Stefan Hayden

There is a rumor going around that at one of the volunteers stopped a man with out an name badge from getting on one of the buses. He started to yell and ask if she knew who he was. Turns out it was Milton Glaser. A lot of the other big name designers were also making fun of her on the trip. Is this what we’ve resorted to? Let me tell you right now that I didn’t take the history of graphic design class at tcnj and I didn’t know who anyone was either. When people act like this it keep other out of the field and stifles the industry. While Milton is the most famous he still is just a print designer and the world has no idea who he is (even his wikipedia entry is small).

I’ve mentioned this type of behavior before and we really need to nip this in the bud. I think blogs have the right attitude with this shirt and perhaps AIGA needs on as well.

So Ben Karlin was on stage talking about America: The Book. He’s very funny and answering John Hockenberry’s questions before he’s about to get off stage. John mentions that Ben has to catch a plane and he doesn’t even flinch. I don’t know how he can be so calm. I know I wasn’t and nobody backstage was either. What the audience doesn’t know is that it’s three minutes till 11am and his plane is off the ground in less then an hour.

Ben calmly walks off stage and chaos erupts in the darkness backstage. His mic is quickly removed and he runs over to me to grab his stuff. Lunch started at the end of his presentation and about 2,300 people are exiting the room all of which would have love to stop and talk to Ben. I take him the back way down and we run down an escalator that isn’t working from the 3rd floor. Getting to the bottom we run full speed across the length of the convention center. Ben comments on how much he hates schedules that make him do this between puffs of breath. No convention goes have made it down to the first floor yet and we don’t have to worry about a fan stopping him. Another AIGA staff is waiting for us at the door and points us to a waiting car with the engine on. the doors and trunk pop he jumps in and I put his stuff in the trunk. The car pulls away as I’m closing the trunk.

I check my watch and it’s 11:01. We made it through the massive convention center in 4 minutes. Wow. exciting but I’m out of breath.

It’s hard to say what I would not give to have a laptop at the conference now. Not that I’m trying to keep up with Kottke but there are actually a good number of people blogging and there’s not way I’m going to be able to read them all. Not getting home till 11:30 I blog for the benefit of AIGA which I hope to help drag it kicking and screaming in to the blogosphere.

I’d like to say high to all the folks from Kottke and UnBeige who have been doing much better coverage then I have. I suppose working the conference does have it’s downsides. For other blogs present at AIGA look at this handy list:

1. Kottke
2. UnBeige
3. Reverse Innovation
4. Speak Up
5. PeterMe
6. Open the Window

UnBeige actually has a number of great posts about the blog focus session (the only panel about the web) that included Jen Bekman, Michael Bierut, Jason Kottke, and Armin Vit. I was sad that after the main stage presentation there was not much to do backstage but I was glad I got to go to the focus sessions.

I had a chance to meet Jason Kottke earlier in the day (the lone laptop in the sea that is the main stage audience). People have different strategies for meeting celebrities and mine is simple. Get in, say hi, compliment their past work, thank them and then move on. You don’t want to be clingy. Jason doesn’t need some groupie talking his ear off. You know…. just plant the seed of friendship and move on. Don’t kill it with too much attention.

I was a little late to the blog session since I was running DJ Spooky, aka Paul Miller, around the convention center. I’m not a big fan of text messaging (at least not with my phone) but I let Paul text all he wanted since he was having a hard day. I was hoping by the title “To blog or not to blog: What’s the question?” that it would have been more about encouraging the audience to blog, Instead it was more of a over view of what all four of them did. And even then it was a brief overview and I wish they had deeper in to how blogging is changing things. I need to remember, baby steps for AIGA. It needs to learn what the internet is before it can figure out what blogging is. I don’t know about all of the audience but a number of them did seem to have a good grasp of what was going on and tried to push the conversation deeper.

Today was very smooth backstage. The band upstairs knew what was going on and so did the sketch artist and the integration between them and intros and exits were wonderful. I was very relived to see everything working after the 1st day where everything just felt jerky. I don’t know if it seemed that way out in the crowd but I doubt it. Everything always seems worse from backstage. It’s just too easy to see the mistakes as they happen.

I’ve run several large events in similar size venues as the main stage for AIGA’s Design Conference but none nearly as elaborate. Video is what really make it hard. There are nine video projectors if you count what is in the living room. Two video cameras so the people in the back can see and seven laptops backstage to make everything work. Switching the feed being output is crazy and it must take a lot of experience to make it run well.

We had a couple of snags backstage with a couple of graphics shown out of order but over all everything was really smooth. I found the mistakes a bit more jarring but I guess that’s just because I wasn’t used to it. Michelle Stanek has been running the show backstage and has been doing an amazing job and has been great at using me as support to make the show run well. I really feel as if I’m helping things run and not just being a waste of space and some times volunteering can seem like. I think it would be awesome to have her job though I haven’t asked how they plan it. If they have one central office or if they just are always calling from all over the nation.

Kottke’s computer is lonely and I’m not all that surprised. The more I work with the AIGA volunteers I really feel that graphic design is really only print design. The fact that I just carried back about 20 pounds of paper samples (I don’t print but I am a freebie whore) isn’t helping my attitude. I think of graphic design as so much more. I think at least any kind of graphics with a commercial focus is graphic design and I’m sure more can be. I want to get more involved with AIGA (perhaps because, like CUB, they have the most money) and I hope to bring a lot more of a web edge to the organization.

If only I had a laptop I would have love to get some of the techy conference feel to it. AIGA’s current try for interaction with the crowd is limited to a wall where people can hang sketches. A good start but not exaxtly the 21st century. John Hockenberry had the essence of the right idea when he talked about emailing his phone and calling people in the crowd for feed back. I’m still not sure if that was a joke or not.