Built Festival 2023 Overview
It’s that time of year again..and this year we are taking the Built Oregon Festival on the road and collaborating with our friends at Cultivate Bend to present:
Built Festival 2023
Built Oregon + Cultivate Bend
“Cultivated in Oregon. Built by Community.”
This year, with the ongoing support of Travel Oregon as presenting sponsor, we are excited to present an amazing lineup of fireside chats & panel discussions between industry founders, leaders, and community members. Each one will inspire, inform and look to spark conversations around Oregon's unique place within the consumer product ecosystem - see below for overview of this year's talks.
The event will take place throughout the afternoon with ample time for networking and community building, including a happy hour reception. In addition, we will have a marketplace featuring Cultivate Bend member companies, businesses from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and the Built Oregon Accelerator & Bridges Programs.
This event would not be possible without the support of our sponsors: Village Family Capital , Market of Choice, Schwabe, OnPoint Community Credit Union, PRIMETRICS, CENTRL Office & Perkins & Co.
2022 Festival
The 2022 Festival saw us bring back community events for the first time since the pandemic began. These included a founder’s only meetup, The Future of Retail discussion, a panel on How to grow beyond Oregon and a women founder/leader meetup.
We again held the main event at The Redd. The 2022 fireside conversations meandered through discussions on family business, Indigenous entrepreneurship, Latinx craft beverages, what small brands can learn from large brand methods, and the challenges and opportunities around local manufacturing.
2021 Festival
The Built Festival in 2019 was the largest one to date at that time, and we had big plans for 2020. But the world and our communities came to a halt because of the COVID 19 pandemic and we paused any celebrations and focused on the community work for two years.
But in the fall of 2021 we saw an opportunity to bring the community together for a half day of conversations. Even behind masks and practicing social distancing the joy in seeing each other after the almost two years of isolation for many was so welcomed.
2019 Festival
After the first two years, we made the decision to head to a larger venue in 2019, add in a couple more fireside conversations, and triple the size of the vendor area. And something unique happened that to be honest we were not expecting — the event grew bigger, and yet, felt more connected.
The Redd space created a community vibe that carried over to the networking and conversations that were happening throughout the day. The fireside conversations that weaved what might be seen as vastly different threads into a connected community tapestry by the end of the day. Sharing stories of community, resilience, opportunity, sustainability, second chances and doing business the right way.
2018 Festival
2018 had a week’s full of events including ones hosted by Portland Made, OEN, PSU, UofO and another amazing PitchBlack. We also saw the first ‘The Present is Female’ event take place.
This years conversations continued on the themes of entrepreneurship, collaboration, community and innovation. But also delved into topics like building responsible companies and the mental health of founders.
2017 Festival
It all begins with an idea. And that is what 2017’s Built Festival was - the beginning. We convened a group of people to discuss the idea of this event, enabling us to explore ways to build it from the ground up and it was important in year one to really connect the dots of the consumer product legacy and impact in Oregon.