
Fresh From the frank Stage
Standout talks from the most recent 2023 gathering, featuring bold voices, urgent truths and unforgettable moments.

Amahra Spence
Liberation Rehearsal Notes from a Time Traveler

Shanelle Matthews
Narrative Power Today for an Abolitionist Future

Nima Shirazi
Irresistible Forces, Immovable Objects
Public Interest Communications – It’s super fantastic!
BusinessCommunicationsFrank KarelProblem SolvingPublic InterestSustainability
Transcript
Alright, forget the Yankee stuff, alright. We’re done with that. The Minnesota Twinkies are not going anywhere. So Ann looked out earlier to everybody and said, this looks like a pretty darn good-looking crowd. I have to agree, but I have to say that this is a really awesome looking crowd. Let’s give these to Hannah. So, I don’t know, when I was 21, like, you know, Thaddeus and Roland and Mina and everybody up here, I was basically, yeah, I was doing what they were doing. I was thinking, where’s my rock and roll band going to play next? And you know, is my drum set going to fall out of the back of a van driving down the mass pike in Boston? That’s, you know, that’s pretty much what I was doing. But this is like, wow, what you guys have done, Roland, you started this conference off with the heart and power of a poet. Unbelievable. And Alvin, earlier today, you know, this idea of this challenging the complacency of the easy solution or the easy answer, I love that. That was absolutely fantastic. Samir, standing alongside your other Samir, not in front of, not in back of, alongside, that was powerful. Thaddeus, you know, earlier, just the future that our kids really deserve. That was awesome. Mina, I mean, and there’s terrific presentation and there’s so much, there’s more to come. You guys have really been terrific. And when, you know, I had the privilege of working with many others in this room to think about the Corel Fellowship program, Anne Cristiano, Betsy Corel, Andy Burness, David Morris, Fred Mann, Amy Curse, many others. One of the elements, and you all know this is an expectation in the program, is to be an ambassador for this field of public interest communications. And I think you’ve all been pretty darn good ambassadors and you’re off to a really, really good start. And that’s important because I think that this, this fellows program, if we think about Frank’s vision, this really is what you all are, is a bridge between what is the past and what is possible. And Frank’s vision for this was let’s, you know, diversify, knit together, grow, build a field of public interest communications. But where we’re going, the journey ahead is really what’s amazing and what’s important in this. And I reflected a little bit on Mina’s presentation, and this is one idea I want to throw out for actually thinking about next year. In her experience with Campaign for Tobacco for Kids, I think this is an amazing opportunity. So, you know, I had the privilege of working with many others, including Frank. And sometimes public interest communications can be really awesome, it’s super fantastic, because you can actually build an organization, start an organization or a movement in something like tobacco advocacy. We just heard about some of the progress. That is really an amazing opportunity to use public interest communications to do that work. And let’s think of what’s happened just in the past couple of months, just a month ago, and talk to Vince Wilmore or Katherine Bush who’s here today. Campaign for Tobacco for Kids led a big coalition of organizations to make some real bold, big, I can say badass, because Liz used the other bad words here, but real big bold, badass bold goals here, to reduce smoking from its current 18%. And back in 1965, we just heard where it was almost 50% of the population, now 18, but reduce it to 10% in 10 years. 100% smoke-free laws. All people are protected in public places from secondhand smoke, and end the epidemic of tobacco use. That is real big bold, measurable goals. And along the way, there’s going to be a lot of very specific public interest communications and policy work that will help get us there. So wouldn’t it be really cool to come back to Frank a year from now, two years from now, and let’s talk in tobacco, in water conservation, in climate change, about the very specific public interest communications, strategies, and tactics that help get us to that point. And that’s something else that Frank really believed in. It’s great for us to talk about defining and branding this field, it’s important, but we also want to move from definition to destination, and keep our focus and our eyes on what are those targets we’re really trying to do. We’re trying to potentially save millions of lives by reducing tobacco use, by doing water conservation. So this is a challenge, I think, for us here in Frank, to continue that kind of progress and get concrete, and really show how what we’re doing in public interest communications is getting us to that point. So thinking again about you all, you’re just in many ways, you’ve had a great experience this summer, but you’re just starting your journey. And this is a saying, a poet, actually Mark Nipah, I read this through him, but it’s not his, but I think it’s a really interesting metaphor. And the phrase is, to journey but not to change is to be a nomad. To change but not to journey is to be a chameleon. But to journey and be transformed is to be a pilgrim. I thought, maybe that’s public interest pilgrims. Maybe we can think about that. Because let’s get past the original thought. If you think about a pilgrim and pilgrimage, this is what combines. No? You see, you’re going to that Thanksgiving image, Kristen, but it’s bigger than that. If you combine what’s meaningful and significant and sacred with people in place, Muslims have Mecca, Christians and Jews, Jerusalem, the Holy Land, got the Ganges with Hindus, why not add Gainesville to that list? I mean, right? Why not? A pilgrimage to Frank and Gainesville. We can be public interest pilgrims. This is part of the journey. So a little bit of inspiration for this journey. And I want to go to another, this was a community I got to visit about three months ago. It’s part of a prize at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that we give out called, we’re now calling it a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Prize. And this is really cool. But these are communities that are taking our county health rankings that we do with the University of Wisconsin. And these are all of the factors that link most closely to how healthy we are and how long we’ll live. So education, kids in poverty, diet, exercise, smoking, health care coverage. And these are communities that are actually doing something about all of these, putting policies and system changes in place. So I was out in one of the finalist communities, Little Sitka, Alaska. Okay, out, I don’t know if anybody here have been to Sitka? All right, yeah, you know, fourth largest city in Alaska. It’s a community of 9,000 people. That tells you how much space there is out in Alaska. And it’s sort of like Northern exposure meets like this sort of social good thing going on in Sitka. It’s really interesting. So we’re there, it’s about 25% Native American, Native Alaskan population. And while we’re there, we were visiting this school. Hi, Greg. How are you? And in this school, they had this fish to school program that was just really neat because it’s an economic boom for the fishermen. It gives fresh, healthy food to the students. And while I was there, I was sitting down and had lunch with the students. And I saw this saying on my way in to eat with them. And I thought about this as a metaphor for where we’re going and the journey ahead. Because you know, we’ve asked a lot, what do we need, you know, to move this field ahead, to really grow this movement? And it’s the other thing, the way to look at it is what do we have already? I think about all the minds and the creativity and what we’ve heard in this room today. And I think we’ve got everything we need right here. And if we think about the connections and the networks we’ll make when we leave here, we’re the ones that we’ve been waiting for. This is what we need for the journey ahead. So I was really caught by this wisdom. And I think that is a nice transition, my buddy Greg is up here now, into where we’re going next because the next huddle, we’re all going to get together and we’re going to make stuff, right Greg? Okay, we are what we need. We’re going to move this forward. Before I turn over to Greg with some logistics, Aaron asked me to just give kind of relax everybody about going into this next huddle. Because I think we all want to follow the instructions and be real strategic planners and communicators. Very performance oriented. You’re a fire. You’re a fire. There are some exceptions. So you know that old commercial, you know, stay between the lines with the crayons? We’re permission to stray outside the lines in this next exercise, right? Think bold and just be fast. Greg, what are we going to do? All right, so very quickly, we’re learning. So one of the things is, you know, yesterday that you might have noticed a few hiccups, we’ve hopefully gotten rid of some of those. We’re going to work this. Today we are making stuff. We were, yesterday we were bold. We set our bar high. We thought wrong. Lots of great stuff generated. We captured almost all of that. It’s up on the tumbler to refer to. Now we’re going to go back. Same crews, same places with the exception of the folks at Emiliano’s who, if you’re huddle, if you want to move to the inflatable lounge on the second floor of Hamptons, you’re the Hampton Inn. That doesn’t sound right. You can’t be inflatable lounge. The lounge with the inflatable furniture. That’s an option. So you guys can decide that. I’m also going to call you out, sort of two crews at a time to get out of the building so we don’t end up with the log jam. So stay in your seat and we’ll start to get everybody out. What I do want to do is just talk about the second huddle. So now what we’re going to do is we’re going to move, as Elizabeth said, we think in images and emotions. So it’s time to move to thinking in terms of imagery and how do we connect with people. So this is the first task that we’re going to have. Pick the name of your profession. So if you came up with your three word label or two word label yesterday, kind of decide among yourselves which are we going to use very quickly. Name your new firm, design your new logo and write your tagline. If you have a laptop or some of your team brought a laptop, like I suggested yesterday, you can go to this Squarespace URL. If you don’t have it, there it is. If you don’t have a laptop, this doesn’t work on a smartphone. But I just created this one really quickly here. You can see some group had potsters as a potential name and think, inspire and mobilize was their tagline. So we can very quickly create this. If you don’t have a laptop, this thing works too right here on these Sharpies on a blank piece of paper and take a picture of it. So that’s going to be our first task. Why don’t we get started? I don’t want to spend any more time because we’re already eating away at your time. I’m going to call down the first crew that’s the one at Volta. So Aaron Hart and Diane McFarland. Once you calm down, Aaron and Diane, I’m going to give you, look how much we learned. I’m going to give you printed materials to help guide your group. It’s a learning journey. So everybody who’s with their crews, come on down and get on out.
