02 May 2009

Hotlanta

KBIS is taking place this weekend in Atlanta. KBIS is the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show and Conference -- the largest annual gathering of professionals in the industry. Oh, how I have KBIS-envy right now!!! I look forward to the year when I can attend. Drool drool drool. I have known attendees there the past couple years and they've brought back cool photos, literature, and news of technology and trends... but this year, amongst my new peers in Portland, I don't personally know anyone who is there. So sad. Luckily the community of kitchen design on the Internet has really blossomed in the last year or two, so there are a few twitter-ers (tweeters?) that I can follow, as well as KBIS themselves offer an RSS feed which I've subbed to. The KBIS site is more marketing-oriented than news, however (which I expected). For example, apparently Eli Manning lost a competition against his dear mother in a pancake cookoff on a Kenmore induction cooktop.

(ETA -- the RSS feed is not from KBIS, but from K+BB magazine online. http://nbm.typepad.com/kbis_live/)

The last occasion where I spent quality time in Atlanta was for the 1996 Olympic Games, where I both volunteered as a gymnastics statistician as well as had a job maintaining the official website for the USA Gymnastics team. I was in Atlanta for over two weeks -- it's a really fun city. I do hope it's a bit more temperate now in the first week of May, than it was in July 1996!

4 comments:

Joseph said...

You have started a very interesting discussion on kitchen design. I'm a cabinetmaker who really does not want to make kitchens for a living, because the most of what is done in the US is just boxes with a "choice of doors and drawer fronts," the most of which are made in a factory somewhere. Boring. I want to do something else if I can, but what?

Last year I started a blog site with a fellow cabinetmaker and have since been exploring this very subject. European design just absolutely blows my mind, and I find myself doing quite a bit on it, even though these are often modular kitchens that one would simply send away for and have installed by a local craftsman. But what fascinates me is the utter innovation of those designs, so I find myself returning to them quite a bit.

I am also looking to design a kitchen for my wife in a too small space in a tract home, which necessarily lets out those wonderful European designs that excite me so. And whenever I find myself going out on a limb with some idea or another for our kitchen, my wife always grounds me by saying, "If you stick with the classics, you won't grow tired of them."

So, what do you do that is different and yet timeless and practical and stimulating to make if you're a cabinetmaker? Damned if I know, but if I ever figure it out, I mean to make it for us and splash that baby all over the Internet!

What you've written, though, has given me quite a bit to think about, and I thank you for sharing your concepts.

Paul Anater said...

Count me in as an industry pro who's also suffering from KBIS envy this weekend. I go every other year and this is my off year. However, in the last year I have met a huge number of industry people through the blogosphere, Twitter and Facebook and I seem to be the only one not there. Grrr. Next year's is in Chicago and you can bet I'll be there. As a blogger, you could qualify for a press pass Rachele...

Rachele said...

Paul, ironically, I entered the online gymnastics community with press passes, covering events for a gymnastics website. It took me to the Olympic Games and countless other elite competitions. Maybe this blog will take me to KBIS next year!

Koekkener said...

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