Philly Media Maker Meetup #1: A Redux
Filed under: Community Support, coworking, From the Business Side
Last week, I pubished a call to action, a meetup to give the proverbial ball it’s first push towards seeing what the media maker community in Philadelphia looks like. In short, we’ve experienced a huge influx of interest in the space between making and entreprenurship. IndyHall covers the high tech, interactive, and small business arenas quite effectively. The Hacktory takes “making” as literal as possible, usually to the point of taking things apart and making new things from them. Philly Startup Leaders has become the point of reference for people who are making new startups and sharing business resources.
But I don’t know a whole lot about people who make media.
I’ve been repeatedly asked two questions since making that post last week.
- What do you mean by “media production studio”
- What do you mean by “media”
I may have mis-stepped in calling it a studio, because that comes with a lot of connotations and expectations. At this stage, I don’t have any of those. I’ve got dreams, I’ve got vision, but that’s not what we’re here for. For the time being, I know that Geoff and I share a lot of interest in shared space, the idea of “clubhouses”, and exploring other communities in Philadelphia. So for the time being, I’m going to make it a point to replace the term “studio” with “clubhouse” until we have a better idea of what that clubhouse might provide.
As far as media, I’m interested in keeping that broad for the time being as well. The obvious categories are audio and video, but being unfamiliar with the facets of this community, we’re back to square one.
That’s right, we’re going old school. Back to basics. And that’s where last night’s meetup got interesting.
Discovering the “We”
It ended up being surprisingly challenging to keep the group focused away from discussing what the space could be. It’s easy to get excited about the prospect of the space, and a space technically can provide almost anything we want it to.
14 people braved the Philadelphia cold last night to join us at National Mechanics and many stayed afterward to continue talking. The group in attendance was split between old faces and new faces, which was exciting to have some crossover while introducing new blood to a community of leaders. The folks who came were from a diverse set of backgrounds as well, which is great to see this early on. Approximately 1/3rd of the attendees were female, which is also a promising ratio for gender representation compared to the boys club that IndyHall was at the onset and continues to improve on. The discussion went down the path of things like equipment rental, equipment co-ops, new media gallery space, workshop/educational space, and many combination of the components. The brainstorm was great, and it was really fantastic to see people get motivated and excited.
What was difficult was to sidestep the space and it’s resources, for a minute, to figure out who the we was.
But I’m pleased to report that’s where we’re starting. (this is where things start to feel so familiar)
We left knowing that there’s collective interest in discovering who represents the community of professional media makers in Philadelphia. We gathered up email addresses, to form a google group, temporarily named “PhillyMediaMakers”. And we left with a commitment to use that google group to continue to share information as we collectively discover what’s already going on in Philly. The goal put forth was to share at least one connection or resource with the group, and make at least one new connection to invite to the next meetup which will be taking place in mid-January. Mission #1 is to “discover the we”.
One of the attendees (Greg Wilder, who is also a member of PSL. Isn’t cross pollination beautiful?) has already started to “pass the mic” in the form of a thread for people to introduce themselves, their resources, and their ideas. If you couldn’t make the first meetup, no worries! We’ll be regrouping very soon in 2009. In the mean time, get involved in the google group and introduce yourself.
Just remember, at this point, our #1 operative is to uncover as many existing resources and connections as we can, and survey the land to see what’s already going on, and see how we can begin to band together towards shared goals.
