While I was at the HOW conference I attended an additional 3 hour session on brainstorming led by Stefan Mumaw (or “Brainsqualling” as he likes to call it). He’s the guy that wrote the books Caffeine for the Creative Team, Caffeine for the Creative Mind. The session itself was amazing, a ton of great new information to digest. Toward the end of the 3rd hour he told the room (about 150-200 people) that he had an assignment for those that were interested, but the rest could leave if they wanted. About a 3rd of the room stayed.

The assignment we were given:
Work with the others at your table (about 10 people) to create a fake charity. Over the next two days of the conference we were to work together to come up with a way to get people to donate money to our fake charity (all of it going to real charity in the end). The group that raised the most money got autographed copies of his new book and a nice signed letter press poster. The catch was, we had to tell people it was a fake charity and still convince them to donate. The only information we could offer up was that it was part of an assignment from one of our sessions. There was also a Ferris Beuller’s Day Off theme to both the room the session was held in and the assignment, which you might see hints of in the photos.

After a while of trying to come up with ideas, figuring we’d have to offer something in exchange for donations otherwise it would be the equivalent of begging for change someone mentioned selling something simple, like cheap candy…. or gum! Almost as soon as someone mentioned gum, one of the team members (Art Director Roiby Gonzales from the O’Donnell Agency) came up with a really strange but fascinating idea. He said “I really need a haircut (he had huge curly hair), why don’t we sell people gum that they can chew and stick in my hair for $1 each?” The entire table paused, knowing the idea was amazing, but unsure if he was seriously willing to do it. He assured us all that he was, and we all took small assignments away and met back up the next day right before the vendor area opened knowing we could ambush everyone on their way in. We got a range of responses at first, shock, horror, “Ummm, no way!” until one person was willing to break the ice. From there thing started moving really fast. Our team raised $70 in a little under an hour. Unfortunately only one of the team members was going to be staying until the very end of the conference, so the rest of us were unable to claim our prizes. The one team member did however catch up with Stefan, told him the story, and gave him all of our business cards. He contacted all of us a few days later, and said that not only did we win, but he said it was by far the most creative solution he’s ever seen a team come up with. He said he had our cards and he would gladly mail everyone their prizes this weekend.

This is easily one of the most memorable moments of my creative career and yet another reason why I wouldn’t hesitate to go to the HOW conference next year.

We helped cut the gum out of his hair when it was over… surprisingly, you couldn’t even tell his hair had been cut.

Let me start by saying the HOW conference was amazing, and I’m incredibly thankful that I had the opportunity to attend. There was a great response to the Vistaprint booth and the reaction to Vistaprint in general was overwhelmingly positive. I got a lot of “Oh yeah, I’ve used you guys!”

Anyway, For those of you that don’t already know, the HOW conference is apparently going to be in Boston next year. I would honestly recommend it to anyone in a creative field. I had always looked at these types of conferences as something that sounded cool, but I could never justify spending the money to attend. Now, having been to this one, it dispelled a lot of ideas I had about these types of things, and I can honestly say I plan on attending next year one way or another. It’s entirely worth the cost if your goal is to learn, re-energize yourself creatively, make contacts and of course get tons of cool free stuff. There was amazing technology on display, fantastic talks and workshops, live artistic performances, software demos, the best of the best vendor samples, and some insanely creative booths to check out. I walked around the entire vendor area 7-8 times throughout the days it was open, it never got old.

The sessions I was able to sit in on were amazing – Using the brand value pyramid by Shannon Carter from Cartis Group, and “Brainsqualling” by Stefan Mumaw were the two that really stood out from the rest.

Hopefully I’ll see some of the same great people I met this year at the Boston Conference next year, along with any new people I’ve convinced to attend.

-Nate