Florida Creatives – Creating a Community of Innovation

Last year at BlogOrlando we had a session called 'The Orlando Scene'. The concept was to bring together folks for different backgrounds to talk about things like cow-orking, start-ups, etc. It's a year later, so what's changed? We gathered some of the local area leaders to talk over what's going on in Orlando.

Watch more live videos from BlogOrlando

BlogOrlando session notes by Tim Welch

groups

florida creatives

barcamp orlando/ tampa/ chaos
doterati
likemind
digital media alliance florida
colab / coworking

ucf incubator program

user groups

ruby
python
java

upcoming events

convergence
create chaos
ignite orlando

the knowledge shop [lab for hire]

florida creative wiki has:

• event calendar
• wireless locations
• is user generated

Jason Hawkins is a filmmaker and a former member of Florida Creatives who has moved on to other (greener?) pastures in Witch Country. He shot a little video at the first meeting of a meetup very similar to Florida Creatives. Check out his post:

Make Film Work » Salem, MA - The Build Guild

1 Salem, MA from Jason Hawkins on Vimeo.

Since moving to Salem I’ve been working on an idea to create video snapshots about some of the cool things I’ve seen here. This video highlights the The Build Guild, a meetup for people in the web industry, and is the first in (what will become) a series of similar snapshots.

Unfortunately, I was a little off my game when I shot this and as a result the audio suffered greatly. Sorry about that.

Etan Horowitz of the Orlando Sentinel's weekly tech column, was at last night's CoLab Open House. Here's what he had to say.

Orlando Sentinel - A recap of the CoLab Orlando open house

Below is a video of Hussey, and Greg Pollack, a local web developer and one of the CoLab organizers, speaking about the space at last night's open house.

Download Show 18
flcreatives_18_eric.mp3
Length: 1:34:26

Eric Marden, AKA Xentek or Dr. XNLB, shares with us some stories from his past about starting record labels, trying to form creative collectives, and the creative climate in Orlando.

Shameless Links:

• Xentek
• Dr. XNLB
• Polyvibe Records
• Egyptian Zombie Robot Party Machine
• Florida Creatives on iTunes

Since the beginning of Florida Creatives, the people have always clambered for a place to post and seek jobs. In the past, I have used the FLCreatives blog for this purpose, or some folks have used the Google Groups list: those days are over.

Florida Creatives Jobs

The ground rules:

Use this space to post job availabilities, or say that you are looking for work. Please understand that joining this list will (by default) sign you up to receive email for every post or comment in this group; you can always unsubscribe and re-subscribe any time you like.

NOTE: if you are posting jobs, please do not post the jobs to other groups, such as regional groups, without permission from the group's moderator. Dozens of people receive emails for each of the groups on our site, and we do not want to be labeled as spam.

Plucked off the wire via NFi Studios' latest update:

NFi is working with other techs and creatives in the community to support the launch of CoLab Orlando. CoLab Orlando is a Coworking Space for anyone looking to have a dedicated work area (desk or suite), and be part of a community environment. CoLab Orlando is located on the 6th floor of the Angebilt building and is a work in progress. The tradition of the Angebilt, Orlando’s most historic building, combined with the innovation of Orlando’s tech and creative talent, make CoLab an exciting project we can all share in.

Owner of the Angebilt, John Hussey, is calling on the communities feedback and support…
“Over the past several years I’ve seen the Orlando tech & creative community really emerge. As a commercial real-estate owner, I am proud to be part of Orlando Coworking. However, I know it’s not my vision that will make this space successful. CoLab Orlando is founded the community’s support and feedback. I ask for your feedback in what you want from CoLab Orlando, and with your support we will make this a success for our city. ”

- John Hussey, President/CEO, RealTrend Inc.
For more info on getting involved with CoLab Orlando, contact Sterling (sterling@nfistudios.com) or Dave (david@hydrastudio.com)

FYI, the Angebilt is the same building as the April BarCamp - at the corner of Orange Ave and Wall Street. It's a historic hotel, as well as the current home of the Downtown UCF Technology Incubator, Subway, Finhenry's, and several Wall Street venues. Easy access to the Library, lots of downtown eateries, bars, clubs, hangouts, coffee shops and the like. I couldn't think of many better places for Orlando's first official full-time 24/7 cow-orking space.

We are up to 15 members now and well on our way to getting to 20. Welcome to all those who have recently joined. I think it's going to be very interesting meeting many of you. I'm seeing a lot of diversity so far and that is a great thing!

Please welcome Alex Rudloff!

Just want to say a quick thank you and "Welcome!" to the first three that joined. Pioneers all!

I see Eric from Longbow just joined. I had the pleasure of meeting Eric just a few weeks ago. We had exchanged emails late last year (over a completely unrelated subject) and he seemed like, well... a swell guy. Yes, that's maybe an outdated term, so sue me.