SparkCon Planning

Dr. Maurice Werness, Nina Be, and Ben Townsend have come together in an effort to develop a more in depth healthSPARK for 2008.

All three met today with Greg to begin brainstorming ideas. Nina and Maurice had already put together a brief outline and mission statement for 2008 complete with activities and commuinty outreach and education concepts. These factors center around the theme that ” We celebrate our human potential by taking ownership of our own health and happiness to evolve towards greater consciousness in union and reverence to all life.”

To accomplish the empowerment of our SPARKcon attendees, healthSPARK would bring in different practitioners such as acupuncturists, naturopaths, yoga therapists, massage therapists, counselors, and chiropractors to discuss, diagnose, and educate folks on the benefits of alternative medicine. A suggestion to host a 1 hour discussion on the subject during ideaSPARK at the RUDC was proposed and would be a great way to compliment the efforts in Moore Square.

For more information or to get involved, please contact:
Nina Be Werness : ninabe@bodycenteringyoga.com
Dr. Maurice Werness : mwerness@gmail.com
Ben Townsend : samuel.townsend@gmail.com

Welcome Back! I trust that everyone had a great 4th of July weekend.

We will be holding our next General SPARKcon Meeting tomorrow night
( Tuesday July 8 ) at 6 pm at Designbox.
323 W Martin St
Raleigh NC 27601

We will be bringing the group up to speed on general logistics and learning what each SPARK component has planned.

See you all tomorrow night!

Yesterday Greg met with Chris Malarkey of The Pour House and Chris Tamplin of Tir Na Nog to get up to speed with the music happenings of SPARKcon.

Tir Na Nog has already began booking local acts for the Thursday Local Beer Local Band night to kind of kick off the SPARKcon weekend. They are still planning on having some local live bluegrass on Friday and Paddy Gibney on Saturday.

The Pour House already has great line up for that weekend. Everything from local covers to hip-hop with a big local band showcase on Sunday night! Chris was very open to new ideas and offered his space during the day for possible film screenings, workshops, or gallery hangings!

Awesome support! A big thanks goes out to these guys for jumping in feet first early on and being involved members of the music community!

Come by designbox (323 W. Martin St.) to pick up your envelope of postcards for you to distribute.

There will two lists posted with them.

One is a sign up sheet of locations in the area. Please sign your name next to the ones you will be dropping postcards at. 7 or 8 locations per spark would be great!

The other is a blank list for you write any location you think of that is not on my list. Write the location and your name so we have it for next years distribution.

If you come by and do not find an envelope with your SPARK, it is because we are not sure if you exist this year or not! Come in and Tell Greg or Britt what you need.

Thank you all for getting these out there and promoting the cause!

Raleigh has a great eclectic bike community. If you don’t think so just come by designbox on any first friday and you will see what I’m talking about! We feel its time to celebrate this community at SPARKcon.

Greg made some calls and found himself corresponding with Miles Holst, organizer of the Raleigh Alley Kat Race. You may remember a bunch folks flying around downtown on bikes dressed like space cadets collecting relics, completing challenges, and shooting an occasional glass of vodka. That was all thanks to Miles and his creative collective. The two threw around ideas on what could happen at SPARKcon and who would be willing to wrap their hands around it. Enter Matt Huffman, another active cycling commuter and supporter.

Greg and Matt met Wednesday afternoon to brainstorm ideas. Matt has attended SPARKcon in the past and is very motivated to try and bring these communities together. The focus of the meeting was to come up with three core concepts for bikes at SPARKcon. The first and obvious one was to hold a SPARKcon alley kat race! Another was to bring in the 1304 crew. 1304 Chamberlain is a group of active bike enthusiasts who hold maintenance workshops weekly. Anyone is welcome! They have worked with Matt in the past with community outreach support with Big Brothers and Sisters of Raleigh. One thought is to connect with them and have them set up temporary shop at Moore Square.

Both Matt and Greg feel that the overall message should be bikes as commuter transportation as well as recreation. With rising fuel prices, and the increasing number of bikers in the area, the community along with the city need to address this issue of more bikers on the roads of Raleigh. Matt proposed bringing in a speaker to the Urban Design Center to offer insight and hopefully generate some dialogue among attendees.

The First Friday riders are a great resource for supporting SPARKcon. Greg offered up the idea of hosting a SPARKcon ride to raise money for bike related charities. Perhaps an attempt to help implement the white bike program of Raleigh. If not, definitely have a ride that ended at Moore Square. Garnish support from local bike shops in the area to be on hand to offer assistance and advice to those seeking to change their commuter ways.

Matt is pumped! He will be reaching out to see what he can make happen.

After a great meeting with the Raleigh Convention Center, we were able to once again gather their significant and generous support for the large screen, main stage, and lighting for SparkCon Sep 19-21. A logistical condition of this was to have all this equipment located in Moore Square.

This shifts our earlier focus from Fayetteville Street (so that we could better connect with BugFest), but given the RCC’s generous offer and the permitting issues of that street and its repeated closure the two prior weekends, it will probably be a more popular choice with the local businesses. We will try to have the Raleigh Rickshaws and other transportation solutions to connect us with Bugfest.

We realize yogaSPARK was very excited about using the Capitol grounds, but we plan to find an equally shaded and attractive location at Moore Square. Lea- please meet with Greg to find the best spot in Moore Square for your group. It will be nice to see this connect better with the meditation space at Longview.

GroundSPARK will maintain its location on Martin Street, and we will also be better positioned to have Marbles do some youthSPARK programming.

We will have Marbles to house the models and stylists for fashionSPARK which will be a nice logistical solution to maitain this year. Also we will have the courtyard at Marbles to use Friday night - possibly a nice location for Salsa dancing before the fashion show?  Allison - thoughts on how to do this without interfering with the fashion show prep?

Greg will soon update the SparkCon map to give clear indication on the when/where of each component.

Overall, we’re excited to have this donation come through from the RCC in a tough year, and we’ll be on what is now our home court advantage. We’ll begin to look at City Plaza and Fayetteville Street next year when its construction is complete.

This week Aly and Greg met with some of the Local Venue’s at Tir Na Nog to talk about how we can coordinate efforts to showcase Raleigh music for SPARKcon.

Chico Scott from the Riviera, Steve Popson, and the good folks at Tir Na Nog threw around ideas to bring this together. Our main focus was to try and put the ‘power’ back into the hands of the club owners so that they can take ownership and have more of a say in how it would work.

Tir Na Nog will be hosting ‘local band local beer’ night on Thursday to help kick off the weekend. Friday they are looking to book some local bluegrass band, and Saturday they will have Paddy Gibney, a regular come in to lead us in traditional Irish drinking ballads! Tir Na Nog has also offered discounts on lunch for SPARKpatrons and use of their space during the day for lectures, workshops, etc.

Chico is looking to book Stacy Kidd again this year for the Saturday night of SPARKcon. He also offered use of the upstairs with the great dance floor for any dance components that could go on.

Steve, who works at the Museum of Natural Sciences is putting together Bugfest and will be hosting music in the Square. Details on the who and when are coming. We also discussed the idea of how to link all venues together and introduce a musicSPARK pass that patrons could purchase before hand that would grant them access to all venues/shows during SPARKcon. Another idea was to get some recording capability during SPARKcon and capture all the live music and put it onto a “Best of SPARKcon Music 2008″ CD that we could use to promote and raise funds for next year! Very cool idea.

We will be meeting again on Monday June 30 at Tir Na Nog at 2pm. We are reaching out to local bars/restaurants/clubs to garnish more energy and interest. Come out and share your ideas!

Beth has finished the design and they are off to the printer!

We have 2,500 coming. The idea here is to get them out to each SPARK once they have arrived. Greg will have envelopes labeled for you at design box and you can come pick them up. Their will be a post once they are ready

This is a general call, get involved, volunteer, sponsor our event type of postcard. It is designed to generate interest on all fronts, not just getting artists. We will be going around to all the ‘hotspots’ in Raleigh and leaving them for folks to pick up.

In the interest of getting them out immediately, Greg has posted a link for the postcard onto the Documents page. Email it out, post it on list serves, get it out there and let it circulate!

Santos has been busy reaching out to various dance organizations and has a few things in the works. Aly and Greg sat down with Santos this afternoon and learned his plans.

He has made contacts with a Capoeira group who might be willing to come and host an open dance workshop. He also got in touch with a swing dance group, contra dancers, and knows a few breakdancers who might come out!

Aly got the word from Pam at Marbles museum that we could host a dance workshop in their courtyard on Friday. The thought is to bring some salsa dancers/instructors and get as many involved as possible. Santos and I are going to visit with the folks at Red Room on Glenwood to see if they along with DJ Keith and their dance instructor would like to be involved. 

The overall vision is to have a variety of workshops happening throughout the three days of SPARKcon. It looks like that we will probably have to hold some of these workshops/demo’s indoors due to the nature of the style of dance, so an idea was to have donation boxes at the doors to raise money for giveSPARK! 

It will be very cool to see how this shapes up!

Heather Hesketh, Teresa Spangler and Aly met together to discuss options for ideaSPARK. A main focus of the meeting was on how to use ideaSPARK as a way to show off the great local talent that is largely unknown to other locals. With such great professionals in the area, it would be great to have ideaSPARK continue to highlight those gems among us. 

We want the workshops to be energetic and also attended by people with shared specific interests. As a result, we considered having local chapters of IDSA (Industrial Designers), TRIUPA (Web designers), and other professional organizations.

One idea is to have the following format:
15 minute presentation of someone from their field
15 minute presentation of someone outside -but analogous- to the field (architect with web designers?)
1 hour “structured play” and workshop session on how to combine the ideas of both of these people  
Afterwards head to local restaurants, bars etc to get some fun networking in. 

These “professional sessions” would be open to the public but hopefully well attended by the professional societies themselves so that real meaty issues can be addressed with good detail. These would be well suited to Friday Sep 19 - possibly at the Urban Design Center, who has donated their space. Other options exist at the Longview Center, Marbles Museum, and two large rooms at Tir na Nog.