[Photos through­out are by either David Ewald or Marcelino J. Alvarez, as not­ed, unless oth­er­wise indicated.]

James Keller: Hey there every­body. How are you? So, here we are. My name is James Keller, and Marce and I work for a lit­tle prod­uct design stu­dio in Portland, Oregon called Uncorked Studios. And at Uncorked, we look to find the con­nec­tions between peo­ple, tech­nol­o­gy, and con­text to cre­ate change. We do that for folks like Google, Adidas, Samsung, Intel. We make every­thing from wear­ables, to inter­ac­tive full-wall instal­la­tions, to web sites. But more than any­thing we like to build prod­ucts with purpose. 

My role there is as—and I apol­o­gize, my title is a mouth­ful. I’m the Executive Director of Semiotics, semi­otics being the study of mean­ing. So I aim to put the work that we do in con­text. But, I was an inter­ac­tion design­er for about two decades, so I am amongst my peo­ple. So I’m very excit­ed to be here. And this is Marce.

Marcelino J. Alvarez: Hello. So, I’m Marcelino Alvarez, and I am Founder and CEO of Uncorked Studios. I come from a pro­duc­tion back­ground, actu­al­ly. I was a pro­duc­er in adver­tis­ing for a num­ber of years before start­ing Uncorked, and iron­i­cal­ly enough, this is my sec­ond time in Lyon, my first time hav­ing been for a project that real­ly inspired kind of the foun­da­tion of Uncorked Studios. It was 2009 and we were here with Nike and the Live Strong Foundation and we built a mechan­i­cal street print­er that you could send mes­sages of hope and inspi­ra­tion to. It was for Live Strong Foundation—obviously we all know how Lance’s chap­ter end­ed. But, it was a project that brought me close to the inter­sec­tion between phys­i­cal prod­ucts, soft­ware, and hard­ware tech­nol­o­gy, and a large glob­al stage to cre­ate change. 

Keller: Alrighty. So, I want to talk a lit­tle bit about the ties that bind us. And when I orig­i­nal­ly set out on this, I was think­ing I just want­ed to explain how Marce and I are alike? Because at the end of the day we’re even teased around the office about being opti­mists. And who knew that that could be such an insult, but some­times it is. But at the end of the day, I actu­al­ly believe that my opti­mism is a super­pow­er. And at the risk of sound­ing like a beau­ty queen, I believe that I can make the world a bet­ter place. 

And this is where I believe this is the ties that bind all of us togeth­er. Because I believe fun­da­men­tal­ly that design is an act of opti­mism. We believe that by trust­ing the process, and through our own blood, sweat, tears, effort, and anx­i­eties, we can solve a prob­lem in the world and make things a lit­tle bit bet­ter. Which is a real­ly amaz­ing thing to be able to do, to be a part of this com­mu­ni­ty that are out there cre­at­ing change. 

But before I talk about how a cou­ple of crazy design­ers and tech­nol­o­gists in Portland, Oregon were flown around the world on diplo­mat­ic mis­sions, we need to start with an apology. 

Alvarez: So, like James said, I think there’s a back­drop that we need to acknowl­edge before we talk about the role of American diplo­ma­cy. And that is that we need to acknowl­edge the ele­phant in the room. And in our case it’s an orange ele­phant that has made the con­ver­sa­tion around diplo­ma­cy pret­ty com­pli­cat­ed. As we know, the con­ver­sa­tions over the last four­teen months, the dis­course in American pol­i­tics have made it very dif­fi­cult for American diplo­ma­cy to real­ly stand out, whether you are an offi­cial mem­ber of gov­ern­ment or a pri­vate non-state actor hop­ing to impact change. 

And I believe that there’s two ways of look­ing at this. I think the first is a real­ly deeply skep­ti­cal view, one that posits that American hege­mo­ny after the Cold War has been in con­stant decline. And this is a view that’s sup­port­ed by two Gulf Wars, a war in Afghanistan, failed pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives in Syria, in Myanmar, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of nuclear war in North Korea. It is a view that sug­gests that any non-state actor try­ing to encour­age flip diplo­ma­cy, people-to-people con­nec­tions, faces a seri­ous cred­i­bil­i­ty chal­lenge. And this is a real­ly deeply skep­ti­cal view of the world, which may or may not be true. 

However, the opti­mist take on this is a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent. And that is that this new sense of urgency that has been cre­at­ed in the pri­vate sec­tor, because of and in spite of an admin­is­tra­tion. And this view is sup­port­ed by a num­ber of fac­tors. The Women’s March in DC. The Science March. The Me Too move­ment. The 25,000 women who have decid­ed to run for pub­lic office in the United States using Emily’s List. These are all orga­ni­za­tions and mis­sions that are being dri­ven for­ward in spite of the incom­pe­tence, the malev­o­lence, the misog­y­ny, the racism, and the pos­si­ble col­lu­sion of the cur­rent administration. 

And it is with this opti­mist view, through this lens, that we as design­ers have an abil­i­ty to pro­vide per­spec­tive, to bring focus, and to share the tools that we use on a dai­ly basis to align a group of dis­parate voic­es for a cause that is greater than our own. And like James said, I’m an opti­mist so I pre­fer that take. 

Keller: So, we’ve got our talk today, a sto­ry in three acts. So we’ve got def­i­n­i­tions, because you know, as design­ers if you ask some­one what design is you’re always going to get a dif­fer­ent take, so I always feel it’s good to sort of anchor on these things. Then we’re going to tell you a lit­tle bit about the work that we’ve been doing in diplo­mat­ic chan­nels. And then hope­ful­ly we’re going to frame for you a call to action so that you can under­stand how you too can par­tic­i­pate in bring­ing change to the world. And as I men­tioned I’m head of semi­otics, which is around mean­ing. So def­i­n­i­tions are near and dear to my heart. Before I went into design I was very much a word nerd, so I love this stuff. 

Design is a plan for arrang­ing ele­ments in such a way as best to accom­plish a par­tic­u­lar purpose.
Charles Eames [pre­sen­ta­tion slide]

So yes­ter­day I know that there was a talk about an inter­ac­tive game at the Eames offices. And I think every­one here loves Charles Eames because of the great work that he did. But this has always been my favorite def­i­n­i­tion of design. Because I feel like it’s boiled down to its most sim­ple parts. I love the fact that he talks about arrang­ing ele­ments. And ele­ments can be any­thing. They can be box­es and arrows. They can be mar­bles in a tray, right. But we do some­thing with intent to accom­plish a pur­pose. And again, that pur­pose, that goal is the thing that makes design have impact. So I love this definition.

Successful diplo­ma­cy is an align­ment of objec­tives and means.
Denis Ross [pre­sen­ta­tion slide]

Now, as I was look­ing to anchor on a def­i­n­i­tion of design that was going to help us set the frame­work for this talk, I also want­ed to look at what diplo­ma­cy means. And so I came across this quote by a man named Dennis Ross. And Dennis Ross is notable because he’s actu­al­ly a very well-known American diplo­mat in mod­ern soci­ety. He served under George Herbert Bush—the first. He worked under Bill Clinton and the Secretary of State. And then he also was an advi­sor on the Middle East to Hillary Clinton. And the way he talks about diplo­ma­cy is that suc­cess­ful diplo­ma­cy is an align­ment of objec­tives and means. 

So the inter­est­ing thing when you take these two def­i­n­i­tions and you sort of pull them togeth­er, you have objec­tives and pur­pose, means and ele­ments, align­ment and plan. And boiled all the way down, design equals diplo­ma­cy. And this is some­thing that we had found, as we were doing our work, it was real­ly inter­est­ing to see that come to life in a much dif­fer­ent way. 

And that just sort of grew. We real­ized that there were a lot of par­al­lels that were hard to ignore. And one of those themes is around intent. You hear the word ​“intent” a lot with design. It’s some­thing we throw around the stu­dio a lot. And I love this pho­to. It’s from a stat­ue in Havana of a man named José Martí. And José Martí is a cel­e­brat­ed hero in Cuba. He was a rad­i­cal indi­vid­ual for Cuban inde­pen­dence. But he was also known (and you see him hold­ing a child), he was also known as sort of the grand­fa­ther of Cuba because he want­ed to bring edu­ca­tion to the mass­es, and Cuba to this day has one of the best lit­er­a­cy rates there is. 

But the rea­son I love the stat­ue is that he’s point­ing, with intent. José shows the world that he has an inten­tion in what he want­ed to do. And I feel that this is some­thing that as design­ers, might not feel quite as stat­uesque, but we go at things with a very clear objective. 

Another theme that we saw between diplo­ma­cy and design is that you have to trust the process. And this actu­al­ly, I was think­ing about this the oth­er day. This goes real­ly deep as a design­er. Because we trust the process so much, we charge oth­er peo­ple and they don’t know what they’re going to get. We say, ​“No, real­ly. Come along this jour­ney. We’ll have some objec­tives on the out­set but we don’t know what you’re going to get at the end. Come with us.” And so we believe in that. And that’s why I fall back on this thing of opti­mism. We trust the process enough that if we bring the right tools, the right peo­ple, and the right ener­gy to any­thing, that we are going to build some­thing from nothing. 

And diplo­ma­cy is very much the same way. When two coun­tries are sit­ting around a diplo­mat­ic table, they both have their own objec­tives but at the end of the day they try to align to bring those objec­tives to life. And it requires a lit­tle bit of a tan­go. Very sim­i­lar to design, if you’ve ever had a con­flict with a client or an inter­nal part­ner you’ll under­stand that. But at the end of the day you work towards a greater solution. 

Fringe Diplomacy explores the space just beyond the bound­aries of states and gov­ern­ments’ capac­i­ty and author­i­ty in inter­na­tion­al rela­tions by focus­ing on smart, strate­gic and mean­ing­ful human inter­ac­tion and engagement.
[pre­sen­ta­tion slide]

And so it was with that that brings you to the inter­est­ing part, where we through a bizarre kind of seem­ing­ly uncon­nect­ed peo­ple, places, and times, we got con­nect­ed with a group out of the Aspen Institute in Colorado called Fringe Diplomacy. And this is the def­i­n­i­tion of fringe diplo­ma­cy. And real­ly what it aims to do is in places where diplo­ma­cy is not ten­able for what­ev­er rea­son, or is chal­lenged because of the nature of what’s going on polit­i­cal­ly, Fringe Diplomacy wants to cre­ate deep con­nec­tions between peo­ple. So where the some­times the gov­ern­ments may fail us we still have sol­id foun­da­tions across the world. And in this, we were able to go on sev­er­al diplo­mat­ic mis­sions as a part of Fringe Diplomacy to wield our skills in a new and inter­est­ing way. 

Alvarez: So in 2015, with kind of a back­drop of a rap­proche­ment between the United States and Cuba, we first joined a part­ner­ship oppor­tu­ni­ty del­e­ga­tion that con­nect­ed in emer­gent class of Cuban entre­pre­neurs with their coun­ter­parts from the US. And it was amaz­ing for a num­ber rea­sons. I think one was kind of this new­found opti­mism. But I think that it also had the com­pli­ca­tions of the his­to­ry of fifty-five years of a failed for­eign pol­i­cy between the two nations. And so we want­ed to cre­ate a lit­tle bit more than just kind of a meet and greet. We want­ed some­thing to be a lit­tle bit more inter­ac­tive, a lit­tle bit more hands-on, and some­thing that could pro­vide more val­ue for both sides. 

And it was with that that we cre­at­ed Incúbate, which was a two-day design thinking-modeled work­shop between Cuban entre­pre­neurs and their coun­ter­parts in the United States. We want­ed to acknowl­edge both the com­plex­i­ty of the his­to­ry, but again, find that opti­mism as kind of a guid­ing prin­ci­ple for us. 

And admit­ted­ly, when design­ing a pro­gram like this, I think we want­ed to be care­ful that it was­n’t per­ceived as a bunch of Americans show­ing up with tablets on high and say­ing, ​“This is a design process,” or, ​“This is how we build star­tups in the US.” We want­ed to make sure that our process was root­ed in both an under­stand­ing of the val­ues and the sys­tems and the chal­lenges that we each face as either entre­pre­neurs, as tech­nol­o­gists, as restau­ra­teurs. But also kind of hav­ing the same kind of dia­logue that you might see in kind of a healthy start­up ecosys­tem, like, ​“Hey, did you see this tool? What do you think about this? Let’s share. Let’s remix and adapt.” And so we need­ed to find com­mon ground. We need­ed to share open­ly. And admit­ted­ly we had no idea what to expect. 

So over the course of two days, I would say that the American entre­pre­neurs learned as much from their Cuban coun­ter­parts as vice ver­sa. I think the Cuban entre­pre­neurs were design­ing with­in con­straints and inno­vat­ing in ways that I think made it real­ly impres­sive and kind of remind­ed us how much stuff we take for grant­ed on a dai­ly basis. 

And admit­ted­ly I think the Cuban entre­pre­neurs were also open and eager to shar­ing about things and kind of iter­at­ing. So one of the the moments that was kind of a high­light as we were talk­ing about org charts—which is nev­er some­thing to get excit­ed about. But we’re try­ing to map out like a sales ver­sus a mar­ket­ing sys­tem with a start­up that was build­ing a Yelp-like prod­uct in Cuba. And so he had this aha moment where he under­stood kind of the dif­fer­ence between the two, and he was shar­ing with a CEO from New York. And they both had the equal aha moment about like, ​“Oh. This is new to you, this is new to me, and how do we share this?”

And I think it’s worth not­ing too that the entre­pre­neurs that we were work­ing with weren’t just tech­nol­o­gy entre­pre­neurs. That we had folks who were start­ing restau­rants or build­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty prod­ucts. And admit­ted­ly they were design­ing solu­tions for prob­lems that they saw in their own com­mu­ni­ty. And a lot of these prob­lems were things that from an out­sider’s per­spec­tive might not be glam­orous. It might not be some­thing that you would want to start a busi­ness around. It might not be some­thing that an investor in Silicon Valley would say, ​“Hey, I’ll write a million-dollar check,” for. And that’s fine. 

And that’s fine for a num­ber of rea­sons. We have a friend in Portland, Mara Zepeda, who wrote a blog post called ​“build zebras not uni­corns.” And she’s one of the founders of the Zebras Unite move­ment. And she says you know, uni­corns are myth­i­cal crea­tures; why are we try­ing to chase after these uni­corns? But zebras are real. And zebras are black and white. You can have a bal­ance between the two. And in the case of star­tups you can put both prof­itabil­i­ty and pur­pose on an equal lev­el. She also sug­gests that zebras are kind of a flock­ing, kind of herd­ing ani­mal, and that indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions by one ben­e­fit the entire ecosystem. 

And so you know, in this con­ver­sa­tion you look at the bal­ance of star­tups that maybe are per­haps zebras and not uni­corns, that they have this sense of com­mu­ni­ty. They find com­mon­al­i­ty in their shared pur­pose. But they’re also lim­it­ed by the the ecosys­tem that they’re within. 

And so we were able in our con­ver­sa­tions with the Cuban entre­pre­neurs to real­ly look at the star­tups them­selves and kind of share in that dis­course. The ecosys­tem I think is some­thing that fell out­side of our purview. 

And I would say that over the course of the next three years (we start­ed in 2015), we learned quite a bit. I think one was kind of the chang­ing tone of the dia­logue and the dis­course, depend­ing on what was hap­pen­ing out­side of kind of our purview. Certainly the nation­al dis­course; the orange ele­phant in the room, as it were. 

And I think from the Cuban entre­pre­neur’s per­spec­tive, in a num­ber of ways they leapfrogged the tools that we were orig­i­nal­ly kind of using in the first cou­ple of work­shops. And so it became less about under­stand­ing an effort/impact matrix, or how you might pri­or­i­tize things, and more about how do we shape pol­i­cy so that it sup­ports the needs of Cuban entre­pre­neurs? How do we main­tain con­ti­nu­ity between work­shops that are held twice a year? 

And so we explored a num­ber of things from what would a shared cowork­ing space look like, to what might an incu­ba­tor in Havana look like. And again, in those sit­u­a­tions we kind of ran against some kind of exter­nal hur­dles. And then the orange ele­phant hap­pened, and there’s kind of been a lit­tle bit you know…cooling of rela­tions between the two coun­tries. But we still remain in con­tact with the entre­pre­neurs and are hop­ing to kind of find our path­way for­ward as things hope­ful­ly warm again. 

Another area where we joined the part­ner­ship oppor­tu­ni­ty del­e­ga­tion was in Beirut in Lebanon. Our chief design offi­cer David Ewald went for a one-week-long ses­sion focused on star­tups in the region, led a two-day UX work­shop with a num­ber of those star­tups. And those also were from a vari­ety of indus­tries, from the non­prof­it indus­try, to tech­nol­o­gy, to fash­ion as well. 

And I’ll make a quick shout-out actu­al­ly to David. He’s also in addi­tion to being a design­er an amaz­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er. And so any pho­to you see in this deck that’s well-composed, he took. And any­thing that’s blur­ry is some­thing that I’m respon­si­ble for. 

So, over the course of a week, he met with a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions. So UNICEF in par­tic­u­lar had part­nered with a three-person start­up in Lebanon, and they were look­ing to devel­op an appli­ca­tion for refugees in one of the camps. And they had basi­cal­ly a rudi­men­ta­ry InVision pro­to­type and need­ed to scale from that to about a mil­lion users in the course of a year or so. And so a part of his work­shop aimed to pro­vide focus and under­stand­ing of what an MVP prod­uct might look like that bal­ances both the needs of the ulti­mate users as well as kind of the the need for scale. 

There were also a num­ber of entre­pre­neurs focused on fash­ion and kind of design­ing prod­ucts that reflect­ed their world­view, their per­spec­tives, or their kind of cre­ative goals. And again, I think in the dis­course kind of find­ing com­mon grounds, where we align, and then again, shar­ing the tools that we use to pri­or­i­tize and inform prod­uct directions. 

And then one of the inter­est­ing places where kind of our diplo­mat­ic con­ver­sa­tions took us towards was this con­fer­ence in New York called the Concordance Summit, which is held in NYC dur­ing the UN General Assembly week. And so you have heads of state and lead­ers from a num­ber of large orga­ni­za­tions meet­ing with pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions kind of under the guise of public/private partnerships. 

And so we orig­i­nal­ly were asked to lead a con­ver­sa­tion around some of our efforts in Cuba, which we took to mean let’s talk about some of the insights, much like we’re shar­ing here today. And it was­n’t till I sat down at this table and kind of looked around that I real­ized there are four for­mer pres­i­dents sit­ting at that same table from var­i­ous Latin American coun­tries and Spain, and the Organization of American States. 

And then the intro­duc­tion, you know, we had writ­ten some kind of pre­pared remarks around work­shops and design think­ing. And at the begin­ning they looked around the room like, ​“Great, we’re gonna lead this entire con­ver­sa­tion in Spanish,” which is my first lan­guage but cer­tain­ly not one that I lead diplo­mat­ic con­ver­sa­tions quite often in. And while I was feel­ing quite a bit of impos­tor syn­drome sit­ting on that stage, found my voice in kind of shar­ing the per­spec­tives that peo­ple inter­act­ing togeth­er, people-to-people diplo­ma­cy, can move much faster than government-to-government diplo­ma­cy in spite of some of the chal­lenges that we face at a nation­al level. 

The con­ver­sa­tion did get a lit­tle heat­ed, and I think I found myself rep­re­sent­ing both the opin­ion of the US and Cuba as the same per­son, as I was the only per­son rep­re­sent­ing both. And so I think that may or may not have been a diplo­mat­ic first. But we found our­selves there. 

Keller: Because of the work that we had done in Cuba, I also had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­duct a cou­ple of work­shops at a privately-held con­fer­ence for peo­ple in the Middle East and North Africa. Attendees includ­ed every­thing from diplo­mats, to career politi­cians, aca­d­e­mics, entre­pre­neurs, and even roy­al­ty from all over the region. So there were Israelis and Palestinians and Libyans and all fla­vors and shapes and sizes of peo­ple in the room with me. Again, I under­stand that notion of impos­tor syndrome. 

The rea­son that I was able to be invit­ed to this spe­cial meet­ing is they had tra­di­tion­al­ly had—actually very sim­i­lar to that last slide—a bunch of peo­ple sit­ting around the table with plac­ards. And our con­tact who runs Fringe Diplomacy real­ized that that mod­el of com­mu­ni­ca­tion has its lim­its. And so he real­ly want­ed to do some sort of inter­ac­tive ses­sion in order to get these dif­fer­ent minds togeth­er work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly in solu­tion space. So we ran one work­shop that with on how do we empow­er, and what are the chal­lenges for women entre­pre­neurs in the Middle East and North Africa. And then the sec­ond work­shop, and this is where I felt very much out of my depth, was around under­stand­ing the eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty and impact of con­flict refugees in host countries. 

But this is where I got to trust the process. I’ve facil­i­tat­ed all sorts of things in all sorts of places, and ulti­mate­ly this was no dif­fer­ent. If peo­ple are will­ing to come to the table and com­mu­ni­cate, even if they dis­agree that dis­agree­ment actu­al­ly pro­vides a very deep well of insight that can breed empa­thy and get you to broad­er solu­tions. So that was a real­ly incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence where I got to use my design skills. 

Alvarez: So, one of the things that we would do at each of the the work­shops was the kind of do a quick ret­ro­spec­tive. So what would you want more of? What do you want less of? What did we learn? And that was kind of a quick way to grab a snap­shot right then and there of what peo­ple’s per­cep­tions were. And this sticky in par­tic­u­lar I think always res­onates with me. A, because of the per­son who wrote it, this woman Gretel who was basi­cal­ly kind of like our tour guide/fixer in Havana. And she had been through a num­ber of the work­shops with us, but she’s also been through a num­ber of tour groups of folks from all around the world com­ing into Cuba for var­i­ous rea­sons. And so I think she had both per­spec­tive, where she could have been a skep­tic and a pes­simist and said you know, folks are com­ing in and they’re try­ing to influ­ence the future of my place. 

Or you know, the opti­mist per­spec­tive, which I think is this: it’s that we’re all very much alike, despite the dif­fer­ences on the sur­face and dif­fer­ences in pol­i­cy. And I think when you break down some of those gov­ern­men­tal and big­ger kind of pol­i­cy bar­ri­ers, you get to the fact that we have more things in com­mon than we do that are different. 

And so I want to talk a lit­tle bit about some of the insights that we learned, both in the the pod expe­ri­ences as well as kind of the broad­er diplo­mat­ic ones. And I think one is kind of the role that art and design have in terms of influ­enc­ing you know…as kin­da being the art of com­mu­ni­ties and kind of the focal point for both con­flict and kind of expres­sion of angst. 

And so this in par­tic­u­lar is one of my favorite pieces of art that we saw in Havana. It’s by an artist named Kadir López that restores old neon signs. So he’s got basi­cal­ly an awe­some task of restor­ing all the old neon signs in Havana but then kind of using it as an expres­sion of kind of protest art. So you can imag­ine kind of Monopoly and pre Fidel-era Cuba, and kind of what what became of the old kind of Atlantic city vibe of Cuba. 

But if you look at art as kind of a voice of kind of the resis­tance, this is some­thing that is com­mon not just in Cuba but I think uni­ver­sal­ly. That it becomes a tool to express both out dis­con­tent, our per­spec­tives in the world, and the tools that we have before us. 

I think sec­ond­ly is the idea that eco­nom­ics and indus­try are tools of momen­tum. So, star­tups in Cuba are con­duct­ing where the lit­er­al phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture has failed. In many ways, they’re poised to leapfrog things that we have faced in our coun­try in terms of things like mobile pay­ment or poten­tial­ly blockchain tech­nol­o­gy, because they don’t come from like a web-first or computer-first mod­el. It’s sim­i­lar how in Kenya mobile pay­ments kind of leapfrogged the US as well. 

But I think you know, against that opti­mism I think there’s also pol­i­tics that pro­vide con­straints which are also forc­ing func­tions for cre­ativ­i­ty. So as James said, all Cubans are design­ers, and I think one of the things that you see are that con­straints are sort of a source of inno­va­tion. And if you look at the types of things that VC’s fund, it’s peo­ple and hus­tle and those behav­iors that we look at in terms of invest­ing cap­i­tal and resources in indi­vid­u­als I think are part of the sys­tem. And I think it’s part of what Ross Baird calls single-pocket thinking. 

So Ross Baird is the CEO of Village Capital. It’s a VC firm based out of DC that is focused on invest­ing in star­tups that aren’t typ­i­cal­ly the star­tups that you might invest in. And one of his anec­dotes that he gives is the sto­ry of the first time he went to ask some­one for mon­ey to raise a fund for what basi­cal­ly are zebra com­pa­nies, com­pa­nies that bal­ance both prof­its and purpose. 

And so he goes to a poten­tial lim­it­ed part­ner, some­body’s he’s known, and says, ​“Look, I’m rais­ing this fund. Here’s what I hope to do with it. Here the type of com­pa­nies that I hope to invest. Here’s our thesis.” 

And the LP says to him you know, ​“Ross, I’ve got two pock­ets. And in my left pock­et I have all the mon­ey that I’ve made in the world that I use to basi­cal­ly invest in oth­er star­tups. And in my right pock­et I have my phil­an­thropic pock­et. Which pock­et are you ask­ing for mon­ey from?”

And Ross said it does­n’t have to be left or right pock­et think­ing. It can be soul pock­et think­ing, where you can bal­ance both prof­its and pur­pose together. 

We knew going into Cuba that we weren’t going to solve the chal­lenges that both Cubans and Americans faced overnight. And admit­ted­ly, I don’t think… Initially look­ing back, I don’t think we real­ized that we were the ones that were prob­a­bly going to be tak­ing a step back­wards, giv­en kind of the orange ele­phant that entered the room. And so the ques­tion became how could we as design­ers use the tools that we share both for diplo­mat­ic pur­pos­es, with col­leagues, with poten­tial clients, as a bet­ter way or mech­a­nism to under­stand our own iden­ti­ty, our own areas of focus, and how we define success? 

Keller: So this is the part, now that you’ve heard a lit­tle bit about the amaz­ing work that we have been lucky enough to do, where I make a plea to you all to make this your sto­ry as well. As Marce men­tioned in the begin­ning, the time is sort of now to act. I don’t know how all of you feel, but I get real­ly tired of the news cycle these days and I find a lot that’s hap­pen­ing in the world to be over­whelm­ing. And that’s not the time to pull back and hide, it’s actu­al­ly the time to take the skills that we’ve all cul­ti­vat­ed through doing the work that we do and actu­al­ly use that. And trust our process. So I’m going to take you through a few of those skills, sort of soup to nuts. But it’s all things that we as design­ers use in our every­day work. 

So, the first thing is under­stand­ing the prob­lem and real­ly being able to dig in to under­stand all of the nuance that hap­pens around a cer­tain thing. Because prob­lem def­i­n­i­tion allows us—just like we start­ed with those def­i­n­i­tions, prob­lem def­i­n­i­tion allows us to real­ly gain a shared under­stand­ing of what we’re work­ing against, and that is very very very important. 

Next is con­text. So, at Uncorked, the way we talk about con­text is defin­ing the why. Why should the thing exist? Why is some­one pay­ing us to make a thing? Why would some­one care? Who— And as advo­cates for the user you all are very famil­iar with ​“who” in doing good ethno­graph­ic research. And then we also have on the oth­er hand, we have the how. So, in our com­pa­ny we build every­thing from wear­ables to walls. So the how is not always a clear path. And so mak­ing sure that every­one has a shared under­stand­ing of those three com­po­nents is a huge part of what we do. And it’s no dif­fer­ent in diplo­ma­cy when you’re try­ing to solve a world prob­lem than it is when you’re try­ing to fig­ure out what to do with a wall. 

Next, empa­thy. A great col­league of mine, Jeannie, used to bemoan the fact that we are pro­fes­sion­al empaths. Which means some­times it’s real­ly hard to turn off the noise in our brains because we’re so good at see­ing through the eyes of oth­er peo­ple. And in diplo­ma­cy I think this is equal­ly as impor­tant. And the rea­son I actu­al­ly chose this pho­to is this gen­tle­men is amaz­ing. He is a government-paid (because every­one in Cuba is paid by the gov­ern­ment) lounge singer in Varadero resorts on the coast. And so he comes and sings Frank Sinatra cov­ers to a karaoke machine every sin­gle night. He’s so old that he can’t stand while he sings any­more. But he does have an amaz­ing voice. 

And the thing that was inter­est­ing is when we were in work­shops with the more tra­di­tion­al entre­pre­neurs I felt very much amongst my peo­ple. But when we went and met this gen­tle­men I was shocked to real­ize how dif­fer­ent his world is. He gets paid the exact same, by the way, as doc­tors, school­bus dri­vers, teach­ers, lawyers. No mat­ter what they all make the same. But his life is singing for tourists. 

So when I’m think­ing about solv­ing prob­lems for Cuba I always try to remem­ber that yes, I feel the needs of the entre­pre­neurs very eas­i­ly, but are the actions that I’m tak­ing cre­at­ing a con­text for this gen­tle­men to live his life hap­pi­ly as well, and that of his kids and his grandkids? 

Contingency plan­ning. So we talked a lot about opti­mism, right? And the thing about opti­mism as design­ers is it’s some­thing that we very much have. But pes­simism also allows us to be great con­tin­gency plan­ners. So under­stand­ing the dif­fer­ent poten­tial paths that you go through. And that’s some­thing that we all do in our day-to-day. 

And then last­ly is facil­i­ta­tion. This is actu­al­ly the skill that got us, I think, con­nect­ed with this com­mu­ni­ty of diplo­mats and have allowed us to do that work in a mean­ing­ful way. So, you have the skills at your behest. It’s some­thing all of you do pro­fes­sion­al­ly. So, then what?

Alvarez: So, peo­ple often ask us why we engage on these adven­tures? Which is typ­i­cal­ly fol­lowed by, ​“How is it that you guys make mon­ey?” Or, ​“Do you guys make mon­ey?” And you know, I think it’s a good point to note that good does not always equal prof­it, and that’s okay. I think in the case of both the Zebra move­ment and the single-pocket think­ing, you can bal­ance out pur­pose and prof­it with­out com­pro­mis­ing the two. 

And hon­est­ly, I think that our efforts with Fringe Diplomacy kind of reflect both single-pocket and zebra men­tal­i­ty of how we approach the world. And I think it’s real­ly sim­i­lar to the open source hard­ware move­ment, where you’re not look­ing to nec­es­sar­i­ly make mon­ey from the ini­tial effort, but you’re look­ing to build exper­tise. And orga­ni­za­tions and peo­ple who are look­ing for that exper­tise ulti­mate­ly make their way, through a con­vo­lut­ed mess of con­nec­tions, to say, ​“Hey, we heard you were doing this thing. Could you help us with this oth­er thing?” 

And in our case that’s led to any num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties. This was a hard­ware work­shop we did this week­end with an orga­ni­za­tion called ChickTech, where were recon­nect­ed our col­leagues to basi­cal­ly a com­mu­ni­ty of the next gen­er­a­tion of female entre­pre­neurs, hard­ware hack­ers, and tech­nol­o­gy leaders. 

It’s also led to projects with large orga­ni­za­tions. After the hur­ri­canes in Puerto Rico I texted a friend of mine who worked at Carnival, and fast for­ward to a work­shop, then to a meet­ing in Boise and we were meet­ing with lead­ers from Puerto Rico hous­ing, bank­ing, and finance to under­stand what infra­struc­ture might look like. And so you nev­er know where it’s going to lead and I think that’s okay. 

And I think ulti­mate­ly it’s about com­mu­ni­ty. And this is prob­a­bly one of my oth­er favorite pho­tos of from Cuba. This is out­side the col­lab­o­ra­tion between Google and an artist named Kcho. They have an Internet facil­i­ty, and for those who don’t read Spanish it says ​“with the Internet I can…” And I believe that with com­mu­ni­ty we can. And as design­ers we must. We are in a world right now where we can­not rely on public/private part­ner­ships the way that they used to be run as phil­an­thropic endeav­ors. We can­not rely on gov­ern­ments in the case of the folks across the Atlantic to pro­vide the solu­tions. And we must look towards tools that we have to design the future that we want to live in. Thank you.