A gathering of people building creative community in Baltimore
 

What: CreateBaltimore is a participant-created conference for artists, cultural workers, entrepreneurs, and technologists interested in building a creative community in Baltimore.

Where: University of Baltimore, William H. Thumel Sr. Business Center, 11 W Mount Royal Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21201

Who: CreateBaltimore is for artists, coders, crafters, curators, designers, entrepreneurs, hackers, connectors, activists, makers, educators, museum staff, performers, tinkerers, writers, and others who want to work together to enrich life in Baltimore.

Organized by Scott Burkholder, Andrew Hazlett, J. Buck Jabaily, and Dave Troy, CreateBaltimore is an opportunity to find unexpected connections between Baltimore’s dynamic arts and tech communities.

Format:  Using the participatory “unconference” model of barcamps, all participants will have the opportunity to shape and run the event.  The program will be set by the attendees at a pre-conference session.  There will be room for concrete, practical projects as well as broader, long-term discussions.

Session topics will likely include:

• Doing business at the intersection of tech and liberal arts
• Crowdfunding and other alternative financing models 
• Social media for artists
• Betascape 2012
• New business structures for social impact
• Inclusive innovation: bridging divides in Baltimore's creative community
• Makers and manufacturers in Baltimore
• Mapping and visualizing
• Innovation spaces and labs
• New media and the people formerly known as the audience
• What sessions would you like to see happen? Let us know! [via info@createbaltimore {dot} org]

We encourage everyone attending to carry the conversation beyond the conference walls via blog, podcast, tweet, etc.  [using the hashtag #CreateBmore].  

Attending: CreateBaltimore is intended for artists and “techies” with a serious interest in collaboration and making positive change in Baltimore.  To cover food and event expenses, we are asking participants to pay $15 for a ticket.  We eagerly welcome sponsors, but the event will not be an opportunity to sell products or services.

Rationale: In recent years, Baltimore has witnessed a surprising renaissance in two important areas: the arts and technology.  Even in the midst of a Great Recession, an increasing number of technology entrepreneurs have emerged to build a buzzing hive of innovation, events, and idea-sharing.  At the same time, alongside Baltimore’s established cultural institutions, a remarkable variety of innovative artists, performers, and arts organizations have taken root in Baltimore.

These communities, largely working in parallel, have more in common than they realize.  Their differences may also be sources of some really interesting cross-pollination.

• More than ever, entrepreneurs need creative methods, design thinking, and oblique strategies. Businesses are rediscovering the importance of “high touch” concepts like story, empathy, play, and meaning. 
   
• Artists and cultural workers are already using technology to shape their work and share their vision.  But they could benefit from technologists’ deep knowledge of digital tools and networks (not to mention entrepreneurs’ practical business and marketing savvy). 

Ultimately, both communities depend on one another to help make Baltimore a lively, thriving, sustainable, and fun place.  Baltimore has immense unrealized potential as a place to live, to work, and to experiment with new forms of social, economic, and cultural organization.

Though the arts and tech crowds already overlap (as seen at events like Ignite Baltimore), we feel that a continuous effort is needed to combine the creative energies and common interests of these two communities.

CreateBaltimore is an event to draw out the surprising similarities and productive contrasts between these two dynamic communities.  We believe there will be concrete, practical benefits and profound, creative consequences for both “sides.”

Baltimore’s creative communities are already driving significant social, cultural, and economic change in the city.  But the potential exists to do much, much more.