Inspiration Event List & A Question for You

Lately, I’ve been writing quite a bit – some weeks busting out three articles a week for Advertising Week and the Examiner – and yet, I’ve ignored this blog.  I’m sorry, friends.

To start making up for it, I’ll give you a couple quality posts this coming month; I promise.  If you’d like me to address something specific about moving up in your career, creating work-life balance, or something else creative career related, please leave a comment below (or e-mail me privately at angela@definingsuccesscoaching.com).

In the meantime, check out the fun list I created for an article on inspiration.  These are life experience-type ideas that don’t take as much time or commitment as the usual examples of traveling, skydiving, learning a language or taking an art class.  Give some of these a try (or let them inspire you to create your own list) that you can pull from when you hit a creative block:

  • Watch a foreign film (with or without the subtitles)
  • Hang out in a store you’d be embarrassed to be caught in
  • Crash a party or happy hour (You get extra points if it’s an industry-specific event for an industry you know little about. Hint: These are constantly taking place in hotel ballrooms.)
  • Search for the perfect gift for the weirdest person you know (and who isn’t a close friend)
  • Learn to fix something mechanical (e.g., old clock, typewriter, motor)
  • Eat at a foreign restaurant where you know nothing about the type of food
  • Attend an open mic or beat poetry night
  • Go to the most bizarre niche MeetUp group event you can find
  • Get to know festival/carnival/fair workers and their stories (Yes, befriending carnies will inspire you. Trust my experience.)
  • Volunteer at a food bank
  • Spend time in a musical instrument store (if you don’t usually)
  • Play with Mad Libs

Read the full article on ways to get unstuck creatively, if you’d like.  If you do, you’ll learn about my “carny days.”

Remember to leave a comment (or e-mail me directly) if you have something you’d like this blog to answer for you.  What would you like help with?

Creative Week 2012 Highlights

 

One Show Interactive Awards

Enjoying the company of my long-time friends, Creative Recruiters from GSP (Linda Harless and Zach Canfield) and DraftFCB (Rafi Kugler) was a personal highlight during Creative Week 2012. Here we are the final night of Creative Week at The One Show Interactive Awards.

Creative Week 2012 was a whirlwind, an incredible whirlwind.  Each day started with a breakfast presentation at 8:30a.m. and ended with parties that lasted until 3:30a.m.  (Note: That’s 19 hours of inspiration, networking and good times, and it’s impossible to do it all for 5 days straight.)  Here are some whirlwind highlights:

  • The people that think the Big Idea is dead are outnumbered.  No one is arguing about the Big Insight (as a replacement) yet.
  • Curate the funny.  That’s advice from Ron Faris, the Director of Brand Marketing for Virgin Mobile USA.
  • When an audience full of want-to-be authors are asked if they’ve ever wanted to write a book, 2 people will raise their hands – the guy who’s written a book and me.
  • Adobe’s VP of Experience Design, Michael Gough, never mentions the word “creativity” to his people.  For Adobe, it’s about the alignment of 10,000 people and getting them all moving in the same direction.  Imagine the “creative” alternative…
  • Every 7 to 10 years puppets become viable again.  The people of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop believe we’re on the onset of that.
  • The best networking happens after the events.  While business cards can be exchanged during pre-scheduled networking times, the most natural, genuine (and fun) networking takes place when people are hanging out because they want to.
  • The concept of “collaboration,” with its best of intentions, continues to be the black sheep in discussions on creativity.
  • People want to work with cool people and do cool stuff.
  • If phone chargers are gold, finding an outlet to use in Manhattan is platinum.
  • 72andSunny sat on a panel for provocative advertising and then swept The One Shows (yes, plural, both the advertising and interactive awards) with their provocative ads.

Coming soon: Advertising Week the first week in October 2012.