Spoilt Rotten
We are lucky here. We are more than lucky.
We have incredible, intelligent and thought provoking mentors and speakers coming in everyday, often 3 or 4 or 5 of them at a time alongside our normal mentors. From top agency guys to business owners, freelancers to creative teams.
We are spoilt with opportunity and access to these wonderful minds, with their fantastic opinions, perspectives and insights. The mentors and speakers come and bring so much information into this room; they put their wealth of information at our fingertips. We don’t even have to go to them, they actually want to come to us. They actually seem to enjoy talking to us about ‘Our Dream Monster’ and patiently listen to our mad schemes and plans about what a Dream Monster might do.
How do we make sure we consistently appreciate these people and the time and energy the are giving us? How do we make sure the hours they are spending with us, just for our own gain, are worth it?
Because of course, we are not entitled to this at all. We haven’t really done anything to get this far. We don’t even know how far we can actually take this whole advertising malarkey. Sooner or later someone is going to notice that we haven’t actually done anything yet.
CUE: First Advertising Brief.
On Thursday, Chris Arning visited us and held a Semiotics Lecture and set us our first Advertising brief. As it turns out, Semiotics is a subject that encompasses most of the things I’ve ever been truly interested in; language, art, communications and people. Who knew?
Chris was probably my favourite speaker of the year so far. I know you aren’t supposed to have favourites, but he was (so lucky his visit coincided with a SCAB). His lecture brought together so many references that don’t necessarily relate or come together in life, but somehow, in this one particular topic, are all interlinked. It kind of made me feel like all the various things I’ve done were secretly heading in one direction, and direction is certainly a thing I never thought I had, so that was a relief.
It made me think that having lots of interests isn’t a bad thing at all, once you know the name of the topic that encompasses them. Maybe all this ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ business can be solved by just finding the right word to describe what all your trades are. Maybe we can all stop worrying about being amazing at one thing and one thing only or else.
So thanks Chris, for the (minor) brainwave.
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