This is a guest blog post by a recent attendee of LaidOffCamp Southwest Valley, Ben Chatterton. Ben provides his perspective on LaidOffCamp having attended events in Phoenix and Avondale.
My experience with Arizona’s startup and freelance culture.
Like many telecommuters and freelancers, I usually live my life alone, in a home office, at my computer. And, like many people in that situation, I do a number of random internet searches every day. One of those searches, one day, led me to the site of a marketing firm called Forty, which was apparently located in a collaborative space called Gangplank. Being an adventurous sort, I drove the zillion miles to Chandler one Tuesday morning.
Gangplank was remarkable. Operations Manager Katie Charland immediately introduced me to a number of people who did cool things for themselves: a few designers, a community organizer, and a number of programmers. All of a sudden, I thought I was really starting to work my way into a community. Then I heard about LaidOffCamp Phoenix.
Let me tell you: I’m not the typical LaidOffCamp attendee, if there is such a thing. I have a “day job”, but I’ve been digging into the world of freelance writing on the side. I’m not actively looking for a full-time employment opportunity—most of my efforts are directed toward finding new clients, so I wasn’t quite sure what I’d get out of the event.
Those fears were allayed right away. Susan Baier, organizer of LOC Phoenix, took the stage before any of the classes began, and explained her philosophy lucidly, and with humor. Her philosophy was simple: The crowd in the room—the network—was just as important as the content of the classes.
“These people aren’t going to be unemployed forever,” she said. Meaning that as people got work, they’d have contacts, which would lift the whole group up, one job at a time. I was a little skeptical, but as I attended the classes, I found that most of the comments were thoughtful, and most of the people were very social.
One of these was a man who had previously been an executive for several hotels and golf courses. He obviously wasn’t desperate, but he was finding that in this economy, having valuable experience in a high-pay industry was actually working against him. Despite his previous success, he never seemed to mind conversing with the LOC community.
In contrast, a woman I met in the hall asked me, “How is anyone going to find a job here?”
“You just talk to people, build relationships, and when they hear of a job opening that fits you, they tell you.”
“But…but these people—” she leaned in and whispered, as if she knew I were not one of them, “—are unemployed.”
“They won’t be unemployed forever!” I smiled. I was buying in.
When LaidOffCamp Southwest Valley was announced, I immediately signed up. I was very excited about the possibility of creating community in my own backyard. As the day arrived, I thought about the people I’d meet who’d have connections to tons of clients that needed my work, people who would be a short drive away. There was sure to be a thriving community for me to tap into.
The day came, and Baier gave the same energetic speech as she had in Chandler. I went to the classes, and participated as I had previously. Two of the classes I attended were taught by people associated with Gangplank: Chris Conrey and Tyler Hurst.
In Conrey’s class, I asked a question that was ostensibly about sales (or how to sell my writing services to clients), which Conrey answered in part by referring me to the guy that was running the slideshow—Andy Lenards, who said he’d get me in contact with someone who was patched into the writing scene in the Valley. Andy lives in Tucson and is active with the recently Gangplank space there.
Hurst’s class focused on building community, specifically using events as a way to get one’s name out in the world and get hired. There was a great discussion, and Hurst gave out as a prize a copy of The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry. I positioned myself to win the book, which he gave out on condition that I sign it and pass it on to someone else.
By the end of the day, I hadn’t changed the world. I didn’t join some magical community of people desperate to give me work. In fact, most of the leads I got from LOC Southwest Valley were people that lived elsewhere. But that’s exactly the point—even though this community is just beginning to emerge, it’s clear that it’s going somewhere. Get connected; you’ll be glad you did.
