Mansfield Rising 2.0 🚀
Eight local residents are attending South By Southwest (SXSW), a world-renowned festival for tech and ideas in Austin, TX. Follow along with their daily blog posts as they research and develop new ideas to bring back to Mansfield.
Glad you’ve joined us for the first in a series of travel blogs from the team with Mansfield Rising 2024. For the next several days, we’re going to take you on a trip to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas with us as best we can.
Our goal is to highlight the ideas, people, and trends that lit us up and blew our minds from one of the world’s most exciting gatherings of business, culture, science, and technology. South by Southwest (SXSW) can be like looking into the future and we want you with us while we’re there!
Jenn and I along for the ride as part experienced elders (don’t tell her I said that), part tour guides, and part camp counselors.
Nervous, excited, and ready to work
You know something’s become important or gathered momentum when people get a little freaked out at the prospect of becoming involved with it. We’re pretty sure that’s what’s happened with Mansfield Rising, the citizen-led community development framework we helped design back in 2019, and have volunteered for ever since.
This past Wednesday, just a couple of days ago, we met one last time in-person with the eight new members of Mansfield Rising before leaving for their kickoff experience at SXSW.
As we brought things to a close, finalized drop-off times, and so-on, we happened to catch a glance of one of the cohort members. This is a person who works with the public, is supremely skilled, and has confidence for days.
The person looked petrified. We mean, like, the kind of “Oh- Dear-God-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into-I-just-peed-my-pants-a-little!” kind of nervousness you get right before jumping out of an airplane or riding a rollercoaster. That kind of petrified.
We’ve seen a little bit of that fear in all of the participants this year and my friends, this is good news for all of us.
Community development is serious business
This team is excited for their kickoff experience and honored to volunteer in service of Mansfield Rising. They see this as an opportunity, of course. But more than that, they’re very aware of the financial and psychological investment our community has made in Mansfield Rising.
Way more significant than opportunity is responsibility.
Underneath all the anticipation and nervousness, we can see clearly they’re as serious as they can be about the chance to serve and grow Mansfield into the place it can become, and that’s good for all of us.
They’re looking at this as a business trip. Maybe the most fun and inspiring business trip ever, but also maybe the most important one ever, too.
It was that way for the two of us, and we’re honored to lead these dynamic advocates for Mansfield on their journey and take you with us!
