Another year has come and gone for CREATE South. It was a great experience this year. As one of the co-founders of CREATE South my hands touch all facets of the conference. For better or worse that is just how it is. We learned a tremendous amount from 2008 and even more form 2009. CREATE South 2010 should be even better.

As I look back on getting CREATE South 2009 together I wanted to make sure I posted some of the key points that I think will lead us to an even better conference in 2010.

• Remember to have fun
• Don’t forget to ask for help
• Know your strengths and weaknesses
• Plan ahead
• Have contingencies
• Find more sponsors

I like to tell myself that this is a grassroots conference. This takes a little pressure off. With a grassroots effort, things tend to a be a little more laid back, expectations from others aren’t so high, and the ability to change everything at the last minute is ok.

Andre @ CREATE South 2009 By Chrys

I do not like structured environments and I want to make sure that CREATE South stays true to the grassroots feel. One day I want to be able to hand off CREATE South to the new blood and let them run with the philosophy that we have instilled in it.

One of the best things we did this year was partner up with Horry Georgetown Technical College. In doing so we had a new found partner with some of the same goals. They were able to provide real life, hands on applications for their students to test their skills. CREATE South in returned received a venue to have the conference and an ongoing working relationship with a leader in the community. For that I am grateful.

Between planning, organizing and cooking I got to have a little fun and meet some really cool people. For me the conference isn’t what I learn in the session but rather what I take away from the people that I meet there. This year was a great exercise in networking for myself and my ideas.

I feel as if CREATE South 2009 was a big success. It laid down a firm foundation to build an even better conference with in 2010.

Until then check out some of the other CREATE South 2009 links:

Tiffany Trent Blog Post

CREATE South 2009 Flickr Group Pool

The Twitter Talk

The second year of CREATE South is now upon us. It is an exciting time due to the fact that all the hard work has been done and now it is time to get the word out. This year we have brought fourth four different tracks of creativity under one roof with exciting speakers and keynotes. I am proud to be a part of the entire process and look forward to this years CREATE South. If you get a chance please come out April 25, 2009 to support the Southeast only grassroots new media technology and creative conference.

Below you will find a list of the speakers and presenters at this years CREATE South conference.

Key Note

Tiffany Trent – Author
Everyday Creativity: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

http://www.tiffany-trent.com/

Tiffany Trent’s Blog

Track 1: Writing

Kelly Love-Johnson – Author
Writing Your Personal Story. A version of the popular workshop by Kelly Love-Johnson

Katherine Williams – Poet
A reading from Cranioglyph: A Memoir in Verse, followed by a moderated conversation with poet Katherine Williams.

Marsha Guerard – Editor
Looking Less Dorky: Practical tips for editing your own work

Track 2: Making Media

Tee Morris and Kregg Steppe – Podcast Pioneers
Podcasting 101 – getting started creating and publishing your podcasts.

Robert Harvey – Artist and Videographer
Lighting and shooting your video

Kregg Steppe – Podcast Pioneer
Digital photography and Creative Commons

Track 3: Art

Arron Frobase – Free Thinker Artist
Presents a lecture on stencils, stickers and homegrown art, with a how to create stencils and produce stickers.

Ava Ann Vrooman – Web Comic Producer
Discussion on how to utilize the comicpress theme with wordpress to publish and manage web comics.

Matt “Six “Bahr – Freelance Commercial Artist

Art as a means to survive. See how one artist took his passion and ran with it.

Track 4: Creating Community

Chuck Boyd – Photograoher
How to start and maintain a community group with MeetUps

Jared Smith -
Memes – From self promotion to catchphrase to cultural ideas, Lets get it rolling!

I am bogged down in chicken. Heidi and I are working on prepping 6lbs of rice, 15lbs of chicken, 6 links of smoked sausage and tons of spices.

It had been pretty fun the past few nights prepping all the food. Tomorrow we will put it all together to have it all in time for the CREATE Conference. The menu looks a little like this:

• 34lbs of pepper vinegar BBQ
• 25lbs of southern chicken bog
• 2 trays of banana pudding
• 2 trays of baked beans

This sounds like a lot but I am actually afraid that it won’t be enough. (I am always afraid of this) We have tried to see how many people are planning on attending and right now we have 56 registered. But who really knows. Some people who have registered won’t show up, while others who haven’t registered will. I guess on Saturday we will find out.

BTW. I haven’t ever cooked for this many people in my life!!!! HAHAHAHA

Funny you should ask.

Right now I am prepping 25 lbs of pork 3 gallons of BBQ sauce, listening to Hot Chip “Made In The Dark,” and getting ready for the CREATE conference. I have to go ahead and prep the food for Sat. cause I am going to slow cook the BBQ and the amount I have to do will take forever if I don’t do some work before hand. My kitchen right now has 5 slow cookers (aka crock pots) set up at each outlet in the kitchen. Its pretty funny.

Wish me luck. Hope to see you on Sat. that way you can tell me if it is any good.

After two long nights of set-up I finally have my computer set-up as a localhost. It now has PHP 5, Apache, and MySQL database set up on it. I am not even going to pretend I know half of what that means but it is all set-up. Paul walked me through a little rough bit with the set-up of the MySQL database. I have no clue how people know where to look to begin setting it up properly. So thanks Paul.

WHY? D0 you ask. Well I need to get a feel for how WordPress runs and how to set it up. In the next few months you may see 803 Labs transform over from MovableType to WordPress. It is really my call and I have to have some inkling of how to set it all up, not to mention how to port all of the old entries over to WordPress.

I am also looking into Joomla! Joomla! is a powerful content management system (CMS) that is OpenSource and promising. It seems pretty cool so far, but I am not sold on it yet. I will keep you posted.

But don’t fear I am not getting into that whole side of everything. This is something that I wanted to learn more about so I can contribute a little more to the upcoming CREATE Conference. It is more for a learning experience than anything else.