Anna PotapovaGenerative AI creates new opportunities to create and manage content at scale. And scale is definitely required when crafting content experiences for one of the world's largest ecommerce companies.Anna Potapova is incorporating gen-AI across the span of her work at AliExpress: content creation and management, localization, personalizat…

Duane ForresterSEO has always been difficult, but generative AI takes things to an entirely new level.Duane Forrester has been immersed in the search world for more than 20 years, including stints as the Product Manager for the Bing Webmaster Program and Vice President of Industry Insights at Yext, where he developed company AI strategy. He also he…

Leah KraussNew AI products like Microsoft's Copilot can be powerful productivity enhancers, but if designers aren't careful they can inadvertently introduce into the product the bias and other hazards that can come with large language models.As a content designer working on Microsoft's Copilot for Sales product, Leah Krauss helps her colleagues und…

Jack MolisaniAs the founder of the long-standing LavaCon conference and the principal at a technical content staffing agency, Jack Molisani gets a deeply informed view of the world of technical communication.While he sees the opportunities that generative AI presents, he raises several concerns for technical content strategy practitioners, among th…

Lisa WelchmanOver the past 25 years, Lisa Welchman has established and codified the field of digital governance.With an enterprise consulting career that spans the emergence of the web, the arrival of social media, and the rise of mobile computing, she is uniquely positioned to help digital practitioners, managers, and executives understand and man…

Rob HoeijmakersLLM-based conversational tools are revolutionizing all parts of the content ecosystem, including blogs by independent professionals.Rob Hoeijmakers is an independent web strategist based in Amsterdam. He's using AI tools like Whisper and Perplexity to streamline and improve his research and writing workflows.This lets him spend more …

Chelsea LarssonThe arrival of generative AI gives content designers a whole new toolkit. As with any new set of gear, there's some learning that comes with the new capabilities that the tools afford.At Expedia, Chelsea Larsson is leading her team of content designers into the AI design future with fresh takes on the planning, design, and evaluation…

Patrick StaffordLike most tech professionals, content designers are extremely interested in how AI might affect their work and employment prospects in the future.Patrick Stafford and his colleagues at the UX Content Collective recently conducted research to explore the impact of AI on the future of the profession, as well as the attitudes and opini…

Wouter SligterFiguring out how to best adopt new technology is difficult at any time for any organization. AI tech rachets up this challenge to new heights.Wouter Sligter helps companies understand the capabilities and limitations of LLMs and related technologies to create trustworthy experience-delivery platforms.Transparency is a key element in i…

Lasse RindomLasse Rindom both consults with enterprises on AI projects and talks with business and technology experts about their thoughts and discoveries.In both his consulting practice and his podcast conversations, Lasse has discovered both tremendous opportunities and potentially pitfalls when adopting enterprise-scale AI solutions.We talked ab…

Gerry McGovernAs we navigate our paperless offices and admire our sleek compact computing devices, it can be hard to imagine the impact that our digital experiences are having on our communities and the planet.Gerry McGovern studies the environmental impact of the digital industry. He has uncovered an alarming story of unsustainable growth, toxic s…

Mike AthertonMike Atherton is well-known in the content world for his work at institutions like the BBC and Facebook and for his co-authorship of the influential book Designing Connected Content. His latest content project appears at first to be less serious.Newsbang is a daily AI-produced satirical news show. Its content is based on real historica…

Elizabeth BeasleyAs AI is storming into content design and operations, Elizabeth Beasley is taking a patient and deliberate approach to adopting it in her practice.Elizabeth works on security and identity products at Intuit, so the experiences she designs have to be reliable and trustworthy, hence her identification as a "risk nerd."She has also na…

Maaike GroenewegeMaaike Groenewege began her content career in technical communication. She is now a leading voice in conversation design for AI.Maaike draws on her technical writing background in her conversational AI practice, having observed that whether you're writing for humans or designing prompts for LLMs, you have to truly understand your a…

Rebecca EvanhoeRebecca Evanhoe practices, teaches, and writes about conversation design, a key UX practice that is taking on fresh importance in the age of chat-based AI applications.Since the publication of her book Conversations with Things (co-authored with Diana Deibel) three years ago, the tech and media worlds have fundamentally transformed, …

Andy CrestodinaAndy Crestodina has been developing high-quality content for his business customers at Orbit Media for more than 20 years.As they have incorporated AI into their workflows at the agency, Andy has discovered that the best use of these new tools is to improve the quality of their content and service offerings rather than simply doing m…

Markus Edgar HormessMarkus Edgar Hormess offers this advice: "Never prompt alone."Markus was working with AI long before the current wave of excitement. He experimented with early versions of ChatGPT and quickly identified new opportunities to collaborate with both his human colleagues and his new AI coworkers.He's currently building a community - …

Dan PorderA few years ago, Dan Porder was teaching poetry to university students. Now he's at IKEA training large language models to generate useful, usable content for user experiences.He's picked up new skills along the way, like Python programming, but much of his work still relies on well-established content and design crafts like content strat…

Rebecca NguyenIn her work as a content designer at Indeed.com, Rebecca Nguyen is finding new opportunities to assume a leadership role on teams working with generative AI.Rebecca feels fortunate to work with teams that recognize the value of writing and design skills. She's also finding that generative AI is the perfect place for content design to …

May HabibMay Habib is the CEO at Writer.com, a generative-AI platform that has been helping enterprises use AI since 2020.Her company builds its own award-winning large language models and is pioneering approaches like "headless AI" to help employees across an enterprise use AI to be more creative and productive.We talked about: her work as CEO at …

Laura CostantinoLaura Costantino is watching the emergence of AI in content professions from two interesting and valuable perspectives: as a content designer working on LLMs at Google and as an active participant in the social-media communities where content professionals gathers.In their work at Google, they have returned to their roots as a conte…

Chris CameronAt Booking.com, they've been helping travelers with their trip planning for many years.The arrival of generative AI has given them new ways to help travelers with this business-critical task.Over the past year, Chris Cameron has applied his UX writing and content strategy skills in ways both familiar and new to help build a new AI-powe…

Lance CummingsEducation often lags behind tech trends. Not in the case of AI. And not when Lance Cummings is involved.Lance conducts academic research on AI content operations and has worked both with technical communicators and with content entrepreneurs in the creator economy.Along the way he has discovered concepts and practices around structure…

Dave Birss (AI-generated)Dave Birss has had a busy 2023.Since developing his first AI course for LinkedIn Learning early in the year, he has produced five more courses and has become the learning platform's most popular AI instructor.We talked about: his experimental approach to teaching AI how he helps companies understand the true benefits of AI …

Lisa Jennings YoungOver the past five years, Lisa Jennings Young has pioneered the adoption of AI tools in content-design practices at Twitter and Microsoft.Lisa has watched in real time the realization of the benefits of natural-language AI tools to help govern and create content, as well as to assist with content-design research and operations.We…

Claudia Francesca MuellerAt Trusted Shops, Claudia Francesca Mueller and her colleagues have built an AI-powered chatbot called Piuma that lets non-writers access content guidance through a natural-language interface.It took just a few weeks to launch the initial version of Piuma, building the chat interface with Voiceflow and using the LangChain d…

Kurt Cagle(AI-generated image)Kurt Cagle has been reporting on and participating in the tech world for several decades. He's never seen anything like the pace of change around AI.His advice for staying ready to work with AI: stay nimble, pay attention to what's going on, don't get tied to any one technology, and always bear in mind that your work w…

Tane Piper"Leading-edge technology" may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you walk into an IKEA store, but maybe it should be.IKEA is using AI technologies across its vast collection of businesses to deliver better content experiences to its customers.Tane Piper leads an engineering team at Inter IKEA - the business unit that owns the …

Sarah O'KeefeThe arrival of AI affects every area and aspect of content practice.In the technical documentation field, Sarah O'Keefe sees three immediate impacts on the work she does for her clients: how AI agents can support technical documentation workflows, the ability to create content with generative AI, and the ways that AI is changing the de…

Noz UrbinaModern content projects begin with research to create lifelike customer personas and build detailed customer journey maps. Whether you're on a tight budget or have a team of UX researchers at your disposal, AI can help accelerate and improve the development of these personas and journey maps.Noz Urbina has developed the RAUX (Rapid AI-pow…

Paco NathanMost of us are learning about AI on the fly and just got started in the past year or two.Paco Nathan has been working with AI since the 1980s and has been doing digital business nearly as long.His background in both the technical and commercial sides of artificial intelligence gives him a unique perspective on the field that can help new…

Dan McCrearyDan McCreary has years of experience selling AI solutions to executives. He uses a metaphorical story to show the importance of making your enterprise as intelligent and nimble as possible.His story of the the evolutionary heritage of jellyfish and flatworms seemed to me like a great way to kick off this new podcast.We talked about: the…

In this episode, Andy and Lisa review the management maxims Lisa laid out in her 2010 e-book The Digital Deca: 10 Management Truths for the Web Age. In this episode, they talk about truths 9 and 10: "Know your customer, but own your mission;" and, "Measure twice, execute once." Episode transcriptBy Lisa Welchman & Andy Vitale

Update 11 November 2023: I've talked with a lot of people, both interviews for the podcast and informational chats, over the past few weeks and have made some interesting discoveries. So, in addition to helping us all understand AI and how to use it in our work, I'm adding to this podcast's scope coverage of people working in content roles on AI pr…

In this episode, Lisa and Andy talk to Christina Grell, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Rocket Mortgage. Christina explains the discipline of product marketing and how it intersects with design and user experience. Episode transcriptBy Lisa Welchman & Andy Vitale

In this episode, Andy and Lisa review the management maxims Lisa laid out in her 2010 e-book The Digital Deca: 10 Management Truths for the Web Age. In this episode, they talk about truths 7 and 8: "The organization owns the web presnece;" and "Management should embrace impermanence." Episode Transcript…

In this episode, Andy and Lisa talk to Arin Bhowmick, Chief Design Officer at SAP. In this rich conversation, Arin discusses "design as a team sport" and the role of intuition in the design process. Episode transcript

In this episode, Andy and Lisa review the management maxims Lisa laid out in her 2010 e-book The Digital Deca: 10 Management Truths for the Web Age. In this episode, they talk about truths five and six: "Standards enable collaboration;" and "The Web is an asset." Episode transcriptBy Lisa Welchman & Andy Vitale

In this episode of Surfacing, Lisa and Andy talk to Scott Rosenberg. Scott is the Vice President, Global Head of Brand Management at Visa. Scott explores his leadership strategies for designing and implementing governance and operational practices that enable a diverse global team. Episode Transcript…

In this episode of Surfacing, Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale talk to Design Leader, Judy Ma. Judy reveals her leadership philosophy, the guidance she gives up-and-coming designers, and how her background in industrial design influences her approach to User Experience Design. Episode TranscriptBy Lisa Welchman & Andy Vitale

In this episode of Surfacing, Andy and Lisa tackle Digital Deca Truths 3 and four: 3) Decision-making must be based on expertise, not power; and, 4) The business framework must be inclusive. Episode TranscriptBy Lisa Welchman & Andy Vitale

In this episode of Surfacing, Lisa and Andy talk with Laura Barnes, Senior Director of Content Strategy at Red Hat. Laura talks about how she started in digital and content strategy and her philosophies around lifelong learning and leading content teams. Episode TranscriptBy Lisa Welchman & Andy Vitale

In this episode, Andy and Lisa talk to Sam Quan Krueger. Sam is the Head of Digital Communications at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Sam discusses his journey from agency work to a leadership role at the UNDP and his philosophy around supporting and enabling teams. Episode TranscriptBy Lisa Welchman & Andy Vitale

In this episode, Andy and Lisa review the management maxims Lisa laid out in her 2010 e-book The Digital Deca: 10 Management Truths for the Web Age. In this episode, they talk about truths one and two: "Your Web presence is the digital manifestation of your organization;" and "In a digitally transforming business environment, bold leadership is vit…

In this episode of Surfacing, Lisa and Andy talk with Amy Heymans. Amy serves as Chief Design officer of United Healthcare. Amy is a designer, futurist, visionary, and innovator focused on collaboratively designing a better future. She talks about her career path and the importance of being human-centered as a leader and designer. Episode transcrip…

In this episode of Surfacing, Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale talk to Jaryn Miller. Jaryn leads Service Design at Headspace and is the Co-founder of Oakland Reparations. In this rich conversation, Jaryn discusses mindfulness, his vocational journey, and how adopting an inclusive approach to service design is a win for every human being. Episode trans…

In this episode, hosts Lisa Welchman and Andy Vital speak to Jose Coronado. Jose is the global head of design operations for JP Morgan and spoke about the career path to his current role. He also spoke about the maturity of design ops in the workplace and how Jose tries to avoid an "exclusion by design" dynamic when establishing recruitment and onb…

In this episode, co-hosts Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale have a conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion. They speak about what the terms mean and how the dynamics of D.E.I. play out for them professionally and as colleagues. Episode transcriptBy Lisa Welchman & Andy Vitale

In this episode of Surfacing, co-hosts Lisa and Andy speak with Alex Edmans. Alex is a professor of Finance at London Business School and serves as Mercers School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College. Alex talks about his "pie-conomics" framework detailed in his book Grow the Pie. He also explains how organizations can make a business …

Welcome to Surfacing. This episode co-hosts Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale speak to design leader Aaron Irizarry. Aaron talks about music, his design journey, and his steps to create team environments that create space for the whole person. Andy asked Aaron about building and implementing design systems, and Lisa asked Aaron to talk about how he ens…