After the rousing success of last year's CINformation Seminar Series, the excitement around the office quickly segued into a charge: how could we build upon that success in order to make it even better in the future. Never one to rest on my laurels (partly because I have so few that it's rarely an issue, but largely due to the fact that the record attendance was more attributable to the panelists who participated and the support of local hero Linda Burns in putting me in contact with so many of them), I quickly set about trying to figure out how to move the event in a direction that would be more in line with the grand vision that we at the festival have for it, which is no less than the pre-eminent Media Conference in the Southeast.

The first thing that had to go was the name.

While conceptually interesting, CINformation was never really something that clicked with me. Unless one could see it in print, it made very little sense. It took too much effort to explain to potential panelists - efforts that could be better spent discussing specific panel ideas. And frankly, whenever I heard it out loud it gave me nervous images of sweaty revival side tents. As a newcomer, it was a title I was saddled with and didn't feel I had the authority to change. To my great relief, it started to become clear to me in the months following the festival that most everybody else felt the same way.

And so, without further ado, I present to you the 2014 Atlanta Film Festival Creative Conference.

As part of our vision for the Conference, we're expanding the scope of our panels, in the hopes of including media professionals and academics from all over the country to compliment the wide-ranging experts we have locally. The hope is to engage in a conversation that affirms, explores, and challenges the local infrastructure while also placing it within the context of a larger media and storytelling community.

Now the call goes out. Help us take the first steps towards establishing the Creative Conference as a destination for eager, info-hungry acolytes by submitting your proposals, ideas, and possible demos. Whether you have a topic you yourself would like to present, or merely a subject for moderation, we'd like to hear from you. If you've got nothing, then send it on to your friends and make sure to come out March 31st - April 4th to learn, network, and be inspired. Together, we can achieve the goal of making this the largest, most successful, and most informative conference in the region.

 - cs