We sat down with Stanfield Gray to discuss the upcoming DIG SOUTH Interactive Festival.  Essentially, the goal of the DIG SOUTH Festival is to create an event that emulates Austins SXSW, bringing the same sort of festival to the South East.

Here are some links to more info about DIG SOUTH:

TechFaster:    Today we are joined by Stanfield Gray, the Executive Producer of Dig South, an interactive festival and expo in Charleston, South Carolina. Stanfield, why don’t you tell us a little bit about Dig South, what’s going on?

Stanfield Gray:    Sure. Dig South is an interactive festival that’s modeled on SXSW.  Ad Age, the digital conference they host, the idea of festival and several other things that we took a look at. We did a lot of research and thought about how to put this thing together. So what we came up with was a conference with high level presenters from all sorts of digital, social media, marketing creative backgrounds and an expo full of exhibitors to highlight what’s happening across the knowledge economy, everything from Comcast to startup entrepreneur with a new app.  Digitas, CNN Digital will be part of it and then we have the sideshow which is all the fun with networking events, comedy improv, live music happens at night across the Charleston peninsula. So in a nutshell that’s what it is, a conference, an expo and a sideshow that all makes up one big festival.

TechFaster:    How long has Dig South been under planning?

Stanfield Gray:    I started in earnest planning about a year and a half ago. For the last 10 years I’ve worked for the College of Charleston doing marketing. I launched the mobile app for the college and did brand and identity work and a lot of other projects and I’m also a musician and it’s a part time gig. I’m the music editor for Charleston Magazine. So in my experience and looking back historically, music and technology and photography and video always evolve hand in hand, all the way back to Thomas Edison through the iPad.

So it made sense to me to combine all of these different fields into one smart festival and really get people talking about big ideas, innovation, high wage jobs, creative things happening. So that was kind of one part of it. The other part that really inspired me was what is already happening in Charleston with Parliament and BarCamp and with the CRDA, the SCRA, the Charleston Digital Corridor. Who else?

There’s so many I could think of that are working very hard to try and increase knowledge economy jobs here, whether it’s in technology or design or marketing, various creative industries. That’s where we are now in the world. Those are the jobs that I think the younger generations are really focused on and want. So I was inspired about all of those things already happening. PeopleMatter, Xpansion, Blackbaud, BenefitFocus of course, Blue Ion, Levelwing, all these companies are doing amazing things.

So in my mind it just felt like the timing was right to have our own festival that could rival those already happening in Austin and Seattle and Portland has XOXO and Jacksonville has got One Spark and even Jazz Fest which is a 40 something year old music festival has launched Sync Up which is their version of the interactive side. So it just felt like Charleston needed that too and we’ve got kind of the silicon harbor nickname going on. I know it’s kind of a long winded answer, but there are so many things that inspired me to do this and put it together that I can go on for days.

TechFaster:    It’s a very interesting project. I’m looking at the brochure. It looks like the structure of the event is quite varied. Can you talk about the structure of the actual event just a little bit?

Stanfield Gray:    Sure. Well, the conference will be held in the College of Charleston arena and there are breakout rooms all for the facility of art, the main basketball court and the concourse. So the conference, our theme for 2013 was the intersection of technology, social media, marketing and the arts. That’s obviously a very broad umbrella and technology is kind of the hub of all of those things. So it’s really people who are using the web and using things digital to either succeed in business or launch a cool concept or create a work of art. But that’s the main driver, is technology.

So that’s what the conference is really all about. It’s everything from entrepreneurs to startups to leading brands come in and we want to mash all that up and just see what happens. So a lot of those sessions are also very interactive. We’ve got something called speed dating for startups which is where people get to jump around every 10 minutes to different groups and ask anything they want from the experts that we have on hand.

We’ve got another one called straight to video where you can crowd source videos you’ve made and get some feedback on either why it’s good, why it’s not good, where should you distribute it now, the best way to use that.

We’ve got people who are experts in social media and backend and frontend software development, people who are involved in digital publishing. You see the programming there, it is pretty diverse, but I think at the heart of all it, everybody understands that digital is the game, global economy, those things are kind of all linking everything together anyway.

So that’s the conference part. Then the expo, the exhibitors, we’re trying to do something really funky with that too. It’s not going to be like your father’s trade show from 20, 30 years ago. But he’d like it too. So that’s our goal. So on the arena, on the main floor of the concourse, we’ll have kind of a traditional expo setup while main stage with an MC handling those things.

Then we’ve got another gym that we’re calling the Dig South Emporia. That room is going to have a live stage that’s sponsored by ReverbNation which is a music platform. ReverbNation did this thing called opportunity live for us where they got bands to submit forms. We got over 650 entries for that. It just blew me away how the people did that. So we’ll have some of those bands from that group playing there as well as local bands in that same mix.

So that room will have exhibitors, but it will be rowdier, funkier. It will feel a little more festive like a party and then out in the main arena will be a little bit quieter and easier for people who are more focused on meet generation and recruitment and business development. So we’re trying to strike a balance between the festival fun atmosphere and people who are serious about trying to network and engage, learn about platforms.

TechFaster:    Can you talk about some of the corporate partners that have come on board, and people’s reaction, in general, to the idea?

Stanfield Gray:    Yes, absolutely. Well, we approached the Digital Corridor very early on. I met several people that are in the corridor. Alloneword Design, Buff Ross is a good friend of mine. He’s an incubator. So we went over and spoke to Ernest Andrade, the director of the Charleston Digital Corridor, told him about what we’re up to and what was happening. He was a very early supporter. Then we went over to the CRDA, the Charleston Regional Development Alliance and they’re working in four clusters.

One of those main clusters they’re pushing breaking out is the knowledge economy. So I met with Steve Warner there. Steve was incredibly helpful. He introduced me to a lot of other people that could get excited about this idea. Then we went out to SPARC. SPARC was super helpful, great company, great environment. They gave us a lot of really smart thinking good ideas about the programing. Went to LevelWing very early on.

Steve Parker was a big help and then Kaleidoscope Marketing group, Mindelle Ziff, they for a while were partners with Omnicom which is a very large international conglomerate of like marketing agencies. Mindelle Ziff there was very instrumental in helping me think through what an advisory committee might look like, who some of the sponsors might potentially be and just kind of hashing out the shape of this festival.

So those guys were all on board very early, then PeopleMatter, BenefitFocus, BoomTown all came in kind of together. They talk to each other a lot. They know what’s happening and they have a very healthy competition. So those guys were instrumental and then like I mentioned before, ReverbNation gave us a really big push on kind of the marketing, but also digital side for where the music business is going. Every band can now package themselves independently. They can have a platform where they don’t have to rely on a major label and Reverb makes it sound great.

So for us it was really important to have other partners that were not just from Charleston, but were from the southeast. So we wanted to have this big picture overview what’s going on. So that’s where CNN came into play. Amy Jordan there is the Director of Network Production is a big advisor for us. Baron Jordan is the Global IT Leader at Coca-Cola, is also one of our advisors.

So those guys came in and gave some ideas and then I mentioned Jazz Fest before and Rob Savoy can help me think through what happens with Sync Up and how that relates to what we’re doing and then I would say the icing on the whole cake was I just picked up the phone and called Hugh Forrest who is the Interactive Director at SXSW and he’s been there for a long time and I think Steve Warner may have connected me to him.

But he did not see us as like a threat or any kind of competition because they’re of course the super bowl of interactive festivals and music, that sort of thing. He was very helpful and he gave me a lot of good ideas about like exhibitors to approach, how to shape that, especially the expo. So yeah, pretty much most of the people I called were into the idea and were very helpful and my whole team has been super encouraged by the feedback we’ve got.

TechFaster:    Great. You guys also have a Kickstarter campaign, trying to get a little funding going?

Stanfield Gray:    Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, Kickstarter is a really cool way to crowd fund something and to get people to buy in early and to think about your idea. For us we decided we have funding and sponsors to do the festival without Kickstarter, but we felt like Kickstarter was a really unique, cool way to get people on board early and to be able to call them festival founders.

So we’ll recognize them on the website when the campaign is over and in spring the program guys, the people that really early on believed in what we’re doing, got on board and thought about it. So for us Kickstarter has been a way to generate awareness, sell early bird tickets at a big discount for folks and to have this group of what we’re calling festival founders.

TechFaster:    Is the city of Charleston also helping out with this?

Stanfield Gray:    Yes. Well, the Digital Corridor is part of the city of Charleston. It funds their operation and they have a partnership where they do some things independently from the city, but they also receive funding. So I did go to the mayor’s office first and I met with Harry Lesesne there and he sent me to Ernest initially. So when I’m speaking of the Digital Corridors and Ernest, I’m also meaning the City of Charleston. We’re very excited to have them on board and yes, so the city in general is part of the whole program.

TechFaster:    Are there maybe one or two presenters or sessions that you’re really looking forward to?

Stanfield Gray:    Yes. Well, there’s one we have with several venture capitalists on it, including Mike Brown. He’s the founder of AOL Ventures. I know a lot of people in town are interested in bringing more capital, angel investors, VCs, to Charleston to see what we’re up to, what we’re doing and find funding for those projects. So I think that’s going to be an exciting panel for a lot of people to hear about. Well, how do I even approach these guys? How do I get the phone number?

So I think that’s going to be cool. Meredith Artley who is the Senior Vice President for CNN Digital, I think she has a really unique view on what’s happening across media digital platforms. She also went to Appalachian State University here. So she’s homegrown, so to speak, in our region. I think those two sessions in particular really stand out. I’m not going to go through the whole list, but those are some of our bigger panels.

And then to launch the entire first day of the conference we’ve got John Warner from InnoVenture in Greenville, Gene Crawford from Converge in Columbia, Jake Hodesh from Creative Coast in Savannah which is their incubator and then Steve Warner moderating it from the CRBA and then Robert Prioleau from Blue Ion who’s been one of the main instigators behind Pecha Kucha Parliament. So those guys are going to give us the big picture, the lay of the land that we’re saying yeah, this is what we see happening, these are some of the cool companies, this is the energy and driving force.

So in my mind those are kind of three of the really exciting ones and all the rest of the programing. We tried to make sure we didn’t duplicate efforts and that we can offer something to anybody who’s really in the game and especially in this space.

TechFaster:    What kind of collaboration tools are you guys using? Are you guys meeting in Charleston? Are you using virtual conferencing or?

Stanfield Gray:    We’re doing a lot of face to face meetings, a lot of phone calls of course. We’ve done some meetings like this, go-to meeting. We’ve used that before. We’re developing an app that we hope will turn the conference into a playable game. So it’s kind of swipe technology. So as you go to each individual session, you can swipe it off and get a prize and then that takes you to the next session. Maybe it’s some swag. You get on the floor with the exhibitors. It could be a Red Bull in one of the after parties, some cool stuff like that.

So we’re hoping that will make it really interactive. Then of course we’re taping everything, but I don’t, like just taping, videotaping it. I don’t know if we’ll have the ability to stream it live, but we’ll be streaming the same day very shortly after those sessions. So we’re working with some different videographers. And then we worked with Dave Brown to create our video for Kickstarter and Dave is a really talented not only videographer but illustrator. So I have some other projects in mind that we’ll be doing with him to try to make some things fun and interactive. Do you guys have any suggestions for some tools we should use?

TechFaster:    Google Hangout right here.

Stanfield Gray:    Yeah, I love it.

TechFaster:    Was there a presenter or sponsor that just blew you away when the agreed to be a part of Dig South?

Stanfield Gray:    There were a couple of things that really surprised us. We have Ed Han as a presenter from Walton Isaacson. They’re based in New York and they handle Lexus, Whirlpool, big international campaigns. Ed was also on the team that created – I don’t know, for any Entourage fans out there, you remember the Tequila Avion that they launched on the show? His team created a fake tequila and then they actually launched it as a real beverage. That’s kind of a really cool way how fantasy or fiction becomes real life.

Then in San Francisco, MB Mobile is a cool platform that kind of turns your minutes on the phone into currency. It can be a big deal in a third world country if you need minutes and you’ve got to eat and you want to borrow using those minutes. It’s kind of an interesting platform. And then Slide Cloud which is based in Idaho. They’re coming to the expo and very interesting. Slide Cloud basically turns like keynote in PowerPoint into a much more socially active tool. It’s like a keynote on speed I guess or on overdrive.

So those guys have been really cool and our biggest sponsor so far is the SCRA, South Carolina Research Authority which I wasn’t sure initially if this was going to be something they’d be excited about because they often work with investor companies who are doing like military industrial stuff and healthcare technology, but they have been really enthusiastic and they’re very involved in job creation and across South Carolina. So yeah, those guys, I probably should have been surprised, but I’m really excited that they’re on board. I love it.

So those are kind of the farther reaching people. Then we have one more I guess who’s really cool. Harry Moxley Production Group. Harry Moxley is based in D.C, but he was a producer for the Travel Channel and for Discovery. So it’s pretty cool to have him, his experience and him coming on board to talk about what they’re doing on the small screen and digital channels now, not only with television but just video in general.

TechFaster:    How can people if they wanted to volunteer for this or can they volunteer to help out with the Dig South?

Stanfield Gray:    Absolutely, yeah. We need a lot of volunteers. We need all the help we can get. Please email info@digsouth.com and I’ll set up another email too specifically for volunteers, but for now that’s a good way for us to collect everybody’s information and I’ll get back in touch with them and somebody from our team will also contact them. We’re putting the volunteers together now, but the opportunities are really broad. We need people that can be content coordinators and event coordinators, people who want to work on the music side, people who want to be involved in the technology side specifically, the expo. So there’s a really wide variety of different ways to get involved.

TechFaster:    Great. Is there still time to sign up to present?

Stanfield Gray:    No. Unfortunately presenters have closed, but if somebody is super interested, has a great idea, go ahead and email me because we’re so far away from April that we do have a backup list and we have people that are really strong presenters but just didn’t contact us in time. So I would love to go ahead and have their name and their information now as an alternate presenter should things change or should we be able to expand the footprint.

It’s not impossible that we may have some people that we’d want to host in another facility, another venue, a different type of discussion. So I know that’s kind a split answer, sort of yes and no. Like the conference programming specifically is full, but the interactive festival programming has some windows of opportunity.

TechFaster:    Do you guys have any events scheduled prior to it so that people who are interested could attend to learn more?

Stanfield Gray:    Yeah. Visit Digsouth.com we have the lineup on there of presenters, but we also have the general schedule for now that walks you through the entire weekend what the times will be. We’re pretty close to nailing down the exact, specific schedule for the presentations, but that may not happen or be announced until early January. But just the run through of the weekend is on the website now.

TechFaster:     What has been the best learning experience of this whole thing or what’s the best experience that you’ve taken away so far?

Stanfield Gray:    Too many to even name. Let’s see. Data collection of course has been a big, big thing for us, figuring out how to handle it because we have so many moving parts. We have presenters, we have sponsors, we have volunteers, we have a big volume of people emailing us and interacting on the website. So we need to work a little harder on our strategy for analyzing that data, figuring out the best way to connect with people and there’s so many platform options now, including what we’re doing right now with Google Hangout. But everybody has a little bit different take on how they want to get in touch with us, how they want to be reached.

I worked for Piccolo Spoleto in the city over 10 years ago, about 13 years ago. That time it was pretty much here is the phone, maybe some people were on email, for the most part it was very simple. Today there could be 20 different channels and we just have to try them all until we find the one that’s the best fit for whoever you’re communicating with, whatever audience or individual you’re communicating with.

TechFaster:    Is there a single social media or communications platform that you think is working the best?

Stanfield Gray:    Yeah. I would say so far Twitter is working the best. This audience is very dialed in to Twitter and Twitter seems to be, functions very quickly of course and response times are really short. That’s how I saw that you guys reached out to me that way too. So tweets have been really big. Facebook, it’s hard to tell how many people are actually reading it or observing it, but we’re getting some interaction and we’re all blasting in that capacity. I noticed a lot of growth in the Instagram which there’s a certain audience for that and they love it, but Instagram is also kind of, to me seems to fluctuate a little more.

There could be heavy traffic and then no traffic for a little while, whereas Twitter is more consistent I would say in terms of that. We do have a Pinterest page we’re just ramping up now and needs a little more love and then we’ve got, we’re going to explore Tumblr a little bit. We’re actually probably going to bring in another presenter from Tumblr. So we’re kind of open to trying all those channels and seeing what works. At this stage we’re still building an audience and more on a one to one basis. In the spring I think we’ll be very, very heavy on social.

TechFaster:    Great. That’s about it. Any closing ideas or thoughts you want to leave us with?

Stanfield Gray:    Well, of course SXSW is the super bowl as I said before and we’re focused on them, but one of our expressions has been, why go to SXSW to see what’s happening in your own backyard and what I mean by that is there are so many cool things happening across the southeast in Raleigh-Durham, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Charleston, Savannah.

So in our view, the best way to pump on the sock and get the world to notice is to shine a spotlight on what’s happening here. You can go to SXSW too, but we’re hoping to share a piece of that and get people to sort of turn inward a little bit and say man, there’s some really cool stuff happening in our particular scene and the knowledge  economy here is not only emerging, it’s kind of on fire at the moment.

So those would be my parting words. If you’re thinking about other festivals, think about us too and help us build it together because we certainly can’t do it alone and we need everybody to participate and send us all the ideas that they have and we’ll try to build them into the programs as much as possible.

TechFaster:    Great. Well, thanks Stanfield for joining us today and we’ll be covering this as it progresses right here on TechFaster.com.

Here are some links to more info about DIG SOUTH: