goals (or often unreachable objectives) and the market’s blind forces for demand.

2-Winning Mindset 

I believe that one of the most important aspects a Head of Growth can provide in the first years of a startup is a winning mindset which can help drive the entire organization through the trough of sorrow. The trough of sorrow is why marketing is crucial for a startup because it is a place that startups will most likely remain until they figure out their messaging, positioning and user experience in relation to what is actually needed in the market.

Trough of Sorrow

The Head of Growth should ideally help to reel back the neurotic mindset that often times comes with being a founder. The constant churning and optimization of what founders believe to be right and the impulsive actions surrounding those beliefs can potentially cause a dramatic decrease in growth when this mentality is brought into what should be the process of building a proper recurring growth foundation. For example, making real-time changes to the website’s messaging and continually adding more user interactions to the product, or making keyword changes based on assumptions with no research or data to back them up. Basically, there is a logic and validation to making such changes where first-time founders boldly make leaps where there should be a framework or thought process behind the actions and so it is important that the founder or CEO is working hand in hand with the Head of Growth. I have known of many founders that accidentally sabotage the efforts of a startup through their desire to manipulate reality into the justification for their unique methodology. Growth is not something that happens just by chance and if you and your organization find sustainable growth beyond the plateau that you may currently be in- it will be in part thanks to an alignment of thoughts and execution in relation to the product and the market.

3-Metrics

Growth Marketing Metrics

Working as the Head of Growth in my last organization I set up 100 attributes to track through Mixpanel, even tracking the wifi network names of those users who connected. Now, by no means do I think that tracking more than 100 metrics is necessary for marketing, but data is data and data is the new oil and so it doesn’t hurt to gather as many touch points as possible. Once the tracking infrastructure and systems are set up this allows certain employees to focus on the most important metrics, which should help drive the company forward.

What are the key metrics that companies need to hit to survive?

Monthly Active Users, Revenue….

you name the metric that investors are looking for to propel you to the next level of funding and chances are it is a growth metric.

4-Product

Focus on your product core value

I believe that a solid Head of Growth should provide innovative product recommendations that help increase network effects, bring new marketing concepts to the table, and set up new ways to track and analyze data. There are no quick tricks, this is a methodology that requires the founders to be open to change in relation to greater market demands, which any good Head of Growth will have a firm grasp on.

Questions to think about when building a product:

  1. How many people do you need to build and maintain the product?
  2. How much are you going to charge for the product?
  3. How many customers do you think you’ll have at the end of year one … and two?

“Growth can be a daunting task to handle but one thing is sure, you can’t have sustainable growth with a bad product. You need to reach a point where the usage and behavior you see can be replicable —  as you acquire more users engagement will not deteriorate. Why is that? A product with poor engagement that grows is not a good thing because you will reach a point where the users leaving will start to offset the number of new users and a growth plateau will follow. If you have good organic acquisition but poor engagement, this is an opportunity for you to take a step back.” –Maxime Salomon

Questions to think about when hiring a Head of Growth:

  1. Am I, as the founder truly open to having a growth mindset?
  2. Will my organization enable this Head of Growth hire to innovate and to think outside of the traditional box and to work across departments?
  3. Are we open to looking at the data objectively to consider new verticals?

Hopefully, this is a helpful starting point for anyone looking into either hiring or working as the Head of Growth in an early stage startup. Ideally, the founding team will gladly trade equity in return for growth and the future success of the organization.

Resources and further reading on growth in startups:

  1. Every Company Needs a Growth Manager
  2. Employee Equity: How Much?
  3. Startup Growth Calculator
  4. Paul Graham Growth
  5. When to Hire a Head of Growth?
November 6, 2017
1
WhyShopsyFailed

Why Shopsy Failed: A startup autopsy

By | Blog, Startup | No Comments

We were one of the first to allow for Purchasing Products on Instagram… had $200k investment from early Facebook employees and had brands like Lilly Pulitzer, Kate Spade, Sephora, Lorna Jane, Tieks, Jack Rogers, Lululemon, Tobi, Alex & Chloe, BaubleBar, ThreadSence, and Ruche…so what happened?

When brands with millions of followers tell their customer base to “go shop the link on the profile page” it creates a new marketing funnel by consolidating the awareness, the consideration, and the conversion, which in turn dramatically increases conversion rates. Shopsy was a double-sided marketplace where brands could tag their Instagram pictures to link up to the exact web page for a product and then customers could follow and shop each brand. After a year of hard fought product and business development, we finally found our beachhead and it had network effects built-in by creating what can be likened to an “Instagram Landing Page” that mirrored a brands exact Instagram post, where each picture directly linked to the individual product through the one hyperlink that Instagram allowed.

I didn’t want to publish this or think about this in depth again so much that I began writing this post before October 16, 2016, and ended up coming around to editing and sitting with my initial write up finally again towards the middle of 2017.

It began without full transparency and a lack of understanding about how to operate at an early stage, high growth potential company. We lacked a focus since everyone was working other full-time jobs. We were energized and idealistic. Starting off one of the biggest mistakes was outsourcing the development which ended up to causing a lot of issues down the road. Our leadership was constantly in a push-pull tension with too many of the same traits that weren’t complimentary. We needed guidance and humility and perhaps another programmer. We would have benefited from being in an incubator so that we could work together and focus. Building two-sided marketplaces takes serious strategic thinking. I believe there were at least two main factors that contributed to our downfall:

  1. Resources. Apparently, according to our Crunchbase profile, we had $200,000 investment from early Facebook employees. We did not leverage it properly. I did not even know that it was funding that could be utilized for the growth of the company and if we were to have done a proper PR push things might have been completely different. Having a clear budget where the founders fully understand the financial roadmap and what it takes to reach certain milestones is critical.
  2. Planning. If we were to have outlined and answered certain questions like; what are we doing, why are we doing it, what’s the funding going to be used for, what are our assumptions, and how are we going to validate them we would have been able to move with a common purpose instead of wasting valuable time having these topics weave into other discussions.

Ups and Downs

Shopsy went through many ups and downs, after merging with Glowpanda to bring some energy into “shoppable pictures” which it did because of the hustle from our marketing manager and community manager in bringing some leading fashion brands on board. The initial months of development and outreach seemed to be going well until the head of social headed out of town to pursue other interests and then a month later the marketing momentum faded away as the complex two-sided value proposition became difficult to communicate with initial funds dwindling. We were passionate and young. The team admittedly “checked out” after ApplePay rolled out, as a lot of energy was spent on adding the universal cart functionality, a feature that merchants still struggle to wrap their heads around as the fight to own the conversions still wages on (particularly on mobile).

The initial product was built by outside developers to get a working product, so our technical co-founder wasn’t able to easily make updates because of the multiple databases, and various pagination, so the learning here is that if you have a technical product it is better to have someone do the development in-house instead of using bits and pieces from outsourced developers who may not necessarily be tied to the end product.

 

 
 
 
 
 

 

Managing energy and my intentions

My energy had been substantially drained from the year-long Glowpanda stint where I was trying to live in San Francisco on affiliate marketing revenue (do not attempt this), working with a remote co-founder, and working very hard on explaining this new opportunity to people. At the point where I met the Shopsy co-founders, it felt like I had been running a marathon straight for about two years and I was just fatigued. I worked hard to not only create the concept with my technical co-founder, but to turn it into a reality, and a profitable reality all without any funding, this was hard. Secondarily, I was spending my time on my paying job as the only marketing employee at SeeControl, and Internet of Things software platform that eventually got acquired by Autodesk.

My intentions needed to be different. There was a part of me that didn’t want the venture to be truly successful because I felt that it was my concept and for me and the only technical co-founder to have 10% ownership each was shorting the fact that we not only created the industry but would be the backbone of the product moving forward. My ego corrupted relationships, my work, and my communication and when I felt my control slipping away I tried to hang on to the remaining proprietary knowledge I had by passive-aggressively communicating. I wanted and needed someone else to guide for a while, however, this lead to me becoming more and more aloof when I felt like there was no clear direction.

Unidentified data objects

As things hit rock bottom and we were seldom speaking to each other I kept looking into Google Analytics for a solution to just jump out at me.  I did not know a lot about analyzing data and I never established a clear or accurate KPI. After months of just willing these charts to go anywhere,  sure enough, I eventually found a little blip on the radar,  I discovered that there was a substantial amount of traffic coming from just one of our clients. It was a spike that showed promise. I should have brought this to the attention of everyone on the team, but I didn’t know what it meant, if it was repeatable, if it was monetizable and I didn’t let the data speak for itself. I am in favor of transparency across the organization when it comes to sharing metrics, visions, and direction but I have also learned that there are benefits to keeping certain strategies to within the founder’s circle that help for stability and focus for task-driven team members. To find out that there was traffic could have been the spark we needed to rally around and turn things around, but it was too late and when I went to speak to the other co-founder he was dead set on closing down shop and there was another company that began executing on the same feature.

Ecosystem Mindset

The search for scalable revenue can be found within the walls of an up and coming application that is a part shop, and part enterprise picture platform. We should have pushed PR big time, but we didn’t. We had an article or two written but it would have been a whole different world had we put out some press. I drafted up a press release “Shopsy Successfully Monetizes Instagram” but never had the chance to publish it and distribute it. The user’s mindset may still be far away from typing in their credit card information to make a purchase before they hop out of their Uber, en-route to work. Social commerce — or the ability to purchase products and services directly through a social media platform is becoming increasingly accepted among today’s consumers but is still not a trusted medium where you would link your payments to pictures. Think about how seemingly logical Google Wallet was and yet, consumers were not able to fully adopt it because of the lack of comfort and trust in the new process. When the brands realize that they are just a couple of clicks away from being merely a manufacturer because Instagram will control the majority of the discovery and education funnel and manipulate where users get targeted, while Facebook with a $355 billion dollar valuation creates the Amazon effect by removing the middle-men.

Some of the companies that I believe Shopsy directly influenced are:

  1. Shopping from Instagram
  2. Spring
  3. FourSixty
  4. Keep
  5. LiketoKnowit

In Conclusion:

Here is what I would have done differently:

  1. I would have had each founder fill out the V2MoM
  2. I would have created a hypothesis, then tested and verified the assumptions
  3. I would have acted more like a leader by articulating clear objectives after thinking through the problems
  4. I would have created one clear KPI that everyone in the organization is aware of all of the time
  5. I would have charged brands after 30 days
  6. I would have had more humility

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from this experience and think that it is important to write out the most accurate narrative of what happened so that everyone can move on and adapt in a healthy way. It could have worked had I known what I know now. Of course, there were a lot of different factors that the rest of the team members experienced and played a role in and this post is for me to learn from my personal mistakes and to be able to fully move on and better understand the situation. I do not place blame on anyone from our team and realize that I have been extremely blessed to even be able to go through this personal learning experience and to get the chance to work and share my passions with people. I appreciate everyone’s contributions who worked on this. There is still room for mobile monetization and my technical co-founder and I still have many of the pieces of the puzzle that would work when put into the right situation (think Snapchat monetization). I am happy because it helped spawn a new method to deliver value through social commerce by creating a win-win scenario for both brands and communities and hopefully helped sway the mobile monetization landscape slightly away from display ads and more towards commerce.

September 28, 2017
1

My 10 Day Silent Vipassana Meditation

By | Blog, Life Optimization, Meditation, Mindfulness | No Comments

It was early June and I was in Mexico City with my good friends for Dylan’s bachelor party and somewhere amidst our escapades in between Franky’s bar and our well-kept Bodega rooftop the conversation swayed towards spirituality where Jason and Erik mentioned the low budget edits of a videotaped voice from the leader of one of the Vipassana retreats that they both participated in, one in India and the other in California. Several months before in San Francisco I had been searching for ways to find my true self after realizing I was in yet another unrewarding job scenario and looking to learn how to better speak with compassion, where I wrote in my Moleskin that “I must first enable myself to live a happy life” and after Youtubeing how to go about this I ended up going to sleep one night to the sound of a jolly Burmese man chanting in a language that I had never heard of before and speaking knowledgeably about finding your truth. Little did I know that this man was the one who helped bring Vipassana from Burma and India to the west and would be the voice I was looking forward to at the end of every sitting. Without much further thought about it I returned back to San Francisco after a great last night in Mexico City filled with empanadas and Mezcal. The next day back the Golden State Warriors won an NBA championship and I decided to apply to The North Fork Vipassana Center, which is located about 3.5 hours south of San Francisco as Jason had recommended this location as being one of the nicest. Since the next course was listed as being waitlisted and starting two days later and in addition to being a Vietnamese/English course, I applied thinking there was a very slim chance that I would get in, but the next day I got an email that said I had been accepted. So I texted Dylan and Jason to let them know as the realization and gravitas of the juxtaposition of going from 10 days in Mexico City to sitting silently and meditating for 10 days hit me. Jason gave me a call to provide me with some good advice and didn’t let me squirrel out of making the leap and I am very grateful for his guidance.

The first night was just to get a brief orientation and to get settled into the cabins, where I and 5 other housemates each had our own private rooms that were more luxurious than I was expecting after seeing one of my buddy Joel’s pictures of his wooden pillow on a concrete slab from his Vipassana experience overseas. The next day and every following day began at 4:00 am with a well-planned schedule to keep us active, or inactive accordingly until about 9:00 pm with 10 hours of sitting and meditation a day. Each day during the week of the 18th was over 100 degrees and all I had was one pair of pants since as I found out on the ride down that you aren’t allowed to wear shorts in the meditation hall. One day just to give my Lululemon sweats a break I wore my running shorts and wrapped a blanket around my waist, it was an awesome monkish look but apart from the one breeze I caught on a walk down to the lunch room and a couple tilted heads wondering if I was, in fact, wearing a bed sheet, it didn’t provide the fresh air movement I was hoping for. Luckily the meditation hall was nicely air-conditioned.

The first two days were about focusing on the natural Anapana breath coming in and out at the tips of the nostrils and then in day 3 and 4, we moved to practice the actual Vipassana technique where we matched the breath to the flowing sensations on the body. The beauty of this breathing technique is that it helps with accepting things as they are, by not trying to change or force the breath, the body, or the natural conditions and other people in the environment. After day 4,  it was incredible to walk out of the meditation hall to see what was one of the most beautiful sunsets with a pink/purple lotus flower hue encompassing the golden-domed pagoda on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year where the sun is farthest from the earth and a day that is often associated with change, nature and new beginnings around the globe.

The animals were amongst us the whole time with the monks placing twigs to signal the ant paths to not step on their bustling ant highways, many friends found black widow spiders and I dealt with a scorpion above my bed but at no point were any animals harmed along the way. On day 7 many people got access to meditate in the pagoda, each person who qualified through persistent practice in the hall would be assigned a dark cell that was roughly a 5×7 pitch black room akin to solitary confinement where I enjoyed the silence, but it was not easy. The saying “going through the motions” is something that struck me as it took all of my mental fortitudes to prevent my monkey mind from cutting corners and I had the realization that I had been doing this in a number of important areas throughout my life. Day 8 was a huge breakthrough day for me after it got awfully loud and more creative than I ever could have imagined in that dark, silent cell. There was a time where I cried, where my heart felt like it was going to explode, and where I just wanted to keep sleeping or lay down, but I stuck with it and did the work and it was just what I needed to experience.

After several days of sitting and not being able to fully sit cross-legged, I literally experienced the metaphors that ring from generation to generation about having a strong backbone, staying grounded, and keeping a stiff upper lip.

I learned that sometimes doing less and stepping away from all the conditioning can help move everything forward with clarity. It was one of the most challenging and most rewarding experiences that I have ever had and I hope to continue the practice of self-improvement through learning and working hard on understanding myself.

—

Everything below is taken directly from the Vipassana marketing collateral.

Vipassana is one of India’s most ancient meditation techniques. Long lost to humanity, it was rediscovered by Gotama the Buddha more than 2500 years ago. Vipassana means seeing things as they really are. It is the process of self-purification by self-observation. One begins by observing the natural breath to concentrate the mind. With a sharpened awareness, one proceeds to observe the changing nature of body and mind and experiences the universal truths of impermanence, suffering, and egolessness. This truth-realization by direct experience is the process of purification. The entire path (Dhamma) is a universal remedy for universal problems and has nothing to do with any organized religion or sectarianism. For this reason, it can be practiced freely by everyone, at any time, in any place, without conflict due to race, community or religion, and it will prove equally beneficial to one and all.

What Vipassana is not:

  • It is not a rite or ritual based on blind faith.
  • It is neither an intellectual nor a philosophical entertainment.
  • It is not a rest cure, a holiday, or an opportunity for socializing.
  • It is not an escape from the trials and tribulation of everyday life.

What Vipassana is:

  • It is a technique that will eradicate suffering.
  • It is a method of mental purification which allows one to face life’s tensions and problems in a calm, balanced way.
  • It is an art of living that one can use to make positive contributions to society.

Vipassana meditation aims at the highest spiritual goals of total liberation and full enlightenment; its purpose is never simply to cure physical disease. However, as a by-product of mental purification, many psychosomatic diseases are eradicated. In fact, Vipassana eliminates the three causes of all unhappiness: craving, aversion, and ignorance. It is a tool to help learn about myself. It helps overcome the psychosomatic and psychogenic symptoms which are physical illnesses that are believed to arise from emotional or mental stressors, or from psychological or psychiatric disorders. Whenever negativity arises in the mind just observe it, face it. Burying the negativity in the unconscious will not eradicate it, and allowing it to manifest as unwholesome physical or vocal actions will only create more problems. But if you just observe, then the defilement passes away and you are free of it. We stop reacting and multiplying our misery.

Learn More Here: https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/schedules/schmahavana

If you find this blog helpful or think that someone else might, please share it on Twitter.

July 10, 2017
4
The Top 6 In App Messaging Platforms for Push Notifications and Emails

The Top 6 In App Messaging Platforms for Push Notifications and Emails

By | Blog, Marketing Software | No Comments

After creating my own iOS app and heading up growth for startup companies I have found that there are a number of tools and platforms that can be used to improve companies marketing automation and messaging capabilities. In my research, I have seen certain tools that have a better UI but lack necessary functionality and vice versa.  It was surprisingly difficult to get clear details and pricing on many of the tools out there and so I wanted to provide some quick information to help in researching marketing automation and messaging platforms, particularly for iOS consumer applications.

  1. AppBoy:

 

Appboy seems to be the best tool for In-App messages because the mobile focus and functions they provide in comparison to the other comparable tools. Appboy’s pricing is based on two inputs Data Points and # of Emails sent. They don’t charge based on MAUs/Profiles. The MAU plan will charge you $100/10K MAUs. The lowest pricing to fully unlock their drag and drop if-this-then-that Canvas and Email will be $15K/YR. That would include:

  • 2M Emails
  • 120M Data Points*
  • Unlimited Push Notifications, In-App Messages, API Calls and Webhooks

*Data Points include Sessions, Updates to Custom Attributes, and Custom Events.

  1. Intercom:

 

Intercom has worked hard to develop into a full customer support and marketing offering from where it started mainly has a desktop chat window. Their focus is still mainly on communications, but isn’t that where all great marketing and customer support stems from? The pricing is $6,168 a year for around 25k users. 

  1. Kahuna:

Kahuna enables B2C marketers to engage consumers across push, email, in-app, web push, and social channels effortlessly. Their Enterprise pricing, more details, and demos are gated and I didn’t find the patience to wait to find out how they could help since the other competitors had this information more readily available.  

  1. Iterable:

Their pricing starts at $2000/month for up to 50,000 subscribers and includes unlimited email and push messaging.

  1. LeanPlum:

LeanPlum ties together Messaging, Automation, A/B Testing, and Analytics — all in one integrated platform. The base pricing tier I found was 50,000 MAU’s $40-50k per year to start.

  1. Smooch

Smooch is a good tool for e-commerce companies but also would not be best for anyone starting a consumer application. They have a free “Labs” pricing tier and a $495 “Growth” tier before getting to the “Enterprise” level.

As a side note: I believe that OneSignal and UrbanAirship are more engineering tools that will require more development because they have less front end tools for marketers.

Key things to look for:

  1. How user-friendly is the interface that you will be going into on a daily basis?
  2. How do they calculate their pricing? These companies have very smart employees and understand that charging by users can add up.
  3. Don’t buy into any platform that touts too much Artifical Intelligence.
  4. How many options do they provide for robust in-app messaging to your users?
May 10, 2017
3
Educational Apps For Developing Student Creativity

Educational Apps For Developing Student Creativity

By | Blog, Marketing Software, Product, Startup | No Comments
As students get settled in for the semester and look to transition from all the fun in the sun, there are plenty of solutions out there to help educators reach students at all levels and in new ways. From software to hardware and everything in between, the ever-evolving tools used in education can help students creatively shape their understanding more powerfully than ever before.

“ Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” — Einstein

The iPad is becoming an increasingly important educational tool, empowering students and teachers alike to teach and learn in new and more interactive ways. The core of this is the eco-system created by the ever-expanding diverse range of Apps, which allow for new and targeted experiences. There are thousands of education apps, books, and courses, so lessons come to life like never before. The iPad has software designed exclusively for educators, so you can manage your classroom and collaborate with students in all-new ways. In addition to this, students can take their learning beyond the classroom with the iPad. So how do you make sure you keep their attention?

Curate information in an information rich world.

We all start with a blank canvas in this world. Children learn from their parents about how to adapt and function towards a particular endeavor. The internet has unlocked unlimited amounts of information and has shifted our thinking from needing to remember critical information to needing to know how to access the right information at the right time. The curation of information and teaching the next generation how to curate information will lead to faster learning, better experiences and less frustration. Many apps are extremely helpful in focusing a specific learning experience, and this can be very effective in helping students learn. Thinking in silos can be good to remain focused, but it is more important to also teach the beginner’s mindset, the mindset to understand how things are ideated and created without the help of all the resources that have been built by others.

Empower original thinking, and transform ideas into reality.

With so many options out there how can you even begin?

It is important to understand what you would like out of any tool, in this case, an application. So if you want your students to get better at drawing, you obviously look for drawing tools. But what about a more creative output, a more colorful and dynamic tool that is not necessary apart from a black and white niche topic? Yes, drawing increases creativity, with that being said drawing and sketching are not only for design students and artists but is a critical piece in any student’s evolution of original thought. This list intends to bridge both education, productivity, and knowledge all while enabling imagination and empowering original ideas. It is not meant to be an exhaustive and comprehensive list, rather just another sign to point the next generation in the right direction.

Use learning tools that are as visually compelling as the entertainment apps competing for the students limited attention.

The Design Museum Collection

The Design Museum presents its 25 Years anniversary update. On the 25 of each month, the museum will release exclusive interview videos with some of the industry’s most important designers talking about their favorite item from the Design Museum Collection.

Green Screen by Do Ink

The app lets you combine photos and videos from the camera roll with live images from your iPad or iPhone’s camera. With Green Screen by Do Ink, you can tell a story, explain an idea, and express yourself in truly creative and unique ways.

Mindmeister

This app makes it easy to map out the relationships between ideas. For complex group projects, it can also provide a way to quickly visualize and create a project outline, together.

Shadow Puppet

Easily Capture and Share Student Work. Create videos in the classroom with Shadow Puppet Edu. Students capture learning with photos and videos of physical work, or by adding digital creations. Everything is uploaded and kept organized for teachers.

June 14, 2015
6

Everyone and Everything is Media

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Everyone and everything is media.

Online consumption, creation and collaboration has risen sharply in recent years, following the ease of access to technology and the rapid spread of digital platforms. The connectivity and transparency has increased to enable the once single direction, top down funnel of producer to consumer to now be a series of nodes that are linked across mediums. We are the nodes, we are the content creators, and we are the consumers of all that is captured through pictures, videos, tweets and texts. It is about connecting to the ever moving humanity and finding and learning more about interesting things all around us. Embrace the fact that everyone will have their fifteen minutes of fame and that you and your network are apart of the new media machine.

January 18, 2015
13

Imagination of Nature

By | Blog | No Comments

As Thoreau’s Walden harnessed the power of nature in the history of western thought, we find profound thinking based off cultural reflections on nature and a cohesion between what is natural for “users” to experience.

Our vision bridges the relation between human imagination and the limitless digital environment.

December 4, 2014
12

Everyone Acts Out of Either Pain or Pleasure

By | Blog | No Comments

The pain-pleasure principle lies at the core of everything you do, and of everything you are. Your beliefs, values and psychological rules are all built upon this principle. The decisions you make, the actions you take, and the habits you indulge in, are all based upon this principle. In fact, every part of your psyche is influenced in some way by the pain-pleasure principle. You are therefore who you are today because of how you have interpreted and acted-upon the experience of pain and pleasure in your life. As we all know action always begins with a decision.

Read more about Exploring the Pain and Pleasure Principle

November 30, 2014
17

Growth Mindset

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You must have a growth mindset if you want to succeed in business.

Those favoring a fixed mindset believe that abilities and intelligence are set in stone, that we have an innate set of talents, which creates an urgency to repeatedly prove those abilities. They perceive failures or setbacks as threatening their sense of worth or their identity. Conversely, those favoring a growth mindset believe that intelligence and abilities can be grown through effort, and tend to view failures or setbacks as opportunities for growth.

The growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things that you can cultivate through your efforts. With fixed traits, success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. When it comes to changing your qualities, you must stretch yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

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