The Working Not Working team is heading to Austin. While we’re there, we want to spend some time with the Austin creative community, enjoying good conversations and mezcal drinks that will only make the conversations more creative.
Read More
A Two-Day Coworking Space Pop-Up in London, Brought to You by WNW
We're hosting a two-day pop-up coworking space from October 1st to 2nd for our creative and hiring community in East London, designed to unite the WNW network and give you the chance to change up your workday routine.
Read More
Image by WNW Member #2846 Leta Sobierajski
WOMEN AND MONEY: OUR FIRST TOWN HALL
WOMEN AND MONEY: OUR FIRST TOWN HALL
By Claire Wasserman
"I’m a woman and I make a lot of money." One of the women in the room declared this loud and proud and the hundred or so women around her cheered. As an accomplished illustrator, and Working Not Working member, she should be proud. But sadly, she is in the minority. With women still making 78 cents to the dollar (64 and 56 cents if you're Black or Latina, respectively), this is a statistic that has long been troubling to us. Given that we are a network of the world's best creatives and companies, we are uniquely positioned to contribute to positive change in the industry. And that begins with conversation: raw, unfiltered, and honest.
At the urging of WNW Member Leta Sobierajski, we organized a town hall forum to enable more women to participate. Clearly we hit a nerve: within minutes of posting on Instagram, our event was sold out with a long waitlist to boot. On May 5th, over 100 women, mostly creatives and a few recruiters, packed into a beautiful Bowery loft (found courtesy of our friends at Splacer.) To help guide the conversation, we asked a few women along with Leta to share their stories first: Lotta Nieminen, Agatha Kulaga of Ovenly, Michelle Higa Fox, Dayna Evans of New York Magazine, Rachael Yaeger, Perrin Drumm of AIGA, and Amy Woodside of OKREAL. We kicked off the evening with a toast (with Cinco de Mayo margaritas, of course!) to each other and to the courage it takes to speak up about a subject that can be so uncomfortable.
We were blown away by the generosity with which everyone offered their experiences. Frustrations were voiced but so was advice; from freelance pricing to salary negotiating, how to fundraise to being the only woman in a meeting. Tips and encouragement were passed as freely as the microphone. Any concern about the town hall being too open of a forum was put to rest as each woman encouraged the next to share. Because a diversity of industries were present, there was one consensus: we must host this again.
In the meantime, we've continued the conversation in private Slack group (email us for an invitation.) You can also download our money playlist on Spotify and tag yourself in the Facebook album.
Thank you to everyone who attended and to our partners at Splacer, Vita Coco, Yes Way Rose, and Taquitoria for helping make this happen. And thank you to Dayna Evans for perfectly capturing the evening in her New York Magazine article, Here's What Happens When Women Talk About Money.
We were proud to welcome the following women to the town hall:
Aelfie
Kinda Akash
Erin Allweiss
Karina de Alwis
Briana Auel
Carly Ayres
Lindsey Balbierz
Heather Beck
Erika Bernetich
Bianca Bramham
Kelsey Bryden
Karyn Campbell
Lauren Cannon
Courtney Cho
Noemie Le Coz
Guillermina Cruz
Stephanie Davila
Cristina Dennstedt
Perrin Drumm
Tonya Douraghy
Lyanne Dubon
Ellen Van Dusen
Dayna Evans
Lily Feinberg
Michelle Higa Fox
Ding Ding Hu
Yinfan Huang
Marissa Grey
Meredith Jenks
Jacquelyn de Jesu
Sasha Jotwani
Molly Keene
Ana Kim
Danielle Kroll
Agatha Kulaga
Nichole Kwok
Anne Lee
Mercy Lomelin
Gabriella Mangino
Jennifer Martonic
Brittany McAllister
Jennifer Monzon
Darcy Moore
Jen Mussari
Leigh Nelson
Lotta Nieminen
Anna Niess
Kaori Ogawa
Deanna Paquette
Lisa Pastor
Isabel Urbina Pena
Kim Phillips
Kiana Pirouz
Clemence Poles
Sara Radin
Jasmine Rao
Lindsey Reay
Julia Rothman
Ksenya Samarskaya
Elana Schlenker
Cari Sekendur
Sangita Shah
Michelle Shekari
Aleks Shineleva
Leta Sobierajski
Heewon Sohn
Preeti Sondhi
Jordan Sondler
Haley Stark
Tida Tep
Courtney Tight
Michelle Traub
Emma Tuccillo
Jennifer Vance
Erin Wahed
Claire Wasserman
Sarah White
Rachel Willey
Kristen Wise
Anna Wolf
Amy Woodside
Rachael Yaeger
Laura Zax
Want to get involved? Email us.
DRINKING NOT DRINKING: CHICAGO
DRINKING NOT DRINKING:
CHICAGO
The Drinking Not Drinking tour continues! The next stop was Chi-Town where WNW Members #3868 Amy Schwartz, #1210 Jenelle Huddleston, #5602 Jennifer Serafini helped organize and host. Big thank you to WNW Member #597 Lucy Hewett for being our photographer for the evening.
Open to both members and friends, DND x CHI had a strong showing with the consensus that networking is best done in a relaxed way, over beers. Networking not networking, anyone?
The ladies gave us a recap of how it went, getting us even more excited for future events to come.
Drinking Not Drinking Chicago went really well!
It was great to meet people in person that I only really knew from the Internet. I always feel slightly awkward about things like that, but once you get talking you remember how cool and welcoming creative communities are. I'm used to admiring work from afar, so this was an awesome chance to learn about the person behind it.
We had a great mix of skills and backgrounds. Copywriting, photography, Illustration, all forms of design, people who felt strongly about the Wu-Tang Clan, people who apparently don't know enough about the Wu-Tang Clan...everything was represented. I'm so glad we got the chance to pull everyone together though, I definitely came out with a few more friends, and I'm excited to see them around town!
Plus, The Rocking Horse was a fantastic location – I had never been there before but I will definitely be back now. Partially for the back patio, mostly for the tater tots.
Jen Serafini adds, So many people came up to me and said how much fun it was and how'd love to do more of that. Networking can be so overwhelming and expensive, that just getting together for beers is ultimately the best way to do it. :)
HOW TO PRESENT YOURSELF: TOBIAS VAN SCHNEIDER
HOW TO PRESENT YOURSELF:
TOBIAS VAN SCHNEIDER
The man, the beard, the legend. Though he'd prefer not to discuss it, the facial hair precedes him. WNW Member #1830 Tobias Van Schneider, product design lead at Spotify and king of side projects, makes us believe there may actually be more than 24 hours in a day. He's recently launched Semplice, the first fully responsive case study portfolio system based on Wordpress. In other words: a simple tool - not a template - to create a unique portfolio, no code needed.
Tobias is just as passionate about empowering creatives as he is about design. With his network les Avignons and now Semplice, Tobias is acutely aware of the importance of our relationships and how we present ourselves as ways to obtain the opportunities we want. He says, "Based on the data we have seen, the About page on a portfolio is always the most visited page. Thats because people are interested in people. Show your face, show who you are and how I can get in touch with you. While the work itself is important, the person behind is even more."
Hi! Tell us about yourself: who is Tobias Van Schneider?
Hi! I’m Tobias, I’m a Designer & Maker who does many different things. Mostly I’m a Product Design Lead at Spotify and Co-Founder of Semplice, Authentic Weather & les Avignons as well as Design Partner & Advisor at memomi. I’m currently loving way too many things, but mostly good food & longboarding. It’s winter, so right now it’s more about eating.
Tell us about your decision to drop out of school at 15. Did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up?
I really didn’t like school, I always hated it (and I say that rarely) and I could not wait to be done with it. I more or less decided to drop out because there was just no other way to continue with it. Right after school I started an apprenticeship as a computer scientist & software engineer - I did it more because I was forced to do something, I had to pay my rent. I had no specific plan but I knew that I loved building something out of nothing.
I did this for a few years which ultimately led me into writing software and then I fell in love with design. It was more of a self-taught process and what it all had in common was that I just love building things.
Standard WNW question: do your parents understand what you do?
Yes, absolutely - At least to a certain degree when it comes to actual output of my work.
Side projects: How do you know what to say yes to? Say no to?
I have many ideas, often too many. As I always like to say, ideas are cheap. Everyone has them, but ultimately it comes down to executing on them. For me it’s mostly intuition and feedback from others that will eventually tell me if I should pursue something or not. The more crazy the idea, the better. The more resistance I will get from people around me, the more likely the idea will stick with me.
I read that you don't keep to-do lists, notes, or rely on your calendar. How the hell do you keep yourself organized? What's the best piece of advice on productivity that you can give us? You clearly know how to get things done.
I do wish I would get more done, and I wouldn’t say I’m very organized at all. I started using my calendar a bit more, but mostly just to keep track of meetings to make sure I don’t disappoint those around me. My number one piece of advice is to do things immediately, act fast and always stay in motion. I know people who are incredible organized with lots of process involved, but their actual output is very low. The more process you have involved, the more time you spend managing the process rather than actually getting things done.
These things of course change when working with a larger team, but we all know how easy it is to fall into the trap of just managing a process, rather than getting things done.
Generating press: is creating great work all you need to do to get covered? Any other tips on cultivating a personal brand?
Yes, I strongly believe in this, at least to a certain degree. Great work will stand on it’s own and it will stand the test of time. However, there are many examples of great work that never gets seen. Depending on your personal goal it’s very important as a designer to not only do great work, but also make sure that it gets seen or used. It’s important to keep a healthy balance - Too much self-promotion will lead to nothing if the work itself isn’t strong enough. If you do self-promotion, make sure you have an opinion, stand for something and create value for those around you.
Being a connector + passing others forward: what's your philosophy on this and why is it important?
This is fairly simple for me. I believe that everything I pass forward will eventually come back to me. I’m not only creating value for those around me, but also try to practice a “fear free” mindset for myself. I’m not afraid that someone is taking something away from me.
Give us some background on Semplice: what is it + how did it start? What was your intention in creating it and what are your goals?
Semplice is a portfolio tool for designers. The core of the idea started about 4-5 years ago when I created pretty extensive case studies for my portfolio. At that time only myself & Fantasy Interactive (an agency I actually ended up working with) created those heavy case studies for their projects which slowly became a trend within the creative industry.
I always loved the idea of presenting a project I worked on in my portfolio within a fully branded environment. If I worked for a project for Red Bull for example, I wanted the viewer to fully dive into the project rather than just looking at a couple JPGs. Creating case studies is a ton of work and it’s essentially building a custom website for each of your projects within your portfolio framework. In order to streamline it, a friend of mine (Semplice Co-Founder Michael Schmidt) and I created the first version of Semplice. I loved this system, it helped me get the work I wanted and position myself in a very competitive industry. This was the moment Semplice was born.
What did building it teach you?
We worked with many designers and close designer friends during the process of building Semplice. There are two sides to building a portfolio that we planned to focus on:
1. For Designers
Designers seek tools that give them freedom to express themselves and flexibility to show their process, their work and help them position themselves in the best way possible.
2. For the viewer
Reviewing portfolios as a company/agency sucks. Designers lack of showcasing their process, and those designers who’re not in the field of digital design lack of building a portfolio that is easy to navigate. So how can we build a system that helps designers build unique portfolios, but streamline the process and help them focus on the UX too? Browsing a portfolio should be a joy - The work can be amazing, but if the presentation fails no one will take a look at it.
What were some of your biggest challenges?
The biggest challenge is to create an extremely powerful system but at the same time keep it as easy to use as possible. We did not want to build another “fill in the blanks” template. At the same time we tried solving the problems from both sides, building a great tool for designers, but also trying to steer them in the right direction to build a great portfolio that others LOVE to look at. There should be a win/win situation happening on both sides.
Anything surprise you?
Yes, designers are incredibly lazy. Everyone wants the best, but not many want to put in the work. I like to count myself to those as well, at least sometimes. Our vision is to help you go the extra mile, because we know the extra mile is required if you want to stand out. And we love to go that extra mile with you.
Why did you decide to white label it?
This was a big decision for us. We as designers love to own things, we take a lot of pride in building our own solutions, or make something to appear fully custom. There is a certain pride in doing so which we aim to protect by giving our users the choice to white label Semplice.
What are some tips for creating an awesome portfolio?
Your portfolio is not the work you did, but the work you will be doing in the future.
This simply translates to “Chose the work you display wisely”. If your goal is to get more branding projects, don’t show any web design work on your portfolio, even if that’s the best you have.
Show yourself. Based on the data we have seen, the About page on a portfolio is always the most visited page. Thats because people are interested in people. Show your face, show who you are and how I can get in touch with you. While the work itself is important, the person behind is even more.
Favorite Semplice examples?
There are so many great ones but our favorites are featured on a regular basis in our hand picked showcase. Semplice designers who are also WNW members include: Pawel Nolbert, Verena Michelitsch, Quintin Lodge, and Hendrick Rolandez.
