Mar 11, 2014
Sometimes the event
you want to organize has already been created. It's sitting there
dormant, like a classic car collecting dust, hidden in a garage.
Jeff Dolan, an avid film-maker, wanted to start his own community.
Being overwhelmed with the thought of creating a group from
scratch, he realized one was already waiting for him to take the
reigns of. Nashville Filmmakers was re-born.
Jeff Dolan on the relaunch and success of Nashville Filmmakers
Shout out to Jeff Brown, Chris Mason, and Mitch Canter. Thanks guys.
Jeff Dolan is a Nashville-based community leader and filmmaker.
He studied Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He joined a start-up called MedFusion. He talks about balancing business with art.
Students need to be networking while they are in school. Think about networking before you need it.
He got sidetracked because of a lack of focus.
On building a community, "You have an advantage if you can focus on an industry."
There's only two reasons you come to Nashville, music or a relationship. It's true, both Jeff and I came to Nashville because of lovely women (hi, Heather).
The Nashville Filmmakers meet up group began in 2008 but was left dormant for a couple of years. Jeff has grown membership to 500.
When Jeff came to Nashville, he wanted to find his community. He found everyone was in different fields with different interests. He had trouble getting a group together who were all on the same page.
It's very hard to build a new group from scratch.
"If you can find a group of these people (with a similar interest) that doesn't have the leadership. You can step into the role of leadership and lead them".
"It's like finding a tribe without a leader, and stepping up and becoming that leader."
He found the filmmaker group on MeetUp.com, but it was dormant. He asked to become the leader of it and took it over.
He started planning, finding a location, locking down an agenda, and building a vision for the group. The feedback from members was very positive.
He first looked at similar groups across the country to identity goals.
He had to determine who the members of the group were. What area of filmmaking are they interested in?
Jeff explains how he determined the best format for his meet up.
- Take over a dormant group.
- Poll them to find out what their needs are.
- Determine the best format for the meet ups.
Jeff first publicly presented on a topic he was passionate about at PodCamp Nashville 2012. Sign up to PCN 2014.
Jeff speaks about his fear of doing anything publicly outside of his job. He had concerns that his employer would not be happy with this.
Understand if you have a day job, you can do it, but you have to be more patient.
Jeff wrote a thought-provoking blog post about the size of media and how our attention spans and shortening.
Jeff shares his thoughts on media and podcasting specifically.
"Our society wants connection".
Disappearing media like SnapChat, Confide, and Cyber Dust.
Contact Jeff at jeffdolan.com or on Twitter @jeffdolan.
Jeff recommends Steal
Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being
Creative
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