FITC 2009

Well, it really paid to be a woman this year!  The ladies at Design Lab want to thank Shawn Pucknell and the FITC team for organizing an amazing conference and giving 100+ women the opportunity to join in the fun for FREE!
The equation for this year: Video submission + Female organs = Free FITC ticket + Happy women (and men)

The designers at Design Lab; Anna, Christa and myself (Kim) were very inspired by the collection of creative, technical, business and panel presentations we attended.

The highlights of the FITC experience:

1. Cool Japanese Flash – it was so nice of these talented developers to travel to Toronto to share their wicked coding tools and final projects.  Who wasn’t impressed by the cool augmented reality examples using FLARtoolkit!?!?  They developed exciting virtual experiences, but added some fun to our real world with a cute bear-head hat.

2. Fantastic tips from Daniel Schutzsmith on how to ‘market your skillz’, weather you’re a freelancer, a small business owner, or a shy individual.

3. Watching the effects of Red Bull on an enthusiastic and talented artist,  Joshua Davis.  He blew us away with his combination of technology and visual arts in an exploration of the concept of space.  I really love any instance of science and art working beautifully together.

4. Catching up with past teachers and fellow Sheridan grads and meeting great new people.

5. Joshua Hirsch’s talk about experimenting as a team at Big Spaceship.  Hopefully we at Design Lab can experiment like this on a smaller scale, but far beyond observing the effects of gingerbread houses on the squirrels in our neighbouring alley.

6. The “Cool Shit” panel of jokesters. We want to give a shout out to Koen De Weggheleire – we hope your trip to FITC helps you find a girlfriend and that she can see beyond your face distortion convolution filters.

7. R.Blank’s very thorough presentation urging the crowd to “get off your ass and start using AS3 already!”  This was a great review of the features of AS3 (some things I knew, but some helpful things that I didn’t know).  This presentation made me feel like I could code confidently again – forgetting for a moment the geniuses who made the “cool shit”.

8. Mikey Richardson’s discussion of “the things I’ve learned about being creative”.  Mikey shared some tips for helping inspire creativity.  While some say that the words creative and process should never be used in the same sentence, I appreciated learning his process for those times when there are time constraints or brain freezes that can kick me off my creative path.

9. The PARTIES!  The closing party at Centre of Gravity was great – complete with fire sound visualizations, and a very impressive circus performer.  Us designers were able to stay creatively entertained with the help of an open bar full of Coronas and Rum & Cokes.  What topped it off was a blast from the past experience on the shuttle school bus.  Shout out to the bus patrollers around the world!

I could go on and on, but instead I just encourage anyone who is interested in…well…anything technology or design related, to seriously consider going next year!  Hopefully you’ll see a lot of happy women there.

Check out their new website:
http://www.fitc.ca/