Jacky Winter Gives You The Biz’ – Part 2

#JWGYTB

Last week Alice was fortunate enough to win a double pass to the Jacky Winter Gives You the Biz through Desktop Mag (http://desktopmag.com.au/) held in Sydney. This is the second of two posts where Alice shares some insight from the day and valuable business tips for creatives.

→ Just do it!

Brodie Lancaster – I really enjoyed Brodie’s presentation about the journey or her self-initiated project Filmme Fatales and how this lead to further opportunities, including becoming a contributing editor for Rookie magazine. Plus it’s not every day you get to call Tavi Gevinson your friend. The moral of the story? Not only are they enjoyable, but self-initiated projects can lead to greater opportunities. Side note: I have also found that employers love seeing self-initiated projects.

→ Tech savvy

Jeremy Wortsman – The Director of Jacky Winter Group , Jeremy, is down-right hilarious. But aside from his witty charisma, Jeremy also shared some useful tools to help with the administrative day-to-day stuff we have to deal with: 

Xero – Get on it! An accounting software which helps deal with your finances. I’ve heard numerous amazing reviews. Faber & Lo are also jumping on the band wagon.

Gmail family – using gmail, google (shared) docs and google calendar to organise your work life is beneficial for your team and yourself.

Basecamp – Basecamp helps you wrangle people with different roles, responsibilities, and objectives toward a common goal: Finishing a project together.

Teamgantt – Who doesn’t love a gantt chart? this software ensures you meet those key milestones.

Workflowmax – An integrated project management software. WorkflowMax’s software contains everything you need to manage your business workflow – in one integrated platform.

TextExpander  – For those that find themselves re-writing the same email but to a different person. TextExpander saves your fingers and your keyboard, expanding custom keyboard shortcuts into frequently-used text and pictures.

→ It’s about time!

Benjamin Law  – a writer & journalist gave the final presentation on time management. I know we all struggle with this and I liked the techniques Benjamin introduced:

1. The pomodoro technique – using timers to ensure you get your work done. Find out more here: http://pomodorotechnique.com/

2. RescueTime  – With so many distractions and possibilities in your digital life, it’s easy to get scattered. RescueTime helps you understand your daily habits so you can focus and be more productive.

3. Freedom  – Freedom is the wonderful app that locks you away from the Internet so you can be more productive.

4. Inbox Zero – This is a system developed by Merlin Mann to clear your emails every day. Merlin uses 5 possible actions delete, delegate, respond, defer and do. read more about it here:  http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/inbox-zero

5. Todoist – Benjamin didn’t mention this but Faber & Lo have been using this to get our tasks done – we highly recommend it and the basic version is free to use. Plus there is nothing more liberating than ticking off something you’ve just completed!

So here we are at the end of this lengthy blog post. Definitely some useful tips to be had, and if you weren’t lucky enough to attend #JWGYTB but would like to know more, email us at hello@faberandlo.com.

A special thanks to Jacky Winter Group & Desktop mag for gifting the double pass to us.

Signing out,

A

‘Jacky Winter Gives You The Biz’ – Part 1

#JWGYTB

Last week Alice was fortunate enough to win a double pass to the Jacky Winter Gives You the Biz through Desktop Mag held in Sydney. This is the first of two posts where Alice shares some insight from the day and valuable business tips for creatives.

I was stoked to win tickets! Since Faber & Lo only launched 2 weeks ago attending #JWGYTB was particularly appealing. The event proved very different to Semi-permanent. None of the big pretty pictures or visual delectables, but certainly crammed with substance. A ton of information regarding the creative industry from a business-perspective, which I think design schools could learn from and teach.

The day was jam-packed with… animated gifs! But also 12 high-profile speakers with some great advice. I won’t detail every speaker’s presentation but the parts that I found useful. So for budding creative start-up studios or freelance designers, this is what I learnt on the day…

→ The Law

Lawyers David Vodicka, Julian Hewitt & Yasmin Naghavi from Media Arts Lawyers who represent musicians, artists & designers spoke individually and at length about the copyright law, contract negotiations and licensing for creatives.

In Australia, the copyright law states that  any original artwork produced by you is automatically copyrighted. But! (there is always a but), the copyright law does not apply if you were commissioned or the artwork was created whilst under the employment of a company. The copyright on an artwork lasts for 70 years after the creators death. Please note: the copyright law is different in every country. Make sure you find out what applies to you.

For contract negotiations Julian suggests to look at the big picture of the project first, and then to hone in on the details, and make sure you negotiate a fee which forms part of the terms of agreement. Yasmin highlighted a very important point – make sure you state the exclusivity of the work you are producing, and that you read the small print. Who gets credited? What is the warranty? Do you need insurance? Be wise, and be thorough.

→ Hashtag that

Next up was a panel discussion between Gemma O’brien & Dan Boud about how social media can be useful. What I gathered from Gemma & Dan was that there is no hard and fast rule, but that it is beneficial to use some form of social media to showcase work as your social media account could certainly land you a job. While it may be time consuming, creatives need to be active on at least one form of social media, and on a relevant platform. On the topic of social media, I myself have made connections with other creatives whom under static circumstances I wouldn’t have. At Faber & Lo we’re active on a number of social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Behance & Linkedin) – we use the different strengths of each platform to promote our work, increase awareness of our brand, and to network. What all businesses need to recognise is that in this ever-evolving digital age, developing a cohesive social media strategy is increasingly important. 

→ Tough love

I’ve labeled this section tough love because Bianca Bramham from Jacky Winter Group & Linda Judic Creative director at Hulbsbosh gave some stern, but sound, advice.

Tips from Bianca on how to manage client expectations:

Linda explains to the audience when setting up a business whether it be for a company or as a sole trader these are the four key things you mustn’t ignore.

The piece of Linda’s advice I found particularly useful was when she discussed the value of what we create for our clients. The breadth, longevity, impact & ongoing benefits of what we design, which is often overlooked by clients.

Perhaps her most important point (which was also repeated several times by other speakers) is to track the time spent on each client brief and to compare the estimated hours against the actual hours.

–

To be continued. Be sure to tune in next week to read the rest of ‘Jacky Winter Gives You The Biz – Part 2’ blog post.

A.