conferences

If you're one of those lucky people who have gotten golden tickets to go visit Philip Johnson's Glass House after it opened to the public just over two years ago, we continue to writhe in jealousy and have no other choice but to live vicariously through your awesome life. For the rest of us, we intend to turn to Metropolis' feature by the magazine's editor, Susan S. Szenasy, who recently attended the day-long Architects Retreat at the famous, modern compound (on his 103 birthday, no less). The first part in the two part series finds Szenasy on a tour of the grounds, with Barbara Campagna, the chief architect for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, describing the ins and outs of Johnson's masterpiece. Part two is written by Belinda Lanks, who talks about the Retreat itself, essentially a conference wherein a whole slew of influential people from the NEA's Maurice Cox to Work's Amale Adraos, to talk about things related, mostly, to preservation and sustainability. All in all, it sounds like maybe the best conference ever in the coolest setting of all time, which none of us were able to attend. But although the jealousy writhing continues, we're very happy Metropolis was there to give us some morsels.

As any successful high school debater can tell you, the faster you speak, the more you can say. And yet branding guru Nathan Reddy of GRID managed to speak at a reasonable pace in his Pecha Kucha presentation at this year's Design Indaba Expo, the curated showcase of South African design that coincides with the annual Design Indaba Conference in Cape Town. For the uninitiated, Pecha Kucha (Japanese for the sound of conversation) challenges presenters to make their case with 20 images, each of which is shown for 20 seconds each. In the video posted below, Reddy shows you how it's done, as he reviews seven brands developed by GRID, including Virgin Mobile, Converse, and South Africa—the brand. But don't let those stunning images fool you. "Branding," notes Reddy, "is not just about pretty pictures."

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(Photo: Steve Bartel)

Crowds are known for many things: wisdom, madness, overhauling the market for stock photography. WIRED editor and author Jeff Howe touched on these traits and many more in his presentation yesterday at the Mediabistro Circus. His topic? Crowdsourcing, a term he coined and the title of his 2008 book about "why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business." Howe showed the below video—worth it for the whimsical visuals alone—to explain the concept to the assembled crowd:

He went on to demonstrate the power of crowdsourcing with examples that spanned multiple industries. Howe pointed to commercial photography, a market that has been transformed in recent years by microstock agencies, as "the canary in the coal mine." Born in 2000 from founder Bruce Livingstone's annoyance at having to pay hundreds of dollars to license a single image, iStockphoto pioneered microstock (and in 2006 was acquired by Getty Images for $50 million). When Livingstone began charging a quarter per image download, he "opened up an ecosystem," said Howe, who then presented the audience with two photos of fiery sunsets. "Which one do you think cost $300 and which cost a dollar?" A quick poll of the audience revealed an evenly divided crowd. So which photo was which? "You know, I totally forget," said Howe with a shrug.

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(Photo: Steve Bartel)

Brandishing a whip and clad in gold lame pants, mediabistro.com founder Laurel Touby reprised her ringmistress role as she welcomed hundreds of media types to the second annual Mediabistro Circus, which kicked off today at the TimesCenter in New York City. The theme of this year's media-meets-technology confab, explained Touby, is "Extraordinary Impact: Do More with Less." The focus of the doing? Data, data, and more data, according to many of the day's speakers. But don't count out design.

"Data is king," said self-promoter extraordinaire Timothy Ferriss, who lives to generate buzz and deduce ways to prolong visitors' stays on his many websites. "The big idea, the one big bet favored by Madison Avenue, is not only irrational, it's also expensive." For Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek (now in its forty-first printing in the United States, he noted), technology and social media offer ways to constantly analyze, adjust, and re-analyze everything, from how to create a successful blog post (aim for evergreen content, omit dates, people enjoy watching short and ideally incomplete videos about how to peel hard-boiled eggs) to how to sell a book (try for the least crowded-channel: face-to-face communication). Thanks to Google analytics, crowdsourcing, and click patterns, life is one long beta-test.

Where does this leave publishing? In flux, according to "From Gutenberg to Movable Type," a panel discussion ably moderated by Dan Costa, executive editor of PCMag.com. Panelist Eileen Gittins, founder and CEO of Blurb, the self-publishing company, is a believer in the power of branding to best communicate with niche markets. "Gone are the days when you have to guess who your audience is," she said of Blurb's print-on-demand model, which eliminates warehousing and adds a new agility to publishing. "Books no longer need to be static things, where you print one—kerplunk—and then maybe come back later with a second edition. Books can now be the starting point of communication."

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There's still time to register for Mediabistro's second annual two-day conference on the covergence of digital and traditional media, featuring speakers such as Crowdsourcing author Jeff Howe of WIRED, New York Times graphics director Steve Duenes, and rogue adman Doug Jaeger, president of the Art Directors Club. And the big finish? A performance by Cirque du Soleil. Formidable! The Circus kicks off tomorrow and runs through Wednesday at the Renzo Piano-designed TimesCenter in New York City. Click here for the full agenda and then prepare yourself by perusing circusmuseum.nl, our favorite online collection of vintage circus graphics. Feeling nostalgic? Check out our design-biased coverage of last year's Circus here.

How much modern design-themed fun can you squeeze into a weekend? Find out next month in Los Angeles when our friends at Dwell host the three-day design extravaganza that is Dwell on Design (the cool kids refer to it as DOD, not to be confused with the Department of Defense). Among the attractions: an exhibition, home tours, a movie night, and a design conference featuring keynote speaker Daniel Pink. UnBeige editor emertius Alissa Walker has been writing up a storm about DOD on Dwell's website and recently interviewed Pink. The author, design advocate, and manga fan—who is himself in the throes of a Dwell-style home renovation—gave Alissa a sneak preview of his DOD talk, which will address motivation and creativity. "The people and the organizations that really flourish prize autonomy, the sense of doing something out of self-direction rather than being pushed by somebody else—the sense of mastery, which is the desire to get better and better and better at something, and also the sense of purpose, which is about doing something that outlasts yourself, in the service of a cause larger than oneself," said Pink. "And in a lot of ways these three keys to true motivation are embodied by architects and designers very strongly." Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr. Pink, and special codes will get UnBeige readers discounted tickets to DOD. We've posted them after the jump.

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What do you get when you combine media, technology, classic circus acrobatics, and slapstick clowning? The Mediabistro Circus, featuring Cirque du Soleil! We kid vous not. Mediabistro's second annual two-day conference on the covergence of digital and traditional media will feature a performance by Cirque du Soleil along with speakers such as Crowdsourcing author Jeff Howe of WIRED, New York Times graphics director Steve Duenes, and rogue adman Doug Jaeger, president of the Art Directors Club. The show takes place next week—Tuesday, June 2 and Wednesday, June 3—at the TimesCenter in New York City. Click here for the full agenda and then prepare yourself by perusing circusmuseum.nl, our favorite online collection of circus memorabilia. Feeling nostalgic? Check out our design-biased coverage of last year's Circus here.

What's better than a great conference? A great conference that gives us an excuse to use vintage circus graphics! Back by popular demand is the Mediabistro Circus. The second annual two-day confab on the covergence of digital and traditional media is set for June 2 and 3 at the TimesCenter (Renzo Piano, people!) in New York City. Among the speakers are Crowdsourcing author Jeff Howe of WIRED, New York Times graphics director Steve Duenes, and rogue adman Doug Jaeger, president of the Art Directors Club. Click here for the full agenda and then prepare yourself by perusing circusmuseum.nl, our favorite online collection of circus memorabilia. Feeling nostalgic? Check out our design-biased coverage of last year's Circus here.

All work and no play makes for a dull design conference, and so the decidedly non-dull folks at LVHRD set out to plan a "non-conference." They redoubled their efforts in the wake of Rick Poynor's stirring call to arms ("Design Conferences: Isn't in Time We Demanded More?") published last year in Creative Review. "After reading [that] article...our team at LVHRD knew that if we were going to throw a non-conference it was going to have to be really heavy on the non and pretty light on the conference," notes the LVHRD website. "And that's exactly what we've set up." The event, dubbed WRK/PLY, takes place this Saturday in New York City, and tickets (or TCKTS, as the case may be) are available here.

What to expect? Seven hours, six speakers, and one open bar. "I'm a little nervous, honestly, and excited," said LVHRD co-founder Doug Jaeger, a panelist at this evening's New Frontiers of Graphic Design panel discussion. "I don't really know what's going to happen. And that's a good thing." The WRK/PLY speakers were chosen for their success in blending play into their work lives, which involve everything from architecture to music: dress code (architecture and design), Chris Rubino (art and photography), Steve Hindy (culture and lifestyle), Gavin McInnes (media and technology), 88-Keys and Izza Kizza (music and performance), Rebecca Turbow (fashion and style). Added Jaeger, "I'm describing it as four years of college squeezed into one day."

One of the most memorable and thought-provoking conferences we've ever attended was last year's Aftertaste 2 symposium at Parsons the New School for Design, so we wanted to alert you of this year's imminent three-peat of the international symposium dedicated to the critical review of interior design. Aftertaste 3: New Agendas for the Interior takes place next Friday and Saturday (April 3 and April 4) at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium in the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center in New York City. This year's symposium promises to be a feast for the senses, exploring the complex and still relatively unexplored roles of sight, taste, hearing, smell, and touch in the imagining of interiors. Translation: four sensory-focused panel discussions (sight, sound, smell, and touch) and a wine tasting. Among the panelists and featured speakers are designer James Auger, architect and theorist Jorge Otero-Pailos, James Tichenor and Joshua Walton of the Interaction LAB at Rockwell Group, self-described "conceptualist and maple sugar maker" Charlie Morrow, and Meyer Rus, design and culture editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Click here for the symposium schedule and a complete list of speakers.