Events, Catching up, Like-minded people | #19

Missed a week of weeknotes, so here’s a long one.

These past two weeks were a lot of absorbing and digesting.

I attended the first social systems game night in San Francisco, it was very fun to play games with people who have similar interests. Since there were ~30 people, we were divided into smaller groups, and it was fascinating to hear every group’s game results.

I also attended the first Micromobility Conference, out of curiousity, and personal interest in urban systems. It was very refreshing to be with a large group of people that aren’t primarily there to discuss design or engineering.

In general, both of these events made me want to attend more first-of-its-kind event/conference more in the future.

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These past two weeks were also full of meeting new people and catching up with old friends.

Had dinner with some of my college friends. It’s fun to go down a memory-viewing-mode and discuss some of the things that happened in college. I always find it nice to meet up.

Met with a few groups that work for non-profit, animation company, and independent researchers. It is so refreshing and delightful to meet new people that share similar interests and goals.

Addtionally, I’m very greatful to those who offered their time to share advice, skills, and tips. Some of the conversations helped me understand that I may be better suited for operational work (with some design work invovled), some of the conversations helped me understand the possible products/services that an individual or a small team of 2-3 can build; beyond sass and physical products.

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It’s surprising to reunite with someone that I met a few years ago for a workshop, and realizing that we’ve been thinking about similar things for the past few months.

It also is quite magical to find or start a tribe where people are all at similar career phase, and all share similar and weird goals.

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Thanks to a friend, I’ve learned quite a bit about European design culture over the past few days. It was great to learn that many design/technology people are funded by governmental grants, and that provides a completely different incentive structure for people to think and plan for their career.

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I think I’m now at a point where I cannot stop thinking about a model that can help people to gain creative autonomy.