As I make my way to FITC Toronto 2010 Sunday morning, tumbling through the schedule trying to decide which presentations to attend, I admit to being just a little intrigued by the title of Jamie Kosoy’s talk: The Importance of Whiskey While Working (and other work flow tips, too!).
Kosoy, who works for one of the most prolific digital agencies in North America (Big Spaceship) as a technical technical director, delivered a rousing presentation full of insights into effective digital work flows, orchestrating positive team dynamics, and of course, Whiskey-inspired anecdotes into their studio’s creatively unconventional approach.
Whiskey it seems, serves as the perfect metaphor for staying loose, agile and open-minded when embarking on complex digital design campaigns as Kosoy describes.
Of course, the work produced by Big Spaceship is innovative to say the least, emphasizing problem-solving on a level most organizations perhaps only dream or talk about implementing. Nevertheless the benefits of the odd shot of Whiskey now and then can be beneficial to any team open to think beyond the box once in a while.
Here are a few memorable take-away ideas from from Kosoy’s talk I was able to jot down:
- Try to stay positive; with a lot of the talk lately surrounding economic uncertainty in the workplace, client projects can suffer -try not to take everything so seriously -have fun.
- Whether you are a designer or developer please name your damn layers! -in the future someone will eventually need to go back into your files and find something.
- Don’t pigeonhole yourself or other team members into being called a Flash developer or a PHP developer (and so on..) -specialist labels are never an accurate reflection of the work most of us do on a daily/weekly basis -you are a multi-talented, multi-disciplinary team member.
- Check your ego at the door. Big egos and attitudes undermine team collaboration. If you can’t work well with others, you might as well stay home.
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