Here are a few of my early favorites, but i’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts as well:

Social Media Cures Cancer and Speaks for Survivor
Speakers: Doug Ullman – CEO of Livestrong, and Julie Shussler – Burson-Marsteller

Agency 2.0: Introducing the Innovation Lab
Speakers: Jamie and Chris Monberg – Hornall Anderson

Design from the Gut: Dangerous or Differentiator?
Speakers: Phil Coffman – Springbox / Method & Craft, Naz Hamid – weightshift, Laurel Hechanova – Apocalypse OK, and tom watson – facebook

OMG Your RFP is Killing Me
Speakers: Joe Rinaldi – Happy Cog, and a panel of others

Humanize the Web: Illustrating for Interactive
Speakers: Gerren Lamson – GSDM, and Reagun Ray – Paravel

The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web?
Speakers: Buzz Andersen – Tumblr, and a panel of others

TenseUp: Creating Positive Tensions In Experiences
Speaker: Matt Walsh – Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Building the Dell app, therapy for a brand.
Speakers: michael kriegshauser – Dell Global Site Design, and a panel of others

Navigating danger in marketing’s in-between times
Speakers: Allison McCarthy, Guthrie Dolin, and Larry Johnson – Odopod

A Brief History of the Complete Redesign of Google
Speakers: Jon Wiley, and a whole panel from Google

Is it better to bring it In-House?
Speakers: John Stevens and Tommy Lynn – Dell Global Creative

Shameless plug for my own panel:
3 creatives. 3 amazing projects. 18 minutes each.
I’ll moderate, and speakers / creatives To Be Determined! maybe you?!

So those are a few of my favorites. What about you?

As I’ve talked about a little bit here on the blog, I had a blast my first time at sxsw this spring, and I want it to be even better next year!

so here’s what I propose, whether your a veteran, a newbie, or have never been to sxsw, let’s band together the collective nerd / design power of the interwebs, and get transparent about what we want to see / present / build up / rip apart at sxsw 2012. let’s stop bemoaning how big / corporate / meh sxsw has become, and let’s blow it out.

and if the thought has ever crossed your mind, “maybe i should submit a panel about (insert whatever your passionate about)”, then yes, you should. we need more PASSION, and less web celebritieness.

with me? alright, let’s procede:

so here’s a few of my prelimenary ideas / topics i would like to either

a) present on / participate on a panel on

or

b) would love to see others present

1. being awesome. i know it sounds completely narcissistic, but hang with me… what if i just moderated a panel and invited four or five designers / creatives / activists / mad scientist / generally awesome people to come and discuss their craft, their lives, and how their using their influence for good.

2. digital dads. i know this isn’t very inclusive, but i’d love to moderate / hear a panel on the daily joys / struggles / opportunities that other dads have experienced.

3. working in house, and killing it. a panel from a handful from some of the world’s leading in house designers / creatives, from large corporations, to startups, to non-profits, and everything in between. @boda , @squaredeye , @keeg , and @soopa are a few possible participants that come to mind.

4. trimming the fat in my creative intake. a panel discussing the growing problem of information overload, particularly with other creatives, and how they balance keeping up with the creative world around them, without getting swamped in blogs / feeds / and general mashahoopla.

5. the remote creative office. this one is a bit more long term aspirations for me, as one day I hope to be able to work remotely as a part of a stellar creative team that is free from the restrictions of a traditional office space / commute. at sxsw 2011 i met a few creatives that are doing this now ( @pws just to name one), and it has inspired me to keep seeking out this possibility. I mean seriously, it’s 2011, and we’re still tied to location??

So these are just a few of the first ideas i have. You might have noticed all of these are panels. After originally proposing a solo presentation last year, and ending up doing a dual presentation, I would highly recommend a panel, or at minimum a dual presentation. Unless your Blake Mycoskie or Majora Carter.

I would love to hear your ideas, no matter how rough they are. Or do any of my ideas sound interesting, need to be tweaked, or should be scrapped, insert your thoughts here.

So don’t hold back, let’s create the future we want to see.

So I wanted to share a few reasons that weighed heavily on my consideration of this opportunity, and hopefully you might find them helpful on your own journey.

Dream no small dreams

In some ways, my career so far could not have gotten off to a better start. I had the honor of working at the top advertising shop in the world, at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, daily mixing it up with some of the brightest minds in the creative industry, and partnering with dream clients that were as generous with the creative reigns as Gordoughs is with the awesomeness. A dream job indeed.

And for the last few years, I was part of the scrappy digital agency, Springbox, learning from some very smart, business minded creative gurus. It was here at Springbox, that I’ve truly started to find that sweetspot, where creative innovation, business goals, and user’s need all meet. Not to mention we had dream clients like Livestrong and Sweet Leaf Tea, and a steady supply of Brooklyn lager in the fridge. Good times.

So when a handful of tempting opportunities came my way, it was my instinct to lean to the hippest, most cutting edge, and overall leaders of the creative / technology industries. All great options, but all in someway easy options. Proven track records, tons of recent success to leverage, and fan bases like the world has never seen before. All of them would have been dream jobs to some degree.

But great stories are never about the easy life, or the luxuries one affords himself (via Donald Miller’s ‘A thousand miles in a million years’). Great stories are always about overcoming great obstacles. The underdog, the one everyone had counted out, who then came back to prove all the naysayers wrong.

I want to live a great story. I want to tell my grandkids of when the chips were down, and we proved them all wrong.

So even as Dell currently has some things going for them (which I’ll get to shortly), I also know that as a brand, they have taken quite a hit with the public perception over the last 5-10 years. There is much work to do. And it will require much blood, sweat and tears, as all great adventures do. And that, has the potential for a great comeback story.

Though dell has seen some rough spots over the last decade, there are many reasons for hope, and I will highlight a few of them next.

Momentum

Over the last year, Dell has been going through a massive and far reaching re-branding, largely led by an in-house team. Far beyond merely a logo, a few colors, and a typeface, this effort is addressing the entire brand prescence. And with a corporation this massive, this has been no small task. I have seen this first hand over the last year, as part of the team at Springbox working in partnership. I will admit that I was a bit skeptical about the rebranding when I first began to see it implemented. Many of us have seen corporations undergo a “rebranding”, while the reality is merely a new coat of paint. Though I thought this may be the case at first, I’m now convinced that I was wrong. There is change happening, and Dell is moving in the right direction. There is a renewed identity and passion in who Dell is as a company, as a force for good. There is a new found focus on design, aesthetics, real world usefulness, user experience, and overall brand perception. There is a good bit of momentum, and with a corporation this large, this is no small feat.

Support from leadership

As I saw the momentum building over the last year, I knew that it had to be a huge team effort, but I also knew that it had to contain a key element often missing from the majority of design / branding / creative changes in corporations: they had the support from leadership. More than just a sign off, change is being driven from both the top down, as well as bottom up. This is huge. Unless the leadership values and desires to see change happen, a million psd files / sketches / and dreams will all go for not.

A stellar team is forming

As I began to tell some fellow creatives about my decision, one of the things that I kept hearing repeatedly was “oh wow, my really talented friend / former coworker just joined the team there”. Though I didn’t know this so much when I accepted the offer, it has been quite reassuring and exciting to hear time and time again. Designers, writers, technologist, interaction designers, producers, and more. The breadth and depth of experience is impressive. Along with having support from leadership, I also believe it’s crucial to have teammates who are both highly skilled and passionate about their craft. I’m excited to join this growing team.

50 years from now, I want to look back over my life and be thankful for the people and teams I had the honor to be a part of, remember the challenges I conquered, and have no regrets about how I invested my God given time, energy, and passion. Here’s to being one step closer.

passion

You may be tempted to skip over this part. I mean really, who wants to talk about passion, right? we’re in a business, an industry, who’s really passionate about the 9-5 anyway. Wrong. Above any thing else, the driving force of passion came up again and again for me while at south by. Though I can easily be distracted by the latest and greatest shiny gadget / idea / startup, ( what self respecting nerd can’t ;} ), the people and conversations that i consider most memorable are ones centered on whatever it is someone’s passionate about.

I’ll get to the offical business of the festival soon, but I wanted to first highlight the passion I found outside of the convention center halls. Whether it be conversations over pints at the gingerman, or over tacos at la condesca, the greatest moments for me were not spent leaning back gazing at slides or the next twittbookspace idea, but rather leaning intently into conversations about fatherhood, adoption, architecture, clients, pricing, camping, cylcing, and a handful of other topics. If we need more of anything at sxsw next year, it’s not opinions, technology, or parties. we (including myself) need more passion for the projects that fill up our moments, days, and lives.

a festival

I read that there were over 19,000 paying attendees this year, the greatest number in sxsw history. I also read that there was somewhere close to 1000 panels. Though at times the shear number of attendees and panels felt overwhelming, I’m thrilled overall to see both my city and my industry grow.

I was fortunate enough to make some outstanding panels, but I also missed a few, as to be expected with so many options at every turn. A few of my favorite in particular, were @rga ‘s “congratulations your brand is about to become obsolete”, Blake ( founder and chief shoe giver at Tom’s shoes, @blakemycoskie ) Mycoskie’s keynote, and john ( @jkolko ) kolko and dennis ( @dennis_littky ) littky ‘s panel “will technology save education” . Different subject matter for each, but the same theme of passion in each. These people are smart, but more importantly they are extremely passionate!

Overall, some of the panels were extremely basic, or mundane, but I did find some real gems! Sometimes you just have to dig! As far as value, I would say the conference is valuable, but I can not see myself ever paying for a badge. If in the future my company is paying, or if I get the honor to speak again and have my badge comped, I would love to come back. But I just can’t honestly say that the festival is worth $500 admission. I would pay $100, and consider $200. But not $500, at least at sxsw current state. which leads me to a challenge of where the festival can go!

Also, I am writing a summary of my own panel, “clients are not the target audience, users are”, co-led by the extremely smart and talented Anton @repponen, an associate creative director from fantasy interactive in new York, New York, and will post this shortly here on the kreathaus blog.

A Challenge

One of great individuals that I met this year, Ted @Boda , recently tweeted

“The best way to complain is to make things.” -James Murphy

This is the best summary for my thoughts on the possible future of sxswi. Over the course of the festival, I heard far too many complaints on how lame this or that panel / keynote / talk was. It was almost the standard way to start a conversation. And though I won’t deny that many of the panels were hit or miss, we can’t stop there.

We have to craft the future we want to live in. do you want sxsw to be amazing next year? well, how are you going to make it happen then?

so let’s drop the cynicism, evaluate what we’re passionate about, what we’re spending our lives on, and how those two things can intertwine.

So here’s my challenge for next year: Determine what your passionate about. What keeps you up at night? What project / business / app / idea do you day dream about? What project will you have invested so much time / sweat / and blood into by march of next year, that by the time I see you, you can’t help but tell me about it?

And if a couple thousand of us gather again next year in this fair city, with a passion for whatever it is we’re spending out lives on, I think we will alI be blown away.

So get to it. And I can’t wait to run into you next year!

Until next year, what were your thoughts on sxsw this year? how can we make it better? I’d love to hear other takes on the subject!

So this past friday was the last day of my first stab at a “100 day plan”, as inspired by Fahrenheit 212.

to put it softly, i failed miserably. in every category, i fell below 50% of the goal.

so i could just keep moving, forget about the goals all together. they were too tough, i had too much to do, blah, blah, blah. the excuses could go on forever.

No.

No excuses. I was just lazy in many areas.

So here’s to round two. Some of the goals have been reworked and a few new ones added.

What have you done in the last 100 days? What goals have you met? What audacious dreams have you dreamed?

But I have to end the post here, as I’m off to log in a few miles on the mountain bike for lunch.

Only 596 miles left to go.

the creative agency

Though I have had the privilege of working at two great digital agencies, Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Springbox, I am still very interested in hearing from other leading shops, to find out the struggles, unique viewpoints, and victories that they have discovered. Whether it’s exploring the digital pod / team concept from R/GA, or a radically new compensation model from Fahrenheit 212, or hopefully a dozen of other innovative agency models / structures, I am looking forward to hearing other’s thoughts on forming and unleashing creative teams, adjusting and finessing the creative process, and the evolving digital agency in general.

the good, the bad, and the ugly role of digital in our daily life

how is the ever present stream of information and connectability helping / hurting our lives? our relationships? our family? our health? our careers? our neighborhoods? what are the psychological affects of always being connected / on / checking in? Specifically for me, as a new dad, and young husband, what precautions do I need to take to keep my own and my families digital intake at a healthy ebb and flow?

technology for the greater good

how can we move past shiny gadgets and time wasting games, and use technology for the greater good of our community, and ultimately our world? how can we use technology to provide basic necessities such as clean water / food / dignity / freedom from slavery to those daily affected by these issues? Much closer to home, how can we restore wonder and play to a dilapidated education system? What can be done to improve easy access to locally grown foods? The possibilities are endless. I know this one is a bit vague, but I have a feeling that there is so much that COULD be done, but is currently being trumped by angry birds and shiny plastic. I mention this topic, not as one who is an expert or even currently active in creating solutions, but rather as an area that I want to invest more of my time and energy into.

So those are my top interest for #sxswi 2011. What about you?

yep, seven years, three states, and 35,892 psd files later, I’m finally staring down the joy of taking part in the sxsw interactive festival this year. oh joy.

so to give this monumentous event the care and energy it deserves, I will be sharing a bit of my preparation on the blog here, with a desire to facilitate a conversation, more than prescribe a plan of attack for others. if 2011 will be your first year attending as well, welcome fellow newby! or maybe your a veteran and could recite the last ten years keynotes in your speech. if so, i would love to hear tips and advice, as well as what your looking forward to as this year’s shindig. or maybe your in the same boat as i have been up until this point, and you can’t make it to tehas this year. even so, i’d love to hear your thought on the topics and have you join in from afar!

Enough preamble, here’s a rough look at the topics I want to cover in this series of posts:

Topics I’m interested in

Reading list in preperation for #sxswi

People I’d like to share a pint with

hidden gems to find while in Austin

daily thougths (during the conference)

post-conference wrap up

I hope you join me in my preparation. And as always, if you have any thoughts, suggestions, or gems of wisdom to contribute here, share away!

FUKINSEI (imbalanced)
Asymmetry, odd numbers, irregularity, unevenness, imbalance is used as a denial of perfection as perfection and symmetry does not occur in nature.

KANSO (simple)
Elimination of ornate and things of simplicity by nature expresses their truthfulness. Neat, frank and uncomplicated.

KOKOU (austere)
Basic, weathered bare essentials that are aged and unsensuous. Evokes sternness, forbiddance, maturity and weight.

SHIZEN (natural)
Raw, natural and unforced creativity without pretence. True naturalness is to negate the naive and accidental.

YUGEN (subtle profound)
Suggest and not reveal layers of meaning hidden within. Invisible to the casual eye and avoiding the obvious.

DATSUZOKU (unworldly)
Transcendence of conventional and traditional. Free from the bondage of laws and restrictions. True creativity.

SEIJAKU (calm)
Silence and tranquility, blissful solitude. Absence of disturbance and noise from one’s mind, body and surroundings.

they are an “innovation firm”, as they call themselves.

bringing high tech, high return on investment innovation to some of the largest companies in the country. they struck me as remarkable for many reasons. one being their unique compensation based on their solution’s earnings. another unique thing about them was there all out, multi hour product reveal extravaganza at the end of each product.

do your self a favor, and read more about them here.

but i want to focus on a different practice of theirs that really stuck out to me.

to stay motivated, focused, and ferocious, they have continual cycles of 100 day plans.

every 100 days, both for each individual, as well as for the company, goals, milestones, and actions are brainstormed and written down. then at the end of that 100 days, everyone, yep EVERYONE is held accountable to how they did against there stated goals.

real goals, actionable items. playing off everyone’s strengths, they are not content to sit on there laurels for even a day.

so being a natural goal setter myself (with my 10, 5, 3, and 1 year goals), i was challenged to step it up even further and try out this 100 day goal challenge.

what type of goals? well hear are a few of mine: 600 miles cycling, 2800 pushups, 700 ab rolls, 15 blog posts, 3 insight post, read 5 books, and a few others

even halfway through, i see how i really missed out on some goals that should be there, and how a few others might have been a bit unrealistic, ha.

but, better to measure, see what’s working and not, and improve; then to daydream and sulk when nothing happens.

today is day 42, and though i half to play a bit of catchup in many of the goals, i’m really glad i’m doing this, and look to continue the experiment.

My current cycle will end on December 8th, and i’d love to have anybody else whose up for it join me starting on the 9th.

it could be goals of cycling. writing. cooking. climbing. loving. doesn’t matter what it is. as long as it takes everything you have. as long as it’s a bit daunting even to think of.

Here’s to grit. Here’s to audacity.

Here’s to changing the world, one day at a time.

before jumping into my early favorites, i do want to note one choice that the sxsw organizers took, that i thought was really classy and cool: there is no vote count or leaderboard for the proposed panels! very very cool, and a great attempt at keeping this from becoming a bandwagon ready popularity contest. thanks sxswi!

that being said, here is an early list of my favorite panels i’ve found so far, and as always i would love to hear your thoughts on these and / or other panels:

Interaction Jones and the Template of Doom
Organizer Naz Hamid, http://www.weightshift.com

Collaboration Nation: How Side-Projects Can Keep You Relevant
Organizer Phil Coffman, http://springbox.com , http://methodandcraft.com

Crazy, Cool, and Interesting Uses of GeoData
By Elad Gil, http://twitter.com

Congratulations! Your Brand Is About to Become Obsolete.
Organizer Andrea Ring, http://www.rga.com

How to Whup ‘Em with the Leroy Stick
By Hawk Thompson, http://www.springbox.com/

Branding Reinvented: Creating Engagement in the Digital World
By david lai, http://www.hellodesign.com/

Listen To Me Dammit! I’m An Expert!
Organizer Chris Mayfield, http://springbox.com

Better Ideas Faster: Effective Brainstorming for Interactive Design
Organizer David Sherwin, http://www.frogdesign.com

Apps or Mobile Site: How to Choose
By Adrian Taylor, http://www.springbox.com

Design as Lifestyle: An Honest Day’s Work
Organizer Duane King http://www.kingduane.com

Interactive Branding and the Built Environment
Organizer Jamie Monberg, http://www.hornallanderson.com/

Let’s Go: The Evolution of JetBlue.com
Organizer Michal Pasternak, http://www.hugeinc.com

Can Design and Technology Fix America’s Education Problem?
Organizer John Kolko, http://www.frogdesign.com

Switch: from Freelancer to Entrepreneur
Organizer Matthew Smith, http://www.squaredeye.com

From Storytelling to Technology and Back Again
Organizer Barry Wacksman, http://www.rga.com

Stop Talking, Start Making
Organizer Will Turnage http://www.rga.com

How Does Scifi Influence Our Future Cities?
Organizer Igor Schwarzmann, http://www.cognitivecities.com

Storytelling in an Age of Industrialized Content
Organizer Upendra Shardanand, http://www.daylife.com

Digital Bookmaking for Designers & Developers
Organizer Brian warren, http://begoodnotbad.com/

Websites Aren’t Enough: the New Interaction Design
Organizer @danielmall

The New Loyalists: Measuring Brand Advocacy Today
Organizer Luane Kohnke, http://www.rga.com