The Value of Building Communities
A Conversation with Pedro Ceron
This week’s blog has a slightly different format inspired by a single conversation. The conversation was so rich and insightful that instead of featuring him as the “spotlight of the week”, I have decided to write the entire post about him.
I have been spending about one day a week at the co-working space Impact Hub in Pedra Branca. Pedro Ceron is the community manager at this location and over the last month, I have gotten to know him better. I sat down to interview Pedro last week to learn more about him and was thoroughly fascinated by his story and experience.
Pedro Ceron was born and raised in Lages which is smaller city about three hours west of Florianópolis. From my conversation with him it was immediately evident that he is very passionate about his city. He has spent most of his life in Lages and strongly believes in bringing people together to facilitate conversations, build collaborations and grow the ecosystem. To this end he has organized many events in the city over the last decade.
Pedro first foray in building communities was in 2013. He is a poet and wanted to connect with other poets to meet and share ideas. Unable to find a community of poets, he started Poesia Ecoa Gente (Poetry of the people) that would bring poets together and share their works in an open mic format. This initial project spurred a bigger idea of helping artists share their work with the community. Pedro teamed up with a friend to co-found Piquenique Literário Lages (Literary Picnic, Lages). This was an expansion of Poesia Ecoa Gente as they invited all artists to share their works and organized it as an annual event in the town square. After the success of this enterprise, Pedro wanted to take it one step forward and create a platform where artists, creatives and entrepreneurs could tell their story. In order to do this, he became an organizer for TEDx Lages to give people in Lages a platform to share and collaborate.
What Makes a City Cool?
In my conversation with him, I learned a few things about his motivation and approach that struck a chord with me. Pedro said, since Lages is a small city, most residents think that the other larger cities are cooler and do more interesting things. However, he noticed that people in Lages were engaged in very unique activities and create unique products that reflecte the culture of the region. He felt that it was important to help people in Lages realize how cool and innovative they are. This motivation of helping people understand their own unique advantage and offerings is what spurred him to start creating avenues where people can showcase their achievements. He believes that we can change the vision about our cities through conversations and connections.
This is not unique to Lages. Most smaller cities will suffer from a “not cool complex” when comparing themselves with larger cities. However, each city and community brings something unique on account of their culture, environment and people. If we embrace and invest in this uniqueness, it can lead to an exponential growth of the city and economy. When I moved to Cleveland, OH in 2005, the city was just starting to reinvent itself. Cleveland was the “not cool” city that had been struggling to get a foothold. However, a strategic approach by the government and the people, to invest in Cleveland’s healthcare and IT capabilities has resulted in the regeneration of the city in the last decade. We have been able to effectively revive the city only by embracing and investing in Cleveland’s uniqueness. And that is the key! Instead of trying to be the “next Silicon Valley” or the “next New York”, we should focus on becoming the best version of ourselves based on the unique skills, environment, attributes and culture that we bring. I know it sounds corny and like a line from a self-help book, but it’s as true for cities, as it is for people.
The Value of Convergent and Divergent Thinking
As Pedro and I continued talking, we started discussing the value of bringing together the creatives, engineers and the entrepreneurs. Each offers unique and overlapping skill sets that they can learn from. Creatives are great at coming up with an innovative idea and transforming it into a great piece of art. However, most creatives struggle to sell their art in a way that they can make a livelihood from it. Entrepreneurs on the other hand, struggle with idea generation, but really know how to sell their product.
As a design thinker, I wholeheartedly embrace the value of divergent thinking and convergent thinking and the value of bringing the two together. We often espouse the value of bringing together a diverse audience into the design thinking process to generate breakthrough ideas. Creatives are divergent thinkers and engineers/scientists/product developers/programmers are convergent thinkers. Bringing them together can not only create breakthrough ideas but can also help each group learn from the other. Creatives can learn to be more convergent when thinking about commercializing their art and entrepreneurs/product developers can learn to be more divergent in idea generation and open to the possibility that there can be more than one right answer or approach to solve a problem.
Working Together
After three hours of discussion, Pedro and I both walked away completely energized and full of ideas of the things that we can do. We are trying to work on creating something unique in my remaining time in Florianópolis and I am really hoping we can build something together. In Pedro’s words “If we work together, we work less and can cause big impact.” Words to live by everyday. At just 30 years, Pedro is wise beyond his age, and has created more impact in his community, then most of us will in our lifetimes. I am very honored to have him as my friend!
Phrase of the week
Está Nublado: It’s cloudy
It is spring in Brazil, and we have barely seen the sun in the last two weeks. It is cloudy and rainy most of the time and I have been saying this a lot. It looks like even when I leave Cleveland, I take the weather with me wherever I go.
