Don’t think about exporting the culture of Silicon Valley

Chris Messina is one of the thought leaders behind some of the concepts we here at Florida Creatives subscribe to: Coworking and BarCamp are the big ones. He made a great post today that seemed to be writing itself in my head as I was reading it. The short version is this: We don’t want to be like San Francisco. It’s true. My idea is that we want to be a better Orlando, or Tampa, or South Florida. See what Chris has to say about it here, but please visit his blog and read the rest of the post.

From FactoryCity » On exporting the culture of Silicon Valley

people don’t have to be alone in their progressive thinking, the question seems to quickly become: “So what happens next? How do we create our own Silicon Valley here?”

Well, I’m here to tell you that the next thought should be, “Oh wait, what we want isn’t to become another Silicon Valley with all their disfunctions and navel-gazing — what we really want is a community that is self-sustaining and a culture of sharing, opportunity and hope…!” Of course, that’s a harder proposition and reality to accept and to create, but if you really want a slice of the Bay, you might as well take the one that’s not just covered with whipped cream.

Where I’ve seen this work, people are collaborating, are open, are sharing, are working together and building something that is defined from within, rather than from without. It’s not about imitating what you think we have out here; it’s about creating and instituting an attitude and mentality that shares the same philosophical underpinnings that allow us to define success for ourselves and then go about achieving it, however we best can.

I doubt I could have said it better myself. At this point, we’ve all heard the arguments that “our scene isn’t supportive” or “the audiences are lazy” or “I can’t find anyone to share this thought with me”. The argument against all of those points is “figure out how to inspire support”, “ask more people”, “try it out sooner, fail sooner, learn how to be better sooner”. Set some goals and a system to measure success, and don’t think of yourself as failing until you’ve really taken stock of what you’re trying to accomplish.

The next 3 weeks are going to see a huge upheaval for the internal and external image of Orlando and Florida in the eyes of the world. Don’t believe me? Then you won’t be seeing the same change I know is coming until it’s already passed you by. All the ingredients are here. All the creatives, audience members, investors, consultants and catalysts are in the petri dish, now all we have to do is raise the temperature.