A few weeks ago I gave a talk on Newspaper Blackout and Steal Like An Artist at The Economist’s Human Potential summit in New York City. They had an awesome tech staff, so we even managed to weave some of my live drawings from the conference into the talk. Enjoy!
TEDxPennQuarter – Austin Kleon – Reinventing Poetry
Photo by Flickr user sexyfitsum
The TEDxPennQuarter folks asked me to give a 10-minute talk around the theme of “reinventing,” with the (not-at-all-lofty!) title, “Reinventing Poetry.”
It started out like almost everything I do: with doodling.
Here are doodles from my phone call with Kes Sampanthar, the organizer of the event:
Kes encouraged me to really think about my personal story and focus on the question, “What does it mean to be an artist today?” (No pressure!)
So I scrapped a lot of the ideas I had, and started thinking about story and process. The meat of the talk really started with my notes on this “Publishing 3.0” talk given by Richard Nash:
I used the flowchart above as a starting point for all of my slides. (See them on Flickr):
This wasn’t the best presentation I’ve ever given, but the process of sorting through all these ideas turned out to be way more valuable to me than a perfect performance. And as they say, why do anything if you can’t learn something from it?
Thanks to Kes and the TEDxPennQuarter folks, and thanks to my friends for showing me a good time in DC!
See also: my visual notes from the rest of the TEDxPennQuarter talks
Austin Kleon at PechaKucha Night Austin 07 from PechaKucha Night Austin on Vimeo.
Above is the video for my Newspaper Blackout Pecha Kucha presentation last month in Austin.
PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.
It was incredibly difficult to time and plan out, and it’s probably the best presentation of my work that I’ve come up with. The audience was really amazing. Thanks to everyone who came, and thanks to Carla and Herman for inviting me.
Here are all my slides in one deck.
And here’s the 20-second time-lapse video that’s in the presentation:
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