- Alicia Hansen
- Founder, NYC Salt
- Posted: 01/25/12 | Recorded at Gel 2011
- 1 comment
Alicia's nonprofit, NYC Salt, provides teenagers in New York with professional-grade skills in photography and other visual communication - thereby helping them succeed academically and professionally.
Here Alicia introduces the Gel 2011 audience to two of her students, both of whom entered college later in the year, on scholarships they achieved in large part due to their time with NYC Salt.
- Nicola Twilley
- Author, Edible Geography
- Posted: 09/14/11 | Recorded at Gel 2011
A Gel first: a presenter who explores the sense of smell. The olfactory sense opens up a "unique personal world," Nicola Twilley explains, as research shows that people have wildly different sensitivities to scent.
Nicola also reveals which scents have been found to be most attractive to each gender. Set aside your ocular centricity and enjoy!
Nicola's blog: Edible Geography
- Tom Lee
- Founder and CEO, One Medical
- Posted: 08/24/11 | Recorded at Gel 2011
- 1 comment
The patient experience: so many people talk about improving it, but very few people have actually done something tangible about it. Dr. Tom Lee is a rare exception: his company, One Medical, provides an excellent patient experience in primary care. Here he describes the challenges and pitfalls in delivering a better experience, despite the torturous constraints in the American medical system.
- Gel 2011 titles 2
- Animation for first Friday session
- Posted: 07/26/11 | Recorded at Gel 2011
- 1 comment
Starting off the first of four speaker sessions on Friday, April 29, 2011, these animated titles showed the full visual expression of the Gel 2011 theme: breaking the barrier. You'll need to watch it multiple times to catch all of the creative touches added by the animators.
Conceived and designed by Thornberg & Forester. Music by Andrew Huang.
- New Yorker cartoonists
- Matt Diffee, Drew Dernavich, and Zach Kanin
- Posted: 07/12/11 | Recorded at Gel 2011
In a feat of daring visual improv, New Yorker cartoonists Matt, Drew, and Zach draw original New Yorker-style cartoons based on audience suggestions. The session is based on the Fisticuffs show that Matt and Drew founded and run in New York City (often enough with Zach participating).
Online: Matt and Drew. Zach is hard to find online, but he did write The Short Book.
- Gel 2011 titles 1
- Animation for conference start
- Posted: 07/12/11 | Recorded at Gel 2011
These animated titles began the Gel 2011 conference and set the visual theme for the whole event - and indeed referenced the conference theme as well ("breaking the barrier"). The narrative of the animation was developed further in subsequent animations, as each speaker session began with its own title movie.
Conceived and designed by Thornberg & Forester. Music by Andrew Huang.
- Connie Brown
- Mapmaker
- Posted: 05/27/10 | Recorded at Gel 2010
Cartography, says Connie Brown, represents a marriage of art and science. She paints one-of-a-kind maps on canvas for private clients, companies, and organizations. Here Connie displays many different types of maps and describes what excites her about mapmaking.
See also: Redstone Studios
- Fred Kent
- Founder and President, Project for Public Spaces
- Posted: 02/03/10 | Recorded at Gel 2009
Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry take some licks from Fred Kent in this Gel talk, as he describes what "placemaking" means in creating a better urban experience. Good architecture, Kent says, serves the needs of the community.
See also: Project for Public Spaces
- Steven Heller
- Author, "Iron Fists"
- Posted: 11/05/09 | Recorded at Gel 2009
- 2 comments
Building a strong visual brand is not always good for the world. Exploring the themes in his book Iron Fists, graphic design legend Steven Heller shows how totalitarian regimes of the 20th century consolidated their power through strong visual imagery.
- Noah Scalin
- Creator, Skull-A-Day
- Posted: 08/12/09 | Recorded at Gel 2009
- 4 comments
To design a different skull every day for a year, it turns out, you need a little help from your friends - and some strangers, too. Noah Scalin talks about one of the boldest creative challenges you'll ever hear about.
- Seth Godin
- Bestselling author, entrepreneur, and agent of change
- Posted: 04/21/09 | Recorded at Gel 2006
- 11 comments
Why are so many things broken? In this entertaining talk - one of the favorites of Gel 2006 - Seth Godin gives a tour of things poorly designed, the reasons why they are that way, and how to fix them.
See also: Seth's Blog, where Seth writes daily on marketing, business, and other issues
- Bridget Duffy
- Chief Experience Officer, Cleveland Clinic
- Posted: 04/14/09 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 10 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.
- Ted Dewan
- Author, artist, transportation activist
- Posted: 03/31/09 | Recorded at euroGel '06
- 2 comments
Cars drove dangerously fast on Ted's residential street in Oxford, England - until he began installing activist art on the street. It brought the community together (even the mayor got on board), slowed the traffic, and improved the experience for everyone involved.
See also Ted's bio and Road Witch Trial.
- 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
- 2 comments
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.
- Ji Lee
- Founder, The Bubble Project
- Posted: 01/29/09 | Recorded at Gel 2006
- 5 comments
(With subtitles now!.. -mh) Not long ago in New York City, cartoon "thought bubbles" began appearing on print advertisements in the subway. Interested passersby wrote in text, beginning a dialogue about the ad, its message, the city, American culture, and with each other. Ji Lee's low-tech, decentralized Bubble Project needed no instructions, no moving parts, no planning, and almost no investment - and yet it yielded a rich set of commentary from and about the people of New York (and now other cities, as the project has spread to four other cities). A brilliant example of good experience in the city.
See also the Good Experience interview of Ji Lee from 2006.
- Chris Jordan
- Photographer
- Posted: 01/13/09 | Recorded at Gel 2007
America's scale of consumption is beyond the reach of any camera... unless Chris Jordan is standing behind it. His work combines photography, information visualization, and wry commentary on the culture and environment. One of the all-time most popular Gel talks.
See more at Chris Jordan's website, or via the Seadragon iPhone app.
- 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.
- Marie Lorenz
- Sculptor, boat builder, Tide and Current Taxi
- Posted: 12/16/08 | Recorded at Gel 2007
- 1 comment
Marie runs the Tide and Current Taxi, which takes passengers on a boat (that she hand-built) on voyages on New York City's East River ... with no planned destination. Her work touches on design, art, and community, which helped make it one of the most popular presentations at Gel '07.
See also the Tide and Current Taxi website.
- Terry Border
- Artist, Bent Objects
- Posted: 12/03/08 | Recorded at Gel 2008
- 91 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.
- 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.)
