Written on Monday,
March 19th, 2012
at 03:27AM
It’s somewhat common to write up a synopsis (aka “review” aka “opinion piece” aka “to do list”) of one’s experience after attending some group event with like-minded individuals. While I’d like to say I’m more original than that, I’m not. A few days ago I arrived in beautiful Greenville (locally pronounced “Greenval” or also “Grnnvl” for those with brevity issues) to attend a small and motivated groups of designers, developers and creator of things for Greenville Grok. For the 99% of you who probably don’t know what a grok is, here’s a definition: “To grok is to intimately and completely share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity.” A small group of around 100 of us gathered in groups (which were broken into 4 smaller, randomized groups) where each of us where encouraged (and sometimes coerced) into sharing thoughts and ideas, participating in discussions and broadly finding the pulse of our tidy industry. It was quite unlike any conference (it was really more a rumpus) that I had been to, as it’s not about panels or talks or speeches or having some expert unload his knowledge on you; but instead an active exploration of community thought and encouragement toward the goal of doing something good with what we do. So, without babbling too much more, here is a list of random and ramblings thoughts and observations I curated from the two days of talking and sharing and communing: A group of designers is like a bag … Continue reading

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