The Dream Share Project

When I was 16 I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. The diagnosis wasn't entirely unexpected since the majority of my family has diabetes too. However, I was really depressed about it at first. When I was graduating high school, my friends Chris Trenner, Patrick Gibson and I decided to throw a charity concert to raise money for diabetes research. We decided to make it our graduation party and call it Chipapalooza. " " The turnout was great - over 300 people and 5 bands, including All Time Low who has now hit the big time - touring the world, playing huge concerts on MTV, getting airplay, etc. We raised over $1000 that first year and a lot of people wanted to see us keep doing more concerts.

Chipapalooza was born - an annual summer fundraising concert for diabetes research.

Since then we've grown the concert, booking bigger bands, securing bigger venues, generating more publicity, and raising more money for diabetes research. Recently, Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer Bob Greene wrote about Chipapalooza in his book on diabetes management. I've loved every second I've spent working on the Chipapalooza concert - it has really become my life's passion.

Recently, we've started dreaming about where we want the concert to go - I started asking people: What is your vision for the ideal concert? what is your dream Chipapalooza?




Here is an approximation of the shared vision we've come up with:

Eventually we want the concert to become a multi-day festival at a large venue like Merriweather Post Pavillion with a massive crowd of people as far as the eye can see. We'd book a couple huge nationally touring headliners that people get super excited about. We also want to book some edgy and ground breaking bands that are on the cutting edge, setting new trends in the music industry. We'd love to have multiple stages for the big acts and also local acts.

One thing we've noticed about Chipapalooza is that some people get more excited for the after party than for the actual concert. We'd like to combine the two into one seamless event. Maybe around dusk, the concert turns into a massive dance party - with a crazy light show and a foam dance tent.

Everyone parties into through the night and we'll have a tent city and camp fires for when people are ready to wind down.

We'd hope cover expenses and turn a profit from tickets, sales, and sponsors. Some of the profit would go into the next year's event and the rest is donated to the JDRF (Juvenile Diabets Research Foundation).

So, that's the dream.

Even though we've been working on this concert for years, we've never really articulated this dream. I think Dream Share is a great place to shape your dreams into something you can actually visualize and achieve.

-Chip Hiden