

Notion Podcast
Notion
Candid conversations with the people shaping the world of technology — from pioneers of computer history to founders at the world’s leading startups. For more information, visit: https://www.notion.so/blog/topic/first-block
Episodes
Mentioned books

Nov 14, 2023 • 42min
First Block: Interview with Julianna Lamb, Co-Founder & CTO of Stytch
Julianna Lamb, Co-Founder & CTO of Stytch, discusses her journey in the tech world, focusing on solving authentication challenges. She shares insights on transitioning from contributor to founder during the pandemic, emphasizing the importance of values in hiring. Julianna explains how they optimized their engineering team's processes and highlights the evolution of leadership dynamics as the company grew. Additionally, she explores adapting market strategies based on customer feedback and the critical role of open-source software in fostering community collaboration.

7 snips
Oct 17, 2023 • 39min
First Block: Interview with Parker Conrad, Co-Founder & CEO of Rippling
Parker Conrad, Co-Founder and CEO of Rippling, shares insights and challenges of starting companies. They discuss the motivation behind starting Rippling, the need for naivete in the startup world, building a compound product, a day in the life of the CEO, and reflecting on a career journey with highs and lows.

35 snips
Nov 1, 2022 • 1h 35min
Pioneers: Michael Nielsen
Michael Nielsen is a quantum physicist, science writer, computer programming researcher, and modern polymath working on tools to expand human capacity to think and create. He’s previously authored pioneering quantum computing books, propelled forward the open science movement, and published research on artificial intelligence. He now researches meta-science at the Astera Institute, while writing about his many interests online.
See www.notion.so/blog/michael-nielsen for episode transcript.
Hosted by Devon Zuegel
Edited by Anson Yu
Audio by The Land Films

50 snips
May 12, 2022 • 1h 2min
Pioneers: Andy Matuschak on physically-informed digital interface design
Andy is a software engineer, designer, and researcher working on technologies that expand what people can think and do. In past lives he helped build iOS at Apple and led R&D at Khan Academy. Now as an independent researcher, his methods bridge the gap between academia and Silicon Valley.

7 snips
Mar 31, 2022 • 1h 17min
Pioneers: Char Stiles explores tools for expression and experience
Char Stiles is an artist, educator and programmer whose work uses emerging technologies to bring to light how computers work. Char works and collaborates across mediums such as interactive installation, video, performance and web. She is a part of the Livecode.nyc collective, where she organizes shows, and livecodes music and visuals and has given talks and led workshops at Carnegie Mellon University, Duke University, University of Limerick, MIT and NYU. She is currently at an NEA-funded artist residency at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University to develop an open-source toolkit for artists.

26 snips
Feb 17, 2022 • 1h 1min
Pioneers: Suzanne Ciani explains the composition of her sensory career
Suzanne Ciani is a five-time Grammy award-nominated musician, composer, sound designer, and record label executive whose work helped define the sound of electronic music in the 1970s and left a lasting impression on the genre as a whole. She has released over 20 solo albums including "Seven Waves," and "The Velocity of Love," and was inducted into the first class of Keyboard Magazine's Hall of Fame. She is best known for sound designing commercials like the famous Coke noise, appearing on the David Letterman show, and for her explorations in quadraphonic sound.

Jan 27, 2022 • 42min
Pioneers: Loretta Staples' journey through digital and cultural interfaces
Loretta Staples is a prolific designer and educator whose work designing graphical user interfaces such as those seen on the Macintosh Classic in the 1980s and 1990s helped shape personal computing as we know it today. Before becoming interested in software design, Loretta was a graphic designer for The Understanding Business, exhibit developer for The Burdick Group, and textile curator for the Yale University Art Gallery. Her essays and lectures on design criticism such as "The New Design Basics," in Steven Heller's book, “The Education of a Graphic Designer,” have defined the disciplines’ vocabulary and conception of itself. She now works as a therapist at Cityblock in Waterbury, and in private practice in New Haven.

4 snips
Jan 4, 2022 • 1h 18min
Pioneers: Danielle Baskin gives words to her many wondrous worlds
Danielle Baskin is a product designer, situation designer, visual artist, and the founder of numerous small businesses such as Branded Fruit, the first company to print logos on avocados and clementines, Dialup, a voice-based social network that connects friends serendipitously in phone calls, Maskalike, a service that prints your own face realistically on your mask, and many others. She has been featured in The New York Times, Mashable, Vice, Fast Company, Business Insider, Engadget, The Verge, CNET, Oprah, MacWorld, and many others. In her free time she enjoys playing video games, creating Internet pranks, exploring abandoned buildings, and talking on the phone, a lot.

11 snips
Dec 9, 2021 • 1h 13min
Pioneers: Gretchen McCulloch talks about why we talk the way we do online
Gretchen McCulloch is an internet linguist — an analyst of the language of the internet, for the people of the internet. She's the author of the New York Times bestselling Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, a Resident Linguist at WIRED, and was formerly the Resident Linguist at The Toast. She also co-hosts a podcast called Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics.

5 snips
Nov 11, 2021 • 50min
Pioneers: Omar Rizwan on shaping computers into friendlier forms
Omar Rizwan is a researcher and developer interested in new computer interfaces and new ways of programming. He previously worked at Stripe, Khan Academy, and Dynamicland, where he worked on projects such as Geokit. He’s also a prolific creator of paradigm-challenging projects such as Screenotate, Horrifying PDF experiments, Hijack Your Feed, and many others.