Summit of Awesome Day One: Let the Awesome Begin
This post was guest written by Christiane Knight of Three Ravens and The World of Xiane.
- Part One, because this day was so packed full of the Awesome!
Summit of Awesome is the brainchild of Hello Craft, which is a non-profit organization that’s here to champion independent crafters and the handmade movement via education, support, and events. They offer a wealth of knowledge via their website, and have offer a crafting space that they call the “Make Something Awesome Area” at various events around the country, which allows folks to try their hand at creating something for free. How cool!
The Summit is a three day conference that features business and technical seminars as well as hands-on workshops. One can learn how to screen print, create business branding and identity, manage your website’s SEO, experiment with Gocco and letterpress techniques, and get Etsy shop critiques – and that’s just to name a FEW of the fun and educational offerings!
One can see why I’ve been dying to attend, especially since it is in the heart of Baltimore City, my wonderfully weird hometown!
On day one, the first order of business, after signing in, was to go to the Make Something Awesome area and create a name tag for myself. The Make Something Awesome area was chock-full of tools, materials, and ideas for fun crafts to make. It had areas devoted to various crafts like embroidery, knitting, envelope making, duct tape crafts, and button-making - I settled down at the “Make a pom-pom” table, which was sponsored by Charm City Craft Mafia, and created a happily lop-sides and fuzzy pom-pom of my own!
After a welcoming and updates from the organizers, we were off to the Morning Sessions. Each block of time throughout the day offered a choice of workshops and sessions, which are a more interactive, friendly, and fun version of a lecture. There were also one-on-one opportunities to meet with Danielle Maveal from Etsy for a critique of your shop, and with literary agent Kate McKean of the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency - where you could pitch your idea for a craft book.
I joined a workshop called “Making the Not-So-Fun Stuff Easier So You Can Save Time and Sell More” - a mouthful of a title for a super-informative presentation from Willo O’Brien of WilloToons. She covered how to create a place in our indie businesses where sustainable growth can happen by using systems like the one from Stitch Labs to manage our contacts, products, inventory, sales, fulfillment, and expenses. She offered lots of tips to help us streamline our systems, which is always a great idea. She’s got a video and blog post up that gives you an idea of what was covered, available on her website.
Next up was lunch - I had a sandwich made from tasty vegan “cold cuts” with a side of marinated olives, plus a really tasty veggie loaf. They’re feeding us well there! If you’re a meat-atarian, there was a great selection of sandwich fixin’s for you, too.
During the lunch break, we were treated to a “Craftnote” presentation from none other than Debbie Stoller and Laurie Henzel of BUST Magazine. [You may also know Debbie from the Stitch ‘N Bitch books!]
The topic was an informative and fun one: how they started and maintained their DIY business for 18+ years. It was really interesting to hear how BUST started from the humble beginnings of a cut/pasted/copied ‘zine, and slowly morphed into the fully glossy pro magazine that so many of us know and love today!
They also announced their new book, The BUST DIY Guide To Life, available from STC Craft/Melanie Falick Books. I’m excited to pick this up, as it has more than 250 of BUST’s ideas in DIY health, finance, beauty, fashion, and even more. It’s available now, and I’m running out to pick up my copy sometime this weekend.
In the second part of my wrap-up, I’ll talk about what I did in the afternoon - stuffed full of great tips and insight that I can’t wait to share with you!