The girls are back from Chicago, and it was great !!!!!

We had four days of trade show with seminars and 3 days of architectural tours, site seeing and shopping (of course).

The NeoCon trade show was fantastic, the furniture stands were interesting and informative, and we found the American sales representatives who were manning the stands very enthusiastic and helpful. We certainly had our favourite stands and found ourselves going back to them wanting to investigate more.

We attended four seminars including "The critical influence approach to effective work environments. (with research findings surrounding the impact of physical space on behaviour in the workplace)" and "Ergonomics in the office".

The last seminar we attended was very interesting. A large interior design company proposed the new offices of CMT (Country Music & Television), a division of MTV. We viewed the floor plans proposing the space planning and listened to the design philosophies. We were amazed. Sue and I could have been giving the talk, using Deloitte as the client and the Cape Town office, and JHB Building 1 as the proposed project. The new Deloitte interiors are certainly cutting edge. Our space planning is so similar to the floor plans proposed. In fact, we believe our designing is more space efficient. Deloitte also adopted similar philosophies as CMT have, i.e. moving managers from offices into open plan, reducing the square meterage of workstations and switching from dedicated to shared spaces.

We are very excited about continually creating an environment which compliments and reflects our clients’ cultures, whilst also promoting shared spaces, collaborative areas, transparent offices and an energized, open atmosphere with lots of natural light.

We also realised that we are no longer just space planners but also "workspace strategists", assisting our clients in achieving pre-determined goals (such as cost reduction, consolidating locations, increasing productivity, improving office morale and creating an environment showcase to attract and retain talent).

Its good to be back.