What choice did you have?
That was the question posed to a hodge podge of creative and innovative folks during the 15th iteration of a presentation series called “20×2” at SXSW Interactive earlier this week.
Creator and host Kevin Newsum launched the first iteration of 20×2 at SXSWi in 2001 along with Jeff Rider and Mark Couvillion. Since then the show has traveled to Chicago and London in addition to Austin.
Like Ted Talks and Ignite, 20×2 is a presentation series that seeks to surprise and enlighten its audience. What sets 20×2 apart? Each of the 20 participants receive just two minutes to answer the question of the day in any manner they choose.
Participants at the 2015 SXSW Interactive show ranged from illustrators and musicians to a behavioral investigator and a woman who studies “the psychology of typefaces and how we respond to them as type consumers.”
Equally varied where the responses. Illustrator Rob Jones has designed posters for Jack White and The Raconteurs, but only after 15 years or so of trying (and failing) to do something more respectable by his parents’ standards. “I know this is going to be kind of obvious and to the point, but becoming an artist was kind of the main thing I couldn’t escape from,” Jones said.
Musician Phil Ajjarapu plucked on his acoustic guitar while singing a song about how you really don’t have a choice so you might as well come to terms with it.
WP Engine founder and CTO Jason Cohen used his two minutes to illustrate how sometimes there’s not a choice when your personal happiness is at stake. Read the full text of his response or listen to a recording from the presentation below:
They say of startup founders that their company is their baby. But this is the wrong metaphor. It’s not your baby. It’s you. It’s your identity. It’s the thing that you think about every day. Every waking moment. I know you know that, right? From when you wake up until you go to bed and also what wakes you up in the middle of the night thinking about…
And so, it’s not different from who you are. You don’t have separate hobbies, even separate friends sometimes. This is what you are only.
So you can imagine how I felt when a CEO of another company offered me millions of dollars to buy my company. Or in other words, to buy me.
So I went home and told my wife about how this guy came and over a plate of enchiladas at Trudy’s North Star Restaurant here in Austin, Texas, offered this thing.
Trudy’s isn’t as good now as it was in 2007, sadly. That was a long time ago too. Now it’s Chuy’s by the way, if you guys are looking for the appropriate Austin experience. Chuy’s.
Anyway, so I told my wife what had happened and she said, “Obviously you have to sell.” And I said, “What do you mean? Why?” And she said, “Well, don’t you realize how unhappy you are?”
No, I hadn’t until that point. And that’s an interesting realization that the thing that you spent seven years on–that is you–is the thing that makes you unhappy.
So I sold the company. What choice did I have?
For more on 20×2, visit www.20×2.org.
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