Gel is my favorite design conference – this year did not disapoint.

Four really smart things GEL does:

1. Short presentation slots (20 & 5 minutes).
2. Single track of speakers.
3. Notable people who (appear to) enjoy public speaking.
4. Uses location (NYC) as an advantage by empowering locals to share with attendies through Day 1 “experiences”.

All contribute to making the event itself an experience: single track means you saw what everyone else did easing chats with new people at breaks. Short sessions mean presenters have to be sharp (and if they’re not they’ll be off stage soon).
Here are my speaker notes (note: I missed some talks):

• David Rushkoff – The opening slot is tough, and Rushkoff was a good choice. I wasn’t clear on his key points, but watching him try to express them kept my attention. He talked about outsourcing and confusion over the best use of talent – why can’t people make a living doing something good for the world, instead of trying to do what pays well, squeezing goodness in afterwards? He mentioned various web 2.0 type themes, customers as amateur employees, and the failure of management as an abstraction, but ocassionally invented unfortunate phrases (such as the dreadful “mandala of participation”) I didn’t have much in my notes from his talk – it’s possible his points, and their relevance to experience, were over my head.
• Craig Newmark – It’s hard not to like Craig. His presentation style was as unassuming as and unpretentious as his website. He told the craigslist origin story – an e-mail list in 1995 that he set up to tell people about things going on. Years later, it was a website and the rest is history. His key points were 1) Power can be redistributed 2) There is hidden potential for good in customers 3) Mainstream media will always disappointingly emphasize commercial interests – I can’t recall the context, but he had a great quote “If you want to tell the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you” – Oscar Wilde
• Jane McGonigal, Game Designer– Jane designs and uses games to explore, teach and learn about people. Her talk focused on a project to help return cemeteries to their original function: as parks. The game illustrated her 5 step approach to game design: What is the history of social use of the space? What are the universal physical affordances? Do I have any personal experience with the place? What are most likely obstacles? She closed with the question “What makes you think you’re supposed to pick up a ringing phone?” posing the idea that a good public game makes you feel ok about participating and wanting to get involved. I love the use of games she promotes and it was great to see her speak.
• Seth Godin , Author– This was the most entertaining, but also least potent talk of the day. Godin’s talk was pure chocolate – an entertaining review of bad designs from the thisisbroken.com site, getting the most laughter and positive audience vibe of the morning’s speakers. It was great, but I didn’t walk away with much – I didn’t mind at all, as it was freeing to be entertained, but wondered what he’d do if asked to go for a higher degree of difficulty (why are there so many broken things in the world, yet the world goes on?) rather than preaching to the design choir about bad designs to at a design conference.
• Leni Schwendinger, Architect – I love Gel’s cross discipline ambition and Leni was a crossover highlight. She talked about her design process for relighting a neglected urban bridge in Glasgow, providing the best case study at the conference. The project, called Chroma Stream (at Kingston bridge), mapped traffic rates to a system of artistic lighting elements, making for a piece of urban art that changed dynamically with the use of the bridge. The organic/digital/aesthetic combo was both ambitious and inspiring.
• Marc Salem, Mentalist – Quote of the talk “Anyone who doesn’t know the difference between an entertainer and an educator doesn’t know anything about either”. Marc explained how much we depend on non-verbal communication, with several exercises (e.g. simon says) that quickly made his point (Though neglected to mention the role of group psychology on behavior) – Of note was the concept of using body language and facial expression to punctuate what we say, and that different punctuation, with same language, creates different meaning. His final exercise had 5 people on stage, privately drawing pictures, and he successfully guessed who’s picture was whose by asking each one, and having them all lie (Tells included: saying yes, but nodding no, Maintaining eye contact, Turning to look at other people on stage). He was solidly entertaining and had clearly done this particular routine dozens of times before. Mindgames.com
• Cathy Salit, Improvisation Coach – As an improv class survivor myself, it was cool to see Cathy connect theater to life. After having the audience move in slow motion for a few minutes, she noted how easy change is – that we all have the ability to perform and change, and moreso we are performing and changing all the time. She suggested that theatre of any kind (including gameplay, Hi Jane) is a fun way to escape the burden of our rigid-sense of self, and try new roles/behaviors/feelings out. Quote: “What should I do with skeptical people? Leave them alone.”
• Erin McKean, Editor – This was the most well performed and designed talk of the day: fun, smart, informative, surprising, sharp. She’s editor in chief of the Oxford University U.S. edition, and her talk simulatenously explained what lexicographers do, why dictionaries are important, the limits of dictionaries, expertly demonstrated various gems of presentation skill and style, defined the word asshat, explained why Noah Webster was nuts, explained her most interesting attire, and fit snuggly into her time slot of 20 minutes.
• Ji Lee, Designer – what if you could leave blog like comments on things in the physical world? Well you can. Ji Lee, an advertiser/designer/creator, decided to explore what would happen if adverts in public spaces had comment fields. He created large comic book bubbles, stuck them on various ads in NYC, and captured what happened. His goal was to change a corporate monologue of boring, stale ads into a public dialog of fresh interaction and real commentary. Half of his talk were examples from the field and included high comedy, sarcasm, wit, but also raised questions about rights, defacement, and the rights of corporations or artists to control their work. More about the project at thebubbleproject.com
• Dennis DiFlorio, Bank Executive – Dennis seemed like the kind of guy you’d want to have as your boss. Reasonable, funny, warm, smart. His talk covered two topics: some ideas from the NYC bank he runs, and commentary about service in general. On innovation he pointed out that people have always said the world doesn’t need X, such as more coffee shops, doughnut stores or search engines, but that didn’t stop Starbucks, Krispy Kreme and Google from revolutionizing those businesses. I only wish he talked more about how his ideals manifest in practice.
• Geoffrey Canada, Director – Statistic: it costs $60k per NYC prison inmate per year, but $30k per NYC elementary school student per year. See something wrong? He runs the Harlem childrens zone, a non profit focused on building communities to help children. “Schools are not designed to catch people up. One year’s progress in one year’s time.” He pointed out there is no escape velocity for children – people are always products of the community they live in no matter what they did before they got there. The school is not enough, it takes a community to make a difference, which is what his organization is focused on. He’s also the author of Fight, Stick, Knife, gun about a history of child violence, through his experiences growing up in the Bronx.
• Linda Stone – Gave a short talk on her concept of “continuous partial attention”, which describes our fractured state of experience. I liked her focus on questions such as “How does desire meet technology?”, emphasizing that the interaction between those things is what matters, a point relevant to the design crowd. She also noted that “Innovation depends on reflection”. Her talk appears to be the same one given at e-tech in March, with a transcript here.
• Jason Fried, 37 Signals – I loved Jason’s characterization of More and Less: More is a guy who corrects your grammar, fixes your spelling, and arrogantly does tons of things on your behalf that you didn’t need. While Less, clearly Fried’s best friend, gives you what you need done well. As much as I like the philosophy, at times this talk itself felt like More – the presentation itself dictated and proclaimed, more than it convinced, enlightened or shared with the largely design centric crowd. My small brain exploded at the anti-matter/matter paradox this generated. (I had similiar consumption challenges with the 37signals book “Getting Real“, which I recommend). I half expected him to talk for 7 minutes instead of 20, pulling a less is more stunt, but I doubt I’d have the balls to do that either.
• Rases – Gave a short talk on his run for city council. Notable quotes: “All politicians suck” and “You run because you believe in yourself, and if you believe in yourself you always win”.

I’ll report on the sacred places experience tour I ran at GEL in a follow-up post.

Kudos to Mark Hurst, Dawn Barber, Laurea de Ocampo and the rest of the GEL staff and supporters for running a great event.