Armed with complimentary Temple coffee and donuts, bleary-eyed designers and creative workers filled a Midtown auditorium early Friday morning.

The free lecture series CreativeMornings has popped up in 162 cities worldwide, and Sacramento is among the most recent. Today’s monthly event at CLARA, the E. Claire Raley Studios for the Performing Arts, was the second of the series. It sold out in two hours, said organizer Rebecca Plumb.

“Historically, creatives have had to move to bigger cities [than Sacramento] to make a living,” Plumb said. That seems to be changing, but it’s up to Sacramentans to keep the community strong, she said. “Get out and find ways to buy from local makers.”

In the audience, Jamie Furlong, a freelance florist and horticulture student, had recently moved to Sacramento from Brooklyn, N.Y. She was buoyed by the solid turnout at the event and appreciative of the call to support local businesses.

“When I was moving here, I was afraid,” she said. Furlong didn’t want to move back to a larger city to make it as a florist. “I want to live in Sacramento, so I think it’s important people embrace the creative economy.”

The speaker of the morning, local journalist and designer Melody Stone, regaled the crowd of roughly 200 people with the charming twists and turns of her career. After dropping out of high school, she eventually worked for ten months at a small newspaper, until it went belly up.

“When the paper folded, I moved to Sacramento to seek my fame and fortune,” she said with a wink in her voice. The audience laughed.

Assigned the theme of “mystery,” Stone rallied the crowd to follow their curiosity. As an example, she reported one of her most popular stories for Capital Public Radio’s Roadside Distractions series after following a nagging question about a Sacramento highway sign. It lists the thousands of miles to Ocean City, Md.

“Don’t discount that ‘what the F’ moment,” she said. “That’s how we’ll find the mystery in the everyday.”