Wayne and I were terribly excited to have the opportunity to attend the Maker’s Summit put on by Indie Craft Parade in Greenville, SC this past weekend. The sold out event was held at a gorgeous space downtown and was filled with an amazing array of creative folks.
The speaker list itself was awesome and included Stephen Fraser from Spoonflower, Grace Kang from Pink Olive, and Kimm Alfonso from Etsy. Plus there were two seperate discussion panels that provided the audience the opportunity to ask questions.
Throughout the day there were also experts set up in a side room to offer 10 minute one-on-one consultations. We took advantage of the lawyer (because really? free legal advice?) as well as a shop critique with Kimm. Both provided great advice that we were grateful to receive.
I loved Kimm’s slide pictured below. Really, it is remarkably easy sometimes to get so swamped in the minutia of the business that you forget the most important part.
As if all that wasn’t good enough, Finkelstein’s Center brought Barnum. ’Cause really, what’s a conference without a giant squid?
We came home with a fun bag of goodies and a new book purchased from Amy Flurry. Wayne was particularly happy with his new monkey hat courtesy of Mailchimp. He didn’t want to take it off. At all. Like all day.
The space had two long tables that were used for lunch and dinner. Down the middle were black cards, white pencils, and stands – all the requirements for make your own centerpieces. As Wayne and I are try-to-be-creative types with no artistic ability at all, we were in awe of all the cards folks were drawing at the tables and we had to take some pictures. We’ve posted a few on facebook and instagram, but here’s a small selection that we had to share:
So we learned a ton, met some wonderful new people, and got to spend time in Greenville. A pretty amazing weekend. We’re hopeful that they hold the event again next year and would highly encourage any small business owners to take advantage of it.
