artdude creative

Jul 24th 2014 | Joe Smith

ArtCamp Came to Me...

artcamp

It all started on a cold November morning.

If you don't know what an unconference is look up BarCamp or PodCamp. You will be just as likely to see the national efforts to promote these events as you will the highly successful, eight years running Nashville versions. The short definition: an unconference is for the community and provided by the community. I've been lucky enough to watch BarCamp and Podcamp grow over the years and see them have enormous influence on the technology and interactive marketing direction of this town.

After attending both events for a few years I started volunteering. One year I signed up for clean up. I ended up move tables onto trucks at the end of the day. Another year I helped create print materials and the slogan for PodCamp 2013, "Brewin' Content". When BarCamp 2013 was forming its crew the opportunity to chair the event came up. I was happy to use my creative skills, technical knowledge, and sometimes latent leadership experience to herd a crew of cats toward an awesome event. We saw almost 400 attend 48 sessions with great knowledge, enthusiasm and inspiration. And Mayor Dean visited.

During the preparation for BarCamp I attended Creativity Moves Nashville. Jacob Weiss's event included awe inspiring speakers on a single stage with large group interactivity and opportunities to connect. It didn't have quite the buzz or the free-for-all feel (herding cats I suppose) of an unconference. It did prove Nashville has tons of arts knowledge and experience. I quickly imagined that this would work really well as an unconference. ArtCamp!

From Tech Desert to Dreamland

Before I moved to Nashville in 2006 Art Dude Creative was the first result in a search for "Graphic Artist Nashville" or "Web Designer Nashville". This town had very little technological business savvy. Emma was just taking hold. Education and healthcare were the major consumers of bandwidth and off-site storage. That is until BarCamp encouraged us all to start sharing our knowledge with other Nashvillians. Accumulatively we've learned a whole lot over the last eight years. And I am not afraid to say BarCamp and PodCamp have significantly helped turn Nashville into a technological destination.

Word of Mouth

In Nashville we've got business mixers, technology mixers, marketing mixers, professional women mixers, food and beverage mixers (pun intended), creative mixers, music mixers, religious mixers, playful mixers, social mixers, dating mixers, and often organizations to join mixer mixers. Being an off-the-charts extrovert I attend as many of these as my time, interest, and budget can afford. In this context I started talking about ArtCamp as an idea. That idea seemed to be well received, but no one stepped forward to actually help organize an ArtCamp.

Doing any event is exhausting. Doing one that involves hundreds of people, tens of direct participants, and a gaggle of volunteers can easily become a nightmare. The BarCamp model is a good one but must involve a solid 'crew' of people to handle raising money, managing that money, promoting the event on multiple levels, communicating between crew, the public and the direct participants, and producing the actual event logistics, materials, and people. I am self employed so my time is flexible but not nearly available enough to pull this off. This event promised to be a long road to hoe.

Then along came Knight "Polly" Stivender and 12th & Broad, Nashville's new engagement media company. ArtCamp came to their attention, and it came with my name attached. Let me say 'ownership' comes from my desire to advance the arts in Nashville. I am glad to attach my name to ArtCamp as long as that helps make it happen.

I still had a choice between building a crew to do all the busy, time-consuming work; and buying into a for-profit post-new-media company to help. That was easy. Let's have an ArtCamp.

A Renaissance in Nashville

Why can't Nashville become an arts destination? It may take longer than BarCamp's eight years, but I believe we can become a renaissance destination for art and artists with our population growth, the fact that creatives are moving here in droves, and the existing creative community. I am excited by what will be our collaboration and shared knowledge. I can't help but be inspired, and I hope you will be too!

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