The Blend Conference (aka @BlendConf/#blendconf) starts today! It's the first large-scale Web event Charlotte has ever seen, and it is something we should all be quite proud to host. In addition to being a rising tech star, the BlendConf founder, and the sporter of an awesome mustache Bermon Painter, is a local all Charlotte tech folks ought to be familiar with.

From their press release:

"We're tapping into the incredible local talent we have in Charlotte and augmenting their knowledge by flying in other experts in user experience, design and development to our city," said conference organizer Bermon Painter. "Not only do local students, tech professionals and managers get a chance to learn from the best and brightest, but the speakers and experts get a chance to learn about Charlotte's growing startup, UX, and tech scene."

The meeting, a three-day, three-track generalist conference with 50 speakers focusing on user experience, design and web development, bans devices during sessions but provides old-school, high-quality custom journals from the North Carolina company Bound, for each attendee. Painter also focused on diversity in organizing the speaker lineup.

"The issue of diversity in tech keeps coming up, so we created an intentional speaker lineup, topics and conference environment to demonstrate that fostering a diverse culture is possible and only requires a small amount of effort," Painter said.

Charlotte has been clawing its way up in very recent times and struggling to make a name for itself as an East Coast tech hub. We heard rumblings of its potential pre-DNC, but now, with things like RailsGirlsCLT, Launchpad Code Academy which launches on the 9th, and now BlendConf, it's safe to say that our fair queen is no longer trying, but is the tech hub we've all envisioned for years.