For two days this week, The Times Center in New York became home to a creative conference with a difference. Scott Belsky, CEO and Founder of Behance and Josh Rubin, Editor of Cool Hunting, the organizers of the 99% Conference, chose to focus on the execution of inspirational ideas rather than on simply having them. They dared the audience of nearly 400 to not only be creative and generate ideas, but more importantly, said Rubin, to actually "execute them before they die."

Inspired by the invitation-only TED conference, each 20-minute session was packed with fast-paced speakers, visuals, and enough information to make participants want to jump off their seats and get back to work.

The name of the conference is borrowed from Thomas Edison's definition of genius as 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Not a bad motto for a creative person who likes to think too much and, well, to also do quite a lot.

Pictures from the conference. Left: Scott Belsky of Behance and Josh Rubin of Cool Hunting. Right: Josh Rubin at the podium. Photos courtesy Behance.

Needless to say, each of the speakers here, including the organizers, are big-time do-ers, from the Obama campaign design team's Scott Thomas; to Pentagram's Michael Bierut; Google's Ji Lee; the controversial photographer Jill Greenberg and the community-generated, online T-shirt monster Threadless founders, Jake Nickell and Jeff Kalmikoff; theorist and consultant Jason Randal; Cheryl Dorsey, President of Echoing Green; and the High Line's best friend, Robert Hammond.

Scott Thomas, Design Director of New Media/Obama for America, shared stories about the fast pace of the year and a half the team spent running from coast to coast, changing things as they went, as if they were "building a plane in mid-flight." He then went on to present the four main components of the campaign, which he described as: instant vintage (the type for Shepherd Fairey's posters); timeless (classic imagery that made Obama appear as if he was already president); campaign (conventional imagery); and supporter (buttons, stickers, signs, apparel, etc). Thomas went on to show that visual consistency between Web and print was a mandate implemented from the get-go.

Moving on, Ji Lee, Creative Director, Google Creative Labs, exposed us to his independent guerrilla projects, which evolved from his frustration as a creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, where his best ideas kept getting killed. His recent projects include campaigns that engage the public in continuous dialogue, such as  The Bubble Project an open network in which participants can download bubble templates, fix them onto outdoor ads and launch a public conversation. According to Ji, "These were campaigns that became viral; I discovered that creating platforms for other artists is powerful!"

Then we jumped to the (even) more experienced and extremist Seth Godin, a renown marketing blogger, hyper-prolific author and CEO of Squidoo. Seth's thing is all about shipping. That's right, shipping ideas, projects, thoughts, and anything we manage to execute. By shipping, Seth means delivering, becoming a do-er instead of a mere talker. We ship, succeed, fail, fail, succeed, and fail again. But the more we ship, the more likely it is that some of it will succeed.

Finally, the Threadless.com heads, Jake Nickell, Chief Strategy Officer and Jeffrey Kalmikoff, Chief Creative Officer, walk us through the evolution of their company since 2000. They explained how as they got bigger, they were forced to delegate and, as they did, they actually became more focused on their specific piece of the cake. They shared the ups of failing and the downs of succeeding, and closed their session with the fact that we, creative people, need to collaborate in order to filter useless ideas and to stay focused on the ones that are worth it. The bottom line, according to Jake and Jeffrey, is: good work takes "brutal prioritization and maniacal focus."

99% felt like an explosion of initiative, passion and unlimited will to make things happen, on and off the stage. And, to make the initiative stick, the organizers scheduled a second day of hands-on activities at five different New York agencies, including Saatchi & Saatchi and Naked, where attendees were again encouraged to speak up, share their ideas, brainstorm in groups and plan the execution of their dream projects. For me, it was a lightning bolt, any eye opener, a reminder that if I don't do it, nobody else will execute those precious ideas worth materializing. Or even worse: someone with strong initiative will succeed at it before I have a shot.

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