About Christopher Anton (#TophersTravels)

Prior to COVID shifting everyone’s universe, Christopher spent his days globetrotting or working as the Vice President for New Orleans’ largest event production and supply company and his nights as an Airbnb Superhost. While he plots his next career move and wraps his midlife crisis up in a Moderna bow, Christopher flexes his passion for problem solving, predicting user behavior, and process flow improvements by participating in innovation and design competitions, producing artwork for his eponymous website, and writing content for Improve This Experience.

The Long(er) Story

As a student at Oberlin College in 1998, Christopher started designing websites for extra income when the dot-com boom was in its infancy. At that time, Google had only recently launched and was still a month away from incorporating, and AOL was still mailing CDs to everyone on the planet. While he achieved some success as a self-taught designer of websites, content management systems, and Flash animation, he eventually realized a new passion for content organization, process simplification, and predicting user behavior.

Ten years and more than 200 websites later, he was hired at Event Rental, the largest event production and supply company in New Orleans. Concerned with an erosion of customer service and general areas of friction that he witnessed during his time quietly designing from a makeshift cubicle in the office, Christopher approached the company owner with a list of challenges and suggestions for process and policy improvements within the organization. He was promoted and given free-range to make changes within the company. With a focus on boosting employee morale, predicting user behavior (likely customer and employee response to specific policies), and overseeing development of software to automate and standardize common tasks, he garnered dramatic improvements in sales flow and employee retention, and a substantial reduction in customer complaints and service issues.

Christopher then hid at the back of Event Rental’s New Orleans headquarters handling the general “let’s think this through for a second” and “can you write this letter so it sounds fancy” challenges that popped up for quite some time. In 2020, he returned to his design roots to help the company rebrand as ELEMENT just before COVID decimated the special events industry. He’s currently in search of another intrepid innovator with a struggling company they want to see shift from floundering to flourishing.