July 19th, 2009

Likemind: the Start of Something Big?

When I saw the @substance tweet last week about the Likemind gathering, and that they mentioned the Noseys as a topic, it seemed like a great opportunity to talk to some people face to face and get some first hand feedback about this thing. So Friday morning found Dave and I at our first Likemind meet-up at Tiny’s.

The conversation started off around the Noseys, what our plans were for it, what people were thinking of it and so on, but quickly turned to a much broader, and much more interesting topic. Happily acknowledging that neither Dave nor I have any concrete plan for the mechanics of the Noseys, talk went to what might a different sort of award show look like? What exactly ‘different’ meant seemed to be up for debate, but there was general agreement that the structure of the traditional show left little for any of us to get excited about. With only vague notions of exactly what was being rewarded, and even less information about the process that goes into judging the winners, the relative value of awards seemed lacking with the crowd. While the one thing that has always been part of the design of the Noseys was that the public would choose the winner, I still find myself wanting more, and any discussion of alternative ideas helped.

I felt the most interesting and important part of the discussion came late in the meetup: the idea of establishing a week long festival of synchronized events around the city. Obviously we didn’t get down to details, but what makes me really excited about this idea is that while there have been really successful, independent functions all year, organizing them creates a more important event that might actually draw people in from outside Portland and shine a little more light on the talent and opportunities that reside here.

I don’t know where this is all going to go, or how it might impact the Noseys, but we’ve always been about more than an awards show. Our goal has always been to challenge Portland’s creative community to do more and be more than we have been. The idea that an event of this nature and this importance could come out of the community rather than an organization is tremendously energizing to me. What ever happens, this feels like the very beginning of something, and if the Noseys can be any part of that I’ll feel like we did what we set out to do.