Jacqueline Kurdziel

Yogi | Adventurer | Start-Up Gal

[jqkurdziel]

There's barely enough space to fit all the highlights of 2015! It was a year of conquering the seemingly impossible and accomplishing many incredible firsts - first company acquisition, first trek to Machu Picchu, first triathlon (and learning how to actually swim for the first time). 2015 brought with it some of the richest and most memorable days with family & friends - and borderline religious experiences witnessing some of the best artists of our time (imo) - Beyoncé, Tame Impala, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Spoon, Drake, Miguel, and more. Hey, 2015, you weren't too shabby. Here's to more adventures and happy days in 2016. 🍾

[jqkurdziel]

A grounding and inspiring talk/performance by John Forte at Creative Mornings today. From Exeter and a Grammy nomination to 7 years in prison and learning to appreciate every step of the journey. An amazing story of humility and embracing change. Just added his bio to my reading list. (at Google New York)

[jqkurdziel]

8 long years and I finally managed to see Spoon live. BIG mistake missing them at Vandy's Rites of Spring but better late than never! (at Summer Stage Central Park Babasonicos in Ny)

[jqkurdziel]

Epic day of stand up paddle boarding and beach time with @dihard and @ckurdziel. 🏄☀️🌊 (at Long Beach, New York)

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#tbt That time I decided to take the summer off and move to Bali. Um yeah, that was awesome. It's those crazy ideas that end up being some of the best ones. (at Pantai Jasri, Bali)

[jqkurdziel]

This #tbt goes out to @jenniferlsnider #honestabe #sidewalkgraffiti #bklyn

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First installment of the @dardenmba alumnae series around social media & brand management was a great success! #regram courtesy of miss @filialusa (at Officelinks)

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We're all toasty up in here! Thanks, @toasty_time <00

[jqkurdziel]

I miss real ice cream.

[as featured on medium]

It all started about 5 years ago when I was training for my first marathon. I was running 6 days a week and because my body was operating so efficiently, it rejected anything I ate that wasn’t pure energy.

Addicted to Diet Coke for life, my body first rebelled against me anytime I consumed the artificially-flavored soft drink. What used to be a treat transformed into a chemical-ridden poison.

It wasn’t just Diet Coke, either. With anything I ate that was overly processed, such as cold cuts, microwavable foods or fast food, I’d get sick to my stomach. Literally. My body wouldn’t have any of it, and since then I’ve continued to be hyper-sensitive to artificial foods.

This past summer my body had the same rejection response with one of my favorite food groups: ice cream (yes, it’s a food group in my book).

My then-fiance and I wanted to treat ourselves to Marble Slab ice cream while we were on vacation in South Carolina. Generally a healthy eater, I love to indulge every once in awhile. Ice cream is my ultimate weakness.

The thought of Marble Slab was especially appealing because it was the ice cream I grew up on. I have the most vivid memories of how fresh and natural their Vanilla Bean tasted, as if they mashed in the beans right on the spot.

Fast forward to this summer, my fiance and I stepped up to the counter. I was excited to see one of my latest ice cream obsessions was available: coconut flavor with chocolate chips. I ordered their smallest size, which was like ordering popcorn in a movie theater — the small was really the equivalent of a XXL.

The minute I took the first bite of that coconut ice cream I immediately spit it out. This was not the ice cream I grew up on. Chock full of chemicals, it tasted like Windex with specks of fake plastic-like chocolate bits.

How could anyone eat this? And a heaping super-sized mound of it, at that?

That moment depressed me about the state of ice cream today. The ingredients aren’t real anymore. In fact, one of the most legendary ice cream brands, Breyer’s, no longer can call itself ice cream. Instead, it’s now a “frozen dairy product”. I get it — the cost of food continues to increase, but the quality shouldn’t be compromised.

I miss real ice cream. Real just tastes better. It’s richer in flavor and far more satisfying. Plus, it’s better for you. Not that I’m saying ice cream is good for you (good for the soul, maybe, but not so much for the hips), but FDA allows foods to have chemical additives without proper testing of their long-term effects. That’s just straight-up not safe. I’ll take egg yolks and heavy cream over guar gum, stabilizers and [insert other scary ingredient here] any day.

It’s time for something better, and that’s why I love companies likeMilkMade ice cream — so much that I started working with them to help change the way ice cream is consumed.

Every month, MilkMade sources sustainable, local and real ingredients to create inventive ice cream flavors that are delivered to their members’ doorsteps.

MilkMade’s only for New Yorkers right now, but their monthly ice cream subscription base is quickly growing to reach their fanbase of millions.

Clearly I’m not alone in my pursuit of a better pint.

[jqkurdziel]

Let’s grow Milkmade! Get the best ice cream of your life, delivered right to your door. Support the #lickstarter! http://thndr.it/1b0ieD7

[jqkurdziel]

It's the final countdown for the @milkmadescream #lickstarter

[jqkurdziel]

What a beautiful way to be remembered. On a bench overlooking a gorgeous field in Central Park, no less.

Since my grandmother’s passing I’ve been thinking a lot about the legacy I want to leave behind and the spirit I want people to remember me for. When I was in Bali we talked at great length about how contemplating death can help you to live a fuller life. Thinking about what you want to pass on can help you to better focus your energies on thoughts and actions that align with what you want to achieve on this earth. Some people even claim writing your own eulogy is a productive exercise for mapping your personal and professional goals with what deeply matters to you.

I’m still figuring out what exactly that is for me. Bold, beautiful and dynamic are a good start. A thoughtful friend. A devoted and caring wife (and mother if I’m lucky enough). A lifelong student. A girl at heart who took pleasure in the littlest things. A relentless optimist…

Thanks, Karen, for the inspiration. :-)

[jqkurdziel]

Finding inspiration in unconventional places

  Some of my best ideas come from the most unusual places. Often it’s during a run around NYC or while I’m in the final resting pose in a yoga class. Typically, it’s a new reference point that gets me out of my familiar frame of mind and helps me look at something from a different angle. It’s almost as if that moment of shifted focus slows everything else down and allows me to surface combined ideas that might have seemed disconnected minutes earlier.

The principle that great ideas spawn from unusual recombinations isn’t a new one. For a long time people have pointed out that the best ideas are often born out of the collision of seemingly separate things. Cooking, for example, has exploded as a hotbed for this sort of recombining. Just one episode of Top Chef will open your eyes to a multitude of out-of-the-box, strangely mouth-watering concoctions. Even a stroll through a gourmet grocery store will expose you to odd, yet tasty, pairings, such as bacon-infused chocolate or cheese lined with edible ash.

The opportunities for these collisions only seem to increase in urban centers where there’s both high diversity (of people, industries, and ideas) and little space, making it more likely for people and ideas to meld.

In college I took a class called “Paris, Montreal, and New York” that spoke to this idea specifically by highlighting some of the literary geniuses and visionaries of the Beat Generation, such as Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Cohen, and the cities that helped shape them. These three men frequently traveled between these three global capitals of art, music and literature, and some of their best ideas emerged from these diverse cultural immersions and intersections.

All of this came to focus for me lately when I was reading Steven Johnson’s “Where Good Ideas Come From.” The thesis of the book, in essence, is that ideas and innovations stem from unusual recombinations of tangential environments and from a slow build of inputs. It’s not those “Eureka!” moments where great ideas emerge, it is an amalgamation of experiences that shed light on a new way of looking at things. In fact, Johnson often cites urban centers as major sources of new ideas because of the close proximity of diverse subcultures.

We can even apply these concepts to brand-building and content marketing. Ideas often spark from unconventional permutations of inputs. This is where great ideas and innovations come from and this same rule applies to content. In order to be a good content creator, you have to be a good content consumer. To do that, a brand can take a multitude of new and different ideas from the world around them and combine them to create interesting and engaging content. That’s because like great innovations, great real-time content lives at the intersection of seemingly disparate ideas: In this case brand voice and cultural relevance. The best brands make that connection the most effectively, and to do that means paying attention to the world around them all the time.

[s-m-i]

the most innovative workers — also the “happiest,” by its definition — are those who have a strong sense of mission about their work and who also feel that they have much personal autonomy

Don’t be evil. Don’t micromanage.

Big Data, Trying to Build Better Workers - NYTimes.com

(via s-m-i)

[jqkurdziel]

Last week Percolate brought together our entire company to brainstorm our next iteration of the platform. Take a look at my recent post detailing our product brainstorm methodology - including crowdsourced ideas, as well as some Percolate Pictionary. 

Building a thoughtful technology company takes many minds. Last week we brought together the entire Percolate company to brainstorm the next iteration of Percolate’s software.

Our product manager Stacy and lead designer Dom organized the session and set the stage for how we should be thinking about the future of Percolate.

Having grown almost threefold in size since the last company-wide brainstorming, Dom walked everyone through the evolution of Percolate since day 1.

This brought newbies and veterans alike up to speed on how we got to where we are today and how what we’ve learned along the way might inform future plans for Percolate.

Before diving into the actual brainstorming of the new product, we were asked to forget everything we knew about Percolate to date. So as not to bias our ideas for new features and functionality, Dom and Stacy outlined the following criteria for brainstorming 4.0:

1. Forget everything 2. Think in workflows 3. Sketch (Actions, Flows, Interfaces, States) 4. How might we create the most amazing version? 5. Have fun

We then broke into groups, sketched out individual ideas channeling a little Percolate Pictionary, presented those to the group and then assembled the best ones to present to the entire company.

I came out of the 4.0 brainstorming session with a few key take-aways for building an awesome technology platform:

Create an environment that sifts out the best ideas: During the brainstorming session our time limitations forced us to prioritize what was most important. Our short 10-minute bursts of brainstorming forced us to focus on the most critical features for our given challenge.

More inputs lead to better outputs: Involving the entire company helped us to crowdsource the best ideas for Percolate 4.0.

Designing to build a culture and community: Getting Percolators to wear a designer’s hat for a day brought everyone together in a unique way. Each person had a say in the company’s future and had an opportunity to exercise their talents in new and different ways.

[tracetheradianceback]

[jqkurdziel]

Growth vs. fixed mindset - which one are you? 

[efectossonoros-deactivated20230]

[jqkurdziel]

Ganesh is so fresh