The 2nd day of the HOW conference brought a combination of business (a bit) and pleasure (a lot).

We spent some daytime hours sleeping, had a yummy brunch buffet, and then napped. The 3 R-Designers made it to the hotel pool around 1pm. The city was hot and the water was cold. We hung out with friends and made new HOW friends until about 4. Then it was time to get pretty.

There was a Sunday evening Networking Event planned at the Georgia World Congress Center. We hopped on busses around 5:15 and got to a foyer full of mayhem with people passing out business cards. There was a networking game that led us on a wild goose chase meeting new people. It worked - I met lots of people. Including a woman who could sing “Georgia on My Mind” and a guy who did a cool pocket knife magic trick. And Justine - the girl with a video camera on her hat.  And one of the HOW Design winners who works in the Empire State Building. I think it’s pretty cool when your business card address actually says “Empire State Building”!

Following the networking session we heard the hand-clapping, foot-stomping sounds of The Alabama A&M gospel choir.  What an uplifting performance!  It was a great way to start things off.

Following the choir was the Keynote Speaker of the event, there to teach us all to be “ballsy”. Karen Salmansohn has chutzpah and told us when and why we should too. Someone told me when I was applying to colleges to “be my own cheerleader because no one else is going to.” Karen was kinda like that too.

Monday morning, we attended a great opening session with Chip Kidd, entitled ‘A Number of People: The Spaces In Between’.  We were supposed to guess what that title meant. I can tell you if you email me. He was funny, entertaining and inspiring. In the future, I hope to steal his jokes. You can hear his ha-ha’s here:

http://www.howconference.com/downloads/soundbytes/ChipKidd.mp3

My notes include remarks such as:

Teach yourself how to write, infuse their heads with sensations.

Keep a Wonderdrawer - items that you made that you can’t use yet but should be saved in case you can use them later.

You see, I titled my post the way I did because previous entries regarding the HOW conference were by Brian. Brian is not a designer. He is creative and fun, but he is a PC guy - not a designer. And deep down the conference is meant for designers, so I am giving my 2 cents here.

We got to Atlanta in our Honda minivan and checked to see if we saw anyone we knew. This led us to the hotel bar, where we saw friends from last year’s HOW conference, friends from the HOW online forums, and people who became friends just because they were there and smiling.

An AIGA pub crawl was scheduled for that night, so we left the crowd to register for the conference and shower/change. I call the getting-ready-to-go-out process “getting pretty”. Some occassions require a lot of pretty. Some require just lipgloss.

The 3 R-Designers in Atlanta met up with another St Pete designer, two designers sitting in the bar, our friend Young from last year, and a designer taking a smoke break. We all enjoyed dinner at Jalapeno Charlies. The margaritas were lemonade, and the service was slow, but the conversations made the night. It is very interesting talking to designers in different industries from different locations - who have similar projects and problems.

From there we met up with the pub crawl at Brewhouse Cafe. (I’m not sure why they bother with the Cafe part of their name.) I think there may have been 40 creative people who suddenly showed up and made the owner happy.

When the pub crawl ended a few of us met up at Lava Lounge, where they had a private VIP room waiting behind a velvet rope. I don’t usually get such treatment, and when the $250 bottle of vodka came, I understood why. Interestingly, because we were all designers, we all bring cameras everywhere we go. So the memories that might be hazy the next morning are actually caught as .jpgs somewhere as evidence.

A 3am closing time put a damper on things, so we moved the party to the hotel room of a woman who came all the way to Atlanta from Anguilla. She had tourist magazines she designs with beautiful crytal blue beach photos. Then I remembered I was from Florida…

Someone had the foresight to bake and bring homemade chocolate chip cookies. And a few men actually volunteered to use their hands (that are normally attached to a mouse and keyboard) as mechanisms for massage. Ahhh!

We crawled to bed in the wee hours knowing Sunday held no morning conference sessions, and sleep till noon was permissable.