Finding The Relevance of the GCECS/Innovation Philadelphia Conference

The Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit was not only a mouthful to say but an earful of information.  From workshops to panel presentations to pecha kucha slide shows one could gain insight on just about any topic closely related to the creative workforce.  Both Emily and I were glad to be a part of this convergence summit on October 5^th & 6^th, 2009, and pleased with what we got out of it.

Day one started off with a welcome by Kelly Lee, President of Innovation Philadelphia, and was followed by an interesting breakfast talk by Elizabeth Gilbert.  We all know her from her famous book, Eat Pray Love, but few of us knew (before this week) about the next book she is putting out early 2010 about marriage!  Yup, you guessed it with whom she got remarried to!  Elizabeth told us of her life and dreams and inspired us to find our creativity in ours.

Entrepreneur’s Entourage gave a Social Media workshop following the breakfast keynote.  We expected a much different crowd, and not knowing anything about our participants’ backgrounds, nor how many were planning on attending, we decided to be creative in our presentation to better meet the needs of our participants.  Our workshop introduced effective ways to build any social media campaign and then turned it into a Q&A/Discussion.  We found that many people had specific questions about their current practices and wanted feedback on how to do it all better.  I am so thankful that our web guru Mary was presenting with me to help answer the dozens of questions.  All in all I think we helped a ton of people understand how to run their campaign with differentiation, relevance, efficiency and quality.

Later that afternoon Emily, Founder of Entrepreneur’s Entourage, sat on a panel discussing alternative workspaces.  Many participants here were interested in the co-working buzz and how to find ways to make their office use some of the alternative practices to save money and go green.  Emily talked a lot about industries that are ideal candidates for outsourcing and the benefits of using virtual professionals.  Her other fellow panelists included David Walker, who runs a co-working space in Austin, Todd Sundsted, a manager of Shift101, and Nathan Gasser, Founder of Rock River Star.

The second day of the event was kicked off, rather abruptly, but the one and only Peter Shankman.  He was his usual entertaining self and focused on the importance of relevance in a social media campaign and how to effectively market your business.   Other great sessions throughout the event were delivered by Jane McGonigal, via Skype, all about the use of gaming to optimize human ability (which was really fascinating); Gloria Bell, Hajj Flemings and Melinda Emerson on growing your creative passion; and Emily Morgan on taking your office virtual and the green benefits.  You can see that presentation at: http://watchuslaunch.com

The opportunities for networking each night of this 2-day event felt rushed.  We had so many contacts lined up to speak with and ended up speaking to only 1 each night!  Just one!  But, that one conversation each night was fun, insightful and meaningful.  We thank David Walker of Conjunctured and Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady, for their time and open discussions about business growth and networking!

Innovation Philadelphia hosted a great event and brought together some very talented entrepreneurs and professionals as speakers, sponsors, attendees and volunteers.  We look forward to working with them again in the future.  We also look forward to following up with everyone who attended our sessions and provided us with such great feedback and support.