WHAT ADVERTISING WEEK NEW YORK TAUGHT ME THAT AI NEVER COULD

I have a podcast. I have a production company. I create content for a living and I help other people do the same. I know how to use every AI tool in the game and I use them every single week.

And I just got back from New York with a notebook full of things no algorithm is ever going to teach me.

I went to Advertising Week NYC for work, representing KNOW Women in rooms full of brand executives, agency leads, and media minds who are shaping the way the world communicates. I sat in session after session, raised my hand to compete on a game show and met Flavor Flav Backstage. BUT What I actually learned was something way more important than marketing and advertising….. it was all of it IRL.

IRL is irreplaceable and the best teacher. Not in a nostalgic, put your phon -down, ‘back-in-my-day’ kind of way. In a this is where the real magic happens kind of way. The conversations that happened between sessions, in hallways, at lunch tables, on escalators, on the streets in New York City between strangers who realized they were building the same thing from different angles. That is where I learned more in 2 days than I could learn in two months of scrolling, researching, and prompting.

AI can give me information. It cannot give me the moment a speaker pauses mid-sentence and says something that lands so specifically in your chest. It cannot replicate the energy of a room full of people who all decided to show up. It cannot manufacture the kind of trust that gets built when someone looks you in the eye and says your name.

One session said it in a way I keep coming back to: devotion over awareness. “ROI gets you awareness. Devotion gets you remembered.” You cannot automate devotion. You cannot prompt your way into it. Devotion comes from showing up, consistently, as yourself, in rooms where it counts.

Another session said people are starving for unstructured, low pressure, real conversation. Not content. Conversation. Book clubs are winning. Roundtables are winning. Podcasts are winning. Because you cannot fake a real conversation and people know the difference. What are the kids calling it? Performative?

So go to the thing. Book the flight. Be in the room. Raise your hand to be on the game show- shout out to ‘The Perfect Line’.

XoXo Britt

AVAILABLE LIGHT PHOENIX THE WESTERN EXPANSION CONTINUES

For Immediate Release

Media Contact: Paulina Villarroel Cruz (she/her/hers)

617-944-6800x130 | paulina@availablelight.com

High Resolution Images are Available

June 13, 2022, Boston MA—Available Light (AvLt) today announced that its new Phoenix studio continues its western expansion beyond Los Angeles, first announced in April 2022. Available Light is an internationally recognized lighting design firm specializing in museum, architectural, trade show/special event lighting design. The new ventures join existing AvLt studios in Boston, New York, and Raleigh.

Founded in Boston in 1992, Available Light is celebrating 30 years of creative achievement and design innovation by focusing on regional growth. “When we reached our 25th anniversary, we commissioned a monograph to celebrate our achievements,” said Steven Rosen, Founder and President, “At 30, we’ve reinvigorated our practice with a strategic growth plan that lets us meet and support our clients at their doorstep.”

Phoenix is a city with a burgeoning health care industry that calls for architectural expansion where scientific research, patient care, and academic study can be conducted. AvLt’s Phoenix studio will be led by Associate Principal Rachel Gibney, Assoc. IALD, MIES, LC. Gibney, who trained as a theatrical lighting designer, is an Arizona native who has been part of the AvLt team since joining the firm as an intern nearly a decade ago. Says Gibney, “From aesthetics, to well-being, to sustainability, we look forward to collaborating with owners, architects, designers, consultants, and contractors to create the best possible architectural and experiential outcomes for everyone who encounters the spaces we light.”

“Rachel rapidly climbed the responsibility ladder at AvLt,” said Rosen. “Over time, she’s deeply absorbed our aesthetic, culture, and design process. At the same time, her desire to enhance our technical skills—generating computer daylighting studies, developing virtual real-time 3D presentations, studying the affect of light on humans, and more—has made Rachel a real boon to the firm. From higher ed STEM complexes to museums, Rachel uses light to tell meaningful and compelling stories with lasting impact. Rachel’s design skills and collaborative spirit will greatly benefit our clients.”

“I’m excited to expand Available Light and offer our lighting expertise in life sciences, commercial and other industries in the Phoenix area,” said Gibney. “In addition to more directly serving clients in the Southwest, we now have an opportunity to contribute to the professional networks that underpin other related regional design industries.”

Committed to professional development, Gibney is active in two IES standards committees: Education, Library, Office Lighting and Theater, Film, and Television Lighting. She has also been deeply involved in Women in Lighting + Design (WILD). A lifelong advocate of teaching and learning, Gibney teaches the Revit/BIM application to theatrical design students at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and the Studio School of Design. She holds a BFA from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University. Gibney has won several industry and design awards.

Recent AvLt projects include the National Museum of African American Music, Amherst College New Science Center, the James Mandell Building at Boston Children's Hospital, and an exhibition at the RSA international conference.

Founded in Boston in 1992, Available Light’s designs create lasting and memorable encounters. AvLt has crafted compelling, innovative, and economical lighting solutions for a widely diverse range of project types around the globe: from science research labs to museum exhibition; hospitality to trade show exhibits/events; and corporate interiors to college lecture halls. AvLt combines modern technology and insight with aspects of beauty, mystery, and design to achieve the vision of its museum, architecture, trade show and special event clients. AvLt’s designers recognize environmental sustainability is the greatest collective challenge of our time.

AvLt supports the cultivation of diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout its studios, the lighting design profession, and the world. Modern design lives or dies on transparency and partnership. The language of collaboration is our mother tongue.

Available Light

LISTEN. CREATE. DELIVER.

Boston | New York | Raleigh | Phoenix | Los Angeles

www.availablelight.com