Breaking New Ground: Recent Episodes
VIM
Technology, whether we like it or not, is rapidly altering how we live, learn, work, and play. Join Joel Pennington, Head of Product at VIM and tech industry veteran, as he inquisitively joins thought leaders and innovators to explore how industries like Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Science, Gaming, and Film shape the reality of our future.
On this episode of Breaking New Ground, Host Joel Pennington talked with Radha Mistry, a digital native who spends her time intuiting what our future, both digital and physical, will look like. She also leads the foresight practice at Autodesk and teaches as part-time faculty on the MFA Transdisciplinary Design program at The New School (Parsons).
The middle manager is dead. Long live the middle manager. Those are two conflicting ideologies, but truthfully, middle management has changed quite a bit. Non-digital natives are at the end of the career, while digital natives are taking their place. These things are going to have a major impact on the workforce moving forward.
“I also think the way people learn is going to change in those environments,” Mistry explained, “because you have an emerging generation of middle managers who are used to hopping on YouTube, checking Instagram, learning something from a video tutorial, hitting up their friends across the world for something … they haven’t grown up in these silos, essentially, due to physical proximity.”
There is a level of culture and world fluency where technology isn’t the inhibitor. Those who grew up with technology understand that it changes quickly quickly changes. Middle managers are no longer using the same tech or methods for long periods. Instead, they are having to pivot and constantly adjust to new tech.
“We’ve kind of grown up and got used to the fact that technology changes at intervals,” Mistry said. “And so now we have this, what I’m finding, is folks are really innovating and finding new modes of inspiration, new ways of learning, new ways of connecting, and finding it in unlikely places.”
While BIM (building information modeling) began in the U.S., it’s Europe leading the charge in championing it. Breaking New Ground host Joel Pennington invited two leading BIM evangelists from Europe currently leading the BIM adoption movement in the U.S. to discuss their efforts.
What is the digital metaverse, and what role will this play for our society as we become more and more integrated with the technology we use every day?
On this episode of the Breaking New Ground podcast, host Joel Pennington has brought in two guests – Samuel Arsenault-Brassard and Johan Hanegraaf – to answer these questions and more.
Although these two are accomplished architects in their own right, they're also VR enthusiasts in their free time. Hanegraaf, for example, is the Vice President of Product at Arkio. Arsenault-Brassard is both a Product Owner at VIM and a designer at the Museum of Other Realities VR Experience.
"The metaverse is actually not a new concept," Hanegraaf said. "It's something that's been in development for many years. What people are talking about when it comes to the metaverse is having one completely digital world where you can do all of the activities that you normally would in the real world."
"It's a destruction of old limitations like gravity, moisture and mold," Arsenault-Brassard added. "We are liberating ourselves from traditional limitations, but there are new limitations that are important to understand, because they actually shape the designs. … If you know the rules of the game, you can push it a lot further. But there are new rules despite all the new freedoms."
For the latest insights from industry leaders in architecture and design, subscribe to the Breaking New Ground podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify today.
There's no denying that the environmental movement has grown exponentially in the last decade. But, unlike other movements, sustainability isn't something we can easily measure or notice a palpable change with. That doesn't mean that it's any less important, however.
So, for the inaugural episode of the podcast, Joel Pennington, podcast host and the Head of Product at Vim, brings together Arol Wolford and Charlie Cichetti, two leaders driving radical change in the built environment today.
Wolford is a distinguished entrepreneur in the construction industry as well as an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects. Cichetti, on the other hand, is the CEO and Co-founder of Sustainable Investment Group and has 15 years of experience creating green and healthy buildings totaling over 56 million square feet.
Wolford recounted his first introduction to sustainability in construction after a visit to Prince Charles in 2005, when he discovered that the construction industry was responsible for a large amount of the world's carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption.
"When I realized it was our industry, I got a real passion for green," he said. "This industry has been very good to me, so I want to give back in whatever way I can."
With 15 years in the industry under his belt, Cichetti got his start in sustainable architecture around the same time that Wolford did – and he's already seen the impact that his work has made on the local communities.
"We're in the middle of this environmental movement here, and it's going to impact you and your business in some way," Cichetti said. "Let's make sure we do it right. Let's make sure our building has less of an impact on the environment."
If you enjoyed the first episode of the Breaking New Ground podcast, make sure to subscribe to Vim's podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to get notifications when the next episodes go live.