Daily Archives: 05/23/2009

Matthew Hinsley & the Guitar Foundation of America

(Community Matters) My first lunch yesterday – after breakfast with Lainey Melnick who’s considering a Congressional run against Lamar Smith, but that’s a completely different story – was with my favorite classical guitarist & entrepreneur, Matthew Hinsley – at Corazon (the old Castle Hill restaurant).

Matthew always blows me away. Eighteen or so months ago, we met and discussed his ideas about a replicable curriculum for teaching classical guitar to students. Batted around ideas especially for earned income models (he was well on his way here, I mean to suggest no meaningful contributions to his success or thinking). The curriculum is up and running at GuitarCurriculum.com.

Annual, national classical guitar convention will take place in Austin in 2010. Matthew and the Austin Classical Guitar Society are blowing out the model; Matthew taking this to an entirely new level. They’ve rented the Long Center for 6 days (June 22 – 27, 2010) and have already engaged the Miro Quartet and the Austin Symphony for the festivities. Obviously absent from the line up: Craig Hella Johnson’s Conspirare and Graham Reynolds & Peter Stopschiniski’s Golden Hornet Project but I digress and shouldn’t offer up programing suggestions.

Loved, loved catching up with one of my favorite arts entrepreneurs. It’s already inspired me to pull together a dinner with Matthew & his wife, Glenda and Graham Reynolds & Shawn Sides and Kirk Lynn & Carrie Fountain and Michael & Rachel Feferman – now just finding the intersection of available dates for these arts entrepreneurs and Steven’s summer travel schedule – oy ve.

Personality Type Clusters and the Texaplex

(Community Matters) Mapping the Big 5 personality typesRichard Florida notes these new maps.

Don’t we all . . . . I immediately looked to see where Austin & Texas lie. The Texaplex isn’t represented in all the maps but in enough to show we’re especially strong in Extroversion (check out the hot spot – must be Texarkana!) and Openness to Experience. Pleased to see not so much so in Neuroticism (I’ve played with predicting this by zip code!). Funny, we don’t appear to especially track with what I consider peer cities, though, admittedly, my capacity for comparative visual observation from graphics is not a strong point. If you make observations, please relay them.