Makers & Mavericks 2023
We recently attended Hiut Denim’s Makers & Mavericks in Cardigan, Wales.
Home of the Do Lectures, the town is a hotbed of creativity.
This years event was a series of workshops and talks, centred around the theme of ‘This Works’.
Don’t aim for success, aim for joy
Playwright, television writer and producer, Lucy Gannon opened the event with a heartwarming perspective on her values and career experiences.
After a life of ricocheting around the world, as she put it, she found her feet in writing plays.
Her key advice and message was simple and emotive:
Find what you’re good at.
Don’t be so stuck on success that you fail to enjoy the people around you.
Don’t aim for success, aim for joy. Perhaps a motto for life.
Putting on your own oxygen mask
Gareth Dauncey shared his personal journey with mental health and the shift he has made. He openly shared how being comfortable with being a founder doesn’t come naturally to him.
His mental health app, mood.io draws on a personal method albeit analogue, that helped him to track his mood using colour coding. He spotted patterns over time and could attribute what was helping or hindering his mental health.
The app’s simplicity is commendable. All too often the temptation is to add more. However, Gareth strongly believed in minimal functionality to encourage maximum engagement.
Finding balance in life
Peter Komolafe ran a workshop orientated around the Wheel of Life. The author of The Money Basics, demonstrated the tool that helps you to reflect what’s working for you, or what needs attention and investment. Aspects such as romance, finance, career, home environment, friends and family.
It’s an incredible way to sense check where to focus your time to improve life balance. It’s advised that checking in with your scoring every 3 months is a good duration to reflect on how aspects are improving.
Stories are the fuel
Russell Ashdown, shared the power of insight and big ideas. The founder of Dirt Bag, quality coffee in a bag, shared his journey to launch a new product to market via Amazon.
His talk stressed the importance of the story for any brand. The outcome might be the same as others but your story is different. Too often people are so fixated on the product, ‘the answer’, they fail to step back to think about what the question is. What is the real human insight and idea that will create daylight between you and the competition?
Overall, it highlighted how much progress you can make when you’re time short. Dirt Bag is Russell’s side hussle, using an hour and a half each day to make progress. Whilst his day job is Creative Director at Love Creative.
Ask a better question
David Hieatt ran a workshop on the power of asking good questions, to draw strong conclusions.
Being influenced by the recent AI phenomenon, we explored a series of enquiries using ChatGPT that got us to the answers, real quick.
The tool is only as good as the questions you ask it! Perhaps a lesson for any successful innovation. The better the question, the better the answer.
Energy to take into our everyday
The event was at the home of the Do Lectures, a place that naturally encourages you to slow down.
Something we perhaps feel reluctant to do when we’re on a hamster wheel constantly forging ahead, and sometimes not necessarily in the right direction.
The conversations, the people, the topics covered, and meals shared were fuel and energy to inspire us and carry through into our everyday.
