The Programs of the Week After XOXO
This Week’s Program: Sep 12 - Sep 16
Hello! I’m writing this over the course of an Engineering Management workshop program. This newsletter is all about my little escape from Engineering Management, but it’s important to also, you know, work and think about working better. So that’s what I’m up to today.
I decided to take this week off from my code streak to collect my
thoughts from XOXO. At the XOXO #bots social meetup, I got to
present my work on sonic-sketches. I was so glad to be a part of
that! My bot even made it to The Verge’s
Best of XOXO
list. Cool!
My Best of XOXO
- Sammus’s discussion about tears and why it’s okay to shed them, followed by an awesome acapella performance and some talk on the merits of sharing your vulnerability. It was incredibly moving. It was at this moment where I realized what XOXO is really about. It’s not a tech conference or an art conference or a professional networking event. XOXO is a symposium on following your creative spirit and being honest with it through pain and criticism and in the face of external judgement. It’s about self-care in the pursuit of your need for creative expression, and how that pursuit is in itself a form of self-care.
- Starlee Kine talked about her relationship to her listeners and balancing their desire for more content with her own creative desires. This was a recurring topic throughout the conference: the relationship and dialog between a content-creator and their audience. It can be demanding. What was really cool is that I got to catch up with Starlee at the conference’s final party. She also happened to participate in an art project by Miranda July and Paul Ford from the Rhizome Seven on Seven conference earlier this year. In this project, Starlee assisted in stalking everyone in the audience. It was great. Starlee recognized both my wife and I on sight and laughs were had. She’s a good detective.
- John Roderick offered what I think was my favorite talk of the event. He spoke about the perception of effortlessness and how damaging that was to his beliefs about how “effortless” his creative work should seem, and the subsequent guilt he felt when he started podcasting and things did feel effortless. He spoke about “contentedness” and why he’s the type who can never feel contented. His talk spoke to something angry and cynical and bitter that lay deep inside me and I appreciated what he had to say. I just started the episode of Roderick on the Line following the conference and so far it’s a great postscript.
- Lucy Bellwood, a comic artist who I wasn’t familiar with, gave a heart-wrenching, vulnerable talk about her own financial stability. This was another recurring theme of the conference: size of audience does not have a direct relationship with financial growth. She was great.
- Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is a brilliant film series that should be watched serially in its entirety. My wife and I quoted it for the rest of the conference. It’s hilarious and disturbing. Like David Lynch meets Pee Wee’s Playhouse.
- Two More Eggs by The Brothers Chaps. A series of short cartoons produced by Disney from the same guys who created Homestar Runner. Was so cool to see Homestar Runner on the stage at XOXO but I really loved these shorts, and to see how much leash Disney had given them.
- Jenn Schiffer was hilarious and raised so many important points about the way men rush to judge and criticize and explain something to a woman. Meanwhile, a well-respected leader in our industry is a literal vampire and somehow that’s okay.
- David Rees gave a great and vulnerable talk about his financial struggles and touched on all of the previously stated themes of the conference.
- Sarah Jeong gave a talk about ad blockers and the identity crisis they present to the media industry. This one was great because Vera, my wife, is a product manager for Ghostery and had just, days earlier, released the latest version of their browser extension. She worked really hard on it and it is awesome and Sarah nailed why its existence is so necessary.
So that’s my non-exhaustive list. Tantek has collected a bunch of other people’s writing and perspectives of the festival. You should check this all out and watch the conference videos when they are eventually released. It was a fantastic experience and Portland is a great place.
Next Week…
It’s back to working on hive-city. I’m trying to learn enough about
SVG to render something reasonably interesting to look at. Here are
some resources that are helping me with that:
Please endorse me for “Engineering Management” on LinkedIn,
– Mark