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Jul 24, 2026
000 · Welcome · Our Origin Story.
000 · Welcome · Our Origin Story.
00:00
06:44
Transcript
0:00
This is Harvest the Signal, where the smallest signals can change the biggest systems. And now here's your host, Jodi Lynn Owen. [on-hold music] Welcome.
0:11
For a long time, I have been collecting ideas in what I would call a digital notebook.
0:18
And this goes way back to the days when we had the little mini recorders, and I always kept one in my purse, so when I was driving, I could just talk into it if I was having ideas about something I wanted to write or do, or maybe it was just something about patient care or in the clinic I was working in.
0:43
And that evolved to voice notes on the phone, and that evolved to talking to apps that record things, and that evolved into conversations with my girl chat. And none of these thoughts are exactly finished thoughts.
1:00
They're just fragments or questions or patterns that I'm seeing, or if I hear a really cool story or something that I've observed or just ideas that I could not stop turning over.
1:12
Recently, I decided to use AI to help me code a build of something I call my Ideograph. And this is a system that could do more than store the ideas because I was
1:29
trying to figure out how to consolidate them from all these sources. And I wanted it to, yes, capture them, but then categorize them and crosswalk them and surface connections between them.
1:41
And I wanted it to show me loops and patterns in my own thinking and help me see what I had actually been thinking about for all these years.
1:51
So, uh, this was not a surprise to anybody who knows me, but the first version contained nearly twenty-eight hundred ideas. So that's where we started, and I don't know what's a girl supposed to do with that.
2:06
So one cluster of ideas led me into a literature review, which I have now completed to explore whether there may be some academic work ahead for me, and more on that later.
2:20
And another helped me outline the book I've apparently been writing for the last ten years, and more on that later too.
2:27
And yet another helped me really hone in and define a business idea that I'm now building to support the work of midwives, and more on that later too.
2:39
One kept pulling me back toward the thing my eyes seem to find everywhere, and there's hundreds and hundreds of ideas in here. It's systems and infrastructure, the invisible structures beneath the work we all do.
2:54
The reasons we humans run into brick walls and then stand up and shake it off, but then do it again.
3:01
Those moments when a small observation reveals a much larger pattern, or the stories from history that still have something urgent to say about the present.
3:13
And one of the parts of this application that I made shows essentially ideas on
3:22
a sort of lopsided wheel, so I could see them physically emerging from a bunch of noise. Here comes one idea at me.
3:34
So that's the way a signal emerges from a noisy field if we'll watch for it, if we're interested in it. And that is where this Harvest the Signal began.
3:47
Harvest the Signal is a series of field notes where I write about all kinds of things.
3:53
And in this first cluster of field notes, I write about the origins of the school nurse program in America, how organizations waste mistakes, why indispensable people may be carrying very broken systems,
4:11
what learning to run taught me about interrupted progress, and why redesigning postpartum care may require us to notice expertise already standing across the street.
4:25
And most recently, it is where Coach Hammock of the Seahawks, go Hawks, had an F-bomb viral moment on the very same day I was writing about what an AI operations coach might say to a very overwhelmed receptionist.
4:42
It was just a really fortuitous day, and that's a fun episode. I encourage you to listen to it. There were twenty-eight hundred ideas in my Ideograph. I wrote about these initial ten or so, but it didn't feel done.
4:58
So I got on the mic, and I shared stories around the ideas and created this podcast.
5:05
And that, you'll be relieved to learn, is the one thing I'm revealing now rather than later, which you know, because you're listening to it. So if you like to read, please do. But I really encourage the listen.
5:16
I leave one more signal at the end of every episode just for the listener and drop my favorite anecdotes or in one case a few rants along the way. And I promise there's only one with rants, but I was really salty.
5:32
That Ideograph is one of the cooler AI-powered things I've built. It does amazing things with my twenty-eight hundred ideas. But this is me beginning to harvest them.
5:45
I'll be posting about each one in the weeks ahead and building more as we go.
5:50
I've also started talking to people that I've met along the way to learn more about what they're exploring, learning, or doing in the world of systems, infrastructure, healthcare, or human connectivity work.
6:06
And I'll be bringing those conversations to you in the future. So whether you're reading online, listening on Spotify or Apple, welcome. I'm Jodi Lynn Owen.
6:17
You can connect with me on LinkedIn by my name or on Threads at Harvest the Signal. This has been Harvest the Signal with Jodi Lynn Owen. The smallest signals can change the biggest systems.
6:32
Be sure to like, follow and share so you never miss an episode or the opportunity to compare your field notes with your colleagues. [on-hold music]
Harvest the Signal
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