An Apology to Jeff Croft from the Drunken Wretch That Was Me Last Night
Dear Jeff,
I couldn’t be more mortified when I woke up this morning (in hangover agony mind you) and read your post, A response to one especially harsh critic of our SXSW panel. That horrible woman was me, and I apologize deeply, and publicly, for making you feel badly.
Believe it or not, I actually can usually offer constructive criticism in a kind and lighthearted way. Clearly I did not accomplish that last night. What happened from my perspective is that after letting you know that I really loved your work and then drunkenly blurting out that your panel sucked (did I really say it sucked? … if so, that’s horrific of me), I could see immediately that I had upset you and tried, obviously with absolutely no success, to back-pedal. I think the continued railing that you felt you experienced was actually me trying desperately to explain and minimize what I had said. And, ironically, I actually felt that I was the one spending the rest of the conversation apologizing. I distinctly remember hanging my head in shame and telling you that I was actually normally quite a nice person!
I feel profoundly crappy for making you feel bad and being a dark spot on the awesome time that is SxSW. Especially since you are actually someone I have admired professionally for a long time – for your work, your writings and your accomplishments. You are basically the reason I went to the Design Workflow panel! And, no, I am not the woman who left early and went to the next room and got on the mic to say that your panel sucked (I’m really not … I have witnesses!).
I hope you will consider accepting my apology.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:56 am
I already responded over at my site, so I won’t repeat it all here. But, bottom line: apology accepted, no harm done. It’s over. Thanks for being a man about it. Only, you’re not a man. But you know what I mean. :)
March 14th, 2007 at 8:17 am
SXSW was great. And everyone I met there was awesome. Really. Mani was a pleasure to meet… and although all I did was say a quick hello to Jeff, I felt as though he was everywhere I was.
I am just happy to see that everyone is getting along.
Thanks to BOTH of you for in your own ways making my SXSW a complete success.
March 15th, 2007 at 1:52 am
I forgot to mention this because of the easiness of getting sidetracked at SXSWi, but I think one really cool thing about the design community, that we commonly overlook, is that it’s not as competitive as other fields. Think about it — we simply do the design. Companies are competing for customers through the differences in their ideas, because customers usually only stick to one product to meet their needs for something. People discuss the merits and features one product as compared to another, and then make a decision. But everyone can appreciate good design, no matter where it is. We can step back, look at our product, and the product of a fellow designer, and appreciate both.
And that idea of community transfers to the design community. You won’t see Microsoft giving a presentation to the software community about the details of producing Office — discussing how they came up with the idea, the details of the challenges they ran into and the solutions they came up with, teaching each other how to think creatively, etc.
So it’s wonderful when we get to share an event like SXSWi. It’s also great that we can critique each other to better ourselves and the future of the community. What happened here was a misunderstanding, but I do think it’s important to realize the power of this freedom.
Anyway, I’ll stop making your comments form my blog. :)