- Chip Conley
- CEO, Joie de Vivre Hospitality; author, "Peak"
- Posted: 05/27/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 1 comment
As the CEO of a boutique hotel company, Chip Conley knows something about creating good experience - both for guests and employees. In his recent book Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, and in this Gel talk, Chip explains how to understand good experience through Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
See also: Chip's interview in Good Experience
- Clay Shirky
- Author, "Here Comes Everybody"
- Posted: 04/21/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 1 comment
Social networking thinker Clay Shirky talks about the transformations in corporations and society brought about by the spread of networked communications. His book Here Comes Everybody covers similar themes.
- Bridget Duffy
- Chief Experience Officer, Cleveland Clinic
- Posted: 04/14/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 8 comments
Creating a good patient experience is the focus and mandate of the Chief Experience Officer at the Cleveland Clinic, one of the world's top-rated medical facilities. In this talk, Bridget Duffy shows the theory and practice of patient-centered care, including an on-stage demo of an innovative patient gown.
- Natasha Schull
- Asst. Prof., MIT
- Posted: 02/24/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 1 comment
Las Vegas casinos increasingly pay attention to their customers - their likes, dislikes, moods and patterns - in order to create an engaging experience. As Natasha Schull explains, the stated goal of these new designs is "customer extinction" - the moment at which the customer is out of money. This talk, essential viewing for anyone in the design or user experience fields, underlines the neutral nature of customer experience methods: like any tool, they can be used for good or ill.
See also: The flip side of customer experience (Good Experience column)
- Lelavision
- Musicians, sculptors, performers
- Posted: 02/19/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 1 comment
Like many of the best Gel presenters, Lelavision is difficult to describe in a few words. Are they musicians who sculpt? Or dancers who weld? Their performance here blends music, design, nature, sculpture, choreography, play, and a commitment to the simple, handmade item.
- Garrett Oliver
- Brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery
- Posted: 02/10/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 5 comments
Authenticity plays a central role in brewing good beer. Garrett Oliver, world-renowned brewmaster, explains how beer is like bread - there's a big difference between the real and the fake - and how it's possible to create a great product while growing a responsible, sustainable business.
See also Garrett's book: The Brewmaster's Table
- George Vaillant
- Author, Spiritual Evolution
- Posted: 02/03/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
A psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School, George Vaillant shares thoughts on "spiritual evolution" (the title of his recent book). A compelling, and rare, argument for the intersection of science and faith.
See also: George Vaillant on what makes us happy
- Bobby C. Martin Jr.
- Design Director, Jazz at Lincoln Center
- Posted: 01/13/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 2 comments
New York City's famous Abyssinian Baptist Church is central to this design case study by Bobby Martin. In it, he tells how the rebranding effort he led for the church (he's also worked at Ogilvy + Mather) expanded to involve the surrounding community in Harlem. An example of how design can lead to change.
- Marissa Mayer
- VP of Search Product and User Experience, Google
- Posted: 01/06/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
Five years after her first Gel appearance (at the inaugural event in 2003), Marissa discusses what new experiences she has helped create - in particular, the new iGoogle service.
See also the Good Experience interview of Marissa from 2002.
- Phoebe Damrosch
- Author, "Service Included"
- Posted: 12/16/08 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 2 comments
Phoebe was the first female head captain at Thomas Keller's prestigious New York restaurant Per Se. Here she describes the experience of entering the dining-and-hospitality field, then learning to deliver world-class service to some of the world's most discerning customers. Her book Service Included also describes her experience at Per Se.
- Sam Brown
- Artist, explodingdog.com
- Posted: 12/09/08 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 1 comment
For years now, Sam has drawn cartoons at explodingdog.com based on reader-submitted captions. The simple-yet-rich feel of his art is a great fit with Gel, so Sam has drawn the Gel conference logo every year.
Sam was also one of the speakers at the very first Gel, back in 2003; here he describes what he's been up to in the five years since.
- Terry Border
- Artist, Bent Objects
- Posted: 12/03/08 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 89 comments
Everyday objects take on surprising and often hilarious roles in Terry Border's hard-to-describe project. For years now, this unassuming photographer-sculptor-bargain-bin-shopper has worked with snack foods, office supplies, toys, and other items to create evocative and bizarre scenes. Making something great out of "throwaway" objects is a recurring Gel theme, and Terry's work is a perfect match.
To really get it, just watch the presentation - one of the most entertaining Gel talks ever.
- Kelly Dobson
- Artist and technologist
- Posted: 11/21/08 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 5 comments
After communicating with Blendie, her custom-built voice-activated blender, Kelly starts with a great first line - "I work with machines" - and goes on to describes her unique vision for human-machine interaction. Kelly's genius is building machines to respond to natural cues, like the frazzled screams in ScreamBody (this footage is also in her Gel talk) or normal breathing, as with the empathic Omo device. User interfaces this elegant are incredibly rare; it's worth considering how these patterns - natural cues, radical empathy - could be applied to other experiences.
Kelly's website shows more of her work.
- Alex Lee
- President, Oxo International
- Posted: 11/20/08 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 4 comments
If you spend any time in the kitchen, you're likely to use an Oxo product regularly - an apple corer, vegetable peeler, whisk, or the ever-popular salad spinner. Oxo is practically the definition of "good experience" in cooking utensils - from grips to weight distribution to the aesthetics of each device - and so president Alex Lee was a natural candidate for the Gel stage.
While Oxo typically develops its own products, here Alex talks about the rare Oxo products that have come outside inventors. (In each case, the inventors themselves sound just as interesting as the devices they create.)
