CCSA raises 30K for Breast Cancer

I'm back from our annual Contemporary Ceramic Studio Association (CCSA)convention feeling refreshed and ready to share all the exciting new tips and techniques the Creatopia staff learned! This exciting conference comes once a year and gathers together all the pottery studios from across the world! My husband and I traveled to Phoenix for the big trip and boy was it hot! 112 degrees was the temperature most days, good thing we were inside listening to great speakers and learning about the upcoming trends for 2009. I always enjoy this convention because not only are pottery studio owners a BLAST to hang out with, but this is our chance to say, "hey what fun things have you been doing in your studio??" and how can we make that happen in our studio? Great ideas always come from that conversation starter :)

If I had to call out two major highlights of the conference one would be the opportunity I had to teach a 4 hour workshop on Internet Marketing to a room full of 30 pottery studio owners just like me! For those of you who don't know my background before pottery was in Internet Marketing and my husband (Corey) has written a book, eBoot Camp (due out on shelves Jan. 2009), perfect for small business owners just like me. The opportunity was amazing and I really enjoyed sharing some of what I have learned over the past two years on how easy it is to grow your business on the internet, increase your search rankings and best of all how to get my name to the top of google!

The second highlight of the convention was the CCSA auction to benefit the Vera Bradley Breast Cancer Foundation which raised over $30,000 (the clock pictured above raised $8,000!!). It is truly amazing to watch a live auction and see the energy flow through each person in the audience. It is full of excitment and generosity all for a good cause and the best part is all the items donated were created by studio owners or their customers so I don't even have to tell you that the items were created by some amazing talented people. The item we donated didn't make it into the LIVE auction, so we will have to think a little more creatively next year :)

Some of the great studio owners at convention!