Photo Diary: Alt Summit 2020
If you follow us on social media, you’ve probably seen a bunch of dreamy desert scenes pop up in your feed this past week. That’s because I (Kate) have spent the past 6 days running around sunny Palm Springs, CA speaking at an extremely cool conference for creative women entrepreneurs called Altitude Summit - and I haven’t been able to stop taking pictures of literally everything.
If you’ve never heard of Altitude Summit, or ‘Alt’ Summit for short, you’re not alone. I didn’t know what it was until about six months ago, but I’m definitely glad I do now. It’s basically a super inspiring coming together of artists, entrepreneurs, writers, speakers, and creators of all kinds - and it’s full of nothing but dreamers!
Today I wanna share a little photo diary of some of the highlights of my week at Alt, and a few powerful takeaways I left with.
Alt Summit takes place at three different hotels in Palm Springs - the Ace Hotel, the Riviera Hotel, and the Saguaro Hotel. I decided to stay at the Ace, because I’m a big fan of all their other properties (like the NYC one and the one in New Orleans) and I just love the vibe of the design.
Below is a pic of me outside my room at the Ace.
The main reason I was at Altitude Summit was to give a presentation in a TED Talk style format, which was incredibly fun. This was the first time I’ve really shared my story in this format, and I loved having the chance to share the stage with so many other incredible speakers over the course of the week.
My talk focused on the idea of being a “slash” - aka, someone whose career, life, or line of work doesn’t fall into one pre-defined bucket. Above you can see the really beautiful notes that hand letterer Lindsey of What Happy Makes took during my talk. So cool!
I’m a huge believer in being ‘multi-passionate,’ because for me it’s been such a mainstay reality in my life and career. As a singer/songwriter/actress/artist/entrepreneur (and still counting), I’ve spent the past 15 years of my career discovering how having multiple passions can really be an asset and not a detriment.
Over the years, I’ve run into so many people who have tried to make me feel like I have to ‘pick one thing’ and stick to it - and I’ve come to believe that that’s just not true. So I focused my presentation on how to overcome the top 3 obstacles that we ‘dreamers’ or ‘slashes’ face on our journey to carve out our own path and make a life and career that’s all our own.
Another major highlight of Alt Summit were the fun parties and events that the sponsors of the conference held in the evenings. One of them, put together by kitchen goods company If You Care, involved a small group of attendees getting together to dine outside at Palm Desert’s zoo, The Living Desert, and feeding the giraffes. It was pretty incredible!
The conference itself consisted of so many different types of workshops, presentations, and talks.
One of the standout workshops I attended was put on by Handmade Charlotte, Super Make It, and Project Kid and was called “Upcycled Cardboard Jewelry That SJP Would Wear.” I mean, if you’re gonna bring Carrie Bradshaw into it you can basically consider me in attendance.
About 37 hot glue gun burns on my hands later, I was pretty excited about how my necklace turned out.
Another major sponsor highlight for me was an intimate dinner at Eight4Nine, a delicious restaurant in downtown Palm Springs, put together by The Riveter and Park Place Payments - both of which are highly impressive women-owned companies. The group of women at this dinner was absolutely stellar!
Another random but important highlight? This Scottish Terrier named Queso who lives at the Saguaro Hotel. He has a blue mohawk and it took everything in me not to steal him.
If you’ve been to Alt before you probably recognize Gabrielle Blair, who started Alt Summit, in the above pic. Her blog Design Mom has been a mainstay in the design blogging world for years, and she happens to be incredibly sweet and a total boss.
What an awesome week! I learned so much, had a blast speaking about being a dreamer, and most of all I just loved meeting so many amazing creatives and making new friends.
I’m already super excited to go next year (Courtney too!) and to keep doing more speaking and presentations like this. I’ll probably do a post soon all about what it was like trying something like that out for the first time, because I connected with it so much and loved telling my story in that format.
How do you guys feel about conferences and big workshops like this? Have you ever been to Alt Summit??
