On Monday, I convened a dinner meeting with some cool local folks in the Bay Area had our first meeting as a collective to come up with a strategy and plan for promoting and supporting local electronic music communities in the East Bay Area (Oakland, Berkeley, Downtown, etc.).

As we’re already pretty organized;) we grafted a S.W.O.T. analysis* on to our meeting and came up with the beginnings of a community/business strategy to being implementing before our next meeting.

We came up with the following:

+++++++++++++++++++++

VISION (needs fine-tuning? – I’m particularly fond of the 4th tenet in speaking with local business/venues)
Visceral is a Bay Area electronic music collective. Focusing on the East Bay Area (Oakland, Berkeley, Albany, etc.) we support the local electronic music scene by:

• producing electronic music events
• marketing and promoting local electronic music artists
• connecting these audiences and artists to each other
• providing music, customers and revenue to local businesses

In one year we’d like:

• a successful monthly
• artists’ compensated for their time/money/energy spent

External – what the local scene looks like…

• Opportunities: what opportunities for collaboration already exist? What’s already been done or is happening?

• • 9th Floor Radio show with Timber!
  • artists’ merchandise
  • Radio Sagittarius podcast
  • electronic music meetup for East Bay!!!! —> So far, 130 people are interested in an Oakland Electronic music collective

• Threats: what might keep us from accomplishing our goals?

• • East Bay venues
  • someone is *already* doing this and we’re reinventing the wheel
  • enough money to at least support the organizers – time, transportation, food, brain power. You can donate to our cause by clicking the yellow Paypal button to the right.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Ideally, we can get to a point where we can support local independent electronic musicians. We’re focusing on minimal/techno, IDM, dubstep and glitch. Know anyone in the Bay Area that might be interested?

Download goodies

We also developed some goodies you’re free to download, share and remix as you like:

• My DJ mix (other members are currently working on theirs)
• S.W.O.T. Analysis for Community Group template (it’s a Word document that you can edit for your own use)
  

*S.W.O.T. analysis comes from my non-profit community building work, which asks participants for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats at the beginning of any collaborative business/community venture.