Create WV 2013 Conference

The Future is the topic of the 6^th annual Create West Virginia Conference, to be held in Richwood, West Virginia Thursday, October 24 through Saturday, October 26.

“Richwood is the perfect backdrop for a conference on the future because it’s such a compelling symbol of the 20^th century American industrial age,” says Rebecca Kimmons, 2013 conference director.  Most of the 29 storefronts that make up Main Street are empty.  Citizens of Richwood drive 25 miles west to Summersville for shopping and entertainment.

“A lot of people have asked how in the world we’re going to stage a conference in Richwood that as many as 400 people attend,” Kimmons says.  “I figure if you’re going to call yourself ‘Create West Virginia,’ you’d better be able to improvise.”

It turns out that Richwood has far more going for it than meets the eye, Kimmons says, which was what she figured all along.  “The most important things any community has going for it are will power and imagination,” she says.  “We’re finding that in Richwood, and we’re also finding lots of West Virginians whose creative juices are being stimulated by the prospect of this conference.”

Plenary sessions will be held in the 500-seat Richwood High School Auditorium.  Breakout sessions will be held in various locations near the school.  Empty storefronts on Main Street will be brought to life for the duration of the conference by retail entrepreneurs and artisans affiliated with Tamarack.  Dovetail Wind & Solar, led by Harrisville native Matthew Bennett, who is vice-president of the Athens, Ohio, company, is designing a solar array to provide power to the Main Street shops for the duration of the conference.  The solar array will be placed on a pavilion roof being designed by Thomas Worlledge of McKinley and Associates

Douglas Imbrogno and Doris Fields will co-host a pop-up entertainment “chill out” venue in the Richwood Banking & Trust building on the southeast corner of Main and Oakford Avenue. Imbrogno is the host of the weekly Third Eye Cabaret in Charleston; Fields is the entertainer known as Lady D who is producer of the Simply Jazz and Blues Festival, and monthly programs at 110 Marshall in Beckley.

Keynote speakers include Huntington native Jon Gensler, who will speak on the topic of “Reprogramming Appalachia through Changing the Approach to Leadership.”  Gensler, who holds an MPA from Harvard and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a consultant with Cambridge Leadership Associates in New York City.

Dr. Thomas Frey, founder of the DaVinci Institute in Denver, Colorado; Gregory Bowman of the WVU College of Law; Dr. Naomi Stanford, author and organizational consultant; and architect Thomas Worlledge of McKinley & Associates are also keynote speakers.

Register online for the conference at createwv.org.  Special rates for early registration, and for professional artists, and VISTA and Americorps volunteers are available.

Richwood, WV will be the home of the 2013 Create WV Conference. Photography by Chet Lowther.