inspiring creative professionals

If you’re looking for a job in advertising in London, you might like to pop along to The Good Agency next Wednesday evening 24th June — they’re having a ‘talent evening’.

I’ve been doing some training for The Good Agency recently — they specialise in work on good causes, in business, government and the charity sector, so it’s an opportunity to work on some really interesting and valuable projects. And as you’d expect, they are very nice people, I always enjoy going in to see them. So at the very least I think you’ll have an enjoyable evening and meet some interesting creative folk. I’ll pop along myself if other commitments permit…

Here are the details:

The Good Agency, a leading good cause marketing agency based in Waterloo are holding talent nights the last Wednesday of every month.

Talent night is your opportunity to find out about the Good Agency, meet the team, and, well, show off a bit. We don’t require a song, theatrical performance or interpretative dance. But we are interested in what you have to offer the only integrated creative agency specialising in good causes. Along the way you’ll get the chance to have a glass of wine and some posh crisps, and meet other people in the industry (they used to call this ‘networking’). Talent night happens on the last Wednesday of every month, here at our Boundary Row offices.

We want to meet talented marketing professionals (creatives, account handlers, planners, PR’s and office support people). But we can’t see everyone and places are limited, so please RSVP to Raquel De Araujo to reserve yours.

Where: The Good Agency Group

When: Wednesday 24th June

Time: 18.30-20:00

RSVP – Raquel.dearaujo@thegoodagency.co.uk

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Photo by jurvetson

Boost Your Creativity — Accelerate Your Business — Meet Other Creatives

This summer I’ll be running a series of Creative Momentum workshops in London.

The workshops are for creative professionals of all kinds — artists, freelancers, entrepreneurs and anyone else who sees creativity as central to their work. (Yes, that means you.)

The first two workshops will help you inject some energy and impetus into your creative work — and sustain your momentum over the long run:

Workshop 1. How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself) — 8 July

Motivate yourself to overcome obstacles and create amazing work — and a sustainable career. Click here for more details of the motivation workshop. (Photo by alexsey.const)

Workshop 2. Time Management for Creative People — 29 July

Manage the mundane — create the extraordinary. Essential skills to maximise your creativity and minimise your stress levels at work! Click here for more details of the time management workshop.

The next two workshops will help you tell the world about your work, attracting admirers, collaborators and customers:

Workshop 3. Web Marketing for Creative People — 19 August

Use the web to build your reputation and attract customers and business opportunities. Click here for more details of the web marketing workshop. (Photo by joel_wh)

Workshop 4. Creative Presentation Skills — 9 September

Give presentations that express your creativity and wow your audience. Click here for more details of the presentation skills workshop. (Photo by givepeasachance)

I’ve had a fantastic response to my recent workshops for creatives, which tells me I’m onto something with these topics. (Check out my testimonials page to read what people say about my training.)

And given the state of the economy, I want to provide some high-value support for creative freelancers and small businesses. So I’m deliberately pricing the workshops to be affordable to people on a limited budget.

I’m limiting the numbers to 25 for the first three workshops and 15 for the presentation skills workshop.

I’m pleased to have found a suitably atmospheric venue — the Cockpit Arts incubator in Holborn, a former warehouse that is now home to a community of creative entrepreneurs, running micro-enterprises based on their creative craft skills. Cockpit Arts is an amazing organisation and I’m delighted to be working with them to host these workshops.

Read on for more details of the workshops — I’ve set up an Eventbrite page where you can book your place.

N.B. I’m announcing the workshops here first - but the details will soon be going out to other mailing lists, so early booking is advised.

And if you want to be the first to know about future workshops, you can join my new workshop mailing list.

How Do the Workshops Work?

The workshops will teach you skills that are essential to your creative and commercial success.

I’ve taken each topic and boiled it down to the essential skills you need as a creative practitioner. And I’ll do my best to inject some artistry into the workshops themselves — my aim is to inspire you and for us all to have some fun while we’re at it!

Here’s how it will work:

1. Tell me what you want to learn
Once you’ve booked your place, I’ll e-mail you some questions about your current challenges and what you want to learn. Based on this feedback, I’ll tailor each workshop to address the challenges that are most relevant to the group.

2. Each workshop will feature:

• Practical skills you can start to use immediately
• Stories and real-life examples
• Activities to help you apply the ideas to your own work
• Questions and discussions – ask me what you want to learn!
• Networking and learning from other interesting creative people

3. After each workshop
I’ll send you e-books, articles, links and other resources to help you digest the material and apply it to your work.

As well as the material I’ll be teaching, this will be a great opportunity for you to meet and share ideas with other creative professionals — people like you, following their dreams and doing fascinating creative work, and encountering the same challenges as you. So if you’re free after the workshop, maybe we could go for a drink and continue the networking in the pub (it counts as Professional Development, honest!).

Each workshop is designed to work either as a stand-alone event or as part of a series. None of them require prior knowledge from the others — but if you attend more than one, you’ll experience a cumulative benefit from putting the various skills together.

Where and When?

All four workshops will be held at Cockpit Arts in Holborn, London. Click here to download directions to Cockpit Arts.

The Cockpit building in Holborn is a converted warehouse and makes for an atmospheric venue. We will be joined by some of the Cockpit designer-makers, which should add to a very creative and eclectic mix of people.

The workshops will run on Wednesday evenings, 6.30 - 8.30. So there should be time for everyone to make it after work — and maybe stay for a drink and networking afterwards.

How Much?

• Individual workshops: £25
• Special offers: book all 4 workshops for £80, or the first 3 workshops for £65 (limited places available)

Book Your Place

You can book your place on my Eventbrite page. Payment is via credit/debit card or PayPal.

Tickets are non-refundable. (If you give me 10 days’ notice, I may be able to find someone to fill your place and refund you — but I can’t guarantee to do this, so by booking you accept that the ticket is non-refundable.)

Please note: I’m giving Wishful Thinking readers the first chance to book tickets on public sale, but these details will soon be sent out to other mailing lists, so book early to be sure of a place.

Tell Your Friends

If you have friends who you think would benefit from these workshops, I’d be really grateful if you would send them the link to this page. Likewise your blog readers or Twitter followers. The more interesting creative people who come along, the better the learning experience for everyone.

Be the First to Know about Future Workshops

I’m setting up a mailing list for people who are interested in attending my workshops. So whether or not you can make it to these dates, please sign up if you’d like to be the first to know about future workshops (and one or two secret projects currently in the pipeline).

A Long Way from London?

If you’d like to do the workshops but London is a bit far for you, please send me an e-mail. If I get enough requests for a particular location, then I’ll look into setting something up…

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Photo by Criss!

At the beginning of 2008, I posted my New Year’s resolution on this blog:

I will sit still for five minutes every day.

The aim of the resolution was to establish a regular habit of sitting meditation first thing in the morning.

The result? During 2008 I practised meditation every day … except two.

Oh well, nobody’s perfect.

If you’re going to be strict, I guess you could say that counts as a technical failure. But as a recovering perfectionist, I’m happy to take a 99.45% hit rate as a success. Especially as it meant I achieved my goal of establishing the habit — which I’ve continued to this day. [click to continue…]

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On 28 May I’m talking about Blogging for Business at an event organised by 26.

I’ll be joined on the panel by fellow bloggers Rachel Clarke and John Dodds, to talk about the pros and cons, opportunities and bananaskins of business blogging.

Questions we’ll address include:

• How can you find the time and motivation to write a blog?
• Why do some blogs succeed while others languish in obscurity?
• How does the rise of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook affect blogging?
• What is the future of business blogging?

So if you’ve ever wondered how I find the time to write all this stuff, and whether it could work for you too, now’s your chance to come and ask me!

The event starts at 6.30pm, Thursday 28 May. It’s free for 26 members, £5 for everyone else. The venue is the office of Tequila London, which I’m told features a swanky bar — so arrive early and leave late to make the most of the opportunities for networking and refreshment.

26 is a great organisation, on a mission to ‘to inspire
a greater love of words, in business and in life’. I’ve been to one of their events before and had a great time, meeting lots of writers doing interesting things with words, right across the commercial and literary spectrum.

I hope to see you there — let me know if you’re coming and be sure to say hi on the night. E-mail Rachel Moore to book your ticket.

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You’ve probably noticed Twitter by now.

Whether you love it, hate it or just don’t get it, there’s no getting away from it — Twitter is ‘going mainstream’, the way Facebook did a couple of years ago.

Which means it’s no longer just the geeks and early adopters who are using it. Famous people such as Barack Obama, Steven Fry, Oprah Winfrey and Britney Spears are on Twitter.

There’s a serious point to Tim’s joke — when a media diva like Oprah, who isn’t short of communication channels to choose from, starts experimenting with Twitter, there must be something in it.

But Twitter is not just for geeks and celebrities. ‘Normal’ people like you and me are using it. Millions of us. Which, again, suggests there’s something in it.

But what’s in it for you? [click to continue…]

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Depending on which survey you believe, public speaking is either just ahead of or just behind spiders, heights, snakes and flying in the top 10 things that scare the hell out of human beings.

And when you think about it, the fear is probably justified.

How many of us can honestly say we look forward to another PowerPoint presentation? ‘Death by PowerPoint’ is so common it’s become a cliche, conjuring up images of endless slides full of bullet points in a font just too small to read - so the presenter spends eternity 30 minutes with his head craned backwards over his shoulder, reading the text to us in a monotone.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Would you believe me if I told you PowerPoint can be a very creative medium to work in? Or that I look forward using PowerPoint (or Keynote on my Mac) whenever I have a new presentation to put together?

How would you like to not only overcome any nervousness about presenting, but to enjoy using PowerPoint as an expression of your creativity — and an opportunity to wow your audience?

Here’s a book that will help you do just that. [click to continue…]

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Photo by Lincolnian –(AWAY)–

Collaboration is the new productivity.
Leo Babauta

The recession is challenging all of us to achieve more with less.

Whether you’re a manager facing a hiring freeze (or even redundancies) or a freelancer burning the candle at both ends, chances are your resources are shrinking and the demands on your resourcefulness are growing.

So following on from my piece about How to Motivate People during a Recession, this article will offer some suggestions for boosting your productivity without adding extra team members or spending any money.

The first thing you can do — right now, for free — is to download a copy of my e-book Time Management for Creative People. It’s licensed for free noncommercial distribution, so you are welcome to pass it on to your colleagues and contacts. It contains plenty of tried and tested advice to help you and your team improve your working habits and deliver more value each day.

But getting individuals to change their work habits isn’t always enough. While teaching time management in organisations, I’ve noticed that many of the barriers to productivity are created by the company culture: [click to continue…]

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Photo by JeffBelmonte

On 24 April I’m running a half day seminar for members of The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, about How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself).

Here are the details:

How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself)

A practical seminar to help you get inside the heads of creative workers and bring out their best work.

Objectives / Benefits

• Understand how motivation affects performance - especially creativity
• Use non-monetary motivations to get the best out of people on a limited budget
• Turn problems into inspiring challenges
• Get better work out of creative people
• Avoid (inadvertently) crushing people’s motivation and harming performance
• Use rewards effectively
• Understand and influence many different types of people
• Facilitate better team collaboration
• Adjust your approach according to how the recession affects your agency

Content

• What makes creative people tick
• Why motivation is crucial to performance
• Why offering rewards can sometimes harm performance
• The 4 most powerful types of motivation
• Practical ways to use each type of motivation
• Which motivations to use in the best/worst case recession scenarios
• What Iggy Pop can teach you about management
• How to write 47 novels before breakfast
• Why some people seem so weird - and how to deal with them
• The positive side of peer pressure

Who should attend

Managers, creative directors, account managers - and anyone else charged with facilitating outstanding performance.

What People Say About the E-book - How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself)

“If you’re a creative director like me, it’s a must-read.”
Tim Siedell, Fusebox

“The kind of reading that should be required for new supervisors as well as those in the creative professions.”
Steve Roesler, Roesler Consulting Group

Mark McGuinness is a coach and trainer specialising in work with creative professionals and creative industries companies. He writes two popular blogs about creative business: www.wishfulthinking.co.uk and www.lateralaction.com.

Please note — the seminar is open to IPA members only.

To book your place(s): Login to the IPA CPD Zone. Once logged in, click on ‘Training Courses’, then ‘Friday Morning Energisers’ - my session is on 24 April.

Non-IPA members — if you are interested in booking a seminar on this topic for your organisation, please e-mail me or call me on 020 8691 2475 for a confidential discussion about your needs.

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Photo by Alaskan Dude

Jon Ingham is hosting an HR blog carnival — or as he calls it ‘Carnevale delle Risorse Umane’. Why la lingua bella? Well, Jon points out that it’s carnival season in Venice, which is as good an excuse as any to include a beautiful image of one of the stunning Venetian costumes on. So I’ve followed suit.

After you’ve marvelled at the masks, check out the great collection of articles he’s assembled from HR professionals offering solutions to the management problems raised by the current recession.

Nestling among them, you’ll find my piece on How to Motivate People during a Recession.

Now where did I put my orange ruff…?

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