Past President

After spending the weekend in Jacksonville attending the American Advertising Federation Fourth District Annual Conference I am one step closer to becoming the immediate past president of AAF-Suncoast.

Since it was my seventh district conference in three years it was bittersweet knowing it could be the last time I see some of my friends from the Fourth District. But any feeling of loss was buoyed knowing I get to pass the gavel in June to incoming president Vivian Owen.

Of course I was tempted to stick around for at least one more conference considering the next one is in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but I have no plans to invest more time into the Fourth District at this time. Now that Milestone is established it’s time to focus more of my energy on sustaining our growth.

Speaking of growth, my visit to Jacksonville was a pleasant surprise. One Spark, dubbed the world’s largest crowd sourcing event, was going on the same time as our conference all over downtown Jacksonville. Modeled in many ways after South by Southwest, the first-year event featured budding entrepreneurs, live music, speakers, and vendors.

Organizers are hoping One Spark will become an annual economic driver for Northeast Florida. We have a similar event coming up in our region. Local BarCamp founders Sara Hand and Stan Schultes started a new organization called Spark Growth.

For several months they’ve been working behind the scenes with various groups in Manatee County to produce a four-day event in and around Bradenton’s new Riverwalk district the first weekend in May. STF is one of many sponsors and members of the Suncoast Technology Forum will be there to support the event. I hope we’ll see you there too!

Until next week,

Matthew Anderson, President
Milestone Marketing Associates, Inc.