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Cody Marx Bailey and his colleagues in College Station have been executing successful projects and events in rapid succession. While asking Cody if he would consider playing DJ at the upcoming Get Agile event, I took the opportunity to discuss some of the recent projects he has been involved in. |
Lynn Bender: It seems in the last year, Bryan/College Station has really established a reputation as a city with a strong, well-connected, technical community — not just as a place where people talk the talk, but rather where people put plans into action. Bryan/College Station was host to a very successful BarCampTexas II. It’s the location for the first co-working facility in Texas — The Creative Space (thecreativespace.org). You seem to be one of the main instigators. Tell me how this all came about.
Cody Marx Bailey: It really started about a year and a half ago when some friends of mine and I would all carpool to Houston for Refresh. We would leave work at 5, barely make it there on time, and make it back home around 1am. One night, on the way back, we decided that it was about time that we held our own Refresh in Bryan/College Station. We weren’t sure if it would go over, but we figured if we could get a few new faces out we would at least be that far along. We ended up with 40 or so folks coming out to hear Erica O’Grady give a talk on “The Flight of the Creative Class“. A few months later, I was able to schedule Google to come and give a talk. We had over 200 people attend and it was then that we realized that we had a real community in little old Bryan/College Station.
My friends and I were meeting after work at coffee shops, residence, and bars to get work done when it finally occurred to me that we were very close to catalyzing and forming the Creative Space. We opened up in August 2007 with 5 anchor residents that quickly grew to 10 and more recently expanded to 15 with the addition of more space.
Once the coworking office was established, the community was strong and energized, we decided that it was about time we held a BarCamp. We had attended a few BarCamps as a group so we knew what the expectations were. Our collective goal was to throw on a BarCamp and invite folks from around the state to come in and see what we had been up to. It was sort of our coming out party for our community and we knew we had to pull this off. We made several trips around the state to promote BarCampTexas II and let folks know that it was going to be awesome… and it was.
Bender: Your company, Downtown Cartel (downtowncartel.com), is one of the companies who operate out of The Creative Space. Can you tell me a bit about how The Creative Space functions, the services it provides, and how such a space benefits Downtown Cartel.
Bailey: Downtown Cartel is a direct result of The Creative Space’s opportunities. I was doing freelance work out of the space along with three other guys when it sort of dawned on us that we should work together and form a single entity to get behind. A couple of ruby developers, a python guy, some javascript and a little bit of magic later, we were official — working with some great clients out of both Austin and Houston. There’s a plethora of talented folks in The Creative Space that are all looking out to help one another and are interested in watching everyone grow. It sometimes feels like a family more than a company, but that’s because we’re a bunch of honest, good natured young professionals with tons of passion for doing great things with our customers and community. Downtown Cartel’s first product was hashtags.org, a tagging application for microblogging/twitter.
With respect to how The Creative Space functions, it is a rather loose organization of individuals. The goal is to provide a community space for anyone to come collaborate and innovate in all the creative type occupations. Since office space is never free we have several anchor tenets who have permanent desks in the space. However, anyone is welcome to borrow a spare desk when needed.
Bender: I keep hearing about a company called Fibertown, and how all you folks have fiber to the office. What’s the scoop?
Bailey: Fibertown is the development company that is transforming historic downtown Bryan into a modern technology campus. We’ve been fortunate enough to work with Fibertown to ensure the viability of the space and our businesses. The energy that we bring to downtown has already made a large impression on the professional culture in downtown.
We are situated on a fiber crossroads for five of the world’s nine Tier I internet carriers which gives us some of the best internet connectivity in the United States. We also have access to a brand new Tier IV data center just 300 feet away from our offices. With rent being a fraction of what it is in downtown Austin, Houston, and Dallas we’ve found Bryan/College Station to be a great place to live and work.
Bender: BarCampTexas II was a huge success. You managed to bring a large contingent of folks from Houston, Dallas, and Austin. Can you tell me about the event?
Bailey: Sure thing! We wanted to have a good sized BarCamp in Bryan/College Station and being nearly equi-distant from the big three we felt that it would provide a great place for everyone from around the state to come and geek out together. Folks from The Creative Space all made it out to events like GeekAustin, Houston Startup Happy Hour, RefreshDallas, etc to make sure that those communities saw that we were eager to host them. I think inviting people in person was a big factor in having 180 people show up from out of town.
Honestly, I think the kegs of Shiner may have played a big part in the success. Nothing like good beer, great people, and lots of bandwidth. Good things happen when kindling like that is provided.
Bender: I’ve wanted to go to the TED conference for years. Aside from the fact that it is 10K to attend, you have to be invited — and I am not expecting an invite in the mail. You did something about it and started the BIL conference and attracted a broad list of well-known speakers. You pretty much disproved that someone has to be in a place like Austin or Silicon Valley to put together an event of this caliber. Were there any special considerations or complications organizing the event from College Station?
As part of the Bryan/College Station contingent, we don’t let stuff like that prevent us from doing anything. We think big and execute our ideas. If you listen to every reason why not to do something, you’ll never get anything done. Once we decided we were going to do this, we got to work and reached into our social networks and started working the wiki.
What was originally going to be a few guys hanging out in Monterey became a 250 person unconference across the street from TED. We planned it so that BIL would be hitting it’s stride right when TED finished up. This allowed for about 10% of the attendees from TED to come to BIL and experience a community driven, distributed two-day unconference in the spirit of TED. I’ll admit, it was probably one of the most amazing events I’ve ever experienced. The intelligent minds that gathered that weekend in Monterey, California was nothing short of amazing.
Bender: With the rise of Social Media, there has been considerable talk about the notion of community. You and your colleagues have been able to move beyond talk and motivate each other to action. What advice can you share with folks in other cities.
Bailey: I think that leading by example is the best way to motivate others. Getting people excited about a vision and then leading them through the first couple of times really builds a track record they can trust. At first, there were probably quite a few doubters in the area. They said things like “it’ll never happen”, and “we’re too small to be legitimate”. If you sit around and listen to those people, nothing good ever happens.
The best advice I can give is to ignore the pessimism and focus on making things happen. The power of community and being able to rely on and trust them is priceless.
Cody Marx Bailey will be spinning as DJ SuperPhly at the upcoming GeekAustin Get Agile party.
