SEED Conference

As you may have gathered, I was in Chicago at the end of last week. I was there at the Illinois Institute of Technology for the SEED Conference, a joint effort by the principals behind 37Signals, Segura, Inc., and Coudal Partners. It was a 1-day conference about a lot of stuff: business, entrepreneurship, design, software, architecture, etc. I found it completely interesting and inspiring. If you are interested in any of the above topics, I highly recommend it.

40% of the impact for me was just walking around in the Rem Koolhaas-designed Campus Center, where the conference took place. It’s completely amazing. At lunch Harvard Fellow and public radio host Edward Lifson gave a talk about IIT architecture demigod Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his influence on Rem’s building. (At IIT they are referred to as “Rem” and “Mies”. It’s hard not to do the same.) It was absolutely fascinating. You can read the official page about the building, and this other page has a good summary and some photos. There are some more idiosyncratic photos in my Flickr set about the conference.

In addition to my photos, you can also read the slightly off-the-wall trip report (PDF, 7 pages) that I prepared for my team at work.