This started out with a slide show of inspiring photos and what is turning out to be a theme song for the conferece. Black Eyed Pees, Let’s Get it Started. There must have been over 100 very cool or should I say INSPIRING images in this presentation. These images were very moving and thought out. They were also perfectly synced with the slide show. You can tell that Pash is a designer. His presentation was very well put together. No offense to last night’s speaker, but Mr. Monahan’s keynote session was low-res and kind of chunky. Pash had obviously spent a great deal of time putting this presentation together.

This presentation was more of a multi-media presentation than the Pash show. I hear that he usually speaks more at his sessions than he did today. After he spoke and explained the basis of his book, he turned it over to the people he interviewed in the book via video and recoreded conversations. I just wrote a review of this book on our main blog. It was great to see some of the interviews that I read in the book. Although inspiration is hard to quantify and track down it is nice to see where some of the greats get there inpsiration.

One more thing. ’ÄúOh yeah! Yeah!’Äù

(more…)

Here are some more sessions that we couldn’t attend but would love to hear about. Comments away. How to Know if . . . , AdamsMorioka, Portfolio Perfection, Reboot Refresh Reframe, FileMaker Pro

I think it is obvious why we attended “Daily Candy: Is Blogging Good for you . . .” Please let us know what we missed in the following sessions. Escape Velocity, The Case for Craft, Tooting Your Own Horn, The Business Side of the Web, Creative Sweets, Creating a Learning Culture.

Since we can’t go to everything we are opening this post so you can share you reviews of the following sessions. Creative Zing, Designers Who Care, Maximum Design, But What’s the Point?, Apple: What’s Next.

Where do new ideas come from? Tom Monohan tackled that interesting question tonight when he gave HOW’s Keynote called “The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy: Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking.” I have to admit I wasn’t really excited about this one. There is just something wrong with watching a Powerpoint (or in Tom Monahan’s case, Keynote) about how to be more creative. With that said, it was a pretty interesting talk. Some of the gems I walked away with were:

1. Creativity = Problem Solving.
2. Force yourself to ask questions you don’t know the answer to. That will allow you to find new solutions.
3. Ask questions early. Your mind likes to play with questions it doesn’t know the answer to.
4. Don’t be afraid of bad ideas. Think of them as fertilizer for the really good idea.
5. Fail boldly. Successful people fail more than regular people.

Tom’s had a few fun exercises like brainstorming ways to improve luggage. The exercise was called “100 MPH Thinking” and with 3000 designers cranking out as many ideas as they could, there was undoubtedly some great ideas. Wouldn’t Samsonite have loved to get there hands on the notes from 3000 designer’s ideas for improving luggage.

Another exercise was called “180 Degree Thinkng.” Tom’s point was that intentionally thinking of bad ideas for a project forces you out of your traditional thinking. It allows you to find truly creative ways to approach the project.

It wasn’t revolutionary stuff, just solid advice, and practical activities. Tom got the conference off to a good start, and prepped the crowd for a couple of great days at the 2005 HOW Conference.

Tom ended by giving the following links to follow up on his Keynote:
www.before-after.com/HOW
www.doityourselflobotomy.com/HOW

(Tom said those links should be working by Monday)