Thanks for getting back guys, it is awesome that we can talk about this.
To try and answer both of you the best I can
@Warren, I will say that I am a Junior at Massart. Last year was my first conference.
@Marco, thanks for the information! Puts a little more in perspective for me in a good way, but I’ll go into more detail about some of the issues I had.
I basically let my wallet take a huge hit to try and gain something from each lecture, but most to the ones I went to didn’t really allow me to take anything away. I am really confused why there isn’t an uproar about Maeda’s “presentation”. To me that is completely insulting. I really think he thought the whole thing was a joke. Is it just me? Does anyone else feel the same way?
The lecture by Anthony Pannozzo was probably the most relatable lecture to me that I saw. It made me think that as a designer, I can pretty much do anything. A really good thing to come out of a lecture with. The Design4 Business was the best section hands down. The other just didn’t match up as equally. The integration of Design and Business is a marriage that I am accepting as time goes on, and it would be really awesome to see more talks like the one from Anthony next year.
I think it was a really awesome idea to have different talks go on at the same time, but if you picked one that didn’t fit snug with you it was a loss. Just to share my own experience, the sustainability talk by Matt Grigsby interested me so I went and got a really good seat for that. I chose the wrong one, and I was stuck there. Not really sure of a good solution to the problem, but hopefully feedback like that will help. Events like that is where I felt like I wasted some of my time there. Matt’s story is something to talk about for sure, but he didn’t have any case studies to back his words, I could barely hear him, and his presentation wasn’t the most exciting thing I have ever seen (Sorry Matt! Being honest here). A mic definitely would have helped.
Its hard to spend that much money to go as a student, even if it is so reduced, for that sort of thing to happen and say it was a worth while experience. I was really expecting for all of the lectures to be as exciting as Mr. Potato Head, not sure if that was an unrealistic expectation. And Marco, I totally agree with you in where the value really is, or should be, or something, but there wasn’t enough good content for me to think that I guess. Last years conference was really terrible, so I might just have a bad taste in my mouth or something.
The portfolio review was better than last year by a ton, I think it would be one of the best things that ever happened to have a workshop or lecture on portfolio building. Having a review is good, yes, but is a review of one type of your work. As students, we have to make a web, multiple versions of prints, and different presentations all for the same project. How the hell can anyone actually expect anyone else to do that? It is a real problem I am personally having at the moment. Somehow people have done it, and done it well, and I would love to hear them talk about it.
To answer the question about the walk abouts, the Ximedica party was freaking awesome. The first night was cool with the cheap beer but I think a lot of people were still sort of breaking the ice.
Did this hit points you guys were looking for?