The one-day Seed Conference was an event unlike any of the many conferences I’ve attended over the past few decades. It was, for the most part, a series of personal essays by three unusually creative folks: Jason Fried of 37signals, Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners, and Carlos Segura of Segura Inc and a variety of other ventures. All are based in Chicago, where the event was held.

Carlos Segura, Jason Fried, and Jim Coudal

The program consisted of each of these three people speaking for an hour or two, followed by a panel discussion. It’s hard to put a label on this event, which drew its attendees almost solely by the reputations of the speakers. The event was sold-out and filled the auditorium at the Illinois Institute of Technology to its capacity of 128 attendees.

The conference was about design, web applications, and business, but its real focus was on creating a life and a business that you enjoy by following your creative inspirations. For anyone working in a large company, it was a persuasive, though indirect, call to strike out on your own (one that we heeded some time ago). For designers doing freelance work or running agencies, it was a rallying cry for creating your own products, rather than spending all your time applying your skills on behalf of others. And for everyone, it was an impassioned pitch for following your instincts, creating the best products you can, and having a great time doing it.

Carlos Segura: Art, Type, and Inspiration

Carlos worked as an art director for a string of large ad agencies before striking out on his own in 1991. He now runs multiple ventures, including the Segura Inc. agency, t26 type foundry, 5inch (silk-screened blank DVDs), and Cartype (more than you can imagine about car emblems and logos).

Carlos showed examples of amazing, multifaceted campaigns he created for Corbis and RockShox. Check out the client list on the Segura Inc. site for links to a variety of their work.

Carlos created the t26 type foundry in 1994 out of frustration with the fonts available and the hassles with using it. By applying his own branding and marketing skills, on top of enlightened policies (t26 is the only type supplier that allows designers to legally provide fonts to service bureaus) and great new typefaces, he’s built t26 into one of the largest independent type foundries.

Jason Fried: The 37signals Way

Jason Fried , the founder of 37signals, needs no introduction here, but perhaps the history of 37signals is not as well known. Jason began as a freelance designer and didn’t really form a company until he had freelanced for three years and got the job to design GettyOne, for which he needed another designer. 37signals, founded in 1999, still has only 10 employees, most of whom work primarily from home. For such a small company, it has had a big impact.

37signals became a product company with the launch of Basecamp, from which Ruby on Rails was extracted. Basecamp was initially built as an internal tool, and then turned into a product. Their initial goal was $5K per month in revenue, which they exceeded within six weeks of launch. A year later, 37signals dropped all client work.

Jason remains focused on user experience, while David Heinemeier Hansson, the co-owner of 37signals and original author of Rails, leads the development side of the business.

Jason’s talk was, for the most part, his well-honed “Getting Real” pitch. If you haven’t already read the Getting Real book and you’ve made it this far into this article, it should be next on your list.

Just Wing It

Jason is a vocal advocate for doing away with most planning and just diving in and building products. He argues that plans never end up being what happens anyway, and that you’re better off focusing your time on activities that lead directly to something you can put in front of customers. He takes an approach that is akin to Agile methods in the software development world, but applied to building businesses and doing design—and taken, perhaps, to an extreme. He calls for us to “embrace the unknown” and “just wing it” since “you don’t know what you’re doing anyway until you’re doing it.”

There’s a fascinating discussion to be had over the counterpoint that planning can provide a lot of value, but that didn’t happen at this event, and it will have to wait for a future article to appear here.

Another key point was that all too often there are too many cooks (too many participants in a project) and too few chefs: leaders who freely share their knowledge, as in cookbooks, in cooking shows, and so forth, and thereby build powerful personal brands while spreading their knowledge. Jason pointed out that Getting Real is the 37signals cookbook and asks, “What’s your cookbook?” (This site is growing into ours.)

Jason advocates for small teams and an easy-going approach. 37signals gives everyone Fridays off during the summer months, and Jason says just as much work gets done. He recommends hiring “managers of one”—in other words, people who are self-managing.

As for work style, Jason spoke out against the pervasive open workplace with its focus on nearly constant communication. “A lot of people think interruption is collaboration,” he commented.

Financials remain one topic that Jason won’t discuss, but he did say that Basecamp is the company’s most profitable product, and Campfire its least-profitable.

Some other tidbits:

• They do all their prototyping in HTML and CSS, and don’t use Photoshop for mock-ups.
• They don’t actively market the company, other than by blogging and speaking.
• Highrise came from an internal need to track journalists they were talking with.

Jim Coudal: Business Serendipity

Like Carlos Segura, Jim Coudal runs a creative agency (Coudal Partners) and a host of spinoff products and businesses, including The Deck (ad network), The Show (concert recordings), and Jewelboxing (nice jewel boxes for CDs and DVDs). These sites are worth spending some time on just for inspiration, even if you aren’t interested in the products.

The site Coudal has so much content on it that a note at the bottom proclaims, “We actually do stuff other than update this site,” with a link to the “About Us” page.

Jim described how he moved away from client work, as an example of serendipity and following opportunities that present themselves. After years of doing design, web development, and filmmaking on behalf of clients, Coudal began developing short films and other projects just to show off the firm’s talents. When a British TV production company expressed interest in turning one of these films into a series, Jim thought that was going to be their path away from client work. When sending out a sample DVD, Jim went looking for better packaging for the DVD.

The TV show never happened, but Jewelboxing was born. Check it out if you need cool CD or DVD packaging.

Triggered by an opportunity to produce CDs of live concert recordings for sale to concert-goers, Jim founded The Show, in partnership with a Jewelboxing customer.

Jim points out that enthusiasm for new ideas is typically highest early on, so by pursuing a series of projects you can stay higher on the enthusiasm curve.

Like Jason, Jim argues against the need for things such as business plans. He described his goal as being to “find a way to screw around at work all day and get paid for it,” and it sounds as though he has accomplished just that!

Ready to Go?

Was it worth spending a day at? Absolutely. If I hadn’t already read and absorbed Getting Real, it would have been even more so. Whether it was worth a San Francisco to Chicago trip, complete with a four-hour flight delay and waiting outside for a cab in snowy, 15-degree weather, is a tougher call, but I’m glad I went. A two-day conference would have made much better use of all the travel time, though.

Future Seed conferences haven’t been scheduled, but given the sell-out crowd and how much the presenters seemed to enjoy themselves, it seems likely. Visit seedconference.com if you want to join the notification list for any announcements.

Other articles about the Seed Conference:

• Mike Rohde’s sketchtoons conference notes
• Mike’s blog post
• thoughtbot
• jess3 (with great pictures)
• Flickr photos from the conference