Inchvestments of Hope
I can’t let the day go by without sharing some tech-lovin’ learnings fresh from yesterday’s 140 Character Conference at the Fillmore in Detroit.
The 140 Character Conference is known for pulling together people from the worldwide twitter community to think about the effects of “real-time” internet on the marketplace. That in itself is interesting, ay? But here’s the part that is the carrot on the stick for people-connecting-nuts like me: the Detroit event was pointed at ideas that could inject hope into what appears to be a dying city.
Some talking-points that might prick your interest:
- Charlie Wollborg, a founding partner and “Chief Troublemaker” at the digital agency Curve Detroit, warned people not to fall for the illusion that re-tweeting accomplishes something that translates into the real world.
If you’ve come to see yourself as something of a twitter-vigilante—an advocate for any number of commercial or social causes, be warned, he says. You’ve made friends with apathy.
And apathy, according to Wollberg, is the “enemy” because it tricks us into thinking we’re doing something with our lives when we aren’t.
- That said, now let me introduce you to LEMONADE Detroit, a project from someone using social-technology for more than an occasional advocacy-retweet.
Some background: The guy behind LEMONADE Detroit, Erik Proulx, is teaming with Jerry Paffendorf–the guy behind Loveland, the real-estate venture that sells Detroit one inch at a time (he calls them “inchvestments”—is there any cooler word than that?). Paffendorf uses the land to launch “microhoods”, which are park and garden spaces that will be visitable in person or, virtually, via online grids. Please check out the Loveland blog here.
(As an aside, Paffendorf is also the guy behind Imagination Station, a creative non-profit venture that refurbishes buildings destroyed by arson. You can read more about that here.)
But onto LEMONADE Detroit—a positive film project designed to capture a spirit of hope. The film, according to Paffendorf, is “a reaction to ruin porn,” a term invented by Vice Magazine to describe the national media’s obsession with decaying Detroit.
To fund the film, Paffendorf is selling frames of a film-in-the-making for $1 a frame to make $120,000 to produce a 90-minute film—the trailer for which you can see below. Since announcing the project as of Thursday morning, 83 producers have combined to finance 2,529 frames.
Lemonade: Detroit Trailer from Erik Proulx on Vimeo.
Intrigued? You can read more about the 140 Characters Conference in Detroit here.