The Chandler Guild Community
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Chandler Guild First Continental Congress Announced!
Hear, ye! Hear, ye! Let it be known that The Chandler Guild will hold its first Continental Congress sometime in the next few months on dates and at a place to be determined! All Chandler Guild members with ideas, comments and questions about this upcoming revolutionary event are encouraged to contribute your two or more cents' worth as a comment below.
The Chandler Guild Continental Congress will be the monumental kick-off event of the guild's Formative Year. During this all-important first year, we'll be envisioning what we want the Chandler Guild to be, how it will work, and how we'll each fit in and can make a truly valuable contribution to this first-of-a-kind microenterprise network.
Why call it a Continental Congress?
Much like the original colonies that were destined to become the United States, the Chandler Guild is currently a loose association of craft-oriented business folk who share some revolutionary ideas. We are independent business people who want to be part of something truly remarkable. But we don't want to sacrifice our individuality and freedom to be part of it. We want to revolutionize the candle industry. But in doing so, we don't want to simply become the latest nameless, faceless megacorp to dominate a highly consolidated industry.
The revolutionary founders of the U.S. didn't create our country overnight on a whim. They gathered, in secret at first, for the first and second Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775. Eventually these revolutionary folks had a Declaration that everyone cold get behind that led to the creation of a new and radically different nation.
This is what we'll be aiming for at the Chandler Guild Continental Congress as we launch our Formative Year of business discovery. The Congress will be the ceremonial initiation of the deliberate and shared commitment of a group of folks who together want to create and grow a business that is unlike any we've been part of before.
Where will the Congress be held?
Like the U.S. founders trying to build a nation, we're on a tight budget. Revolutions are historically underfunded. So there is a very good chance that the first Chandler Guild Continental Congress will be held in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mike and Lynette Richards' neighborhood is a vital and lively place with some pretty funky spaces in the various art studios and galleries that surround their Soyawax and Village Chandler headquarters building. We're in the process of evaluating the availability and capacities of these locations.
When will the Chandler Guild Continental Congress take place?
Soon, but not too soon. We know that many of the Founding 100 Village Chandlers are family-based. You are hoping that we can have this kick-off organizing event sometime before school starts. This means sometime in the early-to-mid August timeframe. In the event that we can't pull everything together by then, our 'Plan B' would be to shoot for dates during a Fall school break time such as around the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Obviously, scheduling during the school year gets tricky. So you can be assured that we are going to do everything possible to make an August date work for us.
What about?...
Yes, this announcement opens more questions than it supplies answers. We will be doing our best to organize this exciting and important event as soon as possible. At this point, we simply want the Guild members to have an advance warning of what's shaping up. If nothing else, we're giving you a guesstimate of when and where we hope to hold this event. This should help you with shaping up your Summer schedules.
Please feel free to post comments and questions below about the Congress. Also, don't hesitate to post ideas about what meetings, activities and events you'd like to see incorporated into the Congress' agenda.
Chandler Guild First Continental Congress Is Now History!
Lights! Camera!... Action! Start making your plans now to be in the Bohemian Commercial District of Cedar Rapids, Iowa on August 22nd-24th. Come be part of the revolution that will change the candle industry.
See this page for the Village Chandler Guild First Continental Congress Event Agenda and Delegate Participation Guide.
In order for you to start making travel plans, the dates have been set for our first Continental Congress. We will have an optional social gathering on August 22, 2003 from 6pm until 11pm. The actual proceedings of the Congress will take place from 8:30 AM Saturday until 6:00 PM Sunday on August 23rd and 24th, 2003.
Lodging can be booked with the special Village Chandler Guild discount room rate at the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel. Phone # is 319-363-8161. The Crowne Plaza is downtown, 10 blocks from the Village Chandler building. This is a pleasant walk during the summer months.
This will be one of the most important events that will ever take place in the development of The Village Chandler Guild. We will have key work sessions on the day to day skills of operating a successful candle business. At the Congress we will determine, as a community, the purpose and objectives of the Guild. This Congress will also be where we have our first board election as we take the Village Chandler Guild from a growing concept to a productive reality.
We look forward to the involvement of all Village Chandlers in this important process.
Hotel Reservations for Chandler Guild Congress
For clarification, all meetings that are part of the Congress will take place at the Village Chandler building and other buildings nearby that are also a part of the Bohemian National Historic District. The Village Chandler Building is at 1029 Third Street S.E., Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401.
Lodging will be available with the Village Chandler discount rate at the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel at the corner of 3rd Street and First Avenue S.E. in Downtown Cedar Rapids. This is a pleasant walk from the meeting location. You can call in your hotel reservation to: 319-363-8161.
Lurk or Lead... Where do you fit in?
When you put up a community web site like the Chandler Guild that is geared toward a techno-geek demographic, and if you do a decent job of spreading the word that the site is up, you are almost guaranteed that the site will come to like with spontaneous activity in no time. Geeks are not intimidated by web-based content authoring systems. Geeks have strong opinions and a culture of shooting their mouths off about any and everything at the drop of a hat. Systems like Drupal, which is the Open Source platform underlying this site, have features to allow site owners to hose down the flame wars and to mute the trolls.
The Chandler Guild and its on-line community will be different. Craftspeople like our community of soy wax candlemakers have a large proportion of folks who are not super geeky, folks not casually comfortable with computers, the Net and web-based content authoring. Sure, there are some who are, but not too many.
It will be extremely interesting to watch the Chandler Guild community evolve. In every on-line community there is a tendency to lurk before we get the gumption to speak out, to put our thoughts in print. Folks not overly comfortable with technology and on-line content authoring will have an even stronger tendency to lurk and take a 'wait and see what happens' approach to their participation in the Chandler Guild community.
The problem is, if we all lurk too much, nothing will happen. Lurking is reasonable, to a point. But there will come a point soon where we'll need some spontaneous combustion. Some lurkers will need to take the plunge and become leaders.
The Chandler Guild is a microenterprise network. That means that it is up to us to make this business work. There are no deep pocketed Venture Capitalists behind the scenes pouring money into professional management. There aren't three layers of middle and upper management deciding what we should do and how to do it. Money won't fall out of trees into our laps because we've got artistic products and a kinder, gentler way of doing business.
We'll have to work for our success. It sounds counter-intuitive, but we'll need leaders in a leaderless organization. Making a community of interest work like the Chandler Guild microenterprise network will require new kinds of business practices, new ideas, new ways of working together... new ways of leading through determined peer action, not through wielding authority.
Lurk or lead, it's up to you. We don't all have to be Generals, but we each do have to find a niche and make a contribution.
I want to have a LOT of fun being a part of the Chandler Guild community. I expect to develop a reasonable income stream from participation in this community, but not at the expense of having fun and finding fulfillment through creative activity.
How about you? We don't all have to be leaders. But we can't afford to all be lurkers, either.
As we enter the 21st century, the Small Is Good Business Revolution is happening in many places in many ways. Let's make The Chandler Guild an active front in the campaign to create a new of doing business.
What do you think?