“Do Good Work & Everything Else Happens:” SXSW Recap

At Buckeye, innovation and new technology has been at our core since the beginning. That’s why the last two years, we’ve sent a team of experts to participate in the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. We attended and contributed to five long days of presentations and lectures from some of the brightest minds in the interactive industry.

One lecture that stood out above the rest was called “Do Good Work & Everything Else Happens,” presented by David Lai, CEO of Hello Design.

These were his main takeaways:

  1. Do good work.

  2. Work for diverse and interesting clients.

  3. Learn new things every day.

  4. Stay small.

  5. Everything else, happens.

  • More Work / New Clients: People will seek you out if you do great work. It won’t matter where you are.
  • Great talent: You need good talent to do good work, but you also need good work to work with good talent.
  • Collaboration: Happens naturally when you do good work. Great people always want to work together.
  • Press/Awards: This happens with good work. You’re work will be seen.
  • Money: If you’re doing design just for money, then you shouldn’t be in design. Money comes with good design.

Tweetable Tidbits from David Lai:

  • Innovation is something that requires experimentation.
  • You are what you do. Choose carefully.
  • We all have 24 hours. You choose how you want to spend it. Commit and have no regrets.
  • Its better to be partner, not a vendor.
  • Stay humble, stay curious. There will always be people out there that are better than you are, learn from them. Because if you become the best, you plateau.
  • Go with your gut, take a shot. The faster you fail, the faster you have to get it right.
  • Process can be a barrier. Be lean and adapt.. each client/project is different.

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