Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

 Yes, the Olympics. The Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver, Canada this weekend.

Of course I love:

• • Learning about the host city
• • Learning the athlete back stories
• • Reading Olympics trivia (for example Pigeon Racing was a sport for a year??)
• • The celebration of national identity (In August 2008, we had a really un-PC opening ceremony at Capstrat for the Olympics.)

I like to believe the Olympics bring a huge transformation to the host city - making international audiences aware of a city. 

Barcelona was a wonderful city prior to the Olympics, but the international attention and resulting tourism 18 years later has helped the city flourish. Or has it? Does Atlanta, Georgia enjoy the same international recognition Barcelona enjoys? Sydney, Athens and Beijing were already quite well-known and may not experience the same measurable long-term spike. London will likely perform in a similar fashion. 

If the Olympics do not have a lasting tourist-related economic benefit, could there be other indicators that make the event a success? The games in Vancouver this Winter are considered the greenest Olympics event to date and the London Olympics will be even greener. Could the expansion of and increased ridership on Vancouver's light rail be the success measurement? 

What do you think Vancouver should use as a success metric?

Over the course of my life, I’ve probably seen close to 400 movies on the big screen. And maybe five of those have caused “theater time warp.” What is theater time warp? It’s the name I’ve given the feeling I get when a movie is so engaging, so absorbing that when I walk outside, it feels like time passed me by. The 2008 Cusp Conference I attended in September achieved theater time warp.

By promising to address “the design of everything” in two days, the Cusp coordinators gave themselves a tall order to fill. Well I didn’t learn about the design of everything — but I was powerfully reminded that everything has a design.

Webster’s dictionary lists 17 definitions for the word design. That’s a lot. But when I hear the word, I immediately think graphic. That might come from the fact that I work in the advertising industry, and for every project, I’m paired with a designer who gives our concept a graphic interpretation. But at the Cusp conference, presenters talked about the design of things created without pencils and paper or computer software; community, courage, identity, connections, ethics, hope, the future, reality, fantasy — even food. Each speaker had a personal story, a unique perspective and a creative approach to life — a designer’s approach.
    
One presenter, billed as a body hacker, talked about designing our physical selves through alterations like tattoos, piercings, plastic surgery, pharmacology and — coffee consumption. A seventeen-year-old musical prodigy played flawless compositions designed by composers long dead. A retired catholic priest encouraged us to immerse ourselves in a community in order to design solutions for social issues (he also completely immersed himself in a trough full of water).  

The Cusp conference planners shoehorned 23 presenters into two days. Very ambitious and surprisingly doable. Each had 30 minutes to communicate their message. Some of them were definitely type A, prepared and ready with an outline, PowerPoint and summarized conclusions. Others were Bs, meandering towards their points, discovering tangents and weaving them in as they went (I don’t fall squarely into either camp so I enjoyed both, however one guy threw me by making his entire presentation wearing a creepy, grotesque rubber hobo mask and talking in a monotone voice. Bizarre.)

I must admit this conference impacted me in a way I didn’t expect. And I’m guessing that had to do with a combination of elements — or the design of the conference. First of all, the mixture of professions, ages, races, talents and personalities that paraded across the stage was intoxicating. As a result, I found myself at times simultaneously wishing the speaker would talk longer and that they would hurry up and finish so I could hear what the next person had to say. Before each session, they would keep the doors to the theater closed and about 10 minutes prior to beginning they would start playing intense music that built an atmosphere of anticipation in the lobby. We watched short films, we got the opportunity to win door prizes, and while speakers talked on the stage, a video of their presentation played on the screen giving it a multi-dimensional feel.

The result: I laughed, I cried, I sang (seriously, AND clapped along). I experienced awe, admiration, disbelief, conviction, inspiration and hope over the course of 16 hours.  I revisited the past, relished the present and glimpsed the future. And at the end of it all, I left the museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and felt like time outside had passed me by while inside it stood still. That’s what good design can do.


Read about all of the presenters from the first Cusp conference, or sign up for next year.