Inspire 07: The Aftermath

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Thank you all so much for the kind emails asking about Inspire 07. From my perspective, it went really well, especially for our first time out. The turnout was strong, the energy level was high and the presenters were great. I learned a lot from the whole thing, and I can’t wait to put some of that new knowledge to use… somehow.

A huge team of people was involved in the creation of the event; I was only one small part of it. Massive thanks should be heaped upon the entire Savannah campus Broadcast Design and Motion Graphics faculty for their hard work, the “Duff Army” of student volunteers that constantly reeled in the slack, and Jill Taffet, the conference chair and the head of the BCST department. Peter Weishar, Dean of the School for Film and Digital Media, should also be congratulated for his courage and guidance throughout the event.

Of course, epic odes featuring french horn solos should be written to celebrate the sponsors, but I wanted to make sure the invisible folks got some credit, too.

For those of you who attended, please share your thoughts in the comments. What did you like/disklike? What could have been better? What would you like to see next year?

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.

20 Comments

Yates

Thought all of the presentations were great. Think Bubblyfish was also great, but might have been a little more effective in the club afterwords than in the theater itself.

could spread it over 2 days maybe.

all in all, well done for a first event.

TK

It was such a great event, one of the very top that I have ever been to.
The think the line up guess list was incredible. (I hope they all could made it though)
Overall, I had a great time and yeah… worth $550 plane ticket from LA.

Thank you for everyone that made it happened.

Martz

Justin, you made the most out of this event despite not having complete control over it. This kind of thing really benefits everyone involved, and SCAD needs to put more money and focus into them. This makes me proud to be a student of the Broadcast Design department, and honored to know someone who is sure to achieve amazing things in their lifetime. your the most humble of any of the talented people i met on friday.

special sauce

my favorite part was when this guy brien and jayson were on stage talking about someones mom. huh who would know someones mom could be so popular..

r3awak3n

exopolis, bubbly fish and justin FTW!

Andrea

I wish I could attend the event, the schedule looks so interesting! But I live in Italy… Why don’t you podcast the symposyum contents (charging a price, of course) for all the far away designers like me?

By the way, which font is the Inspire logo?
Thank you a lot.
Andrea

jonathan

hahah. “Duff crew”…ha. LOL @ Duff.

TinaPinxit

Thanks for helping put the event together Justin. I had a great time.
I don’t think I would have included the Matthew Barney movie as part of the event, I would have had the award show instead at that time… and then the party later in the evening.
I saw a video camera in the theatre, was it used for the event? It would be great to have the event every year, and have it taped and put up online. There could be an “inspire” website, and maybe, like someone else mentioned, one could charge a reasonable fee for watching the videos, which in turn would help for the next year’s event.
Overall, fun event, the best part was hearing about the creative process and the sources of inspiration. :)
I recorded a bit of the event with my crappy little digital camera. Here’s a few that survived: http://www.youtube.com/tinapinxit

Caltd

There’s a thread at Mograph.net you might be interested in:

https://mograph.net/board/index.php?showtopic=11557
It’s a follow-up discussion of the event; my thoughts are there. Thanks for setting this up!

Tom

I’m so bummed that I had to skip town before the awards show and bubblyfish. I came with my nephew who might be interested in SCAD and I think he enjoyed a lot of it, but thought that some of the afternoon presentations could have been more informative and not so much a slideshow. Some of the guys had nice stuff, but didn’t show it, only offering their 8 year old material, and from a student’s pov, that may still be cool, but I know they had more. I don’t want to go critiquing too hard because everybody who came out did a great service to the whole audience and I appreciate it. You too Justin, thanks man.

jo3

Everything was great. With my interest lying in archtitecture I probably learned a lot more than most people there.

Psyop’s work is wonderfully morphological.

Exopolis was boring, a one liner, making the streaks is proprietary, garbage.

Trollback is an old dj, making what he hears, damn good.

Small annoyance though, the inspire 07 animation that was on screen between speakers should loop correctly so the transition end to beginning is seemless. The audio that accompanied the animation was spot on, it set the perfect atmosphere.

All in all, fantabulous.

Livid Blind Man

As a newbie to scad and the bcst program, I must say I had a blast @ Inspire 07. Being a first time event here, I felt that it went down like a warm fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies and a nice cold glass of milk (In other words, pretty damn good). I have to agree about spreading the jam over two days of bread, would have been a little easier on the grey matter. On a serious note, I would be surprised if it could have gone any better, kudos to everyone.

cbr

Congrats on the event. It’s great that people like yourself are contributing to this industry in positive ways.

Josh

I wasn’t able to make it either, but I’d like to echo the comment of putting some of the presentations online. I’d love to see them (free or for a small charge)!

Philip

The event was great and it was great to see the how down to earth a lot of these industry greats are. We learned a lot, took notes, and talked about it for days afterwards (alway a good sign). I also enjoyed the reoccurring thought of work and it’s relation to life outside of the office.

I also agree that the Matthew Barney film, although interesting, seemed forced and very out of place for the conference.

Excellent event and I hope it’s annual!

Philip

can’t believe I used “great” that many times in one sentence. Could be a record.

Brett

This event, truly was an event. It was an all day commitment that kept you going from morning to night. The presenters were all (well most) great, but given their work it was almost a given. What was truly amazing for me, was a chance to see all of the industry people come in and really get excited about this stuff. The energy was really going, and although people in motion graphics try to hide their nerdiness, it was all out last Friday. Events like this take place all the time in the world of film, so although I am sure you would have liked to improve on things, I really feel this was a great step towards either a continuation of this event, or the spawning of a new one in the near future.

I’m kind of curious of MediaTemple would ever dream of sponsoring a group like us to drink again though….

Also PMcD’s demo reel isn’t as horrid as the presenter would have you believe. He was a bit of a flop, but it makes for good comparison.

Alex Soto

I just happen to be up visiting a friend in Savannah and was delighted to find out the event was going on the same day. I got in before bubblefish which was cool, but I don’t know about the cheesy political “corporate logo” motion piece going on behind her. The pixel effects matched her stuff, but the logos like, McDonalds, BMW, MTV etc. did not.

The award show went pretty good but did have its awkward moments. For example Shilo having to sit down, then get up walk all the way around to stage, accept the award, with no speech then do the same thing like 4 more times. Hearing a thank you or speech from the winners would have been cool. Also if more of the winners would have been there.

I did leave happy, and the event happening in Savannah really turned me on to that city. Good job.

Alex Soto

Oh and by the way, I bet media temple would sponcer it again. The drinking and all of that stuff was just like Semi-permanent in sydney last year, and the media temple guys were in it with us. (I love them) One of the programmers used to be in the band “The Ataris” before they got big. no joke.

patrick

we have a great reel
an enormous body of work
and pride in all the projects we have done

a bit of a flop
have another drink brett

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