I started making some simple illustrations in Figma for my Substack Newsletter about money. Generic stock images just don’t do it for me and I know how to use Figma (recently acquired by Adobe).
While I’d usually use it for product development and UX it is also a tool I love to use for a variety of occasions. My old co-founder used it to make gingerbread house patterns due to its preciseness and simplicity.
Its collaborative and fast interface thanks to shorter load times runs on Web Assembly (as opposed to its competitors that were built several decades ago) and is the best thing since sliced bread for creating in the browser. I was lucky to live in the bay area when I found it early on and have been a fan ever since. Once you go Figma you never go back.
I started a substack today. It’s about money, my reflections, and thoughts about my own mistakes, wins, and no advice. I think it’s funny how people would rather speak freely in Sweden about sex rather than speak of how they invest, earn, and make a buck or build a business. So here we go, let’s start with fundamental basics and move on to more intermediate subjects. Always remember, no matter how much money you have, if you don’t have any time or energy left, it’s not fun to play.
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Building digital fertility services in emerging markets, an episode with Therese Mannheimer, founder of Grace health, a fertility health app acting a digital health clinic, targeting emerging markets, we round topics of female health, venture building and success.
Founder and CEO, is a user centric venture builder, business developer and strategist with over 10 years experience of working with digital service and product development for Swedish as well as international companies. Prior to founding Grace Health she was the Head of Rn’D at the market leading health app, Lifesum and spent six years as partner and strategist at the global design firm Doberman. Therese has also started several other ventures, including Lissly AB and the Swedish non-profit Allbright.
We speak with award winning data journalist Emanuel Karlsten about the Swedish pandemic numbers, as he reports at hos blog in both English and Swedish.
Emanuels bio Journalist, speaker and advisor on digital media. He is the winner of the Swedish Grand national journalism award, 2020. Considered one of Sweden’s most influential people on social media, and a sought after speaker both on a local and international level for businesses across all industries and sectors.
Columnist in major newspaper Göteborgs-posten, and radio host on one of Sweden’s biggest radio shows.
Interested in digital transformation from a leadership Perspective? We speak with Mathias Eriksson about how to lead businesses boldy in times of change and a pandemic.
Listen to our new @howthepod episode with the brilliant @MathiasEriksson on leading businesses through change, in this Episode with examples from Icebug.
Mathias Eriksson calls himself an applier/bastardiser of science. A Doer-Thinker. A practitioner. He is an entrepreneur with a handful of companies behind him. He started the awarded (60+ international awards, Gold Lions and Webbys among them) content agency Matter in 2009 and sold it in 2018. Before Matter he co-founded and ran furniture producer/incorporated art project Brikolör that made themselves famous offering a 300-year emotional and technical guarantee of their products.
He is a founding team member of the AI-company Adverai and is currently active as a digital transformation specialist, helping companies lay the groundwork for massive automation through clever use of data, software, and smarter processes where HUMANS + MACHINES is the secret sauce.
Mathias started his career as an investigative reporter for Swedish Broadcasting and has recently picked up his studies in Social Anthropology and Science- and Technology Studies. He researches our current and future lives with the machines and how the new machine age influences culture. From time to time, Mathias shares some writing on Machines, Humans, and Science on his blog and on his Instagram.
Clubhouse being a voice and app only social network, by invite only that can take an extended time to drip in to your email. Once in, here is a bit of the deserved hype about the app that mimics humans behaviour on the internet. Here are some takeawys from my first weeks.
1. Human Onboarding (if your lucky) Upon entering, anyone you know will be notified to meet and walk you though the experience with someone you already know in a private room. Quite a refreshing approach to onboarding new users.
2. Partyhat for your first week 🎉. Being a newbie is human, and finding your ropes during that period os indicated a patyhat/partypopper emoji. If you don’t know what you’r doing you are likely to be asked about your experience and a little bit more patience is given.
3. Browse around rooms, clubs and follow relevant people. Browsing around your first rooms (anyone can create) and clubs (takes more effort to create)found in the Hallway, you might look at some of the room or club 🟢moderators profiles. Following any profile, will algorithmically show more content skewed to that profiles interest. Feel free to unfollow whenever you like to regulate, as well as leaving rooms quietly whenever you feel like venturing on.
4. Experiment a bit by starting your own room I started a room and invited som people by word, there are no formal invites as such, even tho ones events how in the hallway to followers and in the calendar. After trying to record an episode via Clubhouse we realised that the quality of the room sound would not hold up, we recorded another episode in a classical podcast environment. The 1-hour session I held where Maryem and I spoke about how clubhouse works with a few people.
5. Clear formats formats win for larger rooms Of course many more things are on here and new formats are tested endlessly from jamming session with worldly artists, to PhD BJ Fogg from Stanford University clearly formated 1 hour sessions on how to create more sustainable habits, where you speak for one minute about what works for you.
6. Terminology of the unique functionality.
7. Moderating: The room creator, can share moderatorship by inviting people to moderating. Long rooms that last for more that 24hours, handoff moderatorship to the next trusted person. Trusted is important due to a moderator being able to throw you out of your own room. Not likely but can technically happen.
8. Hand-raising: If you want to go up on stage at the upper part of your screen, you raise you hand to ask a question, the moderator then might grant you access to the stage for further interaction.
9. Re-setting the Stage New people come in, others leave quietly, every now and then moderators re-set the stage, meaning they mention formats of the stage, what the room is about, are we topic-less, or if the room has a name with a topic, whats the format. This allows new-comers to understand whats happening and is best practice.
10. PTA – Pull to refresh There is now way to share images of text directly byt the networks leverages and incorporates with Twitter and Instagram, where direct communication is to be referred to the DM’s with the other plattforms communication functionality, Clubhouse acclimatises itself to the given ecosystem of existing apps and plays nicely. What is used when people want to share an image is to change their profile image, and at that point “PTA” is used, meaning pulldown page to refresh (and show image).
These point raise many good questions for concept developers, business developers. How will the platform evolve depending on what new features are released, and how will this sticky new product be used, commercialised and grow over time. The best way to make any future theory is to be a part of it.
Maryem Nasri and I have spent some time at Clubhouse, the new voice-only social network. How the pod is doing a talk on Clubhouse on Thursday the 21:st of January at 4pm (CET+1) which will also be recorded into a podcast.
Join in if you have a Clubhouse account to learn, what formats work, and what people are experiencing and what might alter in the space of social networks. See you there 👋
Stockholm: 4PM CET+1 (16:00 local time) London: 3PM GMT New York: 10AM EST San Francisco: 7 AM PST
The global pandemic of Covid-19 requires us to be extra diligent when connecting and communicating for work and private conversations to a greater extent than before.
Having worked remotely for large parts of my professional life with developing remote tools at GeekGirlMeetup, Scrive and Lookback I want to share my favourite tools for connection and conversations. I hope you find the list helpful, and that it helps you connect well, communicate better and stay safe from home.
To learn more about the best practices for leaders as well as remote and distributed teamwork, benefits and challenges I suggest a listen to the chat with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg in the episode “New Future of Work” from the podcast ‘Making Sense’ by Sam Harris.
Communication tools for connection in remote times:
Slack: For teams already using slack as a closed chat channel, their video functionality is excellent, allowing users to share their screen and draw on their own screen. Great for sharing sketches and ideas, during technical production. My own personal favourite across work and private projects. Requires: account and login, free.
Zoom: A great video tool that allows participants to share their screen, and extra good for recording a video session or instruction and sometimes even shorter UX research. Requires: download and login.
Hangouts: A great tool for simpler video chats with lower technical requirements, allows sharing screens of participants. Great for a simple meeting or a lunch chat. Requires: a google account and login, downloads optional on desktop, requires mobile app download on phone, owned by Google.
WherebyA personal favourite for meetings and sharing your screen, where on desktop the level of entering the service is low. The user who receives the link to a call on desktop and does not need to login. The simple “open-link-to-enter-video-chat” lowers the threshold of complexity speaking with people who are less likely comfortable taking time and effort to prepare for a meeting, downloading software. Whereby was formerly known as Appear.in. Requires: Does not require user account login on desktop. The mobile usage requires a mobile app download.
Skype: An old favourite and possibly the longest standing Voip (Voice over IP) service, sold to Microsoft. Probably the most widely adapted tool in the world for simple meetings across work and family calls. Requires: user account downloads and login, owned by Microsoft.
Whats app. A mobile app that allows free phone and video calls across operating systems iOS (iPhone) and Android. For example, you are on an iPhone and your dad is on Android, FaceTime won’t work, What’s app does! Several users can participate in a call. Great for family calls. Owned by Facebook.
FaceTime. A phone and operating system dependent app, thats is embedded for free on every iPhone. No need for downloading anything, just click “FaceTime” when calling any other iPhone user. Several users can participate in a call. Great for family calls.
We speak with award winning data journalist Emanuel Karlsten about the Swedish pandemic numbers, as he reports at hos blog in both 
