HowDesign 2007 will go down as one of the best conferences I have been to. It was a great mix of people from all over the world doing work in all sorts of fields. It was great to hear about the stuff that people are up to.

I got into Atlanta on Sunday morning and headed directly over to the Convention Center. Where i managed to setup the entire booth in a record time. To be fair the booth is quite simple and easy to set up. As I was finishing up the infamous Will Pate arrived in to Atlanta and met me at the booth. We finished up the stuff we needed to and headed over to the hotel to get ready cleaned up and ready for our first evening …..the opening of the How Resource Center.

Sunday Night
We arrived on time and were greeted by a hard of anxious crowd of creative types that were ready to hit the resource center hard. It was crazy to watch the mad rush of people that poured in …drinks in hand. We didn’t notice until later that there were actually bars setup all over the lobby area. We missed the drinks but got to show a lot of people what we were up to.

Monday
The first day was an interesting day. I had to be over at the Resource Center for 8am for the opening of the show floor. I was really impressed with the way the HOW people set up the times for the resource Center. They really did a great job breaking the times up. What I found was the first night was the busiest but the following times there were much better conversations.

I presented ConceptShare in the learning theater that day also. It was a great opportunity to show what we are doing over here at Conceptshare and where we are going with the product. The audience had alot of questions around how this could work for them. It continues to amaze me how companies have created these elaborate processes to share ideas and visuals using a mish mash of tools. There was an overwhelming excitement about how ConceptShare could make their lives easier.

There were a couple of more opportunities for people to come through the Resource Center that day and at the end of the afternoon session there was a design off held up in the main room. This was a 15 minute head to head competitions between designers. They had it well thought out and there was even a DJ who was spinning some hefty tunes. It was neat to see as every brush stroke they made on the Cintiq Display was show live on the screens. Neat to watch designers at work.

During the day Will had met up with www.ijustine.tv ’s Justine Ezarik. So when we went to dinner that evening at a cool Mexican place …our entire evening was broadcast live over the net to her fans. It was kind of funny as you really start to forget that there are actually people watching you live as you eat.

We left there and met Paul Stamatiou from www.paulstamatiou.com This guy is one cool cat. He has it going on. We took off in his very nice car and he toured us around Atlanta showing off some of the sites and hitting a really cool pizza place were we sat on the patio and had lots of drinks. He was a great tour guide of the city. I really like having a local hang out while. They know the places to go and things to do.

Tuesday Morning
Well the morning came really early for us. Especially Will he got in later then I did and had to fly out the next morning. So as i was dragging my ass to the convention center he was peeling his body out of bed and making his way to the Airport. He was looking forward to being able to catch up on sleep on the flight home. He was heading back to TO to attend casecamp. I tired to talk him into staying the extra night …but he was committed to getting back in time for the event. I was flying Solo for Tuesday.
It was a busy day around the conference center. I managed to hit a couple of talks in between the trade show portion.

Tuesday evening
This was the big party night for Howdesign 2007. The show floor closed at 2 and it was a mad rush to clear out the show and go. The nice thing about having a simple booth is it comes down fast. I was cleared out in about 30 minutes. This gave me a bit of time to check out the downtown and look for some food to eat. I was looking for a real taste of Southern Cooking …. I found it PityPat’s Porch. Wow what a treat. I was stuffed ….If you are in Atlanta I highly recommended this place. This was the taste of the South that I was looking for.

I headed from there over to the Aquarium for the big Gala event. I decided to walk over as it was a quick hop from the Westin. I made my way across the Olympic park to the Aquarium. It was a rocking party when I arrived. I will tell you that it is quite strange when you enter as they were frisking and running metal detector over you …. WTF ? Even more bizarre was the fact that they were taking away lighters and gum ……strange very strange …….i was surprised that they didn’t make me take my shoes off.

Once inside it was packed. A band played and people took in the surroundings. It was a cool place to host a party. The only problem was trying to find people inside. That party ended quite early and we ended heading back to the bar at the hotel.

Travel day
The airport was a nightmare. Don’t believe me …well the press covered it Here is a link to the article “Summer Forecast: A mobbed airport “ But managed to get on the plane and rest my weary body ….

Looking back
Atlanta was full of great people. I got the opportunity to talk to lots of great Atlantians? Atlantites ? Great people. Even the homeless people were nice, albeit much more aggressive then any homeless people that I have encountered in other cities. The city takes great care in making sure the people who are on the streets at night feel safe in the hotel district. There were lots of police and Atlanta Ambassadors. The ambassadors were great, taking the time to talk to you and give you any assistance that you could need.

Well done HOW and well done Atlanta. I look forward to the next HowDesign Conference in Boston ! Be sure to check out Will’s photos of the event on Flickr.

Cheers

Scott

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