Creators, inventors and investors prepare to converge on The Combine in Bloomington

Inventors, investors and other creative types will once again make their way to the Bloomington Convention Center on April 7-9 for The Combine, an annual conference where community, culture, creativity, code and capital come together.

Throughout the past six years, The Combine — sponsored in part by Innovate Indiana — has brought together thousands of people from a variety of backgrounds and aspirations in the name of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Described by some as a smaller, more intimate version of Austin’s SXSW event, past attendees and speakers have included Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Cheeseburger CEO Ben Huh, comedian and Witstream creator Michael Ian Black, podcaster Merlin Mann, angel investor Paige Craig and Internet cat sensation Lil Bub.

This year’s lineup includes featured speakers include:

• Justyn Howard, founder of Sprout Social, which creates software for social media management;
• Katherine Hague, founder of Female Funders, an online resource for female investors;
• The Nerdologues, a sketch comedy group;
• Ed Finkler, lead developer at Graph Story, a graph database tool for businesses looking to tell stories with data;
• J.T. Wangercyn, co-founder of Loopy, a Kickstarter-funded phone case maker;
• Mike Kelleher, computer graphics supervisor for Blizzard Animation, known for games such as Warcraft, Diablo and the StarCraft series.
• Neil Brown, co-founder of Baker+Brown Co.

Workshops and after-hours events are scheduled as well. The Combine is made possible by the Bloomington-based Humanetrix Foundation. whose mission is “to mobilize technologists to improve themselves and their community, develop public interest technology tools and provide educational opportunities for technologists.”

General admission is $99 and $25 for students with a valid student ID. Additional sponsors include the City of Bloomington, the Gayle Institute for Entrepreneurship, Form Assembly, the Bloomington Economic Development Corp., Root, Cornerstone Information Systems, Startup Weekend Bloomington, IU’s School of Informatics and Computing, SproutBox, Uel Zing, Food Truck Fridays, Cardinal Spirits, Upland Brewing Co., and Markey’s Rental and Staging.

For scheduling and more information about The Combine, read here: