Massaging Media Conference, Boston’08

Massaging Media 2 Conference, Boston’08

What is next with the technology and design?
How should we prepare our selfs and our students for the future?
What stays what changes?

I think these were the questions hanging above the attendees’ heads.
http://www.massagingmedia.org/

After few hour nap I am able to post some pictures I took at the Massaging Media 2 Conference in Boston. The intensity of program and the weather made me very tired. The nap let my brain and body regain some energy, which I lost at this 3 day event, and finally I’m starting to process all the “data” recorded there…. I’ll be processing that and the “Processing” for some time….

I think the Conference was a success and it was well organized. It was a good chance to meet interesting people and see teachers from various art colleges.

I was very proud of our DMI program, MassArt and our professors!

Meredith Davis from North Carolina State University talked about Masters and Phd Design programs, and about the directions the design educations should go. She gave excellent presentations and it was a pleasure to listen to her.

I did my BFA in Graphic Design at MassArt and now I’m back for MFA. I think that Meredith Davis’s visions of education has been well implemented at MassArt and I was surprised that her ideas seemed revolutionary for some other teachers… It was comforting to know that MassArt is going in the “right direction”.

I also talked to some professors and they were surprised/impressed by the diversity of people/backgrounds/work we do at DMI. That was fun!

However, I was little bit disappointed in the quality of some presentations from the breakout sessions… (Maybe I had a bad luck in choosing ones, there was so many sessions going on in the same time it was hard to be in 2 in the same time.) Also, I had very high expectations for teachers and at the conference and I was wondering how these people teach, if they can’t present their ideas in organized and clear way….???

I was laughing at Jason’s comment, that “if I can’t read the slide  (the viewer) what’s the point of showing it”?
We-designers always try to reinvent things and design according to what we think looks best, but I agree with him, 22pt size is a must for slide presentation!

It also made me think about presentations we – students at DMI program have to do. We all agreed that practice makes us better….

Hopefully everybody learned something new.