- Nowaday's being a generalist is more important than being a specialist.
- Soft skills vs technical skills
- Schools traditionally focus on tech skill
- Design work requires more soft skills -- Writing, design, communication, organization, planning, collaboration.
Sho moved away from a successful professorship to start a program to address those problems. She said, "It wasn't something that I wanted to do, it was something that I HAD to do."
- The web is built on open source stuff. Cathedral vs. bazaar -- we have the bazaar and it's pretty great.
short talk on startup culture from Alex Sox
Start with core values. "Show don't tell."
epic portfolio with Jared Spool
- When showing off a project, the important questions to the prospective company are:
- What was the intent?
- how did you render it?
Emphasis is on visual aspect, however... Great design comes from how you work (i.e. your process).
- Great work
- Show your journey (end product is less important)
- Skills+importance before talent
Sturgeon's Law -- Theodore Sturgeon — "90% of everything is crap. "
-
Completions vs. accomplishments. Latter are things to be proud of, could have failed. They imply that we've taken risks, signal ability.
-
It takes a combination of Talent+experience+skills.
Again, hiring managers tend to focus on visual design. There are dozens of other elements involved, best portfolios show off all the elements.
The important thing is to show what you've learned: tools, techniques, user knowledge, domain/biz knowledge.
Remember: 80% of creativity is learned. The purpose of the portfolio is to showcase your skills, ALL of your skills.
Moving forward, planning for the future. Not enough to survive for today.
He decided to learn the whole stack — design and wireframe down to code and servers. Journey from "pure design, never gonna code" to "I enjoy coding Python." Everyone should be more of a Hybrid -- design+developer.
https://speakerdeck.com/bermonpainter/digital-manufacturing-7-lessons-learned-on-the-assembly-line
7 lessons (applicable to web work) learned from from his time on a Toyota assembly line.
-
Make just enough money to remove money as motivator.
-
Agile recovery: quick recovery from failure.
-
Autonomy. Self determination is key. Kaizen "changing for the better" (also "continuous change") "The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive--and autonomy can be the antidote." -- Tom Kelly, IDEO
-
Concurrent creation: non-linear, concurrent completion of multiple tasks.
-
Constant backlog. Continual work with ramp-ups and concurrent creation.
-
Pairing. Creation is a shared activity.
-
Generalized specialization. Personal mastery & interdisciplinary mentoring. Everyone on the line learned (over time) how to work all of the stations, and how to (with practice) master each.
"Time management... doesn't exist." -- everyone gets a fixed amount of time. It's usually trying to squeeze more work into less time.
"Energy management" is more important. Time is constant, energy varies. This comes down to regulating body, emotions, mind, spirit.
Eat well, exercise. Take time to rest. Sleep plenty each night.
Write down positive contributions at the end of each day. Appreciate yourself and others. 10-10-10 filters: how much will (thing that's bothering me, or important decision) matter in 10 minutes / 10 days / 10 years.
- Single task. Constant email checking — bad stimulus. Turn it OFF.
- Walk in with a plan. Write down your three top tasks the night before and wake up ready to hit them.
- "La chispa" -- Spanish, "the spark." That thing that revitalizes you, helps you get into the zone. Do what recharges, ritualize it.
- Prioritize important (i.e., family, etc.)
- Live your core values
Focus on managing energy. Make 3 small commitments to change things up
"suck it up" -- carl smith
Lots of good stories about stupid business mistakes that he made and how he learned to deal with them over time. It's OK to fail, but learn from it.
"When things go wrong. It's an opportunity to do something amazing. Take the chance to consider your response. What's the story that I want to tell here?"