One of our Favorites: CreateWV15 – Fayetteville, WV
For the past several years we have had the opportunity to support the CreateWV Conference in a variety of locations throughout the State of WV. This year the conference took place in the beautiful town of Fayetteville, WV best know for Bridge Day and Whitewater Rafting.
The Create conference is unique as it does not follow by any means the traditional conference model. You see Fayetteville doesn’t have a conference center, nor does it have a hotel with meeting space. What the town does have is churches, town halls, restaurants and other unique meeting spaces. Over the span of the conference, the various workshops and sessions were held around town in these unique public spaces. Colored tape guided you from the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Building where we oversaw registration to the location of the workshop. Attendees could be seen walking throughout town all day long as they moved from session to session. Even in the drizzly rain, the conference went on without a glitch.
The highlight of this conference for us was the Entrepreneurial Panel – “From Start-up to Grown Up” where our own Julie Hewett was able to share her experiences on what it is like to start and grow a business in West Virginia. She shared the challenges of building a team even with limited resources as well as tips on how to find grow your professional network. Her best advice was to connect with a professional association to gain access to resources and best practices to run your business.
The future of this conference is currently unknown, so for now we will just wait to hear the news of where we will be going next year as we know it will be an adventure!