One of the things that was inspired by my weekend conference retreat with Creative Alliance’12 was my already-developing interest in taking and playing with pictures. I participated in more free-form discussions than technically-oriented sessions during the weekend, but I got the most immediately-useful takeaways from a talk about Pinterest and Instagram, which was supplemented with an excellent list of photo-editing apps (thanks to Yuliya @ SheSuggests and Ciaran of Momfluential). I made the top two collages here with PicFrame on my iPad; I used the Pixlr Express app in Google Drive for the third one.
One of the many things that made CA’12 special was that it wasn’t sponsored or heavy on the “brand interactions,” but several businesses did generously contribute supplies and experiences to the weekend. The Blue Iguana Inn was exclusively ours from Thursday evening till Sunday morning, providing lodging and meeting spaces. Our primary meeting space was an open-air tent, where we used folding beach chairs that Identity Links made just for the retreat. One of our Friday “field trip” options was a Downtown Ojai shopping visit that included stops at Human Arts Gallery and Bart’s Books, and we were visited (and inspired!) on Saturday by Sheila Cluff, owner of the destination spa The Oaks at Ojai, and the Mobile Mixtress, Jennifer Haraway of KleanSpa.