
From the article:
Tabas, a 2024 RealLIST Connector, goes by Lindsay T., Lady Engineer on her social media, where she shares content about technology, design and entrepreneurship.
This year, Tabas launched a YouTube series called “How Real…?”, where she reacts to the way the tech industry is portrayed in TV and movies. She also produced 25 episodes of her podcast Make Sense, which invites guests to discuss how technology and people interact.
Tabas already has big plans for 2025, when she’ll relaunch her product development guide Blueprint to Build. She also intends to pitch a comedy series called “Mandate” about a young woman in the tech industry in the mid-2000s.
“Both projects reflect my passion for demystifying the tech world and inspiring meaningful change,” she told Technical.ly.
Reflections on My Journey as a Creator
In anticipation of the holidays each year, I can’t help but think about my answer to, “How have things been going?” Like me, I’m sure you feel anxious, forgetting all of your achievements in favor of seeing how far you still have to go towards your goals.
Receiving Technical.ly’s Creator of the Year award came at the perfect time, giving me an easy answer! I am super grateful since the other great milestones have been complex transformations in my internal world, my thoughts, focus, and feelings. These are far harder to communicate in passing conversations at holiday parties.
The award is meaningful as it helps draw more attention to the compass that guides my work as an innovator and creator: I’m captivated by the potential of technology to truly support people – meeting them where they are and amplifying their ambitions, rather than leaving them behind.
Below, I share my insights and takeaways from growing into a Creator after years as a designer, consultant, and coach.
Early Inspirations: Designing for Humanity
My fascination with Human-Computer Interaction started with my own lived experience. Growing up as the “fat girl,” I was acutely aware of environments that excluded or alienated kids like me. It was in a 2002 Human Factors class as a second year in my engineering program that I first learned there was so much potential to change that.
When applying for graduate school in 2004 (2 years before the Wii), I wrote about immersive gyms designed for overweight kids – spaces where they could feel included, supported, and motivated. Whether that meant exercising alongside video games or rethinking traditional gym environments, I envisioned technology as a force for inclusion and empowerment.
That optimism still drives me today, fueling my passion for creating tools, frameworks, and content that show how to leverage technology to genuinely serve people.
Legacy and Impact: Designing for Real Problems
I am acutely aware that some people might dismiss my focus on human-centered technology as “too soft” or impractical, particularly when I do not mention dollars and cents. But I believe solving real problems and serving humanity is not only meaningful – it’s a path to financial success.
For my audience, I want to illuminate the nature of problems, which gets innovators at least halfway to the solutions. Make Sense, my podcast, simplifies complex topics so people make informed decisions about how they use technology and how innovators design it.
Blueprint to Build and LearnProductMarketFit.com both take that mission further, offering a framework to guide other creators and technologies from the spark of an idea to a fully realized vision. It’s a step-by-step approach that keeps the customer – the human being – at the heart of innovation. If a problem is worth solving, people will be willing to pay for it.
Challenges and Growth: Building Resilience
The identity transformation from ‘Consultant’ to ‘Creator’ hasn’t been without challenges. I started creating videos in 2018 but the content was always in support of my consulting services, coaching, and programs. By 2022, I grew tired of telling stories to sell things and wanted to tell stories that imparted lessons and insights.
Getting started with my podcast Make Sense in February 2023 was daunting, and it’s something I talked about with my guest on the first episode. Staying consistent week after week was also a challenge as it requires discipline and motivation – especially when view counts are low. In year two, asking high-profile guests to join my podcast forced me to confront my inner critic and overcome feelings of self-doubt.
Through it all, I’ve embraced experimentation, testing new content formats, and learning to see each step – whether a success or a misstep – as part of the process.
Balancing Vision and Execution: A Work in Progress
Balancing my storytelling vision with business goals has been one of the most complex aspects of my journey, and it’s something I am exploring right now with my portfolio of projects. I’m constantly iterating, refining my audience, experimenting with how I cut up and present content, and finding ways to ensure my projects complement each other. As a systems engineer, I want to optimize my time and my outcomes. It’s my education and personality!
Defining Success: From Metrics to Meaning
As a creator, it’s easy to fall into the trap of measuring success through external validation like followers, views, and likes. Through my product-market fit program development over the past 7 years, I’ve encouraged my clients and myself to focus on what I can control, primarily the number of podcasts I publish.
For example, I can control the number of guests I invite and the number of podcasts I record and publish. Once, I heard that people don’t start paying attention to an unknown podcaster until they’ve published 100 episodes. One hundred is my explicit goal. In 2023 I published 40 episodes, and in 2024 I set the intention to publish another 40. Because I took time this summer to evaluate how my projects complement each other, I only published twenty-five. I was okay with changing my goal in favor of higher quality and better, long-term outcomes.
- To me, success also looks like:
Inviting guests to my podcast who I never thought would agree to talk to me
Having conversations that resonate deeply, both with my audience and within myself
Expanding my understanding of how social systems and cultural trends intersect with technology