An Illustrated Interview

Talking to interesting people one doodle at a time.

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008: Mike Cooke

Writer/Director, Across the Tracks mikecooke.tv | Across the Tracks @mikecooketv

—

Mike Cooke is a passionate storyteller.

When we spoke over Skype, the first thing I noticed in his room were the post-its taped to the wall behind him. There were well over 20 sticky notes and index cards on display, of varying colors and shapes. When I pointed them out, Mike beamed. These were all ideas for future projects in the works, all waiting to be tinkered with and executed.

Mike Cooke knows what he’s doing.

He can create with a small or a large canvas; while he has worked with major clients for television commercials—such as Wal-Mart and Vineyard Vines—Mike has also directed and released a full-length film, Across the Tracks. (You can view the trailer here.) Across the Tracks has already garnered a few awards. A lifelong freelancer, Mike worked for himself since his early teen years. The creative drive was sparked by his father, who would take him on trips to take photos of abandoned black churches and other interesting landscapes. Once the fire ignited, he hit the ground running. He hustled, earning a degree from SCAD. And he still hustles.

Mike Cooke understands the industry—and how screwy it can be.

In one interview I discussed U.S. politics; during Mike’s we talked about Hollywood’s, and its complex universe of producers and money and audiences. The notion of diversity in film and television has been the focus of intense attention as of late (see this, and this, and this). It’s fascinating to see the dialogue become louder since I spoke with Mike; our interview immediately followed the heels of the controversies surrounding Ghost in the Shell and Doctor Strange. The conversation continues, particularly through #whitewashedOUT. After talking to Mike, I learned winning at The Mighty Box Office is incredibly layered; for example, I did not really know overseas markets had an impact on what mainstream films get made (and assumably, what do not).

I like Mike Cooke. There’s no better time for another voice to come through the noise and pan the lens toward a new story that Hollywood can’t reach. Money—specifically, financial expectations—intrudes on creativity. But with the right eye, and the right sense, a powerful story can make it to the screen, big or small. And people will watch. 

Lucky for us, Mike Cooke is a filmmaker, with a wall of stories just waiting to be told. 

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007: Dave Wasserman

House Editor, The Cook Political Report http://cookpolitical.com/ FiveThirtyEight @Redistrict  

— So Dave Wasserman is super smart. Like, freakishly should-be-on-Jeopardy!-member-of-MENSA smart. I was lucky enough to speak with him about politics, an area I’ve dabbled in during my undergraduate college days when I truly discovered I was a liberal. I canvassed for local politicians in South Florida and served as vice president of my College Democrats organization. 

In the years since, when election season rolled around, I consistently turned into a political junkie. I would binge on FiveThirtyEight reports (then with the New York Times) and MSNBC or CNN (those sweet, sweet hologram-infographics). More recently, in these last few months, I’ve stayed up late to watch the primary coverage, staring at the seemingly unbudging polls. It seems now we are down to our final two presidential candidates, so let me just say I am utterly exhausted. I can’t wait for the conventions to come and go so that I can get ready to vote in November and be done with it for two/four years.

Given the state of the race — and the hundreds of others taking place at the congressional level across the U.S. — I think Mr. Wasserman drinks a lot of coffee.

Our conversation obviously centered on politics. We tried to not discuss He Who Must Not Be Named, but that didn’t last long. I learned Wasserman had a passion for politics since he was a child; he watched C-SPAN as a boy and begged his parents for a subscription to The Cook Political Report, his current professional home. 

I... I think I’ve been out-nerded.

He hopes to visit Miami, my home turf, for political coverage — and maybe the weather, too. I hope we can chat again over my grandmother’s Cuban cuisine and a cortadito. As exhausting and loony these campaigns have been, they’ve been fascinating. I could have easily talked to Wasserman for another hour, but alas.

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006: Ellen Gottesdiener & Vanessa Ferranto

Co-Producers of Agile Product Open www.agileproductopen.org @AgileProductOpn

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Special announcement: I’ll be sketchnoting Agile Product Open next week, a conference that will openly discuss Agile principles used in product management. This is very exciting for me personally because it’s a new sketchnote gig AND I get to learn a bit about product management/development, a field I’m thinking about joining. 

I spoke with Ellen Gottesdiener and Vanessa Ferranto, producers of Agile Product Open. The conference looks like it’ll be a good one. Register today!

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005: Pilar Wyman

Chief Indexer, Wyman Indexing www.wymanindexing.com @pilarw

— I have never really understood how someone can index. It’s always this magical thing in my head, where a person just somehow knows the order of ideas and subjects for a book that needs an index. What perplexed me most were the sub-subjects, the stuff that’s indented right underneath the main topic with the page number.

Talking with Pilar, a colleague of mine in the ebook production community, made it a little bit easier to get indexing. As she noted, it’s all about finding links between and among terms. I touch upon this notion in my storyboarding talk I gave at ebookcraft; when you parse content to restructure, you need to identify connections and “chunk” them together. This really resonated with Pilar, and I was flattered. I never thought of indexing in this way, through my own personal lens.

Another visual metaphor we discussed for indexing was an amazing art installment Pilar saw at the Smithsonian: tall, lumpy mounds of index cards, an untitled piece by Tara Donovan. A concept can be very large, but ultimately, it can be broken down into many pieces. Indexing is granular. As a result, it’s taxing—and Pilar reads science fiction to unwind.

Indexes are mini mountains, and Pilar doesn’t just climb them—she crafts them.

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004: Mike Tschudy

Head of User Experience, Mint.com @MchewD

---

This was originally going to be the first illustrated interview, but then I ended up interviewing Dan Lyons of Disrupted. (That sweet, sweet SEO. Unicorns! Delightion!) Anyway.

What can I say about speaking with Mike Tschudy? Well, for starters, he was the reason I got this site rolling in the first place.

I was able to meet him telephonically after I gave Mint.com a thoughtful complaint via Twitter. In sum: The interface, in its tone, was negatively charged in some respects — evident for me in the Budgets panel, as I was shown a lot of RED (thanks, student loans!). Back in March, I took the liberty of coming up with a workaround. Mr. Tschudy noticed and thanked me for the approach.

Back then, earlier in my job search, I was flip-flopping between traditional roles in digital publishing (within the trade publishing space) and a possible shift to UX and UI design. I needed to learn more about the field, as well as product management, another area that piqued my interest. Who better to talk about such topics than a head of UX for a major product used by millions people?

After some private tweets and an email, I somehow made it onto Mr. Tschudy’s calendar.

One day in April — April 7, according to the drawing— I was fortunate enough to have a long chat with Mr. Tschudy about Mint’s UX, the team, and what they’re striving to achieve. Halfway in, the conversation turned to me and what I could explore in content design and product management. He suddenly became my cheerleader, even though we had never met. I wasn’t expecting this at all; what did I bring to the table? I was floored. Mr. Tschudy reminded me that I brought a lot to the table. As a result, this drawing was my thank-you note for such a wonderful conversation.

Looking at this interview again, I’m reminded of three things:

UX, UI, and content marketing are viable roles for someone like me — someone who thinks of the user and cares of how they interact with something.

I will find a new job soon, because I am keeping up an active, positive, and focused mindset, and

Mike Tschudy knows how to motivate people and likely lead them.

I wish I recorded the call on April 7. I gushed about the conversation afterward with my partner (he thought it was cool, thankfully). My confidence shot back up.

Then, the idea of An Illustrated Interview struck. 

This is the Illustrated Interview. This started everything, and hopefully the interviews will keep coming.

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003: Chrissy Delk

Storyboard and Comic Artist; Warner Bros., Freelance www.chrissydelk.com MAQ (Webcomic)

--- I had three dream jobs when I was a child:

Magician

Cartoonist

Storyboard artist

Chrissy was my first formal Illustrated Interview, and I was really lucky to have her for the project. When we spoke, I immediately noticed a gorgeous drafting desk in the background. I learned it was made of pure oak and that her father had refinished it for her. She wore a comics shirt, so incredibly perfect for our conversation, and we talked. I never met a storyboard artist before.

From a young age, Chrissy knew she wanted to work in animation. Her parents were supportive of her pursuit from a young age, educating her in the fact that animation was a thing you could do. She later went to Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and holds a degree in sequential art. She now freelances and has quite a bit of commissioned work with Warner Bros. 

I wish I had recorded our talk. I saw a lot of myself in Chrissy: incredibly driven and passionate with a work ethic that’s absolutely bonkers. We talked about impostor syndrome, burnout, and the separation of work from identity; the importance of networking and the challenges of nepotism; the struggle of working within “glamorous” industries when it’s anything but. It was almost like I had a glimpse of myself in an alternate universe, where I decided that comics and storyboarding was what I wanted to do with my professional life. There were points where it felt a little surreal. This could have been me. I could be doing these things.

I thought about our conversation for a long time after we talked. I admire Chrissy for recognizing limits and letting go. That’s something I’m still working on. I think we can all stand to let go once in a while.

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002: Ben Pender-Cudlip

Director/Director of Photography, Dawnland www.dawnland.org | www.upstanderproject.org @unrendered

— Ben Pender-Cudlip is a mellow man who loves documentaries—making them and directing them, in particular. Our conversation stemmed from his major project, three years in the making: Dawnland, described as “a documentary about cultural survival and stolen children: inside the first truth and reconciliation commission for Native Americans.” 

Pender-Cudlip admitted documentaries aren’t necessarily his go-to popcorn flicks on a Saturday night, though he did call out The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence—not for the faint hearted—as excellent examples of amazing documentaries. To the other degree, he discussed an earlier documentary of his called Fetch, which is, plainly put, about a dog fetching a stick. Yes, it’s that simple. I did not realize documentaries could consider topics that aren’t charged with social commentary; my definition of “documentary” was imbued with a purpose of sensitive awareness and critique. In actuality, it could be a simple as a canine’s favorite pastime. As Pender-Cudlip notes, “It just has to be real.”

I could tell through Pender-Cudlip’s calm demeanor that he was incredibly passionate about his craft. Dawnland demonstrates this, an ambitious film that seeks to be utilized in educational curriculums across the U.S. alongside tools to teach young students about genocide and injustice. The project is currently about $20,000 away from achieving its Kickstarter goal to take the film from a rough cut to a polished piece, and these monies will be matched. Please contribute if you can. It’s essential for the reality of this story to come to light, and it can with your help.

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001: Dan Lyons

Author, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble Former Technology Editor of Newsweek; a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs www.realdanlyons.com | @realdanlyons (Twitter & Tumblr)

--- I spent an entire morning and a solid chunk of an afternoon talking to Dan Lyons, author of the recently released Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (Hachette). We ate a lot of bagels loaded with lox and cream cheese. Over a long brunch, we talked about ageism, sexism, bias, humor, privilege, kids, HubSpot, and responsibility. I was able to press him on the Silicon Valley Writers’ Room, though I obtained no inklings on the upcoming third season; in the book, he depicts the Writers’ Room as a sanctuary where he felt he was among peers, celebrating its vulgarities in the name of comedy. After I mentioned a scathing Goodreads review critical of Lyons — and by extension, the Writers’ Room and its perceived sexism— he said it was a fair swipe to make. He explained he had to keep the focus on HubSpot, aligning it as the antagonist to himself as the protagonist. Silicon Valley was his first foray into television writing. I will throw a nickel into a fountain and hope for another fish-out-of-water tale in the world of Hollywood. (Maybe a blog, at least, or a short webseries?)

We talked about the publishing industry and the process more than I expected. I learned the turnaround time for the book was extremely fast, and I did (tactfully) point out that Disrupted could have used one more editing run. Lyons was nice enough to not throw me out his house. 

"The HubSpot Book” is not just a book about a loony company — it is an eye-opening critique of start-up culture and the marginalization that exists inside. I left Lyons feeling that he had a sense of responsibility to serve as a voice for those constantly confronted by ageism in the workplace. He did admit, however, that he did not know how to change things — but I can bet he’ll get an idea or three within the next few weeks or even months. (Certainly the Oakland Book Festival panel he’s doing with Ellen Pao, Erica Baker, and Brad Stone should get the wheels turning...) 

Near the end of our conversation, we lightheartedly deemed him Diversity Advocate Man(!): will he be a hero and foster the conversation on marginalization in tech, or will he be a unicorn?

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A glimpse into the madness. Almost 20 people booked (19). Once I’m at 20+, I’ll likely have a queue build up.

Thank you for your support!

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The Thursday Update: April 14, 2016

An Illustrated Interview is on Twitter — hurray! Follow the fun at @illusinterviews

There approximately 13 potential interviews being scheduled this week. I cannot express how excited I am because SPOILERS

An interview is happening today! Here’s a 1-word hint: Storyboard.

Follow this page for updates, both written and illustrated!

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As I’m starting to schedule folks to be drawn (woo hoo!), I’m also figuring out the setup for a typical illustrated interview. Each will be unique, but hopefully I can find a doable, repeated structure! 

Please keep sending along your suggestions. Looking forward to meeting you!

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I do sketch notes for conferences; it gets me places and it lets me meet cool people.

I think I can go beyond a conference to draw and learn.

Let’s talk if you

Are a creative, technical person

Deal with content in all shapes, sizes, and mediums

Love your work and what you do

Have an interest you’d like to share with people

I need a lot of content to launch this thing in full.

Above is a sample of what to expect from An Illustrated Interview. Reach out if you’d like to be profiled!

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Coming soon

Hang tight, people~