#createhere

It feels like only a few hours ago that all of this got started. We've gotten so much done, in far less time than we anticipated. In twenty-four hours, The UnFoundation has grown from an idea without a name to a full-fledged foundation with an identity that is not only really cool, but has the capability to impact the community we live in.

Everything got kicked off at 6:00 p.m. on Friday evening, everyone ran through their pitch in less than a minute (mostly). Most people had already had a chance to pitch during an extended session the week before. By 8:30 p.m. or so, we found ourselves in the CreateHere space hammering away at a schedule for the next day. We decided that we needed to have branding and structure done tonight, that meant a name. We initially thought that it wouldn't be a big deal - it's just a name, after all. Wrong. It was an arduous process, we must've run through at least fifty names before we came up with the right one!

By around 10:30 p.m. or so, we fell in love with the name The UnFoundation. It embodied grant-giving that wasn't complicated or lengthy, but rather was simple and easy to explain.

Then this happened:

"This is awesome. We have a name. What's next, a designer?"

"I think so. Let me go ask around, I'll go see what we can find."

"Alright."

5 minutes later

"I think we found a designer."

"Seriously? Awesome."

"For sure. He's really cool."

1 hour later

"He just sent the logo over, I'm opening it now. Woah... This is freaking awesome!"

"Did he just do that? That's sick."

In short, thanks so much to Tavis for our logo. He's totally awesome. After we finished reveling in how much awesome just went down, we updated everyone on our progress around 12:00 a.m. After that, we went home and got some shut-eye for the next day.

Arriving back at CreateHere around 9:30 a.m., we got some legal council from James Catanzaro about the structure of our foundation. He gave us some great ideas about what we were doing, making sure that we were covered every step of the way.

Around 10:45 a.m., we got down to the nitty gritty of the copy writing for the foundation. In essence, we were carving out who we wanted to become with each paragraph. The room is buzzing at this point, everyone is coming up with awesome ideas and getting started with implementing them. Designers bringing in massive iMacs, developers bringing in what looked like custom-built PC's, and a certain Chattanooga City Councilman who looked like he was smuggling ties into a metal briefcase. Don't ask, we have no idea.

By 1:00 p.m., we had solidified our model and we headed off to lunch. But, not before Alex Lavidge offered his services in helping designing us an awesome website to launch our foundation with. Totally freaking awesome. Lunch was also good, props to the Bluegrass Grill for the awesome chili. It was delicious.

We get back in CreateHere around 2:30 p.m., at which point we start working with Gavin Baker to put together a marketing strategy for the next year. He did a fantastic job defining some really cool actions that we are definitely going to do going forward. Around 3:30 p.m., we find out that we've exceeded the amount of committed funding that we were seeking. Holy smokes. Much high fiving was had. This is totally a reality.

Now, after a bit of a break, we're hard at work getting everything put together and putting polishes on our website and filling our Tumblr with content like this. Thanks so much to CreateHere, the Company Lab, 48 Hour Launch, and all of its partners for helping put this together. We've still got another 24 hours, and considering all that's happened in the last day, we are so pumped.

A little over a week ago, I made my first Twelve Cities Project visit. I was Chattanooga-bound in sunny, beautiful 70-degree weather with the magnificent Smoky Mountains looming over my head. As I entered the Tennessee River valley and crossed into the Chattanooga area, it was easy to see why so many people have fallen in love with the beauty of this region.

But I wasn't convinced that the aesthetic appeal of the place was the reason young talent has flocked there in droves over the past decade. I was determined to dig deeper.

My first morning there, I took a 5am walk (yes, 5AM) around the city's center. There was a great sense of density and connectivity - everything, no matter what the distance, seemed to be within walking distance. The streets had a beautiful appeal to them, the sidewalks were comfortable to walk on, and there was an appropriate ratio of built environment to greenspace. Yes, they were little details - but they were little details that mattered.

I spent the majority of that morning with an awesome group of enthusiastic residents called CreateHere. Founded in 2007, they were determined to make a difference in both Chattanooga and the nonprofit realm from the start. Upon conception, they have a "supernova" date in mind - on December 31, 2011, they would cease to exist. They dubbed it their supernova date with the idea that a supernova either creates a black hole or shining stars. Based on what I observed during my visit, the latter is definitely true of this group.

In my own words, I'd describe them as an incubator for social innovation. I spent the morning (and a good deal of the week) learning about some of the awesome programs that had evolved out of CreateHere's enthusiasm and passion for economic revival in Chattanooga. MakeWork, an artist grant program, seeks to change public perception of what art is to include new and emerging forms of artistic expression - new media, documentary production, to name a few. Click here to view a clip of my conversation with Kate Creason, the MakeWork Administrator. For a full list of programs that have been developed out of CreateHere, click here - and prepare to be blown away by seeing the explosive results of mixing arts, culture, economic development, and community attachment.

It was fantastic to see the energy, passion, and enthusiasm this group of young people had for Chattanooga - but I knew that wasn't the whole story. I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Three decades ago, Chattanooga had be named the "dirtiest city" in the county and had hit rock bottom about as hard as it could. How did they rebound? How did they begin to establish themselves as - what I'm calling - the Silicon Valley of the south? How did they go from a "nearly dead city" to having such a vibrant and diversified economy, with such a high percentage of growth among young talent?

A conversation with J. Ed Marston of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce shed a little more light on this. Jed told me about where Chattanooga is today in regards to it's recent deployment of the country's fastest internet, and its journey to establish itself as a technology hub on a national and global scale. Additionally, Jed spoke a bit about the steps it took to begin the process - the importance of creating a regional vision that everyone bought into and used as guiding principles for whatever they did. This helped insure that everyone's agendas were aligned and all worked towards a common goal in a collaborative fashion.

I was now scratching the surface, but I knew I wasn't digging down to the roots yet. I still hadn't found the spark that lit the torch for Chattanooga's transformation.

A conversation with Pete Cooper of the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga cleared that up.

As I asked Pete about Chattanooga's story - where they had come from and what led to it - he emphasized one point: passion. It all started with a group of residents who were determined to see Chattanooga change for the better three decades ago, and they started to do so by taking on the enormous task of attempting to change residents' perceptions of the city. Though they had made the unpopular decision to be fish swimming upstream, they knew that if Chattanooga's residents loved the place that they lived - if they were attached to their community - they would be more inclined and willing to invest their time, energy, and talent into enhancing its overall desirability.

This point really hit home with me. On my way to Chattanooga, many had told me you can't make a comparison between them and Fort Wayne. I beg to differ. Many cited the mountains and beautiful Tennessee River as reasons Chattanooga has seen explosive growth over the past few decades. However, many in Chattanooga pointed out the beauty of our cornfields, forests, and natural assets in Northeast Indiana as ways to attract people.

What it all comes down to is a simple, yet entirely complex shift that needs to occur in the mindset of our resident population. Many of us are deeply attached to Northeast Indiana and couldn't see ourselves calling any other location home; that's fantastic! Let's build upon that. Too many times we focus on what we don't have instead of what we could be. A vision is only as effective as the willingness of residents to turn it into action. Let's create the Northeast Indiana we want to be.

Have you ever wondered how companies launch? Well, it's not usually like this, but then again, how many people do you know who have the #hustle to stay awake for 48 hours?

Yesterday evening, I went to the 48 Hour Launch presentations hosted by The Company Lab - and I have rarely seen so much genius in one room. Granted, it was one REALLY big room in the gym of the Southside Industrial YMCA (future home of Basecamp Chattanooga) - but nonetheless, there was more #hustle and brilliance per capita than most any other event I've ever had the honor of attending.

The 48 Hour Launch is a non-stop, no-sleep, two-day entrepreneurial blitz in which skilled entrepreneurs pitch business ideas that they've seeded in hopes of taking home a $5,000 launch grant. The criterion for the prize seemed to be based on what biz would be most attractive to potential investors, and the winner was chosen by three jurors (75% of decision) and a live mobile-phone-based audience vote (25% of decision).

All ten of the pitches were quite impressive, but a few of them really stood out to me for their innovation, new angles, and marketability. Cumberland Signal Flight Hub, Low Country Boil in a Box, Snappy, and Boxatomic all rocked my world, and addressed problems near and dear to my heart.

As a former Lockheed-Martin student insider, AFROTC nerd, and lover of all things aerospace, Richard Hardin and Cumberland Signal Labs/Cumberland Signal Flight Hub (the winning contender) really excited me. The idea behind this is replacing the masses of wires related to a flight instrument control panel. When an airplane goes into a repair station for a major refit, rather than spending 4-8 weeks there having generations of wires and such soldered, crimped, and tended to, all of the old wiring simply comes out, and the Cumberland Flight Hub goes in, connecting all instruments to the hub through a sleek pre-assembled system. Rather than $10-$15 K in labor alone, the Cumberland package would only be around $7K, all-inclusive, and doesn't require minor tweaking or reworking time afterward. Hardin says this is a revolution in aviation, and he's not bragging - it's just a fact.

 [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kvcXWdPowY&w=640&h=390]

Equally delicious an idea is Allen Clark's Low Country Boil in a Box. If you've ever shelled out mega-buck$ catering an event, and dealing with finicky delivery, prep, and setup logistics, prepare to be amazed. Low Country Boil is a one-stop e-commerce shop for catering events of every size from 4-person dinners to community-wide cookouts. With five different meal options (so far), including clam boil, crab boil, shrimp boil, and more, it's hard to beat the functionality of this model. All you have to do is supply the date of your event, your food package selection, and how many you have attending, and two days later you'll have a DELICIOUS low country meal that can be prepared by anyone with an hour to spare and enough skill to boil water. What will I be serving at my housewarming party? - Low Country Boil fare, no question.

As a highly social photog, David Shellabarger's Snappy application was definitely a cause for applause. This mobile app allows multiple users to tell stories online by contributing to customized event photo albums through automatic photo uploads from your smart phone. For example, if myself, Casey, Bijan, and McManus are all at a baller event together, and are all contributing users to an album for the event, then we will all be able to access and contribute to the album at the same time, in real time. I feel that with the new accessibility of media contribution (via blog, flickr, etc.), that David's app has a LOT of potential to redefine the way we create and share documentation on the go as mobile citizens.

Last but certainly not least, Boxatomic will rock our worlds, verily. The product of Kyle Posey, John Prevost, Morgan Freshour, Tianna Buckwalter, and Matthew Keasling, this web-based discount portal is going to shake up the way you think about your Groupon and LivingSocial deals. With Western consumer trends in mind, my money is on them being a serious contender and perhaps an even higher-trafficked biz than Groupon and LivingSocial in the future. Big dreams - but on par with the intellectual #hustle these guys display. The presentation was fantastic, but perhaps a stronger explanation is one Kyle offered up during a chat at the office (ie, The Stone Cup): whereas LivingSocial and Groupon are geographically-based and limited to a given city and ALSO interest or lack thereof in a daily deal, Boxatomic has NEITHER limitation - upcoming iterations of Boxatomic (which currently targets Crossfit affiliates + lovers) could target ANY interest group (the art industry? hint hint?), and have no geographical limits, as products, etc. are available via shipping. As a lover of coupons, I'll be watching with intent to see the heights to which these guys fly in the near future.

Hello, tumblr!

New to the this game, I'm coming from the world of Wordpress. If some of my early content here seems a little dated, it's because I'm pulling noteworthy old posts from Wordpress to create a new archive for them here.  :)

What can you expect from me? Well, explaining a bit about myself should answer.

I'm currently the Senior Copywriter (Wordmaster) at CreateHere in Chattanooga, TN. From August 1 to infinity, I will be the Art teacher at Orchard Knob Middle School ("The Knob") in the 'Noog. I ravenously consume information on the culture and data of public education, especially as relates to the arts, politics, project ideas, and poverty.

I've logged many weeks under the Haitian sun working in humanitarian documentary pursuits, agriculture, and midwifery. Haiti is still a point of focus for much of my creative output.

Most of my work is visual, but I'm also an avid wordsmith. Poetry and creative writing are integral to my visual work and life at large.

I'm big on sketchbooks. I use Pinterest and some mind-mapping software, but the paper page will never die!

I believe that shipping containers are revolutionary, and I'm constantly on the lookout to process new info and images of shipping container architecture. Sustainable architecture is a topic of fascination.

I have tattoos, love tattoos, dig the art, and respect tattoos and related culture as the fine art form that it is.

I am an audiophile to the ^nth degree. Give me vintage rosewood cans. Give me vinyl.

I am a designer of sculptures and structures and typography and environments, and I believe that good design can change the world.

Media I work across: photography, lomography, collage, painting, drawing, sculpture, papermaking, bookmaking, printmaking, video, sound, theatrical makeup, performance, spoken word.

Other things I love: classy tomboy fashion, Southern Gothica, gardening, thunderstorms, the smell of old books, bonfires, large-format field cameras, sleeping on the floors of airports, fishing, woodworking, and being a genuinely nice person.

Biggest regrets: not keeping a better archive of my creative work until recently; being unintentionally unkind to some people in my prior years; not milking my college education for all it was worth; not being more assertive. But hey - the passage of time is the ritual ground for personal improvement.  :)