This fifth annual SPARKcon event begins tomorrow and ends Sunday. SPARKcon the Triangle’s showcase of creativity, talent, and ideas. This year the event showcases events in (a whopping) 16 main categories, including:

• for KIDS!
• artSPARK
• musicSPARK
• bazaarSPARK
• filmSPARK
• circusSPARK
• tastySPARK
• cyberSPARK
• ideaSPARK
• fashionSPARK
• poetrySPARK
• graffitiSPARK
• danceSPARK
• designSPARK
• theatreSPARK
• fireSTARTERS

The festival has an iPhone app and has excellent event summary pages that are connected to Google Calendar events. However neither of these quite fit my needs, so I created a master event list for the entire weekend. I’ve found it’s easier to just subscribe to the master event list and run off of it and a companion map of the area included than to hassle with the walled gardens of an app.

You can follow all 150+ events by subscribing to gogoraleigh’s SPARKcon calendar at Google Calendar. (Those subscribed to the gogoraleigh Hopscotch calendar are automatically subscribed – just check your calendar for all of the events.) See an event you like? Add it to your own calendar. Unsure about an event? Open up the calendar’s event, and see its link to SPARKcon’s event page, see a map to the venue, or see the overall SPARKcon map (which I highly recommend keeping in your mobile device’s photo gallery. You can even enable an alert for each act if you want.

While people flock to the event and enjoy many of the offerings, the Friday night fashion show is the big event of the weekend. The hour-long show begins at 8pm and features fashion from local designers. Be sure to check out the impressive and always-fresh offerings by Mollybeads at the show!

While SPARKcon has a very good website, to me it is easier to just follow the links to the elements pertinent to mobile devices:

• Complete Event Calendar (gogoraleigh)
• SPARKcon Area map
• Events by day
• Events by location
• Events by SPARK themes
• @sparkconner on Twitter
• ideaSPARK on “The State of Things”
• Bob Geary’s article in The Independent Weekly
• Craig Jarvis’ article in The News & Observer
• The Raleigh Downtowner’s SPARKcon spread (not for mobile)

	Google Calendar	XML	ICAL
SPARKcon Calendar

Let’s go Do It!!