The Feast Salon
Yesterday I attended alldaybuffet’s The Feast Salon and was quite inspired by all aspects of the event.
First – The space: MEET at the Apartment.
Located at 101 Crosby Street, Meet is a highly stylized loft created to provide an intimate space to hold events and business meetings. It is “intuitively outfitted with idea-generating essentials,” and is really just beautiful. What a great concept, and a comfortable, hip place to hang.
The speakers:
Noah Brier discussed LikeMind, a concept he and Piers Fawkes of PFSK created out of the desire to just meet and converse with people. Likemind facilitates the meeting of like minded people over coffee and conversation in the morning. It has grown from its inception in New York in 2006, to a global entity, with meetings in over 65 cities across the world. Perhaps I’ll give the next NY one a go.
Steve Larosiliere spoke about his non-profit organization, Stoked Mentoring . Stoked is great. It’s a mentoring program that helps at risk youth through the use of action sports including skate, surf, and snow. As a mentor, you join your mentee in learning how to either snowboard, surf, or skate over the course of the year. They’ve also grown to include programs focusing on graphic design and sports photography. I admire that Steve found a way to combine the hobbies he loves with his passion for helping at risk youth. In his talk, he advocated two things. One - a book called No More Prisons, which I just ordered. And two - a mentor with whom to just kick it twice a month and from whom to learn. I’ve got to get me one of those.
Perry Chen spoke about Kickstarter, a new platform for funding new start-up ventures. To demonstrate the site, he showed us Allison Weiss’ video, soliticing donations in return for “cool stuff” in order to help her make a new EP. It reminded me of Kiva, but more of a pledging system for personal creative art-focused projects. On the site, one can raise money to build an i-Phone app, print a book, start an art project, and even empower women in Rwanda. Looks like it has the potential to be a very powerful platform.
The food: I think the delicious chocolates were from SweetRiot, though I can’t be sure..
The guests: I met quite a few diverse people with varying jobs – photographers, web developers, founders of non-profit organizations. Overall an inspiring and refreshing evening.
