Tuesday, November 22, 2005.
1:54 PM
: (link)
Ich War Ein Berliner: 
Stamen, originally uploaded by Ti.mo. Mike and I just returned to San Francisco from Design Engaged, Andrew Otwell's conference in Berlin. I was pleased to have been able to make it this year - I think it was Chris Heathcote who told me that last year's conference had given him enough raw material to work on for about 6 months, and I'll add to the general happy feeling that people seem to have had about the conference by saying it was a great chance to brainstorm, discuss, collaborate and drink with about 30 designers from all over the world.
There're lots of links & writeups on the conference site (Mike also wrote up his thoughts here), so I won't try and sum it all up here. But I was particularly pleased to meet Jack Schulze & Matt Webb of, well, schulzeandwebb.com. Ben was agigating for a Stamen vs. Schulze and Webb fistfight to see who would emerge as the champion up-and-coming-boutique-design-duo, which we only narrowly managed to avoid. Jack brought along some metal which melts in hot water that had the whole room atwitter.
Probably the most refreshing part of the conference was being able to simply show work in progress and talk about it. At most of the other conferences we've been going to this year, we've generally presented an argument that was fairly formal and complete - this time we showed work in progress, introduced a few ideas, and let conversational flowers bloom. The photo above is from our presentation of the in-progress live taxicab visualization we're doing with The Exploratorium and Scott Snibbe.
But the highlight, for sure, was the following conversation with Matt Webb & Ben Cerveny, over dinner on this amazing boat restaurant:
Me: (remembering that Matt had mentioned an interest in science fiction) So, I hear you're into sci-fi.
(Amazing conversation follows in which it's clear that we've read all the same books and our interests totally overlap, except for Samuel Delany's
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which is all about two people who are found to be compatible to the 9th decimal place, at which the conversation gets too hyper-meta for words, and swooning ensues)
Matt W: So, what else are you reading right now?
Ben C: Well, he reads alot of CEO self-help books & business stuff.
Matt W: (pause) So let me ask you one thing.
Me: Shoot.
Matt W: Your politics: neocon or not?
I think I fooled 'em with the tie. It's working!