#38 - Chaos, Curiosity, And Courage with Zina Kaye

Engaging Conversations | Inspiring Dialogue, Empowering Communities

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The background laughter wasn’t noise; it was the cue. Recorded in Paddington, surrounded by young people finding their voice. Sitting down with technologist and board member Zina Kaye to dig into a simple truth: curiosity becomes courage when you ship small experiments and listen hard.
Zina takes us from the gritty origins of early compression tech to present-day AI, banking, and sustainability projects, showing how unexpected places often spark the most useful advances. Her rock and roll method, pairing an idea with ten surreal couplings, forces teams past rigid heuristics and into fresh, testable paths. We unpack how she moved from flimsy indoor balloons to a large autonomous plane by “farting around,” documenting every miss, and scaling only what worked. It’s a repeatable playbook for founders, product leaders, and policy makers who want fewer slides and more signal.
We challenge lazy assumptions inside organisations too. A board wanted a shiny CRM; customer research showed people only wanted to pay bills online and download schedules. That gap, between what leaders assume and what users actually need, is where service design earns its keep. Zina shares wins that blend digital with the offline nudge, like paper signs in dance classes that quietly drove ticket sales. We also call out shittification: tools that add friction while pretending to be smart. Real productivity means giving people choice, clarity, and dignity, not vanity metrics or chatbot mazes.
Heart-led innovation anchors the conversation. Through Anawim’s shared lunches, Zina helps tackle loneliness by creating settings that restore confidence and a sense of belonging, right down to details that many overlook. Her climate view is equally pragmatic: keep the joy, adjust the system. Let lawns grow, compost the easy way, and utilise public art to tell more compelling stories. If you’re stuck, start small in your own community, run a micro test, learn fast, and iterate. Subscribe, share with someone who needs a push to try, and leave a review telling us the first tiny experiment you’re going to run this week.

Holy Sydney Website: https://hol.ly/

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Κεφάλαια

1. Welcome, Setting And Sponsor Shoutouts (00:00:00)

2. Meet Zina Kaye: Embracing Chaos (00:02:14)

3. Early Tech, Compression And Unexpected Origins (00:04:20)

4. Turning Uncertainty Into Creativity (00:08:40)

5. Experiments, Failure And Learning Loops (00:12:10)

6. Drones, Balloons And Building An Autonomous Plane (00:16:20)

7. Human-Centred Design Over Hype (00:20:35)

8. Heuristics, CRM Myths And Real Needs (00:24:30)

9. Power, Choice And Meaningful Connections (00:28:20)

10. Innovation With Heart: The Anawim Lunches (00:31:40)