{"id":7717,"date":"2020-12-07T09:28:34","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T17:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/us\/?p=7717"},"modified":"2026-06-05T12:13:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T19:13:36","slug":"i-watched-eighteen-hours-of-connected-ink-impressions-and-highlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/i-watched-eighteen-hours-of-connected-ink-impressions-and-highlights\/","title":{"rendered":"I watched eighteen hours of Connected Ink 2020: impressions and highlights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Header from Connected Ink's online art gallery.\u00a0 <\/strong>(It's just a static image, you can't scroll on it.)<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\n \n\nOur promotional materials bill Connected Ink as an \u201cOpen Innovation Platform.\u201d While accurate, I\u2019d say that\u2019s underselling it. It\u2019s more of a multimedia convention: panels and lectures and promos, all focused around digital art and technology, with an art gallery to go with it. A Digital Art Basel, if you will.\n\nMuch like\u00a0Lightbox 2020<\/a>, it took the form of a series of both pre-recorded videos and live events streaming across a few platforms. It lasts an uninterrupted 24 hours: This year\u2019s was from December 17th at 8 PM JST\u2014or 6 AM EST, where I am\u2014to the same time December 18th. And as you might have guessed from the title, I made it through eighteen.\u00a0 (10 AM to 4 AM.)\n\nIt could be divided into two halves, western and Japanese. The western half, which was the first I caught, was a collaborative effort between Wacom America and Europe, conducted from the participants\u2019 homes and through prerecorded videos, via Youtube, Vimeo, and Zoom. The Japanese half was streamed live from a convention center In Shinjuku, Tokyo.\n\nOne feature I really appreciated was the countdown clocks to every event. Although I kept a\u00a0JST to EST converter<\/a>\u00a0open in another tab, I often forgot the JST time when I minimized it, so that feature was a lifesaver In fact, I hope every virtual con gets something like that. Physical cons could use them too, (although I understand they\u2019re hard to print on paper).\n

\"\"<\/p>\nLike any convention, it was hard to catch all of every panel I wanted to see, and I missed parts of things. But all of them except the first one are now on Wacom\u2019s two Youtube channels. Here\u2019s the playlist for the first (Wacom America\/Japan's) half.<\/a>\n\n...But I\u2019m guessing you\u2019ll want to know\u00a0why\u00a0<\/span>you should watch them, not just where. So here are the notes I took during the event. Read on!\n

Highlights<\/h1>\n

Part 1<\/h2>\n

12 PM (2 AM JST) \u2014 One of Those Days<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Devirs with their comic counterparts<\/em><\/p>\nIf you follow webcomics or are active enough on social media, you\u2019ve probably seen Israeli couple Yehuda and Maya Devir\u2019s\u00a0One of Those Days<\/span>\u00a0somewhere. Their usually-wordless one-panel comics\u2014a format they say they settled on to speak to a worldwide audience\u2014aren\u2019t just the #relatable gags they might seem at first glance, but a journal of their entire course through cohabiting, marriage, having a kid, and starting a career.\n\nIn this energetic panel, they go into detail on that course and how the comic helped them through it, taking Yehuda from a struggling illustrator (I particularly enjoyed his complaints about people wanting him to work for exposure) to making a comfortable living due to the exposure he generated himself with the comic. This is the first panel to really reach out and grab me. Their passion for their work, the relationship that inspired it, and their fans, are obvious and infectious. Honorable mention to Maya for being the most excited storyteller I\u2019ve ever seen on a livestream.\n\nI can\u2019t find a video of this one, which is unfortunate for your first impression, but all the other ones have them.\u00a0 Here's their TED talk from last year<\/a> if you want to see them in action, though, as well as their Youtube channel<\/a>, which they update with impressive regularity.\n

1 PM (3 AM JST) \u2014 Creativity in Action<\/h4>\n