Long-form writing
Many times, writing assignments require brevity and economy of words. It’s an important skill.
But sometimes, I have the luxury of expanding my thoughts - really diving into a topic and exploring it in more depth. Here are some examples.
Community Leadership Visit
Each year, the Springfield (Mo) Area Chamber of Commerce takes a delegation of community leaders to a peer city, to learn from the experiences of another community and to bring back ideas that will benefit the Springfield region. I have been privileged to participate in these trips since 2016 and put together a comprehensive post-trip report documenting the experience. Here are several examples.
Prologue, from the 2017 Community Leadership Visit report on Boise, Idaho:
Boise, Idaho is unique.
Most city leaders—those worth their salt, anyway—will say their city is unique. But the people of Boise have made it a point to live their uniqueness and embrace their idiosyncrasies. It is a thriving metropolis with a small-town feel, geographically isolated and yet welcoming and inclusive, equally proud of its commitment to the outdoors and its technology sector.
Springfield leaders have been to Boise for the Community Leadership Visit before, in 1997. But it’s not surprising that Boise was chosen as the first location for a repeat CLV visit; the city is almost unrecognizable to those who were on the trip 20 years ago. The metro area has more than doubled in population as people from the West Coast flock to the area because of its high job growth and quality of life. Numerous national publications list the city as among the best places to live, work, start a business and raise a family.
It wasn’t always this way.
In the 80s and 90s, the city’s downtown was in trouble. Its central commercial district, like so many others nationwide, was floundering and city leaders were torn about how to fix it. Paralysis about whether to build a shopping mall in center city or in the suburbs led to a downtown so empty that one major developer recalls his mother sitting in the window of a downtown deli and waving to passersby, just so they’d think there was something going on. National magazines wrote articles about how Boise was trying to kill its downtown.
What changed?
Many things … but also, very little (again, those idiosyncrasies). It took strong, forward-looking leaders with a love for their city and a vision for what it could be. It took support—moral, political and financial—from the community for that vision. And it took input and buy-in from everyone … business and government leaders, educators, the not-for-profit community and citizens … to make that vision real and attainable.
Those lessons are contained in this report. And ironically, they’re anything but unique. They are the hallmarks of nearly every city toured during one of our Community Leadership Visits in the past. But they offer a reminder of what a city can do when everyone comes together to build something better.
It’s a lesson Boise continues to learn. It’s one Springfield can learn, too.