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Chattanooga…A Tech Hub? Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Sheldon Grizzle is the director of SpringBoard, CreateHere’s resource hub for local entrepreneurs. Before joining the team, he spent three years launching and running his own angel funded tech company. Today, he lays out some cool upcoming tech opportunities right here in Chattanooga.

Throughout the last three years, I have had the opportunity to travel across the country to look at what is going on in the world of entrepreneurship, with an obvious interest in the tech community. In those travels, I was always asked (and still am to this day) “Why are you in Chattanooga? You can’t build a tech company down there.” The common belief in other parts of the country is that Chattanooga does not have the talent needed to produce tech companies that can compete with others based on the coasts.

I am so sick of hearing this. Especially because I know of a lot of really talented developers, designers and serial entrepreneurs working on some pretty sweet projects that are flying under the national, and even local, radar. So, my answer is this: Chattanooga does not lack talent. The talent is here! What we lack are the entrepreneurial stories to bring some attention to the budding tech community that is growing very rapidly here.

I could spend hours citing statistics that show the many perks to being based in Chattanooga — from “extending the runway” for tech companies just by locating here, to the fact that investors get a better bang for their buck on companies down here than on either of the coasts. I won’t go that way right now. Instead, I’d like to write about a couple opportunities for techies and entrepreneurs to engage in projects that will tell the story of the Chattanooga tech scene.

The first is a video competition sponsored by the State of Tennessee’s Small Business Office (BERO) and the Tennessee Main Street Program. This video competition is centered around the topic of “What makes you an entrepreneur?” The winner of the competition will receive a $500 cash prize plus a $2,000 professional marketing package for their business. Finalists will be selected from five business categories: Main Street/downtown; home-based; agri-business; arts and entertainment; and innovation. Videos should be no longer than five minutes. The deadline is December 15th. Complete contest details can be found at the official website.

The second opportunity is one near and dear to my heart: 48Hour Launch (48HL), which is being held at CreateHere November 13-15th. This event is modeled after the big city model of Startup Weekend, with some modifications that make it easy for any community to host their own 48HL. 48HL is a high-octane event where we hope to launch as many [tech] companies as possible in a 48-hour period. Ambitious? Absolutely! Possible? Most definitely! As we speak, there are teams being put together across Chattanooga and East Tennessee to turn great ideas into the next mobile app or website. In addition to the teams being built, a host of entrepreneurs, writers, designers, and programmers will be coming to pitch their own ideas and/or join other teams.

Now, I know that this weekend’s 48Hour Launch isn’t going to solve Chattanooga’s reputation as a non-tech friendly place immediately, but it helps building momentum in the right direction. Personally, I can’t wait for Sunday night when we get to see what was created during the 48-hour period. I have a feeling that this 48Hour Launch is going to be a pretty cool event, and I’m excited to show the world what’s happening in Chattanooga’s tech community when it’s over.

If you’re interested in being a part of 48HL, please visit our site or call 423-648-2195 for more info.

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Notes from the Field: Detroit then and now

Melinda Taylor is a Senior Design Fellow at CreateHere. This week, she’s visiting different organizations and innovators in Detroit, a city she’s met before. This brings us this dispatch.

Before this week, the last time I stepped on Michigan soil was over twelve years ago. But my lengthy absence was not for a lack of love for this city. Even after living in fourteen cities in seven states within ten years, I have always held my hometown closest to my heart. Sure, we all see the same images of a gloomy, dark ghost land in the media, but I see more than that.

I see the memories of my childhood: the Franklin Cider Mill in fall, the Grand Prix in summer, trips to the state fair, the aquarium, the Dream Cruise… so many jewels the city had to offer. And I’d love to say that it’s all still here upon my return. The Michigan State Fair, held at Woodward and 8 Mile Road, is no longer as of this year. Known as the oldest state fair in the United States, it was cut from the budget after 160 years for lack of attendance. This comes quickly after the closing of the oldest aquarium on Belle Isle in 2005. Even the Grand Prix was closed this year because of budgetary constraints.

And while I learn that these places that I held in my memories are no longer, I am not struggling to find beauty here. Elana said it best while walking around Hamtramck on Monday: “You have to find the little pockets of love.” And it’s true. This industrial city in a post-industrial world still has much to offer anyone who is willing to look. There are people here who have such love and pride for their city and spend their resources and time, no matter how limited, to making Detroit an engaging community.

When we spoke with Nina Bianchi of Design 99, she admitted that she often sounds negative when discussing the battles she faces in her community. But she’s still undoubtedly filled with hope and determination. Detroit’s own Henry Ford once stated, “Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Detroit definitely has the opportunity to begin again. And the power of design can help rebuild the city’s ailing economy. And so Bianchi and many others around her are working to make this happen.

Detroit, and all of Michigan, has always held a special place in my heart. And I have always felt proud to say that I am from here. But I am also proud of Chattanooga, and even more proud to be a part of a team that is doing what it can to make it a more dynamic city, much like the people we’re meeting here this week. I’m excited to continue the conversations we’ve had with the artists here after my return to Chattanooga. I hope to work in tandem to create more dialogue of ideas for creating more and bigger pockets of love in both cities. I feel a part of and a responsibility to these two very special cities. Detroit is my hometown. Chattanooga is my home.

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Notes from the Field | Detroit’s Secret Weapon: Its People Monday, November 09, 2009

Today’s been a full day, and there’s plenty to report on. We spent the morning at Detroit’s Russell Industrial Center, a 2 million square foot business incubation space with an “anything goes” mentality. Industrial warehouse spaces with plenty of natural light play host to writers, photographers, painters, illustrators, rock gurus, recording studios, architects, galleries, and countless other creatives.

Formerly a factory, distribution center, and finally a junk mail print house, the “campus” consists of four gently renovated buildings, and operations manger Eric Novack describes the spaces as “horse stalls.” The minimal builds leave a lot of room for embellishment, and one group in particular has taken advantage of this to build out a gallery, workshop and seven private studios. The collective of artists, all local, call themselves Cave, and their multi-use gallery space provides room for the artists to connect, experiment, and collaborate.

In the afternoon, we drove to the Heildelberg Project, a two-square block experiment in repurposed residential space. Started in 1986 by Tyree Guyton, the Heidelberg Project takes its name from the street from which it started, in a neighborhood deeply impacted by the Detroit race riots. Guyton began transforming vacant lots in the neighborhood into “lots of art,” and abandoned houses became “gigantic art sculptures.” One building may be brightly painted in polka dots, another covered in plush stuffed animals. In the lots, installation pieces including a sculpture made from old doors, an outdoor doctor’s office and waiting room, and piles of reclaimed appliances, brightly decorated. In this huge project, Guyton has been joined by his neighbors and friends, and the project has been as much a display as it has been a tool for community development.

We finished the afternoon at Design 99 in Hamtramck, a diverse, independent municipality within Detroit. Design 99 does many things, including $0.99 a minute design consultations and $99 an hour architectural planning and design. Recognizing that design has the power to unite, founder Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope opened an idea storefront to make design more accessible. We spoke with Nina Bianchi, a consistent collaborator who recently finished curating Design 99’s exhibition, “Work and Tumble: Photocopier as Illuminator.” The invitational show asked contributing artists to create works using a photocopier, a ubiquitous media tool, and originals have been reprinted (on a photocopier, of course) and made available for $0.99 a piece. You can take the whole show home for $40, too.

There is an underlying thread in all of these organizations, and it’s the thing that makes their work so very impressive. These are resourceful people, y’all. Using available tools because they have to (30% unemployment in Detroit proper means most are strapped for cash), but also because their neighbors and friends have to. Communication, production, creativity: they haven’t been stifled by the single worst economic downturn this city has experienced. In fact, folks have recognized: you can’t depend on industry, you can’t depend on jobs, but you can depend on people. The result is an organic community of creatives, not forced into silos by commercial markets, but happy to wear many hats, to build and to mend. Together.

Tomorrow we’re headed to Windsor, Ontario to visit Broken City Labs for a micro-residency. Again, it’s going to be a huge day, and we’re looking forward to some important lessons, and many new friends.

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Notes from the Field: Fellows in Detroit, Morning 1

“Take the leap. Go as far as you can. Try staying out of touch. Become a stranger in a strange land. Acquire humility. Learn the language. Listen to what people are saying.”

Wise words from Paul Theroux, and not totally off the point during this trip to Detroit, a city both familiar and foreign, a place we’re very interested in learning from and about. I’m joined here by four other LeadHere fellows: Elana Gulas, Trey Meyer, Melinda Taylor, and Bijan Dhanani, and over the next two days, we’re visiting a host of inspiring, cutting-edge programs that aim to celebrate Detroit for what it is: a major epicenter for the arts, creativity, and innovation.

Today is Day 1.5, and we’re spending it at the Russell Industrial Center, one of the Midwest’s largest arts community, an “Art Mecca/Small Business Haven.” The RIC hosts over 125 tenants, including architects, painters, clothing designers, glass blowers, wood craftsman, metal sculptors, graphic designers.

After, we’ll be visiting with Design 99, a retail space for experimental design and contemporary architecture. The space is a “storefront for new ideas, products, projects, and untapped talent.”

Regardless to say, we’re pumped.

Day .5 (yesterday for me, last night for my fashionably late colleagues) was spent downtown, one of the strangest, most beautiful, haunting cityscapes we’ve encountered. Maybe it was the lull of Sunday Quiet, or maybe the 15-story skeleton skyscrapers, evidence to a very recent history of wealth, and another more recent story of decline. Something was spooky, but something was surprising, too.

Detroit isn’t dead, as some news agencies may lead us to believe: there’s animation, for sure, in small corners everywhere. Unusual window displays in otherwise empty buildings, breakfast joints overflowing on a quiet street, and the faint cry of Greek music everywhere, echoes of Detroit’s flourescent, effervescent Greektown.

We’ll have more this afternoon. Until then, love a city, for us.

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The People who Populate our Travels: Notes from the Field Thursday, November 05, 2009

Josh McManus, CreateHere’s Co-founder and Creative Strategist, recently returned from a 25-day tour of seven European cities through the Marshall Memorial Fellowship. With two feet on American soil, Josh sends us this dispatch about a far away place from recent memory: Belgrade, Serbia.

The first chill of fall was in the air as I awoke in Serbia. Having arrived late the previous afternoon, my colleagues and I were still travel-warn and bleary-eyed. Filip, our host, had made the most of our time so far, proving he was more organized and efficient than the previous two coordinators. As a result, I was feeling more and more comfortable with Eastern Europe, a place I came to rife with preconceived notions and anxieties. On this day, Filip would be joined by a support staff of three, including a tour guide, driver and host. Their stories warrant retelling here.

Chirra was our tour guide.

By all descriptions, he was a normal, middle aged guy, with dark hair and round features. His English was fantastic, and to say his knowledge of the nuances and layers of Serbian history was impressive would be a vast understatement.

Chirra made his living as a tour guide, saying his lifestyle offered him the opportunity to save money and travel in the off-season. That alone would have been enough to place Chirra high on my list of “mad props.” But he was very modest: the entire trip might have passed without me know more of him had it not been for a conversation we had over lunch, conveniently held in a fortress some 2,000 years old. In that discussion, Chirra told me how he had been part of student demonstrations during the Milosevic regime. He would regularly leave school with a group of classmates in the months leading to the overthrow, and during these organized demonstrations, he would take commands from a powerful dissenting structure. Chirra was on the ground for 89 days in Belgrade, during which NATO bombing came in regular intervals for the purpose of infrastructure lockdown and psychological combat, often during periods of calm, in the middle of the night. In fact, he was part of the group that stormed the federal government building just as the regime fell.

Images of this same dissenting group were seen around the world, and I distinctly remember being in my living room for that epic moment in Chirra’s life, watching, not knowing I would eventually meet this man and that history would become real, visceral in fact, in that conversation.

But he never mentioned it until I asked. I’m sure that he could have made bigger tips from foreign tourists wanting to vicariously experience the horror and strife of violent transitions. He spoke of this time in his life as a part of him that had come and gone, and I was honored that he shared. What’s more, I was humbled to stare a man in the face and realize how privileged my life had been and how but for a place of birth, his story could have been my own.

Dragon was our driver.

Dragon didn’t speak much English, though I could tell from his eyes that he understood much more than he let on. Flat-footed, he stared me in the eye: making him about 6’4”. He had the square jaw and menacing stature of the communist soldiers in movies from my childhood. And yet all this was in opposition with a gentle spirit that brought me pause at the instant my mind raced to prejudge.

I would learn that Dragon had once been a prize-winning boxer, a fact that his broad shoulders and long arms confirmed. He was a fan of Serbian brass music, which fascinated me on my visit, especially in the blue grass tones I heard, or wanted to hear, underneath. The music is a blend of raw metal sounds and rhythms, sounds that have drifted across generations.

What I’ll always remember was how Dragon watched over us. It was as if he felt the burden of all future Trans-Atlantic relations on his shoulders, and accordingly, he watched us as a shepherd does his flock. He knew we were in a place that was strange and he had lived to see the cruelties that we had only heard of, and that position left him with a great deal of responsibility. He lectured cab drivers that took us to individual appointments with a giant, shaking fist. I can only imagine what he told them, but I know a few things: we were cordially delivered, our drivers had turned ashen-faced, and we didn’t have to pay for our lifts.

On the final night of our visit, we convinced Dragon to join us at our going away dinner. He sat at the head of the table and watched us in fellowship and revelry as if we were his own.

Chirra and the Dragon led us to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was of average build, in above-average health for a man in his sixties. The shock of white hair around his head gave way to a neatly coiffed beard, à la Abraham Lincoln. We first met him on a tour of his labor of love, the Museum of Bread. Jeremiah’s talents were many, but it seemed that his paintings of traditional Serbian landscapes and scenes had gained him international notoriety and resources to preserve traditions and artifacts through his museum.

The wonderfully hand-crafted structure was all built by Jeremiah, and served as a display place for hundreds of artifacts used in the collection and processing of wheat and the baking of bread. The entire collection was amazing, but I was most drawn to and original McCormick and Co. reaper that worked with mule assistance. Jeremiah had also gone to great lengths to preserve the tradition of bread-making, beyond just the tools that make production possible. His artwork and pottery showed various examples of how bread was used for the celebrations and sorrows of all major life events, as well as explored the spiritual contexts for bread, and Jeremiah was especially interested in how bread related to the body of Christ.

What was more striking, however, was Jeremiah’s character, which drove his admirable vision. He brimmed with energy and ended our tour telling us stories about everything from plane crashes to beautiful women. We laughed ourselves to tears, and washed down his tales with homemade liquor. It was an experience in grace, and an unforgettable one.

As I think about these three characters, and the many more that I met and traveled with across Europe, I realize that the landscapes and cathedrals of my journey are blending together in my mind. Now, I’m left with people, and happily so: a journey of mere images and artifacts would have been worthless. What left a mark on my soul? The small moments of connection with other individuals. These moments serve as subtle reminders that our paths are all different, and that we all have a story (or two) to share.

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