Summit of Awesome

I was pretty thrilled when I heard that Hello Craft’s Summit of Awesome was coming to Baltimore as it’s not every day that the who’s who of the maker world lands on your doorstep and you have the chance to pick their brains!

Since I was limited both in finances and time, I could only attend one day of the three day conference. Luckily, Friday had seminars during every session that had to do directly with stuff that I’m struggling with at the moment, so I felt that my time there would be extremely well spent.

The first session on Craft Fair Booth Set Up and Display was presented by Caitlin Phillips of Rebound Designs. I was pleased to discover that a lot of the things that I’d been super fussy about while building my display were worthwhile and got a lot more good ideas that may give my booth a serious boost next year. It’ll give me some scheming to do down in the Shed of Thread until the next season rolls around in 4 months or so when I begin applying to fairs again.

Lucky for me that the second session had to do with Craft Fair Applications presented by Rachel Bone of the Charm City Craft Mafia and Red Prairie Press and Andrea and Robert Tucker of Got Craft? I’d fortuitously spoken to Rachel earlier over breakfast and was pleased to have gotten a heads up about the session which gave a few good hints as to how to apply for big indie fairs. I’ve had some rejections from ones in the area this year and it was actually really validating to hear exactly how competitive space in these top events is.

Over lunch, the “Craftnote” speaker was Jay McCarroll, winner of the first season of Project Runway which I have to admit that I’ve never watched due to the fact that I find fashion to be vapid and boring despite the rather charming Heidi Klum. If something looks good, it makes me happy, but the whole scene full of mean girls and guys appeals to me as much as trying to clean cat sick out of a keyboard. (Can you tell I had to do that this morning?) McCarroll, refreshingly, felt the same way and was both an interesting and engaging speaker who seems to feel more at home within the handmade movement than in the fashion world.

I dedicated two of my three afternoon sessions to Etsy, choosing first to attend Danielle Maveal‘s (daniellexo of Etsy admin) Best of Etsy Success, meant to dispel some Etsy myths as well as give a few pointers regarding the changes taking place on the site. Again, I was pleased to see that I was taking a lot of the right steps in order to make the best of my shop, although I’m aware that I need to sit down in between the approximately 659 other things that I’m doing right now to do some keyword adjustment.

For the second session, I booked a 10 minute 1-0n-1 with Danielle for a shop critique, so to kill time until my slot, I headed down to the “Make Something Awesome” area for a gander at what was on display.

The busiest table in the making area by far was the button machine, which was something staggering in it’s simplicity, but limitless in it’s capacity to turn adults into small children, seeing who could cut the craziest and most artful piece of wearable art. “You gotta see this!” A wonderfully enthusiastic festival goer said, dragging me over to a design volume, “there’s a picture here of George Bush coming out of some guy’s ass! This is TOTALLY going to be my next button!” Despite my enthusiasm for presidential proctology, I chose instead a crazy eyed flying nun as well as some lovely fabric patterns for my creations.

My session with Danielle was extremely helpful in terms of both suggestion and validation. I had a lot of good take-aways from our discussion including suggestions for better use of tags, improvements to writing style and more effective ways to use the new Search Ads. Now it is just up to me for implementation. (Approximately #3 on the list of 659)

I rounded up my day at the Summit with Social Media 101, which is something I’ve been feeling a little lost in recently. The workshop was presented by the charming pair of Willo O’Brien of WilloToons and Lish Dorset of Craft Magazine. When I think about what the internet was like when I was in college, (mostly one color blog pages with the dancing hamster and/or Jesus plastered all over them from top to bottom) it’s staggering that most people didn’t give up on it when social media had it’s Big Bang and started expanding exponentially in all directions, creating endless ways of sharing thoughts, stories and pornography with one another. (I think I just answered my own question.) At any rate, it was good to get the basics from two people within the handmade community intimately acquainted with the medium and able to steer us down the right murky pathways towards friends, followers and customers. (Approximately #4 on the list of 659)

I left feeling thoroughly invigorated and ready to face a new year of craft challenges, so big kudos to the wonderful organizers at Hello Craft for a TRULY Awesome Summit. Check out the photopool over at Flickr for all the crafty goodness!

I wish I had been as prepared for my trip home down 395, but that is quite another story altogether.