Florida Creatives – Creating a Community of Innovation

Alex Williams, a New York Times reporter, sent out a request through the Likemind organizers mailing list asking a few questions about the event that has grown to be an international affair every month. Here is a sample of his article:

To Erin Middleton, a 27-year-old brand strategist in Dallas, the word “networking” calls to mind “stodgy business types in suits,” who are “very uncomfortable and poor at engaging conversation,” she said in an e-mail message.

Melissa Clark, an advertising account manager in Minneapolis, said there is “something smarmy” about the word.

Peter Bihr, 28, a media consultant in Berlin, was even stronger in his denunciation. “ ‘Networking,’ as a word, makes me feel like I get a physical reaction, I hate the term so much,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “It sounds all like strategically talking to people and trying to be their friends. It’s not authentic.”

So, what exactly, are these three doing at 8 a.m. on the third Friday of each month, meeting with other young professionals at their local coffeehouse?

They are participating in likemind, a monthly kaffeeklatsch for creative professionals, held in 55 cities around the world, including Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai, and Malmo, Sweden.

Read the rest of the Likemind article on the New York Times' website

The article calls out the no-agenda, no-hard-sell nature of Likemind, the differences with Meetup.com events, the similarity to Unconferences, or Green Drinks, and even gives some literary reference.

Our next Likemind in Orlando (or anywhere else) will be Friday, December 5th. Jim Hathaway and Ryan Price are the co-organizers of the Orlando Likemind.

If you work in marketing, design, advertising, or something more squirrely, please check out Likemind, the conversation and the coffee are never cold, and always welcome in the morning.

We just wanted to share the news with all of you. Brikolodge, Miami's first coworking facility, got some press last night on CBS 4 News (local station). Please check it out... I hope you enjoy it! And if you are ever in the Miami area, please don't forget to stop by.

Ali & Eduardo from Brikolodge
www.Brikolodge.org

Exciting news: I was informed that Florida Creatives and BarCamp Orlando were named "Best way to staff your social networking startup" by the Orlando Weekly as part of their annual Best of Orlando issue.

Location

what: an unconference
when: September 25-27, 2008
where: Orlando, Florida
cost: free

tracks:
Journalism
Technology/Tools
Local/Community
New Media/Creative
Marketing/PR

Voce Communications, in partnership with Rollins College will host the third edition of this FREE event that was open to bloggers and non-bloggers alike from Florida and anywhere else. We bring together a good cross-section of folks to discuss blogging, podcasting, public relations, social media, citizen's journalism and other related topics. The event was as much a social/family gathering as it is a 'work' gathering.

There is an opening and a closing reception in Downtown Orlando on Orange Ave both nights - check the schedule for details.

BlogOrlando Sessions

Over on the Orlando Sentinel Theatre blog, there has been a recent discussion about how to get Orlando's Theatre (and theater) community together. They decided on having a pot-luck dinner in a local theatre space, namely Mad Cow. The date is April 6th at 7PM, the same day as BarCamp Media Day, one hour after our event wraps up, right across the street from our event.

Florida Creatives on Mahalo

Originally uploaded by Liberatr.net.

Mahalo is a human-edited search directory - sortof a return to the original Yahoo! - hand-edited lists of relevant pages, videos and links to other directories or wiki pages about tens of thousands of subjects. Naturally, I submitted Florida Creatives to be on the Orlando page, but I was denied until yesterday. Check it out at mahalo.com/Orlando

Local blog shenomenon Sarah in Tampa is now creating content for ReadWriteWeb and Microsoft's Channel 10. Heard it on a blog from Tampa called Sticks of Fire, perhaps the best placeblog in Florida.

The NFI Studios blog had a very nice post about our little group today. I want to thank Lynda Raphael (any relation to Sterling?) for writing such a positive post. She even quoted Mr. Richard Florida (who is not the namesake for our group, but) whose writings are often compared with our grassroots community-building efforts here in Orlando and around the state.

Here's some of what Lynda wrote:

I just noticed on a PeachPit Press blog that Blog Orlando was mentioned. Normally I don't read their blogs, but I happened to come
across a link in their newsletter that I get since they sponsor my user group. Among the big names mentioned in the post is one of our own crew, Alex Rudloff. Here's a quote: