A busy October

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My publicist is having a busy month.

(I don't have a publicist. But if I did, they’d be getting a bonus.)

I've had a busy October professionally. Some of these opportunities have been cooking for a long time, some sprung up on me, but everything felt like it landed all at once.

Here's what I've been up to:

Collage of pairs of people sitting and standing together in a garden in Marrakech, doing the listening exercise

1. I ran a listening workshop for our entire company during our offsite

Our Chief of Staff Jo and I planned a workshop on the welcome day of our packed retreat in Marrakech. We asked pairs of people to do a Thinking Partners exercise, inspired by Nancy Kline's workshops.

One person in the pair would talk, uninterrupted, for 5 minutes, and the other would listen. The goal of this wasn't to practice speaking, so the speaker was allowed to pause as much as necessary. The listener wasn't allowed to interrupt or ask questions. Ideally they wouldn't even respond with facial expressions. They then swapped round: speakers became listeners, and we did it again. We repeated this three times with three different points.

The point of this was to practice listening - it's fundamental to how we work at Granola; we value user research super highly, and it's part of our motto (being present is a power move). It also helped demonstrate how having someone listen to you without butting in is a cognitive unlock: it allows you to think more deeply, beyond surface level thoughts.

Laptop showing the Figma webinar studio, with the title slide "Figma agent: Closing the context gap with Amplitude, Granola, and Linear"

2. I presented in a Figma webinar about how I'm using Figma's agent with the Granola MCP

I presented alongside two incredible designers, Yann from Linear and Jingshu from Amplitude. Apparently over 3000 people registered for this (I don't think that many joined in live, but they'll have been sent the recording.) Mad.

Paavan waving from the WDC lectern, next to a screen showing the talk title "Designing for calm"

3. I spoke at WebDevConf in Bristol

I was feeling deathly sick this week after returning from Morocco. But I managed to cobble together the v1 of my talk about designing software that makes you feel calmer.

Luke and Alex have put together such a lovely friendly indie conference. I loved meeting Josh in particular, who's part of the CSS working group and has helped shape the direction of CSS! (and also having the opportunity to drop in on some old friends in Bristol).

Paavan on stage at Push Conference, in front of a slide reading "Watch what they do, not just what they say"

4. I gave a keynote talk at Push Conf in Munich

It was my second time speaking at Push, four years since i spoke on their stage about magic and UX. It was a joy being back in Munich; Christian, Fra and the rest of the team put together a cracking conference and the attention to detail over every little bit is unparalleled.

I spoke about designing software to make you feel calmer. In the two week gap since presenting in Bristol, I reworked the talk to have a better flow, but there's still lots I want to improve. (My friend Kevin's advice: if you throw a brick out into the crowd, the brick has to make it back to stage. If you know...)

Though it was a flying visit, I did manage to get an afternoon at the Pinakothek der Moderne in. And I hugely enjoyed hanging out with the other speakers at the welcome dinner and in the breaks between talks.

The Messy Middle panel on stage at Push Conference, with the four panellists and the host seated beneath the title slide

5. I was a panellist in the closing slot at Push Conf

I was also incredibly flattered to be invited to take part in the conference’s closing panel. I spoke with Chelsea from Anthropic, Paolo from IKEA Innovation and Anneke from Google about the conference theme, "the messy middle."

Still from Sneak Peek, with Paavan and Jayneil on video call bubbles either side of a GitHub pull request showing before and after designs

6. I appeared on Jayneil's excellent YouTube series, Sneak Peek

Jay has such a compelling hook for his show: he invites viewers to take a peek behind the curtain by asking designers to show off their real Figma files.

We filmed this episode a while ago, where I showed off my current design workflow and how its changed over the last few months. I’ve been amazed by the response; the video has quickly amassed more than 10k views, and I’ve had multiple folks come up to me in person saying they enjoyed watching it. So nice!

Still from For Context, with Paavan talking at a laptop in a warm wood-panelled apartment

7. I appeared in an episode of a short film series my company Granola is producing, called For Context

This was a really fun shoot. Our Content Lead Lo and I went to a gorgeous apartment/film set and shot me rambling about how I use the Granola MCP to add design crit notes straight onto the canvas in Figma. The final episode came out great!

Paavan showing Soleio something on a laptop in the Granola SF office, with a camera rig in the foreground

8. I'm appearing in Series 3 of First of Kind, hosted by Soleio

This one hasn't been published yet, but it should be live shortly. Soleio is one of a few global designer megastars: he was an early designer at Facebook, widely credited with inventing the Like button, and has since invested in loads of design-led companies. He met some of the Granola design team in our SF office, back in Config week, and shot interviews with all of us. I can’t wait to see the results!

Whew. What a month. If you came to any of these talks or listened to any of these interviews, I’m super grateful.