*** The pics for this story were taken with the Canon S90 and the Nikon D90 ***
I went down to Savannah to attend the IXDA10 convention for interaction design, basically a convention of information architects and UX designers. Also it was another opportunity for me to visit a corner of the country I hadn’t seen yet. Luckily my cousin was going to SCAD, the university that was hosting the conference, so I was able to visit the city on the cheap.
Before I get into the rest of the story there was one particular incident that I just have to mention, it illustrates that you should never judge a book by it’s cover and you never know who you are sitting next to until you make the effort to talk to them. Cutting to the chase, I started a conversation with a person met while in Savannah and found out that she was the inventor of the Snuggie. I know, not exactly the most amazing claim to fame, but still it’s kinda funny to think about it – you never know where those wacky “As Seen on TV” product come from. She was a very modest woman and almost was not going to tell me about her famous invention, when she heard that I work in advertising she couldn’t keep her secret to herself because she was interested in talking about marketing and her experience selling the product. As I mentioned, she is very modest and she likes her anonymity so I didn’t take a picture of her. In her words keeping shut and just cashing the checks has been the best decision she has made (no random people asking her for loans).
Day 1
I spent the first day in Savannah just walking around town and getting my bearings, I discovered that you can see pretty much all of downtown Savannah in about an hour.
While walking around I happened upon Lady and Sons, I’ve heard mixed things from people. Like most celebrity restaurants, people complain about lengthy waits for food that barely justified the inconvenience. I decided to ask, out of curiosity, how long the wait would take and was surprised to find myself seated within 5 minutes. I ended up ordering the chicken pot pie, which was excellent but definitely artery clogging – I can only imagine how much heavy cream and butter went into making it.
After a day of walking around I went back to my cousins apartment to catch up with him. I hadn’t had a chance to meet him yet since he was in school for the entire day. He is studying his masters in special effects at SCAD with a focus on lighting and rendering. He’s also an amazing photographer, check out his flickr page here.
Day 2
The first day of the conference was spent at the Hyatt taking a wireframing workshop. Actually it ended up being more like a contest to see what kind of ideas we could generate with a limited amount of time. We were all split into groups depending on the wireframing tool of choice that we were going to use (I’m and Omnigraffle user). After splitting up we were given information on the client, a couple of personas and some business requirements to begin working.
The client was a non-profit called Loan4Life, they provide micro loans to families that need to pay for Autism related treatments. The challenge was to build a new homepage, which would enable users to search for people who need help and to donate to these people. The session started off with a round of 8-up thumbnail sketches and a quick round of group critique. After picking elements from all the thumbnails that we liked the next step was to sketch out 1-up sketches of a few key pages and present them as a group to another group. Following this round we had to create a final wireframe in 30 minutes using the program of our choice and present the concept to the entire group.
While I didn’t particularly learn anything new, it was interesting to be able to compare my approach and skill level with other IA’s. I’m completely self taught and usually have no other people to use as references to compare my work with – so it was a welcome change to work in a group of other people who do the same thing for a living.
I wanted to take my cousin out for a meal that evening and he hadn’t been to Lady and Sons. This time he got the pot pie and I tried the bacon wrapped shrimp. The pot pie was better, either way you’re going to get a heart attack. Later on that evening there was a quick after party at a local bar, Moon River.
I stayed for a little while and then headed out to catch up with my cousin and visit some other bars that he recommended. I guess two of the big hotspots are Seed and Saya. Both were pretty cool, Saya had a very lounge feel to it with an Asian theme. Seed was more of an upscale bar.
Day 3
The second day of the conference were lectures that lasted from 10:00 to 5:00PM. All he lectures were spread out over the downtown SCAD campus in four of it’s venues, I won’t go through every lecture but subjects varied from the practical to the theoretical.
That night we had an event organized at the SCAD trustee’s garden. Among the highlights were Microsoft Surface tables, which were these touch sensitive coffee tables that you could play games on. Also they had set up an oyster-shucking table. Initially I was skeptical about the wisdom of providing open bar AND shucking knives to complete newbie’s (myself included) but I actually ended up learning how to shuck an oyster without killing myself.
Day 4
The next day I took an architectural tour of Savannah during lunch, the day ended up being kind of miserable with off and on rain. The tour itself was fantastic and was lead by the chair of architecture at SCAD. A few of the interesting facts learned were that Savannah is the largest port south of the mason Dixon line on the east coast. Also, the entire city is rested on a sand bar and the cobblestones that make up the port area were actually ballast from old ships that were loading up cargo n the 1700s. The city itself is actually elaborately panned in a series of squares with open public spaces/gardens that are laid out in a grid throughout the city.
That evening I tried the Shrimp with Grits at Vic’s on the River. The grits in this case were pretty amazing, light and creamy, they almost tasted like scrambled eggs. Actually they reminded me a lot of the spoon bread I had in California. I need the recipe, I tried duplicating the spoon bread a bunch of times and it never came out right.
That night Microsoft organized a party at the SCAD design center. I guess this is the building that the industrial design students take their cases at. There were student exhibits on display and it was amazing the amount of work that these kids put into their designs. I’ve said it before but if I could invent a time machine I’d go back and switch my major to Industrial Design.
Day 5
The final day of the conference was pretty low key for me, honestly attending sessions all day long and staying up late definitely gets to you after a while. Luckily this was sort of a half day event, it also happened to be the day of the Superbowl. Later on that evening I went out to a bar called JJ Boners (seriously) and caught the game surrounded by strangers. Actually it was pretty good because there were a bunch of Indy fans and the game ended up being kinda soul shattering for them.
Day 6
The last day of my say in Savannah was mostly spent walking round taking pictures. I was a bit obsessed with getting some pictures of the Spanish moss on the trees, an excellent time to break out the 50mm and play around with the DOF. After taking endless amounts of pictures, I headed down to the Wilkes house for what was promised to be the best food Savannah had to offer.
The Wilkes house is definitely a unique concept; basically it is southern cooking served in a communal family style. You walk in and get seated (no paying up front) you end up sitting with random strangers and get served a 10 course comfort food meal. It was an amazing experience, the first time in years that I had fried chicken. The atmosphere was completely unique and it was a fitting meal to end my trip on. I ended up taking it easy that night because of the plane I had to catch the next morning. Definitely good times though…
The last thing I did in Savannah was to get out at night and take some pics of the statues in the square. There is definitely an eery feeling about Savannah in the middle of the night, the atmosphere definitely has a ghostly quality to it.
