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PSFK Conference NYC 2012

March 30, 2012. PSFK hosted its sixth annual conference celebrating new ideas. An audience of creative professionals from across advertising, design, marketing and technology industries will listen to a mix of inspirational speakers curated by the PSFK editorial team.

Abe Burmeister:
How I Built A Fashion Brand With No Experience, Just Punk Rock Spirit (And The Web)


In this talk from PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Abe Burmeister explains how a punk-rock ethic helped him create a business building a new niche in a market he had no experience in. Abe just wanted a pair of pants he could both ride his bike and go to work in - and all his partner Tyler needed was a shirt that stayed fresh despite his pedal-powered commute. The Outlier co-founder describes how the duo paired intensive research in New York's garment district with the connectivity of the web to create Outlier - a performance fashion business that only sells over the web.

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Clay Shirky:
What I Learned About Creativity By Watching Creatives


In this video of his talk at PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Clay Shirky talks about the work of Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. After working there as an assistant professor for almost ten years, Shirky describes five student projects that he thinks are pushing the creative boundaries - from interface design to how people cluster to build new work. At the end of the talk, the technology thought-leader compares creatives as members of a philharmonic orchestra and wonders if any rules can be drawn from looking at such an ensemble.

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Steve Powers:
Distilling Daily Stories Into Art


In this video from PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, artist Steve Powers takes us through his recent public and private art projects. He explains love-letters to the neighborhoods he painted on the sides of buildings in Brooklyn. He also talks about his one-a-day art “Daily Metaltation” pieces that he paints on 8×10 pieces of metal. When you’re presented with any day you’re presented with a blank slate he says and as an artist its his job to find some form and boundaries and distill his experiences of the day onto that canvas.

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Jonathan Harris:
Cowbird And Humanizing The Web


In this video from PSFK CONFERENCE NYC 2012, new media artists Jonathan Harris talks to the audience about how he walked away from success and notoriety and was inspired to counter current trends to build Cowbird.com.

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Jason Silva:
How Ideas Are Living, Beautiful Beings Of Wonder


In this video from his talk at PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Jason Silva shares two of his ‘shots of philosophical expresso’ - an exploration of how technology can quickly manifest our ideas and desires. The filmmaker and futurist rapidly demands that we need to learn to see the word in new ways in order to experience anew the amazement that has always been there. Heady, rapid

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Vikram Gandhi:
Directing ‘Kumaré’ - From Illusion Comes Truth


At PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Vikram Gandhi spoke about his latest movie Kumaré - The True Story of A False Prophet. While he was born in New Jersey, the film director spoke about how he had been noticing how the Indian-heritage culture he had experienced as he grew up, was being used by Americans and other Westerners to help solve their emotional and spiritual issues. To explore this idea further he dressed up as a guru, created a backstory with YouTube video and website, spoke like his grandmother and recruited followers in Arizona. What's unique is that throughout the film is that he tells everyone he was an illusion and asks his followers to look in a mirror to solve their own problems.

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Graham Hill:
Are You Ready To Life-Edit?


In this video from PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Graham Hill spoke to the audience about a skill that he believes will be essential in the 21st century. The designer and environmentalist explained that while the stuff we have and the money we make has increased over the last 50 years, our happiness has plateaued - and more dangerously, our environment has suffered. Graham says that it's time to reduce, remove and re-imagine.

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Todd Carmichael:
Expect Your Brand To Act & Behave Like A Decent Person


Todd Carmichael explains how his brand needs to think and act like a human being. The self-confessed coffee-craftsman explains that he expects his company La Colombe Torrefaction to behave like a decent person.

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SwissMiss:
How A Sabbatical From Clients Led To Business Success


In this short talk from PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Tina Roth Eisenberg describes how she decided to put the design work she was doing for clients on hold as she focused on creating a series of 'side projects'. For the designer known by her blog-readers as SwissMiss, a number of small bets worked out so well that her client sabbatical will now go on indefinitely.

Projects she describes in the video include the temporary tattoo brand Tattly, her lecture series Creative Mornings, her efficiency tool TeuxDeux and her co-working space Studiomates.

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Grant McCracken Spots A Culture Creation Trend


At PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Grant McCracken spoke about how he was looking at a trend where creative minds were taking culture and remixing it to make new culture. For his new book Culturematic, the ethnographer has studied Twitter users who mimicked an imaginary character in a real TV show, bar-owners who didn't want their new establishment to be found and Syberian youths who created protests using lego men.

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Steve Clayton:
How To Design Technology So It Becomes Natural


In this video from PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Steve Clayton talk about the drive at Microsoft to embrace what he calls 'natural user interface'. Clayton, who says his job is to find out what amazing projects the tech firm is working on and share it with the world, takes us through a future-forward vision where gesture, sound and artificial-intuition creates a world that extends the possibilities of our creativity.

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Rachel Shechtman:
How I See Retail As Publishing


Retail expert Rachel Shechtman believes that the future of consumption needs to be more about content and community. She says that shoppers expect price, quality and service as modern need-to-haves. They now crave surprise and delight and we want to be part of something. These insights led her to create a store in the New York neighborhood of Chelsea that acts more like a magazine – a place that presents new products based on rotating themes. In this talk from PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, she explains the mission of ‘Story’ and how she sees the future of retail unfolding.

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Alain Sylvain:
Could You Live On $1.50 A Day?


At PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Alain Sylvain asked the audience to spend a week living on less than two dollars a day. He explains that the Global Poverty Project us running a campaign called Live Below the Line which challenges people to live on $1.50/food day to raise awareness about extreme poverty. The Haitian-American, who like many others was personally effected by the earthquake in his home-country, says that traditional images of poverty have little effect and by actually participating in a program of denial, people can truly begin to understand the challenges when living below the poverty line.

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DJ Spooky Performance At PSFK CONFERENCE NYC


In this video from PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, DJ Spooky presents a live music mash-up of his Antartica-inspired music using a violinist and a DJ using his app. In setting up the performance, the celebrated musician and artist speaks to PSFK founder and editor-in-chief Piers Fawkes about how the app has absorbed how early types of multimedia has worked (including the phonograph and kinescope) and that the app has changed the creative act more than anything because of its ubiquity.

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Robert Kirkpatrick:
How The United Nations Is Using Social Data To Spot Disasters


In this talk from PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Robert Kirkpatrick talks about how the social media revolution has opened up a significant amount of data that can be analyzed (anonymously) to see signs of change. Kirkpatrick, together with his Global Pulse team at the United Nations, studies sentiment in Twitter feeds, fluctuations in price data and changes in other available information to look for trouble. By using data for good, the United Nations can respond to disaster rapidly - rather than well after the fact.

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Justin Gignac Paints What He Wants To Raise Money For Charity


At PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, the artist Justin Gignac came on to stage to give an update to the audience since he last spoke in 2011. Gignac spoke about how he took the idea behind the paint what you want that he and his artist wife had been creating for a few years, and apply it to fundraising. The Gignacs have created a range of T-Shirts with Threadless to raise funds for UNICEF. When someone buys a shirt the money goes towards what's printed on it.

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Ben Lerer:
Our Drive For A Deeper Level Of Engagement


In this short video from PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Ben Lerer talks about what happened when he realized that the market his content-company was in had changed and if he wanted to stay in business he needed Thrillist.com to evolve rapidly. He says that he noticed how the ad-market was becoming commoditized, that it was too easy to become a publisher and that it was very difficult to cut through to the audience with anything creative because of the noise. The co-founder explains that he now is building web entities that are both valuable to an audience and have intent built into them.

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Simon Collins:
How Saying 'No' Transformed Parsons Into A Global Brand


Simon Collins, Dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons The New School for Design, spoke to the audience about how he is turning the school into a global brand. Simon told the audience that things can be done on a global scale if you stick to the values: ‘make it beautiful, make it brilliant,’ and if you refuse to accept the limitations of what has been done before. He leads Parsons with the principle that passion and dedication to good design will lead to innovation and experimentation; this strict adherence to quality has led the school to become a leader within the fashion industry, with brands like Christian Louboutin and Stella McCartney asking to work with students for challenge and inspiration. Simon also talks of the importance of selectivity in growing a brand, of learning to say no to opportunities that will not further the brand’s mission.

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