CreativeMornings with Hillman Curtis

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Here it is, finally, the September announcement for next week’s CreativeMornings.

Our speaker at the CreativeMornings on September 18th, 2009, is much respected Hillman Curtis, a Brooklyn based filmmaker and designer. His company, hillmancurtis, inc. has designed sites for Yahoo, Adobe, Aquent, the American Institute of Graphic Design, Paramount and Fox Searchlight Pictures among others. His film work includes the popular documentary series “Artist Series”, as well as award winning short films.

Interested in attending? Make sure to r.s.v.p via email quickly as we usually fill up within a few hours. Please tell us your name and what industry you’re in. (Check your inbox for a confirmation email with all the details in the coming days!) CreativeMornings start at 8.30am, end at 10am and are FREE of charge. I am sorry but we’ve reached full capacity and we can no longer accept any r.s.v.p’s!

A big thank you to the Film Society of Lincoln Center for hosting our September CreativeMornings at the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery. The organization has been a pioneer among film institutions and one of the film world’s most respected and influential arbiters of cinematic trends and discoveries. Learn more about the Film Society of Lincoln Center. And see what’s currently playing.

NEW: Follow CreativeMornings on twitter!

Check out pictures of previous CreativeMornings over at Flickr.

A big thank you to fabulous GenevaSound and Rebus Software for generously sponsoring Breakfast :

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CreativeMornings? ‘CreativeMornings’ is a monthly morning gathering of creative types. Each event includes a 10 minute lecture, followed by a 20 minute group discussion. The gathering begins at 8:30am with the topic presentation starting at 9:00am. The whole thing closes down at 10am. The events are hosted at studios/gallery spaces in NYC. (We are always looking for potential hosts that are willing to accomodate 50+ people. Please email us if you’re interested in hosting or sponsoring one of our events!)

CreativeMornings Video: Allegra Burnette

On August 14th, 2009, Allegra Burnette, Creative Director of Digital Media at MoMA spoke on the subject of how she jumped the fence and went from consultant to becoming the client!

8/14 Allegra Burnette from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

(A big huge thank you to Rob Blatt who donated his time and skills to tape and edit this video!)

What would make *you* a good client?

We had another successful CreativeMornings today, generously hosted at the fancy Education Wing of the MoMA with Allegra Burnette (MoMA) as our fabulous speaker. Yummee breakfast was sponsored by GenevaSound.

I introduced the Conversation Starter tags a few months back, and today, I asked the question: “what would make *you* a good client?

Below are some of the answers, see all of them in this flickr set.

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CreativeMornings with Allegra Burnette, MoMA

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After our last successful CreativeMornings in Zurich with Daniel Freitag, I am happy to announce next week’s event which will be generously hosted at … drumrolls… MoMA! On august 14th, 2009, Allegra Burnette, Creative Director of Digital Media at MoMA will talk on the subject of how she jumped the fence and went from consultant to becoming the client!

I am sorry but we’ve reached full capacity! Interested in attending? Make sure to r.s.v.p via email. Please tell us your name and what industry you’re in. (We will later on send you a confirmation email with all the necessary details for the event.) Space is *extremely* limited this time, so please don’t be sad if you didn’t make it on the list. CreativeMornings are free. They start at 8.30am and end at 10am.

NEW: Follow CreativeMornings on twitter!

A big thank you to fabulous GenevaSound for generously sponsoring Breakfast :

geenvasound

CreativeMornings? ‘CreativeMornings’ is a monthly morning gathering of creative types. Each event includes a 10 minute lecture, followed by a 20 minute group discussion. The gathering begins at 8:30am with the topic presentation starting at 9:00am. The whole thing closes down at 10am. The events are hosted at studios/gallery spaces in NYC. (We are always looking for potential hosts that are willing to accomodate 50+ people. Please email us if you’re interested in hosting or sponsoring one of our events!)

CreativeMornings Video: Khoi Vinh

6/7 Khoi Vinh from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

(A big huge thank you to Rob Blatt who donated his time and skills to tape and edit this video!)

What would you do if you had your own storefront?

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At today’s CreativeMornings at FREITAG in Zurich, I asked the question “What would you do if you had your own storefront?” Here are (some of) the answers in a flickr set. (These tags are meant to help break the ice and facilitate a conversation!)

So, what about you? What would you do if you had your own storefront?

Impressions of Today’s CreativeMornings with Daniel Freitag

Today’s first Switzerland based CreativeMornings was a huge success. When I first approached FREITAG for hosting, I flat-out told them that I had no idea if people would actually show up. I know by now that the NYC events fill up quickly, but would I be able to gather a crowd in Zurich? The answer is: YES! We had over a 160 r.s.v.p’s and I’d say a good 150 showed up despite nasty rain. (Oh, swiss summer, where are you?)

Daniel Freitag, one of the co-founders of Freitag was our speaker and he was simply fantastic. He was flexible enough to spontaneously hold the presentation in English as it turned out that we had about 8 english-speaking only guests. (To all of you that didn’t come because we thought the event would be in swiss-german, I am very sorry!)

Daniel is a great presenter and was an overall gracious, humble host. He even gave a small group of us a tour of the Container Store nearby, as well their graphic design and prototyping atelier. All day I kept saying to G how impressed I was by Daniel’s warmth and generosity.

Below are a few visual impressions of the event. My fab cousin Thilo Hoffmann was so kind to tape the presentation and I will try to get it up asap.

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The set up at the Freitag Factory could not have been any better. These guys are thorough. A *big* thank you to the Freitag team and Sascha Koeglmeier in particular who was simply a delight to organize this with. Everything was meticulously thought out and prepared – oh, so, swiss!

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In his presentation Daniel was talking about their take on recontextualization. Take their bags made out of truck tarp and seat belts, their store built out of Containers as well their Truck Tarp Presentation Room.

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Daniel Freitag presenting under the Truck Tarp ‘Tent’. Fantastic!

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Daniel Freitag answering Oliver Reichenstein’s questions. Oliver, of Information Architects was our virtual guest dialing in from Tokyo. Oliver, it was a pleasure to have you!

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Jens of Jung von Beck was our delightful breakfast-man! He showed up with two Lavazza espresso makers and lots of yummee bakery stuff – wheee! A big thank you to MailChimp and ROD Communications for sponsoring breakfast! I was particularly happy about the mountains of Gipfeli! :)

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I was standing behind this shirt wearing CreativeMorning guest and was tempted to dial the number a few times.

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How fantastic are these Freitag Benches? (not available for sale yet, unfortunately) I would love a few of these in our studio!

Here are all the photos of today’s event. Did you take pictures? If so, please consider adding them to our creativemornings group.

Did you attend today’s CreativeMornings? Did you write a post about it? Or do you have some thoughts/feedback? Write it in a comment below. Did you take some pictures?

Follow @creativemorning on twitter and be the first to know when the next event with Allegra Burnette of MoMA NYC is accepting r.s.v.p’s.

CreativeMornings with Daniel Freitag in Zurich

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Swiss readers, listen up: Our July CreativeMornings is going to take place in Zurich at the FREITAG Factory on July 17, 2009. Daniel Freitag, one of the two masterminds behind the FREITAG messenger bag empire, will be our speaker.

This will be our first international CreativeMornings! YAY!

Interested in attending? Make sure to r.s.v.p via email. Please tell us your name and what industry you’re in. (We will later on send you a confirmation email with all the necessary details for the event.) CreativeMornings are free. They start at 8.30am and end at 10am.

NEW: Follow CreativeMornings on twitter!

Breakfast will be generously sponsored by two companies:

MailChimp, a fantastic service that makes it easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance.

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And Rod Communication AG, a Zurich based communication and strategy agency. A big thank you to our sponsors!

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CreativeMornings? ‘CreativeMornings’ is a monthly morning gathering of creative types. Each event includes a 10 minute lecture, followed by a 20 minute group discussion. The gathering begins at 8:30am with the topic presentation starting at 9:00am. The whole thing closes down at 10am. The events are hosted at studios/gallery spaces in NYC. (We are always looking for potential hosts that are willing to accomodate 50+ people. Please email us if you’re interested in hosting or sponsoring one of our events!)

CreativeMornings with Khoi Vinh

Khoi Speaking at CreativeMornings

Last friday was one packed CreativeMornings, I am not surprised because it was clearly a perfect combination of speaker (Khoi Vinh), space (Meet at the Apartment) and breakfast sponsor (MailChimp).

Everyone seemed to have showed up even though it was a rainy morning. Hat tip to all my loyal attendees!

A big two thumbs up to the hosts Sara and Marc Schiller and their team. They once again were *incredibly* organized, gracious and generous with opening the doors to their truly fantastic space on Crosby street. Make sure to spread the word about Meet at the Apartment: You can rent it for your events and it is by far the most amazing meeting space I have ever seen. Business meetings/workshops don’t have to be in a dull environment, really!

Khoi’s talk was amusing, insightful and honest. He was talking about the fact that everything he knows about design he learned in the 90s. He took a look at how his designer’s early attitudes and assumptions about how design works have weathered the past fifteen years, for better or worse. He showed us some of his early works, that made him cringe and made us all feel better knowing, that he wasn’t just born with his beautiful amazing design sense. We all have to work hard for it, don’t we? One of his last slides sums up his major talking points:

1. Tell The Truth
2. Understand the problem
3. Don’t Skimp
4. Fads are bad
5. Let things be what they are
6. A little bit of self-delusion goes a long way

We will post a video of the talk soon. Hang tight! See pictures of the event here.

I truly enjoyed perusing everyone’s answer on the conversation-starter-tags, which asked the question: “What can you teach me?” See all the diverse answers here.

A big thank you also to brave soul Naz Hamid for virtually joining us at a very early hour San Francisco time. Naz is the force behind Weightshift. He is an amazing designer and obviously, a morning person! Here’s what it looked like from his side of the screen:

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(Image by Naz Hamid)

And here’s some good news for all my swiss readers that would like to attend one of my CreativeMornings: The July event will take place in Zurich, Switzerland. Sit tight, more info coming soon!

What can you teach me?

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At today’s CreativeMornings I asked the question “What can you teach me?” Here are the answers in a flickr set. (These tags are meant to help break the ice and facilitate a conversation!)

So, what about you? What can you teach us?

CreativeMornings, June 5th, with Khoi Vinh

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I don’t think I can be any more excited about the announcement of an upcoming CreativeMornings! (A tad bit more and I’d burst.)

Our speaker at the CreativeMornings on June 5th, 2009, is much respected Khoi Vinh, Design Director of the NYTimes and force behind Subtraction.com. The Title of Khoi’s talk: Everything I Know About Design I Learned in the 90s. It will be a look at how one designer’s early attitudes and assumptions about how design works have weathered the past fifteen years, for better or worse.

Interested in attending? Make sure to r.s.v.p via email quickly as we usually fill up within a few hours. Please tell us your name and what industry you’re in. CreativeMornings start at 8.30am, end at 10am and are FREE of charge.

I am very sorry but we have already reached full capacity. This was a new record, we filled up within an hour. Khoi, you’re a star!

A big thank you to Marc and Sara Schiller of Electric Artists for hosting yet another CreativeMornings event at MEET, an impressive storefront apartment-like space in the middle of Soho. MEET is a dedicated space in New York where creative and business executives can gather to re-imageine a business, re-invent a product or pitch potential clients. Check out the images on their site, the space is fantastic!

NEW: Follow CreativeMornings on twitter!

Check out pictures of previous CreativeMornings over at Flickr.

Breakfast will be generously sponsored by MailChimp, a fantastic service that makes it easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. Yay!

Mailchimp

CreativeMornings? ‘CreativeMornings’ is a monthly morning gathering of creative types. Each event includes a 10 minute lecture, followed by a 20 minute group discussion. The gathering begins at 8:30am with the topic presentation starting at 9:00am. The whole thing closes down at 10am. The events are hosted at studios/gallery spaces in NYC. (We are always looking for potential hosts that are willing to accomodate 50+ people. Please email us if you’re interested in hosting or sponsoring one of our events!)

CreativeMornings Video: Michael Surtees, DesignNotes

5/8 Michael Surtees from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

(A big thank you to Roland Lazarte for filming and editing.)

CreativeMornings with Michael Surtees

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Last Friday Michael Surtees of DesignNotes gave a fantastic talk on agile design at our May CreativeMornings. A big thank you to our host Daylife and breakfast sponsor Core-Industries.

In his 10 minute talk, Michael was sharing a pretty broad view of agile design. The idea of iterating isn’t something that only happens in an agile process, but letting go of perfection on the first try is a hard concept to grapple. Michael posted the links from his resources slides, check them here.

A big thank you also to our Virtual Guest James A. Reeves who was joining us from Helsinki Finland. James is a writer, teacher, designer and co-foundeder Red Antenna, a creative studio in New York City. James also writes about chivalry, typography, and techno music at kinosport.tv.

A video of Michael’s talk will go up shortly! Watch the video of Michael’s talk.

NEW: Follow us on twitter!

I want to redesign…

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A new element of my CreativeMornings is the Conversation-Starter-Name-Tag experiment where I ask our attendees a question and they then display their answer like a name tag. Today’s question was: “What would you like to redesign?” See all of the answers here. What should I ask next week? And what would your answer have been? Tell us in a comment below.

(Another post about Michael’s fab talk at this morning’s CreativeMorning(s) will go up (hopefully) later today!)

CreativeMornings with Michael Surtees of DesignNotes

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I am excited to announce our upcoming CreativeMornings with Michael Surtees of DesignNotes fame. On friday May 8, Michael will talk on the topic of agile design, which is based on the process of incremental improvements in the design (what you start with and finish with tend to evolve over time)—typically it’s been used in software applications but is now starting to find it’s way into websites. Michael has ideas on how normal graphic designers or agency people might be able to use Agile Design in their process.

Interested in attending? Make sure to r.s.v.p via email quickly as we usually fill up within a few hours. Please tell us your name and what industry you’re in. (We will later on send you a confirmation email with all the necessary details for the event.) I am sorry but we’ve reached full capacity. CreativeMornings start at 8.30am and end at 10am. This event will be hosted at Daylife.

NEW: Follow CreativeMornings on twitter!

Breakfast will be generously sponsored by Core Industries, a DUMBO based strategic interactive, marketing, design and development company. Yay!

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CreativeMornings Video: Andy Bonventre, Google

(A big thank you to Roland Lazarte for filming and editing.)

Talk to me about…

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We had a fantastic CreativeMorning(s) at Google’s NYC offices this morning. A big thank you to Google, for not only hosting but also sponsoring an amazing breakfast. A big thank you to Andy Bonventre for talking on the topic of the collaboration of designers and engineers. And last but not least: A warm thank you to our Virtual Guest, John Ford, skyping in from Greensboro, NC.

I am still giddy about the fact that we got to tour the Google Offices! Whee!

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I started a small experiment this morning, that I am planning on carrying through the next CreativeMornings. I asked people to print out a nametag-like paper titled “Talk to me about….” I *loved* that some of you actually took the time to ‘design’ the batch. Take for example this one. My question to those of you who attended this morning’s event: Did it spark a conversation? What should the next one say/ask? (See most of the tags of this morning here)

CreativeMornings with Andy Bonventre of Google

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I am excited to announce our upcoming CreativeMornings with Andy Bonventre of Google. On April 10, 2009 Andy will be discussing how he evangelizes the symbiotic relationship between design and engineering, and how he learned to trust his designer. Andy has been a loyal CreativeMornings attendee and I am excited that he is switching sides for this month’s event! Venue will be announced shortly! I am smiling all over my face: Google is hosting the event! YAY!

Interested in attending? Make sure to r.s.v.p via email. We are filling up quickly. Please tell us your name and what industry you’re in. (We will later on send you a confirmation email with all the necessary details for the event.) We’ve reached our limit, I apologize.

NEW: Follow CreativeMornings on twitter!

We are looking for a breakfast sponsor that will cover coffee and bagels. You would in exchange get mentioned on swissmiss and during the actual event. Please get in touch sponsor [at] swiss-miss.com if interested.

CreativeMornings Video: Armin Vit of UnderConsideration

Armin Vit of UnderConsideration was our wonderful speaker at our march CreativeMornings. He spoke about branding and gave us some wonderful insights on how we are affected by it on a day to day basis. I especially loved his Chocolate Chip Cookie analogy.

The event was generously hosted at HUGE. They had me speechless when I saw the breakfast buffet. We are talking fruit salad, nutella (!), croissants and mimosas. A big virtual hug and thank you to the team over at HUGE.

I was especially excited about this month’s virtual guest, Chris Glass. I have been following Chris’ online for years now and was thrilled to finally get a chance to e-meet him via skype video.

For those of you that couldn’t make it to the event, you can watch the video below. (We apologize for the bad projection quality of Armin’s presentation.) A big thank you to Rolo for filming and editing.

Big Spaceship has an interesting post on the talk.

CreativeMornings Video: Matthew Waldman of Nooka


2/27/09 Matthew Waldman from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

At February’s CreativeMornings generously sponsored by Nooka and hosted by Parsons, we had a wonderful time with Matthew Waldman. The chief question he posed to the crowd was “What Motivates You” and then he set out explaining how his own biography led him to understand his own motivation. He explained his motivation as questioning what seems intuitive and seeing if that process can be made more intuitive. There was some great talk about universal language and how the Nooka watch was born in a london train station (though he had been sketching the idea before that).

One of the more interesting revelations was that, Nooka is a design agency, not a watch company, its merely a design agency (or lifestyle brand) that has only brought a watch to market. I’m excited to see what they come up with next. As a final note, and more or less a reoccurring theme in terms of creative successes, Matthew asserts “I am not a genius, I had this idea and I had happy accidents.”

You can see the photos of the event here.

A big thank you again to Parsons for hosting, for Cyrilla who supplied us with delicious Nuts&Nuts cashews and to Rolo Lazarte for filming and editing the event.

CreativeMornings with Armin Vit

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I am excited to be announcing our upcoming March CreativeMornings with Armin Vit on March 13, 2009. Armin will be speaking about branding and brand experiences without pretense and with just enough sarcasm and irony to make your morning a little more interesting. If you want to brush up on his style ahead of time I’d recommend checking out the blog / column / branch of underconsideration, Brand New.

This month’s networking breakfast/lecture series is being generously hosted at HUGE in Dumbo. YAY!

Interested in attending? Make sure to r.s.v.p via email as there are only 50 spots available. We are filling up quickly. Please tell us your name and what industry you’re in. (We will send you a confirmation email with all the necessary details for the event.) I am sorry but we’ve already reached our limit, we can no longer accept r.s.v.p’s.

A post covering last week’s CreativeMornings with Matthew Waldman alongside with the full video of the event will be coming shortly.

CreativeMornings with Matthew Waldman

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I am excited to announce our upcoming CreativeMorning with Matthew Waldman of Nooka Fame. Matthew was my very first boss here in NYC, a good 10 years ago. I remember the morning when he showed me a sketch of his very first Nooka. Now, years later, they’re sold at such prestigious places as the MoMA. He obviously knows what he’s doing and I am so happy for his success. It will be interesting to hear him speak about the long path of having a product idea until seeing it on store shelves.

As he is an adjunct of Parsons School of Design they generously agreed on hosting the event at their auditorium. A big warm thank you!

Interested in attending? Make sure to r.s.v.p via email as there are only 50 spots available. We are filling up quickly. Please tell us your name and what industry you’re in. Sorry, the event is full, we’ve reached our limit!

We are still looking for a Breafkast Sponsor. Please let us know if you’d be interested in sponsoring coffee and bagels in exchange of instant karma points and exposure on swissmiss and the actual event.

(I realize that we initially announced this event for february 13. Unfortunately we had to push the date back, we apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.)

Today’s CreativeMorning with Anjeli Sharma and Joey Roth

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CreativeMornings continues! Today’s talk from Anjeli Sharma, Sr. Strategist at Naked, introduced some of the main concepts of designing Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) for the Food and Drug Market (FDM). The discussion started off with the idea of “unboxing” as in once I buy the product, what is the experience of opening it? And continued on to the many points of how education (of clients), marketing, and testing processes all impact the final package design. It was a great chance to to think and talk about packaging and the role it plays in the perception of a product.

We also increased our interactions with our virtual skype guest. As Joey Roth, the man behind the Sorapot, contributed to this mornings talk and did his best to answer questions on the packaging for a product he designed.

You can see pictures of the event over at flickr, and ad your own to our group.

Big thanks to Naked for hosting this mornings event, what an amazing space they have! Also thanks to Iridesco, the creators of Harvest and Co-op, for sponsoring today’s breakfast. If you’re looking for a better way to communicate between your design team or would like a better way to keep track of your productivity definitely check out them out. And once again, thanks to NYC Tap’d for providing us with bottled water.

Next month’s CreativeMornings will be on february 27, 2009. Matthew Waldman, will talk about his NOOKA empire. We realize we initially announced it to be taking place on february 13th, we unfortunately had to move it later in the month. Thanks for understanding.

CreativeMornings: Anjeli Sharma on “The Role of Packaging Design” (only 30 spots available)

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I am thrilled to announce the first CreativeMornings of 2009: On January 9th, 2009, Anjeli Sharma Sr. Strategist at Naked, will talk on how Packaging plays a crucial role in the communications mix, acting as the core essence of the brand, both on shelf and after purchase. Once at shelf, the package has less than three seconds to grab people’s attention, amidst a slew of competition, shelf talkers and sales prices. Despite it’s importance, the package becomes a means of slapping on extensive messaging, leaving it ineffective and confusing to people. This talk will explore the role of packaging design in communications planning and why it is so important to get it right!

The event is being generously hosted by Naked at 96 Greene Street #3 in Soho and opens up at 8:30am with the 10 minute talk starting at 9:00am, following a 20 minute disussion. Our virtual guest of the month will be Joey Roth, mastermind behind the fabulous Sorapot.

Interested in attending? Make sure to r.s.v.p via email as there are only 30 spots available. We are filling up quickly. Please tell us your name and what industry you’re in. Sorry, but we are at full capacity already.

Can’t attend? Don’t worry, here’s a list of our scheduled 2009 speakers: Matthew Waldman, Armin Vit, Allegra Burnette (Creative Director of Digital Media at The Museum of Modern Art) and Hillman Curtis.

Breakfast will be sponsored by Iridesco, the creators of Harvest, a web-based time-tracking and invoicing application and Co-op, a casual communication tool to help small teams work together better. Both of these apps have played a key role in helping creative businesses stay organized and work efficiently.

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