Afro Tech Executive is our multi city series which empowers corporate executives, investors, and tech moguls. And we kick off our twenty twenty three series with a trip to Seattle, Washington March thirtieth. We're in the city discussing artificial intelligence with Jessica Matthews, founder of Uncharted. Be in the house with us this year for an Afrotech Executive events. Experienced dot afrotech dot com to learn more. I'm Will Lucas,
missus Black Tech, Green Money. I'm going to introduce you to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black and building or simply using Texas Security, you bag this podcast is for you. Drew Hansen is an award winning designer, entrepreneur, and founder currently working on cannabis related technologies. His undergraduate in engineering physics from a university is Saskatchewan and he's got a
massive industrial design from Italy. Balances the requirements that both feels naturally in any design strategy. So I ask them, our designer's naturally good at design, Like is this something you can be born with? Or it's good and inspire design a concept that can be taught in school.
There's some parts of design that education helps. I think, you know, I create a lot of things, but I don't call myself an artist. And I do that I don't know because I don't have a lot of as much maybe faith in my art creations as I do my engineering creations. And I can't hinge my identity on it. But when it comes to design, the difference between art and design is functionality. It has a purpose, It serves
humans somehow in its methodology of its creation. And to that point, education helps the size of the basket of tools you have to reach to to be able to create. But there's great creators who have it, and there's great to sorry, there's great designers who have it, and there's great designers who don't. But you'll be more prone to I suppose, making a mistake or doing some exposure things like that, just because you wouldn't have certain experiences that maybe would have stopped that.
It's so interesting that you said you don't call yourself an artist in that way, and it would seem to me that, well, let me translate that for how I heard it, and then maybe you can clarify what you actually mean by that. So how I hear that is you're less inclined to reach and to go completely left field or just give a whole new perspective to how something could be presented to the world. And maybe you don't mean that. So I'm looking for clarity.
When I say my art, I feel like if I was to just restart the conversation with that being the subject, I feel like my art is the digital hardware creations I make with the zeros and the ones and the software, and how that's done, and the designs themselves and how they come out. I can fairly honestly say from all the hard where pieces I've gone that've created that have made it into mass production in the world, nothing really looked like them before, nothing really operated like them before.
There's some part of them there that there's a lighting design that you know, there's some real heart and soul in And I think maybe that's what I could call my art. But in the sense of how the TikTok world sees art, which is I can create this piece and sell it for this much money and I live off of that, you know that definition of art, I guess I would say I have a hard time of saying I am one of.
Those you know, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm glad you said that, because I wanted to talk to you about how how you balance the desire to create something special with what the business needs and what the consumer needs and what the business needs to make sense, Like, how do you balance those things?
It's an interesting question. It has to do with whether or not the products you create you consume, because what I've learned is it's obviously a lot easier to create something that you consume because you have certain insights that don't exist if you're outside of the demographic pool of what who actually utilizes your product. And it's okay to create that way, but it's a hell of a lot harder, and it's a hell of a lot harder to be not just on demographic, but to ensure that you're timing
for when you're making this thing is also accurate. And when I talked to that, I guess my own personal experience is, well, I my background in life is I wanted to design racing technology for Formula one, and then I pursued this long, you know, passionate journey for that, and along the way there was there was some great wins, but I think at the core of it it was a bit it was a bit different. So let me reset. I just I lost my train of thought as to why I brought that point up.
Now this is good, this is super good. I'm really interested.
Okay, so let's reset asking the ques and again, just you can have it reframed. Yeah.
So I was interested in how you balance the consumer needs and what the consumer wants versus actually what the business needs.
So but you always are trying to make something that the business needs. If you're making it under your business umbrella, that's kind of the starting point for the conversation. But how you craft that solution and what you craft and
why you craft it still can have different answers. And when I was talking about having insights versus not having insights right now, so I always My parent company is twenty two b in my product design studio, and from there we focused on things at the intersection of art and technology and art and design. But when we first created something, I want to create things that help people.
And the first thing we created was seem Technique. You know, in that company, we created a personal safety IoT platform. It had a mobile application that an Uber driver or anybody work by themselves could use to share not just where they are. Because I felt like that was easy, that was done, that was accessible. That's just by my friends. But if you you know, used by my friends, or you send up that red flag that you're in danger once or twice, that kind of a system doesn't really
have much usage. So what we're talking about is how do you share your current state with context? And that's where I felt there could be an advancement in that area. And so you know, we created an app that allowed you to share what you see, what you hear, and where you are synchronized to your GPS data live stream to five people, and it had a good application for Uber drivers. Then we extended that to we've expanded that to loan workers, targeted degmographic of people who just work
by themselves and might need access to such technology. But we really landed on a good home with realtors and
people doing open homes. For example. Now I am not a realtor, I'm not somebody doing an open home, and in this situation, I don't have certain insights, but we went ahead because I was very certain that the product we were creating was needed, was something that was valuable and I still do this day contend that, you know, we and then we created a wearable device called the Lotus that had a built in microphone and speaker, but
it also synchronized to your SERI or Google Assistant. And this is like six seven years ago right now, So it was like on the cusp of when Google introduced this technology. We were at cees on that launch here with them, and you know, I guess the point I'm trying to make is when I was in that company, we were basically trying to sell do you feel safe? And you know, to the point about doing something and
selling it and having those insights. I've been consuming cannabis my whole life for medicinal purposes, and on top of that, I've been creating technology my whole life. So when it comes to now having a cannabis technology company where our goal is to become, say the dis in of the industry, it's not just to have a vappen. It's a lot easier to create products that are on target push forward the business versus even if they're on my personal agenda.
As I guess the point to bring it all the way back to the question.
Yeah, yeah, And I'm interested in your take on It's one thing to say, you know, you you pushed for because you believe that, you know it was needed in the marketplace. It's one thing for people to want what you have. It's another thing that they're willing to pay for it. How do you you know balance? How did you know that they would pay for this?
Because we we had people that paid us, and you know, when we when we made the when we made the device itself, we actually showed up to cees at various points in the year, at various points in the product cycle, to effectively ascertained from our initial prototypes, was there market for this not only just in user base, but was there a market for this in retail distribution buyers around the world, you know, And the all the signs said yeah. Every time we had to go through some form of research,
the markets said yes. And we ended up getting into best Buy. You know, we ended up almost being acquired by a company whose name I probably shouldn't say, so I won't, but we you know, we were we were right there. And but I think the thing in business that's interesting is you missed by a bit, You missed
by a Matt doesn't matter. You miss you miss, you know, And so a lot of that for me, whether it was timing, whether it was other stuff, it pushes you to really try and consider why it was that the business didn't get where the business needed to go, even if I thought I was satisfying those personal This is what this does need to be for me to go to sleep at night. You know.
My next question, I'm going to tee this up in a specific way because I was in a Ikea some years ago and I saw this poster that they had on the wall and there it was about their design and pricing, and it was talking about they decide what something was cost first, and then the cost of it will dictate how they produce it. So they're going to make a chair, and they're going to make a twenty four dollar chair, and therefore it has to be produced
a certain way. And so getting to the point my question is sometimes things fail, not because they're not needed in the marketplace, not that because there's no demand, but the price you know of it just doesn't make sense. And so you could have decided to instead of making it with some sort of plastic, making it with a different type of plastic, therefore the price, you know, can
come down. So how do you know which levers to pull when you know that there's a need in the marketplace, you know there's some desire in the marketplace, How do you know which levers decide whether this thing will be successful or not.
There's as much market research as you can do. But you know, I hate making this quote because I know it's just such an overused quote. But somebody likes Steve jobs are the best. Like, people don't really know what they want, right, And so if I'm gonna sit there and try and market test, and I'm gonna say, I know I can sell a twenty dollars version of X. Okay, that makes perfect sense. We can go and we can try and create a twenty dollars version of X, and
we'll go forward and we'll do that. And that is a that is a way that a lot of companies, sorry, let me just turn it out. That is a way that a lot of companies operate. However, most of those companies didn't make the iPhone. Most of those companies aren't
the chat ChiPT you know. And so yeah, there's a whole lot of like zoom boxes that we can sell for twenty bucks or whatever it might be, or you know, but there's there's something to be said about combining as much as you can know with some thing that has insights in something, and then just in two suitively understanding this is a cliff, a cliff that's worth at least looking over, you know. And at the end of the day, it's almost like when it comes to creating product, creating
companies or anything of that nature. You know, when a lot of people ask when do you think it's perfect? When do you think it's finished? There is no there is no There is no perfect there is It's good enough to go out and I'm comfortable that it's going
to deliver on its experience. And I think maybe bringing it back to a fundamental difference between art and design, design does have a point where it's supposed to deliver on a promise, and at that point in time, I can be more relaxed about the visual cues of something or the aesthetic component of something, which is only one part of that thing.
You know.
Yeah, Oh, I was just watching you answer that, and you made me think about how just having the design is probably not enough. You got to be able to communicate the whys and the hows and the reasoning behind.
Have you experienced, perhaps you know, a counterpart or even a classmate, somebody who had remarkable things but couldn't communicate it therefore couldn't find success, or just aware of the concept and what happens there that could allow those people to find better success being able to communicate versus just having great notes and great designs on a sketch pad.
Yeah. I think there's like two levels to that question. On the first level, you have communication of your own ideas, right, and the ability to work within your team, the ability to show somebody, I thought, the ability to do whatever. And you know, for me transitioning from an engineer to a designer because my undergraduate's engineering physics. I then did a whole bunch of motorsports stuff. I did a data
acquisition internship in Indianapolis. But when I was in Italy and I was shifting over to becoming a designer, and I was just trying to be humble and say, I don't know if about you know, like, I was just really trying to see the difference.
And I think.
I think somebody who can't communicate their simple ideas to their team that's one problem. That's something you can learn. And you know, my mentor in Italy, Alberto Fraser, he said, I'll teach you three things. One how to draw because you can't draw, and he used a lot more expeditive language than that too. How to think like a designer and not an engineer because they're fundamentally different. And three
quality of life. And that's another conversation. But on the subject of drawing, you know, there is a book called Learning to Draw with the Right Side of the Brain, and it's a fantastic, fundamental book that if you go through their exercises, it is undeniable that you will be able to draw at the end of it. I absolutely guarantee it. And so it basically rewires your brain from seeing the world with the left side, where you're analyzing
shape system and patterns. You know, when you were a kid, if somebody asked you to draw an eye, you weren't going to do the half circle with the other half circle. But now as an adult, almost every single adult will draw an eye as that because they've been trained on
that as the symbol for that. But if you were a child and you said draw that eye, they would actually just try to draw the contours as they saw it, and that's the fundamental difference, is just learning to draw it as you see it versus how you think about it. And once you kind of free yourself from that shackle, you know, communication abilities at least quick sketch ones become
more proficient. So on that first level, i'd say that's the answer to that question of if somebody was lacking a communication ability, it would definitely affect their ability to communicate because the beauty is in the details. And you know, one time I was working on a hangar designed for Valentino with my mentor. It was his client, not mine, and he sat there and we printed out what we
did from the digital files. But then he just sit there with a pencil and went over it like forty fifty sixty times until he was like, nah, that's the curve. And so there's a small part of just knowing the fundamental tools that helps you really master those digital ones, even if you are the more advanced students who thinks you're great at communication. And then I would say the second level to that answer is me, I am terrible
at communicating in certain regards. I am horrible at posting on social media, and when you don't show the world what you're creating, and the only mediums that the world accepts these days, nobody knows who you are what you create, And so you know, I am the poster child for I never really wanted to be famous. I just wanted
to make things that help people. But in today's world, when the things you create other people now depend on and livelihoods start to depend on, you kind of have to let go of the original reasonings and learn some new communication tools, because I guess that would be what you're hampering.
What inspired you to use your talents in the cannabis industry.
I we were coming out of seeing Technic, which is that personal Safety at Platform had one hundred thousand dollars left. I had just burned quite a significant chunk of change trying to make it work because we kept getting really positive indicators that were just like, Okay, we should figure this one out a bit longer. And you know, to that point, I'm still happy everything went the way it is. I still have to recover the damage that that created, but you just learned so much from it, and I think,
I think, what do I think? What do I think? Okay, ask me the question again.
Yeah, I'm interested in what inspired you to use the talents and gifts you've been able to develop in the cannabis industry versus you know, all the other things you could have selected.
So my dream in life was Formula one racing tech. I ended up getting flown to England to defend a technology design against the other ten best selected in the world in a Formula one competition that Renau put on. And you know, I spent a year in Indianapolis very graciously with Team Wattwalker Racing and got to see the track life. And you know, when that was my initial dream,
it just seems so unattainable. But then when I was twenty six and I was in the F one facility, I was like, I can hang with the best in the world in this. But then when I had to go back to Italy and my mentor was like quality of life. Bringing that into the conversation, now, how do you want to live your life? He's like, don't I want to be able to see my daughter. So I gave up being the head designer at ray Ban and I was like, I want to be able to eat Chinese food. I want to live in a real city.
I want culture. I can't live in the middle of nowhere for the rest of my life just because I want to pursue Formula one. And so when it came to what I could use my skills for, I just really realized I love designing tech, you know, I loved just the final applications for it. And when it came down to, you know, starting it now, seem had about one hundred thousand dollars left in the bank account, and it was, well, now's the time because here in Canada
it's fully legal federally. It's something that I have the insights on, you know, growing up, I started consuming Canada's very young, and to a point where, of course, at certain times everybody have uses something when they're a child, but it was very medicinal, like I sat almost every day through calculus. I finished calculus and bilingual diploma, so I finished calculus in French. For anybody who says, you know, cannabis destroys the child's mind, well it was helping me
sit through mine. I got through that, and then I went to university, so I know firsthand what it's like and what it means to certain people, I suppose and I also know that when it comes to something like alcohol, people have decanters in their homes, these very beautiful crystal vases, vases what you want to say, I call it, and the world will walk into somebody's home and be like, here's a nice bottle of wine. What a beautiful decanter. Let's get smashed now and celebrated, and it's like this
culture that's kind of interesting when people don't. People have basically debranded alcohol from being a drug. They're like, that's not a drug, that's alcohol, but it's a definition a drug. And so what I always thought was lacking was the injection of something that could create pieces in the cannabis sector that were officially decanter level grades. So somebody walks into a home, you can invite them into the conversation just with the object itself and then soften the experience
and then ultimately elevate it for everybody. So really that I just I thought I had something to offer, you know, I when all the technology in cannabis that I feel is relevant exploded onto the scene in the various places it did, you know, like the volcano with analog dial over a decade ago in Los Angeles, when people started figuring out to pass a little bag around was a thing. You know, there's a certain moment in time when concentrates
came out. That company called Gpenn captured all of everybody's attention, and we're producing a device called the micro g and that that was a moment in time. But what's different about us and everybody else is I guess the word purpose.
You know.
I don't want to just take any of those little things and make a small adjustment on it. I want to find holes where we're just not fulfilling our promise as creators that have functionality requirements, not just artistic requirements.
And I want to make sure that this one chance we've been given to consume cannabis recreationally, medicinally and legally gets the best shot of having the tools and the products that elevated status to something that is becoming mainstream, and not even just here in the most wild of country. It's like, can we get this in a Shariahwah country and maybe get them just often up in one way and have cannabis, you know, if we do it right.
Because there's certain bars in those places that are consuming alcohol, so it's not like the conversations that far fetch and I guess back to the point of making things just to help people, it seems like a good place to put my efforts. After the dream of that f one was kind of passed on.
As a part of jews website that said he's interested in consulting and collaborating on projects that have a positive impact on the world. And I think we all get by now the benefits of medicinal marijuana. I mean it helps with anxiety, pain, information, talk to your own doctor, not me. But like re creational marijuana. When you say you're interested in working on things that make a positive impact on the world, how does recreational marijuana do that?
How does recreational marijuana make a positive impact on the world?
Ju speak Sony, Well, there's there's a lot of safety and regulation ultimately, you know, when it comes to cannabis products, there's people who make bad cannabis.
Will give you cannabis covered in mold, will give you cannabis covered in xyz that is actually harmful for an individual when it comes to a recreational user. So I don't necessarily need a medicinal certificate to say I want to take tailan all right, or if I just want to kind of have like a sleep ease, right, And so there's a certain functionality that we can empower a recreational user with without needing it to be medicinal like we have done with everything else. And so so that
only happens when you can trust what's in something. And ultimately I've just really learned we can't trust people in general, like to leave something to themselves. I'm sorry to say so, But other very interesting things start to happen with regulations.
So let me explain that. For example, if every single cannabis that's now released is tested for all it's cannabinoids and terrapenes and there's specific percentages and volumes by weight, now we can start to have reliable data to offer products that utilize that machine learning structures on that data sets. How is this affecting that? How is that doing that?
And the level of infrastructure from the creator side starts to go up, and it starts to become more advanced, and it starts to become more evolved with a purpose, you know. And I always said, for example, blockchain is great, cryptocurrencies are great. Is cryptocurrency going to be the best demonstration of blockchain technology. Time will tell, and that's kind of what I'm talking about.
No, Yeah, So I have outside of this business. I have another business where we're a marketing technology agency. We do video production and etc. And we specifically focus on companies and organizations that are trying to reach and engage
multiculture and diverse audiences. And so as a byproduct of that, a lot of our clients tend to be like, you know, nonprofit organizations, governments and etc. And what I learned a revelation to me was that what typically happens with video producers is they assume that when you hire me to do a video, you just want a really beautiful video. And what I found to be our value proposition was I realized, you don't just want a nice video. You if your government you ultimately want to pass a levee.
That's really what you want. The video is just a part of telling a story that ultimately helps you pass a levee down the line or whatever. So what are are some of the things when you take on a new project, design project? What are the questions you ask yourself to answer for the consumer? What they're really they don't even know to ask what are you trying to solve for them?
It depends on if that the foundation of why I'm answering the question is personal based or business based. And I say that because when I'm trying to solve something personal based, of course the end goal is business positive results.
But it's almost some of it is an ego play if you're being honest, that you put that into production because you didn't necessarily have the data to do that, and when it came when it comes time, like right now, we have we have or we're transitioning from a vaporizer product with toky to an accessory that is for dry flour, and and you know, there's arguably not a whole lot on the market that's like it to prove that it
should exist. But I know how much happiness will come from people when they go through this experience that we're trying to offer. And there's just a certain level of happiness that when you get a wave that hits you of it after you touch something that intuitively, I don't need data anymore. I've been I've been around certainly long enough to know. So I guess the challenge to me and my team or a team, and I is always when we talk about a product, we always say, Okay,
what's the user journey? How am I going to touch it? How am I going to hold it? How is it going to feel when I go about it? And every single step, have I introduced friction which is going to piss somebody off? Or have I just made their lives easier? And if you make somebody's lives enough easier, you're doing great.
And if at some point you inject a piece of cleverness where people can figure like almost find it, then you're taking somebody from doing great having a great experience to oh damn, I'm gonna remember this forever because that was just so cute, you know, And it's like, how much of that can you find while still fulfilling your promise of I'm not going to just put crap in here for the sake of putting crap in here, and it still works the way it's supposed to.
You know, when you do have to go gather data, is you talked about, you know, just that unique insight that you may have as a designer, But when data is important, talk to me about the experiences you've had in how you actually go about collecting data, like what are you using, are you using serve? Are you going door to door knocking? And are you using on What is the process for gathering valuable consumer data?
Depending it's industry specif think again when we were in the so when I was creating action cameras in London the UK as designing action cameras for your company called Drift Innovation kind of like GoPros. We had a lot of professional teams in a lot of professional circuits and there was you know, access to mailing lists of people that we could you know, bring to the table to give us active data that we were actively bringing people
into sessions for which sometimes we did. But what I think was more important was where that company came from. Is also an insightful conversation about data. So the two owners of my action sports company, Robin and sab rus their souls for helping bring me up. They were IBM consultants who started effectively, sorry, let me fix my camera. They were IBM consultants who started a website to distribute
action cameras. Originally, then they sold so many action cameras that they had the data on what the consumers hated and liked and loved, and they were able to translate that to three features that an action camera didn't have, a rotating lens, a built in screen, and a built in remote control. And they said, I don't know anything about making cameras, but I know what the consumers want. And so for them, they were able to, I guess, take data off of their current activities that was relevant
for tomorrow's activities so to speak. When it comes to us now and operating data. You know my business partner Roy I'll bu Lack. He's fantastic. He's from Uni Lever, he's ahead of technology over there in Canada, and he really drives a lot of data conversations for us. And he was developing dashboards for them a long time ago where I used to live in London, England and he used to live in London, England, and I remember meeting one day and he was like, you have to come
see this dashboard. But to that point, you know, there's the data that you create internally in your own company that you should be setting yourself up to capture before you're trying to invest in outside external capture data. Because if you're already able to generate revenue, well, your own data is going to help you become more efficient at all facets of that. And so you know, when it comes to should I make a product for a consumer, I'll usually go out on a limb and test after,
if I'm absolutely honest with you. But the testing we do before is now that we're in the industry. For example, we can create something and we can make a digital version of it and I can go bring it to key opinion leaders and have their their opinion on it. And I think, you know, it's tough to trust people
these days, absolutely, with the way the world is. But I think a lot of what drives our creations after we have an aditional idea is bringing in certain key people at certain milestones that we trust.
What informed your sense of design in your background? Like what if I go to Bill and I see you Bill grew up in the countryside, you know, maybe he went to parochio, I mean some Christian school like he had. He was going to have some sort of design sense that was informed by his upbringing. Tell me about yours.
It's probably by my parents' taste, because they got some good taste, to be honest, and they were just when I was growing up. You know, my father was He's a genius. He got one of two scholarships to all of Guyana to leave the country and that allowed him to get a mining engineering degree at Queen's University in Canada.
He then started working for several companies and along the journey, but at some point in time he convinced them to send him back to school so he could get his m And when he came back the company was going under. He bought it for eight dollars plus, assuming all the responsibility for their debt. Of course, and long story short, he figured out a new way to mine a coal deposit that they couldn't have access to before, and then he took that to Asia. And this is to answer
your question. My father while I was growing up, was frequently coming to and from Asia with you know, Japanese little toys, karaoke, laser discs, all the latest stuff, where it was just picking my curiosity of technology, but at the same time just seeing how things are done efficiently.
And so I think that combined with watching him just from a fly on the wall as he progressed his career while I was a child, from an entrepreneur perspective, it made me always want to create things that were for the future that you know, were business savvy, because if that makes sense, that and the fact that I want to die a kid, If I'm honest, I've been watching anime since I was a kid, and I just want to I always want to be able to dream
in different worlds and see different things and expand like that. And I think just riding that train as far as it'll go. And it took me into import cars, which took me into Formula one cars, which took me into wherever we went. You know the story I tell somebody asking me about how I figured out Santa Claus wasn't real.
It was one of those toys that my dad brought me back, was a voice recorder that had like a voice activated function, and so I taped it to the Christmas tree and I heard my parents that night and the next morning I yelled at them for lying then like that Santa Claus wasn't real. But it's just kind of that kind of stuff, I guess.
Bread.
But then like my dad, you know, he loved banging Olison and he's an aud so yeah, growing up, he like every time he had had the speaker, he was just like, look at the curves and just you know, it was always just so much more than the product. It was always about how you made you feel when you were just with it. You know that that I think is a bit of a differentiator. Maybe then about how I see things?
How would you say a designer knows they're good? Because I imagine there's an argument to be made for some sort of external validation, right, and could it be pure conviction? Though, how do you know if you're going.
It's a good question. So when I when I transitioned from engineering into design, I knew I had no design ability, and I knew things like drawing and communication were difficult for me, which put me at a severe disadvantage versus other designers. Then I went to try and get a job in London, probably the one of the hardest places to find a job, and I got humble pie caked
in my face every day for six months. You know, I went to every single design studio and gave them my initial little portfolio that I had when I came out of school thinking I was top dollar and just you know, after you burn all thirty forty of them, it's like, but each time it happens, though, I realize I was trying to tell people I love designing technology, and I think the important lesson here is the designs
I was showing. A lot of them were things I created that were created because I had to a school project, for example, I have to make that. But when it comes to showing the things you made for the love of it, that's when you know you're a good designer, in my opinion, because I will hire somebody who can come to me in a job interview and be like, here's these four things I made because I loved them,
and I did all these things. And it's true. If you go through the process of creating something, you know the small little things about it, you know, and the nuances and those sort of parts, but you need to have the rigor to see it all the way through because until you're finished something, it always looks like crap from the moment you start like until it's at that part. But it's not about trying to make it not look
like crap. It's about continuing to ask the right questions that carve out from that ice block simplicity and leave you with that thing that was always there to begin with. And trying to do that for the reasons of oh, school taught me this is how I render, so I render this way versus oh, I actually googled how to do bump mapping because I saw somebody else and now my shit's way back. Like it's just that's really it. Once you have that's the part. I can't teach anybody.
You can't teach anybody to give a shit but excuse me. But once they do, they you know you're a good designer because you care. Love that. I guess that's the point.
It's a really really good answer to it. In talking about cannabisity, I mean there is it's such a new industry, a legal industry. I should say it's not a new industry, but it's a new legal industry, and there's so much still left to be formed with the industry. It's not federally federally legal in the United States. But what role do you see product designers might play in shaping the future of the cannabis industry.
I think it could be everything. Because the interesting thing about the word product design in twenty twenty three is that it no longer means would have meant six years ago. It doesn't mean would have meant three years ago. You know, somebody out walking out of school calling themselves a product designer could be a web three stack developer these days, and they're like, I make products and that's what the
world accepts. To that point, the pos terminals that the Canada sector uses are all designed technically speaking, and up here in Canada, you know, we in Ontario and the British Columbia and a couple other provinces. The way it works is, even though it's federally legal, provincially, either it's you know, still run by the government or it's allowed
to be privatized. And in those sectors where it's still run by the government, you know, there were some hiccups this year where they had to shut down orders to the entire province because their systems basically went down or got hacked or X, Y and z. So to the point of how do we make it? How do products help push it forward? Well, one is just make sure we don't make mistakes like that when making those infrastructure products.
But when it comes to the visual, tangible things I hold in my hand products, they have to be things that you know, don't instantly give a version to the masses. And you know, if somebody were just to walk in the next day and just like slap a sex toy on the table. Everybody in the room would be like go. And if somebody was to come and walk in and like slap a bong on the table, depending on the environment,
most people would still be like God, you know. But I think there's something to be said about if somebody were to come in with a cannabis plant that's been created in a beautiful container in a Bondz eye method to showcase the artistic of it and put that on the table, everybody in the room would approach it with curiosity. And so what we choose to put in the room and what rooms we choose to put them in will really help speed up people's curiosity being accepted or just
slow it down. But either way, it's coming. It's just how fast we can remove the ignorance. Is I suppose the designer's responsibility.
Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Network and I Hire Media, and it's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with additional production support by Sarah Ragon and Rose McLucas. Special thank you to Michael Davis. If Nessa Serrano. Learn more about my guess and other tech that Trump is an innovators, an afrotech dot com, enjoying black tech, green money. Share this with somebody, Go get your money. Peace and love,