We at GDC Manitoba have had 12, count them, TWELVE! PechaKucha Nights in Winnipeg now. Three years later, we’re still going strong and have already booked our dates for 2013 (March 7, May 16, September 12 and December 5). What’s so amazing to us is that we keep finding such interesting speakers… it’s a real testament to the varied creative culture that we have in Winnipeg! We always do our best to choose an eclectic, entertaining mix of presenters for each line-up, but that is where our work stops. Our speakers pour their heart and soul into their presentations — they make us laugh, cry, think and most of all, they give us a huge, heaping dose of inspiration. We can’t thank them enough.
For Volume 12, our final speaker line-up was made up of Jeope Wolfe (designer), Lindsay Hamel (personal trainer), Rod Edwards (accountant-in-training), Chris Chuckry (illustrator), Adrian J. K. Shum (designer/karateka), Shawn Jordan (designer/artist), Carson Samson (designer), Cal Harrison (author/consultant) and Jack Jonasson (former, and hopefully future, owner of Lo Pub). As always, I left wired with PechaKucha goodness and I still have thoughts zinging back and forth in my mind as a result.
I’m not going to try and recap what everyone said, but I do want to share what I walked away with.
– Take a look back into your childhood and figure out what you loved to do (what you were most creatively enthusiastic about), and try to bring that into your work.
– If you’ve found the right job (or made the right job), it will make you feel good, and happy. Even if on paper you have a fantastic job, if it’s not fulfilling you, it’s not the right one.
– Even if you have a creative job, find other outlets to be purely creative (without the constraints/considerations that come with work).
– Life is tough sometimes. There’s no way around it.
– Being healthy, strong and fit takes inner strength and motivation.
– It’s important to travel, to expand your experience of the world.
– You never know what, or who, is going to inspire you (be open).
– RFP’s are bad business.
– Last but not least, “Put a bird on it”.
Many thanks to Kevin Guenther for designing our 2012 series of Pecha Kucha Night in Winnipeg posters. Go here to view the series, read about the thought process behind them and get a sense of how they are made.