Headstand Media

As a member of Chicago’s creative web design community, Headstand Media was invited to participate in Google’s Creative Sandbox 08 - Chicago event, which was held last night, October 16, 2008. They had rented out a large warehouse facility on the near west side and decked it out with all manner of state-of-the-art technology in true Google fashion. There were stations all around the multiple room complex that featured the various areas of Google technology including: Google Maps, iGoogle, Search, YouTube, Rich Media, Finance and many more.

The event was well catered and the food and drink flowed. I’d guess there were about 500 or so attendees throughout the evening from various agencies, creative design firms, independent web designers, developers and educational organizations. It was hard to walk around at certain times.

My favorite station was at Google Maps, probably because I am a former cartographer, or map illustrator as some may know it. The technology surrounding Google Maps and Google Earth is truly amazing to me. Not only is the online version the best out there, Google has opened up the technology to designers and developers like Headstand Media through an API, to add more design and functionality to the core base technology.

I saw ALL the PUBLICLY KNOWN satellites that are currently in orbit around the earth mapped in real-time. You could click on each one and see who owned it, it’s name and what it does. There is a similar plug-in developed that shows every commercial airline flight in real-time. Truly amazing stuff.

A brief welcome to the event included an explanation of how Google views themselves as a technology company that partners the creative community to produce better solutions. In this vein, I would say they were successful. I came away with lots of new ideas on features that Headstand Media could design and develop and deliver to our clients that would add value to their websites, web applications, or business Intranets.

As I left the event, I was handed a “Google bag” that had several printed books in it, and a black t-shirt with this printed on the back…

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