Synthesis

A List Apart is conducting their annual web designer survey:

I’m back from Austin. This was my first SXSW, but probably not the last. Four days of total immersion with web professionals and super stars from all over the world can start to distort reality. But it was very inspiring! I’m full of new ideas and ambitions. One mantra from the conference to remember – ideas are 1%, execution is 99%.

At any given time, 1/3rd of the attendees were gazing into their laptop screen, usually a Mac powerbook. I guess I’ll soon be joining this world minority/design majority. I’m kinda glad I didn’t have mine during the sessions. The attendees that did were often surfing the web and reading OTHER blogs rather than paying attention! It would have helped to take more notes though – my hand is forgetting how to write manually. Many people were taking notes directly into their blogs, so I’m sure multiple outlines of every session already exists on the net some where.

Networkers paradise: I met a lot of cool people – some of the blogging elite, some who don’t blog, some old friends, and more.

I usually read blogs from Bloglines, so everything tends to look the same. Lame. What a shame. Too bad bloglines doesn’t let you read each blog in the design the author intended.

I just updated my blog’s sidebar with a list of my randomly favorite blogs. (Leaving out still a bunch of others I check out just because I don’t want the list to scroll forever.) Clicking around, I noticed that a couple of them have recently re-designed! Check out the fresh looks at:

• encytemedia – these tones of green are among my favorite colors. love the icons. but that blue line in the header slightly irks me.
• whitespace – so nice. giant comment numbers! and when you click to read a full entry, the article appears in the left column and the comments appear in the right, awesome idea.

Originally seen at Needmore Notes, here’s 11 Tips to surviving a day job with your creativity intact . Creativity is a muscle that needs exercise just like any other, or you will become weak. This article has ideas that will inspire and show you how to make time for your creative side.

The article reminded me of The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, another great book on creativity.

Speaking of which, I’d really like to bust out an original design for this blog sometime in the near future.