creative briefing

Hey, it’s been a while. How are the kids?

Yes, I’ve been absent for some time. But for those of you who have been paying attention (all 3 of you), you’ll know that if I’m absent here it usually means I’m drowning in work elsewhere. But have no fear, I’m alive (for the time being) and am just making a much needed visit to the surface for some air.

What have I been up to? A crap load. Remember what I said about the up-and-down nature of the freelancer lifestyle? Yea, it’s definitely an up time. In fact, it’s getting up-er as we speak.

But I thought I’d leave you all a quick update on a few items so that you don’t feel neglected and start to hate me. So here goes (in no particular order)…

FITC

I wanted to do a full write-up on my experience at FITC but after some thought (and some serious lack of time and energy), I realized it wasn’t worth it. In all honesty, the 4-day conference fell below my expectations. It was very Flash-focused this year, which is fine, but in many of the presentations there seemed to be a lack of enthusiasm for the material being presented. But there were still a handful of sessions that I really enjoyed - namely that of Grupo W (”The Madness of Interaction”), Gmunk (”Gmunk Kickdown 08″), and Joshua Davis (”New Works”).

Musical inspiration

It’s the season of [awesome] concerts as I’ve had the privilege to be in the musical presence of my favorite artists: Jason Mraz (last Sunday), Lifehouse (last night), and Jack Johnson (August 3). Music has always been my second creative love and immersing myself in live tunes is a truly inspiring experience. Aside from the auditory sensations, I came away from last night’s Lifehouse concert with some pretty sick visual stimuli as well. I’ll be sharing them in a later post.

Taxes!

As you know, today is the last day of tax season. If you haven’t filed your taxes yet, you’re either fortunate enough to not owe the government anything, or you’re now panicing because I’ve just reminded you that you have to do your taxes. This year was the first year I’ve had to incorporate my business transactions into my personal tax process and I’ve learned a lot in the process. I wanted to do a write-up on some of the things I’ve learned (i.e. rule #1: get an accountant), but I realize that it would have very little relevance now that tax season has passed. If anybody shows enough interest, I’ll do the write up. Otherwise, I’ll save it for next year.

I’m on the WinMo train

To satisfy my tech itch, I recently swapped my Blackberry 8320 Curve with a HTC Touch. I’m big on productivity and staying connected so any new phone I get must perform well on both counts. Of course the big difference between the Blackberry Curve and the HTC Touch is that the latter runs on Windows Mobile. While I still very much have my old MS juices running through me, I’ve always been reluctant to jump into WinMo because of poor market reviews of the mobile OS. I was told that version 6 (which is what the Touch came loaded with) is a leap ahead of its predecessors, and that the newly released 6.1 is even better. Comparing the two devices, they are both great business tools. WinMo has the one-up however because it syncs perfectly with my Outlook data and can run Word, Excel, and PowerPoint seamlessly through its Pocket Office suite. Ironically though, WinMo blows as a phone. I have a post in the works for those of you who are looking to add a smartphone to your on-the-go arsenal and are contemplating between Blackberry and Windows Mobile. And no, the iPhone is not part of that comparison.

I’m not going anywhere

Thank you for all the kind people that emailed me about my biggest mistakes. Apparently, it might have come off that I was leaving my business behind, but if you read carefully I’m simply making changes to it. It’s a really exciting time for me as I’m just starting to get knee-deep in the planning process of the next big thing. So you can all rest assured that I’m not going anywhere.

Back to work! Thanks for staying tuned in.