This year I attended my first Design Indaba in Cape Town. It’s been a long time since I’ve attended a learning experience that’s impacted me as significantly as the three days Design Indaba ran for (I’m usually on the other side of the learning transaction).
My biggest challenge has been attempting to articulate my experience to family, friends and colleagues. I haven’t been able to find the words, and I’m not sure there are enough words to do an adequate job?
Design Indaba isn’t just for ‘creatives’, although most attendees seemed to come from that world. It was a refreshing experience for me to feel a little normal for a change. I’m usually the guy that looks different in a corporate context. For three days I blended in. It was a pleasant experience 🙂 The speakers were from all works of life: Designers, Chefs, DJ’s, Dancers, Architects, Managers. That’s why it’s not just for creatives. It’s a showcase of the amazing things people think and execute, and in most industries and businesses today, we could all do with being inspired with large creative thinking and brilliant execution.
It was the sheer size and audacity of the projects that were show-cased that provided inspiration to my inner-creative soul. I didn’t leave wanting to copy anything any of the speakers presented. I walked away feeling confident to return and be bigger than I’ve ever been before. That was definitely my biggest learning: that whatever I thought big and audacious was before, it’s been redefined, and I have a lot of space to grow in order to match some of the impressive people who are out there.
So for the near future I’ve decided to simply share some of the work I was exposed to during the Indaba. I know it’ll be good for me to go through it all again, and I hope that it’s useful and inspirational to those people who travel through my blog as well.