The AIGA Conference in one long run on sentence per day.

Thursday started with a trip to see the Sappi sponsored Penguin exhiit at the New England aquarium, followed by Ansel Adams with Kara at the Museum of Fine Arts until it was time to go to the opening session where Richard Grefé welcomed the nearly 3,000 attendees, he then introduced John Hockenberry who is actually funny for a newsman who then turned the mike over to Murray Moss of the store/emporium/conglomerate MOSS in NYC who shared with us his 10 favorite things; Juan Enriquez then shared with us how screwing around with nature and tampering with DNA is a good thing, which I suppose it is in some cases like developing milk which can carry amazing antibodies but I still do not like the idea of breeding three winged chickens, just doesn't make sense, then Leila and Massimo Vignelli read from their book, that's right THEY READ FROM THEIR BOOK, John Hockenberry then closed the evening and sent us out into the Boston night. Dinner at Atlantic Fish with Julia, Dave, TIna, and Richard, Dave's co-worker I am not speaking in the third person of myself, and myself.


Friday: Hockenberry, don't call him Frankenberry, started the day with his cow bell again and lead the talk to introduce Barney Frank who spoke to us about Design and CIvic Leadership; Errol Morris picked up the ball and, oh wait, he cancelled; Ellen Lupton then shared Typophillia: Love, Death and Typography, yes, there is a difference between inch marks and quotes, DJ Spooky aka Paul Miller shared culture and design with us and renamed the group AIGA, pronounced AY-ga, Hockenberry then sent us to lunch the afternoon sessions found me in a session moderated by Steven Heller and a panel made up of Armin Vit, Speak Up, Jen Bekman, Michael Beirut, Pentagram and Design Observer blog, and Jason Kottke, really interesting their varied views on blogs and how they all tailor the use of them for different needs; afternoon session Kara Murphy presented her project along with three other groups for Designers Without Clients, not to be confused with Men Without Hats although equally entertaining; Speak Up hosted a party at 33 and I, once again, got sick in Boston!

Saturday: John rang us in with cow bell and introduced Milton Glaser, of which nothing more needs to be said about that other than he has a great recipe for spaghetti from his mother, the man is a LEGEND followed by Nicholas Negroponte, from the media lab at MIT told us how he will be building $100 computers and paying designers based on how much code they can REMOVE, Ben Karlin, Daily Show and Emmy winner, and Paula Scher, Pentagram, took us through their collaborative process of the making of America, John Stewart's book, Ze Frank shared with us his love of Airline Safety Cards and it is really scary but very funny, then we all met a man who is changing the world, for real, Bill Strickland, do some research and you will be inspired, although his secret is really good smoked salmon, Hockenberry wrapped things up for the morning and that afternoon I found myself listening to Ze Frank and his Pedagogy of Play; followed by the closing remarks of JH, Mark Pine of NASA and the Griffith Observatory in LA, Stefan Sagmeister, who needed the only reboot, and Richard Grefé and Hockenberry closed the show and sent us off to the Museum of Science for the closing party.

Sunday: Town meeting, blah, blah, blah, we went to breakfast while Julia went to the airport at 5 am, Mr. Atwood picked Tina up, Eileen headed out of town in her pick and Dave and Richard left for the airport at noon, leaving me to the afternoon in Boston.

It was an inspiring three days! It was great seeing all me mates from school and those who I really last saw two years ago at the last conference in Vancouver.