Even More Important NAU

We’ve all gotten them: the phone call that starts “I’ve got some bad news. You might want to sit down.”

I got one of those yesterday. It was the Exec Director of GAS.

“We just lost our keynote speaker for the conference. His business went under.”

Looking “Stealth” in the face. Geoff & Jeff install e-merge.

OK. First of all, I heard the sound of my heart cracking. I loved NAU. They were a business that was about more than just business. They had a new vision. Of community, of giving back, of good design married to sustainability.

But the second sound was in my head. It was the chilling thwack of Soul being clobbered by the Idea of Success.

It’s a sound that I’ve heard a lot in the last few months as we’ve been consumed with our biennial emerging artist competition. By definition none of the people entering e-merge have ever succeeded according to the standards we set up: they aren’t shown in the best galleries, their work isn’t flying off the pedestals at Damian Hirst prices. They may be in school still, or struggling along after years of experimenting with ideas and materials.

Yesterday as I walked through the little mezzanine gallery where the finalists’ works were being installed, I couldn’t stop thinking of all the work that wasn’t there: the hundreds of pieces that hadn’t made the cut. Some were wonderful. So wonderful that I’d sent private notes to their makers to say how much I loved them. But the judges hadn’t. Did that make them losers?

No way.

Whether it’s an investor or a juror, some people just won’t get what you’re doing. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Most are exceptionally savvy. Sometimes it’s just wrong time, wrong place, wrong audience for what you’re trying to say.

So you didn’t get a prize. So your startup failed.

Can only The Successful speak in America? There are so many more of us who are “failures”. When the money disappears, when we don’t make the finals, is what we have to say no longer valid? Is it only about Winning? Maybe we need to know how to fail. I’d rather listen to someone with a great idea who failed than someone with a mediocre one who succeeded.

And that for me personally is even sadder than the end of NAU. It’s that GAS might not get to hear a message that was about lots more than the business bottom line – or being a finalist.