The Alabama Build-Vention 2015

The martial arts school owner association and business consulting firm, The 100. Method, sponsors a yearly house building project in Rural Alabama, all proceeds got the www.herohousing.org

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The Alabama Build-Vention 2015. Who and When!

On April 8 to 11, 2015 I will be co-hosting the 11th Annual Alabama Martial Arts Teacher Build-Vention in the little southern town of Greensboro, Alabama. The Build-Vention is part martial arts teacher and business convention and part build project --where instead of sitting in chairs discussing how to be better school owners and instructors, we pick up hammers, saws, measuring tapes, and paint brushes and we build and renovate structures for a rather amazing non-profit, www.HeroHousing.org, run by my even more amazing friend, Pam Dorr.

I say I’m a co-host of this event, as this year’s Build-Vention is a group efforts by some rather remarkable people; people you can meet and get to know, when you come help us make martial arts history, again. Allow me to introduce you to some of the people involved.

Hosts and Co-Hosts of this Year’s Build-Vention:

Pamela Dorr

Pam, as I mentioned above, is the head of HERO Housing, the Hale County Empowerment and Revitalization Organization. Her work in Alabama has been covered by the likes of CBS News, Al Jazeera, Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, Elle Decor, Fortune, Fast Company, and on This American Life. Pam’s a change-maker extraordinaire and someone I want you to meet, observe, and interact with. She’s not only a strong and powerful female role model for the young people you might bring with you to Alabama --but watching her do her work is an honest-to-goodness course in leadership 101.  

Zen Planner (www.Zenplanner.com)

Zen Planner is a software company that I consider a business leadership role model in the martial arts community. They contacted me a few years back and asked me if I might help them promote their school management software; I told them I liked their work, but that I simply didn’t endorse or work with ANY company that didn’t have a humanitarian arm. In response and since then, Zen Planner has stepped up to offer free software and support to non-profits working in the martial arts community, like Alexandra Fuller’s Level Ground Martial Arts in Boston, a program that helps at-risk inner-city youth. Zen Planner’s sending some of its staff out to build with us --and they’ll talk school management to those interested in improving their game.

Dave Kovar

Dave Kovar is a martial arts teacher’s teacher. He’s also an author, a multi-school owner, and a world traveler who has, for years now, brought a more-than-noteworthy sensibility, enthusiasm, and level-headed leadership to the international martial arts teacher’s community. Dave’s coming to build --and speak to us about teaching and business the art of doing what we do, better.

Julia Butterfly Hill

Julia was named by John F. Kennedy Jr., in George magazine, as one of the twenty most influential women in politics. She’s a world renown environmental activist and an author whose works include The Legacy of Luna, One Makes a Difference: Inspiring Actions that Change Our World, and Becoming. Julia is coming to work and to speak with us about care for the environment and its relevance to the work of the master of the martial arts. We are VERY fortunate to be on Julia Hill’s event list, as she is in demand, worldwide, for her speaking skills and message.

Keshia Thomas

Keshia is, by way of her action in the world, an icon for compassion and social justice. She’s coming to speak with us about those very subjects --and to work alongside us as we do for others.

Tom Callos

OK, it’s me, and I launched this event a decade ago with Pam Dorr. For me, it’s about guiding instructors to a more PARTICIPATIVE relationship with their communities; it’s about the people one “hangs out” with and the impact the right people can have on your own work, your beliefs, and your motivation; it’s about showing the martial arts community that we have work to do --and the we can, with right action, redesign the role of the martial arts teacher and the martial arts school in today’s world.  

To attend the event, reach out to me, Tom Callos, at 530-903-0286, on Skype at tomcallos, or at my gmail account, TomCallos@. I am also on Facebook, here: https://www.facebook.com/tomcallos

Go to www.herohousing.org to make a direct donation --and please, whether you donate $10 or more, your participation is greatly appreciciated.

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The Alabama Build-Vention 2015. Building a Bakery for a Town That Doesn't Have One

So this year, in the Alabama Martial Arts Build-Vention 2015, which I'm happy to say is co-sponsored by www.ZENPLANNER.com, we're tackling a very cool project. We're helping Pam Dorr and team to build a new business for the community, to benefit both local residents and the HERO (Hale Empowerment & Revitalization Organization, Inc.) ---and it should be noted that HERO's director, Pam Dorr, has received no small amount of press for her efforts to build small businesses in Greensboro to support the community work HERO does. Here's a CBS news piece on the very subject:http://www.cbsnews.com/…/an-entrepreneur-who-turned-a-town-…

We're building an outdoor bread baking oven; which came out of a call I made to Pam while visiting the south this last year. It went like this:

Tom: "Pam, I'm coming thru Greensboro tomorrow, coming from Jackson, MS. Is there anything you need?"

Pam: "Yes, could you bring a great loaf of bread, as all we have here in Greensboro is Wonderbread." (Sound of bell going off in Tom's head)

You see, a couple of organic farmer's in my community had built an outdoor oven and were baking these incredible loaves of bread 2 or 3 days a week --loaves that were so good you had to buy two, one of the house and one to eat on the way home.

When I arrived to Greensboro I suggested we might actually BUILD an oven and that Pam would, if we did, have a new business to benefit the charity work...that the town would REALLY appreciate. Here's a video I took showing the place I'd been buying bread: http://youtu.be/k4uT6tiSaZ8

Now, what does building an oven and an enclosure and seating for an oven / bakery have to do with the martial arts teacher? Well, first off, we do martial arts and talk martial arts business all during the event. We have very important speakers coming, speakers who could help you get a big handle on what you will be teaching in the future --and who can give you an edge now. And, frankly, I see small projects like this, things that help your community in unique ways, part of a school's marketing strategy. I think you already have tradesmen / crafts-people in your circle of friends who could not only help you with interesting projects, but that you could do some youth education and mentoring right along with it.

Info for the project and a place to donate may be found (with updates as the project gets cooking) at http://alabama.flavors.me/

We're coordinating guest teachers and builders for the event, including Dave Kovar, Julia Butterfly Hill, Keshia Thomas, and Amal Easton and his lovely better-half, Casey Easton.

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The Alabama Build-Vention 2015. First Announcement

I'm happy to announce the Alabama Build-Vention 2015 will be co-hosted by Julia Hill, Pam Dorr, Keshia Thomas, and Tom Callos (me) ---and the event will be dedicated to the new book by former President Jimmy Carter, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power. Carter’s book focuses on what he calls "the most serious and unaddressed worldwide challenge" of our time - the discrimination and abuse of women and girls.

The book, suggested reading for all attendees, may be ordered at http://www.amazon.com/Call-Action-Women-Religion-Violence/dp/1476773955

Mark your calendars now. All proceeds from the event will go to www.herohousing.org, a 5013c non-profit working on behalf of the people of Greensboro, Alabama --and beyond.

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John Bussard Donates Mats to The Alabama Build-Vention. A Note of Thanks.

I must take a moment to again thank John Bussard for his generous donation to The 2014 Alabama Build-Vention of 2000 square feet of ZEBRA mats. John, they have arrived --and will serve the Greensboro community in a multitude of ways, for years to come.  The Alabama Martial Arts Build-Vention 2014 is a martial arts business convention, definitely the most unconventional business training event in the martial arts world, where the learning happens, the exchange of ideas, and the classes --while we build and renovate homes and other structures in cooperation with Pam Dorr and the team at www.herohousing.org.  John's donation of mats gives us some of the tools we need to help the martial arts take root in Greensboro --next to the landmark work of Pam, Samuel Mockbee (http://samuelmockbee.net/) and www.rurualstudio.org ---and alongside the work of John Bielenberg and his Project M (http://www.projectmlab.com/).  For 10 years now I've been taking martial arts teachers, instructors, and their staff members / students to Greensboro --to sleep on the floor, to eat local food, to get dirty while operating power tools and hammers, to help a community in transition, and to live the simple life of volunteerism for a short-week ---all for the purpose of re-thinking how we teach the martial arts, how we impact the places we live, and how we inspire students to take the work out of our dojos and into the world.  This is a completely not-for-profit event that survives only on donations from the international martial arts community. We fund it thru small donation from students and teachers who appreciate the work, who are moved by it, and who want to support the movement the work represents away from the crass and blatant commercialism, up-sells, and product-mongering abundant in the "industry." The link for info and to donate is here: www.ubbtAlabama.org It's working; more martial arts teachers than ever before are starting to blend community activism, serious, grass-roots volunteerism, into their agendas ---inspiring students from age 5 to 75 to see our training as something more than learning how to fight.  This year we host one of the most prominent and important environmentalists of our era, Ms. Julia Butterfly Hill --who is coming to further the dialog we've started about "Environmental Self-Defense" and how we, martial arts teachers, might come to serve the movement for more sustainable, sane, and sensible living --in ways that cause less harm, less exploitation, and less irreparable damage to the world we all inhabit. John, your donation greatly enhances our ability to do this work. Thank you.

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Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. A Martial Arts School Owner Event with a Sense of Regional History

The sharecropper families mentioned below live in Hale County and around Greensboro, where we will be having our Martial Arts House Build-Vention, April 9 to 13, 2014.  From Wikipedia: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men grew out of an assignmentthe two men accepted in 1936 to produce a Fortune magazine article on the conditions among sharecropper families in the American South during the "Dust Bowl". It was the time of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" programs designed to help the poorest segments of the society. Agee and Evans spent eight weeks that summer researching their assignment, mainly among three white sharecropping families mired in desperate poverty. They returned with Evans' portfolio of stark images—of families with gaunt faces, adults and children huddled in bare shacks before dusty yards in the Depression-era nowhere of the deep south—and Agee's detailed notes.

If / when you're coming to The Alabama Martial Arts Build-Vention 2014 --be sure to look over the work of Walker Evans.  Walker Evans is one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. His elegant, crystal-clear photographs and articulate publications have inspired several generations of artists, from Helen Levitt and Robert Frank to Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. The progenitor of the documentary tradition in American photography, Evans had the extraordinary ability to see the present as if it were already the past, and to translate that knowledge and historically inflected vision into an enduring art.

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A picture of one of the rooms in the Rural Studio restored Safe House Museum, in Greensboro, Alabama ---where Rev. Martin Luther King hid from the Klan --just two weeks before he was assassinated in Memphis.  It'll be just a mile or two from where we're staying and working. See http://www.ruralstudio.org/ for info on the architectural program in the Greensboro area --and it's impact. Read up too on Samuel "Sambo" Mockbee.  The event is April 9 to 13, 2014. Info here at www.UBBTalabama.org

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On April 9 to 13, 2014, Tom Callos will be joined by testing members of The Ultimate Black Belt Test, participants in the project called The 100. Method, members of Gracie Barra, and a host of friends, martial arts master teachers, students, and interested engagers --in Greensboro, Alabama for the Alabama Martial Arts Build-Vention. 

This year, our 10th, we'll be building and equipping a dojo and building a house for cancer survivor Latonia Williams. For more information go to www.flavors.me/alabama

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The Alabama Build-Vention, a Zero Waste Event

Head's Up, the Alabama Martial Arts Build-Vention 2014 will be a ZERO WASTE EVENT. All participants will be required to bring their own plate / bowl, chopsticks or fork, knife, spoon, hot beverage container, re-fillable water bottle, and washable napkin.  We will, to the best of our collective abilities, limit all throw-away waste to the absolute unavoidable minimum. Plan accordingly.

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How I Never Met Samuel Mockbee; How I Came to Greensboro

In mid 2001 I boarded a plane to go teach a seminar somewhere --and in some magazine I'd picked up I came across a "pod" built from bundles of waxed cardboard. Students of Mockbee's Rural Studio built their own "pods" to stay in, little experimental structures of their own design, while they worked under their teacher.  I was enthralled. There was a clip with the photo about some of Mockbee's philosophy --and reading it I came to the conclusion that Mockbee had genuinely transcended his subject matter --and had gone way deeper as a teacher. I wanted to go way deeper as a teacher.  After running across two or three other mentions of Mockbee in various publications over the next month or two --and feeling a real pull to meet him, maybe even to go there to Alabama and find some way to help or engage him, one day I just got on the phone and started calling the Rural Studio and Auburn University. Nobody answered any of the numbers I called. That night I went to Borders, the book store; I walked in, went straight to the magazine rack, picked up an Architectural Digest, flipped it open randomly --and boom, I had opened it right to his obituary. He'd passed just two months before.  I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach, like I'd lost a friend and a teacher, even though I'd never met the man. The more I read about him, the more I realized I wanted to do something (anything) like what he had done, but in my own career, in the martial arts world. A few weeks later I connected with Pam Dorr. It took me a year of calling and writing and proposing this and that, offering help, before I had dreamed up the Ultimate Black Belt Test --and then decided that, as a part of the test, we'd all go down to Greensboro and do something, anything, to pitch in.  This will be the 10th year of pitching in. While I was never able to meet Samuel Mockbee, I see the work I help organize there as a way to honor his influence on my own career. While my accomplishments and influence pale compared to his, I am grateful to have the opportunity to be connected, albeit in the smallest way, to the work he envisioned and executed.

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The Alabama Project: Build a Dojo and They Will Come

It's official. We will, in one of the loft spaces in this building on Main Street in Greensboro, Alabama, be equipping the first martial arts dojo in the town's history (I believe). It's 3400 square feet, which we previously helped clean out at a past event.  We are looking for 2000 square feet of mats, minimum, to create a training space. More info to come.  This is one of two projects, the other being a house build for someone in need (details to be announced). Now Greensboro will have a place you can bring your own team to train and engage in leadership training with www.herohousing.org.  The photo, by the way, is from this page:http://www.pictorymag.com/showcases/best-small-town-america/