Ever heard of NeoCon? How about NeoCon 2023? NeoCon is the hub for the commercial design community! A place for designers, architects, end-users, manufacturers, dealers, service providers, associations, educators, students and media to unite each year in June. 

This year I got to attend NeoCon with Dianana Rushton. Diana is Project Manager and Assistant Designer here at Color Works. This episode is our highlight reel for you! We share trends we saw, the layout of the conference, the most ideal itinerary, and constructive feedback. Whether you plan to attend in the future or just want the inside scoop—you won’t want to miss this colorful conversation!

In this episode, we cover:

• What is NeoCon

• What the focus was for NeoCon 2023

• The meaning behind “Alone Together”

• How to navigate overstimulation at work

• The new role of noise absorption in the office

• The conference displays and booths that stood out

• Are we coming back to the office or remaining virtual

• Sustainable material options for the office

• Lessons learned from NeoCon 2023

• How to navigate NeoCon

• The best way to organize your NeoCon itinerary

• How to maximize your creativity

Have you ever thought of visiting NeoCon (or did we perhaps pass you in the halls)? Reach out and share your thoughts on the event with us over on Instagram!

More about Diana Rushton

Diana Rushton specializes in project management and interior design. She likes to say that the partnership between project management and design work fulfills her lifelong love of art and puzzles. With 15 years of experience in brick and mortar, e-commerce, residential, and commercial design, she feels she’s found her true calling. With each project, she strives to create beautifully inspired work while bringing transparency to the process. When she’s not designing or managing projects, you’ll probably find her sipping iced coffee or petting as many puppies as possible.

Links and Mentioned Resources

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Interior Design Resources

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More about Colorful Conversations with Katie

Welcome to “Colorful Conversations with Katie”! Join us for a vibrant webcast where we seamlessly blend the realms of design and business in a fun and professional setting. Available on YouTube or any of your favorite podcast platforms!

Hosted by the dynamic Katie, a seasoned expert with nearly 20 years of experience in both fields, this engaging series promises to ignite your creative spark and sharpen your entrepreneurial acumen. From exploring the latest design trends to uncovering strategies for building successful ventures, we dive deep into the colorful world where aesthetics meet profitability.

Whether you’re a budding designer or a savvy entrepreneur, this webcast is your go-to source for inspiration, insights, and a dash of lively conversation. Tune in and let your imagination, business and life take flight!

This post may contain affiliate links, so I may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on my site at no additional cost to you. 

The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of the Colorful Conversations with Katie podcast follows

Katie Decker-Erickson (00:15.118)

Welcome to Colorful Conversations with Katie from exploring the latest design trends to uncovering strategies for building successful ventures. We are going to dive deeper into the colorful world where aesthetics meet profitability. Whether you're a budding designer or a savvy entrepreneur, this webcast is your go -to source for inspiration, insights, and hopefully a dash of lively conversation. Today, joining me is our guest, Diana Rushton. She has been with our firm for over a year now, but been in the creative space.

for 15 years. And we're so excited to welcome her to the webcast as we begin discussing Neocon 2023 and what we've learned. Welcome aboard.

Diana Rushton

Thank you for having me.

Katie Decker-Erickson

Yeah, it was so fun. And we had a really, I think we had a great time at Neocon. It was plenty of lessons learned, great discoveries, all sorts of things. What jumped out to you?

Diana Rushton

I would say probably just the like magnitude of commercial space that was very like, office heavy, I didn't realize that like in that commercial space, like that was the focus because what we do is so wide in like how we help our clients. And, but like to see like, it was very meticulous about office and how they had put a lot of thought into like making it easy and how to coexist and with remote work and in -person work and how they really like hybrided that together, I thought was great, but I don't know. I wasn't expecting it to be so office, um, focused just because of what we do. It was. It was very interesting.

Katie Decker-Erickson

I totally agree. And I think one of the biggest takeaways for those of you that have gone to neocon in the past is the top two floors used to be outdoor furniture and that outdoor furniture has been relocated to a specific once a year event in Atlanta that's coming up in the next month. And so if you go to the top, well, you can't even really get to the top two floors. They're just non -existent. That being said, there are a few other outdoor furniture stores that do have permanent showrooms there, but it's meager. I think at best compared to what was there as they just get their own mark out of Atlanta. So that was, I think, a huge surprise for us, expecting to go there and have that as an option potentially and realizing that commercial outdoor furniture has moved in a very permanent way and don't expect to see it, at least for the foreseeable future back in Chicago. A couple of other thoughts that we had walking away, one term that resonated with both of us was the alone together.

There were three key points that we wanted to share with you, but the first one was alone together. And it's very interesting as people come back to work, we want to be together, but boy, we've sure gotten used to being alone as well. Do you want to kind of expand on that, Di, and what stood out to you?

Diana Rushton

Yeah, because I mean, being, I mean, we're all virtual in our design firm, which is a blessing for all of us, I think, because it's like we can do what we need to do and travel and still keep things moving along for our clients but I also do understand coming from a brick and mortar background in visuals, like the need to be in person and to collaborate with others and to have like hands -on type of experience at work, no matter what industry you're in. But like, how do we do that now that we've all become very accustomed to being able to like start a little laundry on my 10 minute break or like I didn't meal prep, but it's not a big deal. Cause I can just make lunch cause I had my kitchen. So it was very interesting to see them come out with these like different pods that are like quiet and insulated so that you could have a little bit more of like a break from just like the loudness that comes with over -simulation from having that many people around you that were just not used to. And then as an introvert myself, like I appreciated those two, cause it's, I love being around people like that is not, you know, in question, but it's like sometimes I just need like 10 minutes to review something. And like my, my attention's being like, I just need like quiet focus. So having that option, um, that has really exploded in the industry, I think is a really big deal that we'll see a lot more offices doing, whether you're like an entry level office and you just have like one or two locations, or if you are a big corporation and you have them worldwide. But like having that option for as a teammate or as like a group, like focus, I think was really impactful. And just like the width of it too, right? Like we saw a bunch of different like styles. So you could really make it work from no matter. what company you were.

Katie Decker-Erickson

Yeah, it was crazy. We saw like lights that were put into the backs of these that were designed to imitate a night sky. We saw some that you could almost lay down in and would calibrate your senses and help you guys, right? Like there were some designed for sensory issue kids that are struggling, especially because they've just grown up in a whole COVID world and they show up to first grade and oh boy. it's a lot noisier than they thought it was gonna be. In fact, it was interesting, I'm thinking back on the one vendor that shared with us, he had heard of an employee who actually quit jobs and switched strictly because the office environment was too noisy for her and they had no intent of toning it down in any way. And she's like, I just couldn't take how loud it was, I couldn't function in there, which is pretty interesting. It brings up the other component of this, which is all the felt panels we saw there. If you were looking for felt, I would highly recommend Neocon. There's an overabundance of felt. You could get felt in every color, every texture, wood -looking felt panels. There was noise absorption at a level that no pun intended was off the charts. It was an insane amount of felt.

Diana Rushton

Well, and it was interesting too, as a visual. It's like the...Cause there were so many, you're totally right. Like, but out of so many, the two that really stick out to me are the ones who had a good display at Neocon. Like they had like the pretty, um, like drop almost like they created their own like drop ceiling in it, but that it was like all fell. And so they could really showcase what they're able to do. And then like the big woodland creatures, like they had their entire background and there wasn't, it wasn't even anyone at their booth. Like there wasn't a human there, but I like took the info card. Cause it was like, if you can make that large of a scale in fell, like when we're doing like, you know, waiting rooms for like little kids, like I'm there for that. But it was like, it was just interesting as a business side, like there's that much felt, but I only like remember two of them.

Katie Decker-Erickson

Totally. 120%. Isn't that, yeah, I felt was a big thing, but I think, I think, you know, really the whole alone together, however we get there, we need to be together, but we've also gotten used to a very reduced amount of noise and we still want to meet in smaller groups, which these pods were allowing for where you have one or two people. I think the max we saw well most of them were four on their Macs. And there was a couple that you could do a round table of like eight or 12 people that I want to say.

Diana Rushton

You can do like the door. So it was like more of like a half moon. Like it was.

Katie Decker-Erickson

Yeah. Yeah. So it was a little different. The other thing too, that segues really nicely into this was that whole return to work tension that we saw manifested and just, are we coming back to work? Are we not coming back to work? How many days are we coming back to work? How are we coming back to work? And just seeing, And just the general tension. In fact, we got to attend a lecture on that and listen to the tension of how are we designing spaces so that we are returning to work and people want to come back to work. But the how was the really big missing component to me and that we're trying a bunch of different things. But I feel like it's still so new that nothing has actually stuck like we're going to have big conference rooms, but we're also going to have private pods. But we're also going to have it just felt still very nebulous to me, I guess. Did it feel that way to you at all?

Diana Rushton

Yeah, because I feel like it was either you did the pods and you did the felt or you did like the big giant conference tables and office chairs. Like there was no company that really showed like, how do you display this or how do you set this up in your office to do both? Like there wasn't a shero saying, this is how you can take this manufacturer and this manufacturer and this manufacturer and create a cohesive look that your, your teammates actually will use a and B will enjoy to retain, you know, talent and like. people in the office. Like there wasn't that showroom. I don't feel like.

Katie Decker-Erickson

I don't either. It was interesting. One manufacturer furniture manufacturer was saying the big thing is versatility. And we sure saw a lot of that in all that office furniture, whether it was having a spine that ran through the entire office where you could pop in a desk or put in a chair or add a lamp or because I don't think anyone really knows how this is going to all shake out when it's said and done. And so the whole idea is, Hey, we're going to buy furniture, but we're going to do it in a way where if we end up going back to individual offices, we can, if we're going to keep everybody in a cowork space, we can. It was amazing. The amount of vertebrae I feel like that we saw as far as like having an electrical spine and then attaching people workstations and whatever to it. I think that was, we saw that in multiple manufacturers.

Diana Rushton

Yeah, a lot, like it was configurable so you can move it around. And even with the pods, a lot of them are on casters. So you could move them around and have like. the option, you know, during some seasons, like during the Christmas season, if you're corporate, like you don't have a ton of people in the office. So you may not need that many, like little pods taking up your main space. So you could like roll them around.

Katie Decker-Erickson

Totally. And one thing I was surprised by too, and was really keeping an eye out for was the amount of ADA compliance that were in those pods. And don't get me wrong, there were a ton that were not ADA compliant, but there was also a surprising number that was where you could still drop one or two and be meeting ADA compliance standards. And they were still very accessible, very quiet, very effective still. And I think that that hurdle, when the idea of the pod initially came to the market, that wasn't necessarily addressed. And I feel like now it's been adequately addressed, I would say.

Diana Rushton

Yeah. And it didn't feel like a design afterthought. It wasn't like...Oh, we had to do this because we need it, but it was like, Oh no, we did this so that this can be used by everyone. And it wasn't just a like half done design, but it was very intentional and it looked great. And it was like, okay, this will actually be useful. Totally.

Katie Decker-Erickson

Um, the third and final thing that I think we really saw a lot of was sustainable materials. Sustainable materials are making a huge push right now. I don't want to say come back because it never went out of vogue, but, um, The amount of sustainable materials we saw, I think was pretty off the charts right down to CEUs on sustainability, recyclability across the board from office chairs. I mean, we saw it in pretty much everything I wanna say.

Diana Rushton

Yeah, and even seeing a lot of the companies that were B Corps too, it was just like really encouraging that, if you buy from that manufacturer, the priorities of our firm are going to be like extended into the manufacturers that we choose. And...I mean, it's a big deal. Like that stuff is not replaceable. And it was nice that it was top of mind.

Katie Decker-Erickson

I totally agree. And one thing about, I think that we're seeing in Gen Z and subsequent generations is we want sustainability. We want to find minority women owned businesses. We want to go track those down and have more of a we care attitude when we're making our purchases. And so to be given the option of finding those businesses there, I think was lovely. I mean, like you said, I'm looking in the window as I'm walking down the halls to see if they've got a B Corp representation to show that, which I think was really fun. Okay, lessons learned. Like what do we think could have been done differently or that would have helped us as walking into the show, as people attending the show, trying to figure out what's the best way to navigate Neocon? Cause it is numerous floors. It's hundreds of thousands of square feet and it's a lot. I would say that it's a lot. Everyone bring your tennis shoes. I think we averaged five to six miles a day just in the building alone, which was pretty incredible. But yeah, I mean, what do you think could have been done differently that would have helped us more as attendees?

Diana Rushton

I feel like the biggest thing would have been like the, like, I think it was the 11th floor where they had a lot of like the pop -up vendors. And so there was just a ton, a ton of people up there and we found some really good resources up there. But if they had been organized a little bit better, as far as like here are, all the office chairs in two rows. Here are some kid focused humans like in these two like corridors. Like that would have been helpful because there's only so much time you have. And so we were on a very specific list of like, we want to find X, Y and Z, but we were having to go through each floor almost to find that one. So I know some of those permanent showrooms that might be a little bit hard to achieve, but as far as like those pop -ups go, I feel like maybe we could have squished like categories together a little bit better.

Katie Decker-Erickson

Totally like I know some of the problems we were going to solve were like commercial lighting, of course, outdoor furniture, artificial plants. And those were just kind of hodgepodge. There were some on seventh, there were some on 11th. It was just kind of bits and pieces together. And it would have been nice to say, hey, as a company, we know the problems we're wanting to solve and we're going there to solve them. And these are the areas we're going to specifically hit. I think that would have been super duper helpful too. Of course, the elevators are always an event at Neocon. Word to the wise, start on the top floor and then take the stairs down. Gravity is your friend, just accept and go to the top floor and work your way down for sure. I do feel like it metered out as far as timing of the show, like show tips that we would give people who haven't been to Neocon maybe for next year or subsequent years. I would say Monday is packed, Tuesday pretty packed, by Wednesday pretty quiet. Still some flowing around. I know I flew out Wednesday morning. You had more Wednesday there. What would you say?

Diana Rushton

Yeah. Wednesday day was pretty quiet and some of the vendors started to pack up, I think a little earlier than like when the show like actually ended, which I don't, I don't blame them, but because I got there Monday, like afternoon, I didn't have a full day Monday. Um, so I, I feel like on Wednesday, even if they had a couple of more like teaching or like, um, Like some of those like interactive things, I feel like they had, might've had a little bit more buy -in on that, like full Wednesday, unless that wasn't their intent, right? Like if they were like, nah, that's not a point, but for me, because of my schedule, like I could not fly out on Sunday because you know, other things are going on. It would've been nice to have more of a full day on Wednesday because I was already there. So yeah, if you're planning to go, I would fly in the day before it because. depending on where you're, you're coming from, but coming from, you know, Seattle, it was like an all day event traveling. So

Katie Decker-Erickson

it totally was. Yeah. I think flying in on Sunday, while it's not ever handy to give up the weekend, that was a great thing we learned is like flying on Sunday, hit the ground running on Monday, um, and be prepared also constructive criticism, but also feedback and pro tip be prepared to wait for your pass on Monday morning for up to three hours. So build that into your timeline, knowing that when you go downstairs to the main floor to get your pass, it can take two to three hours to even get your pass, but you have to have that pass to get on the elevator to get to the upper floors, because that's what those vendors are scanning so they can follow up with you after the fact with your own personal QR code on there. So yeah, that I would definitely say just plan into how you want to allocate your time, because if you think you're just going to do the whole show on Monday. you're gonna need lunch after getting your badge. And then you're gonna be ready to go to floor 14 or whatever the top floor is for that year. What else are we missing that is a good conversation point, either pro tip, constructive criticism, or other things we just haven't touched on as part of the overview that was Neocon 2023?

Diana Rushton

I feel like the two big things besides what we just talked about is even though the airport is only 15 miles away, it took us like an hour. hour and 10 minutes to get there just because of traffic. Like just plan accordingly for that because in my head I was like, cool, I'm gonna land on Monday at one. I'll be to the show by one 30. Like I had it all like very romanticized in my head. And let me tell you, I did not go that well. So.

Katie Decker-Erickson

I might have gotten a few texts from Di.

Diana Rushton

I swear I'm coming. I'm stuck in traffic. I promise I'm coming. I'm so sorry. Cause I'm like sitting really like nervously twitchy in my Uber. So just plan for it. for the traffic part, like coming from Seattle, you think I would have had a better idea about that, but not in my head.

Katie Decker-Erickson

Not one block on a Monday, like no, traffic should be flowing by then. Yeah, not in Chicago folks, not in Chicago.

Diana Rushton

And to plan just a couple hours of margin of like, this is not on my list because I feel like in that, those couple of hours that I did have, we were able to find vendors that we didn't go looking for, but because we had a little bit of margin, it was like, oh. Well, we could take over that part of the business for our business or, Oh, I never thought about doing it in this way, but if it was all very scheduled out, I feel like we wouldn't have had the creative mental space to go, Hmm. You know, because it would have been too rushed. So like, even if it's like an hour or two of unscheduled time to wander, I, I found that helpful.

Katie Decker-Erickson

Yep. I totally agree with that margin is, and we'll, I mean, that's something that I think is going to come up in our conversations more as we go forward, but the power of margin, what margin allows for, whether it's mental margin or just a tissue margin, even in that time where you can stumble into the unexpected that can be filled with incredible possibilities. Margin is everything. I think when it comes to our personal lives, our professional lives, it's so important to have it so hard to get, but when you do it opens a world of possibilities. I think that's a great point, Di.

All right, folks, that's a wrap. Thank you for joining us for another insightful episode of Colorful Conversations with me, Katie, your host, and of course, Diana along today to give her insights on EOCON. I hope you enjoyed our discussion today and found valuable insights to help you thrive in your design business and your life as we merge them here. To all of our listeners, thank you for joining us for the journey of personal learning and growth and your enthusiasm and dedication to honing your business skills as a design professional continue to inspire me to keep bringing you valuable content.

Remember to subscribe to our podcast so you never miss an episode. We would love to have you. If you have any questions or topics that you really want addressed, please make sure and let us know. If you would like one -on -one time with me, I would love to discuss your firm plans for intentional steps for your growth, for your success. You can book a call with me on our website at www .colorworks .coach. Until then keep dreaming, keep designing and mastering the art of running a successful interior design business that scales to your life.

This is Katie Erickson signing off. Bye for now. We'll see you next time.