One Spark, The World's Crowdfunding Festival

The one spark events have always been one of my favorite community events. Creativity and new ideas from people in the local community bring the whole city together. However, it is also a contest in which people can choose from each booth or company who has the best idea.Location- downtown underneath the football stadium gate. It was a rainy day but it didn't stop the crowd for participating.This year was much smaller than the previous years and they also charged a 12 dollar fee for each guest which was way overpriced considering it only includes entrance fee. Drinks should at least be included. Not as much people participated in the program this year. So I felt the vibe wasn't too exciting.They did have some cute ideas like the wax candle glass ideas or even solar powered RVS. Anyway it was fun but I can't get over the rip off entrance fee of 12.00 dollars!!

My first time being able to attend one spark....... Totally impressed!!! Downtown is a beautiful place and this is showing how much is down there. I really didn't know what to expect, a Crowd funding festival!? You walk around and people have booths set up to tell you about their ideas.... Big or small, then you can vote for them thru the app and can also contribute financially if you want to. Cool to hear about the creators. It was a wonderful way to spend the day just hanging out and loved all the food trucks there.

One Spark! Yay! I enjoyed this year's festival even more than last year. There were more vendors but the space downtown was a little more compacted and easier to get to. I attended both as a spectator and as a creator for a work project. The organization was better this year. Food truck alley was fabulous and packed every single day. I enjoyed trying different things for lunch every day. Project information on the website was handy, but their location was not always easy to find quickly. The voting was easy once you got registered. I know a number of people who had registration issues, myself included. The registration site said my phone was registered with a different account so I could not log in. There was no one who would solve my problem. I ended up having to show ID at the registration booth and have them check me in so I could vote. Once I was confirmed checked in, I was able to use the app and vote. I do hope they have a way to solve registration issues next year, not just find a work around.An absolute ton of people visited downtown during the festival. The first day the drive downtown was insane, but I remember and came around the back every other day. There was JSO and private security constantly walking about which allowed creators to leave tents and tables in place instead of breaking them down every single night. There was also a bevy of One Spark volunteers who were eager to help. Each creator had a volunteer assigned to them and there were super helpful checking on us, answering questions, and bringing handouts if needed. Also - props to Florid Blue for the creator tent. Free snacks, drinks, and massages were available daily at the creator's tent. I even managed to snag a stick charges - always handy to have around.It was a great festival. I had a great time, learned about new projects, found some people to support, and ate my way through the food truck alley. Looking forward to next year!

I am so thrilled we attended One Spark this year! As Daisy D. said, it is really great to see downtown crawling with so many people. It's like downtown Jax is finally coming alive again and it is such a great, great thing!I think it's amazing that our wonderful city gets to host this huge event every year. So many people with so many amazing new ideas all coming together in one place for a great big showcase. I throughly enjoyed walking the streets and seeing all the new ideas and inventions. Also saw some really great art and heard some really great music.We only went one day this year, so we didn't get to see everything. I definitely plan on attending multiple days next year so I'll be able to take much more of it in!I really can't add anything extra to what everyone else has already said about this amazing event, but I do have just one last thing to say:Love the huge ass Goldfish floating in the water in Hemming Plaza! Oh yea! http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/one-spark-the-worlds-crowdfunding-festival-jacksonville?select=Br_nES2oTtkB7otIkp2NJQ#Br_nES2oTtkB7otIkp2NJQ

One spark is LEGIT! When I first heard about One Spark, I was like whatever...I might check it out. Then, my friend sent me a message on Facebook about it...I skimmed the website and I told my friend "I don't feel like reading it, what is it?" She says basically it's an art walk on steriods! Hahah, I thought to myself....now were talkin!" Too bad I only went to 2/5 days of the event.Day 1: Walked around, some guy comes up to me and says you've got a nice camera you n your friend should check out this Fashion Show there cute girls, free wine/beer, and free Bonefish Grill! I'm sold! hahah it was amazing! It was how i pictured New York Fashion week on a smaller scale and I got to be paparazzi with 4 other photographers. We got served different wines, a fancy tuna dish that was amazing, a seafood mix with chips, and a quinoa mixture. What a start to One Spark!Then we checked out the One Spark Food Village! Food Trucks, to food stands, Jamaican, Asian, Brazilian, BBQ, tacos it was all there! Then, walked all over the place soaked in all the art, music, random street shows, and different One Spark booths. Julie A. told me about the Happy Grilled Cheese Truck and I found out they were opening at 8pm. As soon as 8pm hit, the chase started. We ended up going in the wrong direction but eventually we made it and it was all worth it. Check out the review here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-happy-grilled-cheese-jacksonville#hrid:nMuhGR9h2BuTVQIhrsmiwADay 2: Walked around.....ended up at the Fathomsphere booth by Chamblin's bookmine. The Fathomsphere goal was to restore an unused building downtown to serve as a cultural center. They had a live band, people freestyling, hula hoops for kids, a dance floor, and the kids running the show were so talented. The music even got me get down on the dance floor! This was the 1st booth I voted for. How good were they? Awesome enough to win 1st place in the music category! There was another live band that was redonkulous! They had a crowd of at least 100 people in a massive circle! I have video of the music straight flowing through people dancing! If they had a tip jar, they would need a bathtub to hold all that mula! After that, we got food from Corner Taco, got samples of free food like Broccoli Brownies, Fruit and vegetable juices, and walked around until our feet bled.If you want to go to a place where the energy is electric you MUST to come to One Spark! Art, music, technology, dancing, food, and good vibes...what else could you ask for? There is too much to say about One Spark....I added a gang of pictures so you can see for yourself!

Opening night of One Spark 2014 was ridiculously fun! I've never felt such community TRANSCENDENCE in Jacksonville before! There was a giant wave of ENERGY and I just crested on top of it all night long. Giant sculptures to check out, photos ops to interact with, free beer, free ice cream, live music, and I kept running into friends at every corner!What is One Spark you ask? It's an GIANT annual block party to help fund your dreams! Be it a start up business, technological invention, non-profit, bakery, an after school program, medical technology, or supporting the local arts. These "Creators" receive votes via smart phone from the participating crowd which are FREE to give. At the end of the 5 day festival they tally up the votes and each creator receives a cut of the prize money. Last year the overall winner was ReThreaded, a local non-profit that helps ex-prostitutes in India learn life skills to survive so they don't have to turn back to prostitution. My favorite this year was the HUGE Teepee that sat in Hemming Plaza and had a live marsh mellow roast led by Dr. Wayne Wood inside. The interior of the Teepee was beautiful too with a hanging chandelier and oval paintings hung on the wall. So mysteriously elegant! I also enjoyed the "secret tunnel" leading to a bank vault under the old Barnett Bank. AdLib Tours is trying to restore all the secret tunnels in Jacksonville and connect them. Awesome!We also listened to Firewater Tent Revival at "One Spark After Dark" which was set in the Jax Chamber of Commerce parking lot and filled with Food Trucks. The lounge area was ultra comfortable and two beers from Intuition Ale Works were also available for purchase. Everyone was in SUCH a good mood! I talked with plenty of strangers and I felt like we were one cuddly family. We banded together on the sardine packed skyway when one person had to get off we did it 'Dauntless' style! The overly anxious skyway drivers kept closing the doors on riders and my father got slapped in the shoulders with them. This poor woman almost got hit before we yanked her inside! All the riders banded together to open, move, and help you jump off in time. The community camaraderie was unlike anything I've ever experienced. That alone made One Spark a huge success to me!Saturday was another experience entirely. We all swore to take a day off work next year and attend on a Thursday or Friday *instead* of heading out on a Saturday. The line at the skyway was wrapped around the upper level all the way DOWN to the ground floor. We decided to walk the fifteen minutes to downtown instead of waiting in line. It was actually fun and we go to pose in front of some Shaun Thurston mural work for an impromptu photoshoot. The crowds downtown on Saturday were THICK! Thicker than Disney World on a Holiday! I am thrilled how popular One Spark has become and hope the momentum propels it to continue year after year---but this lady will kindly NOT go on a Saturday again. I felt squeezed the entire time I was there and I just didn't enjoy that.As an attendee to both years of One Spark I am glad the bugs of the voting process have been worked out but I did I miss all the yarn bombing that was prevalent last year. I am SO proud of the success of One Spark and I'm already excited for it next year!http://www.beonespark.com/

I will admit I don't usually go to events like this. Sometimes they're just too much of a headache that I don't want to put up with. But i'm so glad I went this year. It's so nice to see Downtown Jacksonville actually crawling with people. The idea of getting all the creators together in one place is fantastic and why shouldn't Jacksonville be the one to do it?!?!!It was fun meandering in and out of the different booths and seeing all the city had to offer. Loved the One Spark Alt brew from Intuition. My only complaint would have to be of the organization of the Food Village. I LOVED that all the brick & mortars came out alongside the food trucks to keep our bellies happy. I didn't love so much that it became difficult to navigate as the crowds grew and the lines snaked around. I don't know if they can, but maybe having the food tents up on the sidewalk to create more walking space in the street would help. Just a thought. Other talking to a few other One Sparkers, they had similar thoughts on the organization. While I can understand some creators don't want to be pigeon-holed into one type of category, for ease of seeing all the creators from a user's perspective, it would make sense to have all the Creators grouped into broad categories (i.e. Tech, Education, Green, Music, etc). Maybe they were, but it sure didn't feel like to me.I'm excited to see what the continued growth of this festival will do for DTJax (and now Berlin). We want a vibrant downtown. We want it to be a place to go. Now we just have to set it on fire!

I love what this festival is doing for Jacksonville. Not only does it showcase talented artists and musicians, talented minds of the technological and innovative type are welcome to showcase as well. You had the usual painters and performers, but at OneSpark, they had people raising funds for cool ideas like healthy snacks in kids schools, touch screen tables, a school based in a skatepark, and a music studio powered by bicycle. Oh, and let's not forget the street full of food trucks! There were so many people and downtown came alive ArtWalk style in the weekend daylight. So many fun things to see, so many interesting people to meet. As for the voting process, I thought it was great that visitors could vote for more than one exhibit/cause. Alot of people complained that the distribution of money was too wide so that it thinned out the winnings. I disagree. I think it's great that anyone who got any vote received a portion of the money. After all, everyone here made an effort to get votes, so why not? Out of the people I voted for, two were winners. I can't wait to see the artsy revolution get jumpstarted from this awesome event. Go One Spark!

This is an excellent event to attend if you are looking for an investor or looking to invest in new ideas and businesses. This is not an event you want to attend if you dont like big crowds. There are alot of innovative ideas found here at One Spark. Its what you make of it. I enjoyed meeting people, voting for ideas , eating, drinking and listening to good music. Give it a try you may like it. Keep and open mind. See ya next year!

It is a must see. Bring the family! I enjoyed One Spark this year, just as much as last year. I get to see so much diversity and new inventions and cool ideas! I highly recommend you to come more than one day. This year I went five days and still did not get to see it all. I am proud of our city for doing this every year. I would love it if they did this more than once a year. I enjoyed everything I saw.