Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Learning Through Experience

In the last couple of weeks I've been working on a series of labs for different groups spread across a few cities. I am designing them as interactive experiences because we learn the most when we participate. Thinking back to the most creative times in my life, I can draw a few dotted lines to moments when I've been fully immersed in an experience. I still chuckle when I visualize the look on the face on my mom at discovering that I had taken apart the few toys received as gifts to make something else out of the parts. The... Read more →

Exist Strategy

So much of the current zeitgeist in technology and business circles (think about how we still have marketing campaigns) follows a predictable roadmap -- build minimum viable product, get users/audience through freemium model, as many as possible to then monetize. The ultimate strategy is an exit strategy, it seems. Jim Collins called it Built to Flip: We have arrived at a unique moment in history: the intersection of an unprecedented abundance of capital and an explosion of Internet-related business ideas. But, for all of the incredible opportunities unleashed by this combination, there is one monumental problem: The entrepreneurial mind-set has... Read more →

Patience, Persuasion, and the Pursuit of Better

Making Sense: From communities of practice to collaborations of purpose, working together elevates everyone's game. Because access has more value than information. This week we took a look at emergent networks on #Slack. Is blogging killing planning? Ad Literate: the plannersphere has created a kind of intellectual soup for a global community of brand thinkers to feed off, contribute to and create value from. As such it is and has the power to significantly improve the quality of planners and planning in the brand advice business. For my money blogging and planning are a marriage made in heaven. GV Guide... Read more →

Five Attributes of Being an Expert

Experience makes your process less expensive. It's the time-tested tip of the spear that helps get to the point faster. The person implementing it knows how to string along tasks to serves the business, and not the other way around. One of the best definitions I found for experience is that it is the act of trying, the practical knowledge acquired through direct observation and/or participation. When situations are experiential, they create a space or give us the tools to try something. Good experiences place your in a situation or context under which you attract, or pull, events and opportunities.... Read more →

Access has More Value than Information

Who has the time to look through the 2,654 posts I have on this blog? Many of them are relevant to current needs and filled with valuable information, yet even a powerful search box is not going to solve for connecting your specific issue with a post here. Plus problems tend to be more complex to solve based on changes in circumstances. But make a comment, engage in conversation and you access the key -- the person who has been thinking about similar issues and knows what kind of information would be helpful. Likely a combination of ideas and resources... Read more →

Taking Good Advice

One of the main difficulties in taking good advice is that it comes from other experiences and contexts -- like a language. You have to literally break it down into its components to rebuild it and adapt it to your situation so you can use it. Then build routines around the process to get better continuously. Two options, then: 1) either learn to process information better so you can do the work; 2) or learn by doing with others who have mastered it. Either one involves commitment to change. It is no chance that the two emerging forms of getting... Read more →

Creativity Must be Made Accessible for Consumption

“Creativity has many definitions. For me, creativity is solving problems in new ways and conceiving new ways of looking at the world. Creativity can be expressed in many forms, like art, science, and thought. But creativity is all too often undiscoverable and incomprehensible. Art, without distribution and discovery, moves nobody. Did it ever exist? Science, without clear explanation and advocacy, won’t be understood by the masses. Will it make an impact?” Scott Belsky, the Founder of Behance and author of Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, says that creativity has a fundamental problem -- that it’s... Read more →

Why Face-to-Face Contact Still Matters

“Research shows that people who feel socially disconnected are at a greater risk of dying young – especially if they are men. Women are more prone to seek out and build longstanding, intimate personal relationships: within their extended families, through lifelong friendships, in their neighbourhoods. That is one reason – there are others, of course – why in every industrialised country, women outlive men by an average of five to seven years. This gender imbalance is visible wherever older people spend their time; in parks, libraries, churches, community halls and seniors’ tour groups, women over the age of 60 outnumber... Read more →

Engineering Strategy, Untold Stories, and a Magical Wristband

Making Sense: I was sorry to miss the Google Firestarters event (did not go to SxSW) because I value and appreciate the importance of partnering with Experience Designers in my work. The highlights from the notes reflect my take as well well done, Neil.) And speaking of untold stories -- with the publication of a new book on Steve Jobs we are regaled with more details about his work and relationships. Mr. Cook continues to impress me on multiple levels, and so does Fred Wilson. It is about the people. Google Firestarters Austin - Engineering Strategy - The Event. Neil... Read more →

Connecting through Work

I was reading the Wired article about TED# and how over the years the talks have become more anxiety-inducing. It's sad that we would have a company set up booths around the country to help us have honest conversations. With all the talk about transparency and being real, is the gap between what we say and what we do widening? Do we need permission and a special stage for something as human as communicating and connecting? Attend any conference in North America and you are exposed to the spectrum -- from the top things you are doing wrong to the... Read more →