"To be rather than seem"

Speaking of, among other things, Greensboro's inability to operate with genuine sincerity, from Ed Cone:

What's odd is that we're talking about it happening with a well-publicized effort by a well-funded, well-intentioned group to promote GSO's creative culture -- a group that ignores significant creative aspects already underway in the city.

I'm not even sure there's a mechanism for dealing with creative endeavors that arise organically from the local scene. Sean got a meeting, but it sounds like that was all on his own initiative.

People are going to do their thing. That's part of being creative. But there is sometimes a role for a group like AG, and -- the reason we're having this conversation in the first place -- they proclaimed their interest in this topic.

I've given the example of the ConvergeSouth conference. Instigated and run by volunteers, it brought people from DC and Atlanta and across the Carolinas to A&T each year to talk about (as the founding motto had it) creativity on the web for all people.

We ran it successfully until it felt played out and we were burnt out on it, and then we shut it down. We were happy with what we'd done.

But -- what if institutional support had been there at some point, not just for funding but for planning, marketing, etc?

What if the ideas and energy of the grassroots creative folks had been combined with the muscle of AG?

Then GSO today might have an ongoing creative arts/new media festival, something like a regional version of SXSW -- an actual creative effort that drives economic development, just as the creative culture rap has it.

But we don't. Rather than having the downtown leadership adding to the mix, we had a mayor who laughed that he couldn't use a computer and declined all invitations to attend the event.

So we did our thing, and it worked, and after a while it was done.