In September I was had the opportunity to attend the XOXOfest 2016, right here in Portland, Oregon. XOXO is an experimental festival celebrating independent artists who work on the internet. At the festival I was able to record this show in the Streampdx recording studio. The studio is built inside of a converted Airstream trailer and placed on the common at the festival. The goal is to create a podcast recording studio that is open to the community; providing a space to record and learn for everyone. I took this moment to record some thoughts on my own experience with creative endeavors and my experience at the festival itself. Thank you to the StreamPDX crew (especially @tyeshasnow & @aaronpk) and the everyone at XOXO that opened the door for me to attend.

Thoughts:

The whole time I attended this event I felt like I showed up to meeting of folks that work in an entirely different world than me. Although I do this podcast the majority of my works are with people in person in this city. I got the feeling that I was one of the few people there who's day job was social service related.
I played a game with a playstation wand that I won due to my elite elusiveness for a man my size. It was crazy fun, involved some kind of chamber music, and tapping other people's controllers. It was really dope and I would be happy to play it again.
I met some interesting people, but did not get the time to develop any depth to those new relations. Since this was the last one I will have to do some leg work to reconnect with the people I had to pleasure of meeting.
Board and Table games can get really weird, but remain fun. I played several during the game night. Burgle Bros. and Illimat being the most fun. I encourage you to pick them both up.
I found out about a lot of cool video stuff, website stuff, game stuff, folks merchandising random stuff, eating stuff, and generally stuff that was stuff. I mean that sincerely.
The speakers were really cool. I got a little inspiration, a little motivation, and a little clarity around expectations. Doing this thing here has been challenging to keep going and having an idea of what I think success looks like for me at this moment.
In hindsight I don't know if I maximized my promotion opportunities, but this project was not in position to be promoted anyway at the time. Smh
I walked around the a lot and that was cool. Nice roof top bar above Revolution Hall.
It still bothers me a little that I have lived in Portland the entire time this event was happening and never once heard about it. I never heard someone else more closely aligned to the tech world bring it up, never saw a flyer, a banner ad, or really anything about it. To that says this was a real inside baseball kind of tech event. Good for those in the loop, but not so much for expanding the attendees. I would have been happy to come to this last year when I was making my first recordings and figure podcasting out. Seems like lost opportunities here as well.
I really did enjoy myself. I met new people and would be happy to be apart of a future event if one comes to be.