Story by Levi Weinhagen    /   Photography by Isaac Ruder

“I aim to be the dumbest guy in the room.” – Mike Bollinger

Mike Bollinger is a designer, entrepreneur, and world traveler. He’s the founder of the technology powerhouse Livefront, and co-founder of the technology resource hub TechdotMN. Bollinger has now also added educator and school co-founder to his list of hyphenates with Smart Factory, a school that offers classes to experienced designers and engineers who want to improve their web and mobile app design skills. We got the chance to chat with Mike about how Smart Factory works and why he’s investing his time into an education project.

Pollen: Why is building a nontraditional educational program such as Smart Factory important to you and an organization like Livefront?

Mike Bollinger: One of the things we talk about at Livefront is that we work really hard and focus on being leaders in our field and in the future of our field. The future part is really interesting to me because it implies that we always need to be learning. It implies this sense of curiosity of determination, or exploration. That’s really core to who I am. The students at Smart Factory share those same values. They’re self-motivated, determined, and curious explorers. That’s one of the reasons that this makes a lot of sense and is fun for all of us to work on, because it really aligns with that core fundamental sense of curiosity and exploration.

P: How does your work as a designer and entrepreneur inform the way you approach education?

MB: Because I’m a designer myself, anything I create starts from user experience. How do we create the best experience possible for our students — for our users?

One of the big things that you learn as an entrepreneur is that you have to throw something out there to see what works and what doesn’t. I think our starting point has been to work with mentees or students that have existing knowledge as programmers or designers and typically already have a career in that field, but want to expand their skills.

P: Is there an emphasis on one kind of teaching at Smart Factory, such as lecture or hands-on learning?

MB: We set up our classes with about 50 percent of each. We got some great feedback from our students. On the whole, everyone loves what we’re doing which is fun. What’s interesting is the feedback we got when we asked the question: “Is this the right balance of lecture versus hands-on?” One-third said, “Absolutely perfect.” Another third said, “You need way more lecture and way less hands-on.” The final third said, “You need way more hands-on and a lot less lecture.”

It’s funny, but almost frustrating as someone who is trying to be very intentional about education, because I just want to know the answer. I want to know how we can improve. But what I think we’ve learned is that as an educator you actually have to be opinionated about your pedagogy. I think you do everyone a service if you’re opinionated about it.

P: Are you approaching Smart Factory the way you would a mobile app for a client?

MB: I think there are a lot of parallels. Design, like a lot of things in life, is part art and part science. There’s data that can inform decisions, and that’s kind of the logical part. There’s the emotional design — the aesthetics and the allure. There’s the subjective piece of design that also matters a lot. Being an awesome interface designer in the software world means finding the perfect blend of those.

In the same way I think there’s a lot of yin and yang in the education world. You need to have a structure and opinion about how things should be done, but also keep an open mind and be flexible about not only what your class look like next semester, but what it looks like ten minutes from now.

P: How are Smart Factory teachers different than what you would find in typical educational environments?

MB: Part of the draw of Smart Factory classes is that we’re not educators. It’s the irony that we’re telling people to come learn from us because we’re not academics. Most of us haven’t been trained on how to teach. We just know that we have a lot of knowledge to share. We can learn a lot on the way, and our students can learn a lot on the way. The hypothesis is that for this subject matter — new technology, interface design, and the burgeoning mobile software world — that there’s a lot of ways to go about it, and that we’re early in discovering what the best way is to teach and learn.

P: Is how you do Smart Factory a reaction to how you learned how to do what you do?

MB: The way I learn is by just digging in, learning by example and through watching really smart people work around me. That was one of my personal motivations for how these classes are structured. When I was 15 years old I worked as an intern at a software company. I walked into the CEO’s office and he asked, “Do you know cold fusion?” I said, “No.” He said I had three days to figure it out because a client had an application they needed to complete. I just kind of stood there, and he told me I could do it.

So I went and figured it out. I was able to sit next to one of their senior guys to watch, learn, and just experiment. That pattern has repeated itself throughout my life, and I think it’s a great way that many people learn. Some need more structure, some need less, but it has certainly been effective in what I’ve done.

P: Are you creating future collaborators or competition?

MB: I don’t really believe in competition. If we’re doing incredible things and focusing on being the absolute best we can be then competition kind of takes care of itself. I don’t ever worry about creating more IOS programmers that might start a company that could someday compete with Livefront. That’s good for the market. It’s good for the community as a whole. We’ll focus on being great and they can focus on being great, and there will be plenty of work for everyone to go around.

I work from the assumption of abundance. You can see that with Livefront’s involvement in the community in general, with Smart Factory growing up future competition, and hopefully in the work I do with TECHdotMN.