The Full Circle

07/22/23 • 55 min

On the topic we have been avoiding this whole time: the rise and fall of our co-owned company.

In the last episode of this season, we took the dogs to the Buda Hills to have a surprisingly chill conversation about the emotionally loaded subject of our experience with co-ownership, distributed decision-making, and trust.

The path we took:

A journey back in time to 2015: the pitch to join a co-owned company, and what made us say yes.
The era of building end-to-end product agency / venture builder hybrids.
The beanbags and foosball tables of every 2010s office, aka hiring developers before the bootcamp boom.
The motivational powers, technicalities, and challenges of co-ownership.
Experiments with flat organizations and distributed decision-making, and the ups and downs of our implementation of holacracy.
And the downfall: why we left, and what we are taking with us - about PLCs, amazingly productive meetings, and contract-backed trust.

Further reading:

Ps. We are going on a little summer break now and will be back with our next season in September. We're experimenting with some shorter outtakes and thought-nuggets on Instagram until then. Also, we are all ears - if you want to chime in, have some feedback, or have a topic in mind that you would love to hear about next, hit us up at @paths.puddles.products!

★ Support this podcast ★

On the topic we have been avoiding this whole time: the rise and fall of our co-owned company.

The path we took:

A journey back in time to 2015: the pitch to join a co-owned company, and what made us say yes.
The era of building end-to-end product agency / venture builder hybrids.
The beanbags and foosball tables of every 2010s office, aka hiring developers before the bootcamp boom.
The motivational powers, technicalities, and challenges of co-ownership.
Experiments with flat organizations and distributed decision-making, and the ups and downs of our implementation of holacracy.
And the downfall: why we left, and what we are taking with us - about PLCs, amazingly productive meetings, and contract-backed trust.

Further reading:

★ Support this podcast ★

Previous Episode

Learning to Learn, Learning to Teach

On learning models, DnD, and dressage.

This time we grabbed a light topic with roleplaying games, horse riding, and arts, and gathered around an unlit campfire with the dogs for what turned out to be a deep dive into our learning and teaching experiences.

The path we took:

Our most recent learning choices, favoring tabletop roleplaying and literary writing over tools of the trade.
How learning things unrelated to our profession helps build context for our work.
Teaching university classes, bootcamps, nights and weekends, designers, coders, and horse riders.
The unseen work of mentoring or explicit teaching responsibilities.
Learning models and pedagogical approaches, black boxes and cognitive apprenticeship.
Gatekeeping by degrees versus the democratization of education.
And a question for you, while we run from the boars: what is your favorite unexpected skill or piece of knowledge that you could use in your work?

Further reading:

https://learningjournals.co.uk/what-are-the-different-pedagogical-approaches-to-learning/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_apprenticeship
https://www.simplypsychology.org/zone-of-proximal-development.html
https://www.storytellingcollective.com/pages/rpg-writer-workshop
http://kunstfuck.tilda.ws/
Ken Robinson on How schools kill creativity on TED

Grab your headphones, and head to the nearest forest to walk with us! - Just beware of the boars 🐗

Ps. If you want to chime in, DM us or leave a comment on our Instagram - we're @paths.puddles.products and would love your feedback!

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Next Episode

The Gods of AI

On AI, with its threats and hopes, history and religion.

We are back! In the last season, we mostly focused on our past: where we came from, and how our history affected the value we seek to create in our career. This season, we are looking towards the future.

This time we recorded among the mushrooms of the autumn forest. While the dogs ran around sniffing the wind, we discussed what we hope from AI, and what we fear the most.

The path we took:

Science fiction's AI promises, teaching us to fear the robots early on.
The promise of growth and prosperity, and the last time we heard those promises: in the mobile revolution.
Machines doing stupid human stuff much more efficiently than humans.
The brief history of AI, or all the different things we called AI at some point.
Regulation, legislation, and setting rules for something we don't fully understand.
Surpassing human intelligence being a thread in itself or a way to salvation.
Robot gods, robots with emotions.
And for a more grounded ending: AI tools we use now, in our daily work, and why we're not worried about robots taking our jobs just yet.

Further reading:

Spoiler warning: This episode contains major plot spoilers for the following sci-fi movies or books: The Matrix franchise, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, The Orchid Cage by Herbert W. Franke, and The Outside series by Ada Hoffman.

Grab your headphones, and walk with us! We have some sparkly winter sunshine, just ideal for a one-episode-long walk.

Ps. If you want to chime in, DM us or leave a comment on our Instagram - we're @paths.puddles.products and would love your feedback!

★ Support this podcast ★

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