Cohere Podcast Bill Johnston

On this episode of the Cohere podcast, co-hosts Bill Johnston and Dr. Lauren Vargas chat with Ed Finn, the founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. As an associate professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering, Finn provides fascinating insights into the Center's endeavors, the collaborative imagination and writing project 'Hieroglyph,' and the pioneering Imaginative Collaboration Framework. Throughout the discussion, Finn emphasizes the influential role of hopeful stories in shaping collective visions for the future and shares examples demonstrating how these narratives can drive innovation, learning, and societal transformation. Mentioned in this episode:  [Book] by a partnership of Slate, Arizona State University, and New America [Book] edited by David H. Guston and Ed Finn [Book] edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer [Book] by Ed Finn [Article] by Ed Finn and Ruth Wylie [Website] [Website] [Website] [Website] [Website]   About our guest(s):  Ed Finn is the founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University where he is an associate professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Arts, Media and Engineering. He also serves as the academic director of Future Tense, a partnership between ASU, New America and Slate Magazine, and a co-director of Emerge, an annual festival of art, ideas and the future. Ed’s research and teaching explore imagination, digital culture, creative collaboration, and the intersection of the humanities, arts and sciences. He is the author of What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing (MIT Press, spring 2017) and co-editor of Future Tense Fiction (Unnamed Press, 2019), Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers and Creators of All Kinds (MIT Press, 2017) and Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (William Morrow, 2014), among other books. He completed his PhD in English and American Literature at Stanford University in 2011 and his bachelor’s degree at Princeton University in 2002. Before graduate school, Ed worked as a journalist at Time, Slate, and Popular Science.   Call-to-Action(s): If you liked this episode, check out: and For more reflections about the intersection of community and futures literacy, subscribe to the Cohere Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Share about future guests / topics of exploration. Check out #BookDNA for a list of books, articles, and whitepapers featured on the Cohere Podcast.  

In this episode, Bill and Lauren engage chat with esteemed customer experience analyst and researcher Esteban Kolsky. They delve into the complex world of customer experience, discussing the importance of community, the hype around generative AI, and how to sift through the noise to identify critical signals, trends, and patterns. This conversation highlights what is needed to develop the mindset required for staying attuned to what matters in a constantly evolving customer experience landscape. Memorable Quote: “Organizations still have the idea that communities need to be managed and created by the organization. Mm-hmm. They don't understand the communities. They don't understand independent communities. They don't understand, even if they understand that they exist, they don't know what to do with information and with the people in there.” In this episode, we discuss:  [16:03] The Role of Community in Customer Experience [25:00] Generative AI: Cutting Through the Hype [44:20] Navigating Through the Noise   Mentioned in this episode:  [Book] by Peter Schwartz [Book] by Brian Christian About our guest(s):  With an impressive 30-year career in enterprise technology, Esteban Kolsy has done it all - from entry-level positions to executive roles. He's a veteran in the field, boasting 20 years of experience as an analyst and influencer. Having recently taken a step back from his role as a vendor executive, Esteban is now contemplating one more orbit later this year.       Call-to-Action(s): If you liked this episode, check out: Link to other relevant Cohere episodes For more reflections about the intersection of community and customer experience, subscribe to the Cohere Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Did Cohere Podcast inspire you to take action or change your perspective on something? If so, please share your experience by leaving a review. Your review will not only help us but also encourage others to tune in. Share about future guests / topics of exploration. Check out #BookDNA for a list of books, articles, and whitepapers featured on the Cohere Podcast.  

In this episode, Bill and Lauren engage in a conversation with Meena Palaniappan, the Founder, and CEO of Atma Connect, as she discusses her journey of building Atma Go, a tool for community change that operates on a hyperlocal level in Indonesia, Puerto Rico, and Ukraine. Palaniappan introduces the concept of the ‘plentiverse,’ which contrasts the metaverse, and emphasizes the potential of technology in creating collective action and enabling every individual to become a change-maker in constructing a better world. This conversation showcases how Atma Connect is empowering individuals living in low income and vulnerable communities to take the lead in shaping their communities. Memorable Quote: “What we really need is an algorithm for cohesion and connection - this is what needs to be built. AtmaGo has been an incredible hyperlocal tool for community change. And, now we are focused on building a new infrastructure for global collective action that creates real measurable change in communities, and new ways for money to flow to this real world impact.” In this episode, we discuss:  [01:30] About Atma Connect [05:00] How Atma Connect served communities in Indonesia and Puerto Rico during the pandemic [08:29] How Atma Connect launched platform in Ukraine [13:49] How Atma Connect is helping communities measure impact [24:30] Meena introduces the concept of the ‘plentyierse’ [34:03] Meena unpacks the components of the ‘plentiverse’   Mentioned in this episode:  [Report] [Article] [Article] [Impact Report / Dashboard] [Website] [Facebook] [Twitter]   Atma Connect's goal is to connect over a billion people around the world living in vulnerable communities, so they might take collective action, advocate with governments and lead the way to the future we need. Atma Connect is always looking for volunteers and advisors to work on product design and management challenges, as well as network business models. Atma Connect is an international non-profit. You can make a .  About our guest:  Meena Palaniappan is the Founder and CEO of Atma Connect, an award-winning organization building the infrastructure for impact at scale. She is an Ashoka Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, named in Ideas that are Changing the World, and an awardee of the Million Lives Club.      Call to Action(s): If you liked this episode, check out: and For more reflections about the intersection of community and human-centered design, subscribe to the Cohere Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Have you listened to the Cohere Podcast? We would love to hear your thoughts! Leave a review and let us know what you think about the show. Your feedback helps us improve and make the podcast even better.  

In this podcast episode, Lauren and Bill revisit their conversation from the beginning of the year and discuss the trends, drivers, and forces they are paying attention to as they enter a new season. They dive into the recently released , which covers 14 different areas impacting technology. They highlight the generative AI trend, which is becoming a force multiplier for technological progress and an enabler of other technologies. They discuss how generative AI is being incorporated into consumer applications, such as Canva, Microsoft's image creator applications, and Notion for assistive writing. They also explore the ethical implications of forcing humans to consume machine-generated content and how using these tools can help build more creative muscles and foster considered thinking.  Lastly, they announce Wave 3 of AI & Communities Research Project! You can participate here:  

The convergence of knowledge management and organizational development with conversational leadership and ‘communityship’ As a leader in the convergence of Knowledge Management (KM) and Organization Development (OD), John Hovell is the Managing Director and co-founder of STRATactical. He is a practitioner, speaker, and author of OD/KM strategies and their application to current challenges. More specifically, John is the author of Creating Conversational Leadership: Combining and Expanding Knowledge Management, Organization Development, and Diversity & Inclusion. Lauren met John through one of our podcast’s previous guests, Dr. Sharon Varney, as I attended their “Advancing your change and organizational development practice” course. - Welcome, John! KEY resource from this episode: by John Hovell   Books from this episode: , an online book by David Gurteen by Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein by Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein , published by De Gruyter Saur, Edited by Guy St. Clair by Henry Mintzberg by Stephen R. Covey by Dan Millman   Other resources from this episode: by Patricia Shaw by John Hagel by John Hagel by Dr. Mee Yan Cheung-Judge   Where to find John: LinkedIn:   : “Advancing your change and organisational development practice” course

Venessa Paech is an internationally regarded online community strategist with over 25 years of experience building community online. Venessa is also a PhD candidate studying the intersection of AI and community, and a global authority on communities and community management. In the first Cohere episode of 2023, Venessa joins Bill Johnston and Dr. Lauren Vargas to discuss the quickly evolving role of AI in our digital experiences, how AI is currently playing a role in online communities, and what the future may hold regarding our collective relationship with AI. Key Quote: "It's still a relationship business. It's just we now have relationships with tools and machines in a new way:  in a more anthropomorphized way and in ways that mimic our own thinking and behavior sufficiently that we do need to recontextualize them. So how do we do that in a way that still prioritizes and centers the human work of what we're doing and brings us to those core community protocols of: How are we building a healthy, thriving, constructive space for constituents? is it accessible? Is it productive in meaningful ways? Is it relevant? And honoring the context, always honoring our context, which is one of the biggest problems we do see with so many different sorts of automated and or AI tools, is they tend to flatten and standardize context because that is how they operate. … But for community, which is typically a smaller, more intimate, and more nuanced sort of cluster of relations and ties, that does not work.”    Resources From This Episode: All things In Moderation Conference:   SWARM (Australia’s Community Management Conference):   Australian Community Managers:   Books: by Kate Crawford by Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles Vogl by Howard Rheingold by Adrian Speyer by Howard Rheingold Venessa’s scholarship:   Where to find Venessa: