|
> > more....blogs > make blogs for core! be famous! >> The Student Life archives
|
The Student Life an ongoing journal by Donald Lehman |
....who is Donald Lehman? |
December 8, 2003  by Don Lehman don@donald-lehman.com The past couple weeks have been pretty amazing. Thought at Work has finally come and gone, and it went off better than we could have hoped for: over 200 students and professionals attended the conference (some driving more than 14 hours). Our speakers gave insightful speeches to their design processes and inspirations, students from 10 different schools connected, and everyone had a good time getting out of their studios for a couple days. One of the questions that I kept getting asked was, “How did all of this come together?” Back in May of this year, Sam Aquillano, Ori Fowler, and I met with RIT’s School of Design Program Chair, Patti Lachance, and proposed putting together a design conference we were calling Thought at Work. We outlined the basic plan of what we wanted to accomplish on one sheet of paper and 20 minutes later she bought into the idea. We walked back into our studio, victorious, arms raised like we just won the Super Bowl with Jesus as our quarterback proclaiming, “WE’RE HAVING A CONFERENCE!” Everyone looked up from their projects for a moment, blinked once or twice, and then started working again. The truth was we had no speakers, no attendees, no budget, no sponsors… but the three of us knew that at the end of November we would have everything in place to host a conference. Over the course of the summer we stayed in touch through a ton of emails and phone calls from various parts of the country: Sam in Boston, Ori on a farm outside of Syracuse, and I in Minneapolis. Before parting ways, we had scrawled out a wish list of speakers whose work we felt really conveyed what the conference was to be all about. We crossed our fingers and hoped we would get some sort of positive response. Thankfully, everyone we wanted thought it was a great idea and wanted to take part. For awhile our calls got pretty surreal: “Dude. Guess what? Cameron said, ‘Yes’!” “Can you hold on a sec? I have Yves on the other line.” “Sure.” “Oh by the way, John also said ‘Yes’ and Blu Dot is willing to sponsor.” “Sweet.” Inviting speakers was actually the easiest part. The majority of our time was making sure the event would actually happen. For example, no one will come to a conference they have never heard of. A large chunk of the work was just getting our name out with the website, posters, getting student contacts in other design schools, sending out press releases, setting up media sponsorships, etc. Then of course there was putting together the student competition, reserving rooms, letting the right people back at RIT know what was going on, getting sponsorships… For all intents and purposes we were running a small business. When school started up again, we had a meeting with the entire ID department to inform them of what we had been up to and try to enlist volunteers to help during the days of the conference. We had been confident all along that Thought at Work was the type of event that students really wanted to see and this was our first test to see how they would respond. Everyone loved it and a ton of people signed-up to volunteer. At this point, everything was clicking, we were feeling really confident, and just knew that when we opened up registration a week later we would get a flood of students signing up. All we had to do at this point was lean back in our chairs and wait for November to roll around. But then we opened registration and no one was signing up. I think over the first week we had 10 total registrants. We started freaking out. We couldn’t understand it. All this work put into making this the best event we could, at a reasonable price for students AND NO ONE WAS FREAKIN REGISTERING. We had a meeting, vented a bit, and finally just realized that if it were us, we wouldn’t have registered yet either. The event was still more than a month and a half away and the basic human reaction is to wait until the last minute to do something. We calmed down, but started working overtime to make sure we would have our butts covered just in case things didn’t pan out the way we hoped. We contacted more sponsors and applied for more funding through various student groups at RIT. Around the time more sponsors came on board, the registrations started rolling in. It was now the beginning of November and the conference was two weeks away. During the last minute preparations we also had to deal with finals week, so in the midst of building the conference gallery and other various displays, we were also writing 10 page papers and finishing up our other design projects. (I do have to mention here that while we were running back and forth between home and school, our shop tech, Rick Auburn, was “The Man” and cut up countless pedestals and pieces of wood for us… it sends chills up my spine to think of how we would have gotten everything done without him.) The night before Thought at Work, we were in the middle of a volunteer meeting when it started to hit us that it was actually happening. Six months before we wrote an outline and then there we were: wearing Thought at Work t-shirts, moving the final pieces over to the auditorium, and picking up speakers from the airport. The three of us paused for a second and said a hushed, collective “Wow”. When I look back on Thought at Work, my first thought won’t go to the conference itself but to the time spent working with Ori and Sam. Partnering with two others who shared the same passion, commitment, and willingness to take our idea from start to finish was one of the greatest experiences that I have ever had.  "Pour Some Sugar (And Cinnamon) On Me" Design of the Month: Domino Sugar and Cinnamon Shakers. Okay so the clown is kinda freaky, but I couldn't find a picture of the ultra cool cowboy one. This product is all about combining ideas together. For example: Sugar and cinnamon or a shaker with a figurine that as domino.com points out "kids can play with long after the sugar is gone." |
|
| back to core! | |