Design conferences are magnets for craziness. This year's regional events brought us Richard Simmons in the South, the National Association of Black Cowboys in the Northeast, and now the good folks of Kohler being forced out of their hotel (by armed guards) at the Midwest conference because of a hotel wide Hip-hop show. Nice.

Click here to listen to Lisa Hood and Cinny Tsai of Kohler talk about being turned away from their hotel by armed guards!

So, Tucker Viemeister comes up to me and is like, "Hey, you want to go see the oldest corn patch in America?"

"Um, yes."

Click here to listen to Tucker Viemeister, an industrial design icon: co-founder of Smart Design! founder of the NYC office of frog design! and now head of Springtime USA!

We talk about corn patches, where the name Smart Design came from, secret projects, China, etc. etc. It's about 11 minutes/4MB.

Herb is Senior Design manager at Kimberly Clark, a gi-normous copy to the tune of $15 billion in sales in 2004. It's pretty big.

Herb was responsible for starting up the design group more than six years ago and has shaped his team into a key part of Kimberly-Clark's product development process. (Inspiring for me to see since I am at the beginning stages of this at my company.)

Listen to Herb talk about starting a business group, outfitting consumers with cameras for research, and what's next for his team.

Scott is a professor at UW-Stout and the designer of the Toro Tissue Ring by Vessel. I caught up with him to talk about design education and our past mishaps with beer and portfolios. Eek.

Click here to listen to Scott Christensen!

In an effort to bring loyal Coreviewers to the action I'm posting mp3 interviews with people here at the Midwest Conference. First up: Paul Hatch.

Currently the head of Teams Design in Chicago and the Midwest district, Paul is a low key, highly energetic guy with a British wry sense of humor. His personality is infused into this conference. The speakers here are humble, intelligent and extremely curious with the world around them.

Paul gave a talk this morning on visual perception and design details. In the process, he broke down aesthetics in a way that I have never seen at a design conference.

Click here to listen to Paul talk about aesthetics!

Bruce Nussbaum, editor Business Week...

got involved with ID because a little girl on a plane poured water on his face with an interesting bottle he had never seen before. He featured the bottle in Business Week and the next thing he knows he's helping IDSA with the IDEA awards.

He rehashed a lot of the current talk amongst designers about converging marketing, engineering, research and design into "design thinking". In fact, just go look at the two most recent articles in Core and you will get the basic talk. The major difference is he's a business minded guy. The business community at large is embracing this and it's changing our little design community whether we like it or not.

At the end of his speech he added that this is design's opportunity. We have to grab what is essentially being handed to us and what we have always wanted: taking on the leadership role and designing the experience of everyday life, business, objects, whatever. The question is, can we do it? Will we want to do it? It means intimately collaborating with disciplines and way of thinking that designers have been traditionally against.

Good news for Core: Bruce says IDSA.org and Core77 are his favorite two design sites. wOOt!

The main reason I was going to the Midwest Conference? To celebrate the U. of Illinois' national championship victory with a ton of hot sorority girls!

Well, that plan was thrown out the window late Monday night when the Illini lost to North Carolina in the title game. Bummer. I guess it's up to me and DJ Kreemy to get this party started right tomorrow night. See you dudes in Champaign!