At Cincinnati's Barefoot Proximity, creativity breeds invention. The company has evolved from a start-up ad agency to a consumer branding and marketing juggernaut with international appeal, all the while keeping its focus on building relationships, one innovative product at a time.
At an upcoming inaugural festival in Northside, thinking inside the box offers the clearest route to creativity. parProjects, a two-man artist group, is launching its fundraising and programming effort for their art and education center made mostly out of repurposed shipping containers by hosting the Factory Square Arts Festival Oct. 22-23. It takes shape in the lot in front of the new American Can Lofts, the space set to be the future home of the art center. The festival features 14 temporary exhibition spaces inside of shipping containers, large-scale sculpture displays by international and local artists, live music by Far-I-Rome Productions and a full complement of food and drinks. A portion of the festival will also be housed in the industrial bays of the American Can Lofts. An encore to the popular City Flea will fill one of the bays. World-renowned South African sculptor, Ledelle Moe will also have works inside the bay. Several other artists from DAAP and Northside’s Prairie Gallery will also display work on site. After a year of negotiating and planning with several partners, Jonathan Sears and Chris Hoeting, founders of parProjects, look forward to seeing their dream come to fruition. They hope to gain backing for their arts center through ongoing outreach and programming efforts and even gained Soapbox as the media sponsor. “We want to involve as many people as we can in this city,” says Sears. “There is a great appreciation of the arts, and we want to create something special.” During the festival, visitors can preview the arts center that will use shipping containers as building blocks and employ a variety of green building methods. With a target completion date in 2012, the arts center plan includes resident artists programs, collaborative arts education programs and exhibition spaces. Part of the center will also be detachable and serve as a mobile exhibition space. By Evan Wallis
Millions of kids participate in sports every day. With the hassles of scheduling games, alerting players to rain-outs and carpooling, parents spend hours figuring out the logistics of managing or being part of sports teams. The staff at Barefoot Proximity, a Cincinnati-based global digital and eCRM agency, found a way to help parents score with a high-tech time-saving tool. “Being a coach includes more than being just a coach,” says Troy Hitch, executive creative director at Barefoot Proximity. “Besides understanding the game, you have to deal with the players, their parents, friends and everyone else involved. It can be a lot of work.” That’s why BFP created CoachHub, a free website that connects coaches and parents who are involved on a sports team. Coaches can click one button to contact all parents at once, making last-minute schedule changes, rainouts and cancellations a lot less hassle. They can also remind parents about snack duty and even post pictures to share. But Coachhub acts as more than a niche social media website. Imagine you’re a soccer mom driving to a game, when all of the sudden your phone beeps with more than a reminder from CoachHub that it’s your week to buy snacks. It also has a mobile coupon for Gatorade attached to the reminder. You stop at the closest gas station, pick up Gatorade and scan your mobile coupon. Just like that, you have snacks and saved money. “The redemption rate of these coupons would be incredibly high,” says Hitch. “This is where we create partners with brands.” Hitch and his team plan on working on partnerships with brands like Gatorade and Dick’s Sporting Goods. “All of it helps the user, but it also creates meaningful intersections between the user and these brands,” Hitch says. As people use CoachHub, the program collects super-rich consumer data that BFP can leverage to gain other partners. Dick’s could partner with BFP and sell one-click equipment packages to teams on CoachHub at a 10 percent discount. “The idea is that a brand has the potential to create a self-liquidating market experience,” Hitch says. “Instead of throwing money into advertisement, they can actually create an asset that creates revenue and is meaningful to the consumer.” By Evan Wallis
Who gives a tweet? Turns out, just about everyone. That’s why Cincinnati State Technical and Community College is expanding certificate program options at the one-year-old Social Media Institute at the Workforce Development Center. The SMI combines the talents of working professionals, innovative thinkers and traditional educators in a short series of classes focusing on specific areas of social media expertise. The second class of Marketing for Social Media starts Sept. 23. The new Selling 2.0 certification launches in November. The SMI took shape as founder Dennis Ulrich, executive director of the Workforce Development Center, saw a pressing business need as more companies turned to Facebook and Twitter in search of new sales and marketing platforms. “There are no standards on qualifications to work in the social media space,” Ulrich says. “That’s exactly why I started the Institute.” Selling 2.0 will teach students how to gain referrals, manage customer concerns and build customer loyalty through two eight-hour seminars, Nov. 1 and Nov. 8. By the time students have completed the seminars, Ulrich hopes they will feel comfortable running the social media side of their businesses. “There is a lot of academic rigor in these programs,” Ulrich says. “This isn’t a lunch-and-learn. There is a heavy focus on business. You have to do pre-work, look at case studies and apply it to real-world situations. We can measure students’ performance.” The work and case studies are created by an advisory committee, which consists of recognized social media experts from trusted companies including Procter & Gamble, Boot Camp Digital and O’Keefe PR. “They provide us with input, feedback and support for the entire program,” Ulrich says. “The Institute is guided by people who are innovators in these exact areas of social media.” Kendra Ramirez of Ascendum Solutions will help teach the Selling 2.0 seminars. Ulrich thinks by focusing on very specific areas of this rapidly changing field, the certification process is beneficial. He hopes to expand with HR Seminars, social media for educators and even research and development courses. “The Institute, just like most of the work we do, is to bolster the regional economy,” Ulrich says. “Cincinnati is becoming a marketing hub, so we believe we are in the perfect place to utilize all the great experts here.” By Evan Wallis
The Glenway Skyline, one of three operated by the Lambrinides, the company's founding family, will be serving more than coneys from now on. The fourth-generation family owners have created the $30,000 Glenway Skyline Scholarship to benefit graduates of Cincinnati Cooks. The Freestore Foodbank initiative offers free 10-week culinary courses for budding chefs in need of job training but with limited resources. Cincinnati Cooks prepares students for work in the food service industry. To further help the community, all the food cooked during courses is served at Kids Café, an after-school meal program that provides food for many Cincinnati Public School children. The Lambrinides brothers learned of the Cincinnati Cooks through John Young, president and CEO of the Freestore Foodbank, and long-time customer of the Glenway Skyline. “We’ve had an ongoing relationship with him and knew it was something we could help out with,” says Nicholas Lambrinides. The scholarship will be awarded in $1,500 installments to a new graduate of Cincinnati Cooks each year. The money will be deposited to the Midwest Culinary Institute at Cincinnati State to allow the winner to continue a culinary education. Brenda Torres received the inaugural scholarship at the most recent Cincinnati Cooks graduation ceremony. “She’s a hard worker and is going to do well at the culinary institute,” Lambrinides says. He personally presented Torres with the award at the ceremony. The Lambrinides have a long-standing reputation of philanthropy in the city and were especially interested because of the culinary nature of their business and Cincinnati Cooks. “Cincinnati Cooks is a great program that helps the community,” says Lambrinides, co-owner of the Glenway Skyline. “Our great-grandfather came from a modest beginning and created something great with Skyline. Maybe we can help do the same.” Do Good: • Donate: Free Store Foodbank is always accepting donations • Volunteer: Contact Melanie Burden for information on how you can help out. • Advocate: Check out this page to see how else you can help the FreeStore FoodBank. By Evan Wallis
If you miss the Kaki King show this Thursday, don’t fret. Swing by Midpoint Midway and grab a poster printed and designed by local artists to commemorate the event, anyway. As part of the new addition to MPMF, Midpoint Midway will now be home to the poster expo. Run by Powerhouse Factories, a local print and design house, the expo will be run out of two box trucks and feature posters of MPMF artists by Powerhouse, Libre Okay and Southpaw Prints. More than 11 new posters will be sold during the weekend, featuring artists like King and Toro y Moi. Powerhouse also collaborated with visual art students at the School for Creative & Performing Arts to design a poster for MPMF.11 performers The Low Anthem, a group playing at SCPA’s Mayerson Theater. All new posters will be sold for $20. Older posters will be available for $10 to $50 and up, depending on the artist, the rarity of the work and whether it’s framed. Midway takes place in a closed off section of Twelfth Street, bordered by the CAC Singer/Songwriter stage and ArtWorks Box truck Carnival. Box trucks, including Soapbox Media’s own “Get on Your Soapbox Truck,” created in partnership with the BIG Media Company, will feature local artists and creatives, including Know Theater and parProjects. As the only closed of section of road during MPMF, Midway allows festival-goers to enjoy food, beer and music while exploring one-of-a-kind box truck exhibits. The showcase features a light box truck by Losantiville, and in-truck play by Know Theatre and a lollipop ring shop operated by Olive Branch Metals. "There are going to be some great surprises at Midway," says Tamara Harkavay, executive director of ArtWorks. "We really want to give people an experience they will remember." By Evan Wallis
Randy and Leisa Wilcox of Once Blind Studios could have built their design and branding business anywhere. The L.A. transplants chose Over-the-Rhine. In this Q&A with Soapbox, they explain why. And what's next.
Midpoint Music Festival -- time for dancing, drinking and . . . waffles? That's the current plan for Jean-Francois Flechet,the city's ambitious waffle entrepreneur. It's been just four years since Flechet, owner of Taste of Belgium, served his first waffe. And only 10 since he moved to the United States. At first, he served only waffles in a shared space in Findlay Market. Now, the Taste of Belgium franchise serves buckwheat crepes, Belgian chocolate brownies, calzones and espresso drinks. You can find his waffles in coffee shops and his specialty items at the Banks, a bigger shop at Findlay, at North Market in Columbus and via a parner with a waffle trailer in Nashville, Tennessee. His latest venture, a bistro at Twelfth and Vine streets, already has signage, and anticipation for its opening has grown as the summer aged into fall. For now, Flechet has his eyes on Midpoint as a time to launch partial service at the bistro. “It would be a perfect time to open our doors,” Flechet says. “There is a venue right near us and a great way to become a part of the community." Once in full operation, the new space will hold 57 guests, as well as a chef’s table in the bakery. The bistro will employ between 30 and 40 people serving breakfast, lunch and, a new offering for Flechet, dinner. He plans to serve Belgian beers, mussels, fries and other traditional fare. The bistro will also be home to a commissary and where Flechet and his employees bake products for all other locations. The Vine Street space will also house offices and help Flechet plan for even more expansions. "A national brand with the idea of waffles, crepes and coffee is the long-term goal," says Flechet. "I want to stay anchored in OTR. I love it here and there is a lot of momentum behind the neighborhood right now." By Evan Wallis
Nearly two dozen University of Kentucky College of Design students will team up with Vision 2015 and the Catalytic Development Funding Corporation to study Northern Kentucky’s buildings and neighborhoods. Northern Kentucky was chosen as the newest addition to UK’s College of Design’s River City Initiative program. The program is a multi-year research and design project that pushes students to work directly with neighborhoods and local governments to create projects that will directly impact the cities. Other cities, such as, Louisville and Paducah, have already seen the benefits, which include forming a 100-year plan for the growth of a gas diffusion plan in Paducah that was scheduled to be shut down. Students will spend time at both UK’s campus and in Northern Kentucky developing projects in Covington and Newport. The students will create a planning study of the entire area the first semester and focus more on specific projects in the second semester. Vision 2015 welcomes the students and their ideas, which falls in line with its own 10-year plan to raise economic vitality and living standards in the area through six main focus areas and connecting local organizations. Bill Scheyer, president of Vision 2015, hopes that the partnership will bring fresh ideas to the already flourishing Vision 2015 program. “We are really excited to see what they can bring to the table,” says Scheyer. “It’s always good to see new ideas, and students are great at that.” Besides getting a fresh set of eyes trained on the area, Vision 2015 hopes that students will solidify a partnership with UK. Vision 2015 helped create the Northern Kentucky Education Council, another avenue for extended connections between campuses across the state and their northern neighbors. “We find the most powerful tool to implement elements of the community’s plan is through collaboration and cooperation,” Scheyer says. “We try to pull in as many people as we can to help make Northern Kentucky a better place to live.” By Evan Wallis
Smart phones, tablets and laptops kids’ hands makes paying attention in classroom a struggle. Children Inc. of Covington wants to grab kids attention back through service learning. The service learning staff of eight at Children Inc. serves more than 22,000 students in 60 schools, from Kindergarten through high school, in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati. Service learning has been documented as a highly effective teaching method and has even lowered teen pregnancy rates and increased political activity after providing learning experiences that they can connect to real life situations. ““Kids know if it just an exercise, but if they know they are communicating and building a relationship they are a lot more excited about it,” says Mary Kay Connolly, director of service learning at Children Inc. Children Inc. provides training for schools that don’t currently take advantage of service learning and helps teachers tweak programs already in use. Programs target school needs by simply listening to teachers and faculty. “We work with students, teachers and community partners to deepen the impact of class work in students,” Connolly says. “It’s not about Children Inc. at all. It’s about facilitating and getting kids to connect to what they are learning.” Getting students to engage can be as simple as having them write a letter to a pen pal or connecting geography to a recent world event. “It’s great for kids to understand what they are learning and make it real for themselves,” Connolly says. “Kids are more engaged, they want to come to school, and they participate in conversations." Do Good: Donate. The nonprofit Children Inc. accepts donations to help further students’ education Attend the First Annual Celebration of Service at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center. Sept. 27. Contact Mary Kay Connolly for more info Volunteer: Children Inc. is always look for volunteers to help with things from special events to classroom assistants. By Evan Wallis Photo courtesy of Children Inc.
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