Speaking

I love public speaking, I love meeting people, and I love inspiring creative and technical teams to be awesome. As a keynote speaker, panel moderator, emcee, or large-scale workshop facilitator, it’s my greatest pleasure to turn an auditorium (or global videoconference) into a learning environment, an audience into a community that shares an experience and a destination, even for a brief shining moment.

My favorite topics include but are not limited to: Critique, collaboration, remote work, “future of work,” solving the right problems, inclusion practices for creative and technical teams, software development, product and design collaboration.

I'm happy to help bring some diversity to your conference roster, event, or panel, and am always happy to refer other speakers to ensure a diverse program. Like many diverse speakers, I prioritize working with organizations that amplify and value representation for Black folks, other people of color, women and gender-non-binary folks, and LGBT folks.

A few links, to hear me in action:

Finding Our Way: Podcast interview with Peter Merholz and Jesse James Garrett, 2020

I met Peter and Jesse at a conference in the early 2000s, when UX practitioners globally counted in the four digits, and all of us were self-taught. I appreciate how they’ve used their platform to lift up peeps like me, from historically underrepresented groups.

We recorded this spicy interview in the fall of 2020, when I was freshly pandemic-downsized from my in-house role and beginning the patience-trying process of redesigning my life and livelihood. I love the authenticity they elicited in this conversation, how they teased out the connections between my academic background as a multidisciplinary social scientist, my experiences as an out lesbian leader in tech, and the ways I bring value to my clients and students.

How to hire, motivate and inspire the next generation of designers: O'Reilly Design 2017

So grateful to the O'Reilly Design program chairs for the opportunity to speak at such a well-run conference, in such fabulous company! This video is my talk in its entirety. From the conference brochure:

"With the industry booming and fresh designers flooding the job market daily, the gap between education and employment has never been more evident. How can managers mentor junior hires to maximum effectiveness? How can junior designers stand out in the crowd? Billie Mandel explores the impact of strong mentorship in creating successful designers."

Embodied Critique on BigTalker.io

I'm pleased to be a featured speaker on BigTalker.io, a marketplace for inspiring on-site training, seminars, and workshops.

This is a quick intro video I did for BigTalker, where they interviewed me about my method, why I created it, and why it's valuable. I explain why tapping into your feelings at work helps creative professionals turn "tension tension" into creative tension. 

A transcript of the interview is also available, for the hearing impaired.

Application video for Stanford d.school Teaching Fellowship: From the "failed experiment" files

I teach my students, coaching clients, mentees and employees to show their mess, try things out, assess what did and didn't work. And I try to walk the walk. In 2016 I applied to be a Teaching Fellow at the d.school. The application challenge: what is a problem you think the d.school should be addressing, and why are you the right person to work on it? The catch: tell the story in ONE MINUTE. 

I wrote the story of Embodied Critique, diversity of perspective, and how everything I know about managing design teams, I learned in my Stanford undergrad women's self-defense class, and then recorded it. 2:30. Drat. Then I cut and cut, one word at a time, and re-recorded until I got it down to a minute. What I ended up with clearly didn't tell a sufficiently compelling story, since I didn't get the fellowship. 

This failed attempt ended up being a fabulous, powerful personal example of a storytelling lesson I teach my students. Observe the master editors, Hollywood screenwriters: what parts of their stories are emphasized visually or in dialogue, and what's left on the cutting room floor. The story arc and its impact changes significantly based on how thoughtfully you edit, and there's such a thing as paring down too much such that your meaning is too diluted to have impact. 

The part of this I'm still deeply proud of, and stand behind 100%: