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- i'm allan trotschanov. i'm the chair of the mfaproducts of design department, where you are now. so, we are really excited tohave matt manos here today, who took a red eye to be here, so that's full commitment, and he has the best name ever, which i think i referred to lots of times as his business name.

very nice, and so, everybody in the room knows that i remark and joke often about filteringfor nice in this department, so you are the nicest. it's actually in your name. also, i got an email fourminutes ago from somebody who is looking for leads for work, and, in this sentence, writes,"i'm generally rather nice, "and also like other nice people,"

to which i responded, "ineed your okay to read "that sentence in the next six minutes, "'cause i'll be introducing matt manos, "and want to use it. "i hope you get this email," and i did not get clearance. (laughing) so, that's anonymous, sothere's that, so, anyway, so, i was looking at your biography,

which is just completely ridiculous. i just, i. it's hard to believe that anybody, particularly with just thenumber of years you have under your belt could haveaccomplished all this much. i like the fact thatyou're calling yourself a neo-philanthropist. matt's worked with unicef,and, you know, nations, and, walt disney imagineering,

and facebook, and just all ofthese incredible organizations and brands, and then, there'ssomething else in here. decks for parks i did not know about. i have a new interest in long boarding, so we're gonna have to talk about that. - [matt] yeah. - but then, he does mentionin the bio side projects, this is his computer. - [matt] oh, if you just touchthe mouse pad, we're good.

there we go. - okay. so, you mentioned sideprojects in your bio, and i have met more and more people, as i've also said to you, who really, in some sense,judge people or hire people based on their side projects. even people like at google. it's like, yeah, we don'teven look at the resume.

we look at their side projects, and if side projects are interesting, then they're interesting, andthat seems very consistent with not only what you might believe, which i don't know, but certainly, how you've led your life, so that's pretty amazing, so, this is a bit of a long introduction, but we're really excited to have you,

so please welcome matt manos. - [matt] all right, thanks so much. - this is kate, by the way. (applause) (chuckling) kate's our guest tonight. she's crashing the talk. we'll use this for q&a. - cool.

well, thanks again so much for having me, and happy to be here. i was telling allan right before, it kind of feels likei'm in somebody's home, because of the kitchen,too, in the background, which makes this just so much nicer than talking in a regularold conference room, as well, but yeah, so this, i'm gonnakinda throw several things at you, but in general, thisis about being very nice.

giving half, creating models of impact, and inventing the future, so i'm gonna try to walk youguys through a little bit of my story, as well assome of these side projects that are going on, someof these new projects that are just wrappingup as well, and then, hopefully, we can have alittle bit of a discussion about what you guys are doing, and we can use this time to help you out

with your projects too,which would be great. so, i always start mystory with this number, which is $8 billion, andthat is the amount of money that non-profit organizationsin the united states, alone, are spending every singleyear on people like me, on design and marketing professionals, and i don't know about you guys, but that number, tome, is very disturbing, because i like to imaginewhat the world would look like

if they could have the samereally important access to those great services,without this hefty, this hefty amount, right? so, in my mind, you know, ifwe could actually allow them to invest more in theircause, we might be able to make even more impactin the world, and again, design and marketing is reallyimportant, they need that, but maybe there's new modelsto make it more affordable, or to lower the barrier toentry, and if we can do that,

and if they can investmore in their cause, perhaps we can solve some of the world's most persistent problems, like hunger, like housing,water access, etc. the list kind of goes on. this is sort of where "pro-bono" comes in. "pro-bono" is shortfor "pro-bono publico," which literally means, "forthe good of the public." it got its start in the legal industry.

actually, in new york,and it soon trickled into a lot of other industries, especially the design industry, around the time when thead council was emerging. you guys have seen a lot of like smokey the bearadvertisements, and so on. they would recruit a lotof designers and marketers to volunteer to create thesepublic service announcements, and soon people startedto really see the benefits

of pro-bono, and seethat it's really helpful for the world, but also, it'svery gratifying for yourself, and for your own practice. i got my start as a pro-bono practictioner when i was 16 years old. that's when i could do stuff like this. i used to skateboard, competitively. so happy to give you longboard lessons, allan, for sure, although i've never beenthat great at long boarding,

'cause i'm strangelyafraid of going down hills, but being upside downis no problem for me. although, you know, i canonly do this probably on like a one-foot ramp at thispoint, but, i try, right? so, anyways, because i wascompeting as a skateboarder throughout high school, and pretty much, like maybe my first year of college, and that's when i stoppeddoing it competitively, i was always training, andthis was in the bay area.

i grew up in silicon valley. this park is in sunnyvale, california. i would be there every saturday,sometimes every saturday, and sunday, and there would always be kind of the regular crew ofpeople that were hanging out, and trying new stuff, butthere was one weekend, where i saw a man in awheelchair in the bowl, actually do a flip overone of the channels, and it completely blew my mind.

this was pre-youtube, also,so it was before you saw really cool things all the time. so, you know, obviously, i was intrigued. i wanted to approach him,wanted to introduce myself, just kinda learn what was going on, and i noticed that he wasn't alone. he was with a bunch of little kids, who were also in wheelchairs, and it appeared as thoughhe was teaching them,

basically, how to dothis, and it turned out that he was the founder of anon-profit that, at the time, taught kids in wheelchairshow to participate in extreme sports. this was kind of mind-blowing to me. i had never met the founderof a non-profit organization, before. growing up in the siliconvalley, everyone and their mother literally is the founder of something,

but i had never met thefounder of a non-profit, and that passion thatreally radiated from his was very inspiring to me, and i knew, this was the kind ofperson, the kind of thing that i wanted to dedicatethe rest of my life too, and so, you know, i didn'thave any money, really, to donate to him, aside fromsome allowance, you know, from doing random chores, and what not? i also was not personally in a wheelchair,

so i can't really teachsomeone in a wheelchair how to do things, 'causei wouldn't even know how to do it, but i figured, you know, about like the week or two prior, i had gotten my firstpirated copy of photoshop from my godmother who wasstudying art in australia at the time, and i wasstarting to learn, you know, the really important designskills of kind of making your head really big, orchanging the color of your hair,

or, you know, the thingsthat all of you did, and maybe won't admit whenyou first got photoshop. i figured, you know, why notput these incredible skills to good use, and offered todesign him some stickers, and that became my first pro-bono project, before i knew what pro-bono was. it was my dad that toldme what pro-bono was, after i did that, 'cause he's a lawyer, and again, in the legal industry,

there's some really strong ties there. so, flash forward, actuallyjust three years after that, when i was 19. i launched verynice. from my college dorm room, basically, and it's now a globaldesign strategy consultancy that gives half of its work away for free to non-profit organizations, so still, very much inspired by thatmoment, at the skate park,

and really trying to figure out, how can i make that anintegral part of what we do, as well. we work with all kindsof different clients. half of them are non-profits. the other half are really,really big non-profits, or start-ups, or big businesses,or mom and pop shops, etc. really kinda all over theplace, and that's something

that makes us a little bit interesting. i'm gonna talk a little bitabout that later, as well. when we originally launched,we focused exclusively on visual design, so especiallybrand identity design, website design, etc. and then, over the lastfour or five years, we've really transitioned tobalance that more visual work on the left with morestrategic work on the right, as well as developing ourown tools and resources

that we can offer to our clients, and to the world at large, soover the course of that time, what's been interesting iswe kinda keep accumulating more and more services that we offer, so instead of replacing services, we just kind of keep stacking it on, and they really expandthese four categories, the visual communications, so again, kind of where we started,what you might think

of a very traditional graphic design work, to digital product design,so entering that ux/uy space, design strategy, which is a huge section of what we do now around business design, brand strategy, marketing strategy, etc. and then, even strategicforesight, so really looking at long-term implicationsof things for our clients researching trends, etc. our work is equally as diverse.

this is just kind of a fewquick ones to go through. this was a paintingthat we had commissioned from a good friend of mine, dan everett. he's the one that'spositioned in the right image, right there. he actually, his mom lived in a home that was really affectedby fracking issues, and at the time, we were working with nrdc on their demand clean power campaign,

which was all about fracking, and the keystone xl pipeline, etc. and we thought, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we got an artist that'sbeen sort of touched by this cause toparticipate in this somehow? so, we locked him in a room for 24 hours, him and myself, and filmmaker, and we basically videoedthe process of him creating a painting that wasinspired by that experience

that he and his momhad, and so, the result was this really weird thingon the left, which i love, that kinda depicts like a upper world, and a lower world, aswell, and they ended up, you know, having thiskinda in their collection, and was part of the biggercampaign that we did. also, branding, so katy,my wife's in the audience. she did the branding forthis project with us, called the pasadenamuseum of california art.

if any of you are ever in california, this is one of my favoritemuseums, personally, 'cause it focuses exclusivelyon california artists, and themes and images thatare inspired by california, in general. it's actually really small,so it almost has the feeling of a gallery, and equally, it rotates through exhibits all of thetime, and so, as a result, what we did with thebranding and the identity is,

we had the letters, the imagethat's filling those letters change with every newexhibit that they have, so it's a dynamic identity,and we basically instruct the museum to take aclose-up image of whatever the primary piece is in the new show, and that, essentially, becomes the logo, so it's been really fun. we did this maybe twoyears ago at this point, or almost, and watchingthem kind of take that on,

and evolve it over time, and seeing it constantly changehas been really gratifying. i mentioned, we do digital products, too. this was with the keepa breast foundation, that a lot of you might know from the i love boobiesbracelets that they make, so they focus on breast cancer prevention, but at really, really young age, so they target high schoolmen and women, essentially,

and they wanted to create an app, and they wanted it to be something that was actually useful,and that actually contributed to their mission, so we developed this, which is essentiallya self check reminder, so you'll, every month get a text message that reminds you toperform a self check exam for breast cancer, and it'sbasically a push notification. it's really simple,but when you accept it,

it gives you this step-by-stepguide of how to do it, and really helped themkind of expand their reach, through an app design, which is something that i enjoyed about it. a lot of times, you'reapproach to do an app, because an app is cool,but this is something that actually contributedto their mission, and actually, you know, helpedthem make even more impact through their education work.

this is another project that we did. this is an example of when aclient kind of reaches out, and says, "hey, we have two jumbo trons. "can you do something on them?" you gotta kind of, youknow, grab that opportunity, because you don't normally getthat much lenience, really, and this was with theculver center of the arts. this museum is positioned directly across from the city of riverside's city hall,

and riverside is in southern california. it's kind of eastern southern california, and around this time, they were facing a lot of foreclosed homes,a lot of empty storefronts, etc. and there was just kind of this sense of what should we do? right, how can we kindof reimagine riverside? and, so, that's the name of this project. also, around this time,i was living in pasadena,

and for years, therewas a mcdonalds there, and that mcdonalds got boarded up, and i remember, i gotreally excited for a moment, thinking, hey, is this goingto actually be something new? like, something different? that's not mcdonalds, andthen, after about a year of construction, they took the wood down, and it was just a nicer mcdonalds, and i remember thinking, whoa,

what if, you know, what ifwhat shows up on our streets could be democratized in some way? what if the communities could help pick what fills these storefronts,when there's opportunities, so just try to sort ofimagine that potential future, where people would tweetusing the #reimagineriverside ideas of things they'd liketo see in their community, and basically, they wouldshow up on these jumbo trons. what was nice about it beingpositioned directly across

from city hall, is that kind of dialog that was taking place,but also, what i loved is that some of theideas that were submitted were really kind of emotional and serious, and others were justreally playful, you know? and, so it had thisreally human vibe to it. in the sense of that participation, which made it so special. we also launched a civicinnovation fellowship position

with the city of losangeles, and the big goal with that, like some of you might know, la and a lot of cities, they have these open data initiatives, where they're tryingto make government data more accessible toentrepreneurs, or to anybody, and the big problem withthat is it tends to look like endless excel sheets,so it's really hard to be relatable, and one waythat we thought it could go,

and what this fellowship position did, was basically trying to geomap that data, to at least make it relatable to us, in literally where weare, in our community, so that went on for about a year, and a fellow made maybe 20 or 30 of these different diagrams, which is really, reallyawesome experience for them. we also still, like i mentioned,

do more traditional graphic design work, so this is some editorialdesign and infographic design for the downtown women's center, which is in skid row,in downtown los angeles. some of our team went withthe downtown women's center to survey, basically, thehomeless women living there, on what their needs are,and this publication is really great, because it'sshared with all organizations that are supporting thiscause, so it becomes a resource

for everybody to kind of share in, and design and visual communication became a really great wayto make that very tangible for people. decks for parks, you mentioned that. that was a side project of mine. i wanted to start a skateboard company that gave half of its proceedsto help build skate parks, so we made this as a prototype,

and there was a skateboardshop in san francisco that ended up adopting itand selling it for a while, to raise some money with it, as well. what i like about thisproject is it was something i really wanted to do,but then, ultimately, realized i couldn't kindof manage that, and so, instead of giving up, youknow, trying to find somebody that would be interested init became a really good path for this, so that it couldactually live on, as well.

we do a lot of workshops. this is one where i'm popping a balloon. another recent projectthat was really fun, this was a collaboration with google, where we worked with them to rebrand, and do some product development for an app called billion acts. this was short for onebillion acts of peace, and essentially, it's a portal for people

to find opportunitiesto just do nice things, in their community, tocommit some kinds of acts of peace. that can be as big ashousing a homeless person, or it can be as small aspicking up some trash, but these acts of peace are logged here, and peace jam, who's theorganization that runs it, they've actually been nominated for multiple nobel peace prize,

because of the projectsthey do, and this was one of those that sparked anomination, so being a part of something, you know,that could have that kind of recognition, wasreally, really amazing. so, all of this work, and more, actually as of this week, we finished 1,000 pro-bono projects, so it's a huge milestone for us, and all of that has totaled up to a gift

of over $6 million worth of services, since we've launched, and this is a number that i'm really proud of. you know, it's a lot morethan i ever thought we would be able to do, andit's still growing, right? but, it's really not enough,and what i mean by that, when you compare it tothat $8 billion figure that i shared at the very beginning, that's something that's spentevery single year, right?

and our 6.25, it took usalmost a decade to do that, and so, clearly, something'snot adding up, right? we're not gonna be able toalone tackle this issue. if our mission is to helpnon-profit organizations save valuable resources,so they can invest more in their cause, we kinda can'tdo this on our own, anymore, and so, this realization came around 2012, i think right when i hadmet you, allan, as well, and at first it was a littlebit of a point of depression,

and then, it was areally cool opportunity, 'cause i realized,well, what we have to do is make our model go fromsomething that's unique to something that's standard, and that sparked an interestin actually open sourcing verynice's business model,our "give half" model. that started with a lot of,kind of sketches, illustrations, writing, and then it ended up in a book that's in its second addition, now,

called how to give half ofyour work away for free, and it's essentially our business plan, and our business model, openfor anybody to download, at any price that theywant, or to purchase the hard copy as well. so, this is obviously adog-friendly book, also. that's my dog, charlie. perfect kind of liketongue moment right there, for that photo capture, as well,

and what i spend a lot of my time doing, kind of like i'm doing right now, is going around, talking to people, and tricking them intodoing pro-bono work, basically, and telling themthat pro-bono is awesome, and spreading this kind of message, and the result has been thatthousands of practictioners, now, are giving their work away for free, inspired by these toolsthat we've created,

and there's even some thatare giving half as well, which is really kind ofa bar that we try to set, but we're surprisedthat about a dozen or so of these "give half" companies now exist all around the globe, sowhy are they doing this? it turns out that there arebenefits to pro-bono work. some of these, i found, sortof along the way, by accident, and some of which, youmight actually read about. there's been more and morestudies around this, lately.

one is karma, of course. so, that's on scientificbenefit of pro-bono. if you help people out, that the universe will hopefully help you out, right? another that's a little bitmore strategic is networking. something that reallysurprised me is the majority of the non-profit's we're working with, they either have no paidstaff, so everyone's volunteer, or they have very, veryfew, and that means

that they all have dayjobs elsewhere, and so, those day jobs havebecome referrals for us. that's actually beena big source for a lot of our paid work, becauseyou're working with somebody, you're proving that you'regood at what you do, they're gonna wanna work with you, in this other context as well. another opportunity with networking, with some of the biggerorganizations that we work with,

a lot of their board of directors are ceos at really big companies,and that's how we get our foot in the door with a lotof the kind of bigger brands that we work with. that's how we got hooked upwith disney imagineering, actually, was through helping a non-profit that the person that wasworking at imagineering was on the board of, so these connections are really, really helpful,and it's a good way

to kinda spread the good vibes, and help each other out, as well. another third one is education. i mentioned that we kinda went from this visual design space, this more design strategy space. that really was only possible because we asked various non-profitsif we could try stuff with them, right?

no risk, because we weren't charging them. the risk was entirely onus, 'cause they might choose not to use it, but all of a sudden, we were accumulating theproof that we could write a business plan, orcreate an app, you know, or anything that we wanted to do, but we didn't really have that proof, or that client list behind. we all of a sudden were ableto equip ourselves with,

so that's been really, really helpful. so, this is progress. you know, people are out there,they're doing pro-bono work, we're doing great, that's awesome, but, it really is just the beginning, right? and, what i mean bythat, with "give half," what's kind of interesting, the moment we open sourced it, weactually, we really did go from unique to not standard yet,

but unique to less unique,and so, this big question of, well, what is our value proposition? what makes verynice unique now, if everything that we'redoing is kind of open to everybody else came up, and it became a reallyinteresting question to think through, and westarted to try to think okay, well, how is it that we are, you know, not just another design studio, right?

there's probably hundredsof thousands of them, and what we realize isthis "give half" model gave us a really unique position, where we had feet kindof equally in the private and the social sector, and so, as a result,we're able to really take some best practices from one sector, introduce it to another,and vice versa, and also, had a really good sense ofthe trends that were happening

in both of those sectors,which became something that was one of our real true values to the people that we work with. and so, "give half," youknow, was one of those models, but really what we realizeis it's kind of one of potentially hundreds ofmodels that are out there that we could share withpeople, that we could open up to people, etc. and so, that became a projectcalled models of impact,

that began a researchproject of trying to collect as many of these models as possible, map them out, see who's using them, how do they work, how arethey related to one another, how are they differentthan one another, etc. and it turned into aseries of infographics that we developed of kind of cross axes, that we're really tryingto investigate these. across the productspace, the service space,

and just revenue models in general. and then, we kinda had all of this stuff, and didn't really know what to do with it. you know, it was kind of fun to look at, and we put it online, and alot of people were looking at it, but something that,you know, i'm passionate about is education, and actually,having people engage with the materials as well,but before i get into that, some examples of justthese innovative models.

one is homeboy industries. has anybody ever heard of them? so, they're in la. whenever you say, "hasanybody heard of them?" and you're in la, everybodyraises their hand. they're a really amazing organization. they're one of the largest, if not the largest gangintervention organizations in the us, and they are based,

maybe like, what? a mile from our office. so, they're in chinatownof downtown los angeles, and what many of you mightknow is once you've been in jail, or if you have a bad record, it's pretty hard to get a job, and so, they actually launched aseries of social enterprises under their non-profit umbrella, that they then hire theseformerly incarcerated people, or people that aretransitioning out of gangs,

to run, and to actually be employed by, so this is one example of a bakery, but they also have asilk screening company, a tattoo removal business,all kinds of things. another cool model is the"pay what you want" model, which radiohead reallypopularized when they came out with in rainbows. this was in, i think, 2005 or 2006. it's a model that i really like, as well.

we use it for models ofimpact, also, but, basically, they came out with this,really at the height of the music industry kind of declining. you know, people were piratingeverything left and right, people weren't seeing the value of music, sales were going down, etc. and so, what they decided,is instead of trying to go the traditional route, what if we make a websitewhere people can pay

whatever they want, evenif it's zero dollars, to download our music, and what they found is that their kind of netprofit was actually higher than when they went the traditional route, so something about thattrust, in that exchange between a consumer and aprovider of goods or services turned out to be a really smart model, and more and more companiesare using this, now. another model is the"product for service" model.

so, a lot of you haveprobably heard of one for one, which is, like tom's shoes, where you buy a pair ofshoes, and they donate a pair of shoes. the problem with thatmodel from a lot of critics is that it assumes that somebody else wants exactly what you want. that's kind of a very american way of doing social impact stuff in general.

you know, you fly toafrica, and throw crayons at somebody, and then get out of there, but with listen headphones, it's kind of a nice revision, where they're not assuming that kids want hipster headphones, right? instead, they're tryingto think, well, okay, this is what the customer wants. now, what could we givethat's kind of attached

to our story, and in theircase, they donate hearing aids for every pair of headphonesthat are purchased, so it's a really beautifulconnection between music, and what they found intheir field research was actually a need in the communities that they wanted to help, so it's called "product for service." it's when a product enables a service. this is another kind oftrending start-up right now.

they're called meathead movers, and basically, they are student athletes that get hired to move yourstuff, when you're moving, so they're really goodat picking things up, and moving them places, but, you know, they were thinking,well, what kind of impact could we create? and kind of like listen headphones, what kind of impact could we create,

but that is really playingto our core competency, and in this case, it's theability to move things, right? so, they actually do a smallpercentage of their moves for free, for victimsof domestic violence. so, really, again, likereally kind pf emotional, you know, give back program that they have that really plays to their strengths, so it feels very authentic, as well.

you all have heard of thesharing economy, obviously, but this is kind of afunny magazine cover. strangers crashed my car, ate my food, and wore my pants. tales from the sharing economy. this is arguably one of thebiggest new impact models of our generation, atleast, and the reason is because it's enablinga couple of things, with all of the controversiesthat it's brought.

one is this kind of gig economy, and really growing thatfreelance workforce, and allowing people to takeon really kind of micro gigs that can support them whilethey pursue other things, like maybe music or the arts,or whatever it might be. the other is the real impactof promoting a lifestyle where we all own less stuff,which things like owning cars, it's not really part the newyork culture, necessarily, but in la, this is alreadyhaving a pretty profound impact,

and the decrease indui-related accidents, as well, because of this, so it'sreally something to kind of keep an eye out for. it's growing like crazy. so, like i mention, wecollected all this stuff, we ended up writing upa glossary that defined over a hundred of thesemodels, put it online, etc. and started just to be interested. well, how can people engage with it,

in a workshop kind of setting, so we started prototypingthat, and eventually, came to a toolkit, really a curriculum that we were happy with,that we are willing to kind of put onlineand share with people to have them downloadand use in the classroom, or at work, or wherever it might be, and it's, now, it's beingused in 75 countries, so all over the place,people are doing these models

of impact workshops to develop their own business model ideas, kind of like those ones thati showed you, and, really, the basis of it, is what webelieve a business model is. a lot of the times, when you ask somebody what a business model is,i found that they tell you this half of it, whichis the revenue model, a sustainable way ofmaking money, basically, but what we found, with thepeople we're working with,

is that it reallyrequires a balance of both of these things, an impactmodel and a revenue model, so an impact model being a sustainable way of making the impact thatyou're trying to achieve. that doesn't have to besocial impact, necessarily. that could be environmental impact, that could even be personal impact. you know, the idea of kindof what is your why, right? or what's your purpose?

balancing those twothings, we found results in a great business model. the toolkit, itself, hasfour different steps, learn, invent, programand report, and basically, takes you through an educational process of just what models are out there, then how can you makesomething new, and then, how can you actually kindof plan that new thing, and then report, how canyou get feedback on it.

it's a very basic gist of it, but what makes it really funto me is the invent phase, and that's because, in the event phase, randomization is reallycritical to our process. so much so, that we actually use dice. we use polyhedral dice,like you would find in dungeons and dragons,or anything like that, and it sounds kind ofcrazy, but it really works. the reason why randomization is great,

especially with business models, and especially with creative people, is these are things thatare kind of scary, right? like, designing a businessmodel, it's kinda scary, or it's kinda boring,and the moment that you are facing something that'skind of scary or boring, you go to the first thing you've heard of. but, by doing so, youmight have missed out on hundreds of other opportunities,

so when you randomize it,you kind of have no choice. you roll the dice, and you haveto go with that combination of impact model, revenuemodel, or other factors, in general, that kind ofget thrown into the mix, and you just have to play itout, and see what would happen. so, that's where we'veseen some success with it. to give you guys justkind of a quick example, if i were to have asix-sided die right now, i would roll that die three times,

and that would give me one item from each of these three lists. the other factors are, in this case, just things that interest me in general, but the impact models and revenue models are taken straight from our glossary, so if i rolled three times, you know, maybe i'll get lava lamps, recycle, and in-app purchases,and now, i would have

to come up with a businessconcept that connects all three of those things, so maybe, this is a lava lamp thathas an app attached to it, where i can buy differentcolors, or sounds that come out of it, and maybe, it's made in a sustainable up-cycled manner, right? so, that's just kindof a real quick example of trying to go throughthis thought exercise. after you do that, we have you go through

an actual business planning process, to make it really tangible also. so, we've done this ineducational settings, kind of incorporatinginto various curriculum at different schools, forcorporate clients as well, for non-profit organizations, with architecture for humanity, many of you might haveheard they went bankrupt, and they actually respawned

as open architecture collaborative, and we helped them do thatthrough this toolkit, as well, so helping them see through several models that they could have, 'cause ultimately, architecture for humanity went bankrupt because of a lack of a business model, so how can we have newopportunities to explore? this is me teaching it tothe city of west hollywood, as well, so we've beenstarting to get this

into the public sector as well, around how they can use the kind ofmodels that are commonplace in the social and privatesector, and use them to create new initiatives,within government as well, and beginning of this year,i did something really cool, where i went to russia,to teach this to a group of russian entrepreneurs,and to film an online course as well, that kind of madeit available in russian, so somebody pointed outto me that i have unlocked

the life goal of having avideo with russian subtitles, so that's pretty cool, anda lot of this randomization, it actually comes fromless practical places, and i wanted to share thiswith you guys, because, and not that this wasn'tpractical, but it wasn't in a corporate setting, right? 'cause you guys are in the middle of going through your mfa, and thisdirectly relates to what i was doing when i was atschool in art center.

i was really interested in theidea of generative business, or serendipitous business,and the way that that started, i went on a walk, and i basicallycame up with some rules. i walked a hundred steps. i took a picture of thefirst non-living thing that i saw, and that would be my product. then, i walked another hundred steps, i took a picture of the firstliving thing that i saw, and that would be mymarket, or my audience,

and then, i walked another hundred steps, and i took a picture ofthe space that i was in, and that would be myindustry, or my environment, so this business is park benches for dogs at railroad stations, andyou can imagine, you know, if you actually had to,as product designers, design that park bench forthat dog at a rail station, railroad station, what would it look like? it's a really kind ofinteresting jumping-off point.

then, i thought, oh,what if it's not a walk, but it's kind of likea set of playing cards? those are kind of hip these days. so, i made a card game,you know, version of it, as well, where people woulddeal these three factors, randomly, and they would have to fill out a very simple business plan template, to kind of populate their idea. then, i thought, well, what if it's more

of like a community workshop, where people are coming together, so i prototyped this in the city of merced with a bunch of different peoplethat were living there, and working there, and then, well, what if it gets a little less human, and is actually kind of a littlebit more machine generated, so this was a workshopcalled box and button, where basically, students at art center,

they'd press a buttonthat would then generate some factors on a screenthat they would then have to come up with a business concept for, so just gets a little more technological than the card game did. and then, i thought, well, what if i take the human out of it, completely, so i had an algorithm that wrote a thousand business plans, basically,

that just kind of spit them out. some of them are really like gibberish. some are kind of plausible,and some are oddly offensive. but, i shipped all of them to the top venture capitalfirms in silicon valley. that project was calledfor your consideration, and didn't get a singleresponse, but, you know, maybe they will someday, soall of that was documented in a show that kind of show this process,

and it's funny, right? you can see how it directly correlates to what :i'm doing nowwith models of impact, so with you guys, hopefully, you can find that connecting point to that project that you're doing, and bringing it intoyour practice, as well. it's been a huge help for me. the last thing that i wanted to do,

i just released my second book, which is called toward apreemptive social enterprise, and a big part of it, or a real something that i'm excited about it is a manifesto, so i wanted to read that to you guys, but, what i wanted to say about this, i was talking about how oneof the values we've found from verynice is that wehave our feet in both worlds, private, social, and so, wecan kind of take some things

from one, give it to the other. what we realized about the social sector is that they're often born out of a state of emergency, or out of a kind of reaction to some terrible thingthat already happened, versus in the private sector, they become really motivatedto start something new, based off of something kind of imaginary, like a future trend, oran emerging technology,

or whatever it mightbe, and there was kind of this question of well,hey, why is that happening? you know, why is it that way? could we teach the social sector some of those kind ofstrategic foresight tools, to get them to be more preemptive? and what would that actually allow us? so, i'm gonna read it, and hopefully, you guys like it.

it's the first time i've everread it out loud to people. so, toward a preemptive social enterprise. social entrepreneurship isa field defined by reaction. social enterprise is built around the art of reacting to somethingthat has already happened. this is always a reactionto something terrible, and this reaction representsthe heart and soul of an organization's core values. could a non-profit organization exist,

if not for something terrible? no. could a social businessexist if not for something having gone awry? could a venture-backedstart-up exist if not for something terrible? yes. in the fields of business,peripheral to social enterprise, innovation in times of greatprivilege or convenience

is encouraged and incubated. the encouragement to think preemptively is among the key differentiatorsbetween a social enterprise and a traditional enterprise. the entire premise of social enterprise relies on reaction. ours is a field ofbusiness that is built upon the failure of a naturalor societal system. ours is not a field thatprofits from the contemplation

of the signals of failuresthat have yet to exist. social entrepreneursare inspired into action by the trauma of the present, and innovation is only bornout of an existing state of emergency. social entrepreneursperceive trauma as permission to innovate. this is not a responsible assumption. by relying on trauma to beour leading incubation tactic,

for new social enterprises, we are distracting our industryfrom its unique potential to go far beyond the opportunityof yesterday's catastrophe. while profit-mindedenterprise finds success on the basis of balancingreaction and preemption, the conscious-minded enterprise misses out by exclusively investingits energy into the art of reaction. reaction is necessary,but reaction can no longer

be revered as the holy grail,or singular expectation of the new social entrepreneur. social enterprise has failedto encourage a discipline that can deviate from thetrauma of the present, and these strict expectationshave failed to encourage a diverse set of theories and initiatives centered around a traumathat has yet to exist. the new social entrepreneurmust also be preemptive. the preemptive socialentrepreneur understands

a new suite of previouslyunimagined problems, as well as the next evolutions for the present day'smost persistent social and environmental issues. the next wave of socialentrepreneurs must include a community of those whochoose to focus on the future. these are innovators whorefuse to wait for the bomb to explode. the preemptive socialentrepreneur imagines a future

that is bespoke. a future that is ideal. the preemptive socialentrepreneur works backwards from the ideal. the preemptive socialentrepreneur is a visionary, and concerns themselves with the study of systemic interventions. they imagine implications,they author scenarios, they plan strategically.

the preemptive socialentrepreneur balances theory and practice, and thepreemptive social entrepreneur is not necessarily a business owner. we mustn't all focus on cleaning beaches, we mustn't all focus on feeding the poor, we mustn't all focus onhousing the homeless, we mustn't all focus on curing diseases, we mustn't all focus ondonating goods and services. the old social entrepreneuris fueled by this kind

of course, socialentrepreneurs must be engaged with the trauma of the present, but the preemptive social entrepreneur must also consider thetrauma of the future. the new social entrepreneurwill strike a balance between reaction and preemption, and the new socialentrepreneur asks: what if? the new social entrepreneuris a facilitator of change. the next generation of social enterprise

must welcome the preemptivesocial entrepreneur. the preemptive social entrepreneur is the new social entrepreneur. preemption and reaction,preemptive and reactive. reaction to the preemption. welcome the new social entrepreneur. we need you, we're glad you're here. all right, and with that,these are some links to stuff that i do.

i'd be happy to take questions,and the first three people that ask questions geta copy of the new book. yeah. - [woman] hi. - hi. - [man] and the fourth one gets it signed. - [matt] yes. gets a future signature. signature that doesn't exist yet.

- [woman] this is awesome,and very inspiring, and thank you for reading it to us. - yeah, you're welcome. - [woman] i'm really curious about the way that you've thought aboutdeveloping your employees at your company. - yeah. - think about kind of internal, you know, within the business model,

how does the peopleoperation piece of it work, and how do you think about creating spaces that can be the most creative, and kind of balance the different parts of the person? - yeah, that's a great question. it's something i've beenthinking more and more about as we've kind of grown as a team, as well. one of the things that i did originally,

when we were growing was, it wasn't in a very strategic manner. it was very reactive, actually,instead of preemptive, you could say, and now, youknow, my focus with growth is have one person thatis really great at one of our core competencies,and once we fill all of those slots, we kind ofhave the team that we need, and that's not necessarily,you know, a massive company. it doesn't really have to be.

we also work a lot with peopleremotely, too, you know, which is kind of another co-opportunity, but in terms of how wecan really grow the team, kind of intellectually,involving them in these kinds of internal initiatives that we're doing. we're doing more and more of those lately, and next year, we'regonna kind of announce another really big one, kind of that scale of models of impact, thatthe team doesn't know

about yet, but i wantto kind of coauthor it with them, so gettingthem involved in that, so that they're balancing,you know, being kind of challenged in theclient work, but also, having that room to do theirown thing a little bit, too, is definitely a directionthat i want to go in. we're doing a retreatat the end of the year, and one of, our art director wanted to do a workshop on designing kites,

so we're letting her do that. so, it's like, you know,just trying to kind of hear people out, withthings that they're excited about, so now, we're all gonna make kites in palm springs, so that's great. yeah. yeah. - [man] i'm curious aboutthis idea of preemption, and, for instance, the, thankyou for that, by the way. for instance, the social side of i-d-o,

ido.org one of the ways that they're able to really understand the kind of design that people who needthe design might need, is to do a lot of design research, and fieldwork, and that kind of stuff, so i'm curious how you think, if you're trying to preempt something, and you don't know yet if somebody

hasn't been impacted by something, and it's not reactionary, how would you start to tryto research and develop a solution for something that's there? i mean, i love the idea of that, but i'm trying to thinkthrough the logistics of that. - yeah, absolutely. well, one of the thingsthat i think's interesting to note is that there is a whole field

called strategicforesight, and this is one that i was introduced toby a colleague of mine, you know, five or six years ago, and really blew my mindwhen i learned about it, because what it taught me is that there actually are futurists,like that's an actual thing. it's not a crystal ball,necessarily, you know, like you might imagine. they have actual strategicmethods that they use.

they never say to predict the future, but to invent it, or to kind of, at least, tango with it a bit, and so, one of those tactics is called the archetypes of thefuture, and that is a tactic where you take an existing issue, right? it could be something that you gather from that design research workthat you do, and then, you run it through four different filters.

one is a transformation scenario. so, that's a scenario of the future, where you can imagine like the jetsons, like everything's going great, we've got everything, socially, economically,politically, and what not, so what does your idea looklike under that scenario? then, you run it throughone called growth, where it's positive, butit's not transformational,

right, but things are still possible, things are growing, there's some kind of steady growth. it's not like a huge spike, and then, there's the two that aresometimes fun and sad. one is collapse, which is thatkind of apocalyptic scene, so what happens to your ideawhen all of a, b, c, d, e, f, goes wrong, and thenthere's constraint, where, that's the fourth archetype,where literally nothing

changes, so you have tobe incredibly resourceful, so that's just one of aton of different tactics that are out there, and again, you know, the goal of a preemptiveentrepreneur, from my perspective, wouldn't be to tell thefuture, or to predict it, but to just create thespace for a conversation about that, 'cause veryoften, non-profits, they're kind of running on a treadmill, because of funding issues,or whatever it might be,

and so, they're notreserving the time to think about this, mainly becausethey think that it's a huge project, but it'sactually just a thought exercise, at the bare minimum, you know, and so, that's kind of what i'm hopingto spark in some people, yeah. - [woman] first of all, thank you. oh, thanks. thank you for coming and talking to us.

it's really refreshingto get this perspective. i am wondering about, howdo you strike the balance of the value of pro-bonowork, which, i mean, i'm convinced that this is worth doing. - i tricked you? nice. - [woman] you didn't have to trick me. i was there already. but, i will say that likesomething that i think about a lot, i come froma background in theater,

and i have a lot of friends who work in like the ngo sector,and i think that there's an expectation that whenpeople are doing something that they care deeply about,and feel is important, that they don't need to get paid. - [woman] and, yeah, so i, the question's in there somewhere. - yeah, yeah, yeah. how do you maintain your sense of value?

- [woman] well, and howdo you maintain your, you know, you need money to live, so like, like, how does that balancewith like getting paid, and being able to even continueto do the work, or like, not getting burnt out,because you're taking on so many projects tosustain the pro-bono work. - yeah, totally, so, ihave a couple answers. one i think is around thevalue, 'cause this is something that we figured out, thatreally worked for us,

'cause originally, we weretaking on pro-bono work, and doing it, and then, you know, all of the bad things thatyou hear about pro-bono were happening to us,like a project went on for two years, and we couldn'tlike break up with it, the scope went crazy, allof that kind of stuff, and then, what i realizeis, hey, you know, with our paid clients,that doesn't happen. how come?

oh, it's 'cause we havean agreement, and so, we came up with this idea ofhaving pro-bono agreements, where there's no money, right? it says zero dollars, orif it's a partial pro-bono, it says what the market rate would be, and shows the discount, and it lists out the scope and the time frame,and both parties sign that, and magically, there'snot been issue since, of kind of overstepping boundaries.

again, even though it'snot a financial exchange, necessarily, just that actof kind of that commitment has really helped. the other nice thing i mentioned. we get a lot of our referralsfrom pro-bono clients. well, you could imaginethat one potential nightmare would be that we get a referral that says, "oh yeah, these guys are great, "and they do it for free, all the time,"

you know? but these contracts actuallyshow what that market rate would have been, so they know, when they're kind ofpitching us to others, "oh yeah, that would have cost this, "but we were lucky enoughto get it for free, "because of our non-profitstatus, and what not," so that's kind of that answer,and then, with the balance, it's really about justbeing really strict,

so if we're at 50-50,we're not even looking at the applications that are coming in, for new pro-bono work,so it's kind of been about learning how tojust stay really strict to that balance, in terms of having more bandwidth, to be able to cover all that,really opening up our doors to volunteers, to help us out. something i didn't mention.

we have almost 500 volunteersthat we team up with, all over the place, when we're kind of low on resources, 'cause we have a small team. we fluctuate probably betweenlike 12 and 15 people, so it's not a huge company,but we tap into this network to help us out, you know, on a kind of per project basis, which has helped us be able to afford thatpro-bono work as well. yeah, yeah.

- [man] thank you. i was wondering aboutthe question of, like, measuring impact, because i took the class in my undergrad calledsocial entrepreneurship, and the question always came up was like, how we measuring theimpact of like the models that you're creating,and like, is there a way you actually approach that? - yeah, so that's a realhot topic, for sure,

and i would say no onereally knows exactly how to do it right, yet. you know, i think everybody'sstill trying to figure it out, 'cause this is a fieldthat's still pretty new, relatively now, but whati've found is a lot of times, the impact measurement,it's easy to accidentally just do that for yourself,so what i mean by that, is like for your marketing purposes, like it'd be easy for us to just say,

"hey, look," you know, "we did a thousandprojects, and it's worth "over $6 million," andthat's where we stop with measuring, but you have to remember that the measurement's not just for you, it's also for the client, and so, one of the things that we started doing, whenever we would offer aclient a pro-bono service, we would ask them, "whatdid saving that money

"allow you to do?" a lot of the times, that doesn't work, because, in some cases, it allowed them to do nothing, sincethere was just no money, whatsoever, but in somecases, it did, you know. like, we worked with 826 los angeles. they're kind of a national organization, and they told us, you know, they were able to do x amountmore tutoring sessions,

and x amount more books,because of the work we did, 'cause they had that budgeted, and then, they all of a suddendidn't have to pay for it, so they actually couldmove their money around, so we hear things likethat, and trying to get that feedback from clients,has been the best thing that i've found, and for us, you know, i keep a log of what causeswe're serving the most, so that i know like whatare we really kinda high on,

what are we low on, so rightnow, healthcare and education are our two biggest,and the environments one of our lowest, and so, by measuring that, i know that we should be exceptingmore environmental causes to help out in the future,to kind of balance it out, so hopefully that helps, you know. it's not really one wayto do it for everybody. that's what i've found,just talking to people. you kind of have tosee what works for you,

for your own benefitand remembering that it has to benefit the client, too. - [man] the dsi, the socialinnovation department, downstairs, is putting together an entire full-dayconference on (mumbling) - awesome. - [man] coming up, soon,so you should be at that, if you're interested. - yeah, you guys shouldgo, 'cause that would be

very cutting edge. there's, again, there'speople are doing it great, but there's not a consensus at all, so, that's a real fresh conversation. you have the mic. - [woman] i do. i'm going to ask you areal question this time. - all right. - [woman] so, you mentioned something

that really sparked my interest, 'cause i've done a littlepro-bono work in the past, myself, and you said that whenpeople have to do something that's scary or boring, theytend to do the first thing they think of. - mm-hmm. - [woman] but i imagine thatyou've probably encountered some scary and boring stuffwhile you're trying new things in your business.

how do you keep it from getting you down? - yeah, yeah. wow, good question. well, a lot of the times, it's by trying to do multiple angles on it, so if we come to a solution that was kind of boring, a, i mean, the first thingis try to get excited about it, 'cause if it's a solution, that's kind of exciting, right? you helped someone out.

even if it's not thecoolest way to go about it, i always try to see thepositive in it, you know. sometimes, we'll have aproject that's just not, you know, we're probablynot gonna wanna put it on our portfolio. that happens, of course, you know, but, that doesn't mean thatwe were bummed about it, because the client was happy, and it made some kind of impact,

so trying to see some good in it, kind of like with the way i answer the impact measurement questions, see it from the client's eyes, too. i found, you know, we'vedone so many projects, right? that projects, in general,you could easily have them be less and less exciting over the years, but the moment that you start doing that, you kinda have to snapout of it, and remember,

that for that client,this was their first time ever doing something like this, and they're gonna rememberit forever, you know, and so you see it from their perspective, and you get that excitement, i feel like. also, by doing a lot of projects at once, and having side projects,like allan alluded to, that, i mean, to me, that'show you kind of keep it fresh. i even do side projectsoutside of verynice.

i have to, you know, for my sanity. i have an instagram calledthe dumpster decipher, where i go around and i takepictures of tags on dumpsters, and i turn them into poetry,so it has nothing to do with social impact, whatsoever. i mean, i could connect it somehow, but i'd be kinda lying to you, you know. i just want to do it. and so, finding that is anotherway to keep things fresh,

too, no matter how weird it is, even if it's just for yourself, yeah. - [woman] hi, thankyou so much for coming. this is really inspiring, as many of my classmates have said. i'm wondering to what extent your social and environmental valuesand goals translate into the private sector as well. do you ever integratethose, and how do you get

those clients onboard? - yeah, good question,so, in the beginning, it was much harder too,because we were still kind of establishing a brandfor ourself, and so on, but one way to answerthat, what i've noticed, a lot of people ask me, you know, oh, do you ever have, you know,like bp reach out, right? or somebody that's justnot doing so great, and what will you say to them?

will you turn them down, or what? and the nice thing is,because of the brand is so much in this do-good space, those kind of people thatdon't care about that, really just don't reachout to us, i found, because it's not gonnabe a good fit to them, or they see it, and they're like, uh, like why do you give half? i don't get it.

you know, i don't want to talk to you. and we'd just rather nottalk to them, anyways, so that's one kind ofunhelpful answer, i would say, is, well, helpful, and unhelpful, 'cause it means that by really, you know, being loud about your brand,and what you care about, the right people will find you, i found. that's almost always the case, especially the moment youfind a couple of them,

'cause those lead to referrals of other like-minded people, too, but when it comes to theprivate sector, you know, we've been having more people coming to us that are in the privatesector, but are kind of blurring those lines, like we are too. models of impact has really helped us, in capturing more of thosekinds of people, for sure, so that's been a huge value, you know.

it started as a side project, right? that was kind of just aresearch thing, and it's really actually been transformativefor helping us find those right clients, andget them excited about it. the other thing, if youever have naysayers, or i just call them high-hanging fruit, they're really easy tojump onboard when they see that someone else similarto them has done it, and succeeded.

that's the best thingyou can do, is just throw a case study at them. like, hey, you know, suchand such person donated this thing, and that grewtheir social media presence by x amount, you know. even those kinda littlefacts, which are good for you to collect, anyways, you know, to be kind of on top of it. - [woman] thank you.

- [man] i'll just project. - [man] is this sort of a corollary, or a tactical follow up to like expression about like finding balance, but half is such like anawesome, and lofty objective and i'm sure, also, part ofthis is probably answered in the first book, but, i guess, my first question isjust how do you measure half, like how do like, is it, is itquantity of active projects,

quantity of included projects for a year, like hours of work, like howdo you choose to measure that, and maybe, what are thechallenges associated with that? and then, i guess you're partially honest, but like how do youseek that balance, and, how do you make that work? - yeah, so, in terms ofhow we're measuring it, it's funny, 'cause itcould be, in a lot of ways. you mentioned several of them, right?

for us, it's never beenbased on a backlog. it's always been based off of right now, at this exact moment,and we don't measure it, necessarily, by, i don't know if we, wedon't necessarily measure it by time, either. just literally by project. and so, as a result,you know, some projects, they're done in a week, somethey're done in a few years,

and we just, we actually,i have a trello board. i don't know if you guys have used that, but it's just kinda likea glorified to-do list, and i have one list of the pro-bono ones, one list of the for-profit ones, and that's how i monitorit, to be honest, so, it's always at that exact moment. an easier way to go about it would be, like a historical balance,

a 50-50. that would be easier. it's pretty aggressive tosay at any given moment we're giving half, butthat's just kind of the bar that we set for ourself,and we make it work, a lot of the times,because of these volunteers that we get involved init, so you can imagine, you know, it gives a smallcompany the bandwidth of kind of a big company,if need be, or by scheduling

the projects in the right way. the pro-bono projectstend to have a little bit more leniency on due date. we do, we have the contracts,so we commit to it, but they tend to not say,"oh, we need it yesterday," you know, like everybody else does. so, hopefully, thatanswers that a little bit. - [man] hi. i think i would like tocontradict a little bit, like,

are you really balancing,or is this just the way you're living your life, i mean, you've said it yourself,one of the goals (mumbling) - mm-hmm. - [man] you know, and ithink about people giving up on work-life balance. - yeah, that's a good point. mm-hmm. - [man] 'cause they don'thave to like balance, anymore.

- [man] this is how i live my life. - [man] becomes more activelike on social media, and sometimes, i don't... - [man] so, i wonder, like i just, i don't know if you're, you know, the point is to encourage people to re-balance, in orderto like choose, you know, how they want to be inthe world, you know. (mumbling)

- [man] so, even livingthis life, of your own kind, and i think that there wasa point in your career, where you needed to message this out, and maybe there willalways be that requirement, but i just, i'm wondering, (mumbling) like this is not how you actuallyspend your time thinking. - right. no, yeah. you're right, you're right. well, what's interestingis we literally balance it,

because of having thatpublic commitment, basically, but i think like you said,it really is just a way of living, you know, and, what i realize pretty quickly. - [man] give as much as you take. - yeah, give as much as you take, or even, as much asyou can, in some cases. i used to be a lot more kindof harsh in my perspective, saying, "oh, everybody has to give half,"

you know, but now, it's alittle bit more around the lines of, everybody should setthe bar that they think they can reach, but itjust should be a priority. why we landed on 50%was mainly symbolically, because it, the momentthat you do something more, with more than half of yourtime, it's all of a sudden not an extra curricular activity, it's really integrated intoyour life, like you said, and so, setting that bar has been helpful

in maybe finding that way of life, and, it might not be necessaryto measure it forever. it's possible, yeah. yeah, i like that a lot. - [man] i know that aiga, for a long time, offered job work as alsolisted pro-bono work, and has, you know, a couple of sentences about the benefits of pro-bono work, especially for people starting out,

and i'm wondering, since you have a number of flow of clients thattend to want pro-bono work, and you seem to be morearticulate in your benefits of pro-bono work, if you have, or if you thought of consideringpairing up with them, because they're such a major funnel, and have cast a wide net. - yeah, yeah. - [man] if you thoughtabout putting something

out for you there, tohelp disperse the work that comes to you. - well, you know, i'venever thought about it, in terms of the job board. it might be because of beingworried about who ends up taking it on, will theydo a good job or not. will it kind of seem likeit's my fault, almost? that might be the honestanswer, but one way i have worked with aiga, i'm on the board

of the la chapter, and ihelped bring the design for good initiative there,and we do kind of mini, pro-bono hackathons. those are real event-based. you know, not very long-term, right? some of them are 24 hours, some of them are three hours, more like strategy sessions, but that's been my mainway of kind of linking up

with aiga. i think that aiga could do more, kind of like how the legalindustry really, just, all got behind the idea of public service just being part of a riteof passage to that industry. i've written about that before, with not so much response, you know, but, the idea that every designershould do some pro-bono work to kind of have a rite ofpassage into the industry.

i love that idea. not everybody likes that idea, though. but, yeah, aiga's doing really cool things around design for good. the former white housecreative director, ashley, is doing a bunch of stuffwith diversity and inclusion, or racial justice issues,or anything like that, so if you're interested in that, i mean, they, it seems to keep on developing.

new york's obviously thebiggest chapter, too, so you guys have all kindsof stuff for your fingertips, which is cool. - [man] there's a greatwomen's initiative, as well, that launched last year. - yeah, yeah, yeah, women's initiatives. we were doing some women'sdesign salons in la, that were really popular as well. i thought that was a reallygreat kind of addition,

having people have a spacewhere they can just be who they are, you know, and not, you can't really go to eventwith a woman on a panel, and you like, checked thediversity box, you know, it has to be more integrated,more inclusive, yeah. any other questions? - [man] any other books? - not yet. - [woman] what about your computer sleeve,

or assigned backpack? what else do you got in there? little swiss army knife. - it's like you guys are trickor treating, or something, and all i have is a goldwatch to give you, or, yeah. but i don't wear watches though. - [man] i mean, that laptop'slooking a little old. with the stickers on it. - [man] let's throw it out.

- it's got character. - [man] it's gotta be agreat question, though. - it's got character, yeah. well, if you are... oh yeah, yeah, go ahead. - [woman] going back to thepreemptive social entrepreneur, in the way just that you think about this, i'm trying to get a senseof kind of how brand a visionary you're imagining this to be,

like sort of how, how farout, and to what extent, then, how do you see designing for like users, like actual people in the world now, with a vision that's further out? well, that's part of why ithink it's really important. one of the last lines if, youknow, reaction and preemption, and balancing both of those things, because it can't be anexcuse to not help people. that's one way this could be interpreted,

which wouldn't be a correctway to interpret it, but it's more that wejust, we have to balance thinking about thefuture, too, so in terms of getting people onboardwith it that are here, right now, that's actuallya great design opportunity, because design is reallygreat at making things very tangible for people. so are the arts, in general, right? the future is really intangible.

we actually can never be in the future. it's like it doesn't exist, right? it's always just an idea, and as a result, we're the only people thatcan either screw it up, or make it cool. or make it helpful, maybelike those three things, so, yeah, so using design tools, to make that a tangible experience, whether that's like an experiential thing,

like a performance, orwhether that's a product, that's kind of like adiagetic prototype of sorts, you know, that just kindbrings things back to earth, for people, so that it doesn't have to be this big visionary thing, you know. i don't think. not only steve jobs is allowedto think about the future. it is a privilege tothink about the future, but i don't think it has tobe that much of a privilege,

you know, hopefully, it canbe a very accessible thing, and you guys can help do that, yeah. - [man] great, well i thinkthere'll be lots of people who want to ask you questions one on one, so an incredible spirit of generosity. - [man] thank you so much for your time. - yeah, well, thanks for having me.