FC/LA: A Meeting Of The Most Creative Minds
Join Fast Company editors and writers live from our creativity counter-conference in Los Angeles on May 6th & 7th!
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Check out our ideas at the Gensler workshop on what a public space or park should be! Lots of people love the Tuileries gardens in Paris. Interesting to think that even parks can be ageist! Are kiddie parks or exceptionally geriatric setups a misuse of public space? Who gets to make that decision? Gensler deploys teams to the communities around each project to get a feel for what's right for that area.
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7 rules for being effective on social media from the CEO of theAudience:
1. The social organism thrives on human expression. We have to create something that adds value and teaches us something.
2. We have to share human emotions.
3. Social media is the constant exchange of emotion.
4. Social media is constantly affected by external factors (the news, something in nature occurring).
5. Social media flows through frictionless sharing.
6. Social media protects itself from advertising.
7. Social media thrives on memes, on taking a new piece of art or content and add their spin on it. -
Umami director of culinary innovation Thomas Curran: Umami was discovered in the 1900s by a Japanese foodie and scientist (Kikunae Ikeda), there was a flavor he would pick up in certain foods that didn't fit into salty, bitter, sour, or sweet. There is this cool thing called monosodium glutamate that is naturally occurring, even though no one in the US likes to talk about MSG. It's found in beef, mushrooms, soy, and fish products. In Japan they've been using the word for a couple hundred years already (just like we'd say something is sweet). But it wasn't until the 1990s that it became commonly used in the U.S. "Umami is the flavor of time," said author and food developer Barb Stuckey - by roasting and aging food it frees the glutamates so that you can taste them (there is no added monosodium glutamate in Umami burgers).
"Describing the taste umami without using the word umami would be like trying to describe the taste of salt without saying salt," says Stuckey. Instead of buying ingredients like ketchup, Umami makes it from scratch, they have a partner who makes umami rich products just for the restaurant - 40% of the ingredients used in the recipes are proprietary items. Those cheesy tots (scroll down for a photo) is a secret menu ingredient because they are still hand formed--Umami has not found any partner who can make them for the restaurants at scale. Bun has 5 ingredients and it comes from 90 year old starter. But they work with regional bakers -- how do they get this bun to all 25 restaurants around the country? That's the challenge they are solving for right now. -
The classic Umami Burger, first created by Adam Fleischman (One of our Most Creative People 2014). The secret menu used to have 40 different burgers but they have since pulled back on them, says Curran. You might still find the Spicy Bird or Spicy Cow at a couple locations. And there's a secret dessert: the UFO, "unidentified fried object" (deep fried cookie smothered with sauce and ice cream).
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Just had an amazing lunch session at Umami on S. Broadway. It's so refreshing to hear upper management admit they don't have all the kinks of scaling figured out yet. Learning as they go and trying not to scale beyond their reach. Here's a shot of the original Umami burger with the brand new bun recipe, made from a 90-year-old starter!
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Oprah Winfrey announces a new "intentional" show with Holly Robinson Peete and her husband Rodney Robinson Peete. Reality show about their family. "For Peete's Sake." "We live in Hollywood but we're not a Hollywood family," says Holly Robinson Peete. The show will be about their kids--their son has autism--their in-laws and "400 pounds of dog."
"This is Black-ish for real," said Winfrey. -
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"Our creativity comes from the fact that we didn't give a shit and we didn't have to...we didn't have investors...for us it was an elaborate version of the lemonade stand," says Bryan Petroff, cofounder of Big Gay Ice Cream. They source from a 300 cow 1,000 acre dairy in New York.
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"We didn't know if it was going to last 3 days or 300 years," says cofounder Douglas Quint. When waits for Big Gay Ice Cream trucks got up to 90 minutes and visitors were coming from around the world he realized that the hole was keeping our core customers. So they opened a shop. Now there are 90 minute waits at the shop.
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"The real oh shit moment is when we opened the first day and there were 200 people waiting before we opened," says Petroff. They opened the Saturday of Labor Day weekend (bad idea in retrospect, Bryan made cones for 13 hours straight). They didn't leave until 3am and opened the next day at 7am. Buzz was built on social media.
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We just unlocked a secret menu item that wasn't part of our planned tour: the Ace Hotel downtown gave us a private walkthrough of the 1920s United Artists theater that they have refurbished. 1600 seats. They are programming events here after decades of it being unused.
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Oprah Announces A New Reality Show
Fast CompanyThe new show, called For Peete's Sake, will star actress Holly Robinson Peete and her husband, former NFL player Rodney Peete. -
Proud to welcome #FCLA15 to Los Angeles! Welcome @FastCompany, to the capital of #entertainment, #tech, #fashion, & #design. #longLA #techLAby LA Mayor's Office via twitter 5/7/2015 4:56:54 PM -
Fast Company writer Nicole LaPorte is kicking off the first session.
How can a company really have two CEOs? Erik Logan, co-CEO of OWN Network, says "I speak for Sheri [Salata, co-CEO], and Sheri speaks for me." They both work on business and creative. "If we can't reconcile art and commerce, how is the rest of the company going to do it?"
They tell staff that they're so aligned, an update only needs to go through one of them. It's their responsibility to update each other--not everyone else. Having Oprah being the inspiring soul of the company helps. -
It may be surprising to think about, but the OWN network didn't just spring up. Over the past four years, the focus of OWN has had many iterations. The first years were spent learning the cable world. Now, a Tyler Perry partnership has signaled another pivot in programming. The driving factor has been a desire for storytelling, and that's how the network has grown.
That's been a thread throughout the conversations at FCLA. Realizing that creative, successful brands were not at that scale from day one. Having the courage and desire to create and keep creating is how every one of this big ideas has grown. -
OWN Co-Presidents Sheri Salata and Erik Logan share some thoughts on how they are able to work so well together and what makes their partnership so successful:
"This only works if there's love. If there's mistrust or fear, it won't work. Oprah knows we take our relationship very seriously and that if she speaks to one of us it's the other's job to update the other one."
"Call in the miracles you want to happen and leave that space in your life."
"We've signed up to play the long game here that will represent Oprah's legacy for a long time. The big decisions we make are much bigger than any single debate."
"We're on a heartfelt spirit-driven road together so if something doesn't feel right, it usually doesn't feel right to most of us."
"We don't divide our roles into business and creative. If we divided art and commerce there would be a chasm in the company we didn't want."
"Anytime I was in trouble, I had somebody here that had my back. It felt like magic."
"We don't make really fast decisions because that's when you get into trouble. We take our time and will spin it around then try it on for size first."
