055: Miriam Dorsett (Chibur)

Miriam Dorsett on Innovation City

“My role is to go out and find people that are… on fire, doing really good things… and accelerate that.” — Miriam Dorsett

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 cooperation 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. Venture Cafe is the largest combined gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators anywhere in the world. Events are held every Thursday in St. Louis, Miami, and other leading innovation cities around the globe.

Today’s guest is Miriam Dorsett, Connection Doctor at Chibur. She is a full-time artist, entrepreneur, and community activator focused on building community, creating connections, exploring how technology can support artists, and highlighting sustainability. Chibur is a Hebrew word that means “attachment” or “connection from heaven to earth.” Miriam is also a prolific writer — her first book is titled, “What Should I Caption This Picture?”. Miriam sits down with Michael and Tyler to talk about building communities, figuring out how to build her passion into a business, and creating a space for writers and artists to thrive.

They discuss:

• Working with community organizations
• Finding people who are already doing good things and helping them accelerate their work
• Mentoring people at early stages of their careers
• Various forms of connection are necessary for growth
• Connecting to others, connecting to yourself
• Becoming a writer
• Writing as a tool of empowerment, of establishing and clarifying a sense of self
• Writing for oneself vs. writing for work
• Working with other writers and contracting out to other writers
• Writers need to unionize; why don’t writers have more power?
• Project IA; a tool for writers to put their work up for sale, where companies and publishers can bid on their work
• The struggle to remain present and stay off the phone
• “What Should I Caption This Picture?” Writing captions in advance for Instagram, by the time she was done, Miriam had written 700 pages of captions
• The importance of putting out positivity and refraining from negativity
• The importance of continuous creation
• The process of becoming an artist (for some people) involves forgetting everything you’ve been taught
• Teaching artists how to monetize their work