Chris Andrawes @ Emergence: Day 0
Longtail Art Director Chris Andrawes has headed south for Emergence 2016 and reports for Campaign Brief.
Our Emergence adventure got off to a rocky start… well, one rock and a group of people who could actually tell the time.
We were instantly invigorated by the first session “Creativity Techniques Workshop” by Nicole Velik. Her talk began with the resounding sentence “we are all creative”.
This particular talk was probably the stand out talk of the day. Nicole managed to get all of us working creatively at 9am after a long drive to Margaret River with her quick creative thinking techniques.
The second session instantly put creative-Chris to sleep because “Start-up Sessions” by Paul Clarke was about numbers, so so so many numbers.
After my fugue state during this now missing two hours I asked an adult in the form of Longtail Project Manager Tyson Knowles for a one sentence review of what I missed. He said, “it was incredibly useful if you’re looking to get investment as a new business venture”.
So there you go.
Luckily for creative Chris the second half of the numbers talk was taken over by Jim Winter who talked about personalities in business, with a particular focus on balance of personalities in business.
Over the course of the hour we were taken on a rollercoaster of personality tests and amusing stories about Jim’s former navy life.
Jim pointed out that he was in charge of both nuclear weaponry and his crew’s safety, while his personality tests exhibited signs of not caring about rules and effectively getting excited about what happens when you push that big red button.
“What does an engineer use for birth control? Their personality” former engineering student-Chris was greatly amused by this joke. His bigger point was that engineers (despite being incredibly boring) enjoy doing things that he dislikes doing and every business can benefit from realising that they need drastically different kinds of people rather than being a collection of cool creative futuristic idea thinkers.
The final talk for the day was a break out session by podcast/book/public speech giving superstar Ram Castillo. This particular talk was about getting a job in the industry as a student creative.
I have to admit, 90% of the decision to go to this particular talk was driven by the fact that it was at a bar.
Having worked with students on Youngbloods and the PADC, this particular talk got very interesting very quickly as Ram rattled off a bunch of ways he thought he students could get jobs.
His six major tips were:
1. Give people what they need, not what they think they need
2. Believe in what you’re selling
3. Fish where the fish are
4. Be distinct
5. Build quality relationships
6. Create exceptional work
He also made a suggestion to students that I think resonates with industry, “you are a service and you offer a specific product …. what does the world need, that you as a service can give it?”
I’m pretty sure the evening wrapped up with the “Creative Crawl” but I have no memories of this. Also my head hurts, how did I even write all of this?
