 Good evening everyone. Hello. I'm Caroline Bowman, Director of Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and I am really really thrilled to welcome all of you to Cooper Hewitt. Thank you. Thanks John. For this evening's design talk we've gathered a brilliant lineup of pioneering design minds for dynamic exchange on the future of design and technology. It's an ongoing and exciting conversation at Cooper Hewitt and given the popularity of our panelists tonight we decided to experiment and offer live streams in the bridge gallery and the conservatory some of our visitors favorite spaces to congregate to meet the overwhelming demand for seats so I'm hoping that it'll all work upstairs and hello to everybody upstairs plus our wine bar will remain open after the talk so please do stick around for a second drink. At Cooper Hewitt technology unlocks doors for people to be inspired educated and empowered through design. When we reopened after our mammoth renovation in 2014 we introduced an integrated digital platform never before explored in the museum world and gave our audiences an all-access pass to design high-res digital tables an immersion room and the Cooper Hewitt pen a global first to create customized design collections and experiment with the design process and a digitized world-class collection of more than 210,000 design objects one of the most diverse and comprehensive design collections in existence online and available to all. Among our sister institutions at the Smithsonian the world's largest museum education and research complex we were the first to develop our own digital learning tools and have become a model for incorporating technology into the visitor experience and now that the Smithsonian has recently committed to reaching 1 billion people by 2022 with its digital first strategy we are leveraging our digital expertise and accelerating our efforts to broaden our audiences and ensure access for all. We recently appointed our first ever chief experience officer the first CXO in the entire Smithsonian family and the only position of its kind believe it or not at a New York City Museum to seamlessly engage our audiences at every single touch point on campus and beyond. Carolyn Royston is with us this evening and I'd like her to just wave so you all know who she is. It's her sixth week at Cooper Hewitt by the way. All right and as we move forward we will continue to improve our digital architecture and skill sets to empower Cooper Hewitt to share design discovery and learning with even more people. Exhibitions like the critically acclaimed access plus ability and our upcoming the senses design beyond vision emphasize how design and technology are expanding access to products services and more while our partnerships with NYU Tandon School of Engineering Microsoft Google and other tech leaders reinforce Cooper Hewitt as an energetic hub for conversation and collaboration at the nexus of design technology and inclusivity. Tonight's conversation is presented in conjunction with our exhibition of course Bob Greenberg selects an interactive experience of iconic works of industrial design and cutting-edge tech from our permanent collection. Bob is the 16th guest curator of our celebrated select series for which we invite renowned designers artists writers musicians and thought leaders to mine and respond to our holdings. Bob and his team at RGA also designed an exhibition app that represents a whole new experiment in museum learning and I hope you all used it earlier tonight with image recognition technology and AI deep learning tools the app directly engages you in the exhibition's emphasis on connectivity while delving into each object's history with commentary provided by design luminaries including our moderator this evening Debbie Millman and of course Bob and many others the founder and CEO of RGA and the 2003 National Design Award winner for communication design Bob built RGA from a motion graphic shop for film and video into a full service digital interactive agency pioneering a completely new realm of communications along the way in addition to his national design award he has been recognized with the con lion of St. Mark for lifetime achievement the Cleo lifetime achievement an AI GA medal and the Chrysler Award for innovation and design Bob is joined tonight by Jackie Goldberg and Cooper Hewitt trustee John Maida Jackie is designed direct director for Amazon's Alexa shopping the voice assisted technology used by millions of Amazon Prime members prior to joining Amazon Jackie was senior design director of Yahoo search the company's largest business division and leader of product design for Yahoo media overseeing Yahoo's redesign of its homepage my Yahoo and many other verticals John is a dear dear friend of Cooper Hewitt's and mine and global head of computational design and inclusion for automatic a 2001 National Design Award winner for communication design and a 2010 AIG medalist John is globally recognized as a visionary technologist and designer who has worked to integrate technology education and the arts into a 20 21st century synthesis of creativity and innovation John is also the author of the laws of simplicity creative code and redesigning leadership and his widely circulated annual design and tech report delves deep into design trends influencing the entrepreneurial and corporate sectors our discussion will be moderated by 20 2011 National Design Award winner Debbie Milman founder and host of design matters one of the world's first and longest running podcasts for which Debbie has interviewed over 400 artists designers and cultural commentators a designer artist and educator herself Debbie co-founded with Steven Heller the world's first graduate program in branding at the School of Visual Arts and she is also the author of how to think like a great graphic designer brand thinking and other noble pursuits as well as the illustrator and author of look both ways and self-portrait as your traitor please welcome Bob Jackie John and Debbie hello everyone how are you all doing so I have a bit of a confession to make I loathe panel discussions I find them incredibly boring so I am going to do my very very best tonight to try to moderate an exciting and enlivening and inspiring experience for you I'm Caroline thank you so much for your wonderful and generous introductions we're here tonight to talk about technology we're here to talk about the Cooper Hewitt exhibit that Bob just curated and my first question will be to Bob so Bob as a teenager I understand that you became obsessed with the work of Dieter Rams and a number of whose pieces you have here featured prominently in the exhibit but I'm curious how did your mom react to her child's fascination with say a colorful hairdryer with cool buttons I was mentioning earlier to Debbie that my mom was like Gracie Allen which most of you wouldn't know but she was partnered with George Burns and they had a television show and Gracie Allen would go off on a big tangent and she's like a quote-unquote space cadet so my mom didn't really notice anything I was doing she was generally when I'd go to school she'd still be sleeping and she'd make a sandwich that we would automatically toss my brother my sister and I but I started to collect first creative creative play things I think it was like a toy company it was bought by CBS for some reason not sure and I found products really interesting in general very fascinated with cars very fascinated with cameras and Dieter was the best of them all so you told me prior to our joining the stage you were you were talking about your mom and you're probably going to kill me for asking you to do this but you did say that you could do a really good impression of her oh I can't do that my wife can when you go in panel you don't want to do impressions maybe on my sure real amateur but thank you okay well Jackie and John I want to ask you about how you also were impacted by your early childhood interactions with technology what things caught your eye what influenced you let's use the mic John you know when I where I grew up we didn't have much money and not much toys so I grew up in a tofu store yes and there was like a cardboard and you know those like really sharp box cutter things those are my toys and I just make stuff you know cardboard and cutting and cut my hands etc but that was my first technology chopping technology Jackie what about you for me I guess it's less product design I grew up in LA in the 70s and 80s and so I think there was some more kind of a distinctly so Cal vibe like because in LA you can play outside after school 365 days a year so I I don't remember objects or physical objects sticking out in my mind as much as I just remember I kind of grew up worshiping folks like her Brits Bruce Weber Peter Lindberg Terry well I mean it was just like a certain kind of natural daylight like you know beautiful faces natural materials kind of aesthetic minimum of artifice or so I thought I think it just kind of gave me a real passion for a more aesthetic more natural aesthetic one thing that this exhibit strikes in me is the realization about how fast technological improvements and advances are happening today and if you look back at 30 40 50 years ago if you just consider the swift evolution of the Walkman to the iPod to streaming apps on our smartphones so what do you see as the biggest challenges we as designers are facing and trying to keep up with the pace and the design of the future I think I've been fascinated by first the Walkman and and then the iPod and iPads and you know where the where the world is going we work on a lot of Samsung products and services and you know when you look at the we had we had bought very recently a whole series of Samsung screens and then about you know eight months to a year later all the technologies changed and I was talking about updating some iPods iPads in our house but we can't do that without changing them out for newer ones because they don't support the next gen technology so it's both very frustrating and it's very interesting just I mean they have all sorts of thousands of people at companies and they just keep innovating I don't think it goes backwards I think it's always moving forward the same things true with cars and other things we have 42 objects to look at in your exhibit and this is this is these are these are objects that you chose out of the collections 210,000 that quote illustrate how technology has propelled design innovations in form style and function over the last 65 years how difficult was it to arrive at those 42 things out of 210,000 I think it's really difficult I did have the help of my staff and Tishiko Mori who's here tonight and a friend and architect of the show and also our houses upstate well you also donated and lent quite a bit of the show to the Cooper Hewitt so talk a little bit about that if you can as well I think you have to base the show on a story and so you know the way it works very simply is you enter and there's Dita Rammstein principles and his work and then you start looking at what's changed since the time that he was designing is really the connected products and services a big influence on me was the very first Blackberry so it's in there looks more like a pager today and you start walking through and you see the connected products you see the disruptive products you see products that are about measurement and then you come to my ten principles and they're meant to be mirrored with with Deeders I so thrilled that he would join the show because he's been such a big influence on not just myself but as everybody knows Steve Jobs Johnny Ives and every product designer lots of architects and designers and it's just every choice he made so I wound up having to buy things which I have my own collection at our offices on 33rd and throughout our other offices at which we have 17 and it's inspired by Paul and Tinole's one of the voices of the tour and what they do at the modern but then I won't get the name but I went to a museum in Munich that's design museum and it's gigantic I mean they have such a large breadth of objects and it's very deep collection but in the one that we were working on I had to buy certain things which I don't mind so I was saying to Debbie I'd be glad to donate our collection of products to the Cooper Hewitt I'm told I can't take them with me Jackie and John if you were curating your own Cooper Hewitt selects exhibition focused on technology and design what objects would you include in it and why not just the objects but why these are tough questions I know okay if I were doing a show here so what comes to mind is a slide out of Mary Meeker's 2009 internet trends report I had the slide printed out and all my refrigerator for years you probably remember it's five panels where from the left it goes mainframe computers and it's decade by decade mainframe computers many computers desktop computers from desktop to laptop ending up in the aughts with mobile computing and when you look at it this way just side by side it's so obvious that the technology you know it used to be that you had to go to the building to use the computer and then to the room that had the computer and then to the desk that had the computer it's so obvious seeing it side by side like the technology is just getting smaller more portable closer to the human body and it begs the question of like and then what you know what are the next slices this guy fuel band and perhaps more and more and integrated into our environments but I feel like almost just the physical experience of seeing how big the machinery once upon a time was and how insensitive it was to us as animate objects in the world would be a dramatic shock to the system John what about you that's a hard question well my my passion now is trying to understand why when we think of the Bauhaus and all the great Bauhaus masters you can only name men I wonder why that is and so I've been really curious about the world of things that weren't made by all these masters so I would love to include it's a piece I found by a designer from the Bauhaus era Mary and Brent and also there was a National Design Award winner in 2008 that I remember meeting here his name was Charles Harrison an African American designer who designed things that we saw for most of our lives designed by Sears like what and also there's that the view master was one of his original designs so I'm like huh interesting I would also include people that's illegal I know but I was sitting here thinking the last time I saw Bob out in the sunlight was at Redburns funeral or not or her her her honoring day and if you think of all the people who Redburns affected who knows Redburns anyone knows her name an amazing force in New York who transformed the techno landscape in ways that still remain and so what a remember all these people Muriel Cooper another person who transformed digital media but I noticed that they're all easily forgotten so I would want a show that focused on these people we've forgotten and who are who classifying that forgotten hero category maybe for some reason more easily forgettable for some reason so let's talk about that a little bit why are some people so easily remembered and others that have made as big a contribution as important and an important a contribution forgotten power networks so tell me more about that well it's like I was how I had a party and the party had these people and they're all people that were similar to me people I felt comfortable around and so that kind of propagates and you create the structure where you think of someone it's going to be a man and I think that that bias is built in to so many fields design in particular that breaking it is a passion of mine so sorry I'm busting this here but but I know this is a really important conversation it's interesting because Bob and I were actually talking about the ratio of men to women in different disciplines and advertising it's still very much a discipline that is populated by a lot of very very senior men but in the design business in the graphic design business in the branding business the ratios are very different I took a class with Milton Glaser about I want to say 15 years ago at the School of Visual Arts it was a summer intensive and there were 30 people in the class and there were 27 women and three men and he looked at the class the first day and said 40 years ago when he started teaching that summer the same summer intensive the same 30 students were 27 men and three women and so it does seem to be a big shift in the design business to be much more female centered have you seen that have you experienced that we're about 5050 so men versus women now what we have to work on which we've made a lot of progress on is bringing women to the executive level and that we were doing we have the MD of San Francisco LA Austin our all women as an example our chief creative officer in New York is woman along with terrace wiener who's as far as I know a guy but the the key is you really have to work on it and it's a real complicated effort that you have to I think design is about working out the architecture of something then implementing it and I think we designed to more women into our organization and it took a while but we're there I think we're also now 50 between advertising and products and services and that was designed also when text messaging first became popular one of the big questions that people were asking was why why why did text messaging especially the early text messaging when you had to scroll through ABC DEF etc it wasn't easy but yet it became this global phenomenon and that is the way that most people communicate now that was a huge surprise for people what has surprised you in the evolution of technology over the last decade or so Jackie this is a question that you look like you really want to answer not really but okay well I don't want to throw anybody under the bus but I honestly do not get snapchat at all like and I know there have been articles written about it it's I think it's just coming out of me maybe it's when I observe people snapchatting away and photographing themselves and I don't know it's maybe it's just like my personal aversion to taking photographs of myself but yeah I've I know I know there have been some interesting pieces written about the interface itself but I think that there's some it's it's not that dramatic a change in photography per se I think there's some interesting things to it anyway we just did a project where we it's for Nike and we use the new snap filter we had a snap accelerator number of companies came out of them we got to know them pretty well when you look at some of the things that relate to the camera aspect the lens allowed us to do 3d Michael Jordan doing his famous jump from the three-point line all the way to the basket and then we integrated it with Shopify way to buy things there a company that we worked with in our commerce accelerator and then it gets integrated into a shoe ultimately and with AR you can see where Jordan was in relationship to this gentleman's height as an example and then ultimately it goes to dark store which is one of our accelerated companies that uses a dark stores for distribution and then the products were distributed in LA to sneaker heads and everything sold out in 23 minutes which is Jordan's number oddly enough and that type of integrated technology we we actually think there is place for snap along with the other you know bigger social media companies as it relates specifically to the camera aspect what do you think about snap 20 I love snapchat because it solves a problem what problem it solves a problem for a young person who maybe doesn't want to be over manicured over perfect and reduces the stress to have to look awesome kind of like what you mentioned text messaging and the reason why I love inclusive thinking is because you have to ask how things came to be and if you look at this word we use emoji right what kind of world language is that it's Japanese why is it Japanese is because Japanese were heavy text message users why because they were commuting for so long and in Japan you have to be quiet in the train so that culture evolved from that need to speak without speaking and to speak expressively and it evolved into something that became the vernacular so I'm curious about people who discover something for their needs and then suddenly we begin to like mess with it I am not particularly prolific on snap but one of the things that I was aware of early on and I don't know if it's still the case so you'll need to tell me is that you didn't have to publicize how many people you followed or how many people were following you and and this is one thing that I'm really really concerned about as we find ourselves more and more immersed in our devices and that is the comparison factor you know back in 2001 when the iPod was first released those four years between 2001 and 2005 when my space came out which was really the first way we were socially connected in those devices people were talking about us living in an isolation nation that the iPod was essentially depopulating social space for us 2005 my space comes out we then have a way of connecting in this device and for a while that sort of evolved into something that was supposedly this global community now we're living in a day and age where people are buying likes kids are removing photos if they don't get the requisite number of likes you're embarrassed if you don't have enough followers and what snap is doing by not having that number apparent is keeping people feeling okay as is they don't they're not comparing how many this one versus this one versus this one how do you see that impacting the emotional timbre of young people today having to keep up with the numbers and the comparisons does it worry you that's kind of leading well first of all snaps had its problems if you recall two years ago they had this yellow face filter where it would make your eyes squinty and slanty which is clearly someone was like not in the design studio on the day on they were the wrong designers because maybe they noticed that's like a bad thing to do so people do that kind of stuff across all of tech but about this social credibility thing I don't know I think I don't understand how someone who is 12 years old thinks and I just think that they're living in a different economy and I don't know I kind of feel like they're robust this was my take robust doesn't resilient I'm so glad I brought snapchat up you mean robust like that they can it's kind of like yes it's it's quote-unquote worse in different ways but it's similar to things that we had to deal with in terms of social pressure I remember this was also part of David Karp's philosophy at tumblr back in the day was not to publish overtly exactly who's following whom etc it was it was more discreet it was more about the content at the before so I'm certainly not insensitive to it I just I just mentioned snap because I personally don't like taking selfies it's not without its place clearly and it's point-to-point I think is another kind of interesting nuance to it I mean I guess you can broadcast if you so desire but there's a more private kind of take to it well we were talking about things that surprised us yeah they're with their popularity so I'd love to know Bob if there's something that that did surprise you with its popularity and then I have another big sort of political question that wasn't something I was expecting to ask but I think the moment warrants it I know this is my way of keeping you all interested paying attention and that's how sure I understand Gen Z that well at the moment I gotta say regardless of everything else watching the kids so to speak on the stage in front of the 800,000 people where I wouldn't even be able to talk about red burns without choking up but they got up there in a way that I've never seen any group of people do and we are experts on Millennials we spent a lot of time all the way I mean our company is 41 years old and we've been through all the transitions but this one's sort of a new one on me and I'm not exactly sure what they're about yet because it's just becoming noticeable around anti-gun legislation and things but the 11 year old kid I mean that's sort of just amazing to me and yet they are seamless in how they deal with technology and what what I've seen is currently the the way in which people interact with technology is is changing and I know Debbie is fully conversant with the term disruption and maybe one of the upcoming questions but technology is disrupting everything so it's hard to choose any one thing that that if you look at it through the lens obscene the tech the impact of technology on it including museums as Carolyn was talking about earlier and reaching a billion people by a certain date that's becoming possible but also more normal you know we can put something out and we'll get three million people interacting with it and it's just a remarkable change in communications I've been watching the Trump show on television to realize that the young people aren't watching TV at all so I mean I know that but the advertising which Debbie and I have talked about is you know about Colitis and black stools and things on CNN it's all geared towards somebody or perhaps my age even though I don't I don't want to admit it but there's a lot of other ways to get information now and I find that to be probably the most important change that's happening right now yeah struck me just know how I was mentioning Debbie how I have a people on my team and they idolized Debbie now I'm serious about let me explain why and I think that I think that the new generation has new leaders to look up to and I swear I was I was like give me a leader leader quote drunker you know etc the Millman came up three times so I think you're in trouble but it's like a new new leaders are more visible now to the whole generation that that breaks the whole HBR or whatever thing thank goodness that part is good yes I mean I think we saw and and this is something I feel really optimistic about I think we saw a big fat baton pass this weekend and there's a new generation and they're coming and they're actually they're here and that's gonna save us and I think that's really incredibly exciting let's talk about the question I wanted to ask you is about Facebook and you can't have a conversation about technology and not bring up Facebook right now do you think that they can recover crickets anybody out there want to answer I think they should be really looked at as problematic I find that the data breach is huge I find that you know you can use technology for good and for not so good and it seems to me like there is an awful lot of not so good these days and you know I think architecturally if you look at the way in which Trump won the election I think you'd find all sorts of interesting combinations that just were either luck or incredibly brilliant or you know aspects of how things would have come together just at the right time to affect the election not to mention the complexity that nobody really knows of of Russia so in my office I said to our art department could you please find me a really great picture of Robert Mueller and then printed with a flag and they found when they printed on great paper and then I put it in a 8 by 10 frame with one of those backs that opens up that you can put on a shelf and it's right there in front of the screen that everybody sees in my office and they asked me occasionally if it's my father and then they asked me you know do you know Bob you know we we're gonna put a signature on there but I didn't want to do that but I think he may be one of the few hopes anything you want to add to that about where you see Facebook going well I think it's a fallacy to think it's only Facebook mmm you see people saying I'm gonna delete Facebook but keep Instagram or and I'm with the right side and like what are you doing or so I think every technology company is collecting data and it doesn't just technology companies every corporation has been doing it too so I think it's it's it's it's unfortunate it's a fortunate that people can see more clearly what is happening but this is the tip of the iceberg so that's what concerns me is oh wow one company is bad therefore all the rest are good and sounds off particularly bad it's just that as an example Oreos which is part of company which is Mondialese which is connected to craft originally they don't really even own understand the data of their product so they have to create a platform to get people to interact to understand how customers want or not to want to interact with Oreos I think that Amazon which of course has a tremendous amount of data and there they're perhaps the one that's most feared in the sense that they understand so much about consumer behavior in a way that was never understood before Google is also similar because they of course gather information even if your your cell phone isn't on and so it's a question of what's going to happen and how it's going to be used and whether they bring restrictions to these very large incredibly significant and in most cases wonderful companies one of the other things that has also surprised me in thinking about what technological advancements did we not see coming or the popularity not not to see the popularity coming or certainly not all of us because you clearly knew that text messaging was going to be much more popular than most but we've been giving away our data for for 13 years now pretty fearlessly and most of the time we've been doing that for convenience so we will log in with our Facebook credentials on another site just because it's easier not because we really care about the linking that behavior is something that we have to own as a culture do you see our need for privacy changing now that we know that this these types of breaches are probably going to be much more common than we ever expected this is probably question for you Jackie well certainly privacy is the issue of our age it's it wasn't it wasn't I mean remember when Mark Zuckerberg was talking about how we were all one big community that should know everything about each other but these are personal graphs that you curate you just at Facebook you decided who was your friend who had access to what or so you thought right I think it's just for for a corporation it's a huge responsibility to handle their users data and there are business decisions that are made every day that can make or break that trust takes a long time to build that trust you mentioned Amazon obviously I work for Amazon and Amazon has worked for decades more than 20 years to earn customers trust day in day out with customer service and products that people can depend on and I think that you know everybody's keenly aware that like that trust is the most valuable thing of all yeah I mean it was about I think 18 months ago that people were talking about Mark Zuckerberg for president or Cheryl Sandberg for president and it's it's quite astonishing how much power will give people if we do feel like they're doing good as long as they replace Trump Jack you have a question about Alexa you've been working on the development and the evolution of Alexa and I'm wondering if you think that our interactions with Alexa or other AI companions is changing the way that we use or learn language that's a good one well we definitely observe that the way customers talk is not the way they type and a conversation with Alexa is not really comparable to or equivalent to like a query in a search field and I think you know a couple a couple of facets to that one is that speaking is just such a kind of natural fundamental human impulse it's our primary output one of them it's so easy that I think there's an according expectation of the kind of experience you're going to get back you know certainly like when you ask for something when you ask a question you don't expect to be greeted with like 9,000 pixels of scrolling text you ask a question you expect an answer you expected to be that tailored that specific to you your context and you know of course the way people express themselves varies tremendously and I think that when you think about a natural interface like voice you have to as a designer you have to ensure that the interface is going to sustain that kind of variation sustain imperfection speeches imperfect iterative exploratory you could ask this room the same question and we could suspend this belief for a second and say okay half the room is going to respond exact have the exact same intent in response but the way each individual would express it could potentially be quite different and so an interface like voice has to support that distinction so I guess the answer to your question as I really see it more as you know the technology now has to conform to customers it has to meet people on their terms rather than the other way around so if anything I think we're going to learn more from the way people want to express themselves and we have to support that Bob you mentioned the word disruption and I think that the word disruption now is it's often maligned as a trendy buzzword perhaps lacking in substance but many of the objects in this in this collection were indeed disruptive of the industries they existed in such as the Walkman and so I'm wondering does disruption go hand in hand with a successful integration of tech and design one thing I want to mention is we did a speech at can this past summer called disrupted by design and we got sued by or threatened by TBWA which is a very large part of Omnicom which you know well because they did a book on disruption and they actually got a trademark on on the term but the people that know trademarks they're only valid if they get contested and one so I said go f yourself you know and we have a lot of lawyers that at our company and I started looking and it's used in almost every presentation and it has been for years and years and nobody can own the term that's one thing but I think that what was the question again does into disruption go hand in hand with a successful integration of of tech and design yeah but is quote unquote disruption the natural result of brilliant design that serves people is it just the result of good design and the effect that good design has in culture I think the design helps a lot but as I mentioned earlier every single aspect of our business anyway which is advertising marketing communications design consulting connected space and everything is always constantly being disrupted and if you don't make change which is the design that you need to you have to design change and you have to implement it on such a fast turnaround now that you can't you can't wait to see something you have to just start working on the design of something and implement it in enough time before you get disrupted so our company is 41 years old and we've never been disrupted up until last the last quarter of last year and then you know in in the space of doing what we do clients cut budgets they didn't move on to other companies they just simply cut 10 million 20 million million five and it just adds up when you're a company we've got 2,000 people as I mentioned and we're in the range of a 400 million dollar kind of operation and that's one thing but then clients started bringing the work that we do in hub and whether it's Nike or Samsung or any number of our clients and that that's also a trend right now and that's actually a pendulum I saw when I was working in the feature film business when you're doing feature film promotion as an example that's that is done outside then it comes in house then it goes back outside so it takes a few years once client brings things in house and then the pitching process has become so long and the average time is about six months now while you're so you wind up spending so much money of which are one of seven or eight companies trying to get work in and that that's a change as well but really the biggest change is as I mentioned in a quote from a new book that's coming out by Ken Aletta in June I personally think that the advertising model is dead I think the publishing model is dead I think the consulting model is dead manufacturing model all of these things that have been like if you take advertising it's about 70 years old it started you know in the Mad Men era and that's a very competitive structure now it's moved into a very different collaborative model so we see disruption happening around also products and services and companies that are in that space design firms that's a very big one you know I think the design firms have been transitioned into a new model so it's it's it's unfortunate in many ways because it results in a situation where they don't have a seat at the table that they used to have and now they have to go through other methods to be relevant and with the change that's happening now I'm well I'm thinking that the only real difference is it's happening at record speed it happened in a quarter that it may have a big effect on us and we're restructuring so that we'll have an entirely new company pretty much at the scale that we operate in by June 30th of this year so we don't mess around we make change happen and we're doing it across such a large number of capabilities and things that we do and I think it's important that we understand it's all about disruption that comes from technology so I have I have two last questions and then I'd like to open it up to the audience I know that the audience we've been told that the that there's always really good questions from the audience so I want to encourage that but Bob this is I think in your 41 year tenure as the CEO of RGA I think it's the seventh time you have reorganized and adjusted to or led the way for new technologies in our industry John you've been working for years to do this annual report about technology and Jackie obviously you are at the forefront of what is happening technologically how do you stay aware of what's happening and know what is important to pay attention to come to events like this and listen to Bob drop wisdom I don't know if you were moved as I was just listen to him describe everything is bad it's like a Star Trek enterprise moment where all the lights are on the thing and you're like holy you know but at but somewhere you have to find the way and one of my favorite quotes by General Shinseki is if you don't like change you're gonna like being irrelevant even less so I like how when I listen to Bob navigate the rebirth the renewal you know rebooting the matrix to attempt to see if this mix will survive I think that's indicative of why Bob and his team and his companies have been able to survive because you do not hear a CEO a founder talk the way Bob just just share just now so that's my take away is to be like Bob but but but Bob you've worked across now pretty much every medium in our industry and have led the way for the model that has then become obsolete and then you reinvent and then everybody sort of does that and then you keep moving that that mark how do you know what is going to be important how do you get the sense that this is the direction that you need to take these 2,000 people that you helm I think you you have to read a lot I struggle with reading being incredibly Dixlexic but nonetheless and then you have to listen a lot and so we have so many talented people that are great to listen to but at the end of the day I actually think Dixlexia has helped me a lot as it has other people that have it as in a severe kind of case it gives you if you can overcome it as a disability it gives you the ability to pre-visualize things better and to see data points that present themselves I used to think it was just everybody was not seeing what what I was seeing but you know a they weren't but you know big I'm a big fan of Steve Jobs I'm a very big fan of Jeff Bezos I'm a very big fan of how you can see the changes just about present themselves and the difference between myself and maybe somebody else is I take tremendous risk and I don't have a lot of patience as I'm going to be 70 in May for people that don't take risks I I think that you could easily just sit back particularly at my age and I have a three-year contract going forward I don't really have to take the risk but you don't get the rewards without the risk and and what does risk mean mean sort of metaphorically you'll hold your nose and you jump and that's what I do all the time and when when I like right now I had meetings today I must have set up 10 consoles on everything from technology to data to design and each one of MDs around the world managing directors the way that we we then meet and once we lay out a plan it's very architectural it's just laying out that plan and then implementing it once you get it to be pretty solid it never be perfect yeah absolutely you did you did Dita Rams 10 principles for good design are a big part of your exhibit as are your 10 principles and I'd like to read them and I'd like to ask John and Jackie and then anyone in the audience if they had something that they'd like to add to that list so these are these are Bob Goldberg's 10 principle Greenberg Greenberg Jackie Goldberg Bob Greenberg sorry about that these are Bob's 10 principles of design one leave the business model unfinished two simple is better three stories and systems need each other for let creativity drive the business five the whole team is bigger than its parts six never lose your commitment to craft seven the interface is the experience eight thinkers must make nine listen to what data is telling you and ten be connected by design so Jackie Goldberg and John made up if you could add one more principle what would it be well I like the team one I like the team one I'm a big believer in team and it makes me think of how if I would add one I would add the bill magridge inflection because Bill had this one design principle and he said if there's if you need a simple easy to remember design principle it's probably about starting with the people so like that one yeah I would plus one on a couple of those I mean the makers thinkers one reminds me of an essay that was honestly like one of the most influential things for me and we want to be a designer which is Michael Beirut's why designers can't think if you haven't read it read it I guess the one I would add is something that was an adage that I brought into my team at Amazon humanity over technology simply because the like for practical reasons the technique was going to change so much and instead of thinking about what jobs used to call the speeds and feeds to think instead of human input and output what would a what would a person actually want what would they be able to grok yeah so thank you thank you all for answering my questions I'd like to open up the questions to the audience I already see some hands you can ask anyone or all and I think we have a microphone that's going to be going around this gentleman right here in the lovely green blue plaid shirt thank you so much for that compliment I have two questions for Bob I will ask Jackie and John questions separately but as long as I have Bob here I'd like to ask him first with regards to I think you mentioned with regards to Samsung how a subsequent generation device doesn't necessarily interact with the previous generation do you think that is because the technology is changing so quickly that designers can't anticipate changes even one year down the road or is this planned obsolescence or is it more a function of kind of corporations seeking to sink their tendrils deeper into consumers I'd love to this is my first question I have one other quick one I sort of think it's all those things because you know obviously when you're your marketing products and services it's to get people to buy it buy into them so the it that's a natural tendency for any corporation I do think that Samsung as as as we know them they're they're a great design company first first and foremost Korea is a really interesting country as you know and they're they're on a design implementation schedule that is trying to observe what's happening and what the needs are in the audience the new S9 really is based around the camera to me it's just because in the past I I designed cameras I designed film stocks and I was very involved in special effects and the integration of the production process and I can't believe actually the level and the quality of the photographs coming from iOS or Android and when you think about the fact it doesn't have a camera shape it's sort of even more interesting but now they've put slow motion into the newest Samsung device and what it's doing is really quite complicated as an algorithm and and a design and the lenses that they can zoom and you can crop and you can filter and you can do what everything just about that was very difficult to do in the in the in the older days with particularly film and then camera systems so I think they're anticipating the next thing I think what I'm actually interested in and Jackie was looking at her Apple watch at one point as an innovation but what I actually think is I was very fascinated with Dick Tracy and I was very fascinated with where the iPhone would go we worked on the the Nike Apple watch as an example I'm very familiar with how things work what I think will happen in the future is a combination what Jackie is doing with voice natural voice activation combined with what we could see would be a misunderstanding of how small a grid could be for you to actually see things and my brother worked on the Thomas Crown affair and I don't know if anybody remembers the opening but they didn't think at that time that it was possible to do a grid on a huge movie theater screen now I believe they could do a grid on Apple watch size and with voice activation undo text as a way in which Gen Z type people would interact with a device like that and instead it would be tied into a database and their friends would be on there as a grid and they'd be with voice activation whether it's a Apple watch or Samsung watch or somebody else an Amazon watch in the future but I think that's how it's going to work and I think it's going to be something that takes Dick Tracy if you think about it and leaves him in the dust because it's going to be much more advanced than than that so that was your first question what's your second question my second question you mentioned how you could have a new iteration and have three million users very quickly and with attention sorry with attention span so short and with consumer tastes so fickle my question is is a brief interaction with a wide audience of greater or lesser value than a deeper interaction with an audience that's a fraction of that size well I I I've always believed recently came up with the 60-minute interview with the porn star and in the that that was on what's her name somebody Stormy Daniels I love the name but you know they they were saying that with the CD that was photographed on a table and everybody's wondering well what's on that well then you have to start thinking about in these very short real distribution of images what if the image is moving because of a picture is worth a thousand words what if it's moving at 24 30 frames per second and that type of information bless you is is is going to be the future of of that combination along with the future which we never talked about of VR AR MR AI machine language all those things coming together you can only imagine that the distribution of little packets like that could be consumed by particularly that group that was on the stage this this last weekend that's you know what's going to happen past Gen Z will be very interesting that is going to look like do you have any ideas yes Gen Z yeah I think that the the next really big thing bless you everybody it's going to be robotics what I'm sort of fascinated by is when I read recently that they now have the ability to fold towels just think about where this is going to go you know Trump is interested in the coal miners and such but he should be really interested in the truckers even though Uber has killed a person on a street there is no doubt that driverless cars driverless planes driverless trains are going to be the the next big thing and I bought a 2019 car already I because when my wife and I go upstate if it's raining in New York and we're going two and a half three hours north you're going to run into fog and the new cars have the ability to set you know how far you want to be behind the car in front of you and you don't really need to be able to have fog lights that blast or something if the system can actually see the car in front of you then and it's going to stay X number of feet behind it I don't think you really need I would trust that technology and you know cars now see on the left right back in front in a way that you can't possibly see with night vision with whatever anyway we're not you said that you were you were worried about the truckers are you worried about the truckers because they'll be displaced or are you worried about the retail shops all along the highways that will likely have their business model challenged when there are less truckers on the road well there won't be truckers and there won't be shops I mean has anybody walked along Third Avenue has anybody gone to Blaker Street and see all the mark what's his name just mark Jacob stores they had three of them on the and bleaker there was a bookstore there's all this stuff everything's just about closed you know if quick story I went to the Nike store I've been trying to go there for a while it's open for a long time on Broadway but when I went up the escalator all the way to the top where Jordan's where Jordan is sold I did a transaction about a jacket I came back down I went almost into the car and I came back and I said wait a second I went back up all the way to the fifth floor and asked the guy how's it how's the store doing and he said it's doing very well and I went back down the escalator into the car and then I went I had another question I went back there up the escalator to the same guy and I said to him why is it doing well and he said because it's an experience I went back down I went back up and I gave the guy my car because he was really cool and he applied at RGA that's different thing then I went back out and went to gap this is like three o'clock on a Wednesday and it was crickets as you can imagine so I think what's gonna happen is that the the stores are closing left right and center innocence doing well but you can because they're not experiential there's just no way they're gonna be around on the highway or in the city is a question here good evening thanks for a wonderful discussion I want to reach them on the topic of privacy that you took up about Facebook and all isn't something which happens every few years you know if you remember target was in the news couple of years back for you know sending out this coupons for somebody for their pregnancy and the death of family didn't know it and reached more recently you know just three months back there was this whole data breach at Equifax where social security details of almost every American family was out there but nobody talks about it like this has been three months so do you think actually the Facebook fiasco is gonna carry on or it's just something that it's gonna just you know just in the moment good question I feel go away and I think that we'll just go back to what we did there are many forces that would want it to go away if it stays in the press it's because the other companies want it to be in it want to target this company and it's unfortunate I was I've noticed like when I was at MIT there was this phrase that people scientists would use that kind of bewildered me it was like you know got tons of money from the government this is gonna be my Manhattan project like super psyched like my project awesome and it's kind of like now we're in this like the uber for whatever or the Facebook for whatever but it's kind of like Manhattan project awesome and what's amazing is that now people are saying wait a second maybe that was amazing but what are the implications and MIT had this whole major it's not this major called science technology in society created by people who were asking questions about science and these destructive power of it and what I love is that now because of these these larger larger breaches that will come more technologists are stopping and asking I'm not sure if this is okay that maybe the Gen Z or the Gen Z plus or whatever but I'm hopeful around that there's a woman here and with a scarf in the front the comment about technology disrupting your business and how you were able to be reactive so quickly to that and restructuring I'm a design educator and so I'm just curious to hear what you all feel is going to be happening in the landscape in terms of education is traditional design schools going away what do you see as an educator that we should be paying more attention to I think I've struggled with design within universities that's where my experience has been I was on the board of Parsons is on the board of the tissue advisory board that was the meetings were run by Alex of Saturday Night Live Fame so that was sort of interesting when I raised my hand he would say oh no it's the digital guy and you know at the ESCO I said you know you got to get rid of 16 millimeter film I mean it's really got to go and at at NYU film school but I think I've also been connected to SCAD to art center to a lot of the different programs VC VC brand center also school of visual arts where where Debbie is and I I got very frustrated and has after a period of time got tired fighting the battle I was very much pretty much alone trying to get through in VCU for Virginia Commonwealth University a creative tech structure because it takes three years just to get through the university at Parsons there's all the various deans and it's similar to other schools that are set up in a somewhat a housing and way but to break down the traditions and the the structure that's there at Tisch school at ITP where Red Burns ran the came up with the program ran ran it I was with her where she tried to manage out the tenured professors and you know what she FN did it and and it was amazing to watch because nobody's done that before it's like I decertified a union here in the city the big IOTC which is a huge complicated if I couldn't get rid of the union I couldn't have created an interactive company because we'd be the only unionized interactive company in the world and so I fought that battle and I think that the universities are not fighting the right battles and I think the design program is pretty irrelevant from what I've seen I have a lot of experience with the curriculum and the reason why I think it's irrelevant is because they're not training students to come out of the program and be in the case of what I the company I run be competitive with the other students that we hire for jobs at RGA as an example where we cover so many different parts of the design business and that that's critical to me if you can't go into a program get trained up and come out and be relevant for the business that's out there today I think that's where I see the design curriculum failing I agree absolutely agree no more questions that's it oh no wow things were getting really good no more okay we're out of time well I you know we started talking about hair dryers and then we moved to inclusion and diversity and then we talked about privacy and Stormy Daniels so so I think we provided a really interesting range thank you so much for being here thank you Caroline for inviting us thank you to my panelists Bob Greenberg Jackie Goldberg John Mada thank you so much