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November 14, 2010 December 8,2010

Zero to CreatorCamp in three weeksThe Tweet announcing CreatorCamp Ottawa went live at 8:59pmET, November 14. It implicated Mark Blevis, Bob Goyetche and CC Chapman, and set the wheels in motion for the first ever CreatorCamp. Mark explains...

Replies and offers of help came in right away. Sue Murphy volunteered to find a venue. We set some parameters including keeping the event small (100 people max) and having the flexibility to hold two concurrent sessions. Sue offered to make some calls. We stayed in contact through email and SMS.

T-minus 23 days and counting

Bob set up a Wiki to which I forwarded CreatorCamp.org (we registered the domain two

months earlier). The launch of the wiki was kind of haphazard — the way most wikis are launched, I suspect. In the first 24 hours we wrote blurbs about the event, refined and reformatted content, and set up templates for registrants and sessions. There was a concern about spambots and the like so we made

it a requirement that people request membership to the wiki in order to be able to edit the page. Bob and I borrowed some ideas from the PodCamp wiki model, making a master page of information and event listings, with subordinate pages for each event. We also transplanted their

high-level rules with very few modifications. Thank you!

Meanwhile, Sue Murphy was chasing down possible venues. We kicked around a few possibilities. It turns out some options were already booked. For some others, Sue’s calls weren’t returned as quickly as we were hoping. That’s not to say the venues weren’t interested or available, but that we had a short time during which we could actually make our decision.

By Tuesday evening we had settled on a venue (with the help of W. Thomas Leroux) and decided to delay the announcement until we had confirmation. I wrote up a blog post announcing the full details and left it in draft.

Sue’s contributions didn’t stop there. She connected us with one of her media arts students (Carolyn Lundy) who created a logo for the event. We suggested a tweak that allowed identification of city-specific landmarks so each event could have its own customization. For Ottawa, Carolyn put the Peace Tower inside the light bulb of the logo.

T-minus 22 days and counting

Interest in CreatorCamp was on the rise. We were receiving emails and noticed blog posts and podcasts were appearing online. At the same time, Bob was planning an event in Montreal, Daryl Cognito expressed his interest in organizing CreatorCamp Calgary, and Bob and I spoke with possible co-organizers for a CreatorCamp in the US. Carolyn swung into action, customizing logos for Montreal (Olympic Stadium), Calgary (Calgary Tower) and even a logo in anticipation of a CreatorCamp Toronto (CN Tower).

(...continued on page 3...)

Behind the scenes at the first ever CreatorCamp (#CCyow2010).Tips for organizing a CreatorCamp event in your community.

Camps for creatorsCreatorCamp grew out of a September 13, 2010 blog post by Bob Goyetche. In the post, Bob states his case to create an event about creating something.Page 2

Organizing principleA breakout box for CreatorCamp’s one organizing principle and five simple rules.Page 2Keys to SuccessA list of contributing factors to the success of #CCyow2010.Page 3

AfterglowBob’s thoughts on CreatorCamp and the main flow from idea to reality... snarky tweet, expanded thought, name and date to make it happen.Page 4

Creative CollisionsCreatorCamp delivers a veritable collection of creative reminders and collisions for Andrea.Page 5

CreatorCamp ToolkitA summary of tools and tactics to help you organize and promote a CreatorCamp in your community.Page 6

TeamworkMark shares his thoughts on how two people who are creative, passionate and committed to process as much as product can have fun achieving almost anything together.Page 6

@markblevis announces #CCyow2010

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2 CreatorCamp.org

We need camps for creatorsThe idea of CreatorCamp was born out of a September 13, 2010 blog post by Bob Goyetche. The post titled We need camps for creators reads as follows...

I missed Podcamp Montreal.

Actually, let me rephrase that, I missed seeing my friends at Podcamp Montreal. I didn’t miss Podcamp. After the 8 or so I’ve been to, I don’t think I’ll actually ever miss a Podcamp.

It’s a wonderful event, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not for me anymore.

Because it’s no longer about Podcasting? – there’s more to it than that.

I’m not bothered that there isn’t much podcasting talk at podcamps. Podcamp has evolved as an event. This evolution has taken it towards other topics like social media. At one point, I thought imposing podcasting-type topics might be a way to keep it on track. I now think that’s a futile position. Podcamp is has become a recognized social media event, and is the place to be if you want to learn/connect with these topics.

The thing is, the direction these topics have gone, there just happens to be a great percentage of sessions on things that don’t interest me. (and I’m not pretending to speak for anyone else here)..

Looking over the last few podcamps, here are some session topics I never need to see again :

Search Engine Optimization

Marketing

Building Audience

Press Releases

Analytics

Public Relations

facebook

twitter

social freaking media

etc… etc..

Are these topics bad? Of course not. I just honestly have no desire to spend any time on them. I don’t believe that you need to be versed in ANY of these topics to be a media creator. You DO, however, need to be AMAZING at several of these if you want to build a business.

I don’t want to build a business from this.

Now I have several friends who either make a living or tell people they do with the topics above, and more power to them. I also know a few oncologists, but have no desire to know more about how they earn their living.

I just want to be super-clear, I think Podcamp is GREAT (I do!), but it has evolved away from my interests, despite the fact I’m thankful it’s there so I can see my friends.

So this Sunday, just to stir things up (cause I tend to do that), I tweeted “What if we leave PodCamp to marketers, and start #creatorcamp .. #justsaying” .

The reaction was surprising. I fully expected nothing to come of it, like many of my tweets (!), 

but direct messages and my inbox told me I may have hit on something, or at least I’m not alone in feeling the way I do.

So a half joking tweet gets traction. Where can we go with this? Is there somewhere to go? Are there bears there? Won’t someone think about the children?

Valerie mentioned that PAB is kinda like a creator’s camp, but PAB is more about ideas and thoughts than creation. I think there may be room for an event  where discussing the creation of media (not the selling, recognition or  monetizing)  is the goal. I imagine an event where you could learn the basics of audio/video/knitting /photography/woodworking /sculpture/graphics/ etc.. What a treat that would be. Now to be honest, I have no desire to start sculpting, but I’m convinced I would find a session on sculpting more interesting than analyzing web page traffic. That’s how I roll.

The nice thing about doing this in a camp-ish way would be that it would only need 1 organizing principle. Something like :

Your session MUST be about creating something.*

* and by CREATING, we don’t mean revenue, audience, market share, connections, twitter-followers.

At bitnorth this year, I gave a quick talk about organizing conferences, and some of the lessons I’ve learned from co-organizing PAB (and several podcamps!!) and as I was reviewing my notes, the one piece of advice that really stood out was :

“Create an event YOU would like to attend.”

I’d love to attend an event dealing specifically with creation, would you?

Starting the campfireThere was immediate and widespread interest in Bob’s post. Lots of people seemed committed to the idea yet none acted on it.

It was during a Skype conversation between Bob, Mark and C.C. that the decision was made to organize the first CreatorCamp in Ottawa when CC would be in town to kick off the tour for his newly co-authored book, Content Rules, at SMB Ottawa.

Organizing principleWe have one organizing principle... sessions MUST be about creating something (and by CREATING, we don’t mean revenue, audience, market share, connections, Twitter-followers).

Otherwise, the rules are pretty much the same as any other "camp" event.

1. Create an event YOU would like to attend2. All attendees must be treated equally and be

allowed to participate (subject to limitations of physical space).

3. All content created must be released under a Creative Commons license

4. All sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet (if you're not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should quietly walk out and do something else)

5. The financials of a CreatorCamp must be fully disclosed in an open ledger, except for any donor/sponsor who wishes to remain anonymous.

Mark Blevis (photo by Nico)Bob Goyetche (photo by Cat) CC Chapman (photo by CC Chapman)

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How we did it (...continued from page 1...)

T-minus 21 days and counting

Sue confirmed the venue late afternoon on Nov 17. Almost exactly three weeks to the minute before CreatorCamp Ottawa would begin, we went live with the venue information and fully promoted registration for the event. Less than 72 hours had passed since the event had been conceived.

We chose Wiki technology because of the speed at which we could establish the CreatorCamp website and the ability to allow others to contribute. The premise is anyone can edit the page to add themselves to the list of registrants and submit their name as a possible speaker. It’s that conceptual simplicity that makes Wikis so popular for organizing “camp” type events.

Alas, Wikis can be daunting for people who are unfamiliar with the technology. Most people have no problems navigating a Wiki but don’t have the know-how or interest in figuring out how to edit an embedded page. It was a growing concern that the technology was getting in the way of people registering for CreatorCamp — and it had only been about 12 hours since the Wiki was officially launched. So I interrupted Bob on Gchat to suggest we move registration over to Eventbrite, a service designed specifically for managing event registrations and free for events that don’t use the built-in registration fee processing feature.

me: Just want to get your take on me creating an Eventbrite for CCyow2010to make for easier registration for the non-social media community.

Bob: yes- seems like a good idea-, then we can lock down the wiki – I actually dreamed the wiki got spammed last night

We techie folks have weird dreams. In our defence, Wikis are often the target of spammers. This has led many Wiki owners to implement some cursory security controls. A side effect of those controls is a layer of complexity making it less intuitive for participants of the site.

I created an Eventbrite event for CreatorCamp Ottawa and manually re-registered everyone from the Wiki to Eventbrite. We decided to maintain a parallel registration list on the Wiki as well since it allows people to add biographical information; something some registrants had already done though not something we specifically promoted. Given that few made that effort, my guess is the extra steps in the process are discouragingly complex. Besides, the audience is creative folks, not social media creative folks which means they may not be as familiar with the technology as geeks like us.

Bob did some coding to make sure the list of Eventbrite registrants was kept current on the Wiki.

T-minus 5 days to go

The rest of the planning revolved around promotion of the event. Besides blogging and Tweeting about #CCyow2010, we promoted the event through word of mouth. A couple of reminder emails were circulated to registrants. Those emails included a nudge to bring $10 to donate to the Ottawa Food Bank. We settled on financial donations rather than canned goods so it wouldn’t be necessary for us to haul away a small mountain of heavy containers.

I made arrangements for a representative of the Ottawa Food Bank to attend the beginning of Creator Camp to collect and carry the money away, rather than having to take the collection and deliver potentially hundreds of dollars during working hours. By the way, I made the the initial request for a representative on Friday, three business days before Creator Camp. While the Food Bank was able to accommodate us, they apparently request 7 days notice.

Liftoff

There were 25 new registrations on the day of the event. That was attributed to an announcement I made at Social Media Breakfast Ottawa following CC’s presentation.

We estimate about 40 of the 65 registrants participated in Creator Camp Ottawa. The vibe was great. The presenters shared experiences and suggestions; participants seemed engaged. I furiously took notes.

The presenters were fascinating. Amazingly, each session reinforced a common idea to start your project.

Here’s the list with their topics/titles and my personal standout takeaway from each session…

Louise Legault-Hatem: inner creative genius in impromptu situations (success comes from trusting your instincts and abilities)Tom Hofstatter: “Run with scissors”… focusing creativity by imposing boundaries – and removing distraction (committing to the idea is the hard part, accidental and self-imposed limitations contribute to the creative process)Alison Gresik: 4 things you need to know to write a book — or finish any big project — next year (find the big yes and act on it)Sue Murphy: The role of hiatus in the creative process (sometimes you need to give up something you love to renew your passion for it)Christopher Griffin: Accidental inspiration and creativity (get rid of the preciousness of the materials/project)CC Chapman: Photography as a creative activity (take and share pictures of anything/everything every day)

The venue was fantastic; the environment naturally created a “theatre in the round” which the speakers used very well.

If I could change one thing, it would be the music. Being a popular pub, Patty Boland’s played music through the house speakers which are wired in such a way that turning off the music on the second floor (where Creator Camp was held) kills the music on the main floor as well. While the staff did turn the music down for us, it was a bit of a challenge to speak over it. The presenters must have been exhausted afterward. To their credit, they were so engaging, it was easy (for me) to tune the music out.

All that and we raised $340 for the Ottawa Food Bank!

Keys to success...two heads are better than one

keep the event small (100 people) and flexible (the option to have two concurrent streams - though #CCyow2010 was single stream)

promote the event even with basic decisions in place

have a central website for information and registration

don’t be afraid to ask for and accept help (venue, promotion...)

make registration as easy as possible

promote the event at other events (if possible)

arrange to kill the music or hold the event where music won’t be an issue

make giving to the local community a part of the event

have a representative of the selected charity present to collect the donations (one less thing to worry about; money’s easier to carry than food/clothing)

encourage participants to run their own Creator Camp events

trust the event to turn out just as it was meant to

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That project flow won’t make it onto the bestseller lists, but the event on December 8th proves it’s a valid process none the less. If I break this down, here’s what I see :

1. Snarky Tweet – “What if we leave PodCamp to marketers, and start #creatorcamp ..”

I’m all for agreeing with people, but if you do see something you don’t like – say it!  There are plenty of people who just wait for “thought leaders” to say something so that they can agree. I’ve been called a thought leader by some in this space, and I’ll let you in on a secret, a thought leader isn’t necessarily who thought it first, but who said it first. So express your thoughts, “Well said Chris” doesn’t do anything.

So the snarky tweet born out of a feeling that an event no longer spoke to me gets many replies, retweets, and generates MANY private messages to me that tell me I’ve hit upon something, and now would be a good time to expand on that.

2. Expanded thought – in other words, back it up!

It’s so easy to be that person that just bitches about stuff. We know them, sometimes we ARE them. Bitching on its own will do very little to address the issue or  enhance your image. Think of some of the “social media experts” you know – I’m sure you already have a name in mind – all they do is bitch and never offer more. Whether it’s because they won’t or can’t is up for debate.

So propose a solution to what you’re bitching about. I used a blog post to make my thoughts known. Here’s the cool part, you don’t have to follow up on it or make it happen. It doesn’t have to be right or the “final answer” or anything. Your proposed solution at best will move the debate forward, and at worst at least show you’ve thought about it somewhat.

3. Make it happen

This was the surprising part to me. This step wasn’t my idea. The CreatorCamp idea was just sitting there, and I didn’t have the cycles/motivation/time/whatever to push it from idea to event. Then, something interesting happened. It looked like CC Chapman, Mark Blevis and I would be getting together for a few beers on Ottawa. Mark saw the opportunity and suggested we do CreatorCamp then. That was the magic moment. The event

had a name and now a date. Those 2 things made all the other things happen.

The effect of a set date can not be underestimated. If you say let’s do this soon – there is no commitment, because soon is relative, and very flexible. December 8th 2010 though, is pretty hard to change, so all other decisions were made in function of that.

In fact, if you’re thinking of planning an event, pick a name and  date would to me be the two most important things. Seems obvious, but it’s so powerful.

Other thoughts

Let it happen - CreatorCamp Ottawa was a great event, and throughout the evening I couldn’t help but feel that the way the event was going was exactly how it should happen. It could have been completely different and still that would have been perfectly how it should be.

In the round – the layout of the tavern where we held CreatorCamp meant that there were seats all around the person speaking. This was just great – not only did it force the person speaking to move around and interact, it also fostered interaction between the audience, as they were facing each other, not just forward to a speaker.

Keep it small – One of the things we noticed when organizing the PAB conference is that 80 people interact much more easily than 120. CreatorCamp Ottawa had around 45 people, and the interaction level was quite high. It’s not up to me, but I suggest capping the event at 50, otherwise people will naturally break into groups, and someone will be left out. A small number keeps everyone engaged.

Overall, I couldn’t be more thrilled at how CreatorCamp is evolving, and with the success the first event. 2011 brings CreatorCamp to Calgary, Montreal, Boston … and based on conversations maybe Chicago and Windsor.. I’d love to see your city on this list.  All you really need to have a CreatorCamp is someone willing to talk their creative process, and someone willing to listen. Email me with any questions, I’d love to help you make it happen.

So all this happens because of a snarky tweet.  I can’t say I never got anything of value from twitter anymore.  crap.

AfterglowBob’s post-CCyow2010 blog post which includes his thesis on the flow of idea to reality...1. Snarky Tweet --> 2. Expanded Thought --> 3. Name and a date to make it happen

Christopher Griffin presents at #CCyow2010 (photo by Alexa Clark)

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Creative CollisionsThis recap post was published by Andrea Ross following #CCyow2010

Tonight was the first ever Creator Camp.

I was thrilled to take a dip in creativity soup with quilters, painters, writers, musicians, speakers, photographers, storytellers, bakers. And more.

I was grateful for reminders:

to recognize gruelling social situations as creative challengesto start small and draw on what we knowto notice our creative sweet spots — an empty canvas can be much more inhibiting than a tiny space,  a specific problem or a single missing harmonyto appreciate our creativity in its overlooked forms and sizesthat creative goals require decision, commitment, scheduling and enjoymentto keep expectations lowto recognize creative drought as a valuable time of regeneration and renewalto be presentto take ourselves less seriouslyto create.

And, most of all, I was captivated by the collision of my various lives:

Bob, Julien, Bob and Sue, podcasting friendsAlexa, who I met in grade 8Louise and Tom, who are currently my coworkersCandice, who I met through a anti-cancer food for web services barterMy long lost cousin, Susan.

A truly amusing sliced life stew.

Huge thanks to Louise, Tom, Alison, Sue, Christopher and CC for the thought-provoking presentations and to everyone who made time on a cold midweek evening to share an evening of inspiration.

CreatorCamp.orgWe have one organizing principle... sessions MUST be about creating something (and by CREATING, we don’t mean revenue, audience, market share, connections, Twitter-followers).

Will you be next?

Susan Larrivee and Andrea Ross at #CCyow2010 (photo by Mark Blevis)

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CreatorCamp toolkitThe tools we used and how we used them to plan, promote and host #CCyow2010

PBWorks.comThe CreatorCamp.org Wiki was the central hub of all information, coordination, registration and curation of CreatorCamp activity. However, as accessible as they are, participating in a Wiki presents a technological challenge for most people.

So, PBworks is the home for CreatorCamp, its events and for maintaining and publicizing relevant information. Event planners will have take on the responsibility of establishing and maintaining event-specific pages within CreatorCamp.org

Eventbrite.comBecause of its purpose-built and user-friendly interface, Eventbrite is the logical choice to manage the registration process and send email updates and reminders to registrants. It’s free for events that don’t use its payment processing capabilities - particularly appropriate for CreatorCamp. This meant we had to manage a fundraising collection for the Ottawa Food Bank at the event. We didn’t use Eventbrite to check-in participants when they arrived. On reflection, it would have been nice to know who actually attended.

Twitter.comIt’s hard to beat the efficiency and reach of Twitter for disseminating information and promoting events. In the case of CreatorCamp, Bob first planted the seed for and we announced #CCyow2010 on Twitter. It became an important tool for posting updates and encourage registration.

Twitter was also part of the event (people tweeted what was going on) and we used it to announce the event raised $340 for the Ottawa Food Bank.

Facebook.comWe decided against creating a Facebook group or fan page for CreatorCamp. Rather than create too many outposts which would require regular care and feeding, we focused our efforts and distributed specific functions across the Wiki, Eventbrite and Twitter.

Personal Facebook accounts were used to promote the event and post updates about the schedule and speaking program.

BlogsWe used our personal blogs to provide information on the event and to share details on our planning process to help others who may be considering organizing their own CreatorCamp events.

We believe CreatorCamp will have a huge impact and doesn’t need to be complicated or unmanageable. CCyow2010 came together in 3 weeks with just hours of planning. You can do it, too!

Organizers and contributorsBob Goyetche @bobgoyetche, bobgoyetche.com

Mark Blevis @markblevis, markblevis.com

CC Chapman @cc_chapman, cc-chapman.com

Sue Murphy @suzemuse, suzemuse.com

Carolyn Lundy @carolynlundy

W. Thomas Leroux @wtl, leroux.ca

Andrea Ross @justonemorebook, wecanrebuildher.com

This CreatorCamp.org document, prepared by Mark Blevis, Bob Goyetche and Andrea Ross, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.

A word from Mark on great teamworkBob and I are known as the co-organizers of PAB, a conference about digital content creation and audience engagement. It’s a formal conference with a passionate and committed community. It takes months to organize this annual three-day event packed with speaking sessions, social activities and good food. We’ve also organized PodCamp Ottawa in what we believe to be the simplest and most pure way to organize that event — we found a venue, set up a

Wiki to co-ordinate the event and registration, and announced it no sooner than three weeks before the event in an effort to keep it small and engaging.

We’re are a great team. We’re passionate and committed as much to the process as to the product, and not so ego-centric as to put our own interests ahead of the other or the event. While we agree on an unhealthy number of decisions and ideas, neither of us is blindly compliant. We routinely question each other and challenge our ideas as an exercise to ensure nothing needs to be defended to our community. There is the odd time we agree on a compromise or allow the more passionate of the two of us to run with an idea the other isn’t particularly married to nor concerned about. This dynamic has always made for great events, positive community reception and an incredible friendship.

I believe the best events happen because of a co-ordinating partnership, not a single person or committee.

Mark and Bob (photo by John Meadows)