Today is CREATE South Donate/Social Media Day

CREATE South is coming to town for our second annual conference. It was a blast last year, and I highly recommend it. It'll be bigger and better this time....

This is recopied from an email from my buddy Dave Slusher, who is co-chair of CREATE South....

Thanks to everyone for expressing interest in the CREATE South
conference. This year it will be held April 25, 2009 in Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina. We are expanding from our first year in both
programming options and in the space we'll have available to us. The
conference will be held at the Horry-Georgetown Technical College
facilities on the old Air Force Base - a few blocks from Market
Commons and about half a mile from the beach. More information is
always available at http://www.createsouth.org/

The conference registration is free for the attendees and we plan to
always keep it that way. If you haven't already registered for this
year, please do at http://www.createsouth.org/register.php so that we
can accurately plan for the size of the turnout.

That said we have set aside today, March 19th 2009 as "Donate Day."
We are still looking for donors and sponsors to help us meet the costs
of presenting it. If you can spare a few dollars, there is a donate
button in the sidebar of every page on our website. If your company
would be interested in sponsoring the conference or you know of one
that might, please drop a note to sponsors@createsouth.org .

Also, today in honor of March Madness we are putting on the "full
court press" for getting the word out about the conference. If you
have a blog, we'd appreciate greatly if you'd post a short note
referencing the conference. Likewise, for those of you who are users
of Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed or any other social media sites,
please make a quick post about the conference. Our goal is to get as
many interested people in the room for mutual education and
edification. We'd love it if no interested party misses out just
because they didn't know about it.

Thanks to everyone for making 2008 a great conference and we expect
even better for 2009. Over the next few days we'll be posting
information about our programming. Keep watching the main site and our
blog at http://blog.createsouth.org/ for more updated information.

Best to everyone in 2009.

Dave Slusher, co-chair, dslusher@gmail.com

"Niche Expression"

Everything has changed. The way we shop has obviously changed. The way we entertain ourselves and interact with others has changed. We no longer have to be slaves of what the big machine dictates. We don't need to put up with whatever "next big thing" they choose to spoon-feed, shove down our throats, or otherwise foist upon us.

In his enlightening and highly recommended book, Buying In, author Rob walker has this to say:

"The mass market - indeed, massness itself - is dead. No longer must we accept the stultifying, homogenized monoculture of decades past, as niche expression is made available to us at last. Companies must, as more than one guru has put it, provide personalization."

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Thanks Dave!

A quick shout out to my buddy Dave Slusher for playing my song, Just No Way, on the Dec 2 Evil Genius Chronicles Clambake! Those of you who know me know that I am a long time fan of Dave and his show, and I am glad that we're friends. As a matter of fact, he's one of the three guys that got me interested in new media in the first place. Go check out his Blog and his Podcast. You will not be disappointed.

Grand Strand Blogger Meetup

The meetup was a lot of fun. It was a nice, warm day, and we met down at Bummz Beach Cafe. My brother Roger (standing, left) and I (standing, right) met up with Dave Slusher, seated, right) and Andre Pope (seated, left), and hung out for almost a couple hours. It was super cool hanging out with these guys. For you folks that missed this go-round, there's always next time, but you missed a good time. It was awesome to meet Dave and Andre. Dave is one of the original podcasters, if you don't know that already. He is one of the guys that got me interested in the podcasting thing when I read an article in the Charleston Post and Courier about podcasting almost three years ago. It's hard to imagine it's been that long. It's mind boggling to think of the changes that the podcasting medium has gone through in the last couple of years. It's interesting to see it evolve. The media playing field has been leveled in multi-faceted ways. Every aspect of content production and delivery has experienced a major paradigm shift. And the keys to the kingdom have been given to each and every one of us.

Dave is a catalyst, and I appreciate his efforts on behalf of this community.

Thanks to Andre for his generosity this afternoon. You shouldn't have man!