Coming up in Silicon Valley during the 90s and early 2000s was special for a geek like me. I moved to Northern California from LA in 1996. Tech and startups were at the time fledgling in Los Angeles but still exciting. I would later return to help catalyze the startup ecosystem. My goal at the time was to plug into the startup garage capital of the world. By then, there were already storied landmarks that one would have to visit….
The Rise of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Evangelists
Have you noticed the shift in focus of the evolving digital expert? We have… The Gapingvoid team and I have collaborated on many projects over the last decade. Our work has focused on prodding executives and entrepreneurs to think differently in their approaches to digital Darwinism and disruption. Whether we’re speaking to startups about the next big thing, attempting to humanize corporate culture and innovation or exploring ways to engage audiences in more meaningful ways, art and story carry our…
In Pursuit of Relevance
Welcome to irrelevance. Population: most of management by @gapingvoid and @briansolis What does it mean to be relevant today? We live and work in an era of digital Darwinism, where technology and society are evolving away from yesterday’s norms, mindsets, values, and behaviors. Most companies want to be customer and employee centric. Most executives believe that their work matters to employees and customers. But the reality is that customers and employees are changing as times, trends and tastes evolve. They’re…
Customer Experience For The Win #FTW
I had the opportunity to keynote UNITE by Satmetrix recently on the topic of experience design for modern customers. Leading up to the event, I joined the team on a podcast to discuss the topic in-depth. I share it with you here in the hopes that it will help you. Capture the heart, mind and spirt of the new CX…the customer’s experience Ask 10 different executives what CX means and how to improve it, you’ll get at least 15 different…
For Decades, Technology Scaled Businesses Away from People; It’s Time To Bring Customers Closer
For decades, businesses used technology to distance themselves from customers. Systems and processes helped companes automate, grow and scale transactions and service. Moving forward, we have to explore technology and service innovation to deliver against the experiences customers value versus building updated solutions on top of existing paradigms. Innovation is all the work you do to conform to expectations and aspirations of people as they evolve instead of making them conform to your legacy perspectives, assumptions, processes and metrics of…
If you had one hour with Mark Zuckerberg, what would you ask? Here’s what I learned about the state and future of Facebook, data, politics and bad actors
onstine In the wake of Cambridge Analytica, data misappropriation, #deletefacebook, calls for regulation and pending testimony to U.S. Congress, Facebook announced a series of initiatives to restrict data access and also a renewed selfie awareness to focus efforts on protecting people on the platform. What’s more notable however is that Mark Zuckerberg also hosted a last-minute, rare town hall with media and analysts to explain these efforts and also take tough questions for the better part of an hour. Let’s…
The Future of Brand is Experienced and Shared
That one time I was in Genève… What a wonderful way to start any sentence. Shortly after X: The Experience When Business Meets Design launched, I was invited by my good friend Arnaud Grobet to visit Genève. The trip was meant to serve as a mini book tour, with two speaking engagements at LIFT (one of my favorite events), media interviews and also a vist to CREA University to speak to students. Any time I have a chance to speak with…
The New Experts: How Robotics, AI and Automation Are Shaping the Future of Your Work
Sophia, the AI-powered robot who was infamously granted citizenship by Saudi Arabia recently beat me out for two keynote speaking opportunities. True story. This is how I opened my presentation at the KQED studios in its inaugural Silicon Valley Conversations program, “The New Experts: How Robotics, AI and Automation Are Shaping the Future of Your Work.” The event focused on the way new technologies are changing how we work, where we work and the skills we need to work. I joined Michael…
Here’s to the past, but now it’s time to learn and unlearn toward the future
How we measure future success is based on yesterday’s understanding of what success meant. It was a different time. The experiences that many deliver today are based on standards of the past and what was acceptable to a preceding generation of customers. People have changed and continue to do so. We simply can’t imagine new possibilities if we can’t see, feel, hear, sense, people as they advance. Otherwise, our ideas, no matter how creative, brilliant, bold, will always be rooted…
The Importance of Experience Design and the Future of Brand
Customers today are accidental narcissists. Tomorrow is an entirely new game brands, CX strategists and marketers. Disruption is a gift either given to you or by you. Knowing this, we are still making mistakes in creating meanignful experiences to a new generation of connected, impatient and demanding customers. We get stuck in legacy thinking, playbooks and metrics rather than innovate and disrupt to fully capitalize on new digital opportunities. Following my presentation at Adobe Summit, I had the opportunity to…
