Future of Design Industry (KiKK festival day 1)

Key Takeaways

the airport's definitely one of my favorite places to be because it means I'm going on an awesome adventure today I'm flying to Belgium to kick Festival hope it's going to be amazing let's rock and [Music] roll so welcome to Belgium I have just landed here in Brussels and I'm waiting for my train which will be in a few minutes to namore which is the city where uh the kick Festival will be hosted and going to meet there nimal my friend who is a ux designer at Wix he's the one actually told me about this event and I just decided to join uh he's already there from yesterday so it's a 1 and 1 half hour train ride I'm dying to grab something to eat and a coffee hope that would be something on the train [Music] [Music] there was no coffee on the train so I had to grab one here with a famous belgum blackle which is super good and and I'm heading to the theater where the festival is [Music] hosted I just realized that I didn't really explain what is this event and what am I doing here so basically this festival or conference is called Kick festival and basically it's around design art technology Innovation all that sort of stuff so there's a lot of great speakers here from all sorts of you know Art and Design Studios and stuff like that there's an exhibition and a Marketplace and all sorts of things like video art and stuff like that so I hope to listen to a few great talks meet some cool people and just have a great [Music] time the first talk that we've heard heard was from an Austrian creative agency called The Wild which does really cool work and he was kind of explaining the mistakes they did while they were starting their company and what they learned along the way and even though I don't run a creative agency a lot of the stuff that he talked about really resonated with me stuff like how to get along with your partners and that eventually people matters more than the numbers and taking projects that you want to to work on and that you enjoy working on rather than just project that make money or that you know grow your company um so that it will look bigger but then you have to take project that you don't really want to do I really really connect with those [Music] values so I'm here with Stefan my new friend who I just met hi tell us what you think about the new the wild talk that we just saw I saw you taking notes yeah I I've taken notes and I really liked it I like the ideas and the concepts yeah they were they were really like down to earth and yeah no but really good presentation so far now we're going to grab some [Music] sushi after lunch we went to two more talks the first one was from kind of a design researcher that's researching the connection between design and biology to tell you the truth I really didn't connect to what she was saying and basically I'm not really good with all the biology stuff and seeing you know grotesque images and stuff like that really makes me feel bad so I can't really say that I enjoyed it even though I think conceptually she was was talking about uh interesting stuff such as what are the implication when we are going to be able to design body parts and babies and stuff like that that talk really made me feel bad the one after that was about fashion and wearable and you know wearable technology which sounds super interesting but I got to be honest the speaker wasn't so good uh and I could not really you know be involved in the conversation and I kind of got bored pretty easily I just want to say that I've been to a few events in my life already so I know that not all talks are good you got to find the the ones that do and it's okay if you don't enjoy all of the talks it's still worth [Music] it the last Talk of the day in my opinion was really the best and most insightful uh talk and I really feel that I took a lot from it it was from the founder of a company called ASU which is also a creative agency but it's more of like a product studio um and he was really giving kind of an overview of what happened in the creative industry in the last few years and where things stand up now and what are kind of the opportunities in the future and I feel that a lot of what he was saying like he gave an overview how the the agency model is collapsing because big big companies the big advertising companies and the big tech companies are acquiring all the talents and kind of the studio model is collapsing the kind of the consultation model is collapsing and the way to now reinvent the studio or the agency model is by developing your own products or investing in startups which means that you do the work for Equity um and those are things that I really think a lot about and that's actually how I try to manage myself so I even though I kind of knew what he was talking about I think to really see an overview of you know the the past the present and the future really connected the Dos nicely and kind of encouraged me that I'm on the right path and that I'm doing the right thing I really enjoyed that talk it was delivered wonderfully and was very very [Music] insightful and here I am now checked in really late to the hotel and actually I had a super creepy story of getting here um I took a taxi there was no hotels in the city center because everything is fully booked I kind of took a hotel outside of town kind of inside the woods and the taxi dropped me off at the wrong place uh and I had to kind of walk in the pitch dark inside the woods for like 1 kilometer until I found this Castle which is the hotel that I'm staying at went into the castle and there was like you know statues and pictures like old godic pictures and there's nobody there there's no Lobby there's nobody and I'm like hello hello and there's nobody there and it's creepy it's like a horror film so I'm hanging around there I'm just like shouting hello until some girl came up the stairs and she was like hi Ron we were waiting for you uh and took me to my room which I'll show you in a minute it's a crazy room and then she said oh I'm sorry that you got stuck in the woods um you know make yourself comfortable and come down for a drink so I was like okay and then I go down after two minutes and she's not there and I'm walking around and I feel like I'm alone in this castle and it was really super creepy and then I came back through the room and lock myself cuz I didn't know what to do and then I I was hanging out here for like 30 minutes not sure what to do and then I heard some steps so I went outside and I was like Lucy Lucy I was looking for the girl and then I found them like in some kind of a kitchen like a bunch of young cool people turns out that they live here here they kind of took over this Castle a few years ago when it was abandoned by this Rich family who owned it and they're kind of like turned it into a hotel and doing some kind of a farming social farming activity here so it's supposed to be beautiful and I really feel much better now even though it was really really creepy um but they seem super cool now and I think tomorrow I'll check out this place supposed to be beautiful so let me show you my room so basically this is the bedroom it's quite big here you have a big shower space and here you have another kind of a library thing with a fireplace but we cannot find a way to put the lights on so that's all for today it was a super fun day for the first day of the festival I'm going to take a shower I haven't shower for like more than 24 hours try to relax a little bit and I will catch you guys tomorrow see see