#bob kronbauer

[warhead]

[borismann]

…if we ever work with them again I’ll keep business front of mind and go in fully aware that loyalty is not a metric they track.

Bob Kronbauer, Vancouver is Awesome

Ouch.

[vantechia]

vantechia

What is this thing?

Well, right now it is Boris and Mack tumbling links and hosting guest posts (thanks to David Gratton for "16th place is not good enough for Vancouver") related to the theme of Vancouver (Tech) being Awesome.

The about description currently says this:

The technology community in Vancouver is Awesome. Celebrate it. Share it. Bitch about it. Haters gonna hate, let's give them something to talk about.

What will it become? Not sure. Needs a proper name and URL and all that jazz. We've got the Twitters at @vantechawesome, so do that following thing over there.

Want to share? Submit something.

Want to "ask the community"? Post here. Yep, you can even do it anonymously.

I'd say something like "with apologies to the VIA team", but really, we've got a crush on Bob Kronbauer and love what he's done with Vancouver's art & creative communities. Can we unite the tribes under that banner? We think so!

We also love Rob Lewis and the Techvibes team. And at some point will post a picture of Rob strapped to a cot in Banff. Because that's what Tumblr is for.

[creativemorningsvancouver]

[mathewsmith]

Portrait of Bob Kronbauer after his Creative Mornings Vancouver talk Friday.  

Vancouver, Canada

2012

[creativemorningsvancouver]

Bob Kronbauer - Profile and Q&A

Bob Kronbauer is a creative director and early online adopter. He founded the first online skateboarding magazine in the 90′s and, after facilitating it’s acquisition, went on to work in the art department of film director Spike Jonze’s skateboard company in Los Angeles.

Finding his way back home to Vancouver in the mid 2000′s to work as a freelancer for international clients such as Nike, Poketo, Kangol and others, in early 2008 Bob founded the VancouverIsAwesome.com blog which has grown to be one of BC’s most popular web sites, celebrating positive stories of local arts and culture. Over the coming years he plans to launch the “Is Awesome” brand with partners in every major Canadian centre.

CMV: How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?

BK: I finally stopped trying to explain to my relatives what it is that I do for a living. These days I just tell them I'm a publisher. In Sergio Toporek's talk last month he joked that as creatives we all say that what we do is "solve problems" and I laughed really hard at that because it's true, that's often how I define my work.

CMV: Where do you find your best creative inspiration?

BK: This might sound strange but I can safely say that almost all of my best ideas have come to me while driving my car.

CMV: What's the one creative advice or tip you wish you'd known as a young person?

BK: I wish I would have known that the cliche "it's all about the journey" is actually more than a cliche, it's the truth.

CMV: Who would you like to hear speak at Creative Mornings?

BK: I'd love to see somebody older than 65 give a Creative Mornings Vancouver talk. People who are so far outside of my social circle that I wouldn't typically run into or be exposed to otherwise, those are always my favourite speakers.

CMV: What's the most recent thing you learned?

BK: It's a long story but I've been researching knifemaking over the past few weeks so I've been learning quite a bit about that. Today I learned that the kind of knives I might be able to craft on my own are not poured in a foundry like I thought they were but are, in fact, cut out of flat sheets of steel and then shaped further from there. Before that I learned that there are a lot of people making knives in Ontario and very few making knives in BC. Next I'd like to learn exactly why that is and maybe help to "solve" it.

CMV: What books made a difference in your life and why?

BK: A close friend gave me Woody Guthrie's autobiography about 15 years ago and I feel like in a lot of ways it helped shape my life and the way I view the world now. Around that same time another friend gave me Daniel Quinn's The Story of B which is a work of fiction that creatively looks at the population explosion and how it could spell the end for humankind. I decided to only have one child after reading that. David Suzuki also addresses it in his recent book, The Legacy, which is a quick read that I'd recommend to any and all of the 6.8 billion humans currently inhabiting this earth.

CMV: How do you respond to criticism that boosterism themed blogs like VancouverIsAwesome.com lack the integrity, analysis and critical debate necessary to drive culture forward in this city?

BK: I don't think it's fair to say that mostly excluding critical debate from our editorial defines us as lacking integrity, and if you don't think that celebrating people doing positive stuff in and for our city contributes to driving its culture forward then we definitely see things a lot differently. In my eyes, the scales are tipped so far in one direction that we're a valuable piece of the media landscape here. I founded V.I.A. 4 years ago after moving back from Los Angeles, and I was so thankful to be able to return to a city that's very obviously an amazing place to live yet I couldn't find anyone who was actively sharing that sentiment with people like me. You don't have to look far for the bad news or for people to tell you what they feel is wrong with the city; for the most part bad news is the "news" and analysis and critical debate are so ingrained in the culture here that often times it's hard to see the forest for the trees, as it were. And while I'll defend our mandate to only share "Awesome" stories I do feel that if every local media outlet, or even more than a tiny percentage of them, were dedicated to sharing only the positive shit then Vancouver would be an even more dangerous place than it already is.

CMV: Are there days when you look at the lack of affordable housing, talent brain-drain and arts and culture scene in Vancouver and feel like maybe our city isn't really so awesome after all?

BK: I think about that stuff every single day, which is why it's nice at the end of it to have a place like VancouverIsAwesome.com to remind me of why I choose to call this place home, despite all of it. I also follow all of the local news media and often participate in dialogue that's not all about the shiny happy things. Our web site is dedicated to the good but there is always a balance that needs to be considered: keep up on the real issues affecting your city and when you're all done and you just need a reason to smile, you can visit us. That's what we're here for.