Old Advice from John Maeda

More than 20 years ago, I went to meet John Maeda at the MIT Media Lab for the first time.

This week, I had the honor of hosting a conference in SF and interviewing him in front of an audience.

John wore my star shirt.

Me and John Maeda on stage at NCC 2018 in San Francisco

Here’s the backstory:

In the mid 90’s, I was an art and design student at the University of Michigan. I had come across John’s work around then while he was teaching at MIT. I was captivated by his work and wanted to apply to his Aesthetics + Computation Group there to learn how to make work like his.

One day, I emailed him expecting no reply. To my surprise, he asked me to come see him at MIT. So I went, with my portfolio at the time (which was all over the place). The meeting was short, perhaps 15–20min, and he didn’t say much. My English must have been…