Mark Dudlik

TEDxPHXDC happened this past Thursday. The event was an experiment on several levels, and I want to talk about the successes and failures, hoping others can get something out of them.

Goal: Uncomplicated –

I run Phoenix Design Week. A huge endeavor with tons of wonderful volunteers, all with different roles and responsibilities. The process can be frustrating, confusing, overwhelming, all while still being wonderful and a statement to the value of shared passion. It’s a complicated event, and needs a complicated organizational structure. This is true for other events I’ve been involved with.

I’ve also been involved in an event where the main organizer was overbearing, overly detail-oriented, demanding and stressed out the volunteers. (I hope I don’t do this with Design Week, though I know I’ve had my bad moments.) This event didn’t need to be so complicated, or stress inducing, or drawn out. The event content was all that mattered, and thankfully that’s what shone through during the event itself, but the process was miserable for all involved.

I wanted to do things differently: I wanted to put on a small event that focused on content, and didn’t stress anyone out, other than me.

The Success:

I organized all the speakers, I organized the venue arrangement, I put the website together (with some bug-fix help from Andrew Coppola.) I did 98% of the leg-work up until the week of the event. I’m not saying this as a compliment to myself, but rather as a way to show that I didn’t need to stress other people out, I didn’t need to over-complicate a simple idea with cumbersome leadership. To be fair, TEDx has a robust set-up kit, and I always knew I could count on Tomas Carrillo for some advice, as he’s done TEDxPhoenix. I did need to bring people in at the end, to pick up items (Thank you Bully), to manage the audio (Thank You Andrew), to record the A/V (Thanks to Andrew, Safwat Saleem, Bill Binder & Jose Gonzalez). And a huge thanks to Chanelle for taking pictures. I think I did this without stressing them out too much.

The Failures:

Lots of last minute “Oh shit, I didn’t think about that…” stuff. Could these have been avoided? Yep. Will the from now on? Yep.

Also, I accidentally sent Bully on a traveling adventure for the giant TEDxPHXDC letters. I owe him some gas money. Double check the addresses of places you’re sending people to pick things up from.

The Future:

Double check things like power and lights and audio. Bring people in earlier for those event day logistics. But really, these events don’t have to be hard. Talk to Tomas Carrillo if you’re interested in hosting a TEDx event in the valley, he will help you get started. I highly recommend it. I’ll be doing these again.

Goal: Focus on Content -

The event was a curated selection of speakers in the design field. I asked people I knew and trusted. This isn’t favoritism, because I didn’t pick people just because I liked them. I like them because they are talented and intelligent.

(For more information about the speakers/eventually the videos of their presentations, visit tedxphxdc.com)

The Successes:

Without a doubt, the content of this event was stellar. There is no way to pretend otherwise.

The Failures:

None. There is no way you can go wrong with an event if you focus on the content. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

The Future:

This is the only way to go!

Goal: A Curated Audience –

TED asks that people apply to attend. The way you know you’ve made it is if you see a $3000 charge to your credit card. I wanted to do something similar. I set up a small, easy barrier for people to show they wanted to attend. I asked two questions: What are you passionate about? & Why do you want to attend this event?.

I didn’t want this to be fancy. I wanted a small event, with smart people who want to change things. In the acceptance emails I wrote:

We’re counting on you to do something valuable with the knowledge and inspiration you’re going to get. So, expect to leave this event with an actionable idea to change the world, or Phoenix, or even just the life of a single person.

Come prepared to hear great stories and to share your own with the other attendees.

Each attendee was given a sharpie and an index card. They were asked, at the end, to write something down: “What are you going to do to change the world?” and then hold that card up and have their picture taken with it. Accountability!

Also, to spark the conversations between attendees after the event, each attendee received a puzzle piece. After the presentations they had to find the other 3 parts of their puzzle and talk to them about their ideas. It was a small icebreaker, but a unique one I think. (Tanner Woodford was nice enough to print them out for me.)

The Successes:

The applications were, for the most part, wonderful. The barrier also seemed to be a great de-motivator. Which, in my viewpoint, was a bonus. There were no serial attenders at this event (Those who attend every event they can without having any real connection to the content or adding much value to the conversations.) Those who were accepted to come, came. All of them. 100% attendance for an event. No one was rushing to buy a ticket, then having a twitter contest to give it away. These people wanted to be at the event. It was a huge compliment to both the event and themselves, showing their passion.

I can’t say for sure how successful the event conversation/activities themselves were, I suppose the attendees will have to speak to it. I think everyone enjoyed the activities, and enjoyed the prompts for ideas.

The Failure:

I don’t see a huge downside to the curation approach, other than the unfortunate situation of people who I know and am friends with not making the event. I will keep the selection process to myself, but it was not a matter of names, but words. A small downside, but avoidable if people understand they don’t just make it in because you like them.

As for the activities, a small logistics thing, but some people had to leave early, and some of the puzzle pieces disappeared. Maybe its something you hand out at the end of the event, to be sure everyone can find each other.

The Future:

This event was a success for the quality of attendees, not quantity, and I will do it this way next time as well.

Goal: Highlight the community -

I could’ve done this event without the TEDx moniker. I wanted to include it in the hopes that the videos we produce and the content of the presenters eventually get placed on the main TED site, or in other similar avenues. I want to be able to facilitate the great Phoenix design community getting as much attention and praise as it possibly can.

The Successes:

The content was great, the audio came through great. I am not sure about the video yet, due to the spot-light blowing a breaker, but I think it is salvageable.

The Failure:

Stupid light. I hate it so hard.

The Future:

Less reliance on lights/technology.

Goal: An alternative venue -

I had the event at Gallo Blanco, which is housed inside the Clarendon Hotel. There was a little mystery to the location, only being announced to those who were accepted. I wanted to try and have the event at a unique location, thats not usually used for events like this.

The Successes:

The venue was intimate, small, and wonderful. The Gallo Blanco staff was beyond amazing, helping set up chairs, and making fun of me for running around crazy. They’re great people, and I can’t thank them enough for the chance to try something new with them. The conversation and atmosphere was great before and after the event, and they space itself is beautiful and perfect for a design-centric community like those of PHXDC. The mystery location part was really fun too.

The Failures:

I didn’t take into account the dinner crowd. We were right next to the restaurant, during dinner. There was a steady and loud hum from the dinner crowd that made it hard for people to hear the speakers at times, if they weren’t really loud in the mic.

The Future:

I will host other events with Gallo Blanco, such at PHXDC Happy Hours. I will also try and have an event on the roof, when the weather permits. As far as using the lounge area for an event like this, I think that its just a matter of the timing. Make sure its during a weekday and that its not during a meal time! And make sure the speakers are loud! Otherwise, no real downsides.

For other events, I want to continue to explore alternative venues. I think the next TEDxPHXDC will be in a parking garage. Just take over a level of a garage, people park a level below and walk up the ramp with chairs and drinks they’ve brought themselves. Less reliance on technology, and again focuses entirely on the content.

Overall:

I think the event went great. From the uncomplicated build-up, free of stressing out anyone, to the long conversations after-wards, I am proud of what I was able to do thanks to the speakers at TEDxPHXDC. Did it go perfectly? Not even close. But I still think it was a success. And I think its entirely due to the speakers.

Last thought:

There is nothing an event can actually accomplish, for the most part. But the conversations they cause can spawn action. There is always that “Why another event?” conversation that happens in Phoenix. You know why there should be more events? Because there are so many amazing people in this town that deserve attention and an outlet to share their talent. I will have more TEDxPHXDC events. I will help put on as many design related events as possible, because this city’s community is great, and there’s plenty of talent to go around.

There is no way you can go wrong with anything you do, if you focus on the message and the people delivering it. If you focus on sharing stories, and on enriching minds, then there will always be room for another event.

“We can put a man on the moon but we cant…” get people to stop using this statement as if it means anything of value.

We put a man on the moon because of a nationwide interest to do so, because of a need to be better than our ‘enemies’ and to improve our scientific and technological capabilities as a nation. (At least, this is what the history books tell me.)

This argument is just used for what some people think are common-sense needs, but don’t have the knowledge or energy to change themselves.

Yes, we, a united and driven country, can accomplish a lot. But no, ‘we’ don’t care enough about a better car engine, the worlds most giant pumpkin or a wind resistant umbrella (this was inspired by the uninspired Wall Street Journal article) to actually change those things.

Try this instead:

“It took a cold war to put a man on the moon, but I can ______________ just by working a little harder than everyone else.”

One of the themes with our questionnaire, and generally in our lives as designers for all of us working on the magazine, is the detestable practice of plagiarism in the design community. We got a lot of varied responses to one of our questions about the industry view of imitation vs inspiration, and how it’s perceived/handled outside of the academic environment.

To me the majority were like “yeah, it sucks, but you can’t really do anything about it”

I guess that’s how I saw it playing out in school as well. Some of the most ardent style-chasers and idea-copiers had their transgressions ignored, in the face of the overwhelming evidence and transparency of what was being done.

As some who always tries to do something differently I found it frustrating when people who were just mimicking better designers were able to get the same attention, critiquing seriousness, and often better grades. I guess my frustration lies in the fact that the thoughts I was always running into were the same:

“Is no one going to say anything about this!” “Am I the only one that can see that’s a complete Rand knockoff!?” “I mentioned my idea and 10 minutes later you just HAPPEN to change what you’re doing!?” “The teacher has to notice, they’ll say something, point them towards something else right? NO!? What is going on!” “She clearly stole that idea!” “Her boyfriend made that., why is that okay!?” “If this is how its going to be, maybe I should just drop out and try to be a zoologist like I wanted to be in 4th grade.”

Oh, sorry, maybe I’m still a little bitter about things.

Anyway, what I was getting at, was the idea that certain things like plagiarism, unoriginality, or the idea of just telling someone when a project isn’t working, or someones already done it, always seemed to be the ignored elephant in the room. At least in my interactions with Professors, they always just assumed the person had done it unintentionally, mistaking imitation for accidentally overly-similar inspiration.

I came across an interesting article relating to this however, the idea of “stealing” not just imitating.

I disagree with some of whats being said, but in general, the idea of “stealing” bits and pieces of things, learning how they all work together, so in the end, you have a better understanding of WHY certain things work, and WHY elements belong together, and then how to break those rules, is ideal.

For me it relates easier to web design. Like taking bits of CSS code, javascript from here and there, so you can understand the structure a bit better as everything goes together. But trying to just take a whole page’s code at once, then being confused why the DIVs aren’t fitting right, is the “imitation” aspect of it. There is also “stealing” in the sense of taking certain chunks of data, such as CSS hacks to make things work in IE, or taking code to help comply with web standards, that I don’t have a problem with. This however isn’t that “creative”, and so isn’t where my problem is with regards to design plagiarism.

Relating this ‘theft’ idea to general design becomes problematic. Some things can be taken apart to better understand how things go together. For instance certain elements of design are iconic, sometimes necessary to get an idea across. Certain rules of design, such as grid systems, letter spacing, ligatures are all important parts of design. Following these rules, guidelines are part of “stealing” design. People look at Josef Muller-Brockmann’s grids and can learn, copy and use them. The same applies to those “Best Of” series of books that Rockport puts out all the time. Those generally are used as a starting point for different elements of design, like “oh, rounded corners on business cards could look nice” or “that fold style could work well on my brochure design too”. At least, that’s the hope right? But there is a boundary line with these moments of “stealing” that’s harder to define than web development examples.

In design the boundary between stealing and imitation is much more vague. Within that boundary is the idea of “inspiration”. This idea, though hard to distinguish, is the ideal that some like to think they can be held to. The idea that I wasn’t copying this person’s design completely, I may have stolen a few elements, but in general I was simply inspired by what I saw and expanded upon it.

Lets just try and define these terms then, so that its clear, at least to us here, what we should strive to be doing to avoid plagiarism. Also, lets do some random music metaphors to help the analogy.

The Music Theory Major: Stealing is the idea of taking individual elements of a design and applying them to your own products. Stealing is a way to use established pieces of a whole towards another goal, thus helping you to learn about the base element, while expanding upon it in a completely different direction. Stealing is ok. You are learning your instrument, and you’re about to write some great music.

The “I grew up listening to ___” Band: Inspiration is the idea of seeing another design and having an epiphany towards your own design. This can include stealing, such as certain elements, but in the end its a completely different idea, expanding upon the original in such a way that they cannot be quickly connected. Inspiration is ok. All that practice paid off. You listened to Revolver 500 times, but you sound nothing like the Beatles.

The Karaoke Cover Band: Imitation is the idea of seeing another design and having an epiphany towards you own. This includes stealing to a point that you’ve plagiarized the majority of a piece and the elements of both are clearly connected. Nothing was learned. Nothing was taken to another level. And nothing was actually designed, simply reproduced. Imitation is not ok. You think playing guitar hero counts for something.

Now of course this isn’t including the groundbreakers, the trend setters, the people that others look towards and who influence the rest of us. And it doesn’t include the people who will do anything BUT what they see being done by others. But this is a good start on categorizing the problem, I think.

Would love to hear some feedback on this.