#startupcity

Q: How have you benefited by interacting & connecting with a larger community? 

A: Through the event, we've been exposed to how broad the community is. There are researchers and practitioners doing very interesting things in healthcare, public safety, and a host of other areas. We've been introduced to both opportunities to collaborate and to potential employees with a knack for analytics. And we've been exposed to ideas, tools, and approaches that we're able to apply to our own work.

Q: Who would you encourage to come to future events? 

A: We have four main groups that we're trying to connect. We have researchers and academics who are pushing the boundaries in various areas. We have students and recent grads who are looking for jobs or volunteer opportunities. We have "creators" of analytics (consultants and groups within large organizations), and we have decisions makers "consumers" who use analytics in their work.

Lunchalytics 9 - City Analytics is Wednesday, March 18 at 11:45 AM and features three presentations:

Rhys Chouinard Corporate Analyst, City of St. Albert Topic: Correlation Searches, Growth Models, and Novel Visualizations

Stephane Contre and Kris Andreychuk City of Edmonton and Edmonton Police Topic: Contextual Analysis of Crime in Edmonton Kurt Borth Ph.D. Candidate, University of Alberta, Urban Geography and Planning Topic: Housing Choice and Location Efficiency in YEG: Factor Analysis (Q method) 

It breaks my heart a little to say this, but when founders eat, sleep and breathe their startup they can get a bit boring. 

One of the ways to battle this boredom is to commit to consuming great creative content. Ken recently posted about the importance of collaboration between the arts and business communities. I feel the benefits can go deeper, that when you invest in consuming creative work it makes you more open to creativity in your own professional practice. It gives your startup-focused mind an exciting place to release all the stress, possibilities and plans, without any risk. 

Creative inspiration provides moving examples on how to share the origins of your startup in ways that connect to your customers, investors and team in the same way your favourite artists' songs, books, films and paintings connect with you. 

Here are three recent examples of how creative content has inspired my work with Startup Edmonton:

David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks

Mitchell’s novels experiment with non-linear storytelling, characters and places that echo through multiple story lines, and the intersection between the personal, mystical and scientific. He trusts the reader to invest in his characters and embrace the challenging nature of his writing and format.

For me, his work highlights that technology founders should celebrate the complexity of their work. They have the ability to empower supporters by sharing their discovery process - explaining how foundational knowledge combines with inspiration to create solutions.

Serial

The blockbuster podcast Serial, from the team at NPR's This American Life, has captured the imagination of millions of listeners and content creators with dozens of blogs, sub-reddits and podcasts following along to solve this real-world, teen-angst-filled, 90s-pop-culture-soaked murder mystery. 

Sarah Koenig, Host and Executive Producer, and her team use sound to their advantage. Everything on-air is in service to the medium: an original score from Mark Henry Phillips and Nick Thorburn; repetitive audio cues to prepare the listener to focus on new details or a recap from a previous episode; and environmental noises that make the listener feel like they are in the moment with Sarah and her subject, rather than listening to a conversation taped months or weeks before. 

Serial is a perfect example of how the medium, pace and tone you choose have as much impact on your audience as the story you are telling. It challenges me to explore new ways of communicating with our Startup Edmonton members and supporters: to ask what format would best serve the story I want to share, rather than what format am I most comfortable working in.

FKA Twigs 

Any title comes with assumptions. FKA Twigs: R&B artist, video girl, girlfriend-of-famous-actor…. all add up to a pretty specific list of expectations. Her music explores and defies the expectations of these assumptions.

In the startup community there is an abundance of titles with corresponding expectations: founder, technical founder, female founder, hacker, angel investor, mentor… 

Contradiction, personal legend and reinvention are just a few elements of FKA Twigs' recent rise that can inspire the way we talk and share our experiences of startup culture: the contradictions between the technical and non-technical can make your origin story more layered; a single moment of inspiration, or in Startup Edmonton’s case a cocktail napkin with an ambitious future plan doodled at drinks, can be a defining moment that inspires investors; and a startup doesn't have to get everything right in order to share an experience or start a conversation with customers. 

These are just a few example of how artists have inspired me to think in new ways about my work. In today’s culture-of-busy, never-ending-deadlines, and the added pressure for entrepreneurs of building companies from the ground up, it’s important to make time for creative experiences that challenge, inspire and entertain.