III Festival Internacional de Cine de Cali 2011 @ FIX University

III Festival Internacional de Cine de Cali 2011 @ FIX University

On the evening of March 20, 2010, one might expect to have found Aaron Von Frank, Class of 2000, either hard at work or fast asleep gearing up for the inaugural TEDxGreenville conference, which he and other area business leaders were putting the finishing touches on in the final week leading up to what would be a sold-out event.


Instead, the 32-year-old entrepreneur was herding thousands of glow stick-wielding civilians through the darkness and the rolling hills of Falls Park to spell out an unmistakable incandescent message that would be seen around the world. There in the park in perfectly legible primary colors read the word “Google.”

 The event, known as Google on Main, came together in less than two weeks and drew crowds of more than 2,000 people. Time, resources, and money were limited, and Von Frank really took the plunge when he took the lead on the project. “I guess I was the only one in the room stupid enough to raise my hand,” he said of volunteering to handle the event.


The glowing letters served as Greenville’s bid for Google’s experimental, super high-speed fiber optics network, to be installed in one lucky American city. In the end, Greenville was not that city (Topeka, KS, stole the show when they officially renamed the city “Google”), but according to Von Frank, all was not lost.


“We knew from the beginning that Greenville was not going to be the most cost-effective city for the Google Fiber experiment, but we wanted to go big anyway and still do something positive for the community,” he said. “I think we accomplished that."


Flash back 11 years and the younger, collegiate version of Von Frank probably would not have predicted that this is where his life would lead him a decade later. Then again, where he is right now professionally—running his own business with fiancé Susan Sebotnick, planning sold-out conferences, and kick-starting guerilla events with limited time and resources—may very well not have been an option for the political science student at the time.


“I’m not sure I was fully sentient when I was 22 years old and was much less capable of charting out my exact career path in a world where new industries are created and old industries are upended seemingly on a daily basis,” he says. “Ten years ago, I don’t know if I could have possibly charted out or even known about what I do right now.”


Even now, what exactly it is that he does isn’t always so easy to explain. As the official “Cat Herder”—his words, not ours—at Bit Tyrant, a boutique PR and brand development agency that he runs with Sebotnick in Greenville, Von Frank manages brand strategy and word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing for companies that “make their communities—and the world—better.”


Though Von Frank didn’t study WOM, brand strategy, or how to organize 2,000 people into a glowing message in less than two weeks in his political science curriculum while at Furman, he says his liberal arts education was an invaluable step in getting to where he is now.


“It helped give me the capacity to better figure myself out, figure out the world, and create the type of entrepreneurial existence and occupation that is a good match for who I am,” he says. “If you aren’t quite sure who you are or what you want out of life, or you plan to go on to get an advanced degree, then I think you can get exposure to more of the world at a liberal arts institution, especially one as good as Furman, than just about anywhere else.”


Though Google on Main didn’t help Greenville win the bid for super high-speed Internet access, the other project Von Frank was working on the same week, TEDxGreenville 2010, opened to a sold-out crowd and was met with rave reviews.


“One of the comments that I really liked about TEDxGreenville 2010,” he says, “was something to the effect of ‘TEDxGreenville was like turning over a rock in my back yard and finding a gold coin. It made me realize that there is a whole new generation of people that I don't know who are already here taking Greenville to the next level.’”


Aaron Von Frank is, without a doubt, one of those people leading Greenville to the next level even though he may have had different plans while at Furman. “The career choice you make when you’re 22 is not necessarily going to dictate who and what you are at 32,” he says.


His advice for new students entering college is this:"Don’t just bury yourself in the books. Make sure to travel, be a part of the community, get outdoors, develop your capacity for leadership. Be an intern in fields that you think might interest you to get hands-on experience. Use the next four years to become a better human being while understanding that your education is not going to end when you graduate; it’s going to begin.”






Go to www.tedxgreenville.org to learn more about TedxGreenville events.