ConvergeSouth has been a blast for the last four years, and Sue’s right in giving kudos to everyone that’s been involved. But this next one, I’m taking it over to move onto the next phase.
What’s interesting is that this was my thought to begin with, but I think that the brand is mature enough to go towards this direction. My thoughts is that this conference will be shifting its focus towards small businesses and how to harness new mediums for interaction and process. For those of us that are technically minded, this isn’t anything new, but there are many people out there that aren’t using the tools out there to the best of their advantage. This can be a great learning process for those businesses just as we’ve seen in the sessions about SEO, PR and email marketing. There’s a lot more to it but empowering the businesses can often gain you a foothold in a medium that your competitors perhaps do not understand or have not considered.
I don’t think that we’ll be neglecting the individuals that want to learn about X, Y, or Z, since we’ll still be working on those angles. There’s a lot of things that we can cover too.
The team that I’m currently putting together, I’m specifically looking for volunteers that have business management and serial entrepreneurs. Why? Basically I believe that taking this conference and using a business model to run it will be a lot more successful rather than a volunteer/nonprofit base. There’s nothing wrong with the latter, but it’s non-sustainable and we would love to see ConvergeSouth in Greensboro a decade from now or even longer. Perhaps spun out into a company that does specifically conference building. That ties together not only, job creation but also focusing a monetary aspect in the local economy (of which was always one of my personal agendas for ConvergeSouth from the start).
I’m happy to provide some rest for those tired individuals that have giving their all to this conference to make it a success year after year.
I’m open to new ideas in how to push this further. If there are those that are looking to get involved, let me know, either in comment or email.
