Tag: CREATESouth

Deciding to go to this year’s CREATESouth was a bit of a last minute decision. Seemed like everything was going on this weekend. CREATESouth, Cupcake Camp Summerville, Pet Fest, LUG meeting (which ended up getting moved).

CREATESouth 2012 was smaller than previous ones I’ve been to, but I think this year was better, with presentations that were more interesting. Keynotes by Philippa Ballantine and Heather Solos were both very good.

Lunch was once again delicious BBQ provided by Andre Pope and Proud Purveyors of Pork.

There were a lot of sessions that I would have liked to see. I ended up going to the DIY Metallurgy/Metal Casting, Budget Barista and BBQ sessions. I found all of the sessions interesting and inspiring.

The DIY Metallurgy/Metal Casting session was perhaps the coolest one with a hands on part where we actually got to do some sand casting. Packed sand to make molds, and poured the metal to make these little CREATESouth logos. I think I may have found a new hobby.

Budget Barista was a good session looking at some of the variables that go into making a good cup of coffee. Did you know a hot air popcorn popper can be used to roast coffee beans? I’m not a huge coffee drinker, but have been known to consume a cup now and then. After seeing the Aeropress in action at the session, I think it’s my new want item.

The Art and Science of BBQ ended up being an outdoor session with Andre Pope talking about how to do BBQ and showing his BBQ rig. I learned that you don’t need a big huge smoker setup to do BBQ and that it’s easier than it looks. You can make BBQ in a slow cooker, which I’ve done before but never really considered it real BBQ. Now that I know better, I’m inspired to do more BBQ.

Had a really good time at CREATESouth this year, and I’m really glad I decided to go. Got inspired to do new things, at least two of which I’ll probably do. The metal casting sounds like it will be really cool to take up as a hobby, but it’s probably not something I should get into right now.

Check out my photos from the day over on Flickr.

Had a great time at CREATESouth today. There were some excellent keynote talks given by Tiffany Trent on creativity and writing, and Tee Morris on the “social” in social media.

The keynotes were followed by a delicious BBQ lunch prepared by Andre Pope

Following lunch were the breakout sessions, organised into 4 different tracks: Community, Writing, Media and Art. I started off with the Writing track and Marsha Guerard’s talk on editing, which I quite enjoyed.

Then popped over to the Community track to catch Chuck‘s talk about organizing groups using Meetup.com and Jared‘s meme talk.

Caught part of Kreg Steppe’s presentation on digital photography where he talked about what’s ok and not ok to photograph, and Creative Commons licensing. A very informative session. Wish I had made it in earlier to catch the first part of his talk.

The final session of the day was the discussion panel in the Community track about geographic communities. There was a pretty good discussion about how the media was starting to use Twitter and some of the benefits and challenges in getting meetups going so that people participating in social media can get together and meet in person.

Overall I had a great time at CREATESouth, meeting and putting faces/voices to more people, and came back a little more refreshed and energized than when I went.

The rest of my CREATESouth photos can be found in my photo gallery and on Picasaweb.