Why Ideas Need to F*ck: The Creativity Track at ETHBoulder

Transcript

Call and response: human vs creativity

All right, this looks like my mic. They're uh finding a cable. Somebody absconded with it. So, to get the energy up, I'm going to divide the room into two roughly down here. You're in the middle. You get to pick which side you're on. This is going to be the human side. And this is going to be the creativity side. And so when I point at you, you say, >> we'll start there. We'll go higher. And if I'm down low, >> whisper. >> If I go real high. >> If I go real low, >> creativity.

>> If I go real high, >> Creativity. Oh, they haven't fixed it yet. >> Buttons need to be pressed. That works. All right. So, yes, I am the founder of Artisan. Uh, my name is Renee and today I'm going to be talking to you about why ideas need to [ __ ] Uh but first I'm going to be talking to you about the ideas that made it to make me and ultimately

René’s creative lineage (acrobat, musicians, filmmakers)

artisan. Uh so this is my greatgrandfather. He was a vaudevilian acrobat back in the early teens and he performed with all the greats like the Marx brothers, Bob Hope, Blackstone the magician and he was a real legendary figure in our family. I grew up with stories about him tiling roofs on his uh Sutton New Hampshire home and doing like a double backflip off the top and landing perfectly. Uh this is my grandfather who was an amazing violinist had a big band in Buffalo, New York. My grandmother Lorraine who was a body double for Diana Durban. If you ever watch any of the old Diana Durban movies, you'll see her on

all the wide shots or anything a little bit dangerous they put my grandma in. Uh she was also a great singer. And this is my parents. Uh my mom is is an amazing jazz singer. Uh my dad plays classical guitar and writes books about Billy the Kid. He's obsessed with it. He's been doing it for like 40 years. Uh and my uncle was a filmmaker. He made two really good movies in the 1970s. I highly recommend you see them. Last night at the Alamo and uh the whole shooting match. And what was unique about Eagle was that he made movies before the independent cinema was a thing. They called it regional cinema.

And he was one of the very first filmmakers to make movies in Texas, my home state, about Texans. And uh it inspired Robert Redford to create Sundance. That was sort of his claim to fame. He saw my uncle's first film in the 1970s77 I think the whole shooting match and said there needs to be an institution that supports films like this. And so he bought the US Film Festival and turned it into what became Sundance. And so growing up in this uh creative you know soup uh I was destined to do something creative and film making was what caught my imagination very early particularly uh stopotion animations.

Growing up in artistic poverty

This is uh you know I would hide in my bedroom when I was like six and I'd use one of those old uh super eight film cameras to do stopotion animation. I would just spend the whole weekend doing this. This was my whole life. I absolutely loved it. And uh I went to college to do film. Uh I uh fell in love with comedy, sketch comedy, improv comedy. Uh I financed a TV pilot with the the fellas that you see on on the right there. I saw them perform and I went up to them afterwards and I said, "Oh my god, you guys are the best thing ever. We got to make a TV show." And they said, "Okay." And little did they know, I had no experience making TV shows. I had no idea how to do it, but I had a credit card with a $10,000 limit

Stop-motion films & early creative obsession

and that was apparently enough. Uh we we self- financed it and then MTV somehow discovered it through a very roundabout way and uh picked it up for a pilot. They gave us what seemed like an uh incomprehensible amount of money. They gave us $350,000 to remake the TV pilot. Uh incidentally, it wasn't any better. In some ways, it was a lot worse. Uh which taught me that like money does not always make things better. Uh, and it also, uh, led to my next venture. So, uh, MTV didn't pick it up for a season.

MTV pilot & lessons about money not fixing art

A weird internet startup did back in 2006. This is right when YouTube was coming out. They'd raised a bunch of money. Their bet was, uh, that TV on the internet was going to be sort of like a like like like TV on TV, but like cheaper produced. Uh, they were wrong. YouTube was right. Userenerated content was the way. Uh but they paid me to make that show for a couple of years and I discovered the world of startups and it seemed so much more rational than the world of entertainment and art. Uh growing up in the family that I grew up, we all grew up quite poor and it was incredibly difficult to raise money for the you know the work that you know my family was doing and the work that our community was doing. And then I got into startups and I was like oh my god

there's these things called investors and venture capital and they actually want to hear your ideas and they have these sacks of money that they will give you. And it just felt like a much clearer path to funding new ideas. Uh, and I was excited about these new ideas too of like, you know, taking all the stuff that I'd learned as a filmmaker, how to work with a team of, you know, multi-disiplinary people, how to go on a creative adventure, how to make something new that didn't exist before. It felt like I could take those uh learnings and apply them to making products and making companies. Uh, and so I I made this thing called forecast.

Discovering startups & venture capital

It was this was when uh like uh checking in was the rage. This was like 2010. Our our idea was that instead of checking in and telling people where you are now, you'd forecast it, see where you're going in the next 24 hours. Uh it got acquired by a company uh called Hang Time. Uh we moved out to San Francisco. It was not a big acquisition. It did not make me rich. Uh uh but it was clear that the idea wasn't working, so we needed to sell it. And um and and in some ways, this was like a really wonderful, magical time in my life. This is 2012. Uh, I moved in with my childhood best friend, Ross Olrich. We spent an amazing summer together surfing. Uh, he's an amazing surfer. I don't know how to surf at all. And he is fearless. He'd go out with these giant

Building Forecast & moving to San Francisco

mountain waves that would be crashing down. He just assumed that I'd be fine. And like I'd almost drowned every single time we went out. But, uh, it was it was still a tremendous amount of fun. Uh, but it was also kind of depressing because I was making something I didn't care about at all. It was this social networking app that was being run by this really kind, nice person named Carl, who had made an insane amount of money in the 90s. And this was sort of like, you know, I don't mean to be mean to Carl, but it was kind of a vanity project. It was like he wanted to do something cool with his other startup friends. But here he was, you know, mid-40s guy. He would, you know, commute from his mansion in Marin on his uh mini yacht to his mega yacht that was docked

in the harbor and then he'd ride a little like foldable bike to the office. The last person on earth that should probably be making an app for college kids to like hang out. Like it just didn't make any sense. Uh and so creatively it was very unsatisfying. Personally, it was incredibly satisfying. I met my wife that summer. Uh but then my buddy got arrested for creating the Silk Road. And that was like a whole another set of ideas that uh was like a U-turn in my life. Uh and there was a couple of things about it outside of being just completely heartbreaking. But it was it was a you know a couple of brand new ideas that made it with all the other ideas that led to you know where where I am now. Uh and one of those was crypto. Like I had heard about crypto through Ross. Ross is

Living with Ross Ulbricht

incredibly, you know, conscientious and knew that he'd be putting everybody at legal jeopardy if he told anyone what he was doing. So even though we were living together, like I had no idea. Uh but I did, you know, know about crypto as sort of this thing that, you know, uh he was interested in. But I didn't think that much of it until after he was arrested. And I was, uh, you know, not a libertarian at the time. And I was like, I loved his ideas. I loved hearing them because they were so strange. But it was only until after he got arrested and I started to think deeply about what the Silk Road was. I actually found it quite inspiring. the idea of consenting adults being able to share in commerce without uh the state interfering uh provided they don't hurt hurt a third party. Uh

Silk Road, crypto & moral conviction

that was super foundational and uh really got me into crypto in a more meaningful meaningful way where I kind of got got hooked from a a deep moral perspective. Uh and the other thing was that Ross was willing to bet it all. He he he he worked on an idea that he cared about so much that he was willing to take tremendous risk and it made me look at the stupid app that I was building with fresh eyes and was like what am I doing with my life? I have to spend my energy on the thing, you know, hopefully I don't get arrested, you know, but like I have to spend my energy on something that I care about so much that uh that maybe if I did it would be worth it. Uh and that's where where artisan came from. So as you already saw, I grew up

with all these creative people around me. I saw how difficult it was to raise money for creative ideas. Uh I helped artists raise millions of dollars. Uh I realized that it was just completely broken and I wanted to fix that. And the more I spent time understanding the problems that artists and filmmakers uh and you know people in the entertainment industry faced, the more I realized that it was really the same set of problems but you know a different flavor that scientists faced. uh in the same set of problems. Even though startups have a healthier capital formation structure, it's still quite exclusionary. You have to be an accredited investor to put money in. There's all of these gatekeepers. Uh so it really made me realize that like we're all part of the

Betting your life on ideas you believe in

same tribe. And and that's another big big idea that I have I have built my life around, which is that uh I think I think artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers, we're all part of the same tribe. And these are the folks that are pushing humanity forward. They're the ones who are making the world rich. Uh and yet we still silo ourselves. We're we're we we keep to ourselves our our little uh you know, whatever niche we're in, we we resist uh breaking out of that niche and mixing our ideas with other people and viewing ourselves as part of the same the same community.

Founding Artisan

Uh and that leads to uh the the topic of the talk. Ideas need to have sex. Uh because that's where baby ideas come from. Uh but like humans uh ideas become rather boring if we're just mating with our cousins. We don't want inbred baby ideas. We want to make new ideas with people who are wildly different from us. We want the ideas of a creative coder to mate with the ideas of a sematic dancer.

Artists, scientists & founders are one tribe

We want the ideas of a neuroscientist to sleep with the ideas of an installation artist. We want regen ideas to reproduce with degen ideas. In short, we want our ideas to [ __ ] around. Why? Why is this so important? Because our intellectual offspring will be more healthy, more interesting, more diverse. And this is my hope for ETH Boulder.

Kevin spoke about his. I think this is related. Uh we I want I really hope that uh we make new weird and wonderful ideas within interesting people. Uh so don't stick to your crowd. Uh go out. Uh let your ideas [ __ ] around and I promise you the world will be better for it. Uh so that's my talk. Uh, I also want to do a a couple of things now. Uh, some housekeeping. Uh, Artisan, uh, I didn't really say what we do. Uh, you can think about Artisan as sort of Kickstarter plus. That's one lens. So, like Kickstarter, you raise money for new projects. Uh, but when you raise money for new projects from your fans, you unlock match funding and cash prizes.

“Ideas need to have sex.”

Uh, and uh, this weekend we've got uh, we call them boosts. We've got over $50,000 in boosts that are open to everyone here. So if you're raising uh money for any creative venture under the very broad umbrella of human creativity, so art, science, technology, and all the interesting uh spaces that fall between those, uh go to this QR QR code, go to our website, artisan.fund, uh create a project profile, and any money you raise for your project between now and Sunday at 11:00 a.m. will match dollar for dollar. And if you raise the most uh you'll win uh $40,000 uh uh in cash prize and second prize will win$10,000 and third third prize uh

Avoiding inbred ideas

place will win win win $4,000. Uh so if you're raising money for anything that is creative please do go to artisan we'd love to support you and with that I want to welcome up the people running the creativity track. So, uh, uh, my offering is to sort of bring the artist in community and try to cross-pollinate it with with the the Ethereum and regen and, uh, you know, Kevin Owwaukee community. Uh, and so I'd love to welcome up all the people from the creativity tracks. You can get a face, uh, to the name and they'll talk about, uh, what they're offering and, uh, you can hopefully meet them and hang out with them and cross-pollinate your ideas with with them. So, we've got E coming up here. Since you're up first,

Regen × degen × creative collision

you can introduce yourself and say what you're doing. And then we got Joel and they'll just go in a line. >> Go in a line. >> Good morning, everyone. >> Hello, my name is E. Um, like the letter, it actually means art in Chinese. and this weekend. Um, so first of all, I run a platform called Reset and Rise that is to help democratize emotional wellness around the world. Think of it as like a gym for people for emotional wellness. Um, and for this weekend, I'm serving tea.

Artisan boosts: $50K+ in match funding

We got our friend Sean here. And um, we going to sit in Zen tea style um, this weekend. So this is as analog as it gets for this conference where we're gonna sit in silence for a while and a friend call it being stillness domed um by tea. And so this is a great place where we got to sit and let your inner ideas have sex and then we're going to open it up to conversations where um all your ideas get to make out and have a good time.

Creativity Track introductions begin

get you started. >> Yeah. >> And so we have two sessions tomorrow. One is at 11:30 and another at 2:30. And the 2:30 is right now missing from the schedule. So consider this your secret invitation because we're limiting it to 10 people only. So first come, first serve. Uh 11:30 and 2:30 we get to sit in silence and then get to hang out and be stillness domed by tea. >> Thank you. That's a terrible. All right, I'm not going to use a microphone because I hate microphones.

Zen tea & emotional wellness (Yi)

Uh, my name is Sven. I'm the founder of Insent. I am I have a very big place of in my heart for the artisan community. Uh, we participated last season. I'm going to probably try to get on there again season before last uh with incented. But you're the best way to figure out what I do is actually to participate in the collective manifesto we're building this week, this weekend. And it's I'm going to hang this right when you walk up the stairs. And I have flyers so don't worry if you don't don't catch the QR code. But we want to figure out what ETH Boulder means to all of us together, right? So very simple 30 second. You just record it. It's going to be unincented afterwards. There's 200 bucks on the line for all of you who participate just as a little carrot. Um

yeah. So that's what we do. And we're going to turn this into what? We're going to turn this into a song. Okay. and we're going to turn it into a song that we're all going to sing together in the closing ceremony. Okay. So, my name is Joel. I came from Seattle. I do CrowdSource Choir. They're participatory singing experiences. I've always wanted to do an experiment where we take collective inputs, write a song together, have the song emerge, and then we're going to sing it and record it with your consent together um to close this up. So, we need you all to be here to raise the vibe. We're going to take all of the inputs through this QR code uh through the manifesto. So, are we going to deliver the manifesto too at the end?

Collective manifesto → song (Sven & Joel)

Okay. So, we're going to deliver the manifesto, then we're going to sing the manifesto together. >> That'll be here on Sunday. >> It'll be one big creative orgy. >> All right. Hey everyone, I am Linda Arnold aka D.Va Vanic. And today here on this stage at 4:30 p.m. I'll be offering a sound meditation called Ethereal Sound Voyage. And there will be a little bit of vocal meditation. So we're going to tune the room with our voices and our humming sound. And it is World Sound Healing Day tomorrow. And the founder of World Sound Healing Day is right here in Boulder. So we're going to um that's Jonathan Goldman. So we're going to

Sound meditation & vocal tuning (Linda)

collectively participate in this exercise and then I will uh guide you in just a deep listening meditation just so you can integrate everything you've done throughout the day. It's so important to pause. That's why use offering the Zen tea meditation. All those guided meditations are really important for you to integrate your experience and have a moment with yourself. >> Hello. Uh my name is Joe. This is Katia. We kind of got four of us. We got a bigger group. Fab four here. Uh this is Daniela. And that's Paulina. And uh to talk about what we're going to do, I'm just going to pose a couple of hypotheticals for you guys. It seems

Documentary on interwoven migration symbols

like everyone here is like super wellraveled. A lot of artists, a lot of creatives, a lot of uh tech nomads. So I'm assuming everybody has moved around a lot. Um so here's a hypothetical for you. What if in 30 years you decide to travel to Egypt and you go to Egypt, you're excited to see the pyramids. You're excited to see the Sphinx. And when you finally go, you're like, "It's time to go to Egypt. I'm retired. I'm older." You see a new sphinx there, a Sphinx you've never read about, you've never heard about it before. And when you look at its face, it has the face of Peppa Pig.

Would that be crazy? Would that be like, would that ever happen? Is that outlandish? Well, we don't know if it's outlandish. You know, it's it's something to think about. Um because maybe in a thousand years, right, the people of a thousand years later, they they'd look at Peppa Pig and say, "Wow, that's real art. That's history right there." So, if you think it's outlandish, if you don't, okay, that's up to you. But here's another hypothetical. And this one, this one, I swear relates directly to our project. Say you go to Guatemala next week. That's your new vacation. you want to go to Guatemala and you want to learn about the Mayan civilization and their ancient culture. Um, so you go to Teal, you see the pyramids, you see the villages because one thing about the

those villages is they really preserve their ancient cultures. They actually still wear ancient garbs. So if you were to go to some of these villages, you'd actually see people wearing literal literal like ancient Mayan garbs. So what if you do that? You go there, you notice the garbs, and you look closer, and you notice that there are actually emojis on these ancient garbs that someone took the time to weave into them. Would that be ridiculous? What about Benny the Bull for those Chicago? Anyone from Chicago here?

On-chain creators movement

>> Originally, yes. >> Okay, we got one. So, you know Benny the Bull, he's the red icon of the Chicago Bulls. He means you. He looks really angry. What if I told you there'd be you you would see ancient Mayan garbs with Benny the Bull on there? meme mugging you. Would that be crazy? >> I don't know. Katya, what? Or I'm sorry, Daniela. Is that crazy? Let's find out. >> Yeah. Well, this is actually something that is happening in our country right now because of migration. There's a lot of indigenous communities that are migrating to the United States. So we're looking at a a very peculiar phenomena that is this inter woven symbols uh and we want to explore it but we want to do

it in a way that is very respectful and actually gives the people that are weaving these symbols on their garments h the possibility to tell the story how they want to tell it because we founded very um outlandish ourselves. Um but we actually have to question it from a point of view of the locals perspectives because if they are deciding to use these symbols, it it has to signify something. It has to symbolize something. And so we are a very diverse multid-disiplinary group here. We're accompanied by musicians, artists,

anthropologists, scientists, and we've figured out a way to create documentary films without um being extractivists h in our process h and actually decentralize the ownership of the material and footage. So if you want to check like a little glimpse of the actual like workshops that we're going to do for the documentary film, you can come over and we can ask ourselves um what identity means h what wearing something means to us h and yeah collectively build a new

Creativity as oxygen for companies

narrative of uh everyone involved in this space and uh Yeah, that will be a a little art installation also of visually what we're thinking for our project. So yeah, you're all welcome to come to our workshops. Um I >> Terrible Turtle >> at terrible turtle. >> Wonderful. Thank you. >> Hey everybody. I was told to go fast. I'm going to try to make this very quick. Uh my name is Humpty Calderon.

I'm here with David Hernandez. We're both stewards of the onchain creators movement. Um, you know, I've been in the space of traditional social tech and uh creativity space for 15 years. Uh, working with traditional media platforms, onchain media platforms. And the one thing that I've discovered is that it is a very extractive process to creators. So, we decided to [ __ ] around and find out since we're talking about [ __ ] a lot um and uh find ways to support creators directly. So, we host events worldwide where we invite creators to come uh with us and learn about crypto. but throughout that process uh apply their voice to tell the story of what crypto is because we also believe that crypto is telling its story uh in a way to technical way. There's definitely more cultural uh you know

ways to tell that story and so in that way we're uh participating in East Boulder. We're hosting the onchain creator challenge. We're downstairs. We'll also be at the Terrible Turtle. Uh if you're creating content, join us uh and we'll reward you uh through some of the funds that we raise with some of our partners. uh ETH Boulder Insented have been some of the amazing partners here that have supported us to host this event here. So, thank you very much. >> 500 bucks on the line for that one, too. >> Wow. >> Hi, folks. My name is Tinder. I'm here with Lexi. She's got her own thing, so she's going to talk about that real quickly. I'm just going to share some of my experiences. Uh mostly about how creativity is really like oxygen for explosive growth in companies. And I'm going to do two different takes on it.

Faces of ETHBoulder photography

Uh, one's going to be with the creativity track. Um, that's the gist of it since we're going fast. Thanks. >> Hey everybody, my name is David Hernandez. I'm uh part of Onchain Creators, but additionally I'm a creative producer and analog photographer. And so I'll be doing a faces of ETH Boulder um activation. So I'll be taking portraits of people. So if you see me um flag me down if I didn't take your photo yet, but uh I'll be since I'm going quickly. That's it. Hi guys, my name is Lexi. I'm going to be doing a collaborative mural at the Terrible Turtles. So, the kickoff for that is supposed to be 15 minutes ago, but I'm just going to go over there after this. Come by uh and help me [ __ ] up the wall.

Collaborative mural kickoff

>> What's up, y'all? My name is Willie Wonka. I'm co-founder of Blank Space, which I'll be demoing tomorrow. And I just started a new role as head of product at Venice.ai this past week. It's like chat GPT. Yeah. Thanks, man. uh but um not only anonymized access to like open AI and enthropic models, but you can have um fully private uh access to open source models as well as access to uncensored models. Uh tomorrow we're going to be doing a tie-dye swag happy hour in the park across the street if it's sunny. If not, we got terrible turtle turtle as a backup. Um, so if you got a tan swag shirt or if you just want to bring some other uh swag that you have uh to tie dye it, typically light colors or natural fabrics work the best, but it's pretty flexible and if there's

Venice.ai, BlinkSpace & tie-dye happy hour

graphics on there, that's fine. Should be a great time. Counting on you guys to bring the vibes. It'll be a great opportunity to hang out, get to know people, and uh create a unique piece of swag uh that you can rock forever. See you there. Hey y'all. Well, I'm uh I'm Gage and uh I'm doing a dance performance of the Terrible Turtle. Uh when when we started uh the original question was what does creativity look like? And for me, the most classic version of that is the uh the dance. So, uh I'm doing like an improvised thing with two of my favorite musicians of all time, Scott Murphy and uh and Summer Kinsky. They're both incredible. And um come through. I've bought a number of guns. Come shoot me while I dance. Uh that's Saturday

Improvised dance performance

evening. We're going to get >> Colorado. We like >> Yeah, that's right. Right. Um, yeah, that's uh Saturday evening. We're going to have a lot of fun. Come through. >> Hey everyone. Uh, I'm Summer. I'm going to be playing drums for Gage's uh, dance. So, definitely come by. And then I'm also going to have an audience activated uh, sound and light rave installation. So, uh, you'll be able to control the music with flashlights and uh, play you create the rave. So, uh, that'll be tomorrow at the Terrible Turtle.

Robot fights & fiddling

I need to not break this robot. So, uh, Saturday night, the terrible tur turtle. We've got my three favorite f-words. Uh, fiddling, [ __ ] and fighting. >> Yep. So, uh, come on down Saturday night. Uh, bring some money. We're going to get some DJ in our regen and have a good oldfashioned robot fight. Thank you. >> Get out there and find interesting people to have your ideas made with.

Thank you so much everybody.