iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I made something stupid and I love it. It's a service design workshop centered around role playing Games. An elegant activity for a more civilized age (when work was allowed to be fun).

A "Journeys & diamonds" zine printed out in glorious black and white. The cover imitates an old Dungeons and Dragons manual.

The zine opened on a page titled "The activity"

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I once worked for a company that was a bunch of friends and a business model of "that looks cool, let's do the same here". Without the understanding either "that" or "here". Their whole business strategy was daydreaming while having lunch together. Looks like Tech companies operate like that now.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Trying to get a useless metric changed without changing the worldview that set it up in the first place is wasted effort.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

"Can <medium> be art?" My friend, a urinal is considered one of the most significant pieces of modern art. Could you please stop overthinking it?

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

One of the most surprising consequences of AI visual pollution is that now I find shitty Powerpoint clipart not as shitty as I once thought.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Before Corporate Memphis, old powerpoint clipart graced our existence with... Capitalist Proletariat.

A very abstract figure of a buff businessman in a short-sleeved suit, holding a dollar sign flag.
I'm probably doing a terrible job of describing the absurdness of this. It feels basically like using soviet visual language in business scenarios... shittily rendered.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

At least with the blockchain I didn't have anyone at work trying to force me to use it.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

A consistent issue I've seen with Service Design teams is the obsession with creating playbooks. Internal reference material is great; creating something to "socialize" or to "help other teams adopt our practices" is a doomed endeavor.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I've recently been musing on the idea of Gen AI as a boomer technology. This sounds right because: a) it seems to be the broader group most enthralled by it (cue shrimp Jesus), and b) it feels like the most damaging framing of the technology (which is why I'm pushing for it).

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Signals work 📡 The focus on craft, sustainability and being employee owned coupled with this being for fine jewellery makes me think of an underlying reframe of wealth products to one of "social impact". But really more "Goodwashing" than actual impact if you will.

Subway ad for a jewelry boasting "Employee-Owned + Living Wage Certified
CUSTOM JEWELLERY, HANDMADE IN TORONTO FROM SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS"

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Signal work 📡. The rejection of crypto is relevant but nothing out of the ordinary there. On the other hand I'd say the defence of the banking system and the "state apparatus" is highly unusual. The rise of fascism seems to be driving a revalorization of institutions even in more radical spaces.

Sticker seen on the street with the legend:
"Don't Buy Monero
Cryptocurrencies are harmful to the banking system and may weaken the state apparatus"

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

This is a sharp commentary that also plays amazingly great. Who could have guess that gerrymandering could be so fun? gerrymandle.com

gerrymandle.com

Gerrymandle

Draw districts and win the election. A new puzzle every day.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I've started reading China Mieville's Pedido station and while I'm certainly enjoying it, I can't stop seeing its setting as "serious face Ank Morpork".

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

The problem with the "then you have time to rebuild the thing" retort when advocating for research is that the organization would have to measure success and recognize a failure for it to matter. As it is things are launched and never evaluated. And that's by design.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Signal work 📡. This was (because it was removed from Amazon) obviously slop. But it is fascinating non-the-less. There's a financialization of Faith in a way that prioritizes the financial aspect with the faith there as merely an signal for identity. (More examples will follow).

Amazon listing for slop book "The investment Apocalypse: Protecting God's Money in the End Times"
Description:
Is your faith Guiding, Your finances... especially now?
In a world buzzing with uncertainty, are you managing the resources God entrusted you with based on yesterday's rules or seeking His wisdom for today's unique challenges? Many believers feel a growing unease, sensing that conventional Financial planning falls short in light of current global events and potential prophetic significance.
Alvaro Roberson felt it too. That's why he sought out a remarkable global collective - successful business minds, deeply spiritual investors, and faithful stewards from different nations - who aren't compartmentalizing their faith and finances.

CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Biblical Economics: The Divine Blueprint for Wealth
Cryptocurrency and the Mark of the Beast
Prophetic Investment Patterns
Noah's Investment Strategy
Holy Land Investment
Blood Moons and Market Cycles
Epilogue
Afterword

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

LinkedIn today: "What the<world Cup / Spain's win / Argentina's defeat> teaches us about <teams / leadership / marketing/ b2b sales>"

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I was looking at the corporate fanfic site (LinkedIn) and I've noticed a new trend: people re-slopping other people's slop. There's this comic about useless metrics of which I've seen the variations already. On brand for slop though.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

There's a bullshit dynamic within corporations where an obvious lie gets accepted as truth just because of the power differential. i.e. "Yes, RTO is totally about collaboration". This then becomes naturalized within the org and as people try to fit in or raise within the org they replicate it.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Design research operates (understandably) under a design approach. Which means that is objective is to provoke. Meanwhile product teams operate on an implementation and risk management environment. This means that product expect insights to provide certainty.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Signals of the future, a thread

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Innovation is meaningless By definition innovation is doing things in a novel way... and succeeding.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I stare back at the void until it feels uncomfortable.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Me: "I'm going to finish reading this article so I can finally close the tab." Also me: *Finishes the article with 5 new tabs open*

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

If information is Strategic Design's material, then it follows that qual primary research produces organic non-GMO information, while surveys give us greasy transgenic information.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

A consequence of leadership's gaslighting is that responsibility is constantly being pushed downwards. This gets teams focusing on the things they believe they can control (i.e. delivery speed) rather on the structural problems of the org.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I've just got a message from cybersecurity. Turns out that setting up recurring messages in Teams is "restricted technology".

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

I was in a car and a Corvette was driving alongside it. The Corvette was all vroom vroom. It sounded like it was being driven by Vin Diesel. It was going 40. It's amazing how much of these performance cars is just performance in the theatrical sense.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

After a typo now I'm now wondering what a game called "Deathmath island" would look like.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Hey folks. It was only the toilet paper and water after all!

A bathroom sign that reads
"SAVE THE PLANET
Please use water and paper towels conservatively"

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Corporations are attracted by the pretense of control that Quantitative data provides. But Qual research is not about control, is about embracing the messiness of real life, which is uncomfortable, sometimes inconvenient and probably doesn't align with people's beliefs.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

The future will be boring. But people selling you a future (their future) will try to make it look exciting even if it doesn't make sense.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Please, intend your puns or don't pun at all.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Science doesn't lie. People who start the activity are more likely to finish it than those that don't.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

A Low fidelity artifact is not a compromised high fidelity one. They serve different purposes that go beyond just building speed.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

We should publicly ridicule any company using Microsoft Whiteboard. Make them ashamed of what they are forcing into their employees

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

There are things that can be gamified and things that can't. Most often you will find things that shouldn't be gamified. Gamification is introduced as a way to try to force interaction, but that often highlights a lack of understanding of the motivations behind the interactions with the platform.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

The sub in subtext here doesn't come from "subtle".

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

The attractiveness of quant for corporations lies in its pretense of control. Numbers feel solid in a way that human behavior doesn't. Interacting with them provides a feeling of certainty, and that illusion is more important than facing the messiness of actual human beings.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

In corporate environments, it seems silly to focus so much on the speed of execution for research when the real bottleneck is the organization's capacity to absorb knowledge.

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Space age technology is 50 to 70 years old.

A bus stop ad featuring Chris Hatfield with the legend "Space age tech has landed at Specsavers"

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Diego Beltrami @djbeltrami.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Remember when influencers became a thing because of their "authenticity"? What a twist eh?

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