The Seed Conference 2008
The Seed Conference was on the beautiful IIT campus on the south side of Chicago in a relatively new building designed by Rem Koolhaas (a student of Mies van der Rohe), but I’ll get into that in a bit…
Main topics — Stop meeting. Stay small. Say no.
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The first presenter was Carlos Segura. He’s apparently a huge name in print; maybe some of you design-minded individuals know him better than I. Some questions he did a really good job of answering: How do you manage design(ers)? How do you manage a client? What is brand? How do you market yourself?
Best Quote: “We lose more clients than we get”
2nd Best Quote: “If a client says ‘money is not an object’, quote them one million dollars… they’ll give you a budget”
How do you manage design(ers)?
I thought his process was simple, but appropriate. First, he’s (almost) never met a client in person, thinks meetings are generally a waste of time and is much more likely to turn down a project then to take it. Part of the reason his team can do this is because they remain small and focused–they needn’t take on work “just to feed the beast” –so to say. He also claimed that creativity exists at the fringe, and thus… designers will do their best work when they have too much to do combined with inspiring projects. On a practical note, when a new project first comes in, Carlos has many designers go off and work on their own. After a period, they gather again and he helps determine which ideas the client will see.
How do you manage a client?
From what I gathered, it was the combination of three vital practices that cumulated in a successful client relationship. First, record everything (notes) that a client says they want and then briefly remind them of it shortly before presenting. Second, only show what you’d eventually be happy with as a designer and third, get the budget up front. Carlos also said several times that it is imperative to communicate a clear definition of target audience (i.e. “the design is for your customer not for you…”). Thus, there must be a sense of trust that we (the expert) can–and will–do a better job of understanding the ultimate consumer of the creative product. In addition to these guiding principles, Carlos said he always fought for his ideas and in many cases fired clients that wanted too much control over the design. His justification was that the Segura brand was evident in every piece of work he did… in other words, don’t compromise your design integrity if you are trying to build a long-term reputation.
What is brand?
It can be difficult to explain what branding means, and quoting something aloof like “brand is the visual representation of the benefits your product/company provide,” may well be lost on your client. Carlos instead uses the example of several car companies: What is BMW? — excellence in engineering. What is Volvo? — safety. What is Cadillac? — American luxury. What is Ford? — ??? Ford is trying to be all things to all people.
How do you market yourself?
I asked Carlos to what extent his personal brand was a conscious effort and how much was a byproduct of his work. He said that his personal brand–and by extension, that of his company–were a conscious effort every minute of every day. This response surprised me somewhat as I guessed it would have been some combination, but it goes to show how much of himself has been dedicated to the craft that no distinguishable line can be drawn between the man and his work. Finally, when you’re pounding the pavement Carlos claims that great and unique marketing/presentation material will always win the deal.
He did case studies on:
Re-branding Corbis
Rock Shox
Labels for Express Jeans
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The second presenter was Jason Fried founder of 37signals. He and his business partner David Heinemeier Hansson (creator of the Rails application development framework) have created some of the most influential web apps that exists… think Basecamp. He did a wonderful job framing his business philosophy, which can be summed up with a few basic concepts: planning hurts your business, size matters, open works, and interruption kills productivity.
Best Quote: “I’d rather have a client grow out of our products then make them so feature laden that we raise the barrier to entry for new customers.”
2nd Best Quote: “There’s no such thing as a one hour meeting. If it’s a ten person meeting that takes an hour, it’s a ten hour meeting.”
Planning hurts your business
A lot of businesses spend time and meetings trying to figure out where they want to be one, five and even ten years from the present. Jason’s argument is simply that by planning for an uncertain future, one is donning a set of blinders. In other words, the plan itself can limit your ability to grasp opportunity at the fringe. Jason expanded on this topic by making the suggestion that rather than focus on large decisions that require company-wide consensus and considerable commitment of resources, focus instead on small decisions that can be made frequently. This allows the company to fail and fail often without compromising it’s overall health. The idea is that these small failures provide a sustainable platform for learning from one’s mistakes by minimizing the risk associated with each decision. It also empowers employees to take personal responsibility since the risk of failure doesn’t endanger their employment status.
Size matters
Staying small was a theme that permeated each presenter’s talk. Like Carlos, Jason consciously keeps his team small in order to prevent the need to take on work just to pay salaries, but also because he thinks it leads to better products. He argued that businesses will most often scale up their workforce to match the perceived scope of a project. He instead suggests you scale the project scope to your companies head count. This forces the team to focus on only those features which really make an impact for the end user. All 37signals products adhere to this philosophy (they are a company of ~10).
Open works
Rails–the platform upon which Bascamp is built–is completely open sourced, all of 37signals’s business processes are transparent to the public, and the company regularly publishes successes, failures and ideas to its blog (Signals vs. Noise). The idea is that “open” works and the analogy given was that of the Cookbook. Every well known and successful chef gives away their secrets in the form of recipes. This giving-away of intellectual capital actually enhances an organization’s ability to garner success (contrary to what many in the industry think). I believe this to be an extension of the popular theory that work in the interactive space is no longer about the idea, but rather the execution of that idea (could this trend may be a result of the rising knowledge-based economy predicted by Drucker in the 90’s?)
Interruption kills productivity
If you accept the fact that it takes a certain amount of time to focus and un-focus (think about writing an elaborate email, starting a new design or writing code), then it follows that the more times you are required to break concentration, the less productive you become. Think then about how many times during the day someone comes and interrupts your train of thought? As an exercise, Jason suggested we mark on a piece of paper the number of times this happens in a typical work day, then calculate the approximate time sacrificed. As an alternative, he suggests email or if it’s urgent, IM since it at least provides the 15-30 seconds required to finish a thought before responding. Implicit in this method is a social contract that relies on responses within a reasonable timeframe. Jason terms the two types of interruption, active and passive, with passive being the preferred method.
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The third presenter was Jim Coudal who–along with a small team–manages coudal.com and a few other successful businesses. He runs his shop much like the first two presenters but had a few good insights regarding client work, short attention spans, and truth.
Quote: “Hire us because of the way we think not because of what we’ve done”
Client work
As an agency one of the least talked about competencies is the ability to very quickly understand a client’s target market. His point for bringing this up was to make the case for engaging in entrepreneurial activities in conjunction with client work. In other words, if you have developed the craft on behalf of a client (to understand and analyze a market), why not use this for your organization’s own benefit; create something and sell it.
Short attention spans
As illustrated by the short film hosted here, many of us have an entrepreneurial spirit paired with a short attention span. The film casts this behavior in a bad light, but Jim took the opposite view and instead suggested that we embrace our short attention spans as a source of energy and enlightenment. If you’ve ever been part of a team coalescing around the latest “great” idea, then you know the kind of energy and excitement of which Jim speaks; however, the vast majority of these adventures fail either because of lost interest or because the market proves it’s a bad idea. Jim challenges that this cycle of energy and failure is actually a very positive part of his business because it keeps people energized and because you generally learn a lot in the process of failing (credit to the previous speaker).
Truth
During the Q&A session one member of the audience mentioned that while coudal.com was really cool, it didn’t feel elitist, patronizing or otherwise unapproachable–I think the phrase he used was, “too cool for school.” When asked about this balance, Jim simply stated that which appeared obvious (after a brief visual scrutiny) …”I’m not cool.” In three words Jim was expressing his view that customers in the digital age can sense authenticity, even through something as superficial as a web page.
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Some thoughts of my own…
During the lunch break an architecture expert–and fellow at the Harvard school of design–came and gave a presentation on the building we were in (designed by Rem Koolhaas) and the rest of the campus (designed by Mies van der Rohe). Much of the talk was focused on Crown Hall and how it becomes even more grand because of its transparency and bold openness. This didn’t appear to be a conscious reflection on the speakers personal business philosophies, but it did act–even if just below the surface–as a unifying theme of the conference. In an age where Google knows us better than we know ourselves, I think our clients and certainly our client’s clients are demanding a brutal version of the truth in everything they consume. Honesty and doing business in public–especially with regard to our failures–is the new credential. Think about our new politicians; in the past, Obama’s admission of organizational shortcomings might have emboldened skeptics and critics, but instead we saw attacks on his opponent’s veneer of modesty. I believe we may be witnessing the natural, but unexpected consequence of the information age… simply, that we can’t hide anymore. And those who take the first steps to embrace this fact in business, or elsewhere will be rewarded by a population willing to supply capital for something with which they feel a personal connection.
This concept of doing business “in the open” leads me to conclude what I think many in business already know, that the product is no longer separate from the company and the company is no longer separate from it’s employees. Consumers have started to demand that an organization embody the ideals of its product, but I think the next step is to demand that management also be held accountable for that very same ideal. As mentioned previously, I asked Carlos about managing his personal brand, but I think the conclusion is the same for all of the presenters. Product is the company is the person.
From left to right: Carlos Segura, Jason Fried, Jim Coudal
