I get to talk a lot about the city. Conversations in the shop with customers, late night chats at bars with friends, meetings about this Detroit project or that. Sometimes I get Detroit fatigue, but most of the time I love it. There's really nothing better than conversing with people who are passionate about where they live.
So it's been fun to work with Model D over the years on their monthly Speaker Series. I started as an occasional panelist and moderator. Then we teamed up once in awhile to present our Open City discussions. Eventually I would become the coordinator of the Series, working alongside the editorial crew at Model D and our partners at WDET.
As much as I value public discourse, sometimes it's hard to rationalize the amount of work that goes into planning a single forum. Months to plan, and then it's all over in two hours. So it helps when I think of each program as a beginning of a dialogue that will hopefully reverberate long after. The impact is hard to measure, but I know a room full of engaged, interested people always gives me energy.
Individually, each conversation is too short and imperfect. But collectively, I think the Series holds together really well as a sort of catalog of issues, ideas and trends that are top-of-mind in Detroit right now. From entrepreneurship to immigration, transportation and education, here are some of the conversations we've hosted this season:
- Fueling Start-Ups (October 2010)
- Gubernatorial Candidate Forum (October 2010)
- Finding the Right Location for Your Business (November 2010)
- Influence = Change? (December 2010)
- Revitalization & Business: IdeaLab (January 2011)
- Raising City Kids (February 2011)
- Mo' Food: Creating a New Local Economy (March 2011)
- Rolling Out the Welcome Mat: Detroit Global City (April 2011)
- New Urban Mobility (May 2011)
- Gay Detroit (June 2011)
