[REVIEW'D] The Alt Design Summit

Hey all you ppl who didn't go to the Altitude Design Summit (aka #altsummit) in Salt Lake City last week: SUCKKKKKKAAAAZZZZZZ!

Yep, it rawked that hard.

In it's second year, the Altitude Design Summit brings together the best of the best in the world of shelter/design bloggers for 2 days of kickass panels, inspiring keynotes, and down-n-dirty networking. I didn't attend last year so I didn't really know what to expect. But I was super impressed with their list of speakers, and thought the sessions sounded killer, and oh yeah, full disclosure: the company I work for, Squarespace was one of the sponsors.

So yes, I *had* to go, but after attending, I can tell all y'all that I would do whatever I had to do to get my ass back there next year, cause I rully, rully, rully loved it.

Also, Salt Lake City is fab. It's gorge there, and everyone is blonde and sweet, and EVERYONE, I mean, everyone is wearing Uggs. If you do not own a pair of Uggs and you live in Salt Lake, you may as well face facts: YOUR LIFE IS OVER.

Anyway, here are some highlights from ALT:

Dinner with my new besties.

Wednesday night I was lucky enough to go out to dinner with a sexy group of design blogger chicks including: @designspotting @HouseofBrinson @caitlinflemming @CartoulesPress @apartment_34 @rainakattelson. Kate Spade was kind enough to sponsor our dinner (which was at Lugano), and trust: it was delish, but more importantly, we all just had a blast getting to know each other...oh yeah: and flirting with our adorable waiter.

My panel.

After one of the biggest travel catastrophes I've ever had (I realized at the airport that I had grabbed my husband's computer instead of mine...oh, and his MOUSE DOESN'T WORK. OH, and I wasn't done with my presentation yet and had planned to finish it on the plane.), I somehow worked it all out when I arrived in Salt Lake City and met up with my partner-in-crime, Susan Brinson from House of Brinson. We high-tailed it over to the Apple Store (the ONLY Apple store in Utah, ppl), bought a new mouse and then I was back in business.

The next morn (9am, bbs) I was joined by Susan from House of Brinson as well as Megan from Not Martha at our Bigger, Stronger, Faster Blogging panel where we shared all our best tips and tricks for blogging hard. This was a bit of a redux of my Lavish panel that I did with Nicole from Sketch42 Blog, but the addition of two new panelists definitely revved it up a bit. Gotta say, this was my fave slide:

I countered this with the notion that yes: blogging has brought me tons and tons of amazing opps, and has paid off in spades, and I'm SO thankful for it all, however: also it just really sucks a lot of the time. Why is everyone afraid to actually talk about this?? Not sure if it was because our sesh was at 9am and was the first one of the conference, or if people were just not ready to laugh so early in the morn, but it kinda got no reaction. And yeah: I thought this one would kill...so it did throw me off my game a bit. However, me and my panel mates powered through the rest of our tips/tricks and, in the end, everyone really seemed to dig it. Grace Bonney from Design*Sponge brought up my Evernote rec in her panel later that afternoon, so that was rad to the power of sick.

Here are my faves from my panel mates:

Susan had a great rec for Mention Notifier, which is a service that will email you everytime you are mentioned on Twitter or added to a Twitter list. Yes I know that we all have access to a "mention" column on Twitter itself, but at times when you're either at work (and can't check) or out and about, it's a nice option.

Megan mentioned Instapaper, which is one of my fave apps. It lets you save longer articles that you find online, on Twitter, etc to read for later.

So, yo! Thanks to everyone who came to this bitch! Megan did a great wrap-up of all of our tips/tricks here.

Kickass Panels (Yes, aside from mine).

You can see the rest of the panels here by browsing through the Alt sked, but I have to say: I felt like both the quality of speakers and the level of content discussed was pretty fab across the board.

A couple of my faves were:

• My fave-oh-rite-o panel of em all was the advertising panel with Erin Loechner from Design for Mankind, fellow Brooklynite Liz Gumbiner from Cool Moom Picks and Maggie Mason from Mighty Girl. A few take-aways: don't do giveaways for free, don't always look at advertisers as "the enemy," and THINK BIG. Amazing opportunities are not going to drop in your laps out of the sky, ppl. So start making crap happen for yourself! Oh, and Erin had this KILLER IDEA about throwing a "resource party." Basically you get all your friends together and hadn out index cards. Have everyone go around the room and say one thing they'd like to accomplish in the near future. Then when each person puts their wish out there, anyone who can help out raises their hand. Then you have a break, drink wine and let everyone hook up and share resources. Brillz, right?
• The panel on the best new up-and-coming blogs was so much fun! Here's a full list of all the blogs discussed, with links to each (yep, your RSS reader is about to get ripped a new one: TOO MANY BLOGS TO READ!).
• The Pitching panel with @Dooce and Neil Chase from Federated Media was also pretty interesting. Mostly because at the end, @swissmiss layed the SMACKDOWN, and confronted Federated about how they ignored her like 5 times. It was epic! Chase outlined some important tips though like: get your info up on Quantcast immeds (that seems to be the benchmark for measuring site traffic) and reiterated the idea that we should all have a media kit. If you want to be seen as a viable option for advertisers, ppl: LOOK LIKE YOU'RE A VIABLE OPTION.

Swissmiss Keynote:

Speaking of Swissmiss, one of the best parts of Alt for me was the closing keynote with Tina Roth Eisenberg from swissmiss. And no, not just because she hugged me! Well, ok, kinda because she hugged me! But also because it was utterly inspiring to hear her story, marvel at her confidence and innovative approach, and bask in the light of her beautifully designed slides. This chick has got it goin on, big time. If you don't visit her site on a daily basis, you are so stoopid...AND dead to me. Go there now and go there often--it's so chock-full of good shiz, your head is gonna explode.

Room for Improvement?

Just a few suggestions to make Alt even more killer next year:

• No Twitter handles on the name badges?! Really!? We don't really need the dates on there cause we're there and we know when the dates are. Let's keep the logo, get rid of the date stuff, and then we have plenty of room for Twitter handles!
• I'm guessing this was some last minute screw-up, *but* we did not have printed schedules avail until the morn of the conference (I had registered the day before). I know that skeds are avail online, but as someone who was speaking at the first sesh, it was slightly harrowing not knowing exactly where I should be going. Also, I like to map out my sessions the night before and circle all the ones I wanna hit up, and yeah: I can't circle shiz on my laptop screen.
• Scheduling: Ok, so I *know* that there can only be so many keynotes, but also some sessions seem like they should be more than just a session. Like maybe when Dooce or Grace Bonney is speaking, there don't need to be competing sessions (and you can have those workshop thingys). Or maybe add keynote bkfst sessions?
• While I loved the idea of the round table sessions on day two, it was very hard for me to hear my session leader, and harder still to see their presentation at the table. @designspotting and I were chatting and we came up with this idea: each round-table leader gets 10 minutes to speak in front of the entire crowd pecha kucha style. Then we break up into smaller groups for questions/answers and more collaboration. This way we'll get a better sense of what each topic/topic leader is all about, can make a decision about which topic fits our needs the best, and come prepared with questions.
• Perhaps you could help people along with the networking thing a bit more one eve? Like set up some sort of speed networking event (could even be categorized by location? blog focus? etc.) You can make it optional, but still might be fun to help actively connect people a bit more. 
• The "swanky party" at Lamb's Grill seemed slightly odd to me. True we showed up late, but I don't often go to swanky parties at places where they sell gum at the counter, and waitresses are wearing plastic name badges. You know where we could have had a killer swanky party?? At the hotel! Maybe it was booked?
• Also, we need to start a friggin petition to get Bravo added to the TV line-up at the Grand America. They have the HISTORY CHANNEL, but not Bravo?? I missed the last ep of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills there and that was tragic. Until I caved, bought it on itunes and then watched it on the plane (sidenote: KIM IS AN ALCOHOLIC?? Oh Em Gee, that explains soooo much).

Other things to note.

• The Grand America hotel was GORGEOUS and everything about my stay there was phenomenal from top to bottom. The rooms are also perfectly suited for sharing as there is a whole killer dressing room (with an extra sink!) right outside of the fantastico, gigantic bathrooms. Also, the session rooms were killer, and all were so well equipped...it really made presenting there a pleasure.
• Not sure who's brother Salem was, but he belonged to someone who helped plan Alt. And he SAVED MY ASS SO HARD. It was such an incredibly nice touch to have an AV/helper person at each session. It took the pressure off times a billion.
• Bring, GOBS AND GOBS AND GOBS of biz cards, ppl. I know we should all expect the unexpected, but I was kinda shocked by the number of ppl who: forgot theirs, lost theirs, ran out, etc. Or maybe it was just me? OMGZ, YOU PPL ALL HATED ME AND WERE PRETENDING TO BE OUT OF CARDS??? So. Not. Cool.
• By the way, if we didn't get to exchange cards, let's still stay in touch! I love you! You rule! email me at ericareitman at gmail dot com and we can be besties too.
• Salt Lake City was BEE-yoo-tee-ful. If you ski, you should check it out there. Everyone I've spoken to since I got home says "YOU DIDN'T GO SKIING??" with this pained look on their face.

There were allegedly some fresh baked cookies at the hotel each night, though every time I walked by the plates were empty. I had loads of fun with my HGTV friends, loved the Kate Spade party, and ate really delicious mac-n-cheese at another sponsor's party whose name I'm forgetting now like a chump.

OH, and the @Honda shuttles were AMAZEBALLS!

Anyway, that's mostly it. I know you normally expect some bitching and ranting from me, but I srsly got nothin. I hung out with such fab new homies, reconnected with some homies from Lavish, chilled with some old school homies and really just had the best time E-V-A-H.

So, yeah: If you're on the fence about going to Alt next year, get off...you'll <3 it. Mean it. For realz.

Other recaps.

In the meantime, here are some other fab recaps that you should read instead of mine:

• Online Etiquette & Ethics [Design*Sponge]
• Things I learned at Altitude Design Summit [Promise Tangeman]
• 8 Steps to Get Over Post Alt Depression [Old Sweet Song]
• Highlights From Altitude Design Summit [Sacramento Street]
• A Little Event Called "The Alt" [Bohemian Vintage]
• Portraits: The Many Moods of Maggie Mason [Justin Hackworth]
• Alt 2011 Recap [The Aubergine Notebook]
• Here's the Social Media Resources pdf from Design Milk's panel
• 12 Delicious Design Blogs You Must Read, Stat [Cool Mom Picks]
• What I Learned At Alt Summit On Twitter [Lights & Letters]
• The Stars Align [We Heart Paper]
• Alt Summit 2011 [Mimi + Meg]
• The Kiddo Alt Summit Recap Part 1 [Modern Kiddo]
• Alt Summit Hangover [Design Crush]
• Alt Summit Recap [A Little Sussy]
• Alt Glow [The Makerie Journal]
• 10 Design Blogs You Must Read [Today's Mama]
• Taking Care of Business [Camille Styles]
• And also the Alt ladiez are collecting links on their blog!

p.s. I think I'm gonna start a Badass Blogging series to pass along some of my best tips for blogging HARD on the regular. You btchz down??