Spotlight on the Designer Track 2017
With a huge schedule of events across six tracks of programming, putting together your own schedule can be daunting! To help break it all down, each week we’ll be taking a deep dive into one track with the chairs who put it together, exploring the themes and topics they’re focused on this year, and hear what events they’re most excited to see.
This week we’re delving into the Designer Track with co-chairs Castle Searcy and Brian Corrigan.
Castle is an artist with an MBA, a freelance designer, a serial entrepreneur and an occasional creative strategist. She’s run a string of different ventures including Tootsies the Nail Shoppe, Rebelle Salon, Wafflich and Wingbandits. She’s also an (increasingly rare) Denver native, and has been running the Designer Track since the very first Denver Startup Week. Outside of the week, she’s heavily involved in the Denver Art Museum’s CultureHaus program, working to inspire the next generation of arts patrons, as well as working on the PR team for the Denver Film Festival.
Brian is a creative strategist and placemaker focused on the intersection of art, technology, and community planning/development. Eight years ago, after teaching design at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, DC, he made the move to Denver specifically because of the city’s reputation as a hotbed for creative talent. Since then, Brian has played a key role in a number of large-scale public arts initiatives, including Create Denver Week and the OhHeckYeah street arcade project.
How did you both get involved in DSW?
Castle: I went to the University of Denver for my MBA, and one of my classmates there was [Organizing Chair] Ben Deda. Back when Denver Startup Week was just getting off the ground in 2012, Ben asked me to help put together a slate of design-oriented sessions because he thought I knew everyone in design in Denver. I realized pretty quickly that I did not know anyone — but by the end of that first year, Ben’s assumption was true.
Brian: I met Castle several years ago at Denver Startup Week, in a Designer Track session held over at Oz Architecture. While we’ve been friends for a while and have organized events together at previous Denver Startup Week incarnations, it’s only recently that we decided to start working together on the entire program. This is the first year of the full-scale Castle and Brian show!
What’s the main focus for your track this year?
Our theme this year is “Your Guide to Entrepreneurship in the Creative Economy”. There’s a larger national movement underway that recognizes the value that artists bring to the table to tackle big problems facing society — whether as intrapreneurs inside a company or when building their own enterprises — and seeks to encourage that kind of activity. We want to help provide the technical assistance for artists to turn their ideas into new business opportunities. For a few years now, our counterparts in the technology realm have been able to take advantage of a certain amount of established infrastructure to help them get new ventures off the ground — things like incubator and accelerator programs, and established routes for raising capital. We want to start building that for the creative side of the world. There’s a stigma that artists are not “business people.” In reality, artists are the best types of businesspeople; they’re highly resourceful, creative and have an ability to transform liabilities into assets. And in doing so, they develop solutions that improve the bottom line while often times benefiting society and the environment, too. These are the types of ideas we want to scale. We want more artist-led businesses.
Specifically for the Designer Track sessions, we’ve tried hard to look at design as a very general concept and incorporate perspectives from a number of different design practices — UI/UX, architecture, interior design, industrial design, visual art, etc. We want the sessions to be applicable to and inspiring for anyone with a creative/arts background, and building a successful business requires a number of different design-related skills, so we’re wary of focusing too much on any one practice. In addition, we’ve worked hard to select presenters who are able to speak the language of artists, understand their perspectives and fears, and address their unique concerns specifically. That can at times be a difficult gap to bridge — addressing the sometimes-hidden nuances of a particular group’s perspective — but a number of our speakers are artists who have been very successful in their own ventures, and we feel that those types of presenters have a unique ability to build a direct connection with their audience. They have automatic credibility but combine that with the ability to relate to the specific challenges of the creative realm in a very personable way.
What stood out to you from the community submissions for the Designer Track this year?
For one, we reviewed a lot of really great UI/UX design submissions! Our community has built some major chops in those areas over the last several years, and it really shows in the quality of the proposals. There were a lot that looked highly compelling so narrowing those down was difficult.
We also saw a number of submissions with a social impact aspect to them. It seems to be on a lot of people’s minds how they can give back and create a bigger impact beyond just their area of focus. Many of these submissions combined topics in ways that we found super compelling; they expand the scope of the whole program in an awesome way.
What are your picks for “can’t-miss” sessions this year?
“Great Minds Don’t Think Alike: Artists as Innovators in Business, Government & Society” (Monday 9/25 at 3:30pm, Larimer Social) —We’re excited to have Laura Callanan from Upstart Co-Lab as the designer track keynote presenter this year. Upstart is at the forefront of bridging impact investing with creative places & businesses. Laura’s keynote will highlight Upstart’s next phase of work around the artist-innovator and the value they bring to business, society and government. To us, the work that Laura is doing is the next chapter for creative sector development.
“Impact Investing & The Creative Economy” (Wednesday 9/27 at 11:30am, Herman Miller | Workplace Resource), “Startup Accelerators for Creative Businesses” (Tuesday 9/26 at 11:30am, Herman Miller | Workplace Resource) “Get the Capital You Need” (Wednesday 9/27 at 3:30pm, Herman Miller | Workplace Resource)
These sessions will cover the resources available for incubating and raising capital for creative startups, impact investing through a creativity lens, accelerator programs, and other funding sources (respectively). The organizations joining us for this event, Radicle Impact, Creative Startups, and Meow Wolf, are leading us into a new frontier of possibility and creativity. We’re very excited to have the folks from Meow Wolf joining us again this year. Their sessions last year were some of the biggest hits of the week, and as an organization they’re a great example of artist-innovators putting theory into practice, sharing the “how” behind their accomplishments in addition to the “what”, and supporting artistic communities in highly impactful ways.
“Shift: From Contractor to Business Owner” (Friday 9/29 at 11:30am, Herman Miller | Workplace Resource), “Know the (Cash) Flow” (Tuesday 9/26 at 3:30pm, Herman Miller | Workplace Resource), “Legal 101 for Creative Sector Startups” (Thursday 9/28 at 11:30am, Herman Miller | Workplace Resource) — Each of these sessions is a creative-focused version of some of the core curriculum that we want to provide entrepreneurs attending Denver Startup Week. Having experienced artist-entrepreneurs who understand the specific challenges associated with establishing an entity, managing cashflow, and navigating legal challenges (respectively) will, we hope, bring some terrific insight on these topics and make them more accessible to creatives who need to know how to apply them to the particular challenges of their world.
“Impact + Innovation: How Your Business Can Be A Force For Good” (Thursday 9/28 at 3:30pm, Herman Miller Workplace Resource) — This panel gets at the core of our goal to bridging the gap between tech and creativity. We’ve got a diverse set of perspectives (Meow Wolf, Foundry Group, TechStars, B Lab, and more) discussing ways to use business as a force for good and create innovation by being values driven. It should be a very interesting and illuminating discussion!
“Doing Good with Design Thinking” (Monday 9/25 at 4pm, Spire Digital) — This session is one of the submissions we mentioned earlier that incorporates a social impact twist on a design-focused topic. Spire Digital and Pledge 1% Colorado have put together a really neat interactive format that should make for an engaging session, making concrete steps towards solving real problems while teaching attendees the fundamentals of Design Thinking approaches.
What advice would you give someone who is attending DSW for the first time?
Don’t overdo it (particularly at the social events)! Also, make sure you take advantage of what’s on offer. One of the more amazing things about the week is that as an attendee, you have access to a lot of experts that you might not otherwise be able to connect with. Even better, they are all fully committed to helping you. You shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to leverage their advice and expertise.
You have Herman Miller sponsoring the Designer Track this year, correct?
Yup! We’re very excited to have them on board. So much of what they do is focused on leveraging design to help companies connect in ways that add to their bottom line, which resonates very strongly with our goals for the Designer Track this year. By virtue of the market space they occupy, they have a lot of respect for the dynamics of the startup ecosystem in a way that a lot of other companies their size or age might not, and that makes them a great partner! They have a gorgeous showroom space right in the heart of LoDo that they have graciously offered up to host a number of our sessions this year, so we’re excited to be able to showcase that as well.
Anything else that you really want Denver Startup Week attendees to know about the Designer Track?
Laura Callanan (our keynote speaker) has been a great partner in helping us shape this year’s “Guide to Entrepreneurship in the Creative Economy.” She’s not just a person who flies in for a talk; she’s helped connect us to other presenters and played a role in shaping the track’s content. In fact, all of our presenters and panelists have played an important role in making this year’s program top-notch. It is a true demonstration of what a community can achieve when everyone works together to do something they couldn’t just do on their own.
