The business of culture

As their neighbors crunched salted peanuts and buttered popcorn, Rick Schrimper and Zach Posner looked out from their seats along the first baseline of Yankee Stadium and created a business.\n"I'd never been to New York City before," said Schrimper, an accounting lecturer at IU. "It was as good of a place as any to have a business meeting."\nSchrimper traveled to the Big Apple to meet with Posner, a 2001 IU graduate and former student of Schrimper's, to brainstorm ideas on how to create a talent pool for college artists to present their work to their peers and the industry. The conclusion reached at Yankee Stadium was cultureU.org.\nThe brainchild Web site of Schrimper and Posner is the perfect mesh of art, technology and business. The site lets college artists in a variety of fields like music, fashion and visual arts post their art online so it is easily accessible.\n"We took a beautiful blend of technology and successful business models to the arts and came out a winner," said Schrimper, now the Web site's CEO.\nSchrimper said he was reading about satellite radio in the early '90s and was disgusted with what he read, not believing the public would pay for music they could get over the airwaves for free.\n"I was looking at shit," Schrimper said. "The technology was great, but the content was yuck. I thought, 'There's got to be a way to get more original music.'"\nSchrimper took his fragment of an idea to Posner to help him think through the best way to connect technology with music.\n"We wanted to put Bloomington on the map as a cultural mecca," said Posner, cultureU.org's president.\nIU senior Mitch Greenfield's involvement in cultureU.org began as a class project. Schrimper, who is friends with one of Greenfield's professors, Dwight Worker, had Worker assign the creation of cultureU.org to a group of students in his class.\n"You'll never find the energy and enthusiasm you find in college-aged kids," Schrimper said. "If only you could capture that energy and motivation."\nNow Greenfield is the chief Web developer of the brightly designed yellow, red and blue Web site that was launched in mid-December and is still in its beta, or testing, stage. \n"It's never really complete," Greenfield said, "because we keep adding artists."\nClicking on the "musicians" link takes the user to a list of the artists and bands who are trying to make it big with cultureU.org. In his bio, IU senior Chris Jerles is caught mid-song with head thrown back and mouth open wide, wearing an orange Oasis \nT-shirt. His fingers grip his guitar. \nJerles said the mentality of cultureU.org is ideal for artists like him.\n"It provides what you're going after -- to create something you can share with people. This is a way you can do that," Jerles said.\nWhereas Jerles put a photo of himself on his cultureU.org profile, other artists choose different options. Instead of her portrait, IU graduate student Rachel Greenhoe chose one of her 11 paintings, "Burano Market," to represent herself.\nGreenhoe said she decided to post her work to gain more exposure as she worked on her master's degree in art administration at IU. Recently, an interior-designer friend in Chicago who is working on a freelance project designing a bar recommended Greenhoe to her clients.\n"The site provides me with an easy way to show my work to potential clients," Greenhoe said. "The owners of the bar were looking for art work to hang in their business, and the site was an easy way for them to see my work."\nGreenhoe's experience with cultureU.org is exactly the one Schrimper hopes to continue to cultivate.\n"This gives the opportunity to students at small schools, where no one knows who you are, to compete with the big names," Schrimper said. "It levels the playing ground."\nEventually Posner and Schrimper hope to have every college across the country logged on. But for now, they are focusing on three key schools where the creators have connections: Stanford University, where Posner's sister attends; New York University, "because to be in the arts you have to be in New York City," Schrimper said; and IU.\n"(IU) is a love, and it's where we are all based," Posner said. "So it gets favored the biggest."\nStill, the creators are ready to see the site move beyond its grassroots.\n"By fall we'd like to have it at 10 to 15 campuses," Greenfield said. "We don't want to throw it out there all at once. We want to try and get a few campuses going really well first."\nAlthough the site has just three primary schools at the moment, artists from other schools such as Notre Dame University, Harvard University and Columbia University have added their music and art to the site. Schrimper is banking on news of the free promotion site to travel fast.\n"College kids are so connected," he said. "Once you get college kids to use something, word travels fast."\nAlthough Schrimper has been involved in previous business ventures before, he is sure of the success of cultureU.org.\n"I wouldn't have pursued it if I didn't get strong feedback from artists in the first place," Schrimper said.\nSchrimper and Posner said they believe cultureU.org is well on the way to success. Schrimper wants to expand the Web site to include more categories, including movies and journalism. Talks are underway to pair with a major satellite radio station, and the site has paired with WIUS-AM for a site showcase in which four musicians from cultureU.org, including Jerles, will perform on the air Friday.\nSchrimper said the broadcast will be digitally recorded and aired on the Web site, where users can vote on their favorite performance. Schrimper said he is working to get the winner a gig at a local establishment and eventually a possible contract with the satellite radio station.\n"If you throw competition in there, it helps," Schrimper said.\nAlthough they admit they have big dreams, Schrimper and Posner created the site with one specific idea in mind.\n"We're not out there to make millions," Posner said. "We want to give back to the artists as much as possible. It's a fun ride that's really starting to work."\n-- Contact Features Editor Kathleen Quilligan at kquillig@indiana.edu.