After an exciting networking opportunity on Sunday evening at the HOW Design Conference in Atlanta, we were all ushered into a large ballroom at the Georgia World Conference Center to the sounds of The Alabama A&M gospel choir.  What a fabulous and energetic performance!  It was a great way to start things off.

Echoing the eclectic nature of the HOW conference, we went directly from christian gospel music to a self-named “ballsy” Jewish woman.  Karen Salmansohn gave a great presentation on stirring up opportunities through uniqueness and persitance.  That brief description doesn’t do her talk justice, but I’ve got a rooftop party to get to, so I’m only giving you the highlights.

Monday morning, we attended a great opening session with Chip Kidd, entitled ‘The Spaces In Between’.  It wasn’t particularly informative, but it was definately funny, entertaining and inspiring. 

I then moved on to “Inspired by our passions: The pursuit of an enriched life” by Sheree Clark.  We were supposed to learn a bit about taking personal things we’re passionate about and enriching our business life through them. It was a lot of “Here’s Bob, he’s a desiger and he likes to play music…here’s some of the stuff he designs.”  I wasn’t too impressed.

After some lunch and a walk through the Olympic Centennial park, I attended a good session called “Everything I wish I knew before running a design studio”.  Fortunately, I knew most of the things Daniel Schutzsmith said, but I did pick up a few tips. 

Later, I hit “Self promotion in the digital age” with Dave Werner.  I enjoyed it immensely.  If you haven’t seen his online portfolio, you’ve got to check it out.  I have some SEO issues with it, but it’s beautiful and it accomplished its goal of getting him numerous job offers, so it was obviously effective.