009: Cami Thomas (For the Culture TV)

Cami Thomas on Innovation City

“I realized that if a picture tells a thousand words, than a moving image must tell a million.” — Cami Thomas

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in conjunction with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community.

Today’s guest is Cami Thomas. Cami is a marketing professional, a blogger, and a documentary filmmaker based in St. Louis, Missouri. She is also the creator of For The Culture TV – “The underground network for ground level culture.”

For The Culture TV is an underground video blog that features interviews, freestyle sessions, dance videos, mini-documentaries, and short films from Cami and her team, as well as other creators. Find Cami on Twitter at @CamiCruzThomas and Instagram at @CamiCruzThomas. Find For The Culture TV on Twitter at @FTCTVOfficial and on Instagram at @FTCTVOfficial.

They discuss:

• Being storytellers and the power of storytelling
• Why Cami got into filmmaking
• Using video to tell stories
• Why filmmaking resonates in a unique way
• Protests in Ferguson
• Misconceptions about North County, Ferguson, Chesterfield
• The complexity and multi-faceted nature of life in St. Louis
• Venture Cafe, progress, and potential
• Segregation in St. Louis
• Serving as an introduction to new viewpoints
• Helping people have productive conversations
• Making an emotional connection to find common ground
• Telling vs. Showing
• Innovative storytelling with smartphones and drones
• Creating greater connectivity
• Cami’s original series Smoke City, which showed St. Louisans a different side of their city
• Cami’s goal of taking For The Culture TV international
• The fear of the unknown
• The importance of knowing your neighbors
• Cami’s advice for confronting your biggest fears
• Sioux Passage Park, a park in North County that Cami would go to with her family and friends