EdCone.com

An interesting thread beneath this post about the disconnect between the "creative culture" initiative once ballyhooed by Action Greensboro and the actual creative culture of Greensboro. This is a telling comment. Here's part of what I had to say about the now-retired ConvergeSouth conference:

Instigated and run by volunteers, it brought people from DC and Atlanta and across the Carolinas to A&T each year to talk about (as the founding motto had it) creativity on the web for all people.

We ran it successfully until it felt played out and we were burnt out on it, and then we shut it down. We were happy with what we'd done.

But -- what if institutional support had been there at some point, not just for funding but for planning, marketing, etc?

What if the ideas and energy of the grassroots creative folks had been combined with the muscle of AG?

Then GSO today might have an ongoing creative arts/new media festival, something like a regional version of SXSW -- an actual creative effort that drives economic development, just as the creative culture rap has it.

But we don't.

Another lens on ConvergeSouth.

Well that seemed to go well. Hard for me to tell, actually, but that was my impression.

I had another one of those blissful moments during the wrap-up discussion on politics and people-powered media -- it just struck me how great it was to be have talented and informed people from across the country here in Greensboro to help lead the conversation, and to have such a smart and responsive group involved in that conversation.

Thanks to our great hosts at NC A&T, Sue Polinsky, volunteers and sponsors, and all the session leaders and participants.

UPDATE: Coverage from Pam Spaulding and Melody Watson.

Chris Rabb opens the conference by saying he's thrilled to be back in Greensboro. Feeling's mutual.

I'm going to pay attention to what he says, then moderate a panel on social networking with Scoble, Anil Dash, and Pam Spaulding, and then I'll be back online.

Saturday post-Converge activities plan. "At the BBQ on Friday I’ll probably still be wrangling sessions. We’re showing the new media agility and flexibility by arranging in real time, or just-in-time, or maybe not-quite-in-time. Regardless, come and take part. I guarantee you’ll get something out of it or triple your money back."

The evolution of ConvergeSouth, as I apparently described it to Brian Clarey: "It was much more high concept. What can you do online? What will it mean? These theoretical conversations we had…we don’t have to gaze at our navels anymore. It's happened...Everyone can put video on their blog. Now it’s how to make good videos."

An article on the upcoming conference that captures its essence, although it should be said that Ben Hwang was a vital co-founder, and that another co-founder, Sue Polinsky, really makes it all happen.

"Expert panelists will tell you what goes into a great blog and how to let others know about it...Registration is $15.99." That's how the Charlotte Observer markets its upcoming its "first-ever organized gathering of local bloggers." (via Sue)

Could be interesting, although it's hard to believe that there's never before been an organized gathering of local bloggers in Charlotte.

Anyway, we'll be doing things a little differently on Friday at ConvergeSouth. There will be experts sharing their wisdom, but they won't be lecturing an audience, they'll be getting people to talk about how they do good stuff on their own, finding out what people want to know and who in the room has ideas about it. The model is less newspaper article than blog-post-with-comments.

Also, you get to keep your $15.99, 'cause it's free.

100 or so high school students will be joining us at ConvergeSouth.

That's kind of excellent. I'm guessing we'll learn a lot from them.

Registration is closed, but you can still get in to the free web-user conference just by showing up on Friday at A&T.

I ran into a friend this morning who brought up ConvergeSouth, which happens Friday at NC A&T.

I asked if he was coming, and he said no, it would be over his head.

That's just not the case. There will be a lot of smart folks and experts in attendance, but the idea is that anyone can show up and learn something about using the web to express themselves -- and maybe teach the experts something in the process.

Preregistration is closed, but you can still walk up on the day of the event. Free. Y'all come.

T minus two weeks for ConvergeSouth.

Couple of hundred people signed up, and we should see some A&T students, too, but you can still register here for the free web-user conference, to be held at NC A&T on Ocbober 17.

Just found out I might moderate a panel that includes Scoble. He and I have a history of working well together at Converge -- last time he was here, we made a very successful beer run that helped keep the Friday night porkfest rocking.

Still some spaces left for the video walking tour; info here.

More on the day-after-ConvergeSouth instacon: "If anyone in your audience has technical things they want to do but aren't sure where to start, somewhere in the room will be someone that can help with that. Show up, teach and learn and hang out with us. It will be a party - a geeky, new media socializing pedagogical party!"

Free-conference culture at its best: a day-after ConvergeSouth event creates itself online. Type-A Mom and the Evil Genius seem to be involved.

Speaking of which, ConvergeSouth is, like, soon.

You can register here for the free web-user conference, to be held at NC A&T on Ocbober 17.

Still some spaces left for the video walking tour; info here.

ConvergeSouth is just four weeks away.

You can register here for the free web-user conference, to be held at NC A&T on Ocbober 17.

The BlogHer roadshow, scheduled for the next day in Greensboro, has been canceled.

ConvergeSouth is just five weeks away.

You can register here for the free web-user conference, to be held at NC A&T on Ocbober 17.

Hoggard tells new schools supe Mo Green to skip the robocalls and get a blog.

Green says he will be a blogger. As JR says, easier said than done (or done well over time).

I hope Green takes Hoggard's advice and comes to ConvergeSouth.

ConvergeSouth is less than six weeks away. You can register here for the free web-user conference, to be held at NC A&T on Ocbober 17.

I keep touting the program, but apparently the food is going to be good, too (lunch, that is -- the fabled barbecue dinner is a given).

The lunch thing is made possible by generous sponsorship from Smitty's Notes.

That came about after complex negotiations which consisted entirely of me opening up my email one morning and finding a note from Jeff Smith, saying he'd read about the conference online and would like to support it.

Thanks, Jeff.

And don't forget: BlogHer comes to Greensboro the very next day.

ConvergeSouth is shaping up as an interesting event. Scoble's back on the bill, along with some other nationally-known folks and a lot of local talent. Just a couple of opening sessions, then it's how-to stuff in the breakout rooms until the end-of-day wrap up.

The free web-user conference is October 17 at NC A&T, here in Greensboro. You can register here.

I was in the midst of copy-editing the announcement, but I guess Sue was so excited that she posted it anyway, so you'll have to dope out for yourselves what "mentoring our video/photo walking tour" means...but the big news that Microsoft is sponsoring ConvergeSouth is pretty clear. And great.

Some female bloggers say they face a glass ceiling.

BlogHer is one way of addressing the problem; the conference road-show will hit Greensboro on October 18, as part of the ConvergeSouth weekend.

Last month at PDF a woman asked me, "Greensboro -- isn't that the place where they have that blog conference?"

Why, yes, it is.

Planning for ConvergeSouth 2008 is coming along well, and I really like the direction it's taking.

When we started out, the idea was to bring the big-think of the original Dave Winer BloggerCons to North Carolina. That worked pretty well -- we got a lot of smart folks to chew on issues of new media and politics.

But as those things moved from the cutting edge to the mainstream, it made less sense to ruminate on them and more sense to do them, so we've refocused on the theme of "creativity on the web for all people." Lots of hands-on, how-to, practical sessions aimed at helping people participate in the world of social media.

We'll have our share of big names and big-think, but the point of the conference is to get you where you want to be with blogs, social nets, podcasts, video, online business, and so on.

October 17, NC A&T, GSO. Smart. Fun. Free.

Scoble is coming back to ConvergeSouth, Greensboro's free web-user conference in October.

He can't resist the banana pudding.

Sue and I met at the Green Bean to discuss this year's iteration of ConvergeSouth.

I think the world has talked enough about a lot of the things people talk about at these things. The energy and freshness of Dave's original BloggerCon, and of our own little regional version, has become the stuff of daily life. It's all happening, which makes pontificating about it a little redundant.

But that doesn't mean a conference dedicated to creativity on the web for all people is DOA. In fact, the more it focuses on "all people," the more alive it is.

Which is to say, I'd love to see a lot of hands-on, how-to sessions. A good model would be Tom Lassiter's 2007 video-on-the-web teach-in, where experts and noobs worked together in harmony. If we could do that for a lot of different areas -- video, social nets, blogging, etc -- it would be worthwhile.

Plus some guest stars and music and film and all that other stuff that ConvergeSouth is becoming.

It would be great to get some broad support, in terms of money, ideas, and volunteers.

If you looked up during lunch on Friday at ConvergeSouth and thought, huh, I wonder what Ed and Jason Calacanis are saying into that tape recorder, then you really must have been bored.

In any case, this is what we were talking about.

Excerpt: The pendulum has swung from experts only, with the old media companies telling you things, to the wisdom of the crowd as authority...I think it's going to swing to the middle, where you have that broader wisdom, but it is OK to trust an expert.

Beth made a nice widget for ConvergeSouth. Very ConvergeSouthy of her.

I added it to my site (bottom of left column), you can add it to yours, too.

Chris Rabb: "Black people owned more land a century ago. The same is true for Black newspapers -- a medium that was originally used as a proto-blog for Black and White abolitionists."

Chris is expected at next year's ConvergeSouth, the planning for which is underway...

Chris Rabb talked a little at ConvergeSouth about privilege, and the implications of recognizing that one has it.

Liz Seymour has written an essay on much the same subject, reflecting on her upbringing in the "owning class" and the choices she's made as an adult.

The happiness I grew up with (and I do recognize that even if it wasn’t bought with money, it was eased by money) sticks with a person for life. My fundamental privilege is that I expect to be happy. Not everyone comes into adulthood with that expectation.

But like everything else privilege comes with some baggage...

...I turned my house into a collective house because I didn’t want to grow old alone in the uneasy aloneness that leads to gated communities and averted eyes and “they hate us for our freedoms.”

Generalizations are dangerous (he generalized), including generalizations about the ramifications of privilege. I know rich people who are heedless and scared and unhappy, and I know rich people who are heedless and quite pleased with the way things are, and I know rich people who are happy and grateful and aware and involved in a larger world.

Or as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it in The Rich Boy: "Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created - nothing. That is because we are all queer fish, queerer behind our faces and voices than we want anyone to know or than we know ourselves...There are no types, no plurals. There is a rich boy, and this is his and not his brothers' story."

He then generalizes profusely in exactly the way he has warned against: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand."

Hemingway is supposed to have said, Yes, the rich are different -- they have more money.

Anyway. Go read Liz's essay.

ConvergeSouth 2007 filmfest audience award winners.

Len Witt interviewed Will Bunch, Jason Calacanis, Kirk Ross (great title for the video:  "They Just Started a New Newspaper and They Seem Sane") and Anton Zuiker about the future of journalism at ConvergeSouth. More TK.

In which a ConvergeSouth attendee has her prayers answered.

Soni Pitts liked the program and the evening activities at ConvergeSouth, didn't like the food during the day, and had some issues with the "scotch-tape-and-crossed-fingers feel of the event."

She says:

Maybe ConvergeSouth is just a looser, more casual event than I'm used to and I'm blathering like an idiot about something that's a feature, and not a bug. If that's the case then please let me know and I'll STFU...if they're going to be taken seriously by the big boys and girls in the tech world, they have to be capable of putting on a two-day conference without falling apart at the seams.

My reaction to her reaction: first, content is king, and if she liked the sessions and the people around her then I feel good about her experience.

Food, location, and cost: we keep it free because we want it to be open to all people. There has been much discussion of charging for admission, and I'm sure we'll plow that ground again, but access is a core value of the event, and it may be that boxed lunches will still be on the menu in the future.

Finally, I don't want Soni to STFU, I value what she says and think we can learn from her comments about organization. I never had the slightest feeling that things were on the verge of falling apart, but there is a without a doubt a scruffy quality to the conference that you won't find at a big industry event.

That said, I think she's onto something when she raises the feature vs bug question. This is not a tech conference, it's a user conference. We want to bring in big names from across the country, and have done so with great success, but we want to talk to them as much as we want them to talk to us. They're users, too. I'd rather eat barbecue with someone than watch them PowerPoint a quiet audience.

So: room to improve on execution, to be sure. Better food? Love it, let's figure out ways to get it without changing the vibe of the conference. Good content and interesting people? Great, that's the heart of the matter.

Thanks for participating, Soni, and for providing your feedback. I hope you'll be back next year.

ConvergeSouth film festival, online.

Andy Coon did a great job with the inaugural edition of this event.

This could turn into something big for Greensboro. It's a fulfillment of the vision that sparked the conference three years ago.

I wonder what venues we might use next year? I could see the Weatherspoon auditorium, with dinners at restaurants on Tate Street...

And I wonder about tie-ins with other projects and organizations...

Meanwhile...Great work by Andy and the filmmakers, and thnx to Two Art Chicks.

D3 candidate Joe Wilson goes to ConvergeSouth: "I realize the power of the community itself."

Tom Lassiter posted a mess o' links from his how-to session on web video.

I think ConvergeSouth has a future.

The strength of the conference lies in its founding motto: Creativity on the web for all people.

Creativity means the hands-on, how-to sessions that dominated Saturday afternoon -- people who know how to do stuff leading conversations in rooms where everyone from expert to complete noob has a say. More like these, please.

And creativity means the film festival curated by Andy Coon -- demonstrations of some end products of the things we talked about in the afternoon.

I'm less interested in the big-think panels, perhaps because I've seen and done so many of them over the last several years. There's a place for that stuff, but I don't think it's the heart of the matter for us.

"All people": the diversity of attendees is notable by any number of measures, including ethnicity, age, gender, experience, interests. CS brings in big-name talent and has established a strong regional following. I've been to a fair number of tech and media and web conferences across the country, but none that look and feel like this one.

After three years, ConvergeSouth is at an interesting point. We could quit now, satisfied that something real has been accomplished. Sue Polinsky and her merry band of volunteers can't do this thing forever.

But there is a lot of room for growth. In fact, we've barely scratched the surface. The conference needs to reach out, early and often, to its constituents around the region in search of ideas and talent and publicity and volunteers. We need to take this thing to the students and faculties of colleges from Asheville to Wilmington and Charleston and Richmond and get their buy-in. We need people like Sean Coon to keep pushing the downtown music scene.

I'd love to see members of the ConvergeSouth community step up to the challenge of moving it forward. It would be nice if the Greensboro establishment noticed that the conference exists, but I'm not sure that is going to happen.

Tonight: ConvergeSouth Film Festival, Two Art Chicks gallery, 609 South Elm St , 336.273.9885.

Doors open at 7:00 PM, show starts at 7:30.

Also, my dinner at Ganache has been moved to 6 PM.

I'm at the "Why Most Web Videos Stink, but Yours Doesn't Have To" session, which has quickly turned into a group conversation moderated by Tom Lassiter rather than a lecture, which is kinda what we're going for.

Lenslinger says good video requires "no special Jedi power."

Keywords: tripod, homemade steadycam, multiple shots (wide/tight/different angle), scripted work, editing software, external mics, common sense/camera fundamentals, lighting, amateur greenscreen, compression as artform...

Links tk.

Here's the article I mentioned in the ConvergeSouth social networking session.

One of the things I love about ConvergeSouth is that people are willing to come straight from events like this to be here.

Calacanis gives good panel.

Bunch and Conover and Killian up now. They are already being interesting, so I'm going to go pay attention now.

The relaxed approach to having 125 dinner guests.

Fun crowd. Last year Scoble and I had to make a beer run pretty early.

Jeri Rowe on the Coon bros and ConvergeSouth's music and film components.

If I was running for local office in Greensboro, I would get myself to ConvergeSouth this weekend so as to learn something about these interwebs the kids keep talking about, and perhaps to meet a couple of hundred folks in person.

Lots of last-minute sign-ups for ConvergeSouth. Looks like a healthy crowd is on the way.

You can still register today and get lunch at the conference...walk-ups who don't register in time will probably still get in, but may be left to their own devices at mealtime.

Andy Coon posts the ConvergeSouth Film Festival sked.

Saturday, 10/20, Two Art Chicks on South Elm. Doors open at 7:00 PM.

JR writes about ConvergeSouth. Sue writes about ConvergeSouth.

Registration is open through Tuesday. Free, fun, and soon.

These folks are registered for ConvergeSouth.

Registration is open through Sunday for the free web-user conference, which starts one week from today at NC A&T.

People who show up without registering may be able to attend, but will have to fend for themselves at lunchtime.

Stephen van Vuuren is making a giant-screen film "that aims to artistically bridge science and spirituality as it journeys from the big bang to the Cassini-Huygens Mission at Saturn."

He's registered for ConvergeSouth.

You, too, can register for the free web-user conference, to be held next weekend at NC A&T, with music and a film festival in downtown Greensboro; click here to do so.

The Evil Genius is registered for ConvergeSouth.

You can register for the free conference here.

Hurry. It starts a week from Friday.

Mickey McLean is registered for ConvergeSouth.

The free web-user conference begins a week from Friday at NC A&T.

You can register here.

Calacanis, Carr on Calacanis, Calacanis on Carr on Calacanis (scroll down), Calacanis on gaming Techmeme.

We're going to do Jason's keynote at ConvergeSouth as a "fireside chat," which means he and I will sit in the front of the room and talk. Audience participation encouraged expected.

Registration for the free conference here. Oct 19-20, NC A&T, GSO.

Audio of Killian, J, and me talking ConvergeSouth and web culture.

The segment near the end about Radiohead and creative culture and such is pretty interesting. Better than this morning's NYT piece, anyway.

Plus: Little Mascara and their titular inspiration.

Speaking of ConvergeSouth...well, Andy Bechtel is.

Register here for the free conference.