Story In A Bottle Podcast

Bianca Caampued, one of two small girls who founded the aptly named Small Girls PR, began her career under the equally appropriate internet pseudonym BiancaRocksOut. In those early days, she rocked out in every aspect of her life, from running PR for Cure, a thrift store in New York City to seeking out the unique opportunities of the social and tech landscape that the city afforded. The circumstance was primed such that when she connected with her co-founder, whose birthday party she crashed, they found they shared a desire to create content and an entrepreneurial spirit that lead them to create Small Girls PR. Over glasses of Pedialyte (there’s an explanation, we promise), she shares how their interest in creating a web series lead to the founding of their PR company and how they’ve figured it all out along the way. Now, several years, incredible clients and projects in, the company has grown well beyond its initial expectation, boasting a staff of 40+ spanning both coasts (and more than small girls, at that), but is still rocking out… maybe in a slightly different way.

What You’ll Learn:

- Whether or not a formal business plan is necessary when starting a company

- The value of culture and a personal brand within your company

- The perspective of starting a company with social media at its core

Direct download: SIAB_BCaampued_V3.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00pm EDT

If there are two sides to every story, it seems that at the speed in which information travels these days, and the multitude of sources, perspectives are, more than ever, in great conflict. Enter Michael Cervieri. Michael has always known he was meant to be a Writer (with a capital “W”), and, while he spent his early days pursuing the life of a great novelist, he has consistently chosen to entrench himself in perspective and presented his work accordingly. However, when his travels in Central America lead him to deviate from fiction down a path of adventure journalism he was able to see most clearly where that perspective was most desperately needed. Over negronis, Michael talks about how this awareness lead him back to journalism school on the heels of 9/11 and a stint in the Middle East thereafter, and how it’s all culminated at his current project - the Future Journalism Project. His mission has never been more clear; the news cycle demands a rewrite and while the interconnectedness of social has given us the ability to share information at a rapid pace, not all news warrants that protocol.

 

What You’ll Learn:

  • How every company is a media company.
  • Why discerning the importance of news events is an ongoing challenge for the public - “When everything has this heightened importance, nothing really has heightened importance.”
  • The difference between the practice and academics of journalism.
Direct download: SIAB_MCervieri_v3.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:50pm EDT

Renee DiResta's career has been far from conventional; from a government gig to programmer-turned-trader on Wall Street to a stint as a VC in Silicon Valley, she's certainly appreciated many points of view. Today, as the Founder and Director of Marketing of Haven, a shipping container marketplace catering to myriad clientele, that varied experience has proven to be helpful as she navigates the complicated world of a startup - especially one trying to innovate and bring a centuries old industry into the world of digital. Over virgin mimosas (orange juice and seltzer) she explains how she's had to evolve her working style from industry to industry, the importance of empathy when building both products and teams, the logistics of logistics and the many challenges of revolutionizing one of the the world’s first industries.

What You’ll Learn:

  • As a startup, how to avoid building something nobody wants (hint: it starts with company leadership)
  • Why a product should aim to “enable” rather than “disrupt”
  • How to succeed in an industry even if you’re not a subject matter expert
Direct download: SIAB_RDiResta_v3.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:21pm EDT

In the world of User Experience, the argument of formal education vs. on the job training is bigger than ever. One could argue that Tomer Sharon began his education in User Experience long before the field even existed. As a young man serving seven years in the Israeli Defense Forces, and as a project manager at a defense contractor after, he was immersed in training in problem solving and complex systems and the use of technology in critical circumstances. However, what his service left him longing for was bringing creativity into his day to day vernacular, which finding, was less clear. After several attempts at school and work - from copywriting to advertising gigs - he eventually found a path officially into User Experience; a world he understood long before he arrived. Since then, he’s spent the better part of his professional life at Google where he helped inform many products, most recently gathering insights impacting search results - a system that, while simple to the user, is solely so because of the careful consideration of the team. Today, as Head of UX at WeWork, he has taken his immense knowledge of complex systems and user research to bridge the customer experience both on and offline. Over Sam Adams he tells us about his approach to resolving the issues of this growing company and why, while largely unavailable to him, formal education is at the top of his checklist for potential User Experience candidates.

What You’ll Learn:

  • The importance of a discerning mind in user research - why all insights shouldn’t be taken at face value.
  • How becoming your audience may be the key to understanding your product.
  • Behind the scenes of Google’s hiring process and why it takes so long
Direct download: SIAB_TSharon_v3.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:46pm EDT

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