SXSW “Is Spec Work Evil?” panel transcript

Taking time this morning to do some blog house cleaning – catching up on unfinished business and unpublished material. First up, a full transcript of the SXSW 09 Is Spec Work Evil? debate from March. A little late getting around to posting this (The Jon Engle vs. Stock Art flap knocked it to the wayside), but still worth a read it you’re into such things. There’s a You Tube video (below) kicking about, but with a run-time of only ten minutes, most of the hour-long debate ended up on the virtual cutting-room floor. I figured taking a look at a the entire transcript might be interesting, give us the whole picture and let us read some of the more heated exchanges left off the highly-edited video (below).

The basic premise of the panel was this – Mike Samson, one of the co-founders of Crowdspring (a design contest platform, based in Chicago, who recently caused a stir after being featured in a Forbes article that opined the design industry was snooty) set up a debate at the recent South by South West Festival, held in Texas back in March. The subject at hand was “Is Spec Work Evil?” (a title taken from a ‘Why I Hate Crowdspring” post featured on Andrew Hyde’s blog) and subtitled “The Online Community Speaks“. The panel was moderated by Jeff Howe (from Wired magazine) and featured Samson, Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless, veteran designer David Carson of David Carson Design and Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research. Lydia Mann of AIGA was a last minute invitee (perhaps to even things up a bit). The panel turned out to be one of the better attended events, and from all accounts was one of the more interesting, with tempers occasionally flaring during the proceedings. The transcript is long, a little messy, but worth a looksee if you have a bit and a cup of coffee on hand.

SXSW ‘09 “Is Spec Work Evil?” panel transcript

Jeff Howe (Wired Magazine): Alright, we miked? Yeah, we are – hey! Hey, everyone, welcome to ‘Is Spec Work Evil?’- The Online Creative Community Speaks. We want to go quickly up here, because we really want this to be about you guys speaking. We want to get a sense… Well let’s do introductions first so that you know who all of us are. My name is Jeff Howe, and I am a contributing editor to Wired Magazine, and last year I published a book called The Rise of Crowd Sourcing. Sorry-my publisher wrote – so I never remember. The crowd driving the future of business, and it was expanding on an article I had written for Wired Magazine about 3 years ago called the Rise of Crowd Sourcing, they coined that term. I’m going to let everyone else introduce themselves quickly, and then we want to jump in.

Jeffrey Kalmikoff (Threadless): Hi, I’m Jeffry Kalmikoff, partner and chief creative officer of Threadless and Skinny Corp. We were in Jeff’s book.

David Carson (David Carson Design): I’m David Carson, and I’m not in Jeff’s book, and I’ve been a graphic designer for about 20 years.

Lydia Mann (AIGA): I’m Lydia Mann, and I’m the web director at AIGA, the professional association for design.

Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester Research): I’m Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester.I cover social media, a.k.a, crowd sourcing.

Mike Samson (Crowdspring): I’m Mike Samson, I’m the co-founder of Crowdspring.com.

Howe: Alright, excellent. We want to get a sense of who you are, too, so I just want to do a quick poll. How many people here would self-identify as a graphics professional? How many people here would identify as a client of graphics professionals, that are a consumer of graphics work. Okay, that’s great. So, a pretty good mix. Okay – really quickly – we want… Just so we have a framework for this debate, we will define Spec Work, and we are going to use the AIGA definition which is, “It is work done without compensation for the clients speculation.” Spec Work has become a lot more controversial in the last couple years with rise of sites like Crowdspring, like 99designs, which have created a marketplace in which consumers of graphic work can post creative briefs directly to the creative communities that gather on those sites, at which point, the creators submit work in the hope of winning the contest. Let’s jump off here – we’re going to try to stick to our side of the debate to about half hour, thirty-five minutes to give you guys time to weigh in, as well. I think the central question-and there’s been a lot on the blog in the last couple weeks about this and what’s come up a lot in those blogs, and in comments, and on twitter as well – is, does Spec Work democratize the industry or is it devaluing the work of highly trained professionals? I’m going to let everyone weigh in here, and, let’s start with Jeffrey.

Kalmikoff: So, while I don’t agree with Spec Work, I guess my stance on it – which I wrote a blog post about two weeks ago – is that, as a designer, I see the design side of it: where there is fear that there can be this swell of amateur designers that could essentially dilute the pool of professional graphic designers, and it could have a negative effect on the industry. I think that the issue is that, it’s happening online which is basically a catalyst for having the amateurs sort of flood it in a lot faster. Also, as a business owner – in a black-and-white sense – while I don’t agree with Spec Work, I guess I see both sides of the issue. While it doesn’t necessarily answer the question directly of my opinion-which is something that I’m going to talk about further later- is that, I’m not sure, and that was the point of my blog post that I wrote two weeks ago. I’m kind of gray, kind of in the center of it.

Read the rest of the “Is Spec Work Evil?” debate here.

A podcast of the “Is Spec Work Evil?” debate is available for download here.

Related posts:

1. SXSW ‘09 – Is spec work evil?
2. AIGA softening positon on spec and design contests?
3. Defending crowdsourcing & design contests. The platitudes of spec work.
4. The Jon Engle vs. Stockart.com story – an anti-spec work parable?
5. Battle for hearts and minds continues

Tags: advocacy, business, Contests, crowdsourcing, spec work