Our new blogger, Matthew Charboneau

I wish every Monday started this happily: Today all of us at Geniocity.com welcome Matthew Charboneau, the new leader of the COSE Arts Network, to the site as our newest blogger.

In his blog, “Arts-Entrepreneur Resources: Creative Views from the COSE Arts Network,” Matt will keep you up to date on the innovative and ever-growing resources offered by COSE to artist-entrepreneurs. But he’ll also shine a light on regional and national arts-business issues and the creative approaches to them developing on the frontiers of art and commerce.  

Though he’s been on the job at the Arts Network for only a few weeks, Matt brings years of experience as a working musician and nonprofit arts manager to his new task of helping other arts entrepreneurs find and make best use of the contacts, information, programs and mentoring they need in order to succeed.

He started out with a bachelor’s degree in double-bass performance from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, added a master’s degree in nonprofit organization from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management and has most recently worked as associate director for the nonprofit Roots of American Music, helping to bring arts-based programs to underserved schools throughout Northeast Ohio. 

At the same time, he’s performed regionally, nationally and internationally in jazz, rock, blues, roots music, Afro-Cuban and Brazilian music ensembles for 12 years.  Matt plays double bass and electric bass and studies flamenco guitar and tres cubano, a Cuban folk guitar. He even served as guest clinician and adjudicator for the 2004 Tiffin Jazz Festival, twice served as artist-in-residence for the Summer Festival of the Arts in Bar Harbor, Maine, and has been featured with his instrumental trio, the Up ensemble, on NPR and PBS.

I’m excited to have him among us here and I know his posts will give everyone who reads them a clearer view of the creative economy and future coming to us through the work and influence of arts entrepreneurs.  

Matt, thanks for joining us.

And here’s another news item, smaller this time: The video I made for the Women’s Enterprise Network explaining my plans and hopes for Geniocity.com and for human creativity in general has been posted. You can see it by clicking here. Creativity is vital to all of us on so many levels, starting with our survival, that I hope more and more of you will join the growing exploration and discussion of it in our Geniocity blogs.

Virtual networks for actual economic development

I made a recording today.

No, I wasn’t singing, although I’ve made those kinds of recordings, too, and boy, can that process be tedious.

This was a lot easier because all I had to do was talk about what’s important to me professionally: my business; helping the world value and practice creativity; and building a happier future by inventing better solutions to our problems.

A woman named Betsey Merkel was behind the camera. A member of the Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-OPEN, www.i-open.org), she’s been instrumental in helping Northeast Ohioans form themed virtual networks to promote idea-sharing and more productive, collaborative efforts among people trying to solve community problems and/or build business.

Merkel was recording my words for the Women’s Enterprise Network (www.womensenterprisenetwork.net), a group made up of women interested in empowering themselves, helping each other and contributing to economic development and civic leadership. WEN isn’t just a virtual network: Its members regularly meet for dinners, coffees and face-to-face discussion. But with Merkel’s help, the network has also begun building a virtual video library of community knowledge gleaned from those of us who are out there working, being entrepreneurial and trying to improve the world around us.

Betsey wanted me to answer three questions for the video: What do I feel passionate about right now; what do I want other people to know, think, feel and do; and what do I envision for the future?

I’m not sure how much I added to Northeast Ohio’s store of knowledge, but I came away encouraged that someone wanted to know what I think and what I’m trying to do. More important, I was heartened to discover that so many talented people in my region are working valiantly to change our collective luck by thinking innovatively and supporting each other. That’s the kind of network we all need. And it just gets better as more of us join it.