The Overlap Conference – Monterey, CA

There were many great photographs that came out of the Overlap Conference in Monterey, CA, but none as delightful as this. A subtle but hilarious accident, this is the back of Christian Crumlish‘s balding (and brilliant) head right next to the question, “Can we replace this?” The display was about solving the world’s coffee-cup litter problem with a device called the Betacup, but I snapped the photo and suddenly the question about replacing something took on a whole new meaning.

The Overlap Conference is a peer-to-peer event that takes place once a year. It requires an invitation (with the intention of keeping it small) so that unstructured, informal learning and sharing can take hold. Dave Gray hosted this year and the theme was ‘Practice. Prototype. Play.’ You can see via the Flickr stream what kind of play occurred. Because I so often work visually with groups, my biggest take away was around building relationships (I can’t bring myself to use the word ‘networking’) with great minds like Jay Cross, Fred Lakin, Chris Messina, Brynn Evans, MJ Broadbent, Peter Merholz, Debera Johnson, the aforementioned Christian, and on and on. It was a warm and inspiring group of people in a cold and foggy landscape.