HOW Design Conference. Decisions, Decisions

If it's worth $1500 to you to sit in a conference room (or two, or three...) snoozing through various well-intentioned but only partially-applicable seminars and presentations (bad PowerPoint slide-shows and all), then "network" with others in your field who are only interested in seeing how you do it, or creating business ventures that have no interest in, or (if you're a networking wallflower like myself), standing in a corner drinking watered-down vodka tonics (well brand - eeuch!), etc., etc., etc., then by all means go.

I've never been to a HOW Design conference, so I can't speak from experience on the quality of their shows. I have been to numerous other seminars and conferences, however, and they're all pretty much the same.

I say, save the $$$ and check the web site for highlights.

heya.

i agree with bob. i've never been to anything.. the reason is because i think i get hyped up to go because i want to meet and hang with all of these other people. trouble is *everyone else* has the same agenda that i've got. i'll meet them and shake their hand and become a slack-jawed yokel like 50 other people standing around the 5 people having an old-fashioned reunion.

re: davis & pollack. that's too bad. sometimes people come up to you and say, "that painting of a square went for 4 million? fuck, my kid could do that. it sucks." i used to have an art teacher whose response was,
"why didn't your kid do that then?"

i agree with a lot of davis' stuff - i even bought the praystation cd rom kit, but sometimes cool for the sake of cool is crazy. hehe.. my 2 cents.

-mat

for $1500 i'll come into your living room and speak about the things i hate. you won't even have to move. in fact, i'll make you coffee or lemonade while you sit there (and while i talk). email me and i'll give you the details :)

I guess it depends on how burnt-out you're feeling. I felt absolutely torched before I went to SXSW, and hadn't even realized how bad it had gotten. Afterwards, I felt completely revitalized and ready to tackle my job again. Did I make a bunch of lucrative business contacts? Not necessarily. Did I pick up a bunch of new techniques and marketable tricks? Not really. Did I make a bunch of friends that I can now talk to about the state of the industry and ideas for projects and so on and so forth? Absolutely.

Of course, I didn't do the wallflower thing -- I found a group of friendly people and set about making friends with those "five people having an old-fashioned reunion". Making friends: it's like networking, only without the sleazy undertones. And that's what SXSW did for me -- really helped me reconnect to the community and remind me what the hell I was doing all this for in the first place: because even when it's not lucrative, it's a fun line of work with tons of interesting people out there trying just as hard to figure it all out.

So, basically, if you're looking for a quick cash ROI, drop the $1500 on some classes, some new tools or, hell, even some public-access TV ads to snare some new clients. If you're looking for a good way to recharge your batteries, go to SXSW. I can't speak for the HOW conference, as I've never been, but I found SXSW to be well worth the money.

BTW, that clip doesn't do Josh Davis' clip justice, or any of the other panels justice either. If you want a clearer picture, try the transcript I typed up for the independent content panel over here: http://www.sxswblog.com/note.asp?id=35. Thanks for the pointer to the movie, though -- turns out I'm in the audience. That was a hoot. :)

PS: That transcript was just one contribution to the Notes Exchange, which offers notes on many of the panels. That's located over here: http://www.sxswblog.com/exchange.asp. Hope this helps!

The best conference I've regularly gone to is the Doors of Perception conference in Amsterdam. It's also one of the cheapest, except for the flight. Doors is a design conference with an agenda, but with enough wackos to make that agenda just a guidline. They tend to have equal parts practicioners and academics, which is nice--SXSW seems to be pretty homogenous. There's no "how-to" seminars, and the only sales pitch I saw at the last two was a guy from Scient whom the audience laughed at.

Doors is also the only conference that I've been to that has been good at predicting trends, not just reporting on them.

www.doorsofperception.com (It's sometime this November)

I've always wanted to go to one of those big design conferences, but I've never been able to land the cash to go or get a boss to pay for it. You might be right, it might be something that you come back from and say "Well, that was a waste." Even if the content isn't all that great, if you go in with the attitude that you are going to pick up something, you will. You may be pleasantly surprised and find all kind of cool things. It's all in what YOU make of it. I've heard from other designers I know that rave about the things, and they are people that I respect.

Thanks everyone for contributing your thoughts - lots of very well thought out reasons for / against in this thread. It came down to the wire last night, and I ultimately went with my gut on this one. I'm staying home until I have some extra cash to burn. You have to spend money to make money...I know...but I'm sitting this one out.

These are only useful to attend if you are on the company's dime. They're somewhat interesting, you'll find a few tidbits of inspiration, but nothing you couldn't find surfing the web. I am actually finding a daily diet of applicable Blogs to be the best way to stay connected.

Otherwise, the conferences are great for shmoozing (networking), drinking, and otherwise just goofing off on the company's VISA card.

As for something like the HOW conference, I've realized lately that any AIGA-like event really IS just a large circle jerk of people talking about how important they are within the small, self-absorbed circle of graphic designers. If you have an Ego, go and flaunt it. If not, save the headache.

Conferences...I dunno, but other than Macworld Expos or Musik Messes or NAMM or NAB or similar shows, where a bunch of new, cool tools hit the market, I find conferences generally a waste because the panel discussions always get sidetracked and/or too specific.
I've just started (trying) to read Derrida's "The Truth in Painting" and while a lot of it comes across like clever wordplay masquerading as thesis, there are a few interesting ideas about art in there. Which is what bugs me about industry shindigs like this: it's like being a gardener and admiring the flowers but ignoring the soil, pH, water, sun and everything else that is important and necessary. Maybe there needs to be a Meta-conference (call it META: Methods, Examples and Theories on Art) with a much higher-level focus. Software is always changing; operating systems are always changing; but certain things - human nature, human vision, graphical and linguistic semiotics, colour psychology, the Golden Section, etc. etc. remain relatively constant;- and it's worthwhile perhaps exploring (with a group of one's peers) how these lofty concepts affect the nitty-gritty of graphics, Web Design and advertising.

I don't know about the HOW thing, and I hate Florida (and Disney) as well, but I am a huge proponent of design conferences in general. If you think it's just about ego, then that's all you'll get out of it. But as a designer and a fan of design in general, I think there aren't many better ways to spend a few days than watching presentations from people whose work like (or don't), and then being able to walk up to them afterwards and have a talk, usually accompanied by free drinks. I recently attended the AIGA Voice conference in D.C., and once again I found myself in the very particular state of mind I only get into at events like that: totally thinking about work, but with no work to worry about actually doing, I am free to think about what I'd like to be doing and how to do it. Very cool.