The newsletter is back after a long long break - partly due to my travel (and a much needed digital detox), and partly catching up with an avalanche of mails and work, post-break. In the meantime a lot has happened: Google's near-human AI calling hairdressers has been all the rage (and here's What Google Isn't Telling Us), Walmart buying Flipkart, NatGeo's powerful cover (Planet or Plastic) and more...

Here's a reminder that DesignUp's Call for Talks and Workshops are closing soon (Tuesday, May 20th to be precise), plus a bunch of articles I found interesting (Design and beyond)...

The Tarot Cards of Tech that help you gaze into the future — www.artefactgroup.com

Want to find out about the (unintended) consequences and impact of your designerly actions? Here's an interesting (and well-crafted) way...

How to keep productivity from killing your creativity — blogs.dropbox.com

How-to "make work feel less like a hamster wheel and more like a Sunday drive". A good read for productivity geeks—and a reminder that balance is key. 

What People Don’t Tell You About Product Management

I increasingly see more Designers wanting to be Product Managers (which is great) and there's always a need to understand a discipline we work with most closely. This one is an insightful read: "product management is exciting and stressful for the same reason: there’s unpredictability, there’s opportunity to create something new (which also means it may be unproven), and you’re usually operating with less data than you’d like, and everything is always a little bit broken."

Growth is getting hard (and harder) — andrewchen.co

Another fine and reflective piece from Andrew Chen: "the end of a tech cycle has major implications for launching new products, growing existing product categories, because of a simple thing:It gets much, much harder to grow new products or pivot existing ones into new markets."

The epic “Planet or Plastic?” NatGeo cover is just the beginning — www.fastcompany.com

A lot of people are talking about it - from CEOs to hard-nosed business folks. It's visual design at it's powerful best. And beyond this symbolic cover is a multi-year campaign "to fight plastic pollution that includes a $10 million partnership with Sky and a collaboration with The North Face."

There Is No Such Thing as a Smart City — www.theatlantic.com

"Digital stardust won’t magically make future cities more affordable or resilient."

DesignUp, sneak peek

DesignUp 2018 dates are in: On October 25, Thu - we have a dedicated day of Masterclasses, these will be limited places and you can register for them separately. The 2-Day Conference will be on October 26-27 (Fri-Sat), and this year we'll likely have an all inclusive ticket: talks + shorter bite-sized workshops. We're working out the details, but more by mid or late-June when the registrations start. So block the dates, apply for leaves and start thinking about your travel plans.

Until the week after,

@jdallcaps