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Siqi Zhu
Associate Director, Public Realm @ Sidewalk Labs
Professional Background
Siqi Zhu is a talented Boston-based designer and creative technologist, known for his interdisciplinary approach that merges urbanism, technology, and information design. With a rich tapestry of experiences, Siqi has made significant contributions in urban design and strategic planning, fundamentally reshaping how we understand and interact with urban environments. His professional journey is characterized by a progressive trajectory, including pivotal roles at some of the most innovative institutions.
Siqi has played a crucial role in various high-impact projects, notably leading the development of the Boston Complete Street guidelines, which earned him the prestigious 2015 American Planning Association (APA) National Award in communication design. This achievement underscores his mastery in crafting design solutions that communicate urban policies effectively. Additionally, he has contributed to the Go Boston 2030 project, a comprehensive 20-year strategic mobility plan aimed at revitalizing and enhancing the mobility and accessibility of the city.
He hasn't just focused his efforts on Boston; his influence extends globally as he facilitated the development of a design, implementation, and operational plan for the City of Grand Rapids parks department. Siqi’s expertise also transcends borders; he has collaborated with ITESM, Mexico's largest private university system, to create a strategic framework for their campuses in Mexico City.
Currently serving as the Associate Director of Public Realm at Sidewalk Labs, Siqi continues his mission to meld urban planning with innovative technology solutions. His previous experience as a Senior Associate at Sasaki Associates and as a Research Fellow at the MIT Senseable City Lab has equipped him with unique insights into urban data analytics and its visualization. These roles have allowed him to delve deep into urban complexities, aiming to galvanize collective action through informed design.
Education and Achievements
Siqi Zhu's academic credentials are impressive and reflect his dedication to the fields of urban design and planning. He earned his Master of Urban Planning (MUP) with a specialization in Urban Design from the prestigious Harvard University Graduate School of Design. This education laid the foundation for his innovative approach to urbanism and design practices.
Prior to that, Siqi completed his Bachelor of Applied Science (B.A.Sc.) with Distinction from the University of Toronto, where he likely honed his analytical skills and developed a passion for effective design and communication strategies in urban contexts.
His accomplishments extend beyond mere academic degrees. Over the years, Siqi has accumulated a wealth of experience across various organizations, demonstrating his ability to adapt and innovate within different professional settings. His role as Product Designer at Envelope City and Senior Designer at Utile, Inc., showcases his versatility and creative problem-solving skills in applying design thinking to real-world challenges.
Siqi's commitment to education is evident through his position as an adjunct professor at Northeastern University, where he teaches graduate-level courses in information design and visualization. By educating the next generation of designers, he is passing the torch of knowledge and fostering a culture of innovation and thoughtful design.
Achievements
Among Siqi Zhu’s notable achievements is his work on the Boston Complete Streets guidelines, a project that not only garnered national recognition but also established new standards for urban design in connectivity and accessibility. Winning the APA National Award reflects his talent in effectively communicating complex design principles to a broader audience.
Additionally, leading the Go Boston 2030 initiative marks another significant achievement in his career. This ambitious project aims to transform the city’s mobility landscape over the next two decades, showcasing Siqi's ability to conceptualize and implement long-term strategic plans that emphasize sustainability and community needs.
Siqi's work at the MIT Senseable City Lab, where he led data visualization projects, highlights his innovative use of technology to analyze urban issues. His technical proficiency in coding both frontend and backend web technologies enables him to produce working prototypes, further demonstrating his ability to bridge the gap between creative design and functional technology.
Through his diverse portfolio and extensive experience, Siqi continues to seek speculative project opportunities that resonate with his skills and interests, ensuring his work remains at the cutting edge of urban design and creative technology. His dedication to understanding urban complexities and facilitating collective urban action makes him a visionary leader in his field.
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Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
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- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
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Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.