XOXO is an arts and technology festival held in Portland, Oregon. The hosts, Andy Baio and Andy McMillan, were tasked with repeating the success of its debut in 2012. The consensus has been that the second year was as good, if not better, than the first.
Many attendees have commented on the conference, both to applaud what was done well and to bring up constructive criticisms. Anil Dash asked if we can be honest about ambition. Leah Reich cringed at earnestness. Kelly Kend commented on sexism in conferences from personal experience. Frank Chimero spotlighted the loneliness of independence in what Jason Alderman calls the "achingly eloquent unofficial closing keynote." But the most complete wrap-up was written by Andy Baio, which lists all of this and more.
The festival schedule was packed with a market of indie products, a Kickstarter lab, an arcade of unreleased games, screenings of upcoming films, and of course, lots of drinks and music. While the experience was well curated, the focus remained on the excellent conference talks, many of which would be of interest to people in any industry. XOXO has generously posted videos of each of the talks, and I wanted to give a brief review of each for someone looking to watch a few. I've also included XOXO's summary of each talk.
Chris Anderson
DIY Drones/3D Robotics
Summary: One weekend, Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson and his 9-year-old son hacked together a Lego Mindstorms with a model airplane—the first Lego drone. The results inspired Chris to start DIY Drones, the world's largest community of unmanned aerial vehicle enthusiasts, and leave Wired to launch 3D Robotics, a company manufacturing the open-source hardware the community designed. This experience with indie hardware led to his most recent book, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution.
My take: Considering the high level of success Anderson has reached with both Wired and 3D Robotics, his story is definitely an inspiring one. And with his inspiration mostly coming from trying to teach his children, his story is also relatable. It's nice to see the inspiring, polished work being done in the DIYDrones.com open-source community.
Max Temkin
Cards Against Humanity
Summary: In 2010, Chicago-based designer Max Temkin and seven of his friends launched a Kickstarter project for the “party game for horrible people” they first created at a New Year’s party in 2008. The result, Cards Against Humanity, has topped Amazon’s bestselling games list for over two years. Since then, he’s launched projects for a new deck of Werewolf cards and an interpretive dance based on Spelunky, and will publish the highly-anticipated Samurai Gunn.
My take: Temkin is funny, interesting, and insightful. Cards Against Humanity's origin story is interesting mainly because of just how successful it has been. Part of its success is due to how simple the game is, but it wouldn't have worked without the group sticking to their values, which Temkin discusses here. The talk concludes with a performance by the Doubleclicks, a Portland-based sister duo. Considering Temkin's talk, their song includes a twist that is either brilliant or brilliantly lucky.
Erika Moen
Cartoonist
Summary: Portland-based cartoonist Erika Moen illustrated her personal life for the last decade, with frank and honest vignettes of sex, queer culture, and her own sexual identity. She ran her autobiographical webcomic DAR! for six years, leading to an appearance on Penny Arcade’s Strip Search, an online reality show for web cartoonists. In April, Erika launched Oh Joy Sex Toy, a weekly NSFW comic about sex and sexuality, in collaboration with her husband Matthew.
My take: As you can guess, NSFW comic illustrators tend to give somewhat NSFW conference talks. But while Moen is clearly nervous during her talk, her origin story could be interesting to many people looking to balance creative independence with paying the bills.
Maciej Ceglowski
PINBOARD
Summary: Startups are usually devoid of personality on Twitter, but Pinboard is a bookmarking site with attitude—skewering well-funded competitors and Silicon Valley culture. Behind the account is programmer, writer and painter Maciej Ceglowski, who created Pinboard out of frustration with Delicious’ post-Yahoo redesigns. He bootstrapped the site with a crazy idea—take money from your users.
My take: Ceglowski's talk is packed with solid advice, funny quotes, and insight generated from building a great service. His talk tackles the central theme of XOXO, which is what it means to be independent. And he also discusses real issues and real solutions.
Adrian Holovaty
Soundslice
Summary: What do gypsy jazz and Python have in common? Adrian Holovaty, the Chicago-based developer and accomplished jazz guitarist responsible for EveryBlock, Chicago Crime, and the Django framework, named after gypsy jazz legend Django Reinhardt. Adrian’s jazz guitar renditions on YouTube have garnered over 17 million views and inspired SoundSlice, a sophisticated web app for transcribing and sharing guitar tablature from YouTube videos.
My take: It is remarkable that one of the founders of Django can give a great talk at a tech conference and not even need to mention his role in the framework. His work with SoundSlice alone is worth listening to what he has to say, as it uses technology to help artists learn and grow and make better art. Holovaty is a polished performer, and this talk is well worth the time.
Vi Hart
Mathemusician
Summary: Using little more than a Sharpie and a sheet of paper, Vi Hart breaks down topics like Fibonacci sequences, binary trees and hexaflexagons, turning doodling in math class into entertaining, thought-provoking videos. As a result, she’s built an audience of over 600,000 subscribers in three years, with more than 42 million views for her YouTube videos.
My take: If you started watching this talk in the middle, it might appear to be a train wreck. But through the madness, and despite some techincal difficulties, Hart's talk was as wonderful, intelligent, and thought-provoking as her popular YouTube videos. And it ends with a human capo, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Jack Cheng
Writer/Designer
Summary: Shanghai-born, Detroit-raised, and Brooklyn-based, Jack Cheng is a designer turned full-time writer. These Days, his self-published first novel released in April, raised $23,000 on Kickstarter. In the weekly updates that followed, he outlined every step of the creative process, giving an inside look into the publishing and editing process to his 961 backers.
My take: As many speakers at XOXO mention, success shouldn't be judged using other people's measuring sticks. And while Cheng is not a NYTimes bestseller or a world-famous author, he talks about what success means to him. He has been able to go through the experience of writing a novel and sharing it with other people. A successful kickstarter was a means to that end, not the goal.
Molly Crabapple
Artist/Writer
Summary: Molly Crabapple’s reinventing how independent artists find their audience and make a living. Shell Game, a series of large-scale paintings about the financial crisis, raised $65,000 from over 700 backers on Kickstarter. In 2005, Molly founded Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School in Williamsburg, a combination burlesque show and drawing salon that grew into a global movement spanning 120 cities.
My take: Crabapple is probably the most awkward speaker at the conference. The dropping of pages, her uncomfortable expression, the lack of visual aids. She had some interesting points, but it was lost in the presentation.
Evan Williams
Blogger/Twitter/Medium
Summary: For the last 15 years, Evan Williams has made it easy for non-geeks to find their voice online. He cofounded Blogger in 1999, Odeo in 2004, Twitter in 2006, and last year, Medium. Each of his projects built on the last, democratizing personal publishing for everyone. You can follow him on Twitter, along with 1.68 million of his closest friends.
My take: The success Williams has had with any one of Blogger or Twitter or Medium would qualify him to speak at any technology conference. But finding that level of blockbuster success three times means that Williams is fairly distanced from any real concept of failure. As a billionaire, when was the last time he was faced with any of the hurdles most audience members face? His message ended up sounding like the secret to success was to have great ideas that everyone loves and sell them to Google for gobs of money. That's not particularly realistic or helpful.
Mark Frauenfelder, Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, Xeni Jardin
Boing Boing
Summary: In 1988, Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair launched a print zine called bOING bOING, “the world’s greatest neurozine.” After migrating to the web in 1996, Mark added three talented writers to the mix — technology writer David Pescovitz, science-fiction author/free culture advocate Cory Doctorow, and journalist Xeni Jardin. This year is the 25th anniversary of bOING bOING’s first issue, a quarter-century of sharing their “directory of wonderful things.” Interviewed by Glenn Fleishman, editor/publisher of The Magazine and host of The New Disruptors.
My take: This is probably interesting mainly to readers of Boing Boing. Not a normal conference panel, Glenn Fleishman directed an interview with the original staff of the popular weblog.
Jack Conte
Pomplamoose/Patreon
Summary: Multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and filmmaker Jack Conte may be best known as one-half of Pomplamoose, the indie-pop duo that racked up over 80 million views for their “VideoSongs” on YouTube — videos that show every step of the recording process without lip-syncing or dubs. As a solo artist, Conte’s released five albums that fuse electronic, dance and pop. His most recent EP is out now on Patreon, the new funding platform he co-founded for independent artists like him, who release material online frequently for free.
My take: How do musicians handle the inevitable peaks and valleys of success? Some continually tour. Some buy a house with a garage and convert it into a replica of the Millenium Falcon cockpit and film a robot dubstep video. It's even weirder than it sounds. Conte also helped create Patreon, which is a fascinating new funding platform that has the opportunity to smooth out the financial road for artists like him.
Julie Uhrman
Ouya
Summary: The founder and CEO of one of Kickstarter’s most successful — and controversial — hardware projects, Julie Uhrman had a simple vision: a $99 console that brings the mobile app model to the TV, letting any developer to publish a console game without restrictions. Ouya went on to raise over $8M to become the second-most funded project on Kickstarter, and the indie-friendly console was released in June.
My take: This was a good review of the Ouya game console's origin story. Uhrman goes into detail about the mistakes they made, which are doubly-interesting because they are now a platform that other independent developers are relying on for their livelihoods.
Marco Arment
Instapaper, The Magazine, Tumblr
Summary: When we asked New York writer and programmer Marco Arment to speak at XOXO, he was still developing Instapaper and The Magazine, and Tumblr was an independent startup. Since then, he sold The Magazine to Glenn Fleishman, Instapaper to Betaworks, and Tumblr sold to Yahoo in a billion-dollar deal. One of the best parts of independence is choosing what you work on, and Marco’s clearing his plate for something brand new.
My take: This was a really interesting look into Arment's life as an independent developer and business person. Sometimes business decisions are formed by committee in a board room, and sometimes they get made because the sole developer obsessively checks his phone as soon as he wakes up to see if any competitors have come in the night to destroy his business model.
Jay Smooth
Ill Doctrine
Summary: For the last six years, Jay Smooth’s injected his own unique style of funny and thought-provoking commentary into the national debate on race, gender, and politics on Ill Doctrine, his pioneering hip-hop video blog hailed by the Rachel Maddow show as “genius” and selected as one of iTunes’ Best Podcasts of the Year. You can listen to him every Friday night on WBAI’s Underground Railroad, New York’s longest-running hip-hop radio show.
My take: As a long-time Jay Smooth fan, this was probably the talk I was most excited about. On the surface, he is out of place in a room mostly full of programmers and artists. But his intelligent insights on race, gender, and politics apply beyond his hip-hop background. And don't miss his anecdote at the end on connecting Johnny Pate with Jay-Z.
Christina Xu
Breadpig
Summary: In many industries, publishers can sometimes hurt unknown artists more than they help. But a new model for publishing is emerging, and Breadpig is paving the way—helping independent artists find a wider audience without losing control over their work. In addition to her work running Breadpig, Christina Xu is co-founder of ROFLCon, the conference on Internet culture, and founding director of the Institute on Higher Awesome Studies, the nonprofit wing of the Awesome Foundation.
My take: As she points out early on, Xu is not a creator. She is more of a supporter of those that do create things. But she is really good at it, with guerilla philanthropy and ROFLCon and her kickstarter midwifery being offered with BreadPig. If you don't mind her Dazzle camouflage shirt, her back story is also the story of all the projects she has helped.
Mike Rugnetta
Idea Channel
Summary: Here’s an idea: Mike Rugnetta reinvented the critical essay for the web. As host of Idea Channel, Mike deep-dives into a single idea every week, drawing connections between pop culture, technology and art—with a healthy side dish of animated GIFs. In its first year, it’s racked up over 12 million views and over 300,000 subscribers on YouTube. A programmer and composer in Brooklyn, Mike previously toured as one-third of MemeFactory, a performative lecture about the Internet, soon to be released as a book.
My take: If you can keep up with his rapid-fire speaking style and flood of jokes flashing on the screen behind him, you'll find this talk packed with insights on what the internet means for society. And he's funny.
Jonathan Coulton
Internet Musician
Summary: Jonathan Coulton quit his day job as a software developer in 2005 to become a full-time musician, starting with a risky experiment to record a new song every week for a year. The result, Thing A Week, launched his independent career. He’s responsible for some of geek culture’s greatest anthems — “Code Monkey”, “Re: Your Brains”, and the closing themes for Portal and Portal 2. His most recent album, Artificial Heart, reached #1 on Billboard’s Top Heatseekers Chart.
My take: Coulton is an incredibly natural, comfortable speaker. He talks about the dangers of labeling people and their art and how that affects us. He also gives positive encouragement that applies to any line of work. And he's funny.
Cabel Sasser
Panic
Summary: Ostensibly, Panic makes Apple software, like the award-winning Transmit, Coda, and Status Board. But how many Apple software developers team up with the creator of Katamari Damacy to print and sell their official t-shirts, or manufacture a series of deadly accurate Atari 2600 boxes for non-existent games? Cofounder Cabel Sasser shares the unique story of how Panic stayed independent at all costs, as well as some of the challenges along the way.
My take: The festival included an open house at Panic's incredible office, a physical manifestation of the fun and whimsy that many independent software companies strive to build. But that doesn't stop Cabel from facing fear, doubt, and anxiety. This was a deeply personal talk about what business ownership means, even for those that are relatively successful.
Tim Schafer
Double Fine
Summary: Tim Schafer is responsible for some of the greatest games of all time—Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, and many more—but in the last two years, he’s paved a new model for how indie games are made. With Broken Age, Massive Chalice and Amnesia Fortnight, Double Fine Productions opened the doors to their fans with a series of revealing documentaries and blockbuster Kickstarter projects, exposing their biggest fans to every step and stumble of their development process.
My take: Double Fine has seen that bigger-than-expected Kickstarter success means bigger-than-expected hassles. But Schafer, a veteran in game development and best known for Grim Fandango and Full Throttle, has been transparent about the process. This talk follows that experience and goes deep into dealing with negative backlash and expectations, which applies to any public art or creative work.
Header image thanks to Duncan Rawlinson.