CenPhoCamp Roundup

Come join us! Reg­is­ter now and beat the crowds.

Absolutely loved the top­ics, the energy and the cama­raderie dis­played at yesterday’s event. Thanks to every­one who par­tic­i­pated, pre­sented and sponsored.

Please check back through­out the week for the videos of the pre­sen­ta­tions. They will be posted as edit­ing is completed.

Please take a sec­ond to fill out a sur­vey that will let us do bet­ter next time. Thanks in advance for your time.

Congrats to PhxDW — Welcome communitasPHX

The word of the sea­son is sce­nius. With­out the suc­cess of con­fer­ences like Phoenix Design Week (PhxDW , facilities/communities like Gang­plank and the hard-working, hard-playing scen­esters of the Val­ley, Cen­Pho­Camp wouldn’t exist.

Cen­Pho­Camp exists to bridge the gap between those in the know with those who want to learn. It’s here to build on the inspi­ra­tion that events like last week’s PhxDW bring to the table, but we know that just hav­ing an event isn’t enough, you must have a focus.

PhxDW cat­a­lyst Mark Dud­lik attrib­utes PhxDW suc­cess to its focus on con­tent and com­mu­nity. “If you focus on those things, REALLY focus on them, don’t just say you are in some mean­ing­less plat­i­tude meant to “inspire”, then there is no way you can go wrong.”

Now that the cre­atives are fired up, it’s time to get every­one else involved. Gang­plank co-founder Derek Neigh­bors agrees.

“Phoenix has been dev­as­tated by the hous­ing cri­sis and result­ing reces­sion. In times of cri­sis, it is imper­a­tive that peo­ple find com­mu­nity and bind together to move for­ward. Cen­Pho­Camp epit­o­mizes this spirit of locals help­ing locals and real­iz­ing that ris­ing tides raises all boats. Phoenix could use more of this kind of collaboration.”

So join us, write about us and invite those who want to learn to Cen­Pho­Camp and help us help busi­nesses thrive in the new econ­omy. Noth­ing can be accom­plished in a vac­uum and noth­ing is sus­tain­able with­out buy-in from all stakeholders.

Cen­Pho­Camp is also proud to announce the involve­ment of com­mu­ni­tas­PHX, a non-profit cul­ti­vat­ing spir­i­tu­al­ity, com­mu­nity, jus­tice, and cre­ativ­ity in Down­town Phoenix. With a grass­roots col­lec­tion of ini­tia­tives, com­mu­ni­ties, and exper­i­ments, com­mu­ni­tas­PHX is help­ing to imag­ine new ways of liv­ing and being human in the city. Let’s see if we can’t help them out, too.

Scenius — Communal Genius

Call it col­lab­o­ra­tion, call it syn­ergy or now call it sce­nius.

Sce­nius, coined by musi­cian Brian Eno, means: the intel­li­gence and the intu­ition of a whole cul­tural scene. It is the com­mu­nal form of the con­cept of the genius.

Sure it’s another cheesy play on words, but it’s def­i­nitely a goal. Not only must groups be bet­ter as a whole then the peo­ple involved, but those groups must par­tic­i­pate together in a way that fos­ters inno­v­a­tive think­ing. Phoenix Design Week is all about cre­at­ing sce­nius right now.

We look for­ward to do some­thing sim­i­lar next weekend.

See you on Octo­ber 9. Bring your smart friends. Remem­ber to reg­is­ter here.

Tell everyone you know about CenPhoCamp!

The sched­ule is set, the spon­sors are happy and the after party has been reserved.

Now it’s time to get every­one involved. Below, you’ll notice three four things: 1) the boil­er­plate copy that you can copy and paste to your blog, your Face­book page or wher­ever else you live online; 2) a Word copy of the offi­cial press release; 3) a PDF copy of the same release; 4) a text copy for you to give to your non-press friends. Please dis­trib­ute any or all of these to greater down­town Phoenix res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers that you think might ben­e­fit from CenPhoCamp.

Boil­er­plate copy (just copy and paste, yo)
Cen­Pho­Camp exists to teach greater down­town Phoenix busi­nesses how to thrive in the new econ­omy. From Kirk Yuhnke of ABC15 to Jose Gon­za­lez and Bill Binder of Torch The­ater and Kevin Spi­del of Gan­nett Local to Jonathan Kres­saty of Rip­Styles and Betwext, we’ve gath­ered prac­ti­tion­ers, not dis­as­so­ci­ated experts, together for an after­noon or learn­ing and collaboration.

The event is free to anyone.

Please reg­is­ter at http://www.cenphocamp.com/register/

Cen­Pho­Camp will be held at the Cronkite School at the down­town Phoenix ASU campus.

555 N Cen­tral Ave
Phoenix, AZ 85004

Octo­ber 9, 2010
1–4:30pm (con­fer­ence at Cronkite)
5–7:30pm (hosted appe­tiz­ers at the District)

Down­load­able press releases
Word press release (right click)

PDF press release (right click)

Down­load­able friend invite
Text friend invite

Jason Garcia — October 2010 Photographer

It takes more than a fancy cam­era and Pho­to­shop to shoot great pic­tures, and Jason Gar­cia knows that more than any­one. Please join me in thank­ing him for sign­ing on to be our offi­cial pho­tog­ra­pher for Cen­Pho­Camp Octo­ber 2010.

When you see “pho­tog­ra­phy pro­vided by Jason Gar­cia from Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Col­lec­tive,” you know it’s good.

What is CenPhoCamp?

Cen­Pho­Camp, first devised by me and Yuri Art­ibise is late 2009, was cre­ated to help greater down­town Phoenix small busi­nesses use the tools and access the com­mu­ni­ties that are read­ily avail­able to them. From social media to phil­an­thropy groups and week­end brunches to clever, word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, we know that greater col­lab­o­ra­tion ben­e­fits every­one. Phoenix, espe­cially what we con­sider Cen­Pho and down­town, can’t afford to act as sep­a­rate enti­ties any longer.

But research­ing what works takes time, it takes money and it often takes a level of under­stand­ing that doesn’t come natively to most peo­ple. The skills that busi­nesses need to suc­ceed in the new econ­omy need to be taught to those will­ing to listen.

Cen­Pho­Camp is that solu­tion. Designed for small busi­nesses to learn from other local com­pa­nies, area lead­ers and media pro­fes­sion­als, Cen­Pho­Camp, now run by me and Si Robins, is here to pro­mote col­lab­o­ra­tion, exchange ideas and strengthen the local community.

–Cen­Pho­Camp is free of charge to any attendee
–Speak­ers are cho­sen based on what they can offer the entire com­mu­nity
–Spon­sor­ships pay the rent at Cronkite and appe­tiz­ers at the after party
–Food and drink are pro­vided by the atten­dees
–Orga­niz­ers work on a vol­un­teer basis only

Wel­come to the sec­ond Cen­Pho­Camp. We’ll have the speaker sched­ule con­firmed the week of Labor Day.

Thanks, and see you Octo­ber 9!

Ahead of the curve

Looks like we’re not the only ones who think that spe­cial­iza­tion and focus is good.

Great arti­cle from Wired on why smaller is often better.

Improvement Ideas

Great ideas for next time so far.

–Shorter time frame (4 hours)
–Mod­er­a­tors for round­table dis­cus­sions
–Have food and reg­is­tra­tion table in OWN room
–Keep one room open for impromptu pre­sen­ta­tions
–Keep the pre­sen­ters fresh
–Nobody presents more than once

There’s more, but those really stood out. Keep it up!

Survey

While we work on get­ting the videos and slideshows up, please help the next Cen­Pho­Camp out by giv­ing us your thoughts.

Be spe­cific. “I wished it was bet­ter”, “park­ing sucks” and “I would have like more info” aren’t help­ful. Give us ideas that we can run with.

That was awesome

Noth­ing great ever hap­pens in a vac­uum. It takes effort from every­one. Cen­Pho­Camp was no different.

Thanks to every sin­gle per­son who helped with Cen­Pho­Camp, includ­ing Katie Char­land, who took charge when it was nec­es­sary, Stephanie Sim­mons, who ruled room 314 and Andrew Knochel, who never moved from room 252 because he was con­stantly man­ning the cam­era and guard­ing the food. You stepped up and we thank you for it.

We, mean­ing Tyler Hurst and Yuri Art­ibise were more than stoked at the con­ver­sa­tions, the shar­ing and the atmos­phere enjoyed from 2pm to nearly 11pm last night. It was fun, it was use­ful and it’s worth doing again.

So keep up with us. Tyler is con­stantly on Twit­ter, Yuri is more of a Phoenix cof­fee shop guy, but you can eas­ily track either down. Give us sug­ges­tions, feed­back and offers to help. We’ll take them.

Videos are being processed know, expect to see those pop­ping up, in sep­a­rate posts, this week. We’ll also include links to pre­sen­ters’ slides on SlideShare.

Plans are already in the works to have sim­i­lar events in Scotts­dale and Chan­dler, and a fol­low up Cen­Pho­Camp in October.

Stay tuned, stay talk­ing and most of all, get to know your com­mu­nity.