Julie Lasky (ID Magazine) + Davin Stowell (Smart Design) + Eric Chan (ECCO Design) + Manuel Saez (HumanScale) + Walter Herbst (HLB) = an awful lot of ideas.

Davin
"People don't want photographs, they want to share memories with their friends."
(reminiscent of Starck's "People don't want lamps, they want light." And yet we keep making lamps and photo printers.)

"We don't have very many clients coming to us saying 'You know, we don't really have a deadline. And you know, just bill us when you're done.'"

"The rest of the world has designers, and they're just as good as you and will do it for a lot less money." (those of you who've been following along will recognize this as a recurring theme)

"A brand is nothing more than a memory of an experience."

Eric
"The world is the factory now." (third time this weekend someone has referenced Thomas Friedman's recent NY Times magazine essay)

"People care about their own actions before thinking about a company profile."

"People are ready to pay more." (examples: Prius, American Apparel, Whole Foods)

Walter
"We're all anxious about competing in a world where there's so much free and low-cost design."

"Go to the printer aisle at Office Depot and what do you see? It's all grey, it's all pretty good, but it's all just stuff."

And for the 1253rd time: "We buy experiences not objects."

"But what's beyond experience is tribal identification." (example: the Roomba robot vacuum -- not that it vacuums better, but that it makes you one of the Hi-Tech Early Adopter tribe)

"I don't really give a damn what my client thinks....The reason I say that is, I'm not in the business of making things for my client, I make things for the market. If you're going to tell me you like pink and green, that's fine, but unless you're gonna buy the entire run, I'm going to do what the market is telling us."