Here in (now) sunny San Diego, we're with 300 design-firm principals who are super-focused on sessions geared toward improving their business success. It's a pretty intense group; people are deep in discussion in between sessions and during breakfast.

One underpinning (and unintentional) theme of this year's MYOB conference is differentiating your firm with a unique, distinctive positioning. As an editor who sees a ton of capabilities packages from design firms of all stripes throughout the country, I'm continually amazed at how, well, the same all of them are. In fact, opening keynote speaker Tim Williams read positioning statements from real agencies, and the audience chuckled at how cliche and lame they all were. Clearly, designers need to turn the mirror on themselves and define their own brands.

The same kind of discussion continued today, when Brent Hodgins started his presentation by acting out a typical pitch presentation, and again the audience laughed at how silly it all sounded. In what's become a tradition at MYOB, conference partner David Baker conducted a real-world, live business analysis with a principal who volunteered his firm as a case study. Fascinating.