Seven Questions for Leaders

I'm a fan of Seth Godin's daily blog. Most if not all if his posts are though provoking. I really appreciate how he keeps looking forward and urges each and every one of us to do the same. If you aren't reading his blog, you should be.

He recently posted the very thought-provoking "Seven questions for leaders".

I'll wait while you go check 'em out.

Done? Good.

Here's my personal addendum to his post: if you are going on job interviews you need to be asking these seven questions. If the answers are not to your liking, then you don't want to work with those folks. Move on and either find another company or better yet, start your own.

Artisan Economy

I've never been much of a cook. If you ask my friends, they will tell you that the microwave is my best friend. In fact, one of my best buddies was shocked when he learned that I actually use the stove on occasion.

Well, when I first was out on my own I did not own a single pot or pan to cook with. I cooked using the Stouffer's method. But when I decided to buy some pots and pans, I went for a set that featured a saucepan, skillet, and larger pot along with a lot of cook looking utensils that was a great price. These little cookware pieces lasted several years and were of decent quality.

However, when I decided to replace them this year, I decided to look around and spend a bit more for something of higher quality. I ended up purchasing a great T-Fal 2-quart saucepan along with their eco-friendly non-stick 12.5 inch Saute Pan.

So what does this have to do with an "artisan economy"?

Well, I got to thinking that I didn't value the cookware I had, it was disposable because I had only spent a modest sum on it. Then I started thinking about things like the apps in the app store, or office supplies, you know, the little things that are cheap and how if it breaks, you just buy a new one.

Really, when you think about it, can something that costs a dollar or less really cost less than a dollar to produce? In some cases yes, but what about something that is five dollars or even ten? When those items break, we usually discard them too.

But what would happen if we spent more for something of a bit better quality? What if that five dollar toy was ten and was built a bit sturdier and of quality materials instead of cheap plastic? Maybe your kids would value their toys a bit more and want to keep them longer. (Ok it was worth a shot... :P) Or maybe that nice utensil that you bought for $10 that was made of metal instead of plastic would last longer and do better for your needs.

As I've gotten older, I've learned that I'm willing to pay a bit more for quality. Maybe if we all were willing to spend a bit more less often for quality items, then our economy would improve as we need to fill positions to make all this cool stuff.

Ironically, soon after I had this revelation, Eric Karjaluoto over at Ideas on Ideas had a great post about the very same topic. Maybe, fingers crossed, it's the start of a good trend....

(btw, I'm not affiliated with Eric, smashLAB, or Ideas on Ideas other than I enjoy Eric's posts and once had a fun conversation about design conferences with him on Facebook that he probably doesn't remember...)

CFC & HOW 2010: Part 1

I had the privilege of attending the 2010 Creative Freelancer Conference and a few sessions of the 2010 HOW Design Conference. In a stroke of brilliance, F&W Media decided to hold the CFC, HOW, and inHOWse conferences all at the same location and at the same time. As a result, my CFC package included access to the HOW resource center (samples and schwag! :), the HOW Opening Keynote and one "Wildcard" HOW Session.

I'm a CFC and HOW Conference veteran and while my main purpose was to attend both conferences, I brought along my friend who likes to travel, so I planned on working in a bit of a vacation too.

Despite what our pilots told us at the beginning of the flight, our ride into Denver was anything but smooth. Especially the last half hour, it felt as if we were on a roller coaster and not a plane. And alas, I did succumbed to altitude sickness that same night. Going into the first day of CFC, I was a bit unsteady and uncertain.

However, once I arrived and saw Bryn Mooth (HOW Editor and all-around awesome person) and chatted with her a bit, I started feeling much better. That carried me until I entered the room filled with CFCers and the energy of several hundred independent creatives lit my design fire up.

Ilise stared the day off right with the session You Are A Business.She talked about how we decide if and when we are a business. It was very empowering. Pitch Perfect by Dyana was good, however, it was the same basic presentation from 2008, so although it was not new to me, it was good to hear again and to do the exercises to help clarify how I define my business when asked the dreaded "What do you do?"

Luke's session Who's The Boss was by far the best presentation of the day for me. He explained how to set clear boundaries between work and personal for you and your client as well as strategies to keep your business and clients all working together smoothly.

Rather than attend the panel on freelance success and the networking reception, I decided to fill up my soul or as Von said in his HOW session ("add a match to my matchbox", more on that later). My friend's friends were going to visit their dog who had just given birth to the cutest little labrador puppies I've ever seen. Nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, I really got to see the beauty of Denver and surrounding areas.

Day Two of the CFC was shaping up to be a long day for me since I also had the HOW opening keynote and resource center on my agenda. I was starting to really feel better today! The design mojo and creative energy was definitely palpable as I walked through the Hyatt to the sessions.

Look for part 2 coming Monday!

kNOwHOW

A few of the HOW Design Forum members who were unable to attend this year's HOW Design Conference in Austin decided to have a "kNOwHOW" conference. Nothing fancy, just a few designer friends getting together to share knowledge, friendship and food. Our host, Karma, along with her mom, and fellow HOWie Patti really went all out: we had food, a creative exercise (doodling monsters!), a photobooth, and schwag bags!

It was a great bit of creative inspiration and friendship, well worth the 9 hour drive from Ohio to attend. Enjoy the photos on my Flickr here.

Agile Design Tips

Eric Karjaluoto from smashLAB has an interesting essay on his ideas on ideas blog about how to streamline your creative process to be less rigid and more agile while keeping it efficient and productive. While the changes he suggests are small, I believe they make sense for the most part and I'm willing to give some of his ideas a go-round. What do you think? 

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Today is the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The folks over at Design Observer have a great article about it. Basically, UDHR is the new "Bill of Rights" for anyone, no matter what country they live in, for the 21st Century. Alas, its adoption is at an incredibly slow pace. Instead of bailouts, this is the issue every person on earth should be making noise about.

Design Mind for Design Minds

I was surfing my RSS feeds the other day and came across this new magazine from the famous frog design studio. It's called Design Mind and they have a great online version of the mag too. I've already checked out a few blog posts and online articles and they appear to be well-written and thought provoking. Might be worth your time.

(BTW, I'm in no way affiliated with frog design or its magazine. I believe in the "We are smarter than Me" philosophy of my good buddy Steve Gordon and I'm just passin' on the knowledge.)

HOW Design Conferernce 2008 Review

I was fortunate enough to attend my fourth HOW Design Conference May 18-21 in Boston and here are my thoughts about this year's offerings.

As always, it was fantastic to see my old friends from the HOW Magazine Forum as well as meet new friends in the sea of 4,000 designers that descended upon Boston for 4 days of design knowledge!

Opening keynote session was good, there was some great info there, but you had to work to find it. I think if the presentation of the info was just a bit dry/lacking.

Designed Life was not what I was thinking it was going to be about. My expectation from the description was how we as designers should be designing for the custom product/packaging that customers are beginning to get used to and expect in today's world. However, I did think that Joe Duffy did have some good info, I think the visual brief is a fantastic idea!

Decoding Design was very dry, however, I think that her book sounds interesting and I will pick it up and maybe it will give a bit more info to some of her concepts and that might tie the session together a bit better for me.

Arriving at Creativity was a dud. I think these guys were trying to be funny like the 3 Dogz presentation, but they just couldn't pull it off. I had no regrets skipping out on this one.

Visuals and Verbals was fantastic! Great info and presented in an engaging way. Way to go Andy Epstein!




Design Entrepreneur was okay. Sure it is wonderful to see and be inspired by the work of Charles S. Anderson, but I thought this session would explain more of the nitty gritty of how to become a design entrepreneur. I think this session would have been better if Charles had taken his ten points and elaborated on them. Instead of "find a manufacterer (duh!), tell me HOW to find one and HOW to negotiate a good deal for my licensing, etc.

Developing Leadership and Stratetic Awareness, Jeni Herberger gave a wonderful presentation with lots of great information! Excellent speaker, as always.

Lovin' Your Design Job was pretty good. Good information and the speakers were fun and entertaining. I wish that we would've spent more time on the worksheet working out HOW to achieve some of the goals that we started to explore. This session felt incomplete. Perhaps this should have been a two-part session for maximum effectiveness?

Planning, Packaging, and Promoting Yourself as the Product. What can I say? Accomplished logo designer Jeff Fisher gives a great presentation, funny and articulate while passing along good info. Although I still don't know how he keeps up on all those websites he's a part of...and despite being heckled by some rude people in about the 10th row on the right hand side, he remained calm and kept his good humor throughout.

Illustrative Design by Von was great. It was great to see his process and he presented the info in a fun and entertaining way (way to go Billy Mays!). From what I could see, people were coming to his session from other sessions.

Closing Keynote. The best session EVER. Bill Strickland is amazing. He was confident without being arrogant. He was engaging, I hung on his every word. The work he does is so valuable and he recognizes that we as designers can help change the world and he's asking for help. I don't know about anyone else, but I want to go to work for this man.



Suggestions & Closing Thoughts
Overall, I think this year's HOW was on par with Atlanta, some dud sessions, but more good ones than bad. Some general thoughts about the HOW conference:
I think that in addition to the tracks (creativity, business, etc), that each session should be labeled for where you are in your career: entry, mid-level, senior. That might help some people better chose which sessions to attend.

Please bring back the printing of the schedule on the back of the name badge! Yes, I know I am free to attend any session once there, but it'd be nice to at least be reminded of what I registered for.

Please make the badges slightly larger next year. They don't have to go back to their former size, but I like putting all the bcards of my new contacts in their and they simply all don't fit in that small of a badge holder.

I peronsally believe they can get rid of the handout binder and replace it with a notepad. Still have Corporate Image develop it so that F+W and CI remain friends. The current binder is expensive to produce and we're wasting a ton of paper on the copied handouts. Not to mention the 5 extra pounds the attendees have to carry around in addition to all their schwag. What I'd like to see is a small flash drive with a PDF or HTML version of EVERY session's slideshow on it. Put that, a cool HOW branded pen and a nice sketchbook quality pad of notepaper in a trendy HOW branded notebook holder that is portable (like the size of the VEER sketchbooks). And make the notepad/sketchbook a standard size so I can replace the paper and keep the outside binder part for reuse for many years. Bryn/Sarah, et al if you want to learn more about my concept on this, please feel free to contact me, you know where to find me!

I love the HOW Conference, it is the best in my opinion and I truly appreciate all the hard work that the entire HOW gang puts into making this event a success each and every year. Congrats to you all, I hope to see ya in Austin (assuming I can get work to send me again next year. let the crossing of fingers begin!)