Tonight, 6:30pm at John Harvard’s in Harvard Square.
Whether or not you just graduated school or are new to Boston, we all know how difficult it can be your first few years as a professional. Let’s use this group to bridge that knowledge gap, the experience gap, and the networking gap.
Use this group to create meetups where we: network, create new companies, develop old companies & products, have fun, drink beer, share knowledge, introduce new cool things, and just plain ol’ make new friends!
The more experienced folk are here to support the younger folk, so everyone chat and get to know each other. Let’s try to meet up every other week or so for different reasons, and make the most of being young in this great city.
Hey BYC members followers,
Thank you to the 20 or so people who came out last night to the meetup, even though its location was announced last minute. You are all amazing and I can only imagine how many of you would've come out if I had announced a location sooner. Julia's idea to host it at Grafton Street Bar was a well placed one. They worked with us and reserved a portion of the bar area for us, giving us plenty of room to talk and walk around. I'm pretty sure at least half of us ordered the Rosemary Truffle Fries.
I hope you enjoyed your evening, and all I ask in return is that you bring a friend next time, and consider rating the event on meetup.com (and the group).
The next stage...
So the next few meetups are probably going to rotate between An Tua Nua and Grafton Street (or one of it's sister restaurants). Both of them have been really accommodating for us. An Tua Nua also works great because eventually we can host an event in their back room.
That next big event is what I want to start talking about. I started Boston Young Creatives with the intent to bridge gaps in knowledge and expectations between creative departments within a company. I've had plenty of issues in my own experience, and I've come to understand it's definitely not unheard of elsewhere.
My goal is to start organizing a conference or panel or lecture for the end of August, in which people will be able to present to everyone on the issues they've faced working with other departments, and how to fix it. It's really all about managing expectations.
If you're interested in finding out more, presenting, or helping organize, visit our website and please email me at [email protected]
Thanks for coming out and I hope to see you all again soon,
Corey Zev Holland, Organizer
The location tonight is running a special benefit deal:
Over fifty local restaurants - and counting - will be donating a portion of their sales tonight, April 17, through the Greg Hill Foundation to benefit victims of the attack on the Boston Marathon. A representative for the foundation says that it was picked "based on its hyper-local nature and its history of immediate action in directing funds to those most in need." Greg Hill himself says that "All of the donations will go directly to the families. There is no red tape and we can give the donations out immediately."
Draw & redraw until you’ve got something you’re happy with
Find some good light and take a photo (or photos) with your camera phone
Upload image(s) to Dropbox or connect with a cable to fetch the photos
In photoshop, isolate your type from its background
Choose a photo and pop the type on top
Save and you’re done.
These are the basics of what I do when making a piece of type (mainly just for display for a client or throwing up on dribbble or Instagram).
When you are at the photoshop stage, there are endless varieties of things you can do to create the final output. Photo choice, colour adjustments, size and positioning of the type, texture/patterns etc all influence the look of the finished product. It’s the fun part! There are a lot of things that can speed up this process too.
A big one is using actions to perform repetitive tasks. There are a bunch of resources online that can help you learn and conquer actions. Bjango has a fantastic resource here: http://bjango.com/articles/actions/. You will find yourself visiting bjango.com constantly - follow them on twitter to keep updated.
I use actions to isolate my type from the background. This can be time-consuming and repetitive - a perfect candidate for actions.
I’ve included a free texture that I often use to get some grit onto a design. I really hope you find this useful - I use it nearly every day! The link is here:
http://dvclmn.com/download/general-texture
If you have any questions or suggestions on more tutorials, let me know:
Anyone that doesnt’ think design is work, this is what we do. There are a million little decisions to lead to the one thing we show that looks effortless, and this video does a great job of showing that off.
As some of my students would say, “always reblog”.
One day I read an article that said that the richest 2 percent own half the world's wealth. It also said that the richest 1 percent of adults owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000. And further, that the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of the world's total wealth. So there is an unbalanced distribution of wealth in the physical world. Have you ever thought of an unbalanced distribution of knowledge in the software world? According to my view point, the massive expansion of the software industry is forcing developers to use already implemented libraries, services and frameworks to develop software within ever shorter periods of time. The new developers are trained to use (I would say more often) already developed software components, to complete the development quicker. They just plug in an existing library and some how manage to achieve the requirements. But the sad part of the story is, that they never get a training to define, design the architecture for, and implement such components. As the number of years pass by, these developers become leads and also software architects. Their titles change, but the old legacy of not understanding, of not having any architectural experience continues, creating a vacuum of good architects. The bottom line is that only a small percentage of developers know how to design a truly object oriented system. The solution to this problem is getting harder every day as the aggressive nature of the software industry does not support an easy adjustment to existing processes, and also the related online teaching materials are either complex or less practical or sometimes even wrong. The most of them use impractical, irrelevant examples of shapes, animals and many other physical world entities to teach concepts of software architecture. There are only very few good business-oriented design references. Unfortunately, I myself am no exception and am a result of this very same system. I got the same education that all of you did, and also referred to the same resource set you all read.
From the CodeProject.com article on Object Oriented Programming written by Nirosh
BosContent (aka. Boston Content) has reached out to me, in hopes of collaboration between the two groups. I think that what they do there is great, and I look forward to being a part of it.
A blurb from co-founder Jay Acunzo:
The idea of content used for business is booming, but the career path and roles are still blurry. We want to bring together the folks in Boston that make up this community to ensure our careers follow the industry trend. Free membership and 175+ members to date.
You can check them out at http://www.boscontent.com/
Look forward to a great collaboration with them soon. And look out for their next event too. Their upcoming one is sold out!
These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coates, Pixar’s Story Artist. Number 9 on the list - When you’re stuck, make a list of what wouldn’t happen next – is a great one and can apply to writers in all genres.
You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
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