Pecha Kucha Night

I'm off to my first Pecha Kucha Night. I'm really curious to see how this would work and if it could be effective for portfolios or for finding freelance work.

Pecha Kucha Night is special event for designers (or other freelancers with portfolios) where each presenter is allowed 20 images and 20 seconds to make their point about each image. These events are international and you need only check on the website to see if a Pecha Kucha Night is coming up in your area.

Digital portfolio with delicious

If you haven't used delicious, the social bookmarking site that is now dot-lite, there are quite a few good reasons to try it. You can access your bookmarks anywhere, you can create your own name tag and let people follow your work and research--I use this for conferences, very handy--and now, you can use it to make your own online portfolio. The idea, for educators, comes from Michelle Martin, based on a suggestion from Web Upon but I spotted it on a post from weblogg-ed (follow the footpath). Here's how it works:

You look for your online articles, add them to your delicious bookmarks and tag them with your name and portfolio (mynameportfolio). This means that you can keep your articles in order, people can subscribe to your feed of published works--or you can put it on your resume--and employers, or people who are interested in you, can subscribe to your feed. It should also help you to keep track of your work--for as long as it stays online. You should still keep your backfile, but this is one method that you can use to make your work accessible to others. (Explore workology if you are looking for a place to put your work artifacts online.)

You're going to make mistakes

A few days ago, a friend of mine called me, almost in tears, about what she felt was an unfair charge from a service provider. Unfortunately, since the service was irreplaceable and she felt that the person may bad mouth their company, making it more difficult to get help in the future, so she felt like she had to pay it. She also felt like she had no support from her managers and that she was going to be taken out to the woodshed over the cost.

I had bad news: suck it up. My next suggestion: how would you make sure this never happens again? Actually write out a plan that explains how you would get this service in the future and what choices you would have to deliver the service. When she goes to the meeting, yes, she has to mea maxima culpa, but she also has a plan on how to prevent the issue. Since the service was well-received and they would like to do it again, dealing with this issue is imperative.

I give you this little tip--try to fix the issue or come up with a plan to maintain the program--since this will happen to you during your first few years on the job or while you are the intern taking on your special summer project. You're going to try to make it spectacular, but to be really seen and shared, you need to make a record. Describe what you learned and what you would improve on. I wish I had done that on my internships: I did a few projects that I was really proud of, but do I have a record? Nope. Some of them could be really useful in my portfolio, but I have to make do with what I have now, not the progression in my career, no demonstration--except in my head--of how I got better by making mistakes.