What's Next?

Well, it's done. FMC Policy Summit 2009 is over. I'm very proud of the conference we put on. I'm also in an unfamiliar place personally as a result. This multi-day, three-ring circus of a conference has been my goal for a few years...and now it's a goal attained.

Graduating high school and college count as milestones reached, but those were expectations as much as achievements and weren't choices I made. Moving to DC and making a life here is a personal goal that I've also seen through (four years today, as a matter of fact!) Organizing this conference was different though, because it was the first long-term professional goal that I chose and embraced.

What also makes this moment unique for me is that there isn't an obvious next step. When I graduated from high school, the next step was college. When I graduated college, the next step was getting a job that had something to do with college. Those were questions and answers that were anticipated and prepared for. But I didn't anticipate these questions to spring up right now: What's the next big goal? What drives me professionally now? Are incremental goals enough for the moment?

All questions I'll be figuring out how to answer. But don't mistake me, this is a very cool place to be. Having decided to do something and then succeeding is a point of pride and glee.

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As to the conference itself, here were a few of the moments that stand out:

- The sight of the line to get into our SRO crowd on the first day. I know we put on a great conference, but I never really believe other people agree until they start arriving
- Finally getting to see Copyright Criminals; trailer here
- Rob Kaye's hair (one day we'll get him to dye/shave the FMC logo into his head before he arrives)
- We had to get a campus group to relocate their canned food drive when we arrived which resulted in statements like "I gotta go get rid of the food drive."
- Maps, directions, signs, maps, more directions, bad directions, driving directions, what if they take our signs down?, no clue how to direct you here, and the wonderful volunteers who took it upon themselves to stand at strategic locations and direct people
- Sorta making the live video feed work and "beaming" Peter DiCola in for the sampling panel
- The rock show...and having already seen it before so missing the last half wasn't so tragic
- Scene from Office Space + the room above + two turntables = Mike Relm soundchecking on Tuesday morning
- Our closing night cocktail party at the Eighteenth Street Lounge
- Thursday evening after the Summit at 7:46 PM, when I shut my computer down and realized the marathon was over

Schmoozing

Well, the most recent stop on the world tour was 40 hours in San Francisco.

I was there to attend SanFran MusicTech, schmooze and watch panels and panelists.

Along the way, I got to be on my very first panel about activism through music/by musicians. It went well despite a good-sized case of stage fright before we started. During the first few seconds I was convinced my heart was going to burst out of my chest and run screaming down the street...but then I calmed down. It wasn't exactly a focused conversation, but I'm glad I did it. Certainly a confidence booster for me.

One niggling observation: I was surprised by the hard-core attitude from audience and my fellow panelists about musicians "not risking anything these days" when they speak about social justice issues, i.e. musicians choosing to advocate on issues like voter registration rather than the death penalty.

I guess I look at activism and efforts to engage music fans around causes as umbrellas that are better the bigger they are. OK Go advocating for net neutrality doesn't preclude Springsteen from railing against Ticketmaster which doesn't preclude orchestras around the country from collecting food bank donations.

I admire the passion and fearlessness of musicians who use their pulpit to talk about controversial topics, but activism isn't a zero-sum proposition and there are certainly plenty of causes to go around.

Aside from my panel, I like going to these conferences because I can steal ideas on ways to make FMC's events better. Having broad power to try new ideas is one of the big perks of working in such a tiny office. As a result of SanFran MusicTech and last week's Free Press Summit, I'm interesting in finding ways to make networking a goal for our events, rather than a happy byproduct of getting lots of interesting people in the same room.

Anyway, off to go talk activism in New Orleans tomorrow. Expect my flickr feed to be abuzz!

Notes on the Day

Ever since I took over the Events gig at FMC, I've been particularly aware of the large shoes of my co-worker Kristin Thomson that I've been working up to filling. She's so good at everything she touches that it's been a long learning process.

In that light, Wednesday's Policy Day was an especially proud professional moment for me since it's the first event that I either did or oversaw all of from beginning to end. (Reminded me of that feeling I used to get when my visa applications would successfully get the band from some African country into the US.)

A few thoughts on a fantastic 24 hours:

- Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott gave one of my favorite bits of the day during the Broadband panel: certainly there are challenges to telecom policy right now but citizen input is still important. It's so easy for problems to seem huge and out of reach but when that's all anyone hears I feel an essential empowering message gets lost. Case in point: Pandora's campaign around webcasting rates so deluged Congressional offices that the switchboard overloaded. Topics du jour during that time? Iraq and webcasting rates.

- How did people ever run events without text messaging set to vibrate? The walkie-talkies with earbuds from a few years back were incredibly clunky in comparison.

- Our event evaluations ask a question on whether there's enough diversity of gender/race among the panelists. In answering the question, interestingly, this time a couple of people said the question was unnecessary.

- Live webcasting, yay! And archives are available, too.

- One round of pool at the Black Cat = $1 in quarters. Watching the rock stars play pool and do the victory dance afterward = priceless.

The Gorge

Professionally, I've always been a jack-of-all-trades. I've liked it since doing a little of everything saves me from boredom. However, the downsides are that a) it's hard to sell cohesively on a resume b) you're never quite qualified for any specialized position and, c) you're forever qualified for more similar positions at low-paying non-profits where they can't afford more specialized people.

When I took the Events Organizer job at FMC at the beginning of the year, I didn't think much of the future, only that it got me out of an assistant gig. Then we decided to have three events in the coarse of two weeks in two different cities this fall. It'd be an understatement to say that there's been a learning curve. I've had lots of help and I'll certainly do it better next time. But interestingly, I haven't felt ill-equipped for the job.

Most definitely, over the last six weeks or so, it feels like my world has gotten progressively narrower. I work. I sleep. And everything else gets third billing: eating, friends, running, whatever.

However, the unexpected part of this narrowing focus of my days is that while my world has narrowed, it's also gotten deeper. That's because a lot of the parts of my jack-of-all-trades experiences have come into play and they make more sense within the context of this particular job. All that that random stuff that's crammed into my head has coalesced this summer into a job and I've learned more about all of it along the way.

Learning so much so quickly has felt sort of like that dog sticking his face out the window of a car on the freeway and having to turn his head at times because sometimes the onslaught of smells is just too much. But notice he keeps turning back into the wind to get more? That's been me. And it's been fun.

Anyway, if you know any musicians in Chicago on September 22 or New York City on October 6, please send them the links to our websites. These events will be a great chance for musicians to learn more about making a living making music in the 21st century and some of the policy issues that affect the process. Come on out and and pack the house!