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I'm Virginia Chambers.

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I'm a third year, double
majoring in government and art

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history.

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Tom Tom is the founders festival
here in Charlottesville.

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Tom Tom basically signals the
beginning of spring to me.

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And it always seems to
be the first week when

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it's really nice outside.

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It's located downtown
but we basically

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take over the downtown mall.

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And I just really think it's a
big party about Charlottesville

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and about the innovation that
we see in small cities today.

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There's the summit side, which
has professional conferences.

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I work on the festival side,
and includes the block parties.

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And it includes
community programming

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where Tom Tom partners
with entrepreneurs as well

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as community organizations
to bring programming here

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that's really
Charlottesville-centric.

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A lot of the
speakers are brought

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in in conjunction with
UVA, Batten and Darden,

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as well as the college,
the provost for the arts

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all work together to help bring
some of these big names in.

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There are so many
times when I've

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read something interesting
on Medium or on BuzzFeed

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and then actually
looked at our lineup

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and be like, "Oh, my gosh,
that person's coming."

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The intellectual power that
gets brought to Charlottesville

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and kind of works with and
augments the intellectual power

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that's already here
in Charlottesville

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is really almost
overwhelming to think about.

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We want people to come to
Tom Tom from other cities,

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other small cities, in
and out of Virginia,

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and be inspired to go
back to their hometowns

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and take on big things.

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We want them to go
back and realize

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that just as Charlottesville
was able to do it,

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their small community
can as well.

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