Lunch Break with Skillshare

September 18, 2015 by Prisanti 2 Comments

I told you before that I signed up for a Skillshare membership here. The truth is I’m now addicted to it. After signing up for a 14 days free trial, I accidentally upgraded my account to one year subscription (*sigh*). But turns out, it becomes one of the best thing that happened to me. The annual membership costs 96 USD, which means 8 USD/month. That time, the rate was still in IDR 12.000, so I just paid around IDR 96,000/month to learn all the things I wanted! :))

Until this day, I’ve been enrolled to 70 classes and completed 42 classes! Not all the classes turns out informative, but there are several who I love dearly. By the way, in my opinion Skillshare is a great tool to learn. In each class, the teacher will assign you through a certain goal (called project). The class will teach you the basic tools and information to accomplish that goal. In the end, you can post your own project on the Project Class section. You can get feedback from the teacher and your peer on class. In addition to that, the teacher usually shares some course materials that you can download and some references of further learning.

Skillshare also occasionally holds some live sessions with a certain theme to get more interaction from their students to learn more classes and to post more project class. Recently, they held 30 Days Drawing challenge where you need to enroll to some classes and post project for each of the classes. If you decided to join the session, they will send you some syllabus that you need to follow and send you reminder for each deadline classes. In the end of the session, the teacher will select one winner to be given some kind of prize, such as a free annual premium membership. It’s totally fun to learn many creative classes and meet a lot of artist or designer that soon become one of my favorite.

Each classes usually range from 15 minutes to 2 hours, with average classes of an hour. But I love to find classes that only takes 30 – 50 minutes so I can watch it on lunch break between eating my lunch box on the desk :)) I think it is effective to learn something for under an hour because you got time to start putting some interest on it and have enough time to research it by yourself. Here are my recommendations for 5 classes under an hour that I found enjoyable:

Making Your First Zine: From Idea to Illustration
with Kate Bingaman-Burt
46 min

Among all, this is the course I trully enjoy. When people talks to you about what they really like, there is a certain emotion in their eyes. It can be really contagious and that what Kate does. At this course, Kate teaches how to create a zine. She really encourages to make a zine with any little ideas with many different material.s Plus she showcases some of the most interesting zines, the history behind zine, and other resources to find/buy a zine, and even sale yours. The project class itself is a very interesting place to browse around because the task is simple and everybody just let loose making it.

Drawing Daily Monsters: Finding Inspiration in a Drop of Ink
with Stefan G. Bucher
47 min

It is not a secret that I love monsters. The only thing that I enjoy drawing when I was a kid is some googly eyes bat, with wings and big boots. Stefan is the man behind Daily Monster, where he gets his inspiration from daily ink blobs. He lured us to enter his imagination of each monster he created and the story behind it. The creative process between each monster is so fascinating and daring.

Typography That Works: Typographic Composition and Fonts
with Ellen Lupton
36 min

Ellen Lupton demonstrates how to make simple and beautiful name card using some classic fonts like Sans Serif and Serif. She shown us how to create more impact only with changing the composition and the size of the fonts. Ellen, being a curator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, also tells the detail history of classic fonts which is so interesting in my opinion.

Brand an Online Shop: Create a Cohesive Product Line
with Melanie Abrantes
34 min

Melanie is an entrepreneur and a very passionate person. In this class, she breakdowns some of the essential thing for people who wants to start and developing their new products, as well as branding it. There are many useful insight that I find valuable. Including the cycle of preparing collection, how to tell the story between the products, etc.

Beautiful Plastic: Creating a Great Designer Toy
with Paul Budnitz
41 min

There is something about monster and weird toy that allures me! Paul Budnitz is the founder of Kidrobot, creator of designer art toy. In this class, he told the history of art designer toys as well as product sketching.

Since I found a lot of interesting class, I will be sharing other Skillshare classes here next time. Have fun learning, beautiful rockets :3

Playing at GE Garages Indonesia

September 17, 2015 by Prisanti Leave a comment

You know what else I got to do last month? I visited the GE Garages Indonesia!

(image from here)

It is a surprise that Indonesia became the first ASEAN country which got the opportunity to host one of the GE Garages. Partnered up with MakeDoNia Makerspace, GE held one week exhibition and hands on workshop for free. Although it was rather a small exhibition and kind of way below my expectation, there were some interesting things there. Especially the 3D printing machine!

They showcased MakerBot machine, which you can get here at klix3D (Indonesia authorized reseller), the price range for small sized machine is about IDR 42 million :)) They also showcased local 3D printing machine, Replix, that you can get for about IDR 13 million. The representative said the difference between US made and local made are only the production time and durability.

(image from here)

3D printing has been a hot item in tech industry lately, with company like Hershey’s introduced 3D Chocolate Printer called CocoJet 3D, only God knows what else will come next.

The workshops were all interesting in my opinion, from making drone to Hour of Code for Kids. Too bad that all the workshop were held on office hour so I couldn’t make it to any of it. But I managed to come to one of their Meet Up called Social Enterprise and Networking #2: Tinkering – Women and Technology. I recently got interest in this field so I skipped half office hour to come to this meet up :P The talk itself was interesting. It was great to see many women communities that empowers each other in many ways.

Read more about GE Garages Indonesia report here and here.

(image from here)

Other thing that I found interesting about GE Garages Indonesia activity is there were some session involving kids. Like Maker Kids and Hour of Code activity. Not so long ago, I also found Engineering for Kids, which recently opened their Indonesia chapter. EFK is basically like activities center for kids. The programs are packed up with topics ranging from Aerospace Engineering to Robotics that designed for a certain age period. I think finding programs that made S.T.E.M (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) topics become fun activity is quite cool. We should encouraged more of these programs to be run here in Indonesia, rather than making more tutoring center for exam preparation. More of Engineering for Kids Indonesia activity can be found in their Facebook page and Instagram.

Finding Reason at IdeaFest 2015

September 16, 2015 by Prisanti 2 Comments

Since September is a sign for the last quarter of 2015, let’s welcome it with a nice and happy hug. But first, let’s recap what we made on last month :P August was a great month from me, because I got to do many things, going on a short getaway, attending friend’s engagement, snapped my first Polaroid and learning many new things.

One of it, happened to be in a form called IdeaFest.

IdeaFest is a bi-yearly event that aims to empower creative movement in Indonesia. This year, IdeaFest hits its third conference. I know about this event after reading one of the newsletter from GEPI. After running Kawung Living for about a year, I’ve been intensively seeking and learning deeper about it, so I subscribed to GEPI newsletter. GEPI is an incubator and angel investment network for young startup and entrepreneur made by Ciputra. Located in Lotte Shopping Avenue (which just happen to be few steps from my office), GEPI offers co-working space and held several free events to empower many rising startups. GEPI also famously known by its angel investment program called ANGIN, which already helped many startup grow their business even more. ANGIN previously invested on startup company founded by women like Wangsa Jelita, Berry Kitchen, and Kakoa Chocolate.

After many doubt, I bought the 2 days ticket conference anyway. One of my reason was because the theme called Creativity with Purpose, the second reason was I really badly want to meet Melissa Sunjaya.

#28postsfor28

September 15, 2015 by Prisanti 2 Comments

After entering the so called ‘smartphone’ era, we slowly left the beauty of pen and paper. Tough, I still use pen and paper on daily basis, I admit having cloud services that connect and sync data with other devices has improved my productivity. One of the apps I’ve frequently used is Evernote. The idea of having notes online is good, but Evernote asked you to pay for having notes offline (which completely ridiculous to me). Since the data transferred is not that big and Telkomsel has been a reliable (as well as expensive) provider, I don’t have problem using Evernote Basic until now. It’s still my most used apps after Whatsapp. I often write ramblings at my Evernote, especially on the bus or when I get random ideas and stuffs. So it is a surprised when my Notebook hit the number 60, that means I already wrote a lot but never really finish it. They are mostly unfinished posts, short notes, random words or ideas, even playlist.

Since my birthday is coming up next month and I realized that I still have things to do at 2015, which is ‘write more and worry less’. I want to make a promise to write #28postsfor28. I might not write everyday, but I will schedule to post everyday. The idea to write more and post it everyday is something I always admire from Pak Budi Rahardjo. I have failed in the past to accomplish this kind of promise, but there is no point of promise if you know you will someday betray it. So in spirit of high optimism, let’s say I will finish it :)) I will start tomorrow on September 16 and if I really finished it, the 28th post will be at October 13, 2015, a few days before my birthday.

Cheers :3

Happy Website, Happy WordPress Series

July 5, 2015 by Prisanti 1 Comment

Ketika mulai mengetahui tentang Blog di internet, topik yang selalu saya cari adalah tentang anime dan manga. Maklum, zaman itu, Animax baru masuk Indonesia dan majalah Animonster sedang naik daun (kelas 6 SD-ku yang berwarna). Para penggiat dan kontributor artikel majalah itu adalah blogger pertama yang saya ketahui. Mulai dari sana, saya mulai mengenal HTML dan CSS. Saya mulai belajar Dreamweaver (yang menurut saya tidak terlalu nyaman digunakan #TeamNotepadFTW) dan mengenal Photoshop (sampai sekarang menjadi tumpuan untuk bertahan hidup) di waktu yang sama.

Saya mulai rajin mendesign layout blog sendiri. Walaupun tidak pernah di-post ke dunia maya, saya semacam punya diary pribadi yang kontennya selalu di-update setiap hari. Kemudian saya mulai mengenal beberapa blogging platform dan mulai benar-benar membuat blog pada tahun 2008 di DiaryLand, pindah ke WordPress tahun 2010 sampai akhirnya membeli domain pertama saya di tahun 2013.

Di luar negeri sendiri, Blogger adalah sebuah profesi yang sudah cukup lama hidup. Sedangkan di Indonesia, profesi ini juga sudah mulai dikenal luas. Walaupun yang namanya Blogger ada beberapa jenis menurut saya. Ada yang memang ingin mendatangkan traffik via SEO dan iklan semacam Google Adwords, biasanya ditandai dengan banyaknya iklan di sidebar, diselingi dengan iklan jualan e-book/MLM, dan artikel-artikel yang terkadang tidak punya tema khusus yang berkaitan. Tapi ada juga beberapa Blogger yang memang melakukan branding yang baik terhadap blog-nya dan mendapatkan income dengan cara yang, menurut saya, lebih baik pula. Di antaranya adalah adalah Diana Rikasari atau Evita Nuh di bidang fashion, Andra Alodita & Tara Amelz di bidang lifestyle & beauty, atau Living Loving di bidang creative lifestyle.

Ketika mau membangun website Kawung Living, saya blank apakah memang harus menyewa designer khusus atau tidak. Awalnya memang belum pede karena kemampuan WordPress masih setengah-setengah. Kalau ada masalah dengan plugins yang crash, saya masih sering panik sendiri. Sempat tanya ke beberapa teman soal rekomendasi designer web, tapi masih tetap bingung seputar range harga, mekanisme maintenance, dan hal-hal lainnya. Saya sempat browsing juga harga-harga pembuatan web E-commerce sejenis, harganya beragam, mulai dari 3 – 8 juta atau bahkan lebih dari itu. Kalau harga jasa, saya memang tidak bisa komentar banyak. Harga suatu jasa memang hanya bisa dinilai oleh diri sendiri. Ada beberapa yang memasang harga rendah, tapi kualitas yang didapat juga seadanya. Bahkan ada yang cuma custom dari premium themes yang ada (yang sebenarnya bisa kita lakukan sendiri). Anyway, pastinya kamu selalu tahu budget yang kamu punya. Akhirnya, kami memutuskan untuk develop website sendiri karena masalah budget ini (dan merasa yakin akan selalu ada jawaban untuk pertanyaan apapun di pencarian Google).

Artikel WordPress dalam bahasa Indonesia sekarang sudah cukup banyak, tapi isinya kebanyakan teknikal dan tutorial standar. Saya kadang kesulitan mencari tips yang pas dan bingung harus memulai dari mana. Kadang tidak selalu pencarian Google teratas memberikan hasil yang paling baik. Resource dari luar terkadang banyak dan solutif, tapi ada beberapa yang kurang praktikal dipakai di Indonesia. Hal inilah yang membuat saya ingin menulis post series berjudul Happy Website, Happy WordPress.

Outline post series ini saya bagi sebagai berikut: