Five Things We Learned At (Day One of) Semi-Permanent Sydney


The annual unspoken beanie, Vans and black jeans with a two-and-a-half-cuff-roll convention took place over the last two days at the Sydney Convention Centre. 

Coincidentally taking place in the exact same room at the exact same time was Semi-Permanent’s Sydney event, which featured a diverse bi-lingual line-up of serious talent encompassing an array of fine art practitioners, charming Italian photojournalists and capital-C Creatives from around Australia and The World. 
Here are five takeaway soy life lessons we skimmed from the surface of an excellent day of adult learning.
  • Collaborate
Do it every which way you can imagine, but only if it feels authentic. Almost every speaker in yesterday’s lineup expounded on the merits of creative collaboration with your contemporaries because it’s cool to work with people you’re friends with, or will later become friends with via the organic process of DIT (Doing It Together). Don’t do it because it’ll be good for your brand, or because a lot of big businesses are going to want to repackage your ideas for their own profit, do it because it’ll be good for you; and nothing is more important than You doing You. Especially if Sarah from colette comes knocking; girl’s a collaborative goldmine. Same goes for TIME, Billabong or your childhood best friends.
  • #Instagram
The little photo sharing app that could played a huge role in yesterday’s proceedings (and presumably today’s, though I can’t speak to that). Nary a presentation would go buy without a reference to the powers of the ‘Gram to document one’s process (P.A.M.) or practice (Andrew Quilty, a reluctant late adopter turned addict after TIME commissioned him to cover Hurricane Sandy). 
Cool story: nice guy inventor of the hashtag Chris Messina (not to be confused with The Mindy Project’s Chris Messina) was in attendance and his presence was felt in each and every Instagram that played out on the big screen during the interim between presentations, during talks themselves that involved audience participation (search Oracle Fox’s #semipermanentbeauty for raw inspirational examples) and that one time my pal returned a lost driver’s license through the power of the photo on social media.
  • Do It For Free/<3
If you identify as a capital-C Creative, chances are you know by now that you’re not going to be remunerated with an excess of love and money. Don’t, evidently, let that deter you, as a recurrent theme in each presentation was ‘you’re going to have to do things for free on the way to doing it for a living.’ The street art triumvirate behind The Hours offered a great example of doing what you love for free through their manifold outlets; one favourite being the Boring Walls project, which you can check out here and whose services I would enlist had I a wall to call my own.
Photo: via Beastman
  • Find Your Niche
See that gap in the market? That’s your niche! Fill it with all that you are and granted what you are is of value to someone other than your Mum, you too may one day deliver a semi-seamless AV presentation to an impressively large crowd, pausing only for your translator to catch up or to rejig a haywire USB cord. A point of difference is, obviously, essential. Case in point: the Saturdays NYC guys, who had the ballsy idea to open a surf shop in the middle of Manhattan during a recession. The payoff? The world in an oyster, a publication and a lifestyle brand.

  • Ain’t Nobody Got Time For Business Plans
Don’t know how to create a business plan? That doesn’t matter, apparently. Business plans were surprisingly passé among presenters like P.A.M. and Saturdays, who privileged a DIY ethos that eschewed budgets and spreadsheets and instead encouraged feverish bouts of creativity, on-the-fly decision making and a close personal friendship with Lady Luck; that, and an extensive combined background in relevant industries. Instead, write a manifesto: if only for the retrospective hilarity of the you that once was, before you got jaded. 
Semi-Permanent Sydney concludes right about now but resumes in Auckland next week on May 31st. The Stockholm, Melbourne, Brisbane and Wellington events take place in October. You can find out more about those here.

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