APG Sideways
About our guest: Rachel Klysen
Rachel Klysen is a researcher and strategist at Public Inc., a small but mighty social impact agency that believes all companies can be a force for good. Before diving into the world of impact, Rachel was an innovation facilitator and designer at the Deloitte Greenhouse.
She tends to be happiest when exploring answers to questions like: Can fashion ever be truly sustainable? How can we create cities for everyone? And why are the people that contribute the least to climate change most impacted?
Usually you'll find Rachel knee deep in website tabs and sticky notes. Otherwise, you can catch her knee deep in snow or exploring Toronto with her dog Lew.
Previous Posts
Brilliant Weird Best
Planners are curious folks so we asked Rachel to tell us the most brilliant, weirdest and best thing she’s come across recently.
Brilliant: Pre&ent
Finding diverse imagery is much harder than it should be. Finding imagery that authentically portrays people across different cultures and communities is a whole other story.
Enter: Pre&ent, a Montréal-based company that curates image banks that mirror the vast kaleidoscope of Canadian society. Their work inspires me to critically assess my own biases and I love them for it.
Weird: are.na
are.na itself isn’t weird. What’s weird is learning a brand new platform and having no idea where to start. are.na makes me feel like my gran when she joined Facebook back in 2018.
are.na is a space for personal knowledge management and collaboration. It’s kind of like if Google Scholar, Pinterest, and Diigo had a baby. What I like about are.na is that it has no ads, and it is wildly transparent about its pricing plans, business model, and expenses. Cool!
Best: Reasons to be Cheerful
I just recently learned that tonic is any substance that gives a feeling of vigor or well-being. With that in mind, Reasons to be Cheerful is tonic for tumultuous times.
It’s a search engine for solutions. As researchers, we spend so much time diving deep into problems, and it can become difficult to resurface and find a way forward. Reasons to be Cheerful is where I go to find inspiration, ideas, and solutions that are actually happening.
Top Guilty Pleasures
Not all of our consumption habits can be academic. In fact, sometimes the most random things can spur our thinking. So we asked Rachel to give us the sources to her creativity.
Book: Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz
Babitz is hilarious and doesn’t take herself too seriously. I’d love to be able to write like her.
Youtube: Paige Wassel
The spaces I’m in spur my creativity and Paige gives me tips and tricks to make my home feel like me (not necessarily to me directly but it sure feels like it!).
TV Show: Fleabag
The more I watch it the better it gets. The writing, the soundtrack, and the episode with Claire’s haircut gets me every single time.
This month on Slack
In case you haven’t been following us on Slack lately, here are some of our most recent and popular links.
Contributor: Mihir Marolia
“Can’t be bothered this month? Neither can we.”
Cereal brand Surreal calls out what most of us are secretly feeling post holiday season. The comical ads are certainly traffic-stopping (albeit for all the wrong reasons). With typos, Microsoft Word Art and hilariously primitive design, the billboards are certainly living up to the self-proclaimed status as some of the "laziest adverts" of the year.
Contributor: Spencer MacEachern
Adam Tooze, the Columbia professor most responsible for popularising the concept, defines the polycrisis as the interconnected and escalatory set of crises we face globally.
According to Tooze “a problem becomes a crisis when it challenges our ability to cope.” And so the polycrisis is the result of many crisis worsening the others environmental regulations.
Bookshelf wealth & recommendations
Contributor: Multiple
No surprise, but our community certainly loves books!
One member asked for recommendations to add to his impressive collection (see photo), and received the following recommendations:
- The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff
- Culture of Narcissism - Christopher Lasch
- Public Opinion - Walter Lippmann
- The Creative Act - Rick Rubin
- Madison Avenue Makeover - Michael Farmer
In a related post, we heard about the concept of “Bookshelf Wealth” which is an interior design trend that emphasizes lived-in spaces full of books and other collectibles that aren’t just for show. The items aren’t just for show but are arranged organic and unstaged because they have actually been read and enjoyed by the owner.