NASCO In Retrospect

Our time at NASCO was filled with pleasant adventures and came as an affirmation. Let me catch you up, NASCO is a 4 day conference held in grand ol’ Ann Arbor, Michigan. Co-opers from around the globe come to the conference to attend workshops, mingle with fellow co-opers, and in many cases, visit Black Elk for its famous party. Usually the trip is paid for by scholarships set aside by the coop organizations from each city, and only a specific amount of members are allowed to go.

Luckily, Sara, Meg, and myself were on that 24 hour bus ride to and from Michigan. Did I mention that NASCO asked us to host a workshop discussing our film? Besides the fact that I forgot the firewire cable which was needed to dump footage when our 1 memory card was full, and the tech. difficulties we experienced when the projector did not let us screen our trailer for those who came to our workshop forcing us to play it on our tiny computer screen, the trip was a success!

Not only did we have the workshop to spread the word about our film, the generous folks at NASCO gave us a booth in the Commons area as well. Year of the Cooperative memorabilia went like hotcakes (few people were seen WITHOUT a YOTC button pinned to their shirts). While Sara and I manned the booth, folks were enticed by our lovely trailer Joe edited for the film.
We met so many people who signed our email lists, and showed great interest in the project (we even met someone with contacts in Canada!). Many of the coops that were mentioned, I never heard of, despite the extensive research we have done so far. We were able to secure on the spot confessional stories from willing participants eager to talk about their current coop experiences.

The response was encouraging, and it came as a relief. Because of the amount of eager faces at our booth, and the button supply getting smaller and smaller as the weekend went by, I can see that there is a far greater need for this doc to get made. We are all so pumped to continue on with this project. I can’t wait to look into the co-ops even further and find that this one has its own farm, or this one has a community bike shop that is open to the public. Whatever the appeal, YOTC film crew is coming with camera in tow.

-Ivy