Give Camp Memphis

 

As promised, I've spent the weekend with the good folks of Give Camp Memphis. We've been holed up in the Emerge Memphis building downtown since 5:00 on Friday. The bravest among us (not me) are even sleeping here -- hence the "camp" in Give Camp.

Give Camp is a national initiative that has been popping up in an increasing number of cities. This weekend marks Memphis's second event. The group's slogan is "Coding for Charity," and that pretty much sums it up. Give Camp recruits volunteer tech professionals ("from designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web strategists") as well as nonprofits in need of technical help, then puts them all in the same place, divides them into project teams, and gives them one solid weekend to complete a tech project.

Most of the projects at this year's Memphis event involve constructing websites, and Chatterbox's is no exception. As I wrote last week, we requested help building an online home for our ongoing Spoon River Anthology project. As of this writing, we're three hours away from the end of the event. The prototype site is shaping up, and though it won't be ready to share for a while (I still have lots of work to do on the content), it will be fully functional and will serve as a fantastic interface for the fantastic poems we're recording.

We pulled an incredible team in Sarah, Matt, George, Jeff, and Jason. Frankly, I'm amazed at all the professionals who turned out to volunteer their time and talent in exchange for nothing more than a thank-you and some (admittedly excellent) food. For my part, all I've really had to do is be around, answering the occasional question, tossing out the occasional idea, and providing the occasional file. Not a bad trade-off at all.

If you're a small nonprofit in a city where Give Camp has a presence, I highly recommend submitting an application. And if you're a technology professional with a penchant for charitable work, I'm sure they'd be thrilled to hear from you.

Report from the Open House

Like most of us, Aiden got into audio theater for the babes.

Earlier this week, we hosted our second Open House in the Chatterbox Studio. It was great fun, with a crowd of about 60 friendly faces. Everyone had a chance to get on mic and to play with sound effects equipment (which was especially fun for the young'uns who attended). And of course there was food and drink and great camaraderie throughout the evening. You can see photos from the Open House on the Chatterbox website.

Events like these remind me how much Chatterbox depends on its community in order to succeed. Our little theater requires directors, actors, writers, musicians, sound effects artists, sound engineers, visual artists, Board members, administrators, donors, and of course listeners. Without every single one of those elements in place, we couldn't do what we do.

If I weren't busy with Chatterbox, I like to imagine I'd spend my free time hunkered down in a basement somewhere, working on a the Great American Novel. Which would be fun, sure -- if nothing else, I could smoke a pipe and wear jackets with elbow patches -- but would also be a fairly solitary endeavor. Meanwhile, in four years of Chatterbox, we've worked with about 220 people in the creation of our shows, and thousands more listen in each month. I'm certainly the richer for it, and I hope all our participants can say the same.

So, no matter how you participate in Chatterbox, thank you! And whether or not you made the Open House, mark your calendar for our next event: a live Halloween broadcast on WKNO-FM, part of the Transcontinental Terror collaboration. More details soon.

A Glimpse into My Inbox

 That has to be the longest steering column I've ever seen.

One of the consistently amazing things about Chatterbox is its global reach -- the fact that the work we do here in Memphis can affect a listener hundreds of miles away. And the fact that said listener can then turn around and communicate back with us almost instantly.

This mind-boggling thought struck me anew as I was looking over my inbox yesterday evening. At the moment, I've got 16 emails flagged as needing a response. They include:

- Four sketch submissions from a comedy writer in the UK
- A networking email from an audio theater producer in Long Island, NY
- An email from our friend Mariele of the great Wireless Theatre Company (in London) about this year's Halloween collaboration
- An email about the possibility of Chatterbox performing at the Memphis ComicCon
- A networking email from another UK-based theater company (Blackshaw Productions)
- An awesome Halloween Show script from Memphis writer Deborah Hyatt (which we're totally going to use)
- An email from Geneva Community Radio in Geneva, NY about airing our shows (Woot!)
- A suggestion from a listener in MN about a book he thinks would make a good adaptation
- A theater student from Macedonia (!) inquiring about the possibility of performing one of our scripts in area classrooms
- Notice of a monthly donation from a generous new donor (Thanks, Nathan!)

What an array! It's amazing, and humbling, that our work has entered the online conversation enough to inspire such communications. When our mission statement says we hope to "advance the exchange of ideas," this is exactly the kind of thing we're talking about. Exactly.

Anyway, long live the internet! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some emails to answer.