BarCamp, T-Shirts, Secret Handshakes, New Website

[Ryan Price]

If you haven't been following the discussion over at www.FloridaCreatives.com
I invite you to go and view the last 4-5 posts on the homepage and
their comments.

For those of you who missed it, we had an event last week called
BarCamp. It is an unconference, meaning there is no schedule and there
are no special guests or keynotes, so it is more a democratic
gathering. Some really great folks presented or led discussions, and
there was an overwhelming feeling that our community needs to "get
organized", whatever that means.

At the last session of BarCamp, I suggested we could be doing more to
be inclusive and encouraging of our members, and one way to do that
would be to have a system of identifying your fellow creatives and
geeks. My first thought was a secret handshake, so I threw it out
there.

Chris Scott then came back in his usual fashion with a wonderful
suggestion:
"How about some t-shirts and stickers to go along w/the buttons you've
made that we could buy to help show off our FL Creatives spirit/pride/
whathaveyou?"

I will be bringing back the buttons. My button maker has been missing
parts for over a year now, so I only had a few left, but I've ordered
a new kit.

Second is the shirts - I came up with a muck-up for how these might
look:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thickmints/2405824242/in/pool-floridacreatives

Last and by no means least is the new Florida Creatives website. I'll
be working with Rob over at Hydra Studio downtown to get a pretty
design together, but the functionality if the site is the exciting
part for me. The site is currently working at www.floridacreatives.com/community
but we should be moving it over to the main site sometime in the next
week. I've already moved all the content from the wiki over, so that's
one project down. I still need to move the blog posts and set up
redirects from the wiki to the new site, but those won't take effect
until we have everything moved over, so one preceeds the other. If
anyone wants to help, just let me know.

What does this amazing new application do? It is a way for ANYONE to
create a group, for FREE, host it on the Florida Creatives groups
section, list events, have email notifications, message boards, an RSS
aggregator and a wiki (and I might be forgetting some things). The
permissions on the site are almost completely open, so you can get up
and running with a group in 5 mintues instead of waiting for someone
to grant you access. I also added support for uploading a photo,
including a bio and a link to your website, and an "Interests" and
"Skills" field that work like most social networking sites - when you
click on a word, it takes you to a list of everyone else who filled in
the same interest or skill across the whole site.

There is still work to be done, and we still might be missing a few
things, but something is better than nothing in this case. I have a
few test groups up there for now, and we have exactly 3 users, but I'm
sure that will change very soon.

So much more to talk about, but I have to be getting to work.

We'll see you all at Crooked Bayou on the 21st for Florida Creatives
Happy Hour!

Peace,
Ryan Price
floridacreatives.com
ryanpricemedia.com