GabrielMathews.com | Biological Log

What a beautiful Saturday it was for this years Cre8Con 2009 to take place in our fair city of Portland, Oregon!

My morning started with a lovely little note on the inside of the bedroom door, letting me know that we had some sleeping guests downstairs and not to go down there in the buff. After silently getting out of the house, I rode my bike down town before the conference to get some breakfast. I stopped by my favorite Peet’s Coffee and Tea for coffee and then rode around brainstorming where to eat. I didn’t want my usual Bijou mushroom and Grafton cheddar omelet, so I thought I’d stop by Elephants Deli and grab a burrito…closed! Well, I rode around until finally surrendering to The Heathman’s restaurant next to the venue. I ordered the eggs/potatoes/toast plate. The food was mildly bland with a hint of ‘meh’. I met up with creative director Jeff Brummer, his wife, and graphic designer David Gurley.

After breakfast we headed into the venue, and took our seats front row right in front of the podium. After about 15 minutes after seating, the show started.

First up was “On Your Feet’, an awesome corporate improv group that really engages the audience and makes them interact in unique ways. This year was an informal card exchange between members of the audience. You were given two 5×7 cards at the beginning of the show. On the back of the cards, you were to write down something you did to get creatively unstuck. This reminded me of the last cre8camp I was at where we had a large round table discussion on getting unstuck. Cards were exchanged between audience members and also passed down to make a wall of ideas in the venue lobby. Mass idea generation is awesome.

Next up was Dan Wieden of Wieden & Kennedy. Humbling to say the least, but he had an intense assortment of insights as far as creative process and work ethics were concerned. To top the list-”Come to work stupid” every day and “Fail Harder” were the ones that resonated the most. This was all folded within emotional advertisement examples such as “The Girl Effect” as well as the most impactful Levi’s ad ever made(watch it with good, bass heavy, headphones. The audio is a wax recording from 1888 Walt Whitman. It really brought back the American appeal/culture to the denim. I might go get a pair of 501s today. Dan wrapped things up with some poetry and prose and spoke about his youth camp Caldera.

Jennifer Jako showed true humility as anyone would following Dan Wieden. She is the owner of Fix Studio. As an interior designer she helps local businiesses realize the value of space by bringing in her expertise. After her speech, which felt formulaic and hibited, during the Q&A, a lady in the audience commented how she remembered meeting Mrs. Jako 18 years ago when she was still a receptionist and was so proud of her for making it this far. This is pretty profound as she has AIDS and has not deterred her from becoming successful and from what I could make out, happy. At this point the formulaic and hibited aura melted away and alas, a genuine person stood on stage before us. It was really beautiful to see that metamorphosis happen right before my eyes.

Flash Choir happened here…meh. (Thanks Joe for the input)

Lunch break-I was able to get back down to Elephant’s Deli and have a wonderful sandwich in the grass in the park blocks. So relaxing. I washed the sandwich down with a small San Pelligrino. I had a bit of a sweet tooth, so I trotted over to Cacao and had an awesome shot of cinnamon infused drinking chocolate before heading back for the second half of the show.

During the time I spend waiting for the next speaker, I met Shannon Henry (@spiralshannon) who designs and fabricates math based art artifacts such as jewelry and accessories. Buy them! She was super nice and came to sit with our group.

Finally to warm the crowd back up, On Your Feet came back on stage to sing the synopsis of The Artist’s Way. Well done.

Jerry Ketel was up next, opening his speech with a poem (The Quest by Richard Rogers) about the search for hip hop. Quite beautiful and an obvious metaphor for the search for creativity. He spoke about intersections of ideas and that there were the jewels of creativity. Metaphor. Layering. He called it cross , dressing thinking. Actually it was a damn brilliant way to pose his techniques for explaining how he gets into his creative space and how he looks at problems as well as solves them.

Now before I go on, I’d like to note that at this point Jerry had really stirred the pot when he left the stage after undressing and putting on a dress to nail down his point of ‘cross dresser thinking’. It really lit a fire and the energy in the room was great. A wave perfect for the next speaker to ride.

The next speaker really knocked the socks off of everyone. Emek. Holy crap. This man is phenomenal. Even though, to be honest, his speech struck me more as self promotion rather than a monologue on creativity and capturing how to get into the zone. I realize that this conference isn’t a how-to, but I think Ketel did a better job capturing theory. With that said, seeing the amazing amount of work, materials, and processes that this guy  puts into his work was really inspiring. Clients ranged from The Flaming Lips to Erykah Badu to The Decemberists. You can check out his work here.

Teresa Drilling came up next with a profound portfolio of stop motion animation from Coraline to Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Most of her inspiring words were about coming up in the industry and patience…lots of patience. I think the thing I took away most from her speech is the idea that you have to be obsessed with what you love for anything to happen at all with it. I really wish I had paid more attention to what she was saying but I was so distracted by her awesome limited edition Coraline Nikes that I couldn’t focus and could only think about asking her to raise them up so I could get a better view…and I did during the Q&A.

10 minute break.

Local product designer Scott Peterson took the stage next with a presentation on creative process. His attitude of wearing many hats depending on the situation waxed true. Especially since I relate on a day to day basis per my profession.

I should mention between every speaker Rick Emerson of KUFO came out as the MC and did a little monkey dance to keep the crowd smiling. Great charisma.

Now, when Larry Brooks came on stage I can honestly say I had some insecurities of some jock dude telling me how to be creative. I really need to apologize for those misguided thoughts. He was hilarious! Great guy, kind hearted, booming personality. I think he is the reason I woke up early to seize the day today. My favorite part was when he held up a Terry Brooks novel and admitted that he used to go to the bookstore and cover the “T” and “E” with his thumb just to see what his name might look like on the cover of a book. It showed real humility and honest humanity. I’d love to have a coffee with that guy. Also thumb wrestle.

The second to last speaker of the evening was one of the the executive producers of The Simpsons-Bill Oakley. Looking like he just rolled out of his flight from LA to Portland (Yes I am aware he lives here now) he talked about the 3 phases of writing through a project that he uses: 1. The Big Idea 2. The Broad Strokes and 3.The details. I actually thought what he said about faking yourself into believing that the brunt of your hard work is done just to keep momentum on a project was brilliant. Even though, I’m not sure how healthy it is to consistently lie to yourself. I should know, I’ve been doing it for years….oh snap!

Wrapping up the conference through improv comedy was, again, On Your Feet. With 3 performers acted out the conference in full a la Cliff Notes meets The Far Side. Great performance.

The final speaker was Mayor Sam Adams. He had a busy day of events. He spoke briefly on CAN a group that lobbies for money for arts education in k-12. He dismissed the conference to the after party in the street just north of the theater. Lots of elbow rubbing and that sort of jazz. Not really my speed, so I headed to the office for a minute before retreating back home.

To sum it all up, this is a great conference and I hope you attend it next year. The Portland creative community is HUGE and awesome. Get involved.

A special thanks to IDL Worldwide for making it possible for me to attend this as well as many other amazing events.

If you’d like to read more, head over to Phillip Kerman’s site for another great run down of the haps.

You can also see some awesome photography of the event at Scott Hubers Flickr page. I sat next to him through  this and he kept making all of these weird clicking noises. Hey buddy you wanna click? You click over there with your awesome fancy camera that I wanted to lick.

NOTE-I want to just mention sometime before lunch there was a Flash Choir that took place in the conference. But I don’t remember chronologically if it happened before Jennifer Jako or who? Let me know and I will update this. Thanks. Kudos to Joe for filling this blank above.

Enjoy your Sunday people!

~G

Here are my Cre8Camp notes from today’s unconference. For those of you who are unaware, Cre8Camp is an “unconference” for creative industry professionals that is an open format discussion summit. Topics are suggested, voted upon, and then put into a time/location grid. This is my 3rd Cre8Camp that I have attended and can honestly say that it just keeps getting better and better!

Thanks IDL for sending me again and also thanks to Jeff and Alisa Brummer, Kevin Rucier, and Amanda Sheibel for coming out and joining in the fun!

You can read more about Cre8Camp at Cre8Camp.org.

Cre8camp notes-

NW-10a-1115a  |  1125a-12p  |  100p-145p  |  2p-245P
Future of media  | copyright | Getting unstuck  |  Milk bath

SW-10a-1115a  |  1125a-12p  |  100p-145p  |  2p-245P
Design for media  | Client Management | SEO  |  Emerging trends

MAIN-10a-1115a  |  1125a-12p  |  100p-145p  |  2p-245P
OCI  |  Marketing Self  |  Fees/howto  |  balancing design and business

PANEL-10a-1115a  |  1125a-12p  |  100p-145p  |  2p-245P
Building bridges | cre8tive for bottom line  | web2/semantic web  |  Design on a budget

Those might not be in perfect order, but I will lock into the ones I attend(ed).

OCI-Oregon Creative Industries-
_____________________________________

how do we fund this. what is our signature.

Synergy w/sustainability
cre8consulting for bib leadership

Geography isn’t the issue–visibility is.
How do we create that visibility.

Talent sourcing.

Promote the event cluster.
organized or agonized…

culture differences between freelance-hired creatives.

Client Management-
_________________________________________

consulting v. freelance-
separating ego,emotion, self worth.
partner | being someones friend
respecting those invisible boundries-semipermeable membrane.
Standardize the  process | make client do the work create empowerment.
“screencasting”
we sell sleep/we love our customers…literally.
problems arise-don’t tell client unless you have at least 3 solutions.

Getting Unstuck
___________________
What are your techniques?
creative ritual?
writing burn off
change environment
loss of momentum-how to re-swing?
taking something overwhelming-digesting small chunks at a time.
THIS IS AA
there is a need for a container for partial control Ie-creative director
too much information can be a good or bad thing depending on the context.
#cre8camp sometimes brute force can unstick a problem
analogy of the wall…glasses, burn off, walk around, climb, bulldoze
let the problem solve it

The Milk Bath
___________________

Decompression techniques.
Angela Reat-

swiffer the whole house
home-office is bad blend
reallocation of time
structure off time
need people to bounce things off of.
if you want monkeys in your zoo you need a place where they can play.
“im the monkey, and I am leaving the zoo”
try social outfitting human resonance
feeling your own existence–no one is going to die because of the outcome.
there are 2 points of balance; moment to moment and end of day.
move to italy
turn off the ding
create a personal queue
control the controllable to create your own personal management system.
eliminate fear factors-
longnow.org
milk/honey/salt
respect time frames
fight for the work time v. fighting for free time.

What a great time! It was awesome meeting all of you and I look forward to our next meeting!

~Gabe

To sum up this weekend as well as this evening…I’m exhausted.

Friday night was, from what I remember, pretty relaxed…?

Saturday I got up and went to cre8camp at Souk in the NW. I met up with a co-worker during and we both absorbed what we could. (See previous entry for crappy notes).

In the evening I went to Junk to Funk. Lesa posted photos of the awesomeness here.

Today was pretty chill. I rode the bike to Fred Meyer’s to deposit some checks and got a coffee at Pete’s. I went home and worked on some freelance for a friend. I called up Krit at Thai Pod (the best Thai in Portland) and placed an order for take out. Lesa wasn’t feeling too hot so it was a dine in. We watched “Sunshine”. I must say it is my new favorite scifi movie.

Time to feed gliders and pass out for another exciting work week.

~G