Thinkcage

On of the really great things the surprised me at SXSW this year was the renewed art of note taking. Each of the keynotes featured two information designers drawing beautiful graphic versions of the presentations on huge pages. I snapped this image of one of them.

Today after returning home, I see this link to Mike Rohde’s gorgeous notes from the conference.

My design professor in college was adamant that we keep a sketchbook (and I do, to this day) and she stressed that your sketchbook should be more than sloppy notes, but should look as if an “artist had been there”. These exemplify that idea.

This morning I will be once again making the trip south to Austin, TX for the 2008 South by Southwest Interactive conference. 

SXSW is actually three conferences in one, covering Interactive, Music, and Film during SXSW Week, March 7 – 16, 2008. SXSW Interactive is really the premier event for people working in the web industry. The conference features nearly five full days and offers panels, keynotes, a trade show, and other events featuring the top minds in the field. SXSW covers a wide range of topics from business development on the web to social networking to technology, design, and even tactical topics like HTML and CSS. In years past, SXSW has been a favorite launching point for new “Web 2.0″ applications. Nearly anyone working on the web can benefit from something at this conference, even if it is only for the opportunities to network. And like many conferences, some of the best information is found in the form of meeting and sharing ideas with the smart people you meet throughout the week.

I’m looking forward to panels on design, social networking, CMS systems, and web startups. Speakers include: Jason Fried, Jim Coudal, Jason Santa Maria, Kathy Sierra, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Jimmy Wales with keynotes by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, community artist Frank Warren, and futurist Jane McGonigal.

This year, I’ll be heading down to SXSW with Element Fusion senior designer, Dustin Evans. While in Austin, we’ll be looking to line-up meetings with customers, partners, and new friends. If you’d like to meet us at SXSW, you can find us in the online registrant directory. Or leave your contact information below and we can provide email, phone, twitter, or other ways to reach us while at the conference. Hope to see you there!

Oh and did I metion that Mashable rocks?

Note: This post was originally posted on the ElementFusion blog.

One of the things about the internet that has always appealed to me is the powerful independent spirit that drives so much of the creative work being produced. When I first learned HTML it was a revelation to me that you could learn to make a webpage by visiting sites on the web for free. No books, classes, or anything proprietary involved. Amazing — especially in the field of graphic design where $1000 software packages are the norm. But on the web I could make a website using Windows Notepad.

Today the web is much different in many ways as massive data-driven websites deliver millions of pages of dynamically generated content distributed via XML streams and server sockets. Information moves seamlessly between mobile phones, desktop browsers, and database servers. But the things I learned in 1996 still apply today. I can still build a website from start to finish by myself with little to no cost save for my time. What’s more, in this day and age anyone can publish on the web. The rise of blogs and content management systems have ushered in an age where nearly anyone with the desire and basic computer or word-processing skills can create and maintain their own website. From high school students on MySpace.com to business owners everywhere, people are publishing on the web. And it is this leveling of the playing field where anyone can be a newspaper publisher, a sports reporter, a writer, an entertainer, or editorialist and have instant access to a worldwide audience no matter who they are that gives anyone the opportunity to really do something great. Technology levels the playing field.

A great example of this is My Date With Drew by filmmaker Brian Herzlinger who stars in his own documentary of his quest to score a date with actress Drew Barrymore. The film is a pretty entertaining exercise in the “six rules of separation” idea as an everyman tries to use his personal network (my friend has a friend, who has a friend, who…) to propose a date to his boyhood crush. But what really appealed to me was the inspirational story of a regular guy who did something amazing fueled only by his creativity and independent spirit. You see, the hitch is that Brian doesn’t really know anyone famous and only has an $1100 budget and a 30 day deadline to make his film. Yes, 30 days because he purchased a video camera on a credit card and needed to return it within the store’s 30 day return policy. And of course if he fails to score the date, he really doesn’t have a film. Without giving away too much, he is met with remarkable luck in his search but eventually reaches the limits of his network without reaching his goal.

That is where the internet comes in. Late in the process Brian sets up a website detailing his quest. Within days the site is overwhelmed with traffic as the link is passed from person to person across the web. Suddenly his personal network is worldwide. That is how he reaches Drew. That is how he made it happen. Weeks of phone calls and meetings and rejections were instantly forgotten as the power of the web took over. Without his website, Brain would have most certainly failed. But he wasn’t a geek or a programmer just a normal guy with an idea. In today’s internet anyone with an idea has the power to make it happen. Anyone with even a moderately priced computer and video camera can be a film maker or a publisher. Thanks to technology and the web any of us has a place on a worldwide stage. I think that is really fascinating. So where is your website?

Fast Company has a great article entitled, The 6 Myths of Creativity, that I think is a must-read for anyone in the position to shape the working conditions in any company. The article details six misconceptions that, in my opinion, fall into the category of perceptive differences between management and employees. The real takeaway for me, though, is reiterated in several of the six myths: happy workers are best. They are more creative and more productive. Much of this burden of happiness rests on the shoulders of the employee who should seek happiness in doing work in which he can be engaged doing work that he truly enjoys. The balance of the burden is shouldered by management who must provide an environment in which workers can enjoy their work and make meaningful progress. The toughest environments to work in usually are festering with inflexibility, indecision, inaction, and excessive bureaucracy.

Happiness in the workplace has always been a powerful issue for me, especially growing up watching my parents labor endlessly in jobs they hated. And this issue is something I often reflect on as I wonder if people are correct when they say “That’s why they call it work. It isn’t supposed to be fun.”.

Kurt Wenner’s work has been making the rounds for the past few weeks and each time I receive a link I am even more amazed.

Wenner is a street artist who “paints” in chalk in public areas. His subject matter leans to the classical but it is his mastery of geometry and perspective that is so fascinating. His paintings display an astonishing level of vision that I have never seen before. Images of classical figures and scenes appear to be fully three dimensional as if carved from and climbing out of the surfaces upon which they are rendered.

Even as an artist I am baffled about how one could possibly create these images in a perfect and perfectly unusual perspective. Truly amazing. I highly recommend spending time looking at his work online.

A University of Toronto study: Biological Basis For Creativity Linked To Mental Illness.