The second day of SXSW, Saturday, was pretty great. I woke up as usual, to the sound of music from my Macbook. After getting dressed and ready, I took a cab to the convention center, for the first panel at 10:00.
The panelists were top notch, from Apple, A List Apart, and some other big places.
The gist of the panel, I think, was to focus more on content than small issues like grammar and punctuation – stuff that I do anyways.
Have a ‘kitchen table converstion.’ It should be something interesting, a well told story, as you would at the dinner table.
It should have a ‘chillax feeling.’ He also mentioned not to let anyone or the fear of rejection deter you from writing – something I have to deal with sometimes.
He talked about basically learning from others. Finding your writing rockstars and learning from them. There are many great storytellers and many great writers in my field.
I love comedy and wit, and I think my writing used to be funnier in the past. In this department I really like some stuff by John Hargave, especially the old orginal articles.
For technical/design writing, there are many great authors. I love Jeremy Keith’s DOM Scripting book. And the articles by most people like Cameron Moll, Jason Santa Maria, ALA’ers, etc. are always good.
Brought up the interesting point of writing in gmail rather than a normal text editor. I suppose something like Google Docs would also be good, in terms of general portability and all. Psychologically, however, this could possibly be more of a conversational type of thing.
I’ll have to try it out.
All in all, it was very inspiring. To see writing as art, and be pushed to achieve that level.
I am hoping to see all this implemented as an improvement in this blog.
And the other big panel (that I took notes at) of the day:
This is the one I was looking most forward to. Why? Not because I needed to learn about inspiration; the whole conference was inspiring in itself. But rather, Cameron Moll, my inspiration, would ‘be there,’ along with other also cool people like Jason Santa Maria and Rob Weychert.
I kept looking around, asking myself “Where’s Moll?!” Perhaps he had slept in like Michael. Sadly to say, Jason announced that Cameron had the flu and was unable to make it. Very sad – get well soon buddy.
On the other hand, flat hicks was there and the panel was pretty great. Jason and Rob showed some of the stuff that they had done with branding and different sources of inspiration.
Turn off the Computer
One of the biggest points they touched on, and that I’ve found to be true for myself, is turning off the computer. Getting up to make some cocoa or comb your hair or talk to some friends or drive around or take a shower can be extremely helpful in thinking and solving problems. I personally (along with a few others I know) get a lot of ideas in the bathtub, where the mind is relaxed and free to ponder.
Another very important idea – one that I’m still picking up on and need to incorporate into my life and workflow – is recording. Basically, “if you’re just relying on your mind, you’re going to forget. This is especially true for me – I have a pretty bad memory for things like this. I’ll have an idea, or come to a realization or conclusion, or perhaps tell myself that I have to do something. And then later I’ll have totally forgotten about it. Writing things down on post-its (both on Dashboard and on my monitor) are real helpful here, as well as full blown to-do lists that I make on index cards.
Jason and Rob suggested sketchbooks. They showed a few things from their sketchbook and it was real amazing. I usually just use the sketchbook for small wireframes and logo concepts and stuff, but the stuff they had done on ink and paper was wonderful art.
Design Vigilante
Another concept was being a design vigilante, and going around fixing bad design. It’s a novel concept, and they had a great illustration for the concept, but I don’t know if it’s really feasible. In my case, I’m just so busy with client work that I am pressed for time on even personal projects, such as this site.
They talked about being receptive to the environment, and realizing and observing things differently. For example, they were with a crossword puzzle artist driving past a Dunkin’ Donuts when he said “If you take the D in dunkin and put it at the end, it becomes Unkind Donuts.” Interesting to know.
Ah, Constraints. Gotta love ‘em, gotta hate ‘em.
On one hand, they can make our job miserable – preventing us from doing it as good as we want to or can, trapping us in a corner. But on the other hand, generally, they serve as a focus, narrowing our possibilities to a select few
Jason & Rob’s point was that constraints are great. I’d have to agree – working with an existing idea or some predefined material really helps take the pressure off and channels the creativity. Just a blank piece of paper or canvas and no direction or idea where to start is pretty scary, and would usually end up in something bland or strange.
Find a muse.
In the end, I don’t think this’ll be that hard. There are a lot of them here. Many people who are good at what they do.
After those two panels, I went to a few others.
In the evening, Michael and I walked around 6th street trying to find a place to eat. We had mexican food (again) at a restaurant. It wasn’t as good as the Iron Cactus (at least their guacamole wasn’t) but it was good.
Next to the Frog Design party. It was pretty crowded, and pretty loud. I ran into Jeremy Keith – which was really cool. He’s a real nice guy, and his book (DOM Scripting) is top notch. I used it a lot for my senior research paper, actually. Some other people there were Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign, and Cameron Adams from The Man in Blue.
And finally, we wandered down to where Ze Frank was going to have a party. We had seen him earlier on the street and said hi and he had invited us to come to his party. But then, they were carding and didn’t let us in so we just went on home. Later I heard it was pretty lame, anyways.
The highlight of the day is definitely the panels, though the parties are cool just because of all the amazing people you can meet.
Stay tuned for Day 3, and the night of the Web Awards & Bowling Extravaganza.
Comments
This place isn't ALL about me — just mostly.
Cody Mays
2 years, 12 months ago
What are you using for the “alarm” clock program on your macbook?
Anand
2 years, 11 months ago
Cody: both Awaken & iTaf work perfectly. First is $9, second one is free.
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