I walked into the Monticello Public Library and my friend Caye at the desk started looking at my t-shirt and started reading. Next came the questions. I was wearing one of my Startup Weekend t-shirts, because it is the rotation and I literally wear like three things. She started asking some questions about the event and we started talking about what Startup Weekend was, and what I had to do with it. Before long one of the library managers was joining in and we were waist deep in a talk about entrepreneurship, tech, coding, YouTube show studios, and makerspaces. In short, everyone thinks these things are cool, and would like to see these things around Monticello, Indiana in some form. This wasn’t the first time this week that these things came up.
Earlier that week, the local tv news was talking about the now vacant Monticello Fire Department building. With a new firehouse in town the community has gained a rather large empty building downtown that is ripe for development. Proposals are being taken by city government about what might be done with the building. In the news story a makerspace was suggested, what all that entails, I don’t really know. A makerspace can mean a lot of things. Between this news story and my library conversation, it is obvious there are people in this town thinking about some very cool things.
Thinking about really cool tech community things, well that used to be my specialty, between organizing Startup Weekends and Meetups, I have thought about such things a lot. My brain being what it is, I couldn’t help but start to grind my gears a bit on what Monticello could even support as far as these kind of tech and startup type things. So I begin to ask myself how would I even go about seeding and starting up a tech/startup/maker community here in Monticello?
Monticello is a small town, there is a population of about 5,400 people in the 2010 census. At first look the main challenge I see is the critical mass of people needed to build a real community around these tech things. If you expand that to the rest of White County and Carroll County, well then you get to a population of something like 45,000 people to pull from. (Monticello sits on the border of these two counties, so yeah, it seems like a semi reasonable area to draw from for larger/cooler things.) This is a rather nice population, and the people around here are used to driving to do things. So could the town be a bit of a mini-hub for some of these activities people in town are talking about? Yes I think there is some level of potential. A challenge is defining what this community would even look like that people are trying to create. This new community would have to pull from a lot of different groups to reach critical mass, there just wouldn’t be enough software developers for example to create something cool.
Defining this community is a bit hard. How would I define it? Well I think the best way to define it is a “Creative” community. All these things I discussed with the library folks and heard on tv have one thing in common, they involve people doing creative things outside the norms for this town. Coding, woodworking, painting, entrepreneurship, writing, these things are all creative pursuits. The intersection of people doing these things can be really cool. People engaged in these pursuits can really learn a lot from each other and support each other a lot. That is where community starts, what the mix ultimately becomes is a question of leadership and community inclinations. This is more about planting magic beans and seeing where the beanstalk goes rather than building a bridge with a blueprint, I don’t see any way to really know where things will end up going.
I think planning and leadership is still very important in building any creative community here in Monticello. The creative and tech communities I have been involved with have greatly reflected the personalities and interests of their leaders. It is my opinion that most of not all of the leadership of a creative community needs to be people that have skin in the game. The actual creatives need to guide where things are going not “county or state economic development administrative types.” We all know that type, and if they are running the show, the spirit and magic of a creative community probably won’t work. These people should be involved, but if they represent the majority of leadership, bad things are bound to happen, this has to be a grassroots kind of thing. These initial leaders of a community will be instrumental in defining the culture, which is really all such a community is after all.
Defining the right culture is paramount to a creative community flourishing. The community needs to be open, playful, risky, and actually creative. Dealing with people in Indiana, ideas around risk and failure will be a hurdle. Creative acts are inherently super risky. A creative culture needs to accepting and not shaming of people that take those risks and fall flat. A lot of people around here will tell you to stop if you fail 4 or 5 times at something, where that is maybe just the beginning of the creative process. This mindset among others needs to be cultivated. Creating the right culture while hard could be doable because of the area does have a good cultural trait already. This trait has been told to me by transplants to Indiana time after time. People here are really helpful and nice generally in the Midwest compared to certain other parts of the country. We help each other. The more we leverage that the more we can achieve.
So to really create a great creative community where would I start tactically? A makerspace would be cool to open up, but there is no community or group I am aware of that needs that space. There are a bunch of individuals that might need that space and show up. I am unaware of any larger connected group of people hanging out around here though. Building these groups would be a good first start. People need to start collaborating and talking about their projects and businesses. Various meetings, events, and networking opportunities start to build up some momentum to do larger things. This is where leaders and organizers can be found, and creative communities always need more of those. There is a belief I do hold, there are a lot of creative people doing very cool things in this area. They would like to connect to each other too, but just have not yet. The more these people can be connected the more likely a creative community will thrive.
These connections take a lot of time form, and the cross pollination between groups takes even longer. To build these creative communities, I feel like a multi-year mindset needs to be taken. It takes a long time for some people to become aware that communities even exist. To start collaborating and having network effects, well that takes a long time too. To get started, I would look at starting to hold a few ultra low risk events to get people out and talking. These are the kind of things I would consider first.
The first thing I would do is to hold a community meeting in the old firehouse to discus makerspaces and creative spaces. I would explain the kind of things that other similar communities have done. I would also have lots of brainstorming opportunities for the community to contribute ideas to what they might want. This could be some sort of formal activities or just discussions. Beyond collecting ideas, this would be a great way to see if we can get people to start connecting and talking. Something not to be overlooked is email and name collection, before any events these mechanisms needs to be in place. In the past groups I have been affiliated with have time and time messed this up. Structures like email lists make life a lot easier, so being smart about that would be a focus from day one. At this event we would have flyers for our next events. This is also something that gets messed up a lot, we should always promote our next event at our current event.
The next things I would do would be hold some general talks that are of interest to business owners and entrepreneurs as well as tech type people. These would be things like “Google Analytics Basics” or “Using Wordpress” these are things that anyone with a website would be well served in learning a little about. These would be hour long type things at the library or other community building. The main goal here is again seeding this creative community and making connections. So it’s totally acceptable to choose topics that are easy for speakers to do with little preparation. These don’t need to be workshop type things.
Next up I would try and identify 4-5 coders, software developers, or web developers in the Monticello area and start to hold some monthly meetups. Format would be a 30-45 tech talk on some code type thing and plenty of time to network. In such a large area to draw from there has to be a few coders, so personally I would dig in and do a little work and try and find them.
I would also really get engaged with some social media to try and see what is happening around the area. I would start some sort of Facebook Group called “Monticello Makers” or “Monticello Artists” and then just post up some things I was working on and some cool photos of projects. Then I would see what happens. This is so easy to do, and might suck a few people in.
In all these events we would be taking down info about attendees. Things like their professions and hobbies and other creative interests. The hope here would be to analyze what kind of community we have the potential to form and what dots we could connect and grow together.
Once there is some momentum in getting some people talking and working on things, well then we start looking at larger things within the city and area. Where this creative community fits into long term city planning and economic development comes into play. There is the question of where does Monticello as a community want to go as a city. What kind of vision are the city leaders going to provide? To have a creative community, you have to be a community creatives want to be in. This is a big deal. I personally don’t think city size matters much in the type of community a city tries to be. There are wonderful places with a few thousand people living there, and there are horrible places as well. This comes into city planning which I don’t know anything about, but I know it matters to some degree. I personally view communities that choose to be very good at something as being very smart. Indianapolis chose a long time ago to be very good at hosting sporting events. Over time this has lead to some really good things. I think smaller communities can take the same approach. I don’t think this kind of foresight costs excessive amounts of money, just time, thought, and commitment.
If the community can show some level of commitment and some level of energy around these activities then I think that is the time to take some larger risks. For the most part if done well coworking spaces can mitigate much of the risks of building out those spaces. A coworking space is mostly just an office. If things don’t work out then the space can be used for any sort of city functions or turned into office space for rent. I think there are ways to hedge your bets in the long term. Larger makerspaces do require more cash and equipment, so there is the concern of how to hedge those bets.
Lastly I would think about what kind of goals are even reasonable for a community like Monticello to expect out of such a space or creative community. There are all sorts of goals that could be the end goal. Quality of life is one thing the community could focus on. These spaces can be like a park, does it make life better for citizens? Economic development is another goal that can be achieved. Can you link economic development to such spaces? If you can then there is a lot of reason to fund these things.
This is how I would start thinking about bringing this kind of creative spaces to Monticello. There are lots of other factors to consider, but I think everything starts with the people. Can the city build communities of creative people? If they can’t then any place they build is just going to be a place to work for people who are too cheap to pay for an office. If that is all you can get out of such a place, then you are really missing the mark of what potential sits there.