#BarCampCV

I’m not easily motivated by external factors. I am an internally motivated person, and I pride myself on sitting straight-faced during motivational speakers and pump-up speeches.

But…we all break down. This weekend, I went to a kick-ass event (sorry Mom and Grandma for the language) called BarCamp Cedar Valley, and I accidentally found some motivation lying around–probably in the grapes.

BarCamp is an unstructured event where the attendees make the agenda. Anyone can talk about anything. We had three categories–entrepreneurs, techies and creative. I helped plan the event. And by plan, I mean I Tweeted and posted on Facebook about it. Oh, and wrote the sweet “What is BarCamp?” page on the website.

There were almost 100 creatives, techies and entrepreneurs from the Cedar Valley (and some from Des Moines or further) at the event. I spent all day talking to people who have eerily similar mindsets to myself. Scary.

I actually learned a lot from the presentations, and had a chance to reflect on what I love doing. I love being creative, I love writing and I love running social media campaigns (it was overjoying to watch all the #BarCampCV traffic). And as I’m involved in more websites at work (with my lovely sister Shannon), I realize how much I enjoy the challenge of developing effective, optimized websites and engaging social media campaigns.

I like collaborating on sitemaps; plotting wireframes; working with ultra-talented designers; writing engaging, optimized copy; and integrating social media. It’s fun. And I’m lucky that I get to do a lot of this at my job.

No promises that this spark of motivation means consistent blogging…I do have a life, you know. (By “life” I mean work, reading, watching TV and maybe a social engagement or two.) I just wanted to reflect on a sweet event that may have inspired the seemingly uninspirable.