Hi.

Okay. This hap­pened to me recent­ly. I’m in bed. I’m ready to go to sleep. It’s been a long day. I’m tired. And all of a sud­den, my brain decides this is the per­fect time to remem­ber that real­ly embar­rass­ing thing that hap­pened years ago.

Comic: floc­cin­aucini­hilip­il­i­fi­ca­tion

For me it was actu­al­ly twen­ty years ago. And then I’m up all night, toss­ing and turn­ing, reliv­ing the whole embar­rass­ing expe­ri­ence, over and over again…

To make it worse, now I’m going to stand up in front of all of you, and tell you that embar­rass­ing thing that hap­pened to me twen­ty years ago, so this is going to be fun. You ready?

I talk of free­dom, you talk of the flag.
I talk of rev­o­lu­tion, you’d much rather brag.
And as the deci­bels of this dis­en­chant­i­ng discourse
con­tin­ue to damp­en the day, the coin flips again
and again, and again, and again as our san­i­ty walks away. 

This is an excerpt from some­thing I sub­mit­ted to my junior high poet­ry mag­a­zine when I was in the 8^th grade. Now, any­body has a right to be embar­rassed by their own 8^th-grade poet­ry. But that’s not the real­ly bad part.

Because the truth is I did­n’t write this. This guy did. And he record­ed it on this multi-platinum album, which came out in 1994, the same year I tried to pass it off as some­thing I wrote. I’m just lucky that the judges review­ing the sub­mis­sions were high school stu­dents, so they rec­og­nized the song because it was on MTV. If it had been teach­ers they might not have noticed and then it just would’ve been print­ed and mailed to hun­dreds of peo­ple’s homes and been there for­ev­er. My per­ma­nent shame.

Why did I do it? Seriously. When they dragged me in to explain myself, the only answer I had, after the same answer that any 13 year-old has when you ask them why they did some­thing wrong: ​“Iunno.” The only expla­na­tion I could come up with was that I want­ed to have writ­ten some­thing like that so much that I con­vinced myself that I had.

This was obvi­ous­ly a ter­ri­ble excuse, and a real­ly real­ly stu­pid thing to do. But I think I remem­ber that expe­ri­ence so vivid­ly not just because it was hor­ri­fy­ing­ly embar­rass­ing, but because some­thing about that excuse was true. That real­ly was how I felt some­times. When you’re 13 years old and you hear a song for the first time, and you feel like you’re the first per­son in the world to get it, that song, any song, and you’re sure if you had just been able to artic­u­late how you were feel­ing, before you heard that song, sure­ly you would’ve writ­ten it just like that.

And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burn­ing coal
Pouring off of every page
Like it was writ­ten in my soul from me to you
Bob Dylan, ​“Tangled Up in Blue”

I learned the gui­tar in high school so I could play those songs. And I lis­tened to them over and over again. I wrote my own songs that I tried to make sound just like them. Music became some­thing that I loved so much that I did­n’t want to just lis­ten to it. I want­ed to absorb it. I want­ed to crawl inside those songs and live there.

Okay, why am I telling you this? I’m actu­al­ly start­ing to wonder.

But what does this have to do with our theme today, col­lab­o­ra­tion? I want to talk about col­lab­o­ra­tion, but I also want to talk about its awk­ward cousin, appropriation.

Appropriation is a fan­cy word for ​“copy­ing,” but it’s more com­pli­cat­ed than that. When I appro­pri­ate some­thing you made, I take it and I make it my own. I can do that by lit­er­al­ly just tak­ing it for my own ben­e­fit or tak­ing cred­it for it like I did with the song lyrics. Or I can do it by trans­form­ing it and using it to cre­ate some­thing new.

Photos: Getty Images, Michael Ochs archives

One of my favorite artists in the world is Bob Dylan, who wrote so many of those songs that I wished I could’ve writ­ten. But he was also one of the world’s most shame­less mas­ters of appro­pri­a­tion. That’s Dylan, and that’s Woody Guthrie. In the begin­ning, Dylan copied every­thing from Woody. His style, his sound, his songs, and even the way he talked. But then he just kept going, on and on, to some­thing new and strange and dif­fer­ent. And he nev­er stopped appro­pri­at­ing new influ­ences along the way. Bob Dylan became a leg­end in his own right, but he nev­er real­ly out­ran the crit­ics who said that he was just a thief all along. 

Music, art and design, most cre­ative indus­tries have a pret­ty uncom­fort­able rela­tion­ship with appro­pri­a­tion. And it’s worse when every­thing’s online. It’s so triv­ial to copy some­thing or just take cred­it for it. It can be real­ly scary to make some­thing and put it out there. 

Comic: Anthony Clark, ​“The Internet” [rotat­ed for space here; I made this.]

This is what appro­pri­a­tion looks like online. It’s imme­di­ate! It’s unnerv­ing. So appro­pri­a­tion is some­thing we’re real­ly uncom­fort­able with. We talk about it most­ly in neg­a­tive terms, when we even talk about it at all. But it’s also weird­ly a pret­ty fun­da­men­tal part of how we work. Sharing ideas and build­ing on oth­er peo­ple’s solu­tions are just basic parts of how we work togeth­er. In a lot of ways, we need appro­pri­a­tion for col­lab­o­ra­tion to exist. And I think when we only talk about the dark­er side of appro­pri­a­tion, when we make it some­thing to hide or some­thing to be ashamed of, I think we’re actu­al­ly mak­ing it hard­er to work together.

Okay. Fast for­ward from my mid­dle school dis­as­ter. Let’s go about ten years or so, the first time I came to California. I flew out to San Francisco to inter­view for a job at Apple, which I was very excit­ed about and not remote­ly qual­i­fied for. I’d some­how faked my way through the phone screen, and I think at some point the man­ag­er must have just decid­ed, ​“Ah, what the hell. Just give him a shot,” because after they flew me out and I fum­bled my way through 8+ hours of in-person inter­views, it was abun­dant­ly clear to every­one, myself includ­ed, that there was no pos­si­ble way I could even pre­tend to do the job.

But I got lucky. I got a sec­ond chance. Because after they sent me back home, the man­ag­er passed my name on to anoth­er man­ag­er in anoth­er part of Apple, on the team that designed the web site. And even­tu­al­ly I made it back to inter­view for a job that I actu­al­ly had a hope of get­ting. And I did.

Photo: Laura Brunow Miner, ​“Untitled”

This is me right after we moved to California, hope­ful­ly not think­ing about pla­gia­rized song lyrics. When I moved out here to start work­ing at Apple, I had the most incred­i­ble case of impos­tor syn­drome. For the first few weeks, I prac­ti­cal­ly hid every­thing that I was work­ing on. I was ter­ri­fied that after that whole first expe­ri­ence that I was going to be found out any sec­ond and exposed as a fraud and they were going to send me back to Kansas.

Before, when I was stuck work­ing on a design project, I would always look at what Apple was doing. Maybe you get some ideas, copy a few things. I remem­ber think­ing ​“I work here. Now what am I sup­posed to do?” It took me a while before I fig­ured out the answer, which was basi­cal­ly keep doing the same thing. Except now it was­n’t called copy­ing, it was called ​“stay­ing on brand.”

So instead of hid­ing every­thing that I was work­ing on, I start­ed to share every­thing. Not just per­fect, defen­si­ble, fin­ished work, but the real­ly rough and bro­ken and messy stuff. Problems I could­n’t even get my head around yet. And we copied each oth­er shame­less­ly. Literally we nev­er even thought to be ashamed of it. I spent as much time stand­ing over oth­er peo­ple’s shoul­ders as I did work­ing at my own com­put­er. If some­body came up with some­thing I could use, I used it. Nobody’s name ever went on any­thing. Nobody ever talked about cred­it; there was no rea­son to. It was all ​“Designed by Apple in California” at the end of the day anyway.

So much work had already gone into every­thing by the time we got our hands on it, what a tri­umph of ego it would be for us at the end of the line to start mark­ing our ter­ri­to­ry. We were just try­ing not to screw it up. Somebody trust­ed us to do this job, so we trust­ed each other.

I learned so much that first year at Apple. The dead­lines were insane, but it was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence. But the thing that still sticks with me ten years lat­er is that exam­ple of the kind of work you could do in a group of peo­ple who trust each oth­er. It’s real­ly hard to believe that was ten years ago. Do you remem­ber the first time you came to California? Maybe it was­n’t that long ago. Maybe you were born here and this isn’t going to make much sense to you, but I’m from Kansas. California is dif­fer­ent. San Francisco is dif­fer­ent. Coming here for the first time felt like step­ping through a por­tal to an alter­nate uni­verse. I mean, it gets weird here some­times, and so many peo­ple who want to be here for so many dif­fer­ent rea­sons, it can get claus­tro­pho­bic, and expen­sive. But I feel so lucky to be able to live here. To work here. And to be part of this incred­i­ble com­mu­ni­ty of cre­ative peo­ple in this mag­i­cal, sur­re­al place.

I work for a mag­a­zine now. It’s called The California Sunday Magazine. It’s a pret­ty new mag­a­zine. This is what some of the print cov­ers look like. It’s real­ly beau­ti­ful. You should buy a sub­scrip­tion today. Talking about tak­ing cred­it for oth­er peo­ple’s work, just putting these cov­ers on here. Leo [Jung] our cre­ative direc­tor, and Jacqui [Bates] is the pho­to direc­tor, who were respon­si­ble for these look­ing as beau­ti­ful as they are are here today. So please, direct your acco­lades towards them.

The mag­a­zine pub­lish­es these beau­ti­ful sto­ries, all con­nect­ed some­how to California and the West. But it’s not just about the place, it’s sort of about all the ideas and val­ues that we asso­ciate with California. And it is such a tal­ent­ed group of peo­ple who are mak­ing it. I’m not includ­ing myself in that state­ment yet, I’ve only had this job for a few months. But I feel like an impos­tor all over again. It’s fan­tas­tic. I’m still hov­er­ing over peo­ple’s shoul­ders and bor­row­ing ideas when­ev­er I get the chance. Maybe peo­ple are wait­ing for me to set­tle in and start leav­ing them alone but…sorry.

I’ve been real­ly lucky over the years to work with some real­ly amaz­ing peo­ple, and I’ve learned so much from them. But here we all are, togeth­er in this room. 300, maybe, super tal­ent­ed cre­ative peo­ple. Very few of us in this room will ever get a chance to work togeth­er. Most of us nev­er will. Think about how many places you’ve worked in your career so far. How many places do you think you’ll work in your life­time? How many chances will you have to learn, share, and grow like that? To ele­vate your game. To be inspired. To col­lab­o­rate. Why do we lim­it that to peo­ple we work with at a com­pa­ny? Why aren’t we always putting our work out in the open like that? Sharing with each oth­er. Helping each other. 

Because it’s scary. Because I don’t trust you. We’re all afraid of the worst in our­selves and each oth­er, and it’s very real. I’m not going to try to say that it’s not. But I think we get some­thing wrong about trust. We think it’s earned. I do this all the time. I hold back trust­ing oth­er peo­ple until they’ve earned it. 

But some of the most reward­ing expe­ri­ences in my life have come from the moments when I decid­ed, against all the very real worst-case sce­nar­ios, to reverse that order of oper­a­tions. The times I decid­ed to trust first, ask ques­tions lat­er. I’ll be hon­est, it has­n’t always worked out. But when it does, it’s kin­da spec­tac­u­lar. In a way, I’m giv­ing this talk and telling you all these embar­rass­ing things as a reminder to myself to take that risk more often. That’s some­thing I love about California, about this cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty. It feels like shar­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion are part of the ideas and val­ues of this place. Like trust is the default state.

Photo: Vogue, ​“Rising Star: Chad Robertson of San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery & Cafe”

There’s this quote I love from an inter­view with Chad Robertson, who start­ed Tartine Bakery. Tartine is kind of a leg­end in San Francisco, and Chad is sort of a bread rock star. I mean, look at him. But he’s also devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for inter­est­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions with oth­er restau­rants. In this inter­view he’s talk­ing about col­lab­o­ra­tion in the bak­ing scene, which in case you’re won­der­ing is total­ly a real thing. He said this:

I share infor­ma­tion, and infor­ma­tion is shared with me. People don’t shut me out because I don’t take cred­it for oth­er peo­ple’s shit. […] There is mutu­al respect. We don’t copy one anoth­er so much as we are inspired by one anoth­er. There are no secrets. It’s just bread.
Chad Robertson, ​“Tartine’s Chad Robertson Plans to Take Over the World”

To me that just gets at the heart of it. Mutual respect, no secrets, don’t steal oth­er peo­ple’s shit. It’s just bread.

So look around the room. Look at the peo­ple sit­ting next to you. (Come on, actu­al­ly do it.) What would you learn from each oth­er if you had a chance to work togeth­er? What would you share with every­one in this room, if you knew you could trust them? What if you just did it anyway?

Thanks.