One of the coolest things about my job is that I get to see all the crazy and interesting people who for one reason or another want to come visit Savannah.

One such group of crazy people, the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) decided to hold their board meeting here. If you’ve never heard of the IDSA, don’t worry…but listen. The IDSA IDEA Awards are like the Oscar’s of design. Ask any SCAD student worth his or her retro-80’s punk jeans…the IDEA awards are “it.”

The new president of the organization, Frank Tyneski is about as big a bad-ass as you can get in the design community. The dude has more than 50 domestic and foreign patents and was Director of Design Integration at Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM…you know, the makers of the beloved crackberry) and led the design efforts on the Blackberry 7100 series (the one with the small two-letter-per-button style keyboard…predecessor to the Pearl.) We got to hang with him for dinner recently, and he’s definitely a cool cat.

(left: IDSA Southern Conf. flier, right: The Butler’s pimptastic pad (pic courtesy of Attic Fire)

Last week I had the pleasure of being the last person in this office to visit the A.W.O.L. offices downtown on Drayton Street. I know, lame…what took me so long? I have no idea, but I’m glad I finally stopped procrastinating and dropped off our “donation” of two (optionally functional) LaCie hardrives with Tony. As usual with these guys, my expectations were blown.

Never heard of AWOL? Well, either you’ve been living under a rock, or aren’t very cool. Sorry, but its true.

AWOL (All Walks of Life) is one of the coolest non-profits in town and has stirred themselves up a bevvy of followers, a killer program and a good deal of grant money in the last few years. Their mission is pretty simple: “to promote and provide self-awareness through the use of poetry, hip-hop and life.” Basically, they provide young people and at-risk youth with safe afternoon and night-time youth programs. Programs that, though spoken word (poetry) and hip-hop, encourage education, respect, creativity and most of all, nonviolence.