Speaker 1: Afro Tech Executive is our multi city series which empowers
Speaker 1: corporate executives, investors, and tech moguls. And we kick off
Speaker 1: our twenty twenty three series with a trip to Seattle,
Speaker 1: Washington March thirtieth. We're in the city discussing artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: with Jessica Matthews, founder of Uncharted. Be in the house
Speaker 1: with us this year for an Afrotech Executive events. Experienced
Speaker 1: dot afrotech dot com to learn more. I'm Will Lucas,
Speaker 1: missus Black Tech, Green Money. I'm going to introduce you
Speaker 1: to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest
Speaker 1: minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black and building or
Speaker 1: simply using Texas Security, you bag this podcast is for you.
Speaker 1: Drew Hansen is an award winning designer, entrepreneur, and founder
Speaker 1: currently working on cannabis related technologies. His undergraduate in engineering
Speaker 1: physics from a university is Saskatchewan and he's got a
Speaker 1: massive industrial design from Italy. Balances the requirements that both
Speaker 1: feels naturally in any design strategy. So I ask them,
Speaker 1: our designer's naturally good at design, Like is this something
Speaker 1: you can be born with? Or it's good and inspire
Speaker 1: design a concept that can be taught in school.
Speaker 2: There's some parts of design that education helps. I think,
Speaker 2: you know, I create a lot of things, but I
Speaker 2: don't call myself an artist. And I do that I
Speaker 2: don't know because I don't have a lot of as
Speaker 2: much maybe faith in my art creations as I do
Speaker 2: my engineering creations. And I can't hinge my identity on it.
Speaker 2: But when it comes to design, the difference between art
Speaker 2: and design is functionality. It has a purpose, It serves
Speaker 2: humans somehow in its methodology of its creation. And to
Speaker 2: that point, education helps the size of the basket of
Speaker 2: tools you have to reach to to be able to create.
Speaker 2: But there's great creators who have it, and there's great
Speaker 2: to sorry, there's great designers who have it, and there's
Speaker 2: great designers who don't. But you'll be more prone to
Speaker 2: I suppose, making a mistake or doing some exposure things
Speaker 2: like that, just because you wouldn't have certain experiences that
Speaker 2: maybe would have stopped that.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting that you said you don't call yourself
Speaker 1: an artist in that way, and it would seem to
Speaker 1: me that, well, let me translate that for how I
Speaker 1: heard it, and then maybe you can clarify what you
Speaker 1: actually mean by that. So how I hear that is
Speaker 1: you're less inclined to reach and to go completely left
Speaker 1: field or just give a whole new perspective to how
Speaker 1: something could be presented to the world. And maybe you
Speaker 1: don't mean that. So I'm looking for clarity.
Speaker 2: When I say my art, I feel like if I
Speaker 2: was to just restart the conversation with that being the subject,
Speaker 2: I feel like my art is the digital hardware creations
Speaker 2: I make with the zeros and the ones and the software,
Speaker 2: and how that's done, and the designs themselves and how
Speaker 2: they come out. I can fairly honestly say from all
Speaker 2: the hard where pieces I've gone that've created that have
Speaker 2: made it into mass production in the world, nothing really
Speaker 2: looked like them before, nothing really operated like them before.
Speaker 2: There's some part of them there that there's a lighting
Speaker 2: design that you know, there's some real heart and soul
Speaker 2: in And I think maybe that's what I could call
Speaker 2: my art. But in the sense of how the TikTok
Speaker 2: world sees art, which is I can create this piece
Speaker 2: and sell it for this much money and I live
Speaker 2: off of that, you know that definition of art, I
Speaker 2: guess I would say I have a hard time of
Speaker 2: saying I am one of.
Speaker 1: Those you know, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm glad you
Speaker 1: said that, because I wanted to talk to you about
Speaker 1: how how you balance the desire to create something special
Speaker 1: with what the business needs and what the consumer needs
Speaker 1: and what the business needs to make sense, Like, how
Speaker 1: do you balance those things?
Speaker 2: It's an interesting question. It has to do with whether
Speaker 2: or not the products you create you consume, because what
Speaker 2: I've learned is it's obviously a lot easier to create
Speaker 2: something that you consume because you have certain insights that
Speaker 2: don't exist if you're outside of the demographic pool of
Speaker 2: what who actually utilizes your product. And it's okay to
Speaker 2: create that way, but it's a hell of a lot harder,
Speaker 2: and it's a hell of a lot harder to be
Speaker 2: not just on demographic, but to ensure that you're timing
Speaker 2: for when you're making this thing is also accurate. And
Speaker 2: when I talked to that, I guess my own personal
Speaker 2: experience is, well, I my background in life is I
Speaker 2: wanted to design racing technology for Formula one, and then
Speaker 2: I pursued this long, you know, passionate journey for that,
Speaker 2: and along the way there was there was some great wins,
Speaker 2: but I think at the core of it it was
Speaker 2: a bit it was a bit different. So let me reset.
Speaker 2: I just I lost my train of thought as to
Speaker 2: why I brought that point up.
Speaker 1: Now this is good, this is super good. I'm really interested.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's reset asking the ques and again, just
Speaker 2: you can have it reframed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I was interested in how you balance the consumer
Speaker 1: needs and what the consumer wants versus actually what the
Speaker 1: business needs.
Speaker 2: So but you always are trying to make something that
Speaker 2: the business needs. If you're making it under your business umbrella,
Speaker 2: that's kind of the starting point for the conversation. But
Speaker 2: how you craft that solution and what you craft and
Speaker 2: why you craft it still can have different answers. And
Speaker 2: when I was talking about having insights versus not having
Speaker 2: insights right now, so I always My parent company is
Speaker 2: twenty two b in my product design studio, and from
Speaker 2: there we focused on things at the intersection of art
Speaker 2: and technology and art and design. But when we first
Speaker 2: created something, I want to create things that help people.
Speaker 2: And the first thing we created was seem Technique. You know,
Speaker 2: in that company, we created a personal safety IoT platform.
Speaker 2: It had a mobile application that an Uber driver or
Speaker 2: anybody work by themselves could use to share not just
Speaker 2: where they are. Because I felt like that was easy,
Speaker 2: that was done, that was accessible. That's just by my friends.
Speaker 2: But if you you know, used by my friends, or
Speaker 2: you send up that red flag that you're in danger
Speaker 2: once or twice, that kind of a system doesn't really
Speaker 2: have much usage. So what we're talking about is how
Speaker 2: do you share your current state with context? And that's
Speaker 2: where I felt there could be an advancement in that area.
Speaker 2: And so you know, we created an app that allowed
Speaker 2: you to share what you see, what you hear, and
Speaker 2: where you are synchronized to your GPS data live stream
Speaker 2: to five people, and it had a good application for
Speaker 2: Uber drivers. Then we extended that to we've expanded that
Speaker 2: to loan workers, targeted degmographic of people who just work
Speaker 2: by themselves and might need access to such technology. But
Speaker 2: we really landed on a good home with realtors and
Speaker 2: people doing open homes. For example. Now I am not
Speaker 2: a realtor, I'm not somebody doing an open home, and
Speaker 2: in this situation, I don't have certain insights, but we
Speaker 2: went ahead because I was very certain that the product
Speaker 2: we were creating was needed, was something that was valuable
Speaker 2: and I still do this day contend that, you know,
Speaker 2: we and then we created a wearable device called the
Speaker 2: Lotus that had a built in microphone and speaker, but
Speaker 2: it also synchronized to your SERI or Google Assistant. And
Speaker 2: this is like six seven years ago right now, So
Speaker 2: it was like on the cusp of when Google introduced
Speaker 2: this technology. We were at cees on that launch here
Speaker 2: with them, and you know, I guess the point I'm
Speaker 2: trying to make is when I was in that company,
Speaker 2: we were basically trying to sell do you feel safe?
Speaker 2: And you know, to the point about doing something and
Speaker 2: selling it and having those insights. I've been consuming cannabis
Speaker 2: my whole life for medicinal purposes, and on top of that,
Speaker 2: I've been creating technology my whole life. So when it
Speaker 2: comes to now having a cannabis technology company where our
Speaker 2: goal is to become, say the dis in of the industry,
Speaker 2: it's not just to have a vappen. It's a lot
Speaker 2: easier to create products that are on target push forward
Speaker 2: the business versus even if they're on my personal agenda.
Speaker 2: As I guess the point to bring it all the
Speaker 2: way back to the question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I'm interested in your take on It's
Speaker 1: one thing to say, you know, you you pushed for
Speaker 1: because you believe that, you know it was needed in
Speaker 1: the marketplace. It's one thing for people to want what
Speaker 1: you have. It's another thing that they're willing to pay
Speaker 1: for it. How do you you know balance? How did
Speaker 1: you know that they would pay for this?
Speaker 2: Because we we had people that paid us, and you know,
Speaker 2: when we when we made the when we made the
Speaker 2: device itself, we actually showed up to cees at various
Speaker 2: points in the year, at various points in the product cycle,
Speaker 2: to effectively ascertained from our initial prototypes, was there market
Speaker 2: for this not only just in user base, but was
Speaker 2: there a market for this in retail distribution buyers around
Speaker 2: the world, you know, And the all the signs said yeah.
Speaker 2: Every time we had to go through some form of research,
Speaker 2: the markets said yes. And we ended up getting into
Speaker 2: best Buy. You know, we ended up almost being acquired
Speaker 2: by a company whose name I probably shouldn't say, so
Speaker 2: I won't, but we you know, we were we were
Speaker 2: right there. And but I think the thing in business
Speaker 2: that's interesting is you missed by a bit, You missed
Speaker 2: by a Matt doesn't matter. You miss you miss, you know,
Speaker 2: And so a lot of that for me, whether it
Speaker 2: was timing, whether it was other stuff, it pushes you
Speaker 2: to really try and consider why it was that the
Speaker 2: business didn't get where the business needed to go, even
Speaker 2: if I thought I was satisfying those personal This is
Speaker 2: what this does need to be for me to go
Speaker 2: to sleep at night. You know.
Speaker 1: My next question, I'm going to tee this up in
Speaker 1: a specific way because I was in a Ikea some
Speaker 1: years ago and I saw this poster that they had
Speaker 1: on the wall and there it was about their design
Speaker 1: and pricing, and it was talking about they decide what
Speaker 1: something was cost first, and then the cost of it
Speaker 1: will dictate how they produce it. So they're going to
Speaker 1: make a chair, and they're going to make a twenty
Speaker 1: four dollar chair, and therefore it has to be produced
Speaker 1: a certain way. And so getting to the point my
Speaker 1: question is sometimes things fail, not because they're not needed
Speaker 1: in the marketplace, not that because there's no demand, but
Speaker 1: the price you know of it just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: And so you could have decided to instead of making
Speaker 1: it with some sort of plastic, making it with a
Speaker 1: different type of plastic, therefore the price, you know, can
Speaker 1: come down. So how do you know which levers to
Speaker 1: pull when you know that there's a need in the marketplace,
Speaker 1: you know there's some desire in the marketplace, How do
Speaker 1: you know which levers decide whether this thing will be
Speaker 1: successful or not.
Speaker 2: There's as much market research as you can do. But
Speaker 2: you know, I hate making this quote because I know
Speaker 2: it's just such an overused quote. But somebody likes Steve
Speaker 2: jobs are the best. Like, people don't really know what
Speaker 2: they want, right, And so if I'm gonna sit there
Speaker 2: and try and market test, and I'm gonna say, I
Speaker 2: know I can sell a twenty dollars version of X. Okay,
Speaker 2: that makes perfect sense. We can go and we can
Speaker 2: try and create a twenty dollars version of X, and
Speaker 2: we'll go forward and we'll do that. And that is
Speaker 2: a that is a way that a lot of companies, sorry,
Speaker 2: let me just turn it out. That is a way
Speaker 2: that a lot of companies operate. However, most of those
Speaker 2: companies didn't make the iPhone. Most of those companies aren't
Speaker 2: the chat ChiPT you know. And so yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: whole lot of like zoom boxes that we can sell
Speaker 2: for twenty bucks or whatever it might be, or you know,
Speaker 2: but there's there's something to be said about combining as
Speaker 2: much as you can know with some thing that has
Speaker 2: insights in something, and then just in two suitively understanding
Speaker 2: this is a cliff, a cliff that's worth at least
Speaker 2: looking over, you know. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: it's almost like when it comes to creating product, creating
Speaker 2: companies or anything of that nature. You know, when a
Speaker 2: lot of people ask when do you think it's perfect?
Speaker 2: When do you think it's finished? There is no there
Speaker 2: is no There is no perfect there is It's good
Speaker 2: enough to go out and I'm comfortable that it's going
Speaker 2: to deliver on its experience. And I think maybe bringing
Speaker 2: it back to a fundamental difference between art and design,
Speaker 2: design does have a point where it's supposed to deliver
Speaker 2: on a promise, and at that point in time, I
Speaker 2: can be more relaxed about the visual cues of something
Speaker 2: or the aesthetic component of something, which is only one
Speaker 2: part of that thing.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh, I was just watching you answer that, and
Speaker 1: you made me think about how just having the design
Speaker 1: is probably not enough. You got to be able to
Speaker 1: communicate the whys and the hows and the reasoning behind.
Speaker 1: Have you experienced, perhaps you know, a counterpart or even
Speaker 1: a classmate, somebody who had remarkable things but couldn't communicate
Speaker 1: it therefore couldn't find success, or just aware of the
Speaker 1: concept and what happens there that could allow those people
Speaker 1: to find better success being able to communicate versus just
Speaker 1: having great notes and great designs on a sketch pad.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think there's like two levels to that question.
Speaker 2: On the first level, you have communication of your own ideas, right,
Speaker 2: and the ability to work within your team, the ability
Speaker 2: to show somebody, I thought, the ability to do whatever.
Speaker 2: And you know, for me transitioning from an engineer to
Speaker 2: a designer because my undergraduate's engineering physics. I then did
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of motorsports stuff. I did a data
Speaker 2: acquisition internship in Indianapolis. But when I was in Italy
Speaker 2: and I was shifting over to becoming a designer, and
Speaker 2: I was just trying to be humble and say, I
Speaker 2: don't know if about you know, like, I was just
Speaker 2: really trying to see the difference.
Speaker 1: And I think.
Speaker 2: I think somebody who can't communicate their simple ideas to
Speaker 2: their team that's one problem. That's something you can learn.
Speaker 2: And you know, my mentor in Italy, Alberto Fraser, he said,
Speaker 2: I'll teach you three things. One how to draw because
Speaker 2: you can't draw, and he used a lot more expeditive
Speaker 2: language than that too. How to think like a designer
Speaker 2: and not an engineer because they're fundamentally different. And three
Speaker 2: quality of life. And that's another conversation. But on the
Speaker 2: subject of drawing, you know, there is a book called
Speaker 2: Learning to Draw with the Right Side of the Brain,
Speaker 2: and it's a fantastic, fundamental book that if you go
Speaker 2: through their exercises, it is undeniable that you will be
Speaker 2: able to draw at the end of it. I absolutely
Speaker 2: guarantee it. And so it basically rewires your brain from
Speaker 2: seeing the world with the left side, where you're analyzing
Speaker 2: shape system and patterns. You know, when you were a kid,
Speaker 2: if somebody asked you to draw an eye, you weren't
Speaker 2: going to do the half circle with the other half circle.
Speaker 2: But now as an adult, almost every single adult will
Speaker 2: draw an eye as that because they've been trained on
Speaker 2: that as the symbol for that. But if you were
Speaker 2: a child and you said draw that eye, they would
Speaker 2: actually just try to draw the contours as they saw it,
Speaker 2: and that's the fundamental difference, is just learning to draw
Speaker 2: it as you see it versus how you think about it.
Speaker 2: And once you kind of free yourself from that shackle,
Speaker 2: you know, communication abilities at least quick sketch ones become
Speaker 2: more proficient. So on that first level, i'd say that's
Speaker 2: the answer to that question of if somebody was lacking
Speaker 2: a communication ability, it would definitely affect their ability to
Speaker 2: communicate because the beauty is in the details. And you know,
Speaker 2: one time I was working on a hangar designed for
Speaker 2: Valentino with my mentor. It was his client, not mine,
Speaker 2: and he sat there and we printed out what we
Speaker 2: did from the digital files. But then he just sit
Speaker 2: there with a pencil and went over it like forty
Speaker 2: fifty sixty times until he was like, nah, that's the curve.
Speaker 2: And so there's a small part of just knowing the
Speaker 2: fundamental tools that helps you really master those digital ones,
Speaker 2: even if you are the more advanced students who thinks
Speaker 2: you're great at communication. And then I would say the
Speaker 2: second level to that answer is me, I am terrible
Speaker 2: at communicating in certain regards. I am horrible at posting
Speaker 2: on social media, and when you don't show the world
Speaker 2: what you're creating, and the only mediums that the world
Speaker 2: accepts these days, nobody knows who you are what you create,
Speaker 2: And so you know, I am the poster child for
Speaker 2: I never really wanted to be famous. I just wanted
Speaker 2: to make things that help people. But in today's world,
Speaker 2: when the things you create other people now depend on
Speaker 2: and livelihoods start to depend on, you kind of have
Speaker 2: to let go of the original reasonings and learn some
Speaker 2: new communication tools, because I guess that would be what
Speaker 2: you're hampering.
Speaker 1: What inspired you to use your talents in the cannabis industry.
Speaker 2: I we were coming out of seeing Technic, which is
Speaker 2: that personal Safety at Platform had one hundred thousand dollars left.
Speaker 2: I had just burned quite a significant chunk of change
Speaker 2: trying to make it work because we kept getting really
Speaker 2: positive indicators that were just like, Okay, we should figure
Speaker 2: this one out a bit longer. And you know, to
Speaker 2: that point, I'm still happy everything went the way it is.
Speaker 2: I still have to recover the damage that that created,
Speaker 2: but you just learned so much from it, and I think,
Speaker 2: I think, what do I think? What do I think? Okay,
Speaker 2: ask me the question again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm interested in what inspired you to use the
Speaker 1: talents and gifts you've been able to develop in the
Speaker 1: cannabis industry versus you know, all the other things you
Speaker 1: could have selected.
Speaker 2: So my dream in life was Formula one racing tech.
Speaker 2: I ended up getting flown to England to defend a
Speaker 2: technology design against the other ten best selected in the
Speaker 2: world in a Formula one competition that Renau put on.
Speaker 2: And you know, I spent a year in Indianapolis very
Speaker 2: graciously with Team Wattwalker Racing and got to see the
Speaker 2: track life. And you know, when that was my initial dream,
Speaker 2: it just seems so unattainable. But then when I was
Speaker 2: twenty six and I was in the F one facility,
Speaker 2: I was like, I can hang with the best in
Speaker 2: the world in this. But then when I had to
Speaker 2: go back to Italy and my mentor was like quality
Speaker 2: of life. Bringing that into the conversation, now, how do
Speaker 2: you want to live your life? He's like, don't I
Speaker 2: want to be able to see my daughter. So I
Speaker 2: gave up being the head designer at ray Ban and
Speaker 2: I was like, I want to be able to eat
Speaker 2: Chinese food. I want to live in a real city.
Speaker 2: I want culture. I can't live in the middle of
Speaker 2: nowhere for the rest of my life just because I
Speaker 2: want to pursue Formula one. And so when it came
Speaker 2: to what I could use my skills for, I just
Speaker 2: really realized I love designing tech, you know, I loved
Speaker 2: just the final applications for it. And when it came
Speaker 2: down to, you know, starting it now, seem had about
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars left in the bank account, and
Speaker 2: it was, well, now's the time because here in Canada
Speaker 2: it's fully legal federally. It's something that I have the
Speaker 2: insights on, you know, growing up, I started consuming Canada's
Speaker 2: very young, and to a point where, of course, at
Speaker 2: certain times everybody have uses something when they're a child,
Speaker 2: but it was very medicinal, like I sat almost every
Speaker 2: day through calculus. I finished calculus and bilingual diploma, so
Speaker 2: I finished calculus in French. For anybody who says, you know,
Speaker 2: cannabis destroys the child's mind, well it was helping me
Speaker 2: sit through mine. I got through that, and then I
Speaker 2: went to university, so I know firsthand what it's like
Speaker 2: and what it means to certain people, I suppose and
Speaker 2: I also know that when it comes to something like alcohol,
Speaker 2: people have decanters in their homes, these very beautiful crystal vases,
Speaker 2: vases what you want to say, I call it, and
Speaker 2: the world will walk into somebody's home and be like,
Speaker 2: here's a nice bottle of wine. What a beautiful decanter.
Speaker 2: Let's get smashed now and celebrated, and it's like this
Speaker 2: culture that's kind of interesting when people don't. People have
Speaker 2: basically debranded alcohol from being a drug. They're like, that's
Speaker 2: not a drug, that's alcohol, but it's a definition a drug.
Speaker 2: And so what I always thought was lacking was the
Speaker 2: injection of something that could create pieces in the cannabis
Speaker 2: sector that were officially decanter level grades. So somebody walks
Speaker 2: into a home, you can invite them into the conversation
Speaker 2: just with the object itself and then soften the experience
Speaker 2: and then ultimately elevate it for everybody. So really that
Speaker 2: I just I thought I had something to offer, you know,
Speaker 2: I when all the technology in cannabis that I feel
Speaker 2: is relevant exploded onto the scene in the various places
Speaker 2: it did, you know, like the volcano with analog dial
Speaker 2: over a decade ago in Los Angeles, when people started
Speaker 2: figuring out to pass a little bag around was a thing.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a certain moment in time when concentrates
Speaker 2: came out. That company called Gpenn captured all of everybody's attention,
Speaker 2: and we're producing a device called the micro g and
Speaker 2: that that was a moment in time. But what's different
Speaker 2: about us and everybody else is I guess the word purpose.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I don't want to just take any of those little
Speaker 2: things and make a small adjustment on it. I want
Speaker 2: to find holes where we're just not fulfilling our promise
Speaker 2: as creators that have functionality requirements, not just artistic requirements.
Speaker 2: And I want to make sure that this one chance
Speaker 2: we've been given to consume cannabis recreationally, medicinally and legally
Speaker 2: gets the best shot of having the tools and the
Speaker 2: products that elevated status to something that is becoming mainstream,
Speaker 2: and not even just here in the most wild of country.
Speaker 2: It's like, can we get this in a Shariahwah country
Speaker 2: and maybe get them just often up in one way
Speaker 2: and have cannabis, you know, if we do it right.
Speaker 2: Because there's certain bars in those places that are consuming alcohol,
Speaker 2: so it's not like the conversations that far fetch and
Speaker 2: I guess back to the point of making things just
Speaker 2: to help people, it seems like a good place to
Speaker 2: put my efforts. After the dream of that f one
Speaker 2: was kind of passed on.
Speaker 1: As a part of jews website that said he's interested
Speaker 1: in consulting and collaborating on projects that have a positive
Speaker 1: impact on the world. And I think we all get
Speaker 1: by now the benefits of medicinal marijuana. I mean it
Speaker 1: helps with anxiety, pain, information, talk to your own doctor,
Speaker 1: not me. But like re creational marijuana. When you say
Speaker 1: you're interested in working on things that make a positive
Speaker 1: impact on the world, how does recreational marijuana do that?
Speaker 1: How does recreational marijuana make a positive impact on the world?
Speaker 3: Ju speak Sony, Well, there's there's a lot of safety
Speaker 3: and regulation ultimately, you know, when it comes to cannabis products,
Speaker 3: there's people who make bad cannabis.
Speaker 2: Will give you cannabis covered in mold, will give you
Speaker 2: cannabis covered in xyz that is actually harmful for an
Speaker 2: individual when it comes to a recreational user. So I
Speaker 2: don't necessarily need a medicinal certificate to say I want
Speaker 2: to take tailan all right, or if I just want
Speaker 2: to kind of have like a sleep ease, right, And
Speaker 2: so there's a certain functionality that we can empower a
Speaker 2: recreational user with without needing it to be medicinal like
Speaker 2: we have done with everything else. And so so that
Speaker 2: only happens when you can trust what's in something. And
Speaker 2: ultimately I've just really learned we can't trust people in general,
Speaker 2: like to leave something to themselves. I'm sorry to say so,
Speaker 2: But other very interesting things start to happen with regulations.
Speaker 2: So let me explain that. For example, if every single
Speaker 2: cannabis that's now released is tested for all it's cannabinoids
Speaker 2: and terrapenes and there's specific percentages and volumes by weight,
Speaker 2: now we can start to have reliable data to offer
Speaker 2: products that utilize that machine learning structures on that data sets.
Speaker 2: How is this affecting that? How is that doing that?
Speaker 2: And the level of infrastructure from the creator side starts
Speaker 2: to go up, and it starts to become more advanced,
Speaker 2: and it starts to become more evolved with a purpose,
Speaker 2: you know. And I always said, for example, blockchain is great,
Speaker 2: cryptocurrencies are great. Is cryptocurrency going to be the best
Speaker 2: demonstration of blockchain technology. Time will tell, and that's kind
Speaker 2: of what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, So I have outside of this business. I
Speaker 1: have another business where we're a marketing technology agency. We
Speaker 1: do video production and etc. And we specifically focus on
Speaker 1: companies and organizations that are trying to reach and engage
Speaker 1: multiculture and diverse audiences. And so as a byproduct of that,
Speaker 1: a lot of our clients tend to be like, you know,
Speaker 1: nonprofit organizations, governments and etc. And what I learned a
Speaker 1: revelation to me was that what typically happens with video
Speaker 1: producers is they assume that when you hire me to
Speaker 1: do a video, you just want a really beautiful video.
Speaker 1: And what I found to be our value proposition was
Speaker 1: I realized, you don't just want a nice video. You
Speaker 1: if your government you ultimately want to pass a levee.
Speaker 1: That's really what you want. The video is just a
Speaker 1: part of telling a story that ultimately helps you pass
Speaker 1: a levee down the line or whatever. So what are
Speaker 1: are some of the things when you take on a
Speaker 1: new project, design project? What are the questions you ask
Speaker 1: yourself to answer for the consumer? What they're really they
Speaker 1: don't even know to ask what are you trying to
Speaker 1: solve for them?
Speaker 2: It depends on if that the foundation of why I'm
Speaker 2: answering the question is personal based or business based. And
Speaker 2: I say that because when I'm trying to solve something
Speaker 2: personal based, of course the end goal is business positive results.
Speaker 2: But it's almost some of it is an ego play
Speaker 2: if you're being honest, that you put that into production
Speaker 2: because you didn't necessarily have the data to do that,
Speaker 2: and when it came when it comes time, like right now,
Speaker 2: we have we have or we're transitioning from a vaporizer
Speaker 2: product with toky to an accessory that is for dry flour,
Speaker 2: and and you know, there's arguably not a whole lot
Speaker 2: on the market that's like it to prove that it
Speaker 2: should exist. But I know how much happiness will come
Speaker 2: from people when they go through this experience that we're
Speaker 2: trying to offer. And there's just a certain level of
Speaker 2: happiness that when you get a wave that hits you
Speaker 2: of it after you touch something that intuitively, I don't
Speaker 2: need data anymore. I've been I've been around certainly long
Speaker 2: enough to know. So I guess the challenge to me
Speaker 2: and my team or a team, and I is always
Speaker 2: when we talk about a product, we always say, Okay,
Speaker 2: what's the user journey? How am I going to touch it?
Speaker 2: How am I going to hold it? How is it
Speaker 2: going to feel when I go about it? And every
Speaker 2: single step, have I introduced friction which is going to
Speaker 2: piss somebody off? Or have I just made their lives easier?
Speaker 2: And if you make somebody's lives enough easier, you're doing great.
Speaker 2: And if at some point you inject a piece of
Speaker 2: cleverness where people can figure like almost find it, then
Speaker 2: you're taking somebody from doing great having a great experience
Speaker 2: to oh damn, I'm gonna remember this forever because that
Speaker 2: was just so cute, you know, And it's like, how
Speaker 2: much of that can you find while still fulfilling your
Speaker 2: promise of I'm not going to just put crap in
Speaker 2: here for the sake of putting crap in here, and
Speaker 2: it still works the way it's supposed to.
Speaker 1: You know, when you do have to go gather data,
Speaker 1: is you talked about, you know, just that unique insight
Speaker 1: that you may have as a designer, But when data
Speaker 1: is important, talk to me about the experiences you've had
Speaker 1: in how you actually go about collecting data, like what
Speaker 1: are you using, are you using serve? Are you going
Speaker 1: door to door knocking? And are you using on What
Speaker 1: is the process for gathering valuable consumer data?
Speaker 2: Depending it's industry specif think again when we were in
Speaker 2: the so when I was creating action cameras in London
Speaker 2: the UK as designing action cameras for your company called
Speaker 2: Drift Innovation kind of like GoPros. We had a lot
Speaker 2: of professional teams in a lot of professional circuits and
Speaker 2: there was you know, access to mailing lists of people
Speaker 2: that we could you know, bring to the table to
Speaker 2: give us active data that we were actively bringing people
Speaker 2: into sessions for which sometimes we did. But what I
Speaker 2: think was more important was where that company came from.
Speaker 2: Is also an insightful conversation about data. So the two
Speaker 2: owners of my action sports company, Robin and sab rus
Speaker 2: their souls for helping bring me up. They were IBM
Speaker 2: consultants who started effectively, sorry, let me fix my camera.
Speaker 2: They were IBM consultants who started a website to distribute
Speaker 2: action cameras. Originally, then they sold so many action cameras
Speaker 2: that they had the data on what the consumers hated
Speaker 2: and liked and loved, and they were able to translate
Speaker 2: that to three features that an action camera didn't have,
Speaker 2: a rotating lens, a built in screen, and a built
Speaker 2: in remote control. And they said, I don't know anything
Speaker 2: about making cameras, but I know what the consumers want.
Speaker 2: And so for them, they were able to, I guess,
Speaker 2: take data off of their current activities that was relevant
Speaker 2: for tomorrow's activities so to speak. When it comes to
Speaker 2: us now and operating data. You know my business partner
Speaker 2: Roy I'll bu Lack. He's fantastic. He's from Uni Lever,
Speaker 2: he's ahead of technology over there in Canada, and he
Speaker 2: really drives a lot of data conversations for us. And
Speaker 2: he was developing dashboards for them a long time ago
Speaker 2: where I used to live in London, England and he
Speaker 2: used to live in London, England, and I remember meeting
Speaker 2: one day and he was like, you have to come
Speaker 2: see this dashboard. But to that point, you know, there's
Speaker 2: the data that you create internally in your own company
Speaker 2: that you should be setting yourself up to capture before
Speaker 2: you're trying to invest in outside external capture data. Because
Speaker 2: if you're already able to generate revenue, well, your own
Speaker 2: data is going to help you become more efficient at
Speaker 2: all facets of that. And so you know, when it
Speaker 2: comes to should I make a product for a consumer,
Speaker 2: I'll usually go out on a limb and test after,
Speaker 2: if I'm absolutely honest with you. But the testing we
Speaker 2: do before is now that we're in the industry. For example,
Speaker 2: we can create something and we can make a digital
Speaker 2: version of it and I can go bring it to
Speaker 2: key opinion leaders and have their their opinion on it.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, it's tough to trust people
Speaker 2: these days, absolutely, with the way the world is. But
Speaker 2: I think a lot of what drives our creations after
Speaker 2: we have an aditional idea is bringing in certain key
Speaker 2: people at certain milestones that we trust.
Speaker 1: What informed your sense of design in your background? Like
Speaker 1: what if I go to Bill and I see you
Speaker 1: Bill grew up in the countryside, you know, maybe he
Speaker 1: went to parochio, I mean some Christian school like he had.
Speaker 1: He was going to have some sort of design sense
Speaker 1: that was informed by his upbringing. Tell me about yours.
Speaker 2: It's probably by my parents' taste, because they got some
Speaker 2: good taste, to be honest, and they were just when
Speaker 2: I was growing up. You know, my father was He's
Speaker 2: a genius. He got one of two scholarships to all
Speaker 2: of Guyana to leave the country and that allowed him
Speaker 2: to get a mining engineering degree at Queen's University in Canada.
Speaker 2: He then started working for several companies and along the journey,
Speaker 2: but at some point in time he convinced them to
Speaker 2: send him back to school so he could get his
Speaker 2: m And when he came back the company was going under.
Speaker 2: He bought it for eight dollars plus, assuming all the
Speaker 2: responsibility for their debt. Of course, and long story short,
Speaker 2: he figured out a new way to mine a coal
Speaker 2: deposit that they couldn't have access to before, and then
Speaker 2: he took that to Asia. And this is to answer
Speaker 2: your question. My father while I was growing up, was
Speaker 2: frequently coming to and from Asia with you know, Japanese
Speaker 2: little toys, karaoke, laser discs, all the latest stuff, where
Speaker 2: it was just picking my curiosity of technology, but at
Speaker 2: the same time just seeing how things are done efficiently.
Speaker 2: And so I think that combined with watching him just
Speaker 2: from a fly on the wall as he progressed his
Speaker 2: career while I was a child, from an entrepreneur perspective,
Speaker 2: it made me always want to create things that were
Speaker 2: for the future that you know, were business savvy, because
Speaker 2: if that makes sense, that and the fact that I
Speaker 2: want to die a kid, If I'm honest, I've been
Speaker 2: watching anime since I was a kid, and I just
Speaker 2: want to I always want to be able to dream
Speaker 2: in different worlds and see different things and expand like that.
Speaker 2: And I think just riding that train as far as
Speaker 2: it'll go. And it took me into import cars, which
Speaker 2: took me into Formula one cars, which took me into
Speaker 2: wherever we went. You know the story I tell somebody
Speaker 2: asking me about how I figured out Santa Claus wasn't real.
Speaker 2: It was one of those toys that my dad brought
Speaker 2: me back, was a voice recorder that had like a
Speaker 2: voice activated function, and so I taped it to the
Speaker 2: Christmas tree and I heard my parents that night and
Speaker 2: the next morning I yelled at them for lying then
Speaker 2: like that Santa Claus wasn't real. But it's just kind
Speaker 2: of that kind of stuff, I guess.
Speaker 1: Bread.
Speaker 2: But then like my dad, you know, he loved banging
Speaker 2: Olison and he's an aud so yeah, growing up, he
Speaker 2: like every time he had had the speaker, he was
Speaker 2: just like, look at the curves and just you know,
Speaker 2: it was always just so much more than the product.
Speaker 2: It was always about how you made you feel when
Speaker 2: you were just with it. You know that that I
Speaker 2: think is a bit of a differentiator. Maybe then about
Speaker 2: how I see things?
Speaker 1: How would you say a designer knows they're good? Because
Speaker 1: I imagine there's an argument to be made for some
Speaker 1: sort of external validation, right, and could it be pure conviction? Though,
Speaker 1: how do you know if you're going.
Speaker 2: It's a good question. So when I when I transitioned
Speaker 2: from engineering into design, I knew I had no design ability,
Speaker 2: and I knew things like drawing and communication were difficult
Speaker 2: for me, which put me at a severe disadvantage versus
Speaker 2: other designers. Then I went to try and get a
Speaker 2: job in London, probably the one of the hardest places
Speaker 2: to find a job, and I got humble pie caked
Speaker 2: in my face every day for six months. You know,
Speaker 2: I went to every single design studio and gave them
Speaker 2: my initial little portfolio that I had when I came
Speaker 2: out of school thinking I was top dollar and just
Speaker 2: you know, after you burn all thirty forty of them,
Speaker 2: it's like, but each time it happens, though, I realize
Speaker 2: I was trying to tell people I love designing technology,
Speaker 2: and I think the important lesson here is the designs
Speaker 2: I was showing. A lot of them were things I
Speaker 2: created that were created because I had to a school project,
Speaker 2: for example, I have to make that. But when it
Speaker 2: comes to showing the things you made for the love
Speaker 2: of it, that's when you know you're a good designer,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, because I will hire somebody who can
Speaker 2: come to me in a job interview and be like,
Speaker 2: here's these four things I made because I loved them,
Speaker 2: and I did all these things. And it's true. If
Speaker 2: you go through the process of creating something, you know
Speaker 2: the small little things about it, you know, and the
Speaker 2: nuances and those sort of parts, but you need to
Speaker 2: have the rigor to see it all the way through
Speaker 2: because until you're finished something, it always looks like crap
Speaker 2: from the moment you start like until it's at that part.
Speaker 2: But it's not about trying to make it not look
Speaker 2: like crap. It's about continuing to ask the right questions
Speaker 2: that carve out from that ice block simplicity and leave
Speaker 2: you with that thing that was always there to begin with.
Speaker 2: And trying to do that for the reasons of oh,
Speaker 2: school taught me this is how I render, so I
Speaker 2: render this way versus oh, I actually googled how to
Speaker 2: do bump mapping because I saw somebody else and now
Speaker 2: my shit's way back. Like it's just that's really it.
Speaker 2: Once you have that's the part. I can't teach anybody.
Speaker 2: You can't teach anybody to give a shit but excuse me.
Speaker 2: But once they do, they you know you're a good
Speaker 2: designer because you care. Love that. I guess that's the point.
Speaker 1: It's a really really good answer to it. In talking
Speaker 1: about cannabisity, I mean there is it's such a new industry,
Speaker 1: a legal industry. I should say it's not a new industry,
Speaker 1: but it's a new legal industry, and there's so much
Speaker 1: still left to be formed with the industry. It's not
Speaker 1: federally federally legal in the United States. But what role
Speaker 1: do you see product designers might play in shaping the
Speaker 1: future of the cannabis industry.
Speaker 2: I think it could be everything. Because the interesting thing
Speaker 2: about the word product design in twenty twenty three is
Speaker 2: that it no longer means would have meant six years ago.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean would have meant three years ago. You know,
Speaker 2: somebody out walking out of school calling themselves a product
Speaker 2: designer could be a web three stack developer these days,
Speaker 2: and they're like, I make products and that's what the
Speaker 2: world accepts. To that point, the pos terminals that the
Speaker 2: Canada sector uses are all designed technically speaking, and up
Speaker 2: here in Canada, you know, we in Ontario and the
Speaker 2: British Columbia and a couple other provinces. The way it
Speaker 2: works is, even though it's federally legal, provincially, either it's
Speaker 2: you know, still run by the government or it's allowed
Speaker 2: to be privatized. And in those sectors where it's still
Speaker 2: run by the government, you know, there were some hiccups
Speaker 2: this year where they had to shut down orders to
Speaker 2: the entire province because their systems basically went down or
Speaker 2: got hacked or X, Y and z. So to the
Speaker 2: point of how do we make it? How do products
Speaker 2: help push it forward? Well, one is just make sure
Speaker 2: we don't make mistakes like that when making those infrastructure products.
Speaker 2: But when it comes to the visual, tangible things I
Speaker 2: hold in my hand products, they have to be things
Speaker 2: that you know, don't instantly give a version to the masses.
Speaker 2: And you know, if somebody were just to walk in
Speaker 2: the next day and just like slap a sex toy
Speaker 2: on the table. Everybody in the room would be like go.
Speaker 2: And if somebody was to come and walk in and
Speaker 2: like slap a bong on the table, depending on the environment,
Speaker 2: most people would still be like God, you know. But
Speaker 2: I think there's something to be said about if somebody
Speaker 2: were to come in with a cannabis plant that's been
Speaker 2: created in a beautiful container in a Bondz eye method
Speaker 2: to showcase the artistic of it and put that on
Speaker 2: the table, everybody in the room would approach it with curiosity.
Speaker 2: And so what we choose to put in the room
Speaker 2: and what rooms we choose to put them in will
Speaker 2: really help speed up people's curiosity being accepted or just
Speaker 2: slow it down. But either way, it's coming. It's just
Speaker 2: how fast we can remove the ignorance. Is I suppose
Speaker 2: the designer's responsibility.
Speaker 1: Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro
Speaker 1: Tech on the Black Effect podcast Network and I Hire Media,
Speaker 1: and it's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas,
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