Catalyst Podcast

        Photo by Joe Lewandowski on Unsplash It’s Black Friday Forever in America: This week on Track Changes we ask the question on everyone’s minds: Are we happy that Amazon has come to Queens? On one hand, our own consumer choices have brought this upon us. Amazon is great at eliminating steps (hey there Same-Day Delivery and 1-Click Ordering). But on the other hand, we're now reliant, and can't live without them...

Everything You Like Is Garbage: You know the creepy feeling of walking into a dark room and finding your kid hunched over the iPad with their eyes glazed over? So do we. On this week’s episode, Paul and Rich talk about addiction and obsession —  words that are used interchangeably but that speak to different experiences...

How Do We Move The Rectangle: It’s no secret that we think design is integral to engineering great products. This week Gina Trapani and Skyler Balbus are joined by Dylan Field, CEO of Figma, to talk about how Figma’s collaborative interface design tool came to be. We talk about how diverse creative backgrounds are essential to building design teams, how browser-based tools leave designers at the mercy of the browser, and the ways in which constraint inspires creativity and partnerships...

  The Web is a Complex Place: Have you noticed that Track Changes has migrated off of Medium? That got us thinking about WordPress as a platform that’s changed enormously in the past few years. Front-end development has exploded. The way we use the web changed...

Don’t Add Bullshit To The World: In recent episodes you’ve heard from Paul, Rich, and various guests talk about scaling, ethics, design, and engineering — now it’s time to hear from Postlight’s other leaders. We discuss the diverse backgrounds of our leadership team, how have their roles have changed over time, and how we come together to make good software while shipping great products...

Tech is Giant, Monolithic, and Scary: This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziademeet with Louise Matsakis to discuss how tech reporting has evolved alongside the hyper-growth of tech companies. How has the role of journalists changed? Which companies are difficult to talk to, and which are the easiest?  More often than before, Louise says that journalists are playing the role of content moderators, forcing platforms to do more introspection and make broader changes...

Creating a Language We Can Carry Forward: People get really good at bad habits. When we talk about digital transformation, we’re talking about more than software and systems — we’re dealing with how people work with software and with each other. This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade discuss Upgrade, our report on digital transformation. Why did we call it Upgrade? Because that’s what we’re almost always striving for...

Never Going Away: It’s hard to conceive how tech giants will be destroyed. Might it be Government regulation? Another Great Depression? Genius disruption from Topeka, Kansas? This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade discuss the changeable future of tech by looking to the past...

  What Is Creative Capital, Anyway?: This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade meet with Jules Ehrhardt, founder of Creative Capitol Studio FKTRY, the author of the term ‘digital product studio’, and an advocate for authenticity. On this episode, we talk about the problems with the old-guard agency model, where creatives are going instead, and how creativity is commodified and sold like sausage links...

Harpal Singh Design is Not an Add-On: Why did it take so long for design to come back into the conversation? This week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade talk about Digital Transformation and the marriage between Design and Engineering. We talk about how how the importance of design is often misjudged when it comes to Digital Transformation (hint: it’s crucial), and how what may be common sense to designers isn’t always common sense to others...