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On today’s episode, we’re speaking with Kim Allen, Founder and Captain of the Primal Glow Communications mothership. She has a wealth of experience in the nonprofit sector and is now a consultant who works with not-for-profit and public sector organizations to build their digital capacity. We recently collaborated with Kim on building a private and secure online chat service that is just starting to roll out to sexual assault support centres across Ontario. In our conversation today, we take a deep dive into how she brought this project and team together and what she learned from a very unconventional development process. Look at what we made!! ~~~~~> Safe Support ChatConnect with Kim at Primal Glow CommunicationsSee what else we've been working on at Nomadic Labs What we talked about:How she transitioned from public radio to the nonprofit sector to becoming a technology consultantHow and why we built Safe Support ChatUsing off-the-shelf software vs building a custom solutionThe value of research and experimentationPitching a project at Civic Tech Toronto and finding “nerdy generosity”Connecting with the right people who understand the project and learning from themEngaging with volunteers and hackathonsReflections on building a open-source software application

In this episode, we are speaking with Rachel Kohut from the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL). Rachel’s work in public health and legal advocacy has covered many important issues including sexual and reproductive rights, sexual health, maternal health, access to medicines and intellectual property, housing rights, and domestic violence and sexual assault. Now, at NAWL, she is the director of a project called Rebuilding Feminist Law Reform Capacity. We talked about digital advocacy and making information accessible, among other things:A short history of NAWLChallenges and motivation for redesigning the Feminist Law Reform 101 online courseEditing complex and long content for the webReaching out and collaborating with the artistic communityUsing social media effectively to build real connectionsThe value of user research and creating “room to dream”Avoiding perfectionism and learning to experiment and take risksGuest: Rachel Kohut from the National Association of Women and the LawHosts: Sharon Kennedy and Luisa Ji from Nomadic LabsTheme music: "If" by Broke for Free 

This week we spoke with Alisha Bhagat, futurist and senior strategist at Forum for the Future. Forum for the Future is an international non-profit that works with business, government and civil society to solve complex challenges using futures thinking and systems thinking.Alisha, like many others, is now working fully remotely due to the COVID-19 crisis. In our conversation, we compared notes on some of our struggles and successes of working from home. We talked our way through a pile of great topics:quarantine fashionswitching from a time-based workday to a task-based workdaygetting into a flow statedefeating the procrastination monstertaking self-expression to the next level in Zoom callsmeaningful meetingshow organizations can make the remote working experience better for their teamsfinding inspiration, learning opportunities and challenges outside of workThis episode is equal parts commiseration, practical advice, and speculation on how this massive work-from-home movement could have lasting changes in our work and home lives.Guest: Alisha Bhagat from Forum for the FutureHosts: Sharon Kennedy and Luisa Ji from Nomadic LabsTheme music: "If" by Broke for Free 

Our first podcast episode to mark our second year as a company! Sharon and Luisa interview each other to reflect on what we've learned from two years of design+tech consulting and building a business to serve the nonprofit sector.Our conversation covers a lot of ground:how and why we started our companywhat led us to the design/tech sector from our very different backgroundswhat we've learned from doing business with nonprofitsexpectation vs reality of running a digital agencyour hopes and dreams for the future!Theme music: 'If' by Broke for Free