Full Stack Whatever

Sana Rao: The Goop Stage

fsw@miekd.com (Sana Rao, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 3 Dec 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Sana Rao is a contemporary expressionist artist based in London. Her work is a personal meditation and a weapon to guard against the numbness brought on by an entirely mechanised existence. Sana’s artwork draws from the expressionist tradition and depicts the vision of a playful yet symbiotic future. Before returning to art, Sana spent nearly two decades in the world of design and tech working in companies like Twitter, Deliveroo, Apple and Peanut across three continents.

Craig Campbell: One-man Wrecking Crew

fsw@miekd.com (Craig Campbell, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Links:

Pastmaps

Jeff Sheldon: Standing Behind Your Product

fsw@miekd.com (Jeff Sheldon, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 9 Jul 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Links:

Ugmonk

Brett Westervelt: Measure Twice, Cut Once

fsw@miekd.com (Brett Westervelt, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Brett Westervelt is currently the Head of Design at Instagram. We spoke about his life and career, from growing up in Oklahoma, tinkering with his grandfather, to taking a course at Stanford, experiencing startup life, and growing as a leader. This episode has tons of nuggets about how he thinks of building strong teams to create great software, how he thinks about design at scale, and how to keep craft at a high bar.

Andy McMillan: It's About People

fsw@miekd.com (Andy McMillan, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 9 Apr 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Andy is a creative director, designer, and event producer. He is most well known for XOXO and Build Conference. He also recently started a non-alcoholic craft brewery called Heck. We spoke about the events that he's created, and how he went from event production to non-alcoholic beverages. Most notably, Andy's career has run parallel to the evolution of the tech industry in the last 15 years, and he shares some of his perspectives on this.

Gabriel Valdivia: Filling The Design Void

fsw@miekd.com (Gabriel Valdivia, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Gabriel Valdivia is a product designer, and currently an independent fractional design leader. He partners with founders as their design leadership counterpart while embedding with engineering teams to execute and iterate towards product/market fit. We talked about the rise of the model of fractional design leadership, the current issues tech teams are facing after bloating their organizations these last few years, and many other takes of various temperatures.

Cat Noone: Responsibility to Your Craft

fsw@miekd.com (Cat Noone, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 5 Mar 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Cat Noone is a product designer turned founder, and now CEO of Stark, a startup streamlining accessibility compliance for software teams. We talked about her path from designer to business leader, the mistakes made along the way, and how she keeps a high bar for craft of the product and of decision making.

Aaron Carambula: Breaking Down Barriers

fsw@miekd.com (Aaron Carambula, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 12:00:00 +0000

In the inaugural episode of 2024, Aaron and I explore three compelling topics. First, we discuss the qualities of our most effective cross-functional partners and partnerships. Then, we delve into the significance of designers considering their work in the context it lives in, and focusing on the impact it can have. And finally, we share insights on the most impactful feedback we've received.

Majd Taby & Jasper Hauser: No Modes

fsw@miekd.com (Majd Taby, Maykel Loomans, Jasper Hauser) — Mon, 1 Jan 2024 01:30:00 +0000

Majd and Jasper are the co-founders of Darkroom, a photo and video editor for iPhone, iPad and Mac. In this episode we go through the whole history of Darkroom, how they think about the product in the context of the competitive landscape, and how they look at evolving the product going forward.

Brian Lovin & Ryan Nystrom: Surrounded by People Doing Interesting Work

fsw@miekd.com (Ryan Nystrom, Maykel Loomans, Brian Lovin) — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Brian Lovin and Ryan Nystrom are the co-founders of Campsite, a tool for product teams to communicate with increased signal, rich institutional knowledge, and reduced noise. We talked about the lessons they have learned from starting the company, but also about their past lessons and experiences that inform the way they approach building Campsite. We covered a lot of topics that continuously roam around in my mind as I think of how to support my teams in the best way.

Noah Levin: A Tool That Creates Tools

fsw@miekd.com (Noah Levin, Maykel Loomans) — Fri, 8 Dec 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Noah is a designer and design leader who is currently the VP of Design at Figma. In our conversation, we talked about his path into design from high school, to Carnegie Mellon, to Google, and discovered some great anecdotes and stories along the way. Beyond that, we talked about his experience at Figma, about hiring and growing teams, and about some of our other favourite parts of design leadership.

Josh Harris: Exceeding Expectations in Unexpected Ways

fsw@miekd.com (Josh Harris, Maykel Loomans) — Sun, 3 Dec 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Josh is the founder of The Bon Vivants and owner of Trick Dog, a legendary bar in San Francisco that has very recently been crowned Industry Icon by Punch. We talked about the creation of Trick Dog, the context in which Trick Dog was founded, and the lessons from it's first decade. We talked about his 20 year sobriety, how he looks at the low-ABV, non-alcoholic movement. And he also opened up about mental health and some of his recent lessons and realizations.

Chantal Jandard: Useful and Non-Evil

fsw@miekd.com (Chantal Jandard, Maykel Loomans) — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 17:09:41 +0000

Chantal is a designer and design leader. She currently leads a part of the design team at Autodesk related to construction products. We talked about her early years on the internet in her parent’s basement, how she went in to design, and found her role at PlanGrid. We talked about Autodesk’s acquisition of PlanGrid and how they eventually merged their design teams. From there, we took a deep dive in to talking about managing teams and hiring.

Om Malik: The Joy of the Creative Input

fsw@miekd.com (Om Malik, Maykel Loomans) — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Om is a former journalist, Partner Emeritus at True Ventures, and—in my words—a true internet OG. He was one of the first serious tech bloggers, and founder of Gigaom. We spoke about the current state of technology from both of our perspectives, and he shared where he believes the puck is going. We also went deeply into the topic of photography and creativity, which will be shared in next week's episode.

Om Malik: Bumper Sticker Gurus

fsw@miekd.com (Om Malik, Maykel Loomans) — Fri, 3 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Vicki Tan: Happy Accidents

fsw@miekd.com (Vicki Tan, Maykel Loomans) — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Vicki is a designer, author and creative. She’s worked at companies like Google, Headspace, Lyft and Spotify, and is now writing and designing an illustrated book with the goal of making people aware of their biases. We talked about her path from Research Coordinator to Designer, the lessons she learned in her various roles, how she’s managed her career and her creativity, and what excites her about her new book.

Jasper Hauser: Bananas Stuff

fsw@miekd.com (Jasper Hauser, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Jasper is a designer, entrepreneur and fellow dutchman. He’s most notably known for his roles at Sofa, Facebook and Darkroom. We talked about how he started with design, the Sofa team being acquired by Facebook, and the growth he experienced at Facebook. We then dug into his time after Facebook, as a co-founder of Darkroom, and various other ventures.

Amy Snook: Books Are Not a Secret

fsw@miekd.com (Amy Snook, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Amy is the founder of Parea, a startup that is taking a modern approach to book publishing. Before founding Parea, she was various comms, marketing and ops roles at companies like Haus, Glossier and SeatGeek. We walked through her career, and she shared some fantastic insights around brand, operations, and the publishing industry.

Coleen Baik: Asking the Dumb Questions

fsw@miekd.com (Coleen Baik, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Coleen is a designer and multidisciplinary artist. She is currently the founding designer at Braintrust, a new enterprise-grade stack for building AI products. We talked about impostor syndrome, the early days of Twitter Design, her experience helping early-stage startups at Sequoia, and what she looks forward to in her new role.

Nathan Sharp & Ryan Olson: A Big, Beautiful Retrospective

fsw@miekd.com (Nathan Sharp, Ryan Olson, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 5 Sep 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Nathan and Ryan are the co-founders of Retro, a mobile app that offers a new way to share photos and videos with a close group of your friends. We talked about the origin story of how they met, how they ended up founding their startup together, how they look at the social media landscape, and what they hope to achieve with their company and product.

Behzod Sirjani: Personal Trainer for Your Organization

fsw@miekd.com (Behzod Sirjani, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Behzod is a researcher, consultant, and advisor who focuses on helping organizations and teams make better decisions. We talked about his career path from being a TA to his formative roles at Facebook and Slack, and how he’s evolved his consulting practice to support leaders at companies of all sizes. At the end, he shared some of his thoughts on how AI can support the research practice.

Frankie Gaw: Fun Little Side Quests

fsw@miekd.com (Frankie Gaw, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Frankie is a former digital product designer turned food writer and photographer. He’s the author of First Generation: Recipes from My Taiwanese American Home and founder of the food blog Little Fat Boy. We talked about his path, from studying industrial design to unexpectedly landing a job as a digital product designer, and from there taking a side quest to leave tech and fully focus on food.

Alex Cornell & George Kedenburg III: Zoom in Real Life

fsw@miekd.com (George Kedenburg III, Alex Cornell) — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Alex and George are two very talented designers with very complementary skillsets whose paths intersected at Facebook. We sat down to talk about design, careers, technology, and all the things.

Annie Fryman: I Didn't Sleep Much

fsw@miekd.com (Annie Fryman, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 8 Aug 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Annie studied architecture, and after a few years as a practicioner pivoted to tackle the laws that govern our built environment, and the systems that shape it. Most notably, she was a policy staffer for California State Senator Scott Wiener during his first term in office where she was responsible for some of the biggest state housing bills in recent times. She shared her reflections on her career so far, and her perspectives on housing and politics in California.

Rachel Lee: Double Black Diamond

fsw@miekd.com (Rachel Lee, Maykel Loomans) — Wed, 2 Aug 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Rachel is a designer and creative who currently works on the ride-hailing experience at Cruise. We discussed her path from double majoring in Psychology and Sociology to hustling her way into a design career. We covered her experience as a first-generation immigrant and how she deals with her ambition, and the expectations she puts on herself.

Geoff Teehan: Canon DocuColor 1632

fsw@miekd.com (Geoff Teehan, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 19:00:00 +0000

Geoff is a designer, design leader and was one of the founders and partners at Teehan+Lax. We talked about his early career, got a glimpse into the founding of Teehan+Lax, and the rationale behind entertaining an acquisition. We spoke about design leadership and the lessons he learned while leading various teams at Facebook, and we sprinkled in many small tangents.

Bryn & Sarah Jackson: Rawdogging a Squid

fsw@miekd.com (Bryn Jackson, Sarah Jackson) — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 11:00:00 +0000

For over a decade, Bryn and Sarah have been entrepreneurs and in creative or operating roles. However, the place where they truly feel at home is around food and building community. In this conversation we talk about their paths, and we get a candid, personal account of the challenges they’ve faced. We end by learning more about how things are going with their latest endeavor: Cult Flav.

Michelle Morrison & Madelin Woods: Creative Friendship

fsw@miekd.com (Michelle Morisson, Madelin Woods, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Michelle and Madelin have enjoyed a long creative friendship. They overlapped at various different companies and collaborated on an equal amount of creative ventures. In this conversation, we talked about their creative connection, we shared our thoughts on strong collaborative relationships and remote work, and we got to hear some interesting stories from their times at Square, Facebook and Dropbox.

Cameron Koczon: Spider-Man With the Venom Suit

fsw@miekd.com (Cameron Koczon, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 4 Jul 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Cameron is the founder and CEO of Fictive Kin, and co-creator of Brooklyn Beta and Kinference. Cameron has had a significant impact on a pocket of the technology and design industry. We talked about the state of technology, the state of design within those technology businesses, and many more other things.

Maya Gold Patterson: Fairy God Dad

fsw@miekd.com (Maya Gold Patterson, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Maya is a digital product designer and design leader. She is currently the VP of Design at Riverside. We discussed her career path and dug into the lessons she learned from her time at Facebook and Twitter. We spoke about her attraction to the audio medium and how it is to work remotely across ten timezones.

Joshua Dickens: Big in Japan

fsw@miekd.com (Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Josh is a digital product designer and prototyper, currently working at Humane. We talked about a ton of things. We went in depth about his extended periods of time spent at Apple and Instagram. Weaved into this, he shared how he thinks about prototyping, and how he draws the relationship between his acting education and design.

Hans Peter Brøndmo: Arctic Guerilla Warfare

fsw@miekd.com (Hans Peter Brøndmo, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Hans Peter is a serial entrepreneur, technologist and photographer. Most recently, he led Everyday Robots at Alphabet. We talked about the experiences he gained from the companies he founded, his time at Nokia during the rise of the iPhone, and his reflections on leading robotics at Alphabet. Towards the end of our conversation, we talked about our mutual love for photography and got a little nerdy about Leica and photo management.

Kim Bost: Finding Our Way

fsw@miekd.com (Kim Bost, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 6 Jun 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Kim is a designer and leader with a very colorful track record including past roles at well-known companies like The New York Times, Etsy, and Dropbox. She is currently part of the Experience Design leadership team at Netflix. We covered a lot of topics, including burn-out, management styles, values alignment with your team and your employer, our shared thoughts on research, as well as her deep interest in food and wine.

Aaron Carambula: Reducing Future Trash

fsw@miekd.com (Aaron Carambula, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 30 May 2023 15:37:46 +0000

Aaron is one of those great individuals who is both a great designer, as well as a fabulous leader. He recently joined eBay as their VP of Design, where he continues his quest to bring re-commerce to the masses. We talked about his path into design, from his days in service design to realizing he wanted to go in-house, and eventually ending up having a long stint at Facebook, where he most notably was pivotal in the success of Marketplace.

Didier Hilhorst: Mediocre at Best

fsw@miekd.com (Didier Hilhorst, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 23 May 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Didier studied to be an economist before making a pivot into design. Since then, he has been a design lead at Flipboard and led a large part of the Uber design team. Most recently, he co-founded a fintech company in Paris called Bloks. We spoke about the genesis of his career path and the big lessons that he’s learned along the way. Some of the notable topics we dug in to were: working on mobile apps in the early 2010s, how to deal with working at a company that is experiencing major adversity, and the challenges of getting off the hamster wheel to take a long sabbatical, and figuring out what to do afterwards.

Mia Blume: Goofy-looking Cacti

fsw@miekd.com (Mia Blume, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 16 May 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Mia Blume is an entrepreneur, design leader, and leadership coach. She is the founder and CEO of learning & development company DesignDept, and the founder and host of the design leadership conference Within. We discussed her career and how she went from service design to in-house to starting her companies. We spoke about how she guides and supports design leaders through her workshops and coaching practices, and dug deeper into the importance of having business acumen as a design leader.

Jessica Hische: Feeding the Beast

fsw@miekd.com (Jessica Hische, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 2 May 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Jessica is a lettering artist and author who has created custom lettering artwork for established brands, films, classic books, postage stamps, and so much more. She’s traveled the world speaking at creative conferences and colleges and has befriended innumerable internet strangers while navigating the depths of social media. Most recently, she wrote and illustrated her latest children’s book: “Who Will U Be?”. We talked a bit about her career and the meaningful moments within it. And we chatted about befriending tons of people by being extremely online and the differences in connecting with people nowadays versus the past decade and a half.

Michael Sharon: Creative Monkeys

fsw@miekd.com (Michael Sharon, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Michael is an entrepreneur, investor, and product person. He is currently the co-founder and CEO at Taika, making beverages that fuel creativity. He was Facebook's first mobile product hire and subsequently led their mobile product development and strategy—including the company's pivot to mobile—for more than five years. We talked about his path from South Africa to the US, his career-defining role at Facebook, and his path since.

Matthew Buchanan: Growing Slowly

fsw@miekd.com (Matthew Buchanan, Jane Nagle, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Matthew is a designer, entrepreneur and a co-founder of Letterboxd, a social media site for film discussion and discovery. We talked about his path, how he bootstrapped and incubated Letterboxd, and how he has approached leading the company, and evolving the product, in the decade-plus that it has been around.

Haraldur Thorleifsson: Live at Kinference

fsw@miekd.com (Haraldur Thorleifsson, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 11:00:00 +0000

I’m excited to bring you a conversation with Haraldur Thorleifsson, or Halli, for short. I met up with Halli at Kinference in Brooklyn, and he was gracious enough to give me some of his time. We recorded this in the venue during the conference happy hour, so please bear with us as there’s going to be a lot of noise. Halli is an entrepreneur, creative design leader, and musician from Reykjavik, Iceland. He previously founded and led UENO. Currently, he is building 1000 ramps in Iceland, releasing music under the name Önnu Jónu Son and just launched his restaurant, bar, and mini theater Anna Jóna. We spoke for a short period of time during the happy hour of the first day of Kinference in Brooklyn. We talked about his experience being a recovering alcoholic, and cover some meaningful stories about what drives him and what projects he is focusing on next.

Hazel Jennings: Tools, Not Rules

fsw@miekd.com (Hazel Jennings, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 4 Apr 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Hazel is a writer and designer who works on design systems and product architecture. Right now, she’s building the design systems practice at Duolingo. She was the founding member of Instagram’s first content design team, and later, their first design systems team. Our conversation covers where her career started, and how she found her passion in a life-defining role starting Instagram’s design system. We also chat about some of her best practices for building design systems, and her thoughts on taking agency over your career. * This episode is dedicated to the memory of Joy-Vincent Niemantsverdriet.

Andrea Mignolo: The Winding Path

fsw@miekd.com (Andrea Mignolo, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Andrea is a designer, leader, and executive coach working with unconventional leaders and teams. She has a compelling story about her winding career, from various startup roles, to finding her way to Interaction Design and executive leadership. Throughout our conversation we reflect on the industry, and the relationship between design and coaching.

Dan Rubin: Sketching in Public

fsw@miekd.com (Dan Rubin, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Dan is a designer, creative director and photographer based in London. He has had a fascinating story so far, from the early days of the world wide web, to being part of the early blogging scene, to becoming a prolific photographer. We talked about his path towards design and the creative field, how he found his way onto the internet, and how he always gravitates towards writing and teaching as a means to clarify his thinking.

Everett Katigbak: Pounding the Pavement

fsw@miekd.com (Everett Katigbak, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Everett is a multi-talented creative who is currently on the publishing team at Stripe as the executive producer of films and brand content for Stripe Press and Works in Progress. We talked about his path from East LA to the Bay Area and spoke about some of our shared formative experiences from reflections on our time at Facebook in the early 2010s. We dug into his perspectives as a generalist vs. being a specialist, and what the next creative challenges are that he wants to take on.

Linda Eliasen: Bricks and Mortar

fsw@miekd.com (Linda Eliasen, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 7 Mar 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Linda is a designer, creative director, and as her website says: 'Your friend in design.' Her story starts in small-town Georgia, and since she has had an illustrious career, from being a designer at companies like Mailchimp and Dropbox, to her time as an Art Director at UENO, and most recently leadership roles at Help Scout and Mux. Linda shared some of her most meaningful lessons, and how they have affected both her leadership style, and her personal approach to life.

Vika: Twelve Dropdowns in a Row

fsw@miekd.com (Vika Kovalchuk Zamparelli, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 12:00:00 +0000

Vika is a designer and co-founder of Super. In our conversation, we discussed the challenges and lessons from her early career and some of the values and wisdom she likes to share with others now. Most notably, we covered her experience as one of the foundational Product Designers in Facebook's New York office and how she and her co-founder Lindsay approach building, growing, and leading Super.

Pete Hunt: The No-Fun Rule

fsw@miekd.com (Pete Hunt, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Pete is a software engineer, startup founder, and one of the creators of React. We talked through his career, from Facebook, to Instagram, to starting his company Smyte, to their acquisition by Twitter, and now his new role at Elementl. You'll find a ton of never previously shared stories and tidbits in this one.

Michelle Mederos: You Wanna Design Toilets?

fsw@miekd.com (Michelle Mederos, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Michelle is a design leader who currently leads Airbnb’s Trust & Safety, Tooling, and Support design teams and one of my absolute favourite humans. In our episode, we talked about how she found her way into the field of design, some of the important people and moments on her path, her fascination with human connection, and how she coaches herself and others.

Rasmus Andersson: A Computer as a Paintbrush

fsw@miekd.com (Rasmus Andersson, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 7 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Rasmus is a designer, an engineer and a person who expresses their creativity through software. He was on the founding team at Spotify, created the typeface Inter, and had stints at well known companies like Facebook, Dropbox and Figma. We talked about a plethora of things and went on a few tangents, ranging from stories about his career, the differences between building software now versus the past, and how he expresses himself through software.

Dan Mall: Creating Opportunities

fsw@miekd.com (Dan Mall, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Dan is a husband, dad, teacher, creative director, designer, founder, and entrepreneur from Philadelphia. During the start of his career, Dan found himself amongst the people at the forefront of the web standards movement. In our conversation we talked about his career, the people who influenced him, the various eras of his design firm SuperFriendly, and his personal mission to create better opportunities for those who wouldn't have them otherwise.

Kathy Zheng: A Caretaker of Ideas

fsw@miekd.com (Kathy Zheng, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Kathy is a multi-talented creative who works as a digital product designer by day, and pursues various creative endeavors outside of work, including her ceramics project prettygoodclub. In our conversation we covered her various perspectives on careers, and some of the biggest lessons she learned at GitHub.

Brian Lovin: It’s All About Having Fun

fsw@miekd.com (Brian Lovin, Maykel Loomans) — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Brian is a designer, podcaster, writer, and software tinkerer. He is currently building Campsite, a tool that helps software teams share and organize work-in-progress. We talked about his path so far, what drives him, and why he started building Campsite. I really hope you enjoy this pilot episode.