Creative Louisiana, a monthly morning meetup for creative types, was founded one year ago in June 2011. Patterned after New York-based CreativeMornings, the Louisiana meetup is designed to build our creative community by connecting people and providing inspirational programs and experiences.

Every story has a beginning. The story of Creative Louisiana begins with an email, a website, an online survey, Twitter, and the Lean Startup Methodology.

Last spring, a local young entrepreneur and LSU student, Logan Leger, sent me an email linking to CreativeMornings. “This is cool. Baton Rouge needs this,” he wrote.

I agreed with him. But did anyone else?

Central to Eric Ries's Lean Startup Methodology is the idea that a startup is a grand experiment that attempts to answer a question. The question is not "Can this product be built?" Instead, the questions are "Should this product be built?" and "Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?"

The Lean Startup

First, for background info (and to not copy the concept without permission because we are talking creative capital here, you know), I tweeted the organizers who were running the CreativeMornings events and connected to Tina Roth Eisenberg, the founder. A few email interactions later and Creative Louisiana was a go.

But now what? Who would come?

I designed a short SurveyMonkey survey to gauge interest and sent it out on Twitter. A couple dozen retweets later, I had around 50 responses, overwhelmingly in support of a CreativeMornings-style meetup. Proof of market.

The survey answered Lean Startup Question Number One, telling us that others wanted the program. Next we had to test whether we could build a sustainable program out of Creative Mornings. Where would the resources come from? The speakers? The event planning?

And most importantly, what would Creative Louisiana mean for Louisiana?

Stay tuned for Part 2 . . .