This essay is the first in a series, outlining my approach to shaping the spirit of Nouns Town 2025 and inviting you to join this dialogue.
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There is a point in the event planning process where you can't make any big changes to the plans anymore. Once you've crossed that point, you're in execution mode, though not yet producing.
This is when the event planner's mind begins making mental notes, clustering them into two categories.
A) Things I'd do differently next time, as shared in the last propdate here on Proposal 583.
B) Things I couldn't do but want to do next time.
In this essay, I share the key principles derived from A) and B) as a proposal to guide future community events.
Both are quite intuitive through the lens of ⌐◨-◨
Aim for local Impact
Money can't buy Experiences
Aim for local Impact
It's as simple as this: Leave the place better than you found it.
This is the most intuitive to ⌐◨-◨ and can be achieved on smaller as well as larger scales. It's at the core of Nouns:
Building public goods
Doing good without expecting a return, aka being nounish
This guiding principle shouldn't need a lot more explanation. The following are examples that can serve as thought starters. I divided between smaller scale / low budget versus bigger scale / high budget examples.
SMALLER SCALE / LOW BUDGET Time: a few hours, up to one day | BIGGER SCALE / HIGH BUDGET The activities in this category are larger undertakings which require a larger monetary investment and labor. Time: minimum one day |
Clean ups of public spaces Examples:
| Renovating / Restoring / Repairing Public Spaces
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Small Repairs & Renovations in Public Spaces Examples:
| Building new Public Goods Examples:
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What I would stay away from are doing and funding things that won't last, and pure monetary donations.
It's the act of "doing the right thing" that matters most and brings our mission, the brand to life.
⌐◨-◨
Why should we do any of this?
First of all, restating from above: it's the right thing to do and what we signed up for.
And secondly, actions speak louder than words. We're walking the walk of doing good and building public goods.
Things that people can see, touch, experience and support.
The above is relevant for any event, regardless of the size and amount of funding you have available.
When there is a ⌐◨-◨ event, there should be (at least) one activity to leave the place better than you found it.
There are many reasons on why to do it, the first two are listed above. What these activities also do, is increasing the opportunities for IRL impact of Nouns, it's charitable and it's something others might not be able to do and are therefor inclined to partner.
And then there's Money can't buy Experiences which the above is also part of.
Money can't buy experiences
This is the more difficult part which requires more creativity and outside-of-the-box thinking. It puts event planners to back to the drawing board after every event.
The task that wants to be solved at events, is creating experiences that live rent free in peoples minds forever.
For Nouns, that means we want to create experiences only we can. Part of our core DNA is art + code which proliferated into Esports, action sports, curling, breaking, education and many more.
Money can't buy experiences are typically cultural mashups that get the main audience to do things they typically wouldn't.
Two somewhat practical or non-practical examples:
ESPORTS x ART – Getting the gaming community to actively participate in a community mural. But this works the other way around too: setting up gaming stations at an art fair to get art aficionados to sit down and play a game with their friends at an art gallery.
DEV HACKATHON x ART – Getting developers to sculpt their own ceramic mug during a hackathon.
These are things only Nouns can do authentically, and again offers the opportunity for partners to collaborate with us in the future in one way or another.
What does this mean for Nouns Town 2025?
2025 should not be a rinse-and-repeat of 2024
It's one additional cornerstone that will be added to the 2025 happening.
Resulting in the following recipe formula for Nouns Town 2025:
Art x Code x Communities x Local Impact = Nouns Celebration
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I hope this sparks some inspiration and provides insights into my approach for Nouns Town 2025 and how I evaluate future proposals and projects.
While Nouns Town 2025 is still in development, it's best to sign up here or subscribe to this paragraph for future news.
This is new to me too: I'm experimenting here a bit. It's somewhat building in public, seeding new ideas without overselling it and taking in just enough input to create something that will surprise you eventually. Here's some of the thinking that has gone into shaping the concept proposal for Nouns Town 2025. The main take-aways are to a) focus on creating Money-can't-buy-experiences and b) Aim for local Impact. https://paragraph.xyz/@benjamin/nouns-town-25-pt-1
"When there is a ⌐◨-◨ event, there should be (at least) one activity to leave the place better than you found it." 100% on board with this The outline so far is excellent I'm down!
This is spot on 🙌 stoked to see what you get into!
cheers mate!
Thank you for sharing this ⌐◨-◨ looking forward to seeing it build for 2025. Thinking back, loved the energy of Nouns town connecting with the efforts of Nouns Fest all together
First, I love the way you think about building and focusing on community engagement to create something great! I'm all in, specially the larger-scale approach so we can really make a lasting local impact. Other proposals have tried smaller scales and achieved some results, but they usually don’t last long. A bigger-scale scenario allows us to create something meaningful and permanent. Do you already have a specific place, country, or city in mind for Nouns Town? I have some ideas that could be helpful.