So, i’ve been wanting to blog about this, and finally, after the last few days of overwhelming activities, i have time now to sit down and give an account of what happened in Portland, Oregon.

So what is this all about? For those whom i haven’t spoke to, Wieden+Kennedy launched a campaign in November seeking interesting people from all walks of life. I applied in December (we had to send in a pdf of 20 slides) just for the heck of it and surprisingly, got selected in March out of 1500 people from more than 24 different countries. Only 40 people were selected and invited to Portland with airfare and accomodation fully paid. From the beginning to the end, no one exactly knows what’s going on; they’ve been pretty vague about their intentions, although they mention that it’s somewhat about recruitment. Part of this trip was also to meet other creative people out in the world, which was really cool too. We all made new friends whom we probably never would have met if not for this event. 

———————————————————————————————

Portland, Oregon  March 6-9 2008

Day One (thursday):

Flew to Portland. Took the Max train to the Ace Hotel and checked in. It’s quite an awesome hotel as every room was unique and they even had bicycles for rent. We had a reception at 7pm in the hotel with some drinks and finger food. It was pretty awkward at first as no one knew anyone, well except for some who came with their friends, and it was kind of like ‘forced-socialization’. The people from W+K weren’t around, so we were left to ourselves wondering what’s going on. Some of us thought maybe they weren’t coming and that this was all a scam, or maybe this was some sort of reality tv show where they installed cameras in our hotel rooms, which we later realised that none of that was true. Some of us were not used to socializing with so many strangers at once, me being one of them, but later on felt more comfortable as we started to know more people. The people from W+K finally came, and they came around to shake hands with us, and i remmeber going around with Chemin to mingle with the others coz she was too shy. I also met Jim of the famed Body Report.

———————————————————————————————

Day Two (friday):

We began the morning with breakfast at The Living Room Theatres. Then we made our way into one of the rooms and presented our pdfs that we submitted to each other on a huge screen. This was one of the best highlights of the weekend because we learned so much from each other; just seeing all the different personalities presenting their ideas and work in the same room was such an inspirational experience. There were some famous people in that room: the creator of xanga.com was there, the guy who branded the whole TV Asahi was there, who was also the mind behind this famous Japanese variety show Matthew’s Best Hit TV (which was featured in Lost in Translation), the girl who came up with the idea of the manila envelope laptop sleeve for the MacBook Air was there and so on.  After that, we went down to W+K for a tour of the office. It was surprisingly huge, and it looked alot bigger than the photos that you see in their blog. We had lunch on the 6th floor, and after that, John Jay gave us a presentation on what W+K is up to around the world. It was really enlightening and alot of the good work that we saw weren’t exactly featured on their main website. It helped me understand that W+K is not merely just an adveritisng firm, where they take clients’ briefs and solve problems, but that they also generate their own content. In short, they aren’t really looking for designers, but for people who can come up with original ideas.

After the presentation, we met up with the creative directors at W+K individually, in a sort of speed-dating fashion. It didnt seem like an interview though, they were basically asking us if we liked Portland and if we would wanna move out here. Most of them had already seen our work, but we showed them anyway just to remind them of who did what. The creative directors were really nice and humble, oh and i got to sit in that nest in the sixth floor! Dinner came after at the hotel, and we all had dinner together,the participants and the W+K people. They mixed us up so that we would mingle again, and i got to sit with Tyler, who was the CD on the Nike account, and Christian from Belgium. Dinner was filled with lots of food and chatting, but it was also our last interaction with W+K for the weekend. The next day in Portland was meant to be a free and easy day.

———————————————————————————————

Day Three (Saturday):

 So a few of us gathered to have dim sum in chinatown. It was pretty awesome and cheap and we walked around after to look at books and clothes. We bumped into John Jay in one of the stores and he invited us to visit his studio which was nearby. He was really friendly and for some reason he took a group shot of us in his studio. It felt kind of unreal, checking out his personal studio after his inspiring presentation the day before. We journeyed on to explore Portland and ended up in Powell’s books in the afternoon, the largest bookstore in USA, or so they claim. The good thing about Portland is that they have no sales tax, and so some of us splurged on books as much as we can before we went back to our tax-filled cities. Dinner was at 6.30pm, and a bunch of us decided to check out the Lebanese restaurant. One of the participants in W+K Seeking was performing that night in a bar in Portland, so we made our way down to give our support. It was pretty cool seeing a whole bunch of people from different cultures filling up the bar and making a whole lot of noise. I flew off that very night and that was the end of my W+K Seeking adventure.

———————————————————————————————

So what happens from here? I have no idea. 

link to Christian’s report of the Portland weekend.