PSFK Conference San Francisco Speaker Gareth Kay

We are excited to have Gareth Kay of Modernista! at PSFK Conference San Francisco 2008. Gareth will be leading our “Making Inspiration Matter” panel with Eric Corey Freed of organicARCHITECT, Josh Morenstein (fuseproject) and Frank Striefler (TBWA\Chiat Day), in discussion over how inspiration can be used to create change.

First, who are you and what do you do?

I’m Gareth Kay and I run the planning department at Modernista!, an ad agency based in Boston. My job is to help create an environment where great ideas are more likely to happen. Primarily this means turning information into inspiration and planting some seeds for great ideas to hopefully grow from.

You’ll be leading our “Making Inspiration Matter” panel. Can you sum up your views on what it means to “take inspiration and create change”?

It’s a cliché, but inspiration is literally everywhere – conversations in the coffee shop, stuff on the street, all over the internet. The trick is to take all this stimuli, spot patterns and collide together observations that were previously unconnected to make you think about people, businesses and problems differently. This is how change is created. In order to do this, the key is the diversity of stimuli you expose yourself to. Working in advertising, far too many people only really expose themselves to the ad awards show books and marketing texts which is one of the reasons there is so surprisingly little innovation in the industry. If this conference can open people’s eyes to look outside their own field of professional interest then I believe much greater change can be created.

Five sites that provide you with inspiration:

City of Sound
Future Perfect
Noisy Decent Graphics
The Guardian
PSFK (and not just because it’s your conference)

(All the above regularly are regularly found on my del.icio.us)

Thanks, Gareth!

Modernista!

Learn more from Gareth at PSFK Conference San Francisco 2008.