Creative Mornings Grand Rapids: Year One
CreativeMornings is a breakfast lecture series for the creative community. The free, monthly events feature a short talk and breakfast in local chapters globally — and in June 2014, we started Creative Mornings / Grand Rapids (MI). It’s been over a year. Here’s what we’ve learned.
The plan itself didn’t seem too difficult. Figure out how to book a speaker for our first event, Minimal, in just over a month. Figure out how to get food there. Figure out where we’d have it. And then, figure out how to get people to show up. That was the easy part.
We already had a great brand — the type, the colors, all the monthly illustrations, the event themes, all from the CM national headquarters in Brooklyn. But after those pieces, it was up to us, and in the last 18 months, we’ve been learning what it takes to build a non-work related professional organization work at the local level. Since then, with events that have a capacity of about 100 people, we’ve signed-up just over 800 mailing list subscribers with a steady 70% email open rate, and we’re growing at a rate of 50 new sign-ups per month in a city of 200,000.
Here’s what you need to know about how we did it:
1. Find your niche
Kathryn Chaplow — “Color” — September 2014
We’ve got a pretty great design community here, and as a team, that was the first thing we noticed. KCAD, AIGA, Ladies that UX, all were really great places for people to network, learn, and get deeper into specific design fields. So we decided to aim wider. Looking at the word creative as a bigger idea would free us to connect with networks that were underrepresented in the design space — holding events focused on fashion, the environment, technology, the arts, and start-ups just this year alone, but at the same time, also be inclusive with the different groups when our monthly events did overlap without competing.
In the future, you’ll see more of this — we’ve been having discussions on what creative might mean in the medical field, in restaurants, on our bodies, and in production arts. Keeping creative broad has let us try new things that other groups haven’t yet, and find our space in the already rich Grand Rapids programming atmosphere.
2. Keep pushing for new experiences
David Dodde “Work” November 2015
Our community isn’t the largest. Unlike a Chicago, or a Tokyo, getting from one side of Grand Rapids to the other takes about 20 minutes on a high traffic day. And as a result, it’s easy to fall into a routine. Our team set out to break that pattern by committing to make each of our events a little different, whether it was the space, the snacks, or the coffee. GR/CM was a great chance for us to expose our community to new things, even if it was just giving someone their first cup from our friends at Direct Trade Coffee Club.
Yes, new vendors and partners means that every event is an adventure for us to manage (and believe me, some of our adventures are more challenging than others), but at the end of the day, we decided that if we missed because we were trying something new, it was still better for our community than if we phoned it in.
3. Network with care.
James Victore — “Revolution” — June 2015
Networking events are the worst, aren’t they? You get lost finding the place, walk in, get a name tag, awkwardly try to eat whatever is available, and just, kind of, stand there wondering why you came in the first place. Conversations are all about work, and nine times out of ten, someone’s going to try and sell you something. Ugh. Even the word networking is tainted from bad memories. Ever wonder why meeting new people at your friends’ house is much easier than at DeVos Place? You’re comfortable. And that’s the vibe we wanted our organization to have- like you’re visiting friends. Too often, ‘professional networking’ events simply fall short because they don’t do the little things that put people at ease.
On our side of things, we make it a point to send out an email the night before to our event’s attendees with directions so everyone will get to the event stress-free. We know who’s new and who’s been to events before when greeting everyone and tailor what we say accordingly. Even the word we use to describe our function at the event helps sets this standard. We’re hosts, and our organizing team makes it a point to be part of the event so that everyone’s relaxed and happy to see each other. We want everyone who’s come to a CreativeMornings event here in Grand Rapids to feel like they’re part of our community, and even if it was the first time, they don’t feel like it. Being able to understand the pre-existing negative attitudes in what you’re trying to achieve, and zagging away from them is important.
4. Experience is everything.
Carson Davis-Brown — “Color” — October 2015
If you’ve had a chance to read our emails, you’ve probably got a good idea of the type of people we are as an organizing team. The Taylor Swift GIFs, slang, and links to inside jokes are there for a reason — they’re the real things we laugh about and come up with when planning events. We put our best low-maintenance, ‘it’s no big deal’ traits into our communication to lower the barrier to entry for people who aren’t quite sure about us and might be nervous.
At the same time, we’re also putting an exorbitant amount of work is into our product, the monthly events, whether that’s making sure we always have vegan food options on hand, geeking out over booking a fantastic speaker, gold tinseling the stage, hand-lettering our food signs, or color-theming our Halloween candy bags so that everything is red to match.
If either one falls short, so does the organization. Great marketing only works with a great event, and a great event only draws in attendees with great marketing. Know that every official touch point you have with a possible attendee is important, and make sure you’re covering all your bases.
5. Never stop learning
Kelley Howley — “Collaborate” — July 2015
After our first couple events selling out and all-around great vibes coming in from the community, we were pumped. But, as the true skeptics we are, we knew that new excitement could give way to boredom if we weren’t careful. CreativeMornings at its core is duplicate events with a similar program, every month, that take place before work. Just how many people actually would get up for our events more than once? Was it a good thing if everyone was new every time, or would we rather have the same people over and over again? At the end, we realized that we didn’t want either of those extremes.
On one hand, new attendees meant that we were growing our chapter, and bringing new people into the fold. On the other, people who came back multiple times meant that we were doing a good enough job that people actually wanted to spend time with us. The mix is what makes a healthy community — so we started paying attention, and using it as a barometer to help us plan. Of the 88 people who joined us for the David Dodde “Work” event in November, 65% had been to three or more events, and for 35% it was their first or second time. At Kelley Howley’s “Collaborate” event, it was 75% returning, 25% new. At Jim Murray, “Ugly,” it was 65% returning, 35% new. Knowing the numbers helps us make sure we’re on track, and is essential to helping organizations know how to move forward.
Looking back, it’s kind of a wild risk HQ took on us. During that first application process, there were really only about 30 CreativeMornings chapters globally and at the time, they were all in major cities — LA, Amsterdam, Moscow, and Bogota to name a few. Grand Rapids wasn’t on anyone’s radar. We weren’t quite Detroit, but not quite Chicago either. We joked about what the team in Brooklyn must’ve thought of us — cows, farms, and maybe a river? Looking back after two years, I doubt any of us would have guessed what we’d end up learning, but these ideas are the backbone of how our team figures out whats right for us, and what isn’t. Hopefully you’ll be able to take the lessons we’ve learned and apply them to your teams, too.
