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Got to meet my coworker Merrick while I was in Salt Lake City this weekend—went to this delicious Italian restaraunt and spent the evening talking about programming languages and visual development.

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I truly admire what Mastodon is doing but it’s the Linux of social networks. Sadly, I don’t think it’ll get wide adoption because of the level of comprehension people need to even sign up and onboard.

I’ve been encouraging people to check out micro.blog instead.

Eight episodes in and I\’ve loved every single moment of Andor. It\’s so refreshing to have a show without space wizards that all are one degree from separation of the same family. Diego Luna all the things!

Three years at Webflow

Today marks my three-year anniversary at Webflow. It feels like yesterday when I was returning to work after a short sabbatical after my tenure at One Medical. My desire was to take a longer sabbatical to explore what a “Product Me Fit” would look like. I didn’t want any product and design role, but one where I would love the product’s mission the the people working towards it. In all the best ways possible, Webflow cut the sabbatical short, and I found a place with purpose and intention.

In my 20s, I explored a lot of different jobs and roles, as I think one should. Aside from starting my own product studio and running that for five years with my co-founder, I was never at a company for longer than two years. I’m now in a different arc of my career odyssey, and find myself at two companies for the last seven years: One Medical and Webflow—a stark contrast of my early career.

Approaching the forth year at a company might have felt closer to the end in the early arc of my career, but now it feels like the beginning. A mentor of mine once told me that as a leader, it takes year-over-year effort to see the desired outcomes of your work come to fruition, and I see what she means. The senior designers on my team at One Medical are now Staff Product Designers or Product Design Managers either still at the company or at new opportunities. Products I thought that would never see the light of day have now shipped.

I would be lying if I told you there were no hard moments. Hyper-growth is hard and there are many lessons I learned that required taking a hard look in the mirror and facing reality. Our team comprises of 25+ incredible Product Designers and Content Designers, almost twice the size of the team of Product Design, Brand Design, and User Research that I started in the first year.

I’m grateful to work with all the incredibly talented people here—current team members and alumni. You all are such a joy and the reason I am bullish that Webflow’s Product Design org can become the team of the decade with the most thriving alumni group.

Thoughts on the Light and Magic documentary

I spent last night binge watching the new documentary Light & Magic on Disney+. It’s a six-episode series on the story of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the company filmmaker George Lucas founded. Along with the General Magic documentary, I love hearing stories about creatives and innovators. Light & Magic is a great documentary and I’ll bet you learn something new even if you’re familiar with the story.

*Spoilers..? I’m not sure if you’d consider if you can spoil a documentary, but if you’re not familiar with ILM the a documentary*

Reflections

Proof of concepts are very lean

One of my favorite moments in Episode 6 is when they were talking about how the team was approaching the first Jurassic Park, which was a blend of Computer Generated Images (CGI) and practical effects. For obvious reasons, the team did not have reference photos of how Apatosaurus dinosaurs stampede. The crew decided to set up props in the back of the studio and filmed themselves running to get more references. It also resulted in one of the team members falling and breaking their arm, hence the name of the episode: No More Pretending Your Dinosaurs.

Even when you have incredible technology, ideation starts by storyboarding, body-storming, and conveying the concept. In Star Wars, Lucas put together stunt reals from other films to put together the story (Lucas is not known for originality).

Work with multi-disciplinary people who push you

A studio is one of the most sacred places in the world to me. ILM was comprised of incredibly talented people who push themselves. There was autonomy to go work on other departments: sound, writing, second unit direction, film editing, etc. ILM created an amazing alumni group and people who directed films in their own right. When Joe Johnston was going to quit ILM after burnout, Lucas offered to send him to USC and work part-time so he could go to film school. Johnston ended up being a director in his own right, including titles such as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, and Captain America: The First Avenger.

Effects serve the storytelling

I loved the details of effects to tell a wonderful story. The effects should serve the storytelling, and not technology for the sake of technology. As much as we make fun of the Star Wars prequels, Lucas was pushing the technology to tell stories at such a higher scale.

Imagination pushes technology

Okay, so the Star Wars prequels weren’t great. I remember seeing The Phantom Menace in high school and was so disappointed. What I did not realize is this movie that introduced Jar Jar Binks was the reason theaters started switching over to Texas Instruments’ DLP projectors. This kicked off the revolution of movie theaters and evolving the industry to digital. As much as I appreciate a movie in film, digital let’s people see movies at a broader scale and more accessible.

It’s incredible to think a company like ILM helped inspire innovations to spin out Pixar as its own animation studio and John Knoll creating Photoshop for The Abyss and Terminator 2.

Industry methods will evolve, and you need to

This one is top of mind for me as we think about how AI and ML is going to exponentially evolve the way Product Design is done. Computer graphics accelerated the industry: from The Abyss, to Terminator 2, to Jurassic Park, and beyond. Inevitably the model shop was shut down in order to move towards a new paradigms.

Notes

Below are some unstructured notes of what resonated with me:

Light & Magic is available on Disney+ and highly recommend watching it!

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