SwampFox

How did Google in Greenville spontaneously combust?

In less than two weeks, over 2,000 people were organized to wave their glow sticks in Falls Park for Google in Greenville. How did that spontaneously combust?

Many of us have worked very hard for a very long time to catalyze a creative culture here, which nurtures and supports a new creative class of empowered individuals that made that possible.

February 10th, Google issued a request for proposal to pick a city to built a high speed, high band width fiber to the home network. I was contacted by individuals who saw the Google request and asked to lead an effort to put a proposal together to respond.

The proposal had to be issued by a local government. After a few calls, I got in touch with Joe Kernell, Greenville County administrator, who agreed to submit the proposal. I called a meeting of 30 or so technology entrepreneurs and local government officials to discuss it. Others in town had also seen the Google request and had begun thinking about a response. We all managed to merge our efforts together into one, unified effort.

Bob Mihalic with Greenville County took on the task of compiling all the non-sexy statistics, like the number of telephone poles and the amount of conduit in the ground. Brian Conner at the BMW Information Technology Research Center, supported by comments from a number of technologists, compiled information about unique application developers who could take advantage of a broad, fiber to the home network.

Arron von Frank took on the task of publicity. He called a meeting of a small group of entrepreneurs, who decided to create the world's largest human Google chain. They didn't ask anyone if they could do that. They had no doubt from the beginning whether they could do that. They had no traditional media coverage. They were so interconnected digitally, that within a short time of deciding what they wanted to do, they had spread the word and rallied thousands of others.

They hit a couple of bumps along the way. The first was when they published their plan for a massive rally downtown on their website for all the world to see before notifying the city. City official's had a heart attack. Aaron contacted me, and we discussed that the city had legitimate public interests we needed to take into consideration, like liability and public safety. After they exhaled, city officials were great in working through appropriate concerns they had in a expedited fashion. Both the entrepreneurs and the city were flexible and wanted this to work. The result was better than either of them would have gotten to alone.

I stood at the top of the deck overlooking the falls with Knox White, Mayor of Greenville, at the peak of the lights Saturday. He was beaming. Phil Yanov went to the City Council meeting a few days later and said they were absolutely giddy with all the positive publicity. This worked is because we were dealing with government at the local level. There was a leap of faith involved on the city's part because they knew and trusted us. That would never have happened as easily if the government decisions were in Columbia or Washington.

The other panic mode was Sunday night, a week before the event, when Aaron realized the glow sticks cost $2,200. He contacted me again, and I sent out an email to a handful of technology entrepreneurs in town. We raised over $5,000 by lunch on Monday. Not only did the entrepreneurs have glow sticks, they were able to rent a helicopter to record their art work.

What allowed Google in Greenville to happen? I called a meeting of smart, passionate people, gave them a mission, challenged them that there were legitimate public interests they had to address, made sure they had the resources they needed, and then I had the good sense to get out of their way and let them paint on the canvas of Falls Park.

This isn't libertarian. The park itself is a public/private partnership. There were legitimate public standards to consider.

It's not big government Democratic or big business Republican. I'll bet these young creatives actually scare the hell out of both big business and big government, especially Tim TV, the guy with the blue mohawk who warmed up the crowd with a hoola hoop Saturday, but crawled across broken glass at TEDxGreenville a couple of weeks earlier. After the Google event, he breathed fire on the street outside Barleys as we sat on the sidewalk drinking beer on a beautiful spring evening. A reporter from New York City with Time Magazine was with us covering the event. I commented to him that fire breathing as public art was impressive even if it had been in midtown Manhattan. Tim's an icon for the empowered, fearless, creative culture that has emerged in Greenville.

There is a powerful political movement here waiting to be mobilized around creative, empowered individuals. I'm not really sure how to do that. Unlike the Tea Parties, what fueled Google in Greenville wasn't anger. It was fun and aspirational. One family I talked with said they came out because we were making history. It was a very diverse crowd, young and old, lots of ethnicities, all very proud of the incredibly cool place Greenville has become.

A few days later, I was part of a lunch discussion about improving literacy in Greenville. The discussion turned to Google in Greenville as a tangible example of of what a talented, creative, empowered group of people could do to make a difference. I asked them if they knew the story of how Google in Greenville happened. I told them, and now you know too.