Last night – Thursday, November 19th – I attended the Wilmington Young Professionals November Business After Hours at The River Room in Wilmington, North Carolina. As many of our clients and business associates know, Skybox Creative + Skybox Ink are expanding our offices to North Carolina in August 2010. We are extremely excited to get involved with the local Wilmington businesses. So far, I have received a warm welcome from each person I have met! Everyone in Wilmington seems to love it here, there is a strong sense of camaraderie and community that is felt immediately.

One of the gentleman I met, Brian McArtan is co-owner of The River Room as well as VP of DJ Professionals & Video. Awesome guy. He is a man on the move with big plans for the future, I am looking forward to hearing all about them! The River Room is a venue with 2,500 sq ft of meeting and event space available for all types of meeting, rehearsal dinners, corporate events or simply a cool place to hang out. They can seat 80 with a dance floor and cocktail style parties, they can accommodate up to 140. It must have been close to that last night, WYP brought a diverse and entertaining crowd of over 100 to fill the colonial style, yet contemporary venue.

Jackie Willse, was the host of the event. Jackie is one busy woman, organizing events for WYP, Owner/Candlemaster of Port City Candles and more! Chris Davis and I had a chance to chat about his photography work, which is amazing by the way! His focus is on Conceptual Ad Photography as well as Portrait work, check out his work here.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Courtney Shaver of The Bride’s Book (A bridal magazine), Monica Tockman – Wedding & Event Coordinator of Something Blue Productions, Steven Capo of Intelligent Placement Solutions (A physician job placement agency), among many others!

I am pictured above with Shannon Bowen Social Media and Breaking News Journalist for StarNews Media, David Merrill who manages the local Wilmington Networking Events Calendar, along with Todd Bishton, Johnathan Williams and Nicholas Karnazes.

Greg Tumolo and Bill are partners for a local company ClickCheckSave.com. This company will be national in no time, with a rebranded company name + image on the brink of a massive launch, they will be releasing an entirely new concept to the world. I would blog about it, but want to make sure I don’t spoil the secret.

Beautiful photographs were showcased all over the venue from the photo collage in the entry way to the walls in the bathroom. Most well known for their Wedding and Portrait Photography, Baca Photography has a ton of amazing work to show off.

It was a great night overall, within less than 2 hours, I met a ton of friendly people and learned a lot about the various businesses in Wilmington, NC. I’m looking forward to my next mixer when I return in December/January and even more so for the transition out here in August!

- Angelina, Skybox Creative