On Friday afternoon, we successfully finished Echo with almost our entire team intact. Courtney, was counted among the casualties of conference germ warfare on Friday, but she has now recovered. Every year I walk away feeling encouraged and energized in a different way that leads to fresh breakthroughs and personal improvements.
My (personal) highlights of Thursday and Friday:
- Saw Joshua Blankenship in the flesh after stalking his work at NewSpring.cc
- Listened to Andy Crouch dissect Ratatouille and sing a great Tom Waits song
- Gave away some VIN56 t-shirts and a signed copy of my very own book(!)
- Heard Steve Taylor say “I used to do some music”
- Saw the raw edit of Blue Like Jazz and picked it apart with a room full of movie geeks
- Hung out at the Ginger Man and talked about Kyle Steed’s beard
- Toured Woot! headquarters and got a free Bag of Crap!
Overall, the most important thing that I discovered from mashing together ideas and observing people that I look up to was that my passion is storytelling (not that I can do it naturally). This may seem shallow and obvious, but it clears up a whole lot of my wrong thinking and gives me more freedom. For one thing, this explains why I seem to love design, writing, films, and my role as creative director equally; I see all of them through the lens of storytelling even when the medium changes. This also clears up my particular viewpoint I offer at Vintage 56. I’m not simply the “detail-oriented” or “big picture” guy. I see both the details and sweeping arcs that matter for the emotion, story, and user experience of a site or design. I’m also going to stop beating myself up for not noticing when little details are not consistent. My job is to make sure we tell a consistent story, and we have other great people to be passionate about the things I’m not so good at (like little consistencies in visual design).
