Welcome to day two of our coverage of day two of the Tom Tom Fest, an annual festival about entrepreneurship and music held in Charlottesville, Virginia. For day one, check out this post.
If you’ve never been to Charlottesville it’s worth describing this photo. This is the downtown mall, a pedestrian-only downtown. Most of the events at Tom Tom are held on or around the mall. As with many cities around America, it’s been surprising to see how quickly the downtown has gentrified and really changed in character. These changes have in some ways been for the better, but a lot of the quirkier and more interesting stores have been replaced with wine bars and shops selling expensive clothing.
The schedule of the Tom Tom Festival. These are posted around the downtown mall and are a helpful way to discover what is going on. The sheer quantity of events actually makes following all that is happening difficult, so these are well appreciated.
I visited the big event of the day, “Innovations in Early Childhood Education.” 
The panel discussion about early education and how to improve outcomes for children presented strategies and solutions to help get young kids educated. Hosted by Mike Chinn, one of the executives behind SNL Financial, along with Bob Pianta, Dean of UVA’s Curry School, Lisa Howard, CEO of E3, Sarad Davenport with City of Promise; and, Kristen Jamison, Director of The Loop Center for Social and Emotional Development.
There was a healthy crowd for the education summit at the Paramount Theater.
We also stopped by Nevertheless We Persist, which was a “Workshop on the Physical, Political, and Poetical of Aging While Female.” Seeing great workshops like this really was impressive. There is a great diversity of topics covered at the festival, ranging from building a chatbot to promoting yourself online to aging while female. It’s good to know the organizers of Tom Tom have embraced different topics to cover during the festival.
This kid had a big snake draped across his shoulders, which was pretty hardcore. A good way to end the day, if there ever were one.
