July’s global CreativeMornings theme TREASURE will be discussed by Mike Woolf on Friday the 28th.

Our musical guest with be Mama Birds. 

Join us for Cuvée Coffee & breakfast tacos.

We’ll be meeting at Wicked Kitchen.

All thanks to our partners The Creative Executive and Microsoft Teams.

Register to get your free ticket here.

Fill your feed with treasures with the hashtags #CMtreasure & #CMATX

About Mike Woolf:

Oscar Winner. Grammy Nominated. Westminster Finalist. None of these accolades apply to Writer/Director Mike Woolf. 

However, he has been a shiny cog in the Austin advertising machine for 20+ years. He did win a lot of ‘Addys’, writing at GSD&M, for the likes of Southwest Airlines and Texas Tourism. He then founded Beef and Pie Productions which helped lay the foundation for the local video production scene. At Beef and Pie, he continues to create clever commercials, big brand videos and all kinds of disposable social content. He has also done important work in the world of documentary, dealing with such heady subjects as space, beards and beer. His latest film project uses Austin’s first mural as a portal to visit Austin in the early 70’s: 23rdstreetmural.com

Mike’s appreciation for authenticity, obscure tales, and real people doing really crazy things, can be traced back to his upbringing in Baltimore, where the people are often all too authentic. With a degree in Mass Communications from Boston University, but no practical ability to make ads, Mike ‘figured all that shit out’ writing direct mail at a Baltimore ad agency for two long years.  With a very DIY portfolio and the 15-minute short doc, “Pollock Johnny’s 20th Anniversary Polish Sausage Eating Contest,” Mike landed a Jr. Writer position at GSD&M. His salary was $27,000. 

Over the next six years Mike wrote over 75 commercials for AT&T, Gummout, Texas Lottery, the Dixie Chicks, Macaroni Grill and a magical spot for Texas Tourism starring Lyle Lovett. His biggest contribution was for Southwest Airlines, writing the “Wanna Get Away” campaign. It is still a key part of SWA’s marketing, yet he has received no residuals. 

Mike left the agency and started Beef and Pie Productions to get behind the camera and more in control of the production process. He has learned that great work is a result of strong partnerships with trusting clients. Beef and Pie has fostered a roster that ranges from global icons to local legends: the US Airforce, Patron Tequila, St. David’s Healthcare, YETI, Austin Beerworks, Masterbuilt Grills, Homeslice Pizza and Austin FC are all awesome partners.

His feature documentary, Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott’s Road to the Stars, won best documentary at SXSW. His short docs “Growin’ A Beard,” “The 72oz Steak,” and “Crazy Carl and his Man-Boobs: An Austin Love Story” have respectively, spawned the beard craze, the food eating contest industry and the man-boob business. 

Mike runs Beef and Pie with Executive Producer partner Michelle Crosby out of a Bungalow in Hyde Park. He lives with his super-talented designer wife, Ayse Iyriboz and their teenage son Isaac also in Hyde Park. And yes, he should have bought sooner.

Do you love trivia? Our very own Alex Trebek, Ben Thoma, is hosting a DIY Jeopardy! virtual FieldTrip on July 19th.

He figured out how to build a play-at-home version of Jeopardy! using Trello and in this In this interactive, virtual workshop, he’ll show you how to do it yourself with easy templates - and then you’ll play a game together.

Register to join the fun here: creativemornings.com/talks/diy-jeopardy

Our motto at CreativeMornings/Austin is “Everyone is creative. Everyone is welcome.” 

After recent Supreme Court decisions and bills in the Texas legislature, some members of our community aren’t feeling so welcomed by our great state and country.

So, we’re excited about something that Hans and Luis (our speakers in August) have cooked up. Their cookie company, Wunderkeks is having a Charity Bake Sale on Tuesday, July 11th to support the launch of The Sunday Afternoon Foundation. Their mission is to create Safe Spaces for all by building at the intersection of education, media, community, and commerce. 

100% of sales on July 11th will go directly to the foundation - and is tax-deductible. (The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization). The bake sale is all online and cookies ship nationwide.

Here’s their story in their own words: 

A while ago, a potential investor in our company sat us down and told us to “be less gay”, to stop sharing our story, to disappear behind the cookies we baked. That no one cared, and that all the doors would close in our faces if we didn’t.

We absolutely refused to go back into the closet, and, with all that was on the table, gathering the strength to do that became our proudest moment. Being a gay, married, couple running a very queer business in America in 2023? Not so much fun! We need your help to share this story, so we can keep building a world where we all get to come as we are.

From the outside, if you see us, we are all about joy: cookies! confetti! dinosaurs in tutus! disco balls! Today, we’re, honestly, terrified, not only because of that monstrous double feature the Supreme Court just treated us to, but because we never imagined that, once in the US, fighting for the right to share the joy of being ourselves would still be so hard.

We came left everything behind four years ago, with our dogs and not much else, because we wanted to have the rights of a proper family, and built, out of nothing, Wunderkeks, a cookie company that became our pride and joy and that, more importantly, led us to find our purpose: to build a world that is a safe space, to share the joy we found.

We soon realized that a cookie company could only do so much, so we started working on the Sunday Afternoon Foundation last year and spent all this time gearing up to launch with one goal: that the future we built for ourselves was something we all got, just because it’s right. It’s very fitting that this all happened on July 4th, bringing home the point that these battles are far from over in America.

So, we need help to be able to expand our work and launch the Sunday Afternoon Foundation. We need to raise $100,000 as seed capital to launch our programming to build safe spaces at the intersection of media, community, commerce and education.

On Tuesday, July 11th, 100% of the proceeds from the sale of cookies at www.wunderkeks.com will be donated to the Sunday Afternoon Foundation. (Cookies ship nationwide)

Our ask is that you help us share our story with your network and audience, so that we, together, can reach our goal. Every single cookie we sell, every Tweet, every TikTok, every friend you forward this to, helps!

Help us make so much noise they all get the message: not only that the Queer Community IS NEVER GOING BACK INTO THE CLOSET, but that OUR ALLIES WILL NEVER LET THAT HAPPEN!

- Luis and Hans

Our global theme for July is TREASURE. It was chosen by our Brisbane chapter,  illustrated by Spectator Jonze, and is presented by Mailchimp. 

Discover something valuable in your feed with the hashtags #CMtreasure & #CMATX

Treasure takes many forms, both physical and intangible. Yours may be a ring that has been passed down to you from your ancestors. A hidden spring of water in a parched land. The budding, implicit trust of a new friend. New photographs of the wider galaxy, full of iridescent swirls of matter and light. The ruins of a people from a faraway time and place. 

Our instinct is to clutch them tightly. We seal our treasures in glass cases, to preserve them from time’s decay, to display them as testaments to our worth. We fear their loss, yet in this fear, we lose our ability to cherish them. We must soften our grip and magnify our time spent in their presence, precisely because nothing will stay with us. Eventually, even crown jewels will pass into dust. 

What happens when we expand what we treasure beyond the rare, the beautiful, and the precious to the ordinary and the unnoticed? Even graffitied poetry on the side of a bus stop is a relic of someone who had passed through there, leaving traces for future archaeologists to excavate. What treasures can only you discern?

Our next event will be on Friday, June 16th with Jared Moossy speaking.

Our musical guest with be Cecilia and the Broken Hearts.

Join us for Cuvée Coffee & breakfast tacos.

We’ll be meeting at SXSW Center.

All thanks to our partners thirteen23 and Microsoft Teams.

Register to get your free ticket here.

Let your mind wander with the hashtags #CMreverie & #CMATX

Our global theme for June is REVERIE. It was chosen by our Omaha chapter and illustrated by Eduardo Gardea. 

Let your mind wander with the hashtags #CMreverie & #CMATX.

When your gaze softens around the edges, where does your mind travel? What thoughts arise unbidden? Reverie beckons us to dream while awake, spinning loose associations that seem to emerge from somewhere not entirely inside or outside of you. Our woolgathering summons past memories and nascent fantasies. We turn them over and over, like smooth stones in our hand, making meaning.

Neuroscientists have found that daydreaming ignites your brain’s default mode network. Counterintuitively, this unfocused part of the mind is where many creative breakthroughs take place — think Archimedes‘ fluid mechanics in a bathtub and Newton’s gravity under the apple tree. When you’re not preoccupied with solving a problem and chaining yourself to your desk in a fit of productivity, your mind is free to drift, roaming for the pieces that might complete the puzzle unexpectedly.

Pay attention to what lulls you into reverie. What conditions disarm your focus? Let your thoughts float and not settle on anything, but drift like a cloud, or a child skipping across a sidewalk on a hot summer day. 

Welcome our newest partner Microsoft Teams!

We’re experimenting with their community feature to foster connections in between our month events - and hopefully have some fun.

Download the Teams app here: http://aka.ms/teamsmobiledownload .

After you sign into your free account, use this link to join our community: https://cmaust.in/teams

Microsoft Teams is the all-in-one app for communication and collaboration. More is possible when you’re together in Microsoft Teams. Chat, call, meet, share files, and collaborate on documents all in one place. Use Communities in Microsoft Teams to engage in community discussions, share files and photos, plans events and more. No more switching between apps to connect and get things done. Microsoft Teams connects you with anyone, anywhere — all from one place.

May’s global CreativeMornings theme ACCEPTANCE will be discussed by Jared Moossy on Friday the 19th.

Our musical guest with be Christina Marrs.

Join us for Cuvée Coffee & breakfast tacos.

We’ll be meeting at Pease Park.

All thanks to our partners thirteen23 and Microsoft Teams.

Register to get your free ticket here.

We now accept the hashtags #CMacceptance & #CMATX

Our global theme for MAY is ACCEPTANCE. It was chosen by our Lexington chapter and illustrated by Robert Beatty. 

We now accept the hashtags #CMacceptance & #CMATX

Acceptance is the act of surrendering to our reality, without judgment or fear. There are many things in our lives that cause us discomfort or pain. We attempt to change or resist them, to no effect. So we wave a big stick, keeping them at bay like a wounded animal.

Acceptance is weaving into your story what once caused you pain — and still might, to this day. You welcome that creature into your home, tend to its wounds, and feed it out of your hand. Acceptance is knowing that this feral animal lives side by side with your tender house cat of a heart, always.

Embracing what cannot change can help you gather the energy to change what must. Accept these truths: you cannot make another person love or see you. You did not finish everything before the sun set on another day — and you didn’t need to. Every moment will pass, the blissful and the excruciating. It’s the hardest lesson, but one we need the most: the grace to let go.

On Friday the 28th, we’re having a unique event with China Smith, founder of Ballet Afrique, for April’s global CreativeMornings theme MOVEMENT. 

Our musical guest with be Craig Marshall.

Join us for free breakfast tacos and Cuvée Coffee.

We’ll be meeting at VUKA.  

Register to get your free ticket here.

Keep your social feed moving with the hashtags #CMmovement & #CMATX