OK, up for air, mostly jet-lag free, and feeling capable of distilling some words around what has happened for the last couple weeks touring Europe screening this new film of ours.

It was an adventure, let’s put it that way. An adventure with zero missed planes or trains, an unexpectedly massive crowd in Berlin, sold out and chock full venues in every city in Poland, a slight bit of illness, heated conversations, excitable new friendships, about 15 people that claim they want to move to Detroit immediately, passionate city-speak, a wonderful stop in a fellow post-industrial town called Heerlen, lots of new beers, some relaxation in Paris and a lot of headphones-in-the-ear travel bliss kind of movement (I was listening most frequently to Detroit’s own Reverend, who I had the pleasure of seeing live the night before I left for Europe).

But anyway, what does all that mean?

First, I’ll start by saying it was an honor and joy to be travelling through Europe talking pretty much exclusively about Detroit. Seriously. Of course we talked about Lodz, too, but it was incredible to talk with hundreds of people about cities in general, the future of post-industrial places, and just ideating about what will be key components of next-generation cities, and how Detroit in a lot of ways is beautifully positioned to innovate in a lot of those categories. That conversation in general, of course, was met with some skepticism but more so a sense of excitement because of the way that a lot of Europeans envision Detroit– architecture + techno music + historical ruins = dreamland. It’s interesting to take a lot of the things that we excitedly chat about here and otherwise about Detroit, and place them in an entirely new context with people that aren’t as aware of many of the nuances like a local is.

Second, lots and lots of ideas came to me on the road. Some of them:

1. In talking with the guys at SocialBeta and Betawerk in Heerlen (a former mining town facing similar issues as Detroit), we are really keen on formulating an alliance of post-industrial cities across the world and accelerate the information-sharing between them with the conventional tools that largely rule our online existence lately: Twitter, Facebook, Skype, etc.  Think about the idea of having monthly Skype meetings with representatives from cities all over the world talking about what innovative stuff we are doing and using that as fuel to move forward localized versions in our own town.  Electric!
2. I learned of a lot of different efforts  that are working in other countries that could easily be utilized in Detroit.  Just a couple of examples:  Fix My Streetin Great Britian, Kafka Brigade in the Netherlands.  The list goes on and on.
3. I am really in to the idea of using the film and its subsequent screening events as tools to create non-conventional collisions of culture and activity.  Huh?  Collisions of culture– getting people in the same room to do things they normally wouldn’t do together.  Most wouldn’t necessarily think of a film doing that, but what if our film screenings and some funds raised through it were used to fuel some seperate initiatives that extended the message of the film itself in to tangible action.  And everyone that came to the film was the purveyor of that action.  Sounds kind of fun.  My mind swirls thinking about how far we could take that.

But anyway, we’re back in the saddle, and we’ve  got some new projects and ideas to push our work in to March. The excitement builds.