In a little over a week, David Fox will take charge of a pop-up marketing agency, bustling with activity from designers, writers, programmers and more.
But only for a day.
Fox is the organizer of Design-a-thon Nashville 2018 – the kickoff event for this year’s Nashville Content Week – centered around gathering creatives to support a local non-profit, though he wasn’t always so interested in digital content creation.
“I didn’t really choose to get involved as much as I was pulled to get involved.”
Fox’s wife, Carla, had been involved in the PodCamp Pittsburgh community, and encouraged him to attend PodCamp Nashville, where he first realized the power of marketing and branding.
“It kind of opened my eyes quite a bit to a bigger world outside of feature writing. Then I’ve seen it transform over the years from PodCamp – Carla has worked on it and has been the impetus behind it changing from Craft Content to Nashville Content Week,” he said.
Fox then got involved as the official organizer of Design-a-thon, which opens Nashville Content Week on Saturday, April 14. The week will feature a variety of different events and speakers, all focused on the topic of digital content creation.
“For Craft Content, the word we use is ‘unconference.’ It’s really community based. People in the creative community in social media, content creation, podcasting, audio-visual, virtual reality, all of these different disciplines volunteer to speak and to teach what they’ve learned to the community.”
It’s a change to learn more about Nashville’s network of creators and take home some good tips, Fox said. But it also has the power to remind people that they are part of a greater community, Fox said.
Design-a-thon connects content creators with a local non-profit organization, building a pop-up marketing team that spends a whole day developing deliverables that the nonprofit can use in the future.
“Design-a-thon brings together all these people in social media, content creation, design, web development, with the idea that everybody in a room for a volunteer event, works with a local nonprofit that has a problem to solve, that needs to rebrand or work on a campaign or build a website.”
This year, the event will be 12 hours long, starting at 9 a.m. and running until 9 p.m., and will benefit Our Kids, a nonprofit that offers expert medical care, crisis counseling and compassionate response for children and families struggling with child sexual abuse.
“The No. 1 thing that they do is they give care to child survivors of sexual abuse. They make sure they’re in physical good shape, they give crisis counseling, then they also work with parents or caregivers because they’re shattered as well.”
In order to prepare for so long a stretch, Fox and the other organizers met with the leaders of the organization to determine an overarching problem, the kind of volunteers needed, and what the day of work could potentially look like. Our Kids representatives will check in throughout the event, helping to create deliverables that will be released as a part of the “What If I Told You” campaign.
“That can be taken a variety of ways, but they are starting out with ‘What if I told you 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 7 boys have been victims, have been affected by this before they turn 18, and 95 percent of the time it’s someone the child trusts or knows?’ That’s a big problem, and they want people to understand that, to talk about it, and people who are involved in it, people who have been touched by this issue to be able to speak about it, to be able to use their voice either to access the services that they need or for adult survivors to be able to talk about it openly and be heard and understood,” Fox said.
In order to create these campaign deliverables, volunteers in social media copywriting and strategy, content strategy, graphics and design, web development, social advertising are welcome to join the Design-a-thon team, Fox said.
“If someone comes in and has a creative skill set, we will find something for them to do. If you are not a creative person and you don’t know how to code, but you’re really organized, congratulations you’re now keeping us on schedule and being our project manager!”
There’s something for everyone, and even though the event is 12 hours long, people should not feel obligated to stay the whole time, but rather can pitch in where they can, Fox said, joining in on the creativity and motivation to help the organization.
“It’s remarkable the way that Our Kids attracts people to help them and to work on things with them. I think we’re going to see that at Design-a-thon,“ Fox said. “It’s infectious to want to help.”
Design-a-thon Nashville will be held on April 14, 2018. Learn more about Nashville Content Week and register for events online.
This podcast is brought to you by Relationary Marketing, specializing in turn-key B2B podcast production. This episode was produced by Chuck Bryant and Clark Buckner, with editing support from Bobby Yeager and writing support from Riley Wallace.