198 – Introducing Michele Pancera

[00:00:07] David: Hi, and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I’m David Stern, a founding director of IDEMS, and it’s my pleasure and privilege to be here today with Michele Pancera, a new member of IDEMS. He’s been with us about two months, an Impact Activation Fellow, former teacher, beekeeper, many other things. Welcome to IDEMS and welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:31] Michele: Hi, David. Thank you so much. I’m very happy to be here. I feel so lucky.

[00:00:35] David: It’s great to have you, and my aim today is to get a bit of your story so people can get to know you and welcome you to IDEMS. So how did you end up here? You have a slightly non-conventional route, but then again nobody in IDEMS is conventional.

[00:00:53] Michele: Yeah, a very non-linear story. I think I can start at the end of my high school because that’s when I decided to study mathematics. During the summer I had no real plans or ideas, and at the time I just liked gaming and playing around. And I realised that mathematics has the same structure that games have, which is you have some rules, you have some objectives, and you just have to find your path.

That’s true when you solve an exercise, and it’s also true when you prove a theorem. And that was my initial idea at least.

[00:01:39] David: And this is something which resonates, and it resonates with actually many people, it’s how we met through maths camps, which are essentially making maths fun through gaming, it’s something which I believe and many others believe, but is not how people see it generally.

[00:01:56] Michele: Yeah, it isn’t. It was a big part of what I thought was my mission as a teacher, was to just avoid creating the monster of mathematics in the minds of students. That’s what usually happens, like minds of students just close at some point and they just see mathematics as something that they have to do in order to finish school. But it’s, to most, it’s a struggle and it’s a pain, and it doesn’t have to be like that.

[00:02:28] David: But there’s a really interesting point, the word you used there was struggle. Actually you struggle in a game as well. You know, games can be challenging, they can stretch you. So part of, I think, this response is, is that struggle seen as a negative or is it something that you then learn to embrace and to enjoy as you do a puzzle, as people do a Sudoku in the newspaper, they enjoy the struggle that comes with that, and that perception is so important.

[00:02:55] Michele: I completely agree. I had many students asking me about, because they saw I was passionate about what I was teaching, and that was weird to them , so I had many students asking me, were you always good at maths? Why are you so excited? And also, similarly, when I suggested problems or exercises or just, you know, strange ideas, they would often tell me, ‘I don’t know’.

And to them, that was the end of the story, I didn’t study this, I don’t know the solution to the problem or the exercise, tell me what to do. But as you’re saying, what about the struggle? I became good at mathematics because I kind of enjoyed the struggle of not knowing, and working on something and then finding, hopefully finding the solution.

[00:03:52] David: Or not.

[00:03:53] Michele: Or not, or not definitely or not. But if your mindset is stopping when you realise that you don’t know something, how do you learn and how will you progress, you know?

[00:04:07] David: And I think this is part of the mindset, which makes you such a good fit with IDEMS and where we’re so lucky to have you join and become part of our team. But maybe just to round this off, that this idea that mathematics could be perceived differently at a societal level, this is something where there are actually interesting cases which show that this can be achieved.

But it isn’t, across the globe the general perception of mathematics is this negative perception that mathematics is hard and that’s a bad thing, it’s something you have to survive rather than, you know, something to enjoy. And that perception is part of where we first met over a decade ago at a maths camp.

[00:04:59] Michele: Yeah, yeah, you’re exactly right. During my university years I started thinking about how to, I don’t want to say optimise, but make my impact, social impact a bit better. I didn’t want to just use my few coins to do something that had almost no consequence. So I started collecting all of the coins I had in my pockets every time I would go back home in a jar or something.

And the objective was just to do impactful stuff, good stuff with it at some point. But I didn’t know what, so I kept on going for, I, think a couple of years or maybe even more, maybe three. And then a good friend of mine, who also happens to be an amazing person, Diletta Martinelli, she was fundraising for SAMI. And that’s how I started thinking about that area, and getting informed and doing some research.

I ended up donating my coins to SAMI, and then I found out that Maths Camps existed, and it was a compelling idea to me. Again, I liked playing games, so I contacted another good friend of mine, Danilo Lewanski, and we decided to go together. We met Franca and Georg there, and then we met you as well for a brief period of time.

[00:06:32] David: Maybe let me just come in on this. SAMI is Supporting African Mathematics Initiatives. It’s a UK based charity, IDEMS is actually asset locked to SAMI, so as an organisation we donate to them at times, and they’re very good collaborators on a lot of the work we do on education.

One of the things you also mentioned, Diletta, as someone who I’ve actually now worked with in different ways, she’s got very involved in African mathematics through a number of different initiatives. She hasn’t been on the podcast yet, and I don’t think Danilo has. But Franca has, and Georg is another member of IDEMS.

So these are all people who are part of our sort of wider circle of collaborators. And you mentioned the maths camp in Tanzania, which was actually a very special camp for me because this was after I stopped going to maths camps. I’ve said this on previous episodes, I went to all of the first maths camps that were given in every country that came out of the Kenyan initiative. And then I went cold turkey.

And Tanzania was the first maths camp I was present at without actually being at the maths camp. It just so happened by chance. It so happened that I was running another event at the same place and the same time as the preparation week for the maths camp. And so I was present there, but I was trying not to interfere.

But it was the first time a maths camp had happened in Tanzania and there were lots of really interesting challenges, including the venue having to change, there being no space to host the students as they arrived, and other minor details. And so I was sucked in at different places to support the maths camp, which is why I just so happened to be there that week, ’cause I was aware that this might happen.

[00:08:23] Michele: Yeah, I do remember chatting with Franca, and she was kind of stressed.

[00:08:29] David: This was one of the first, no, Franca, for those in the audience who haven’t been on the episode with Franca, is now a professor at Caltech, and she’s been, she’s incredibly competent. But at this point in time, this was, I think one of the first maths camps where she was ostensibly in charge. So yeah, she was quite stressed about this.

[00:08:50] Michele: Yeah, and at this point, one may think that this is where I would keep my relationship with IDEMS or something would happen. But no, actually, I started beekeeping when I went back, or maybe I was already beekeeping. I did that for a few years, and it was amazing.

And it was also, by the way, in some ways connected to the same mentality of problem solving with bee hives, the role of the beekeeper is to check if something is not working properly and then find solutions. And you have to be creative and competent in how the solutions are found and also implemented.

So I think this passion for beekeeping is somewhat connected to everything else, you know, the approach.

[00:09:43] David: And from our perspective, of course, we work in agroecology, so having someone who’s mathematically interested and has experience in agroecology is actually a good fit.

[00:09:53] Michele: Yeah, we’ve been talking in the past about this difference between being a generalist and a specialist. And I, unfortunately, very often our society values specialists so much, which I mean, that’s completely fine, but generalists are not valued as much.

But it’s in my nature. I don’t know what to do with it, but I have so many interests and passions, I just cannot avoid trying to learn new things that are completely different. And for the longest time I saw this as a weakness, but lately I’m starting to hope that it could be a strength, like maybe I’m special, by the way, by the fact that I know something about many things.

[00:10:43] David: And this is absolutely consistent with, I’ve actually had episodes on this in the past where, you know, we believe that generalists are needed in our societies more than they’re currently valued. And in fact, our Impact Activation Fellowship is all about creating generalists. It’s about taking experts who have achieved a level of expertise and getting them to do a task which is totally unrelated to anything they know how to do.

And that’s part of that journey towards being a generalist, being able to be expert enough at multiple things rather than the word expert or the leading expert at something. You actually gain competence in multiple areas. So this is very consistent with IDEMS, it’s a good match.

[00:11:30] Michele: Yeah. It was surprising.

Well, to go on with the story, I then started teaching in an international high school, almost out of my control. I was at the point of deciding if my beekeeping career was going to become serious or not. I was in the middle ground. And just it so happened that a friend of mine who was working in this private international high school got injured and they needed a substitute teacher right away. And they ended up liking me.

And so I started working in the high school for seven years. And it was an amazing experience, I’m very happy I did that. But again, at some point I had to try to do something different. I mean, seven years is quite a bit of time, but I resigned in a moment of my life where resigning was not wise because I just had my second kid.

And fortunately, I almost immediately started working with the University of Trieste, where I learned what STACK was, and how to author STACK questions. And I did find STACK an amazing tool, but I also realised as a newcomer especially, the learning curve is very much non-trivial. And even when you do learn how to author STACK questions, it’s time consuming.

While teachers are just used to find an exercise in the textbook and give the page number and the number of the exercise to the students, and that’s it. And maybe, and probably they already have their list of exercises. So I thought that there was a barrier to STACK authoring that was not allowing STACK to become more widespread.

So a bit for myself, but also I was hoping for other people, I started tinkering with AI and I made an AI assistant for STACK authoring. Again, initially it was just for me, but nowadays you and I are having conversations about the possibility of making it more viable.

At that point, when that was over, I started woodworking professionally.

[00:13:59] David: Before we move to the woodworking stage, there is a bit of history about the Trieste role, which is from our side as well, because Danilo, of course, we’ve known for many years, we’ve collaborated, he was exposed to STACK through the interactions with our Kenyan partners and through various activities that he was involved in in Africa.

But he said what this tool is one that would be useful in Trieste. And so we were subcontracted to help him start STACK in Trieste. The first questions that they used in Trieste we were contracted to help him author them. And then after a while he said, but I could employ someone in Italy who’d be more cost effective.

That became you. And so we encouraged that and, you know, so actually finding that local capacity and so on. So that’s where, in some sense you came in and took the role. But it’s very hard for universities to make such a role permanent or concrete. And that’s where, in some sense, after you’d had that role when you moved to the woodworking, Danilo got in touch with me to say, you know, Michele’s been working on STACK, is there a possibility within IDEMS? And that’s where we also got in touch.

But I’ll let you get onto the woodworking now. But it is quite nice that, you know, these things don’t happen just by chance. There is a long game about engaging different people and building up the capacity, in some ways Trieste trained you, to be able…

[00:15:32] Michele: For IDEMS.

[00:15:32] David: For IDEMS but not on what you are actually doing now. But you know, to be part of the sort of things that we believe are gonna be impactful.

[00:15:40] Michele: Yeah, I now see the path. At the time, everything seemed very random.

So woodworking was always another passion of mine. I have my shop on the side of my house and I started doing it professionally for a bit. And I really enjoyed it, I built some stuff that I’m really proud of. But also at the same time I was looking for some company, or university that was interested in my newly acquired competence with STACK.

And from my point of view, this is how I got in touch with you again and we had this call that was very weird from my perspective because you kept on listing so many projects in IDEMS that were potentially projects in which I could not only participate but become useful right away.

But unfortunately you were not hiring for any of those projects and only at the end of the call you mentioned the app builder, the open app a builder project. And after your description, I realised I did not have the skillset for that. And, you know, I had to tell you, I have no clue about angular or type script and so on. So I was hoping that you would keep me into consideration for the other positions maybe in the future.

And then your answer was so strange. You told me that that was the attitude you were looking for, or something like this. I didn’t know at the time what you meant, but I accepted it and you suggested that I would go on with the hiring process with Chris Marsh.

And again, at the time I didn’t know Chris Marsh, so to me he just represented an expert, and I was not an expert, so in my mind our call was going to be a list of things that I didn’t know how to do, and then the call would end, and it would be miserable. So I just didn’t want to participate to the call, honestly.

But, at the same time I did want to work for IDEMS. And so I decided to at least look at what the open app builder was in order to have something to say during the call. So I found out the repository on GitHub, which is open, I managed to try to download it and set it up in my device. But it wasn’t trivial at all. I found out, like in my imagination, I would double click on an icon and then see what was happening. Actually it was a big struggle to set everything up and I think it took five days or something, and I wanted to give up, but it became personal.

And I think one day before the call was supposed to happen, I managed to set it up reasonably well, so I decided to participate in the end. And the chat with Chris Marsh was very nice, he’s a friendly person, but at some point he had to tell me that he had a task for me, and the task was supposed to be an impossible task so that I would fail, but we could then have a conversation of what my thinking was, what my process was.

And the impossible task was to set up the open app builder in my computer. And I’m so happy I was able to just say, yeah, that’s done. It was so, so easy. So it was a combination of luck and preparation.

[00:19:30] David: It’s not really, I mean, the key is that this is what we are looking for. We were looking for people who have that problem solving mindset. You know, it wasn’t deliberately hard, it’s just some of these things are challenging. And, you know, actually documenting them really well takes time and we haven’t put that time in. And so because it isn’t well documented, it is challenging.

So looking for people who are able to be those problem solvers is exactly what we need. We don’t need to have someone who comes in with expertise who thinks they know how to solve it. We need the problem solvers because actually the way we are designing what we’re designing is different from standard skills, which is exactly where your approach was such a good fit.

You know, I should tell the story from a slightly different perspective. We needed somebody to come into that role and we’d already lined up a postdoc to do so. And it was just by chance that Danilo got in touch while we were just setting up the process we were going to go through with this postdoc to try and onboard them.

And so we said, great, we’ve now got two possible candidates. Now you’re not as highly qualified, as expert as the postdoc who was a couple of years out of a PhD and so on, but you come in with an interesting background. Great, let’s put you in the process . And what you demonstrated exactly through taking the initiative like that is that you were the right fit, and you got the role.

[00:20:58] Michele: Yeah, I now understand, having worked with the app builder for a bit. Nobody knows how to author the app builder, you cannot hire an expert author. You need someone who’s going to learn it even though the documentation is not there, even though it’s still in beta, so it’s buggy. And I could have been as expert as I wanted, but I would still be as prepared as I am today.

[00:21:28] David: Yeah. So we need that person who comes in with that mindset to be able to sort of say, okay, well I’m smart enough, I can figure it out, and be asking the right questions. You know, recognising you’re not an expert and therefore ask the right questions, to have the logic to play it like a game, to make sure we are building it right.

This is what we’re aiming for, this is what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to build a technology differently. So we don’t want someone who knows how to build standard tech because we know that what we are building has to behave differently from the tech which already exists.

[00:22:03] Michele: Yeah. I’m very, I feel very lucky that I found a company like this, it does seem like a good fit for me. And also another thing I really like by the way, is that, as you know, in IDEMS, at least the Impact Activation Fellows, may have more than one role, and they may have side projects.

And so I’m also really enjoying, as we mentioned, our conversations about STACK and about AI, it’s interesting and I’m learning so much. I suppose we are learning together. I feel very motivated, I’ve been here just for three months, I think, and it’s already been very formative.

[00:22:49] David: And just to sort of again, concretise that in a sense, our expectation was that these first few months, whoever came into this role, it would be a struggle because as you say, the documentation for the authoring is not there, the systems are not in place, they’re actually in flux as we are trying to actually improve them and get them to a system which is going to be stable and we can actually release on the world more generally in this sort of format. But it was always going to be an intellectual challenge for whoever came into that role.

And the way you’ve come in, from day, well, I suppose from before day one, because your preparation was exactly the right thing, you’re saying I don’t know, I should find out, okay, i’ll just try. You know, that’s exactly the attitude we needed. And it’s exactly what has meant you’ve been such a great fit and you’ve fitted into the team and you’ve recognised that after three months you still don’t know what you’re doing. And that’s fine.

Like everyone else, we are trying to figure out how to get these things to work really well. We have a lot of the underlying principles. We understand why the current technologies are not delivering on what we need and what’s needed for our partners. And what we are trying to do is design technology that will serve our partners.

And that process is messy. It requires real intellectual engagement and an open mind as to how this should work and how this could be done. And what we are getting to, and I think you’ll have noticed this also, is that even though it’s messy, there’s real substance that different people bring, and the different experiences. And quite often those experiences and that substance isn’t directly related.

This is the generalists, we’re bringing people who have category theory knowledge in to sort of how we’re designing the software, which is, you know, not necessarily immediately obvious. We are bringing people in who are software experts, but from totally different systems to try and think how to do this, but they’ve never worked with these sorts of systems.

So there’s this interesting range of people who have real expertise and knowledge, but recognising that what they know needs to be used or fitted in to build something new. And so there’s real substance to how we’re doing it, but at the same time, there’s a lot of unknowns.

[00:25:17] Michele: Yeah. And by the way, it’s not sufficient to have the correct people as employees. The work environment has to be set up in the proper way, and I think this is one of the best parts of IDEMS. Everything is so relaxed. I mean, not everything.

I mean, of course the work has to become difficult at some point. But what I meant is the work environment is very relaxed and everybody’s friendly and non-formal. There is no, at least from my point of view, no politics or power games or backstabbing and so on, which not only is good for employees, but also for the company, I would argue, because we feel more free to actually bring what we have to the table.

[00:26:16] David: This is something where what you are describing is, I’m very pleased is what we hope in terms of company culture. This is something where, as an organisation, one of my biggest worries is for us to achieve the ambitions we have for the organisation; we are gonna have to grow. And so we’re gonna become quite a bit bigger.

How can we ensure that we are keeping the company culture, which works for a sort of small organisation of 20 or so people? If we get much bigger, how can we make sure that we’re continuing to be able to grow an organisation where that culture is maintained, where we are attracting the right people to be able to do that?

And this comes back to the generalist over the specialist in some ways. Part of what I believe has led to this sort of culture that you are describing is that everybody in IDEMS brings substantial value, and it’s different value. And actually the generalist role that people play means that they often appreciate the values that others bring.

[00:27:23] Michele: Yeah.

[00:27:24] David: They’re not threatened by it. They appreciate that other people have, you know, they’re brilliant, they bring real value. We’re working together on this sort of common problem, but I appreciate what they bring. And so everybody recognises that everyone else is bringing value. And that value therefore means that they’re not directly in competition because I don’t want to do what they do, they do that better than I do.

And it is that team element of actually bringing together these coherent teams that work well together and coherently and understanding the values different individuals bring to the team.

Now, can we scale that approach and that culture, you know, the organisational culture as we grow? Kate and I, this is what we discuss and one of the things we’re really interested in, we want to grow as an organisation, but we are very cautious, we don’t want to just grow for the sake of growth.

We only want to grow if we can grow in a way that we are actually going to be able to continue to keep good organisational culture, to be able to build teams that are really functional, because without that functionality, we don’t have the efficiencies. To be able to build, essentially overachieve on everything we’re doing, that’s sort of what we’re set up to do.

[00:28:46] Michele: Sure. And I suppose if the culture that you’re describing is not something from the top to the employees, that that is imposed, I mean, but is actually part of how the employees like to be, then it becomes natural during the expansion for the culture to just spread out.

[00:29:12] David: It has to be bottom up as much as top down. There’s actually some good management theories around this that we’ve got into, and we’ve looked at looking at sort of inverted pyramid structures and so on. And what I found incredibly useful is to recognise that all of these frameworks and theories have value, but none of them are right.

And so we need to muddle our way through. When we started out I think I was pushing too hard on the inverted pyramid model, whereas we’ve recognised there were times when a traditional, more managerial structure actually creates a better environment. And so actually understanding the needs of different individuals, you know, who needs to be given the freedom and the responsibilities for an inverted pyramid model, and who needs to actually have a proper manager? And how do you actually get those two to work together in a coherent whole? This is really interesting and challenging.

[00:30:09] Michele: Just like we discussed in other topics, it’s a problem solving issue. You have your tools and you have to use the correct tool for the correct application.

[00:30:21] David: Exactly, and yeah, understanding the value of different tools, not dismissing the tools as that’s not what we need. No, understanding that each of these tools have value and understanding where to draw that value out. Having a big toolbox, one of our principles is Options by Context.

We need to apply that to almost everything we do, where we’re understanding, you know, there are times when you need to cater to the individuals and there are times when you just need to have things which are standardised, and how do you navigate between those two? It’s hard work.

But this is part of the problem solving, it’s part of the challenge that we all need to embrace outside our comfort zone. So just like you have been pulled outside your comfort zone into the app builder, I’m finding myself way outside my comfort zone, dealing with managerial structures.

And that’s sort of part of the nature of what we want IDEMS to be for our team. It should be drawing people out, enabling them to grow in different ways, enabling them to build on their strengths, but also stretching them out to be able to be part of a better team.

[00:31:32] Michele: Yeah. I really can’t wait to see how the story goes on, both my story and IDEMS’ story.

[00:31:40] David: Absolutely. And they are now intertwined and hopefully this will be a long and fruitful collaboration.

The last thing I want to finish with is I’m conscious that we should have a follow up call around some of the ideas coming out from your AI agent for STACK authoring, is the way I think of it. So there are some really exciting ideas there which really relate to responsible AI and discussions that we’ve been having within IDEMS in different ways. And so I look forward to another episode where we dig into that more specifically.

[00:32:15] Michele: Sure, sure. I’m very excited about that project. And generally speaking about gaining some expertise in AI that could become useful for different projects, that’s a field that I am really looking forward.

[00:32:28] David: Great. Well, it’s central to our long-term vision, we think there’s a real need for AI to be built more responsibly, and we absolutely see how invaluable this is going to be going forward, but also the dangers that come with it. So I really look forward to that discussion.

[00:32:53] Michele: Let’s do it.

[00:32:54] David: Let’s do it. Our next recording will be on that topic. This has been great.

[00:32:59] Michele: Thank you, David.

[00:33:00] David: Welcome again to IDEMS, it’s great having you.