Are We Here Yet Podcast

Scott M. Graves
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Are We Here Yet Podcast

We're telling the stories of entrepreneurs artists and other creative class warriors making a go of it in cities and small towns all over the country. The Are We Here Yet? Podcast blends topics of economic development, urban planning and arts and culture. We are the official podcast for SMGravesassociates.com.

  1. 1 DAY AGO

    Re-thinking Commerce: Enter the Gifting Grove

    As we enter the winter solstice, exploring the dark that inevitably comes before the light, we’re considering new ways to think about gifting, yes, and what of commerce?  What of a community that reverses the epidemic of loneliness pervasive in our modern society?  Can we do better?  That’s up in the latest Are We Here Yet? Podcast to close season X and 2024.  I’m joined by Veronica Mangio, founder of the Minneapolis-based Gifting Grove and once again by my good friend from Grand Isle County, Vermont based Byron Garcia of Natural Designs.  Veronica is the inspiring founder of Gifting Grove, a company dedicated to facilitating community that can involve creating meaningful, sustainable, and handcrafted gifts that leave a lasting impact, sharing time, and skills. Her vision is rooted in promoting conscious gifting, empathy in an epidemic of loneliness, and supporting local artisans/organizations, fostering environmental and social well-being.  Veronica has turned her passion for sustainability and community into a thriving business redefining how we think about giving.  Referenced in our episode Braiding Sweetgrass Wall Kimmerer Our episode on Biomimicry with Byron Garcia on the Innova802 series The Giving Tree: Shel Silverstein (link to the youtube video) Artist Neri Oxman Strong Towns

    53 min

  2. DEC 13

    AWHY - Neil Mylet

    Neil Mylet is a do-er.  He’s a farmer, a tech advocate and connecting rod.  Neil is also putting his money and his talents where his mouth is, funding his own project, Camden Castle and ensuring a wide spectrum of top-tier programming and connections for his 600 neighbors in the village of Camden, Indiana. Neil sees great opportunity in a future rural economy leveraging AI, blockchain, among other tech and tech-enabled products and services yet to be developed. Students and their families from this village of  are given opportunities to intern and engage with organizations in the United States such as the Tulsa Innovation Labs and MIT and internationally with tech centers like the RDI Labs of Ireland. "It’s very challenging in rural America to access a competitive advantage, resources, in a comfortable environment and we need to change that…" This conversation was all about how folks like Neil, yours truly, and you our faithful listeners build access into your own local projects; how do we stay the course on what is important to us as a project of economic development and physical space development despite all the challenges.  Listen in to learn, grab some ideas and make them your own. Mentioned in our episode: Camden Castle, Tulsa Innovation Labs,  House of Lobkowicz, MIT, RDI Lab (Ireland)

    56 min

  3. DEC 2

    Innova802: Pt II New Frameworks Plus The Jazz Room Celebrates the Saxophone

    We joined Ace McCarleton of Vermont-based New Frameworks to talk about their panelized building innovations for the housing marketplace.  New Frameworks practices high performance natural building towards the construction of climate justice and regeneration.  Innovation is expressed in their home construction products and processes, their sourcing of materials, for sure.  But it’s also in their employee-ownership model, their steadfast dedication to inclusion and more.   Learn in two episodes their origin story, Ace’s thoughts on housing innovation, employee ownership and how to grow a company that consistently leads through example. Listen to Part I, Episode 174 Explore New Frameworks New Frameworks Beam Embodied Carbon Calculator tool  Link to panels page Link to the Casitas models  And the The Jazz Room… We celebrate the Saxophonists!  Our episode includes the likes of Billy Pierce, Jackie MacLean, Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane.

    1h 1m

  4. NOV 27

    Innova802: New Frameworks Plus The Jazz Room on Drummers

    We joined Ace McCarleton of Vermont-based New Frameworks to talk about their panelized building innovations for the housing marketplace.  New Frameworks practices high performance natural building towards the construction of climate justice and regeneration.  Innovation is expressed in their home construction products and processes, their sourcing of materials, for sure.  But it’s also in their employee-ownership model, their steadfast dedication to inclusion and more.   Learn in two episodes their origin story, Ace’s thoughts on housing innovation, employee ownership and how to grow a company that consistently leads through example. Plus in The Jazz Room we celebrate the Drummers!  Host Joan Watson-Jones dedication to drummers. Though she did not have the pleasure of interviewing the great Roy Haynes who passed away last week, we have many of his friends to celebrate in this episode.

    1h 7m

  5. NOV 21

    Innova802: Snap, Crackle, Pop! Plus a Tribute to the legend Quincy Jones

    Glavel is a construction materials company manufacturing foam glass gravel, or in company parlance GLAVEL.  CEO Rob Conboy sat down with the Innova802 crew to discuss what it took to bring this technology to market in the US.  How are they leading in recycling and carbon sequestration, excellence in innovative construction materials how they plan for growth and what effect they can have contributing to solve the housing crisis.  We recently toured their facility and give credit to the Glavel team for epitomizing what a Vermont rural innovation company should look like.  Shout out to those mentioned who helped this team and many other Innova802 guests along the way including Flexible Capital Fund, Fresh Tracks Capital and  Rural Works. Stay on the line for host Scott M. Graves’s personal tribute to one of his inspirations, the legendary composer, arranger, producer and entrepreneur Quincy Jones.  Jones passed away at his home in Los Angeles on November 3 at the age of 91.

    50 min

  6. NOV 17

    AWHY? Music feature Extra: We Remember Saxophonist Lou Donaldson

    Lou Donaldson passed away on November 10, 2024.  In a career spanning more than seven decades, the alto saxophonist began as a stylist devotee to the bop of Charlie Parker, quickly evolving into a soulful and bluesy player which became his signature. Joan Watson Jones, host of the AWHY? Music feature The Jazz Room sat down to interview Lou in 2020 at Studio 952 in Harlem, New York City. In Part 1 of their interview Lou tells us how he got started in the business and why he took up the Saxophone. In Part 2 he tells us about working with Miles Davis, Jimmy Smith and offers his own observations on the future of Jazz.

    58 min

  7. NOV 14

    AWHY? Music feature: Celebrating Gershwin in Jazz

    Our music feature, The Jazz Room returns for a feature of the great American composer George Gershwin.  Host Joan Watson Jones features many great musicians from a long list of recordings featuring the work of George Gershwin, one of the most prized composers of the American song book. For jazz musicians, Gershwin represents an endless source to be mined to create great improvisations and has been for over a century.

    31 min

  8. NOV 6

    The Case for Incremental Development

    Our guest is Noah Harper.  I met Noah at the CNU New England conference in Providence, RI. We were tasked by the organization to debate whether the Congress is positioned well as a leading voice in the current housing challenge before us all.  Thus sparked some great discussion.  Explore Noah's Substack here  Noah has been featured in Strong Towns.  He is a community planner for the firm J.M. Goldson.  Noah is a strong advocate for incremental development and we're sure you will find inspiration in his seamless movement through themes of design excellence, craftsmanship to equity and democracy.   In his own words,   We are, broadly, in a crisis of housing affordability, of which one notable piece is the lack of supply. The question to me then becomes: how should we solve the supply issue? We’ve been experimenting with a lot of different methods of building in the last century, but a return to a more traditional way of building might yield the best result. I’m really interested in the work and writing of Christopher Alexander, an architecture professor working in the sixties and seventies who wrote a book called “The Timeless Way of Building.” It’s on many planners and architects' shelves, but I think some of the biggest ideas have been overlooked (at least until now).  I like to think of it in terms of music. How did we arrive at different genres? How do they evolve over time? By people playing them, innovating, copying off one another. A mutually agreed-upon structure, but also room to innovate, for participation, for call and response. Memes are another great example too—order and variation and innovation. And one of Alexander’s big ideas is that our places grew up in the same way, too. It’s why so many of our towns and villages have a certain quality, and yet they’re not quite the same.  This decentralized, memetic, fundamentally creative act is what motivates me as a planner and writer and advocate. It’s the way we achieve beauty and a more democratic order in our built environment, through more people building and taking part in their place. And, beyond the sort of beauty argument, I think you can make a really strong moral and economic case for it too.

    53 min
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We're telling the stories of entrepreneurs artists and other creative class warriors making a go of it in cities and small towns all over the country. The Are We Here Yet? Podcast blends topics of economic development, urban planning and arts and culture. We are the official podcast for SMGravesassociates.com.

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