Catalyst Podcast

Big thoughts: This week on Track Changes, Paul and Rich sit down to discuss how branding impacts product design. We chat about how branding is critical when designing products, and how helpful it is when the brand comes first. Of course, that’s not always the case. We talk about the challenges of developing brand and product simultaneously and ways to deal with the complexities that come with this type of agile development.  Nike  Craftsman  Ford F-150   Michael Bierut  Jessica Helfand - Twitter  A Conversation with Michael Bierut and Jessica Helfand, Part 1  A Conversation with Michael Bierut and Jessica Helfand, Part 2  Pentagram  Wordpress  National Geographic  Vogue  Economist  Adam Smith  IRS Asana  Monday.com Basecamp  Infospace  Salesforce  Peppa Pig  Do the Brand First - Paul Ford  Careers at Postlight  PostlightSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There’s no secret knowledge: This week on Track Changes, Paul and Rich are joined by Postlight managing partner Gina Trapani to do a follow up on our previous episode about intranets. Gina explains why she was annoyed that we didn't know we had an intranet. From there we discuss why management and employees often need different tools and talk about what makes a good leader. Protip: a good leader is someone who knows how to limit stress, not spread it.   Links:  Gina Trapani  The Private Network: Paul and Rich on Intranets  Basecamp  Slack  Google Drive  Clockwise  Paper  Away  Warby Parker  Emotional Baggage - The Verge  The Verge  Gawker  Lifehacker  Postlight - Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Campaign Design: On this week’s episode of Track Changes Paul and Rich chat with political reporter Hunter Schwarz about political design trends. He breaks down the forms of visual design he’s seeing in political campaigns today and gives us an overview of the evolution of political design. He also tells us about how the Obama campaign in 2008 changed political visual branding and about the rise of grassroots political design.   Links:  Tiny Month  Tiffany’s  Harry Winston  Mike Bloomberg  Hunter Schwarz - Twitter  CNN  Washington Post  Yello  Joe Biden  Tom Steyer Why Tom Steyer Wears a Tartan Tie  The rise of the single-letter political logo - Washington Post  Pete Buttigieg  Shepard Fairey Obama “Hope” Poster    Bloomberg spent millions of dollars on 2020 campaign ads - CNN  Facebook Ad library  Google Transparency Report  Beto O'Rourke Twitter  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Twitter  Stacey Abrams Twitter  Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Warren Merchandise  The Strokes Bring the Bernie Sanders Revolution to New Hampshire - Rolling Stone  25-foot inflatable balloon of Warrens dog Bailey makes campaign appearance - The Hill  Robyn Grace Kanner  Amy Klobuchar  Bernie Sanders See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

People want to be heard: This week on Track Changes, Paul and Rich bring on their design team to talk about The Design Elephants -- Poslight’s quarterly event dedicated to tackling difficult issues within design. From there we go onto discuss one of the main ways agencies find their clients, the RFP. Paul and Rich share their thoughts on the process as a whole and how they prefer a more genuine and empathetic approach to sales.  Links Eventbrite - The Design Elephants Aimée Reed - website Nora Vanni - website Nora Vanni - Twitter PendoSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Keep it simple: There are a million different to-do apps, what makes one stand out? This week on Track Changes Paul and Rich chat with Doist founder Amir Salihefendic. He tells us about how he grew Todoist from a side project he would work on in his dorm room to an app that now reaches 20 million people. He also tells us about his struggle with venture capitalists and about the importance of persistence and simplicity.  Links:  Hello, World! - Wikipedia  Todoist  Amir Salihefendic - Twitter  Wunderlist  Any.do  Lifehacker  Digg  Plurk  Subtraction Blog  Doist  Twist  Instagram  Vim Bear  Slack  Dropbox  Zoom  Superhuman  Dash for SlackSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Action Items: On this week’s episode of Track Changes Paul and Rich sit down and share their top 5 tools that keep them productive. We chat about our favorite to-do apps, calorie counting apps and about apps that will make your meetings more productive. From simple tools to complex tools, we share our secrets for staying sane and productive at work.  Whimsical  OmniGraffle  Visio  Navigator  Bloomberg - What is Code? by Paul Ford  Basecamp  Emacs Org mode  FatSecret  CalorieKing  Google Fit  Todoist  Tinysheet by Postlight Python 4  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Control your data: This week on Track Changes Paul and Rich sit down to chat about storage and subscriptions. We talk about Paul’s new network attached storage setup and why we consider it to be the third wave of computing. We also talk about ongoing and annoying online software subscriptions and Rich gives us some good tips on how to remember to cancel those subscriptions before your free months run out. Links:  Basecamp  SeaGate Ironwolf Pro  QNap Thunderbolt 4 drive Nas  CommonCrawl  Flickr  Google Take-out  OneDrive  SiteCore  Pi-hole  Spotify  Typing Club  Stripe  Truebill  Trim  SubscriptMe  Bobby Subby  TrackMySubs  Mint Plaid  Yodlee  Abacus See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tools to manage your tools: This week on Track Changes Paul and Rich discuss the best way to keep track of company communications and tools. Our verdict, an Intranet. We lay out what an Intranet actually is, what it should and could look like and why it’s so important in an age of using too many apps at once. We also make a pact to build a functional intranet in the next six months. Wish us luck!    Trello  Basecamp  Github  TriNet  Pingboard  Slack  Abacus  Airtable  Dropbox Paper  Whimsical  Jira  Pipedrive  Greenhouse  Dash for Slack  Google Drive  Zapier  Chartbeat  Adobe After Effects  Sketch  Apple Numbers  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Still in reactive mode: On this week’s episode of Track Changes we continue off from last week to talk about broad trends in information technology in 2020. This week we dig into the more unsettling trends, like foreign interference in elections, a need for better and more proactive laws that govern internet use and cloud service confusion. We also chat about the return of bundled content creation and break down an unprecedented year in information technology.  Ivanka Trump’s Appearance at CES Tech Show Draws Criticism - Time  CES 2020 The Libertarian Logic of Peter Thiel - Wired  Google Cloud  HP Cloud - Wikipedia  Tata Communications - Cloud Solutions  Hulu  Netflix  Disney+  Roku  Apple TVSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The year to come: On this week’s episode of Track Changes, Paul and Rich sit down to discuss some of the top trends to look for in 2020. From codeless platforms to Product Led Growth we chat about some of the biggest trends in tech right now. We share our thoughts on new products and discuss whether some of these trends should actually be trends. We also talk about the craziness that could be 2020.  Gina Trepani  Lifehacker  Jobs to be Done  Hasura  GraphQL  PostGraphile  MySQL PostgreSQL Elixir  Erlang Ruby  Yap.Chat  Firefox Pi-hole  Gatsby  AWS  Netlify  Notion  Airtable  Filemaker Glitch  Salesforce See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.