A New Altitude

Yesterday I went to Alt Summit NYC, which is a spin-off of the larger Altitude Design Summit held in Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s basically a design blogging convention, though it’s open to everyone. Some people were neither designers nor bloggers, but everyone was interested in both. And yes, that means right now I’m blogging about a blogging convention. But it’s the best blogging convention, I bet, and you know how I love to find the best stuff!

It was held at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and had a bunch of very generous corporate sponsors that provided attendees with craft projects, food, and eventually even booze! Everything was delicious and gorgeous, and they pretty much fed us every two hours, which is relevant to my interests.

It was fun to be in the MSLO offices, and once I gained access to the building I thought about how I could probably go exploring wherever I wanted and then just say I was lost if I got caught. It would have actually been true, since I practically got lost just trying to get to where I was supposed to be going. Even though there were signs. But the offices are HUGE, and the signs were really far apart.

They really rolled out the blue carpet for us.

It started out with coffee and crafts and mingling, which was a little overwhelming because the room was SO LOUD you had to practically had to shout, which is not really a first impression I like to make, especially so early in the morning. The space had two walls of windows and a cement floor; Stunning, but it creates quite a din when you add 200 bloggers, 197 of which were ladies. (One actual dude, caught on camera above.)

Crafty ladies.

I’m not going to go through the whole agenda, but if you’re interested you can check it out on the Alt site. My favorite speaker was Tina Roth-Eisenberg of the blog SwissMiss, who is also the founder of Creative Mornings, Tattly, and a great app called TeuxDeux. Tina was really inspiring and helped give me some direction. Or really, gave me confidence that I’m on the right track, and I should continue in the direction I’m going, but with gusto! (Coming soon: New and improved punkahontas.com, now with more gusto!)

Tattly, applied by Tina Roth-Eisenberg herself.

I didn’t take a ton of pictures, because there were pro photographers everywhere. Still, I couldn’t resist snapping a few shots. Like the part where Martha Stewart showed up. Surprise! She only stayed for a few minutes, but it was really awesome. To the surprise of no one.

A collective gasp, followed by a million snapshots.

Everyone was really accepting and encouraging, and I met a lot of really great people. I would totally recommend the Alt Summit to anyone interested in design and blogging. You’ll have to be quick though, they sell out almost immediately.

The event ended with a “color pop” party on the roof of MSLO with cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and a panoramic view of... well, New Jersey. It was still impressive though, and we were treated to a spectacular sunset. By then, I was too busy talking to people to take photos. Indeed, the sunset took second place to the ladies (and like three dudes) of Alt Summit NYC.

Rooftop Color Pop