Very pleased (and no, not at all terrified, not me!) to announce that I’ll be giving the opening keynote at SXSW Interactive 2014. I’ve been drawing and organizing panels at the conference since 2008, but this is quite the step up, and I’m honored that the SXSW crew asked me.
I gave my last keynote back in June at HOW Design Live in San Francisco. It was a huge room with a couple thousand people — definitely the biggest room I’d done up until that point, and probably the best talk I’ve given, ever. Alas, due to a miscommunication on my part, we didn’t get any video, but some lovely people on Instagram captured bits and pieces, which you can see below.
Maybe my favorite part of speaking, other than Q&A (yes, I actually love Q&A, because it’s unrehearsed and time I get to think on my feet), is signing books afterwards and getting to talk to people who were in the audience. The line at HOW was at least a hundred people long and it took me 2 hours to get through, but, as should be expected from a design conference, there were some creative moments along the way, such as when Genevieve asked me to sign with a silver Sharpie (why had I never thought of that!?)…
…and when Allan (maybe frustrated from the line length), did a blackout on the last page of Steal:
I’m not doing a lot of speaking for the second half of 2013, but I’ll be hitting the road again next spring for the release of Show Your Work! If you’re interesting in having me talk at your event, drop me a line.