St. Louis was absolutely amazing. Tuesday evening we met up with @Zakmorris, very cool guy. He hooked us up with an awesome dinner and a place to stay. Zak has some big ideas in the making so watch out. Huge thanks to him for helping us out.

All Wednesday we hung out at Infuz, an interactive design firm in downtown St. Louis. To all the design/dev students that just graduated, this firm should be at the top of your list. These guys are so freaking awesome. Jason and Ryan, the CEO and VP respectively, cleared out their schedules for us. We spent the day swapping stories, soaking up advice and we even managed to do some work. We all spent a few hours brainstorming for a really exciting project they are starting. It will be a community driven, story sharing project and we seriously think it is going to be epic, so watch out. We should be able to share more about it once it gets closer to launch.

What did we take away from this experience? One piece of advice that made an impression on us is something Jason talked about. Managing expectations. This idea can really apply to anything in life but is critical to project management. Defining exactly what the client needs and making sure the client knows exactly what they are getting will hopefully remove most surprises. Surprises are not fun and obviously not entirely avoidable, but if the project expectations are understood across the board, everyone will be happier in the long run.