And We're Off...

“30 minutes is plenty of time,” I was reassured by a friend. It certainly wouldn’t take longer than that to get to LaGuardia Airport from Farmingdale, Long Island. On a Sunday night? There couldn’t be traffic.

Sure enough, I found myself stuck in typical New York City traffic trying to catch my plane to Chicago. But with five minutes to spare, I was whisked through security and made it to Gate D6 in time for takeoff!

I missed the second half of my beloved Patriots game, but thanks to @realpatriots, I was able to check in on my team before takeoff (with a healthy lead against Oakland, I felt confident that the Pats would pull out a win).

And so here I am….aboard Flight #353 heading to Chicago. Why? Well, for “Urban 2.0” of course!

Amid plenty of travel delays (including 3 hours at Logan waiting to fly to JFK on Friday night), I’ve been able to complete all the last minute logistics assigned to me in preparation for the upcoming Inner City Economic Summit. Just now, I wrapped up the final “Additional Summit Attendee” list to insert in to the program book in the morning. I’m getting so psyched for this conference. 

Tomorrow we’ll begin “Urban 2.0” – the highly-anticipated event that brings together top-notch urban leaders from around the nation to discuss the future of our inner city economies. We’ve rounded up a fantastic group of panelists, attendees, and even rising urban leaders (students) to join us for two days of research dissemination, idea generation and candid conversation about the challenges – and opportunities – facing our nation’s inner cities.

We’ll kick off tomorrow afternoon with a session on Community-Based Capital for Small Business Financing, which I find particularly interesting given ICIC’s prior research and roundtable discussions on the topic.

From there, we’ll hear remarks from Valerie Piper, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Economic Development at HUD. Ms. Piper is an exciting last-minute addition to the agenda. She’ll be explaining how the American Jobs Act, while a federal program, can have significant positive impacts at the local level.

To round out the day, we’ll have panel loaded with Chicago experts that describes how a distinctive Corporate Community Engagement model has been so successful in revitalizing Chicago’s inner city neighborhoods. Here at ICIC, we know that business-led economic development can have significant impacts on inner city economies; and we look forward to hearing the case study on Chicago to learn from its experiences.

Tomorrow evening wouldn’t be complete without the traditional evening reception. What’s unique to this networking reception, however, is the presentation of the National Mayoral Inner City Leadership Award. Harvard Business School Professor and ICIC founder, Dr. Michael Porter, will be presenting this award to Mayor Mark Mallory of Cincinnati for his forward-thinking and tireless efforts to revitalize inner-city Cincinnati.

Conference substance aside, I’m particularly interested in the Summit because ICIC is going to be trying out some new social media channels. First, we’re going to be live streaming the event (hopefully!). We heard from several ICIC supporters that the agenda looked incredibly strong this year, but for reasons such as reduced travel budgets and limited expendable resources, not all of our partners are able to join us in Chicago. As such, we’re going to video the conference from the Chicago Cultural Center and stream it on our website both Monday and Tuesday. Check it out at www.icic.org/live and let us know what you think.

To accompany our first-ever livestreaming event, we’ve been trying to create buzz using Twitter. We’re going to send updates from the conference to our (now over 1000+!!) followers using the hashtag #ICICSummit. Simultaneously, these updates will be posted to the live stream page. We encourage those at the conference to share what they’re learning, what panelists are saying, and interesting conversations that are taking place at the Summit. Meanwhile, those at home can tweet in questions to @icicorg, again using the hashtag #ICICSummit.

FINALLY (could there possibly be more?), we’re going to live blog from the event. While we’re obsessed with Twitter, we also understand that 140 characters does not do justice for the intriguing conversations that will be taking place. A group of excellent guest-bloggers will be joining us to share their thoughts on the conference as well.  We’ve never live blogged here at ICIC either, so bear with us as we get our feet wet. To follow along, visit www.icic.org/connections/blog.

As I’m sure you can tell, there’s a lot that’s been happening behind the scenes here at ICIC in preparation for tomorrow’s “Urban 2.0” kickoff. Not to jinx ourselves, but it seems as though our ducks are in a row and things will run smoothly tomorrow.

Thank you to all of ICIC’s supporters who have helped to make this Summit happen. I’ve enjoyed my conversations with so many of you over the past few months, and I’m looking forward to meeting you all in Chicago.

And with that, it’s time for landing…so I’ll see you all tomorrow afternoon!

BY Amanda Maher on October 2nd, 2011

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