Eindhoven’s Chamber of Commerce supports creativeneurs of the region
by Slava on Apr.13, 2010, under 6 future congeries
[This blog became a bit inactive lately, not because nothing is happening with Summ()n; exactly the opposite, too many things happen - gatherings, meetings, exhibitions, new partners, new projects. Two weeks in Moscow did kick me off the track a bit, and I was planning to restore the events in a chronological order, thus postponing the postings on the latest events. Wrong strategy, apparently, so I switch to writing on the things as they happen.]
Yesterday I came to the meeting at the Little Mountain agency, in the Strijp-S complex in Eindhoven (I actually wrote about them a while ago). This time they hosted a gathering of creative industry professionals from the Brabant region, organized by the local Chamber of Commerce. The purpose of the workshop was to help in discovering your ‘inner entrepreneur’; in principle, that task should not be difficult in case of ‘creatives’ who are by definition are, well, creative and keen to experiment, innovate and try new things. In reality a transformation of creative professionals into creativeneurs require much support and nurturing.
The gathering was jointly opened by the representations from the Chamber of Commerce and Maarten Hendrix, from Little Mountain (above). Initial reception by the 60+ audience was high, but bit cold. Everything has changed, however, after the introduction exercise and an energizing presentation by a meeting coach.
Participants got engaged into the flow, and actively participated in the event, in fact, co-shaped it.
The audience was far from the stereotypical ‘young hipster’ type of cliches many people have about so called ‘creatives’; there were young and old, man and women, and representatives from a wide variety of the creative industries, from high-tech geeks to low-tech artists.
I really enjoyed the meeting, and its atmosphere (also from the Summ()n point of view I would also propose a more creative formats for such gatherings 
We agreed to discuss it with Arjan Bijvoet, CoC’s advisor on creative industries development in the region:
As always, many more pictures from the event are available in the Creative Entrepreneurs Gathering at Strijp-S set on Flickr. I will also write a short piece about the event for Demotix, independent news agency I’ve joined recently.
