The Blog Studio

This is a monumental day in my life. Both kids are heading off to school for the first time. This is a big deal for more than the obvious “closing one chapter, opening another”. It’s the first time my whole family is getting up early.

Until now, the girls have been going to half-day kindergarden. They didn’t need to be in class until 1pm. Having to have two kids at two different schools by 8:30am is a whole different story. It’s the start of a new regime, and as good a time as any to review and tweak my own routines.

The big thing I hope to change is the productivity of my mornings. While I enjoy getting up early, and having a couple of hours to ease into the day, I don’t succeed in getting much actually done. Design inspiration doesn’t usually strike until later in the day. Instead of fighting that, I resolve to use my mornings to research the latest and greatest in blogs and social media.

Keeping up with the changes in this space has become a full time job. I resolve to use this blog to condense my findings into digestible morsels. This will serve to create some accountability, and to push me to think through the ever changing blog landscape.

My record for sticking with resolutions is so-so at best. That said, they usually involve doing something that goes against my existing momentum, ie changing my eating, changing my sleep/wake habits, etc. I have good hope for this resolution though. It just formalizes something I’ve been doing on auto-pilot for a few years now.

What about all of you? Any back-to-school resolutions on your end?

As I mentioned a few days ago, I recently went through my feed reader and cut my feeds down by about half. My criteria for choosing who to trash was pretty simple: does this site regularly published original, relevant content? To my surprise, I found that I was removing many of the feeds I’ve been following for years.

When I considered why, the answer was obvious: blogger burnout. But that’s not the cause, it’s a symptom. What was causing so many once-prolific bloggers to stop?

There are a bunch of easy answers that spring to mind: ennui, the cyclical nature of inspiration, change in priorities, lack of time…

It’s that last one that really hit me between the eyes. Lack of time. What happened that caused so many once successful bloggers to no longer have the time to post? They became busy. New opportunities came up. They became speakers, writers, and business owners. This happened, in large part, because they had been blogging!

I don’t think there has ever been a platform as successful as blogging for promoting one’s abilities. Those of us who jumped on the wagon early experienced this. It happened so quickly though, that we haven’t really had time to digest it. Blogging helped make us what we are today. And unfortunately, many of us have forgotten what got us here in the first place.

I suspect that many of us who have stopped posting have taken blogging for granted. We’ve forgotten that it was by actively blogging that we landed the gigs we currently hold.

This is dangerous. The blogging world has changed. It’s bigger, faster, and more sophisticated than ever. It’s not as easy to be a star as it was two years ago. Blogging is as effective as ever at helping you land opportunities, but it’s a demanding mistress, and must be treated with ongoing care if it’s to keep throwing goodies your way.

So consider this a long-winded wake up call to those of us who need it. It’s easy to take blogging for granted. Blogging remains an amazingly effective way to uncover opportunities. But just because it worked for us doesn’t mean we should give it up. If the lives we lead today are in part due to the successes we’ve had with blogging, we owe it to ourselves to no longer take blogging for granted.

Catching up on my feed reading this morning, I realize I’ve fallen terribly out of fashion by not giving a wrap up on SxSW. Perhaps it’s this flu, but having just read about a dozen breathlessly fawning, name-dropping, self-stroking ego explosions, I feel like retching. Seriously folks, please keep the first name gushing to yourselves. We’re web designers, not movie stars. A little perspective please…

With that out of the way, here are my take-aways on this year’s conference.

The panels were almost universally disappointing.

Unprepared panelists, vague and misleading panel descriptions, insufficient seating, and silly 25 minute time slots conspired to cause a low level grumbling that increased as the week wore on.

There’s not a lot of BIG innovation in our industry at the moment.

This is a good thing. It means there’s time for people to actually learn how to use the tools at our disposal. There’s time to learn about formal design theory (grids and typography) instead of just rushing full speed for the next big thing.

Redbull is evil.

“Here, have this.” “Yum, what is it?” “Redbull and vodka.” “Oh, I’ll have another.” Flash forward to me lying in bed, wide awake, with the sudden realization that I just had the equivalent of about 8 cups of coffee.

The difference between good design and great design is time.

Attention clients: great design takes A LOT OF TIME. Great design doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of research, planning, and iteration after iteration. It’s not your fault you don’t know that – as you go through your life, you only see the finished products. You don’t see the months of work that led up it.

There’s a real hunger for practical business advice.

People in web development and design have no idea how to run a business. By and large, they know that, and they’re starving for practical, actionable advice.

Good fish tacos are next to godliness.

Since having fish tacos at Polvo’s on First Street last year, I’ve been pining to have them again. Imagine then that when I bit into my first one that it was even better than I remembered. I went back 3 times, and each time was better than the last. Forget the conference, I’m going back next year for the fish tacos!

A room full of guys with Apple laptops = a room full of guys with beards.

You can tell the difference between the designers and the developers by the length of the beard. Designers go closely trimmed, while developers seem to prefer the Grizzly Adams look.

It’s all about the people.

It really is. I had a great time meeting and hanging out with some real quality people. Forget the names, forget the websites. These were just great guys. The fact that we have an industry in common was just the starting point for what became real friendship. If you weren’t able to attend this year, don’t make your decision to come next year based on the podcasts or videos from this year’s conference. They’ll only tell you 10% of what the actual experience is about.

That’s it! Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

This past week has been one disaster after another. First, while in Austin, my back went out – way out. Then I got the flu, and missed the last day of SXSW (yes, it’s the “real” flu, not the “OMG I drank too much redbull and vodka” flu). Then, my plane broke down and my flight was canceled. Then my replacement flight the next day broke down, and I missed my connection. Then my business partner had a horrible dental thing happen – I’ll spare you the details, but it involves the words “wisdom tooth” and “really bad infection”. Then my flu got worse. Then today, my laptop died. Dead. As in nothing happens when you turn it on.

Through it all though, my business has been more or less functioning as normal. Yes, we’ve definitely dropped the ball a bit this week. But good work is being done. New contracts have been signed. And clients are mostly happy. Hell, I’m happy. Sure, I’m miserable. But happy too.

This is such a testament to the effectiveness of centering yourself in the moment. There have been hundreds of reasons this week why I could have just thrown up my arms in an exasperated wail of “Woe is me!”. I’ll admit that when my laptop died I felt just the slightest desire to throw it against the wall. But that’s it!

A few weeks ago on Almost Cool I posted a short thing about being in the moment. In it, I wrote “Repeat that simple exercise a couple of times per day for a week, and watch what happens.” Well hallelujah brothers and sisters! It works, and no one is more amazed than me.

I’m baaaaack. Man, it feels good to be back with the tribe. I just had lunch with a couple of interesting guys. One of us mentioned a website to check out, so we all whipped out our Moleskines and index cards to make our notes. Between the 5 of us, we had 7 Moleskines. Geek heaven.

I had dinner with Erik last night, and am going to connect with Scott tonight.

I’ve already had the very weird feeling that comes from meeting someone who reads my blog (not this one, this one). Meeting someone who regulary reads my stuff makes for an interesting dynamic. They already know so much about me and the things I hold most dear.

Oh, I nearly forgot. While standing at the urinal a while ago, a guy dressed up like Superman came and stood at the urinal next to me. Frankly, I got my money’s worth right there.