Microsoft's Adam Menges—founder at Lobe.ai and a former Apple employee—on helping people build intelligence into their apps by making it simple and understandable, his unconventional education, having death present, regret avoidance, grit, and his daily routine for note-taking, file management, meditation, and much more.


Adam is a product designer, entrepreneur, and engineer located in San Francisco who specializes in Artificial Intelligence and visual programming languages. He spent time working for both Apple and SendGrid before starting his own company, Lobe, which was acquired in late 2018. Adam is continuing his work on making machine learning more accessible, and researching applications of the technology for video effects. You can contact Adam to find out more at adammenges.com, and reach out to him at [email protected] and +17204840285.


Favorite quotes


"You wake up in the morning, you reach over to the side of your bed, grab your laptop, and then you go until you're tired and have to go to bed." [22:40]
"In order to be wildly creative, in order to increase your creative capacity, you need to be able to see the effect of what you're doing in real time." [24:31]
"No one can actually context-switch, even if you think you can multitask."
"[Lobe] gives you a springboard to understand what's happening behind the scenes and go for the research elsewhere."
"If you are reminded five times a day that you're going to die, it makes each day much more meaningful."
"All right, I'm never goin to be the smartest person in the room but I'll outwork everyone, and that'll be me."
"You can do anything you set your mind to do. Don't hold yourself back."
"If it becomes addictive then the technology is not invisible. It's very present."
"The mission of Lobe is to make machine learning simple and understandable for those who are not machine learnists—those that don't code."


Books



Grit by Angela Duckworth

The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Steven Kotler

Einstein: The Life of a Genius by Walter Isaacson

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers



Links



AdamMenges.com


SendGrid


Lobe.ai


SmartGeometry


CSU University

NVIDIA Titan X graphic card

Machine learning (concept)

ReLU (rectified linear unit) (concept)

TensorFlow


ResNet


ImageNet image database

Grasshopper


Visual programming (concept)

Hacker Paradise


Mirrorless cameras


Direct manipulation


Bear (app)

Oak for unguided meditation by Kevin Rose (app)

We Croak (app) [34:05]

Markdown


Love Story Yoga in the mission

CrossFit


Widget tweet from Adam's countdown


Spark AR

Instagram filters

Shaders (concept)

All Birds

Statistical death

Flow


Deliberate practice


vvvv (visual programming language)

The Future of Programming by Bret Victor (talk)


Media



Behind the Tech with Kevin Scott


The Creative Brain (movie)

Abstract: The Art of Design (documentary series)


People mentioned



Samantha Walker


Kevin Scott, Microsoft's CTO

Bill Gates


Jonathan Ive


Markus Beissinger


Mike Matas


Angela Duckworth


Elon Musk


Steve Jobs


Lindsey Menges


Bret Victor


Cal Newport


Chapters


0:00 · Teaser
1:16 · Intro
2:15 · An unconventional education and avoiding context-switching
4:30 · SendGrid
5:38 · Apple
6:26 · The beginnings of Lobe
7:39 · The machine in my apartment
9:20 · A consumer tool
10:13 · The origins of Lobe
12:17 · Projects people built with Lobe
12:32 · Wind tunnel simulation
15:06 · Parents autoplaying audio books
15:53 · Tracking dolphin migration patterns
16:59 · Is Lobe a black box?
18:53 · Joining Microsoft: From three remote workers to eighteen employees
19:49 · Early days of Lobe: How it was to start the company
21:04 · What do you miss? Building Lobe while traveling the world
22:10 · Visual programming and immediate feedback
22:47 · Photography
23:31 · Direct manipulation
23:58 · Adam's daily routine
25:45 · Meditation
26:20 · CrossFit and Yoga
27:00 · The goal of meditation and focus
27:33 · Distractions and notifications
28:02 · Screen time
29:31 · Death and regret avoidance
31:21 · Habits to have death present
32:51 · A death countdown
33:36 · A file system to be present
34:05 · How many days do you have left?
34:20 · Calculating your statistical death
35:11 · Analog activities
35:43 · Keeping in touch online
37:01 · Grit
41:09 · The Grit Scale: Angela Duckworth's work on grit as an indicator of success
45:19 · Forgetting past fears and struggles
46:52 · Deliberate practice
47:57 · Custom-made clothing
51:39 · Connect with Adam
52:15 · Books
52:37 · Media recommendations
53:22 · A purchase of $100 or less
53:58 · Success
54:24 · Role models
54:42 · A message to the world
54:50 · A healthy relationship with technology
55:38 · Ideas: When and where do you get them?
55:59 · Creativity: What makes you more creative?
56:21 · Slowing down
56:34 · Simple
56:54 · Intuitive
57:13 · Your mission
57:24 · How will artificial intelligence and machine learning impact our lives?
58:35 · Outro


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Show notes, transcripts, and past episodes at gettingsimple.com/podcast.

Theme song Sleep by Steve Combs under CC BY 4.0.


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