The Jelly

Thursday night we were invited to a ‘Jelly,’ a relaxed event for techies, artists, entrepreneurs and other passionate Las Vegans (lol) to jam together and make connections.  We decided to bring 7cees’ peanut butter and mingle.

The Jelly was hosted at The Beat, an awesome coffee shop / office / art gallery / co-working space that recently sprung up around Las Vegas’ up-and-coming downtown community.  Crowd Siren let Alex and Sam use their office space to set up a photo-shoot to document the energy at the event.  We set up, played some music, poured some wine and had a blast with the people who streamed through the door.  Enjoy the pics above!

I spent most of the evening walking around and sharing how we’ve been exploring who we are and where we naturally fit into culture, getting comments like “wow, I didn’t think I was going to go to that level tonight!”  I met a guy named John who had worked eight years as a lawyer and had come to the jelly because he wanted to start doing something he cared more about.  I could see him starting to make that happen just in the few hours we were there.

Having the opportunity to express creative passion and do something you care about really seems to be universal; all people want it.  In a world full of division it’s important, even vital, that we see the potential of the fact that everybody shares the same deep needs from society.

We’ve built American society around the basic needs of food, shelter, equal rights and independent freedom and it has flourished.  The next step is to adapt from independent to interdependent, to realize that in the context of a new era of connectedness we can all have much more freedom in our own lives if we support each other in finding theirs.  This can’t come from government or law; it has to be an attitude of the people.  People like those in Downtown Project and the thousands of others we’ve met who are setting aside outdated habits and antiquated models to forge a better lifestyle for themselves and their communities.

Cheers to you all!

-Mike