Nadia's Digest - Issue #16 (May)

Hey y'all! How you living?

I hope all is good and smooth on your end. And if not, well I hope whatever challenges you’re facing, you’re meeting them with a bad-ass attitude, perseverance and recognizing them as disguised opportunities for growth.

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If I sound a little bit too relaxed and wavey .. blame it on Bali! Although I haven’t been taking many yoga classes or engaging in much of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo going on here, this place does things to you. Maybe it’s the stunning sunsets, maybe the diving with 6-meter mantas, maybe it’s the masakan padang meals, maybe it’s simply me slowing down and decompressing after a few (over)stimulating months. 

Either way it’s quite a magical little island(s) and I hope you get to see and experience it for yourself someday.

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Without further ado, these are the digital goods of the month of May!

Brainstorming is a key ritual in any design thinking or concept development process. Yet as with most group activities, it is wired for extroverts. Failing to recognize this flaw, we may just miss out on the best idea in the room being shared, and instead remaining in the mind of an introvert not as eager to speak up. I’ve touched on this sentiment before in my Design for Social Anxiety article. The lovely people at IDEO posted a piece on their blog proposing 5 tweaks to make innovation more inclusive of those less loud. Which will you try out with your team?

I admit this might be for the geeks amongst us but wow! So earlier this year Google announced Clips, a nifty little camera with built-in AI that you carry around and automatically captures what it believes to be a great moment. 2 weeks ago, Google shared a short and non-/semi-technical post breaking down how they’ve been teaching Clips, with the help of professional photo and videographers, how to take and judge a great shot. Although in its primal stages, any machine learning grasping to understand human sentiment intrigues me. Recommended for anyone interested to learn more about machine learning!

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” I relate to this so much. Although Kierkegaard (Søren Kierkegaard, Danish, considered to be the 1st existentialist philosopher) wrote his book The Concept of Anxiety back in 1844 - and its ultimately a universal side effect of human consciousness - his notes on anxiety seem more relevant than ever. If you find yourself in the same predicament or are simply interested in the wonderous defects of the neocortex and its relation to creativity, read these curated snippets of the book on Brainpickings (one of my favorite blogs of all-time so allow yourself the gift of browsing around if you don’t know it).

Whatever is going on with us personally, we bring into the workplace. And as a leader, the effects of this can be brilliant or disastrous. BetterUp (an inspiring SF-based startup bringing personalized professional coaching & mentorship to employees at all levels) founder & CEO Alexi Robichaux persuasively argues the point that some of the most important work a leader can do is inner work. Integrating the personal and professional is a theme close to heart and to let you in on a little secret: we’re starting a new initiative named Humans@Work later this month. More on this later so for now check out this great thought piece!

Just a little bit of self-promotion because I’m so honored and excited to be included in the T500 by TNW and Accenture for biggest change agents under 26! Great thanks to TNW for this beautiful recognition of my work and to all my mentors, colleagues, clients and fellow glowgetters for inspiring me and inviting me to create. If you’re in the NL, under 26 and doing some dope shit in digital, apply for a chance to be included on next year’s list and otherwise check out TNW for your latest on tech, startups & internet culture.

Mixmag describing his sound as “the multi-instrumentalist makes creamy modern soul recalling Frank Ocean and Fat Freddy’s Drop” should tell you enough. If you don’t know the man, waste no more time, shuffle play, and thank me later.

Heyy that’s the end of it. Again, I hope you enjoyed reading this issue as I did putting it together. Please let me know which of these pieces you most enjoyed or has been most valuable to you! And if you fucks with my monthly digest, please share it with your networks or specific people you think would enjoy it the same.

With love from Bali,
Nadia

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