I came, I saw, I blogged the PSFK Conference in San Francisco. I didn't provide a lot of insight into the panels, because in my personal opinion, liveblogging is more about speed and publishing publishing publishing than deep and careful reflection. Here are the posts:
Trends - Should You Care? Ed Cotton talked about the opportunities and pitfalls of making business decisions based on trends. Bottom line, it matters. As a planner you need to separate the wheat from the chaff, be bold in your suggestions, and be convincing in your arguments.
San Francisco Snapshot - The best part of this for me was their insights into how the city recovered from the dotcom crash, and how San Franciscans view their working life as more casual in comparison to NYC or LA. Also the idea driven start-up method vs. the income driven method.
Shape the World - If we can force our clients to answer the age old questions of how do we live together, as a community or even global society, and how do we live with the earth then we will be on track to meet the slow yet inevitable global trends.
New Art - basically a really cool start-up idea that met the needs of emerging artists while fostering a growing market of art buyers and patrons
Make it With Us - Current was a start-up, but NASA's move to open themselves to the general community was freaking awesome.
Making Inspiration Matter - This was a bit fuzzy, but such is the nature of inspiration. It was cool to have the different creative sectors (advertising, architecture, design) discuss what they think is important and how they integrate it into their business practices.
Thoughtful Change - Starbucks is listening to their customers while taking design inspiration from the cafe society of Japan
Aligning Interests - Doing good doesn't have to be a personal sacrifice. Take altruism out of the picture and find ways to make a profit while making a positive impact.
Look and Feel - Meeting the challenge of changing the in-flight experience. (You're probably better off waiting for the video)
Using It - If you have never given your clients a reality check on getting involved in social media, then read this. My favorite part was when Jenka pointed out from the audience that a older person's experience in social media is very different from your average teenager's and we need to reconcile that.
When Words Are Not Enough - Meh.
Behave - How everything Method produces ,from the work environment to the products, is always designed.
All in all it was a great conference and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The money is nice of course (or at least it will be [nudge, nudge]), but it was really great being there and absorbing all of the wonderful ideas and points of view.
I was also really great meeting Mark from Industrial Brand and Richard from Egg Strategy (I hope that leads to a concrete job opportunity) and I wish I could have hung out with Jenka from Social Creature more, but I got a touch absorbed in my agenda of who I needed to meet and talk with while I was there. Hopefully I'll be able to make it up to her at the next likemind.
Now I'm going to be liveblogging DIY Days here in Los Angeles this weekend. Stay tuned, I'm a little short on details.