While most people were likely sleeping in this past Saturday, I woke up bright and early, put my moxie pants on and headed over to MoxieCon, where eleven speakers taught the crowd dozens of ways to build a better design business. Totally worth it.

The five fantastic women that make up Chicago-based design collective, Quite Strong, put on an incredible debut design conference on Saturday. I got my hands on a last-minute ticket to this sold-out event, and took some notes for sharing. After all, sharing is caring.

Local designer and illustrator, Mike McQuade, shared with all of us at today’s Creative Mornings the beauty that comes from pouring all you’ve got into work you love.

Every month, I volunteer to help my buddy Mig Reyes a little with Creative Mornings Chicago, a monthly breakfast lecture series. And every month I leave feeling more driven and inspired to keep doing this work that I love and to work really hard at it. This month’s source of inspiration came from Mike McQuade’s presentation hosted in the incredible workspace of Gensler, a global design, architecture and planning firm, while Artisan made sure our bellies were happily full of delicious coffee and morning treats.

“Work hard. Stay humble. And get your work out there, because you never know who’s watching.”

Those are the awesome words Mike left us with for the day, and he is living proof that if you want to be successful doing what you love, that’s the way to do it. Mike’s work has been featured in tons of publications including Communication Arts, Gestalten Publications, HOW, Print, We Love Typography, GQ Style Blog, Design Taxi, Smashing Magazine, The One Show, Chicago Creative Club and Cannes. He is also a recipient of the Young Guns 9 Award.

If you’re out at a local watering hole and see folks taking pictures of their beer, there’s a chance they are using Untappd, a location-based social app that helps craft beer enthusiasts connect over their favorite brews.

Joy, Kris, Peter and I went to Acre Restaurant this past week for their Three Floyds tap takeover. It was the first real chance I had to use the less-than-24-hour-old Untappd app on my iPhone. Since I had no friends in this app, which is built around the idea of connecting with others over a common interest in beer, I immediately forced my cohorts to download and connect. Here’s what we learned with our maiden Untappd voyage.

The Post Family reminds us at this month's Creative Mornings Chicago about the importance of sharing.

I was lucky enough to snag a seat at this month’s Creative Mornings event, which sold out Monday in a record-breaking two minutes! Creative Mornings is a monthly morning meet-up and lecture for creatives. The seven fine fellas of the Post Family took the stage this time around as The Coop kindly shared their awesome co-working space for the event.

Our favorite ambient cinematic electro-horror pop ensemble will perform Zontar, the Thing From Venus for the first time in its entirety at Martyrs tonight.

Terrible Spaceship’s audiovisual reinterpretation of Zontar, the Thing From Venus is based on a 1966 made-for-television creature feature, which is itself a remake of Roger Corman’s 1957 film It Conquered the World. These multiple degrees of separation, along with the forty-six years that have passed since the original Zontar graced the airwaves, gives Travis, James, Jeff, Zack and the rest of the Spaceship posse plenty of creative license to have fun with the material and bring horns, film clips, graphics, animation, and lab coats into the fray. Zontar is a must-see multimedia experience.