Kate O'Neill

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About Kate O'Neill
Kate O'Neill is an author, keynote speaker, strategic advisor, and "tech humanist" helping humanity prepare for a more technology-driven future by teaching business how to be successful with more human-centric data and technology. An expert on experience strategy and meaningful human experiences, she is founder of KO Insights, which helps clients align their strategic approach to experience design and data to benefit both the organization and the people who use their products and services.
Kate's career has been characterized by firsts: after building the first departmental website at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she was recruited to Toshiba in San Jose, California and built their first intranet, shortly after which she held the first content management role at Netflix. Kate also founded digital strategy and analytics firm [meta]marketer, led cutting-edge online optimization work at Magazines.com, and held leadership positions in a variety of digital content and technology start-ups.
She likewise has a history of pioneering big ideas in digital strategy and human experience: she was among the first to advocate for empathy combined with data to guide experience optimization, and brought a meaningfulness model to marketing strategy.
Kate has been featured in CNN Money, TIME, Forbes, USA Today, and other international media. She writes a business column and contributes regularly to a variety of online outlets including CMO.com. While serving on a dizzying number of boards and committees, Kate provides mentorship and marketing advice to dozens of startups and aspiring founders. She is a vocal and visible advocate for diversity in technology, entrepreneurship, and leadership -- she was featured by Google in their global campaign for women in entrepreneurship.
Kate has been named "Technology Entrepreneur of the Year," a "Woman to Watch in Retail Disruption," "Social Media Strategist of the Year," a "Power Leader in Technology" and a "Woman of Influence," along with numerous other awards and recognitions.
More information about Kate, including ways to connect, can be found at:
http://www.koinsights.com/about/about-kate-oneill/
Kate's career has been characterized by firsts: after building the first departmental website at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she was recruited to Toshiba in San Jose, California and built their first intranet, shortly after which she held the first content management role at Netflix. Kate also founded digital strategy and analytics firm [meta]marketer, led cutting-edge online optimization work at Magazines.com, and held leadership positions in a variety of digital content and technology start-ups.
She likewise has a history of pioneering big ideas in digital strategy and human experience: she was among the first to advocate for empathy combined with data to guide experience optimization, and brought a meaningfulness model to marketing strategy.
Kate has been featured in CNN Money, TIME, Forbes, USA Today, and other international media. She writes a business column and contributes regularly to a variety of online outlets including CMO.com. While serving on a dizzying number of boards and committees, Kate provides mentorship and marketing advice to dozens of startups and aspiring founders. She is a vocal and visible advocate for diversity in technology, entrepreneurship, and leadership -- she was featured by Google in their global campaign for women in entrepreneurship.
Kate has been named "Technology Entrepreneur of the Year," a "Woman to Watch in Retail Disruption," "Social Media Strategist of the Year," a "Power Leader in Technology" and a "Woman of Influence," along with numerous other awards and recognitions.
More information about Kate, including ways to connect, can be found at:
http://www.koinsights.com/about/about-kate-oneill/
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Blog post“In most of our cities and our nation, we don’t prioritize human life [….] We’re prioritizing traffic and the movement of vehicles.”
Source: Zero bikers or pedestrians were killed by cars in Oslo last year photo I took pre-pandemic in the NoLIta area of lower Manhattan What scale you build at and what has your focus shows your priority. If you want to prioritize human safety and human experiences, you have to build at the human scale.
In contemporary business, influenced as it1 week ago Read more -
Blog postI happened to run across an old copy of the values for my old company, [meta]marketer. (Well, I have them in my Evernote. I have everything in my Evernote. I’m bound to run across something random every day. Which is fun.) Anyway, I read them over again because I was curious what kind of perspective …
Continue reading "Still the right values"
The post Still the right values appeared first on Kate O'Neill | KO Insights.
1 week ago Read more -
Blog postThe way strategists and designers theorize about human experience — and specifically customer experience, which is humans in the contextual role of “customer” — is often disconnected from the way business leaders think about strategy and business models. But in practice, for substantive and sustainable results, the efforts must be aligned. For example, I’ve been …
Continue reading "Cannibalizing Your Own Experiences"
The post Cannibalizing Your Own Experiences appear1 week ago Read more -
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Blog postOne of the themes shaping my work this year is “the future of trust and truth.” In an era characterized by disagreement over basic facts, where algorithmically-optimized social media platforms show us the truths we most want to see, the roles of truth and trust in ethics, in systems design, and in human experience strategy …
Continue reading "The Future of Trust and Truth"
The post The Future of Trust and Truth appeared first on Kate O'Neill | KO Insights.
1 week ago Read more -
Blog postScratch the surface of any debate about the future of work and you’ll find there an argument for Universal Basic Income. And certainly from a purely survivalist standpoint that’s an important consideration. We need to know what it is going to look like for people not to have the financial resources from working. We also …
Continue reading "Universal Basic Meaning"
The post Universal Basic Meaning appeared first on Kate O'Neill | KO Insights.
2 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postAh, 2021. The year we’ve been looking forward for the entire century that was 2020. Rationally, we know the calendar year is an arbitrary convention, and that, compared with just a few days ago, nothing is fundamentally different about the laws of physics. Yet after a year predominantly defined by a devastating global pandemic and …
Continue reading "2020’s Trends as Insights into 2021 Possibilities"
The post 2020’s Trends as Insights into 2021 Possibilities appeared2 weeks ago Read more -
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Blog post2020 was the year we all loved to hate. How much did we hate it? Well, thanks to the brilliant data visualization team at The Economist, we can just about quantify that: Answer: we hated it a lot. But while 2020 may have a lot to answer for, and while 2021 has many of us …
Continue reading "Approaching 2021 with Strategic Optimism"
The post Approaching 2021 with Strategic Optimism appeared first on Kate O'Neill | KO Insights.
2 weeks ago Read more -
Blog postThe end of the year teaches us about letting go and renewal, if we let it.55th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues, my favorite block in Midtown during the winter As a child, I thought December was winter, and that winter meant the end of the year. Having grown up in the suburbs of Chicago, I knew gray Januaries and bleak Februaries that felt like the longest, rather than the shortest, months, and I guess if anyone asked me what season we were in before the Vernal Equinox I would hav3 weeks ago Read more
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Blog postA call to make our appreciation for our own good fortune more actionable for others.Atlas masked, at Rockefeller Center Most people think of Thanksgiving as the high holiday of gratitude in the calendar year, but for me it tends to be the last few weeks of December. The more time I spend reflecting on the year about to end and making plans and strategies for the year ahead, the more opportunity I find to appreciate what went well, and what could have gone worse.
In a year it was1 month ago Read more -
Blog postKO Insights is in quiet strategy and planning mode through the rest of the year — we have big plans for 2021, and can’t wait to share them — but if you have a business need you are of course still welcome to reach out. A very happy festive winter season to you all, whether …
Continue reading "May your days be merry and insightful"
The post May your days be merry and insightful appeared first on Kate O'Neill | KO Insights.
1 month ago Read more -
Blog postThere is a popular tendency, amplified perhaps by social media, to catalog all current events by the year in which they are happening, and when these current events are what we might call ”bad,“ to then blame the year itself for being a bad year. 2020, by this reckoning, feels like the worst year of our lifetimes.
But you and I, brilliant creatures that we are, both know that events aren’t dictated by the earth’s rotation of the sun, and we know that the human concept of time is arbitr2 months ago Read more -
Blog postAt the beginning of March, I published a post here sharing my Speaker Strategy Clarity Model. But in the weeks since then (which have felt more like years), conferences and events large and small have been canceled or rescheduled, our everyday vocabulary now includes phrases like “social distancing” and “flatten the curve,” and — hopefully …
Continue reading "Solving Upwards: Revisiting My Speaker Strategy Clarity Model During Social Distancing"
The post Solving Upwa10 months ago Read more -
Blog postI am a professional speaker, and while I don’t speak about speaking, I do often get asked for input on how people can get into speaking, become better speakers, grow their speaking business, and so on. And I like to be able to be helpful when I can. So at one of the recent opportunities …
Continue reading "What Should You Speak About? Sharing My Speaker Strategy Clarity Model"
The post What Should You Speak About? Sharing My Speaker Strategy Clarity Model appeared fi11 months ago Read more -
Blog postWhile business tends to focus on the future of work and humans tend to focus on the future of jobs, the real potential for the future is in aligning them.
A baby interacting with Pepper the robot, taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeena/37017614286/ (CC BY 2.0) When I speak with groups of executives about emerging technology, digital transformation, and the future of human experiences, every group eventually tends to ask the same questions about the future of work. They1 year ago Read more -
Blog postBeing a “resident” (speaker) at the House of Beautiful Business was a unique and memorable experience:
My sessions were well attended and people were engaged:
This was my first time in Lisbon — it was gorgeous. I already want to go back:
Tile everywhere:
I ate and drank like vegan royalty:
We even took a side trip to Cascais on our last day in town:
The post The House of Beautiful Business in Lisbon, November 2019 appeared first on kate
1 year ago Read more -
Blog post“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.”
— John Cage I’ve been traveling a lot these last few years and it’s always an interesting temptation, everywhere I go, to judge the places I visit in terms of whether I could live there, whether it’s cool, whether it’s beautiful. But I find the most satisfying experiences are had when I can remind myself to appreciate1 year ago Read more -
Blog postThe Adobe Summit has been taking place in Las Vegas this week, and having attended as part of the Adobe Insiders influencers program, I’ve…
Continue reading on Medium »
2 years ago Read more -
Blog postI’m thankful to Tony and Camille Chatman for including us in their family Thanksgiving celebration — and then humbling us hard at the family domino game.
The Chatman family and me at dinner; not pictured because he’s taking the photo is Robbie Quinn
The table
Close-up of place setting
The domino game
Looking from their balcony across the East River to Long Island City, Queens
Wherever you were and whomever you were with, I hope your day was as f2 years ago Read more -
Blog post“Excuse me”—
I keep walking. As one does. Vaguely aware of two young women sitting off to the side of the sidewalk and laughing, I quickly come to the conclusion that they’re trying to ask for money.
But the voice repeats and gets to the point more quickly:
— “excusemecanyoutakeapictureofus?”
I turn to see two 20-something women sitting on a sidewalk bench bundled up for the cold and glowing with leftover laughter from whatever had them cracking up just before this m2 years ago Read more -
Blog postvia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism
What about blogs? When I first started mine, I had a small group of friends who posted pretty much daily, often nothing longer than a longish Facebook post. We all read and commented on one another’s posts.
Source: Time for a blog renaissance | David B. Thomas
Totally. I’m all for a blog renaissance, for a revival of the blogging arts, for Blogging 2.0 or 3.0 or 6.3 or whatever it would be now.
3 years ago Read more -
Blog postWith humans and automation sharing many customer care responsibilities, the answer’s not totally straightforward
Continue reading on Medium »
3 years ago Read more -
Blog postthe Chicago River dyed green, photo taken by Mike Boehmer from Chicago, via Wikipedia
Although I lived in Chicago for many St. Patrick’s Days, there was only one year I actually saw the boats out dyeing the river green, and that was in 2003 as I walked to the court house with the first great love of my life, Karsten Soltauer, to get married. We paused for a while to lean over a bridge and watch the boats cruising around in the river pouring in bags of dye behind them, turning their wa3 years ago Read more -
Blog post“Should The Giant Zero be a book?”
Heck yes. I’d read and highlight the crap out of it.
Also, if you haven’t already, please pick up a copy of my book Pixels and Place (and/or send me an address in the great physical world of distances where I can send you a signed one) because we are aligned on a lot of our thinking and I would LOVE to discuss all this with you sometime.
3 years ago Read more -
Blog postI would never claim to know more about love than most people. All humans — and maybe non-human animals too — probably come equipped with a fairly intuitive understanding of it. But as a widow, having seen the one I then loved most in the world die, my view of what love is and what it does and what it means is perhaps unusually clear. And since I’m now remarried, I can test myself every day on how practical what I see is.
I’ve written a lot about love over the years, and I think th3 years ago Read more -
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Blog postI dreamed that the title of the book I’m working on in reality, which doesn’t yet have a firm title, was “0 the Humanity” — 0 as in zero, as in binary 1s and 0s, referring of course to data and technology and their impact on humanity. Which is indeed what the book is about.
It seemed quite clever, except in the dream as I was being introduced before keynotes and book readings, people kept pronouncing it “zero the humanity.” Which sounds, well, kind of like the opposite of the underlyi3 years ago Read more -
Blog postThis part gives me such a heart ache. There’s always that weird relationship between your current self and younger self when you read something you wrote long ago, even when it isn’t something this intense and intentionally life-altering, but you’ve brought this feeling to life so vividly here. Wow.
3 years ago Read more -
Blog postA long time ago I read something Kevin Smith said about how if you ever thought you might be a filmmaker, guess what: you are. I don’t remember how he said it exactly, but what I took away was that if you want to be a filmmaker, you have to both decide you are a filmmaker and, y’know, actually make films.
I’m not a filmmaker, but I’m a writer. I identify as a writer. It’s easy because I’ve been one all my life. I have the body of work: I’ve written b3 years ago Read more -
Blog post2012 was one of the most profoundly life-altering years for me. I lost my husband, I became chronically injured, my business struggled from my inability to focus on it, many of my friends went through illnesses, divorces, and family deaths of their own — no kidding, it was a very hard time. But in mid-December with only two weeks left, the year did at least one thing right: it threw me in the path of someone who ultimately helped me reimagine the rest of my life as uncharted territory yet to3 years ago Read more
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Blog postFive years ago today was the last day I got to spend with Karsten, although of course I didn’t know it at the time. People always think that if they could have a day back to spend with someone who’s gone, that they’d live it so differently. But most of the time there’s no heads-up notice that this day that you’re spending is the last one, so, y’know, you’d better make it good. In other words, even though it sounds trite to say “appreciate the time you have with the people you love,” if there’4 years ago Read more
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Books By Kate O'Neill
by
Kate O'Neill
$14.99
Technology drives the future we create. But are we steering that technology in directions that create that future in the best way, for the most people?
In her new book “Tech Humanist,” Kate O’Neill examines the intent, goals and avenues through which people create and distribute technology, and the amplifying effects technology has on the values the organizations that deploy it.
O’Neill defines a new model of business leader — the “tech humanist” — as developing honest assessments of organizational goals that move far beyond traditional P&L statements, and peer deeper into the consequences of everyday human experience design within our increasingly tech-driven culture.
It’s the idea of using purpose as a strategy — defining organizational meaning, consequences and outcomes to align both business and human objectives — to spur making the world better by making the technology better. And it’s a role that needs to emerge as quickly and spread as completely as the new technologies it aims to harness for the common good, for both businesses and humans alike.
In her new book “Tech Humanist,” Kate O’Neill examines the intent, goals and avenues through which people create and distribute technology, and the amplifying effects technology has on the values the organizations that deploy it.
O’Neill defines a new model of business leader — the “tech humanist” — as developing honest assessments of organizational goals that move far beyond traditional P&L statements, and peer deeper into the consequences of everyday human experience design within our increasingly tech-driven culture.
It’s the idea of using purpose as a strategy — defining organizational meaning, consequences and outcomes to align both business and human objectives — to spur making the world better by making the technology better. And it’s a role that needs to emerge as quickly and spread as completely as the new technologies it aims to harness for the common good, for both businesses and humans alike.
Other Formats:
Paperback
by
Kate O'Neill
$8.99
The distinction between "online" and "offline," between "digital" and "physical," once seemingly unambiguous, has begun to blur thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and personal location data, ad and experience targeting, connected devices, wearable technology, the Internet of Things, and additive capabilities like 3-D printing. The biggest business opportunities for innovative experiences, according to digital marketing expert and "tech humanist" Kate O'Neill, will come from blending the physical and digital worlds intentionally to create a meaningful and integrated human experience. And to do that, we must recognize that human motivations connect these worlds through a transactional data layer, and create experiences with respect for the humanity represented by that data.
In looking at the opportunities presented by the convergence of physical and digital, O'Neill also examines the underlying meaning of place, as well as the abundant metaphors of place already in use in digital experience, and how we can shape our audiences' experiences more meaningfully in alignment with our own business objectives. She unpacks trends like "omnichannel" marketing, digital transformation across all kinds of industries, and more. Executives, strategists, marketers, city planners, and anyone who creates experiences for humans will take away valuable insights from this book.
In looking at the opportunities presented by the convergence of physical and digital, O'Neill also examines the underlying meaning of place, as well as the abundant metaphors of place already in use in digital experience, and how we can shape our audiences' experiences more meaningfully in alignment with our own business objectives. She unpacks trends like "omnichannel" marketing, digital transformation across all kinds of industries, and more. Executives, strategists, marketers, city planners, and anyone who creates experiences for humans will take away valuable insights from this book.
Other Formats:
Paperback
by
Kate O'Neill
$3.99
Part memoir and part reflection on social norms surrounding death and grief, this book explores the opportunity for a fuller picture of life after loss. Following the losses of both her father and husband during her 30s, Kate O’Neill explores her own process and stages, including gratitude and moving forward.
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Paperback
Lessons from Los Gatos: How Working at a Startup Called Netflix Made Me a Better Entrepreneur (and Mentor)
Apr 16, 2014
by
Kate O'Neill
$2.99
As one of the movie giant's first 100 employees, Kate O'Neill describes the early culture and lists a few of the lessons she took away to start and run her own companies and advise others.
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