With the washing still hanging on the line from our trip to London, an email popped into our inbox from Andrew at Porter Novelli asking if one of our team would like to come to Hewlett Packard’s office in Sant Cugat des Valles, Barcelona. The invite was to attend the worldwide launch of the HP’s new printing and computer solutions especially designed for the MCAD/Design market. Not only that but the person we send will be visiting the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (www.iaac.net) for a look at the education and research centre, which is dedicated to the development of an architecture capable of meeting the worldwide challenges in the construction of habitability in the early 21st century. A mouthful, yes I know. Well it would be rude to decline wouldn’t it? I mean it’s not like Barcelona is hot this time of year and has bazillions of great places to eat and drink. Oh wait…

By some great stroke of fate I seem to be the lucky man chosen to go. And so on Wednesday I will be jetting off from Glasgow to Barcelona via Amsterdam. Having never visited Barcelona, I am very excited as Barcelona is known as the European hub for fashion, design and architecture. It’s basically a graphic designers paradise. Whilst there I will be posting up about how I get on and will give feedback on all the new products and solutions that HP are releasing. You’ll also be able to see all my updates on here and I’ll be tweeting when I get a chance on our twitter page (http://twitter.com/midgibyte).

The program includes an overview of new applications that HP say can help win more business through creative digital printing technologies, along with a special demonstration of workgroup collaboration using HP workstations and their new software, SkyRoom, which as their website states “allows you to share your ideas in real time, enjoy easy face-to-face communication with fully interactive 3D graphics and HD video for long distance collaboration”. All in all I think it’s going to be a very interesting couple of days and hopefully I can bring back some great new ideas and solutions to help improve our working environment and workflow.

In the creative design industry, technology is always moving and changing at such a rate that it is important to keep abreast of the new things these kind of guys are releasing. Anything that can make your workflow go smoother is always better in my eyes as the faster and more efficiently you can do work for your clients, the better value you can give them on jobs, with better end results for everyone.

Anyway, I am off to pack my sombrero. Speak to you all soon.

Andrew