SAVANNAH, GA. -- The Creative Coast has announced the first round of speakers for Geekend 2014, the innovative pilgrimage bringing together cutting-edge tech and creative visionaries for a series of stimulating speakers, panels, workshops and networking, November 13 – 15 at locations throughout Savannah, Georgia. This 5th Geekend interactive conference will feature almost 40 experts from across the country who will discuss the latest innovations, applications, practices, technologies and trends in the worlds of innovation, entrepreneurship, software and web development, coding, video game development, designing and more.
“Savannah is always a hotbed of creativity, collaboration, idea-sharing, debate and deal-making. For three days in November we get to do it on stage,” says Bea Wray, Executive Director of the Creative Coast. “These industry leaders will initiate dialogue that is more substance than fluff and will ignite action over theory.”
Speakers include Grace Belangia, Community Development Strategist, theClubhou.se; Greg Foster, Co-founder, CEO and Chairman, BrightWhistle; Kevin Lawver, President, Rails Machine;Brian Maddox, Creative Director, NewCity; Eric Parker, Innovation Architect, CONima Architects; Erik Ragan, Co-founder, Director of Focus Lab; Cliff Seal, UX Designer, Pardot; Chad Vander Veen, Editor, FutureStructure. Additional speakers will soon be announced.
Topics to be explored and presented by Geekend 2014 speakers include:
· Economic Architecture: Why and How You Should Build a Hacker/Maker/ Co-Work Space: Building a startup is hard. Building a community is hard. So why not build your own startup community? Explore the past, present, and future of commerce in this conversation on architecture, startups, and community building– how hackerspaces, makerspaces and co-working spaces represent the best outcome for regional and national economic development plans and how you can create your own.
· Give Your Idea Wings: A Primer in Custom Designer Toy Making: A discussion on the steps, tools and materials involved in transforming an idea into a marketable product -- how to create an initial prototype through sculpting or 3D printing, how to sell your idea using crowd-funding to offset production and market testing costs and insight on branding, packaging and building awareness of your creation.
· People Over Pixels: Meaningful UX: Can design help us achieve business goals? Why does a user’s experience matter? Finally design is getting some respect in tech. Discover how to capitalize on design – what makes a great user experiences, how to scale UX practices and how UX can actually make a difference in the world.
· Oh No, You Have to Scale!: You’ve built an app. Great! Now it’s successful and you’ve outgrown Heroku. Your users are starting to complain about performance and your site may have even gone down a couple of times. What do you do? How do you go about scaling an application from 10 users to 10 million? What tools do you use to find your problem spots, and how do you attack them?
Early Bird registration to Geekend 2014 is $125 on or before August 13, including access to speakers and workshops, lunches and admission to all receptions. Registration after August 13 is $225.
Creative Coast supporters will receive an additional 20% discount off their registration fee and an invitation to the Supporter-only sneak peek of the Creators’ Foundry on August 19.
For more information and registration, log onto www.geek-end.com.
About The Creative Coast
The Creative Coast is a non-profit organization that exists to nurture the members of the Savannah community engaged in creative or innovative endeavors and to cultivate an environment in which they can thrive.
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