The Fetch Blog

Curated reads and events for professionals

Tag: festival

How Going To Coachella Became My Annual Self-Reflection — April 18, 2013

How Going To Coachella Became My Annual Self-Reflection

/Eliza

When I first began making the mid-April pilgrimage to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival back in 2010, I had no idea that the festival would come to have a major impact on my life. As a lover of live music, I had dreamed about going to Coachella ever since first coming across my dream line-up of bands as a wee sixteen-year-old.  So when my freshman year of college rolled around and I finally had the opportunity to go, I jumped at the chance, and never looked back.

Each year that I’ve returned to Coachella I’ve learned new things about myself. I’ve experienced lessons in life, love and friendship, not to mention extreme heat, unexpected rainstorms, group dynamics, channeling creativity, managing expectations, being prepared, and most of all, having fun.

Every time I go to Coachella, the three days of the festival seem to be concurrently the longest and shortest days of the year. I try to take a moment, each time I wait in line to enter the campsite on the Thursday evening before the festivities begin, to appreciate where I am, and the joyful rumpus that I know is about to take place. I know that before I have the chance to blink I will be strapped into an airplane seat, dirty and tired, with six to eight hours of travel ahead of me. It is during this time that I am best able to reflect on the year that has led up to this moment, and think back through my years of previous Coachellas.

I’ll leave you with a few nuggets of wisdom that I have collected over the last four years. 

When it comes to getting out of your comfort zone, don’t let yourself make excuses. Go on adventures with the people that you love. You will never regret getting to know them better, and you will learn more about yourself in the process. It may come as a surprise, but you can always learn new things about yourself, if you take the time to do so. You can never be too prepared, and you will never regret time spent appreciating art and nature.

I may go back to Coachella next year, I may not, but I will be heading to Burning Man for the first time this August so I know one thing for sure: many more adventures await me.

Eliza is the newest member of The Fetch team. Find out more about her on Twitter or her blog. 

Event Review: Pause Fest — November 25, 2012

Event Review: Pause Fest

/The Fetch community

Creativity and the technology behind it is moving at an almost immeasurable speed. Artists, designers, technologists and entrepreneurs are bringing the future to the surface and Pause Fest forces us to take a glimpse into the industry’s current triumphs along with what lies ahead.

The collection of screenings throughout the Pause Fest took me into and out of new worlds. I was blown away by the latest animation tricks forged by the most talented designers of our times. I saw colours, textures and motions I have never seen before and sailed through narratives that were heartfelt, tragic and silly. And while technical execution was undoubtedly extraordinary, there was another layer to savour.

The content of the hand-picked shorts explored issues that were real, raw, relevant and perhaps planted to help re-contextualize or inspire our own creations. Some of the selections hinted at possibilities in sustainable urban design in an environmentally fragile future, for example. Others forced me to consider the dark implications of cultural conservation in a world becoming less about photographs stored in our bookshelves and more about the ones in the cloud.

I walked away from the festival with my eyes bewildered and my mind heavy yet hopeful. I am looking forward to the future as posed by the Pause Fest, promising richer colours and new ways of looking, but am also wary of the changes that may come in an unexamined society.

So if you didn’t get a chance to experience the Pause Fest, I urge you to look forward to the third installment of the Pause Fest in 2013. And for those who are the creators behind the art, products and businesses designing for our future, consider a few guiding principles spun from the underlying themes I found to be palpable throughout the festival:

Tell a story. Build something that is part of a bigger story. Create an immersive world for it so that your audience believes that they can touch and feel it on some level.

Imagine first, engineer later. Dream as though there are no limitations in physics or resources. Figure out how to build it later.

The finer details matter. The small details in colour, texture, font, size and tone are part of the immersive world you’re creating.

Work together. You can’t do it by yourself. Work with people who are not like you. Doing so will make you better at what you do.

Note: the videos hyperlinked within this post were screened at the Pause Fest.

About our Ambassador // Jackie Antig is a product innovator who doubles as a wordsmith and visual designer. Insatiably curious, data junkie. Works in the trenches. Connect with her on Twitter @jantig.

 

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