ACC Conference - From "The Eye of the Beholder" at the Conference
October 18, 2009
Occasionally, I take time away from the studio to attend a conference. For me this is not easy, but a challenge. Conferences can be an opportunity to expose me to the unexpected. It is a metaphorical lifting weights - a effort to build my professional muscles, but it is the hardest thing I do all year.
In 2009 I attended the ACC Conference. This blog post was written after the Conference was over. It was a very enriching experience but there was far more information every day and every lecture than I ever expected.
As the new week begins, I have re-examined my plan for blogging about the Conference in near real-time. It is impossible. So I have decided that it will be better to post a review of each lecture or panel discussion but spread this out over a couple of weeks. This will be 2-3 posts a week. This gives me more time to digest each lecture and a more realistic schedule for everyone reading the blog posts.
Both my Twitter and Facebook will indicate new posts, or you can subscribe to my blog.
Overall, I think the Conference was a rewarding experience. Each and every one of the presentations far exceeded my expectations. I took notes as fast as I could write for two days SOLID! My future posts will digest this information for your review and include links to books and website resources for further investigation.
Perhaps the most significant aspect for me personally was meeting so many new people. I particularly liked that the lunches were only one floor down from the Conference room. Everyone walked down together, you sat down next to someone you just met and finished lunch with a new friend. The bad side was that I never left the hotel for two days and emerged like a mole from underground on Sunday morning.
Stay tuned for each post and links to other blogs posting about the Conference, books mentioned during the lectures and websites with additional information.
Rob Walker promised information for ACC Conference attendees on his blog Murketing.com. CLICK HERE to find the link he is providing for ACC Conference people and the people listening to this blog. Also, this Sunday's New York Times Magazine (October 18, 2009) features a four page article by Rob Walker about Pandora Internet Radio. Although Pandora is not craft, don't dismiss this article as irrelevant. If you want to learn more about marketing your art and craft on "the long tail" then get started with his article and think about how to apply this marketing for your art or craft online. To understand the "long tail" phenomena, I highly recommend the book Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More written by Chris Anderson.*
*This book was written in 2008. It would be interesting to look at how the internet has evolved since then. The internet is like kayaking in class three rapids. With balance and skill, you can have a fun ride, but it also can be unpredicatable.
This post was updated on January 3, 2022, to provide current links.