With the conference's focus on Design Business, it was appropriate that the first speaker of the day was Bill Taylor, a great businessman himself, and President of the full service design consultancy, Kaleidoscope. It was refreshing to listen to a "non-designer" talk about the design biz. He makes a believer out of you when he speaks. He treats his clients as partners, and expects the same relationship out of them in return. He also looks at the much talked about Chinese ODM's as an great opportunity, not as the imminent threat that so many designers believe them to be. Perhaps the aspect that I enjoyed the most though, was that he wasn't up there selling himself, or Kaleidoscope, or a new book...he was just sharing his experiences and the choices he and Kaleidoscope have made in order to get to where they are today.

Apologies for the lack of a picture of Bill, the lighting in these conference rooms is terrible...

On on unrelated note, I find the lack of people sitting in the front row to be an kind of amusing. It doesn't matter how old people get, no one wants to be called on by the teacher...or in this case, the speaker.