I'm SOO in my Honeymoon...

with Hilferty, I mean. All those shirts from all those jobs, for all these years, Mister...that i've incessantly made fun of. Bellsouth, Brokat, Earthlink...all that faux-attire-cum-marketing that you've brought home and I scoffed at. Well, who knew i'd be getting my own little uniform here. I wore this last week during one of the two days of workshops with the clients in ArLaTex, proudly and without embarassment, I might add. Well, it helped that Gerry and Richard wore theirs also. We were like the helpful visitor experience men.

Ok, all kidding aside, I am so in awe of these people. I'd heard the company I previously worked with in Atlanta described as "the Clampett's of the exhibit industry," and I'm realizing what a huge leap i've made away from that. These people WOW clients with workshops, involve them in decisions in a meaningful way, funnel everything into delivering the highest quality possible, and are genuinely experts in the field. Everytime I turn around i discover that another coworker is a professor at OU or someplace, or was, or has a celebrity-local-PBS-station-show star wife, children living abroad and travelling the world...with a few notable exceptions, i just haven't previously had the opportunity to work with such accomplished, high-calibre folks. I knew this was going to be a dream job...why did I wait so long?

Last week at the Vision/Mission/Audience workshop we conducted with the new clients in SW Arkansas, while pretending not to be a newbie, I observed the large client group just start to lap up the stuff coming out of Gerry's, Richard's, and Melanie's mouths. Thankfully, I was able to bring myself to speak also, particularly when we got to the point of bubble diagramming a rough idea of visitor experience for the new museum. At the end of 2 days, we accomplished more in the way of defining the project than previous company could have done in 2 months. It made me realize that when it is actually time to design and develop, I won't be grasping for straws and feeling no support around me, but that it will all flow from a solid foundation. Geez what a good feeling.