Last night, I did a talk at the regular monthly Port 80 event in Perth, entitled ‘Branding is Bullshit’. It’s a topic I have been exploring recently and given my traditional graphic design background, I felt if anyone was going to talk on the subject, I could get away with it.

Unfortunately, I had spent the day with far more inspirational speakers, including His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, and given the fact I had queued since 4.50am that morning (that was cold!), I was not the best I could have been.

I tried a new presentation style called ‘Let’s get this over and done with quick, so we can all eat pizza and drink more beer’. I however believe that a 10 minute presentation done in 5 minutes by someone who had less than 5 hours sleep the night before probably doesn’t make great viewing or listening.

The slides are available here. As you can see, it was far more a verbal manifesto (aka rant) than some thinly disguised education session, however it was reasonably well received, and by all accounts, at least it had people thinking, which was what I was trying to encourage.

An mp3 will probably turn up over at the Australian Web Industry Association podcasts page eventually.

Thanks to everyone who came along and listened. I hope it made sense. I appreciated the heckling was kept to a minimum.

Image: Part of a slide from the presentation.