Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson

Question : How do you decide what adventures to take in your nonlinear career? What are intentional plans vs. accidents? Photo: Kara Hammond and NARAS Martin Atkins talked with our host, Gigi Johnson, from his studio that also acts as a museum of all of the adventurous projects around his career. Martin shared how he began drumming at age 9 and persistently getting into Public Image Ltd,...

This was fun. Your host, Gigi Johnson, has been speaking for college classes this past week and kept being asked to tell her/my story of the pivot points and non-linear decisions over 9 careers. So in this Tuesday Tidbit segment, I share the story of how I changed into a film major at USC based on postcard from my teaching assistant for a single class. That changed my life and direction...

Question: What if you could build a company around your passions? In this episode, David Hernandez shares how he is unlearning and relearning what he knows to create competition for his company . . . in his own company! He runs Colonize Media, a multiplatform network music aggregator. He has worked to create “a very human culture” with his team of 30+ people and now works to “break artis...

Today starts the first segment of Tidbit Tuesday, which brings in parts of the ReadytoZag program from Rethink Next. What is a Creative Career? What are we talking about when we throw around the term “ creative caree r”? This could be having a traditional career in a creative industry, or it could be doing something that has creativity in the actual job. In terms of being different from non-creati...

Question: What if you could pursue the creative projects that you already saw in the world?  In this episode, Beatie Wolfe takes us through her creative journey to become the technologist and artist she is today. Back when she was 7 or 8, she began to imagine the “music books” (album covers) that she wanted over music and moved to reimagine the vinyl experience in her later work. Sh...

Starting next Tuesday, we'll be sharing parts of the Rethink Next career exploration programs to tie in with the non-linear career stories from each of these podcast interviews.  We'll be sharing each week on Tuesdays a bit of the programs we have been working on for a few years with groups on how to expand your creative career, using examples from past and future interview episodes. Lis...

Question: What if you need to leave creative work to deal with crisis? How can you bring your creativity to other fields?  In this episode, Christopher Zyda shares his journey through the 1980s AIDS pandemic as a young professional writer-to-be and his shift into finance to help care for his partner while dealing with insecurities and fears in launching a life. He tells of his choic...

In this episode, Laura Escudé takes us on her journey from violinist to adventures in Los Angeles as a seat filler for TV shows from Craig’s list to market research to other one-off jobs. . . until she becomes a tech support staffer at M-Audio because of problems she had with her own keyboard. For listeners who are inspired by linear journeys, this is not one. Instead, Laura was launched...

Dae Bogan shares how he sees solutions and “warps” them into business ideas -- which is both a blessing and a curse. He began with selling cakes in middle school and organizing bus tours in high school from Cleveland, OH to New York. From his early history in acting, singing, and creating and producing events, he moved into a long series of start-ups (including putting gogo dancers in store window...

In this episode, we hear how Bas den Braber and Jenna Seiden are following their purpose with Zambezi Partners, a benefits corporation with a mission to eradicate African wildlife poaching during our lifetime. They both worked in large company business-to-business strategy, consulting, and brand leadership, and have found their purposes after their mid-career reality checks. Their career...

Tania Katan shares her wit and wisdom about how to use creativity to challenge with playfulness our rigid organizational cultures. She works with large and small companies, helping them find new alignment around their daily contradictions through “small c” creative work, facing everyday practical problems with imagination. She shares the tales of #itwasneveradress (re-seeing the ladies’...

Megan Elliott shares her journey from Australia and indigenous cultural media to trade union representation in Ireland to traveling across Asia connecting leaders and cultures . . before she was found on LinkedIn to bring her superpowers to Nebraska. She tells of the shared collaborative creation of the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, which works to create “pirates, magicians, a...

Ale Cohen and Mark "Frosty" McNeill share their journey through “experimenting with sound” and community in building the Internet radio collective DUBLAB over the past two decades. They share what inspired and drove them to build this institution and how it has shifted gears in our listen-from-home global era.  Dublab is not your average radio station. Mark calls it “experimentation with soun...

In this episode, Arabian Prince shares the rest of the story -- both before and after working with NWA. He shares how he got started with tech, entrepreneurship, and music creation at a young age. He talks with Gigi about how he taught himself new gaming and creative technologies, and how he brings that energy to his many current adventures. Guest: Arabian Prince, Founder of iNov8 Next Open Labs a...

In this episode, Akira Nakano takes us through his journeys in piano performance, music composition, video editing, and starting a non-profit. These led to the launch of the LA Inception Orchestra, which works with youth and composers to launch Composers of Tomorrow. He shares his experience in piloting a learning non-profit organization and how his diverse skills and relationships combined into i...

In this episode, Christopher Hope shares his journey to found The Loop Lab in Cambridge, MA. He learned through DJing, community service, religious studies, and partnering with local organizations to deliver a unique blend of higher education, apprenticeships, and entrepreneurship training. He has grown this nonprofit into a live and virtual training program for womxn and BIPOC youth to build jobs...

In this episode, Sasha Samochina shares her journey connecting art, VR, and science together -- to her trio of roles at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). She illustrates why she is “thankful for [her] boldness” in interning and pushing into each new job and new technology. The Field Museum in Chicago became an opportunity to connect art, science, computing, and social storytelling. By the end,...

In this episode, Ty Frankel shares how as a young music creator and entrepreneur he pushed to create relationships to build Shut Down Media. His multi-country company creates hip hop music for integration into film and television. He talks about how he overcame obstacles, how he got distracted, and how he returned to his core business. He talked about being inspired by Rich Dad, Poor Dad and other...

Zack Zalon has shifted and grown along with a transforming music industry. He began as (and still is) a musician, then blossomed at the Troubadour before launching into websites, marketing, Farm Club, Virgin, and through that Moment of Mojo into taking his background and the now-possible world of artificial intelligence into Super Hi-Fi. We wrap up with advice to his younger self after this intrig...

Enjoy the tales of Carlo Fox, Ben Willis, and Josh Andriano working together as the three-partner independent music management company leadership team running Indie-Pop. After meeting when Josh and Ben married sisters (no longer in the picture), they formed Indie-Pop and have learned to work together making decisions about talent, investment, and growth . . . and now in starting a new independent...

Jack Conte blends the worlds of music creation (Pomplamoose and the funk band Scary Pockets) and solving creators’ problems with systems (crowdfunding and community with Patreon). He shares how he balances (or doesn’t balance at times) creating music with running a large tech business. He also shares what he has learned, how his companies have shifted with the work-from-home world shift, and how h...

This week on the Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson podcast, we are joined by Ted Cohen, who shared tales of doing things for the right reasons and seeing decades ago the dimensions of our current music streaming playlists and challenges. He talks about genuineness of artists vs. overproduction in livestreaming and concerts, pricing the risks of new markets, scarcity, negotiations, how business...

A year ago, Dmitri Vietze launched a new thought leadership conference on music technology in Los Angeles and had to move it with one day's notice. This year, he has moved his whole thought leadership with Music Tectonics online with virtual conferences and community gatherings. He shares his thoughts on crisis-driven shifts to music livestreaming, expanding new releases, and digital access, along...

Welcome to the 2020 launch of the new podcast, Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson. Gigi engages with innovators and creators who are changing the way that we create and reimagine in music, art, live events, virtual events, video, film, education, and social innovation. Guests share their work and personal stories of how they became passionate about innovation and transformation in various creat...