This might seem like a joke or a bunch of rhetoric but it isn’t. Ok, maybe it’s somewhat extremely rhetorical — but no less serious: What exactly is supposed to come out of this economic summit on Thursday anyways?
On Saturday I read a passing mention of it in the subhead to some comments by Chris Bentley, Amit Chakma, Anne Marie DeCicco-Best, Ed Holder, Gerry Macartney, and Howard Rundle, but there weren’t any details other than the date.
Then there was nothing about it on the city’s website. Nothing via the promising-looking link to London’s Next Economy — a page that has apparently not been updated since September 2005. Nothing on their Twitter or Facebook either. And nothing about it on the London Economic Development Corporation’s site. Couldn’t find anything on their events or news listings. Nothing on their Twitter. Searching with Google and Bing didn’t turn up anything relevant at all. Nobody was discussing it, none of the stakeholders, none of the participants (whoever they might be) seemed to have made any mention of it online whatsoever.
Which made me wonder, is anyone actually taking the event seriously? Is it the general public’s need to be informed that isn’t being taken seriously? Is that because the general public doesn’t care to be informed? (Or did I just miss something obvious? — which I wouldn’t bet against.)
Thankfully I only had to wait three days for the next edition of the London Free Press and by Tuesday morning I was reading all about it. This is from Chip Martin’s article:
More than 200 leaders of London business, labour, education, finance, government and other agencies will brainstorm this Thursday in a bid to devise an economic action plan.
The movers and shakers in the local economy are being brought together by the London Economic Development Corp., at the request of city council, to plan how London can succeed in the future.
…
White said the focus was expanded to deal with all aspects of the city and its economy where concern exists about unemployment levels, the loss of manufacturing jobs, comparatively low population growth and the challenge of finding suitable employment to retain university and college graduates.
After the summit, White said the LEDC will take the recommendations it produces, consider them in light of the city’s strategic plan and recommend a course of action to city council likely next month.
Well put it that way and it sounds pretty important, but the relative silence makes me wonder whether everyone thinks this is just a waste of time.
It’s just the impression I get when I don’t see anyone demonstrating ownership, nor any of the participants taking it upon themselves to acknowledge the event. Nobody, not even the LEDC [screenshot] or the London Convention Centre [screenshot], have posted it on their calenders.
Digital media is still fairly new but we’re getting to a point at which, for many of us, this seems unfathomable.
Then again, why wouldn’t everybody think a summit is a waste of time? We’re talking about over 200 of London’s busiest people using a substantial part of a workday for this. And it’s not like many of them would have much difficulty finding an audience for their input if the right insight and urge happened to occur to them at the right moment.
Ideas can occur anytime, anywhere. The post-summit action shouldn’t be to merely recommend an economic plan, it should also (if not primarily) be to establish a framework for ongoing deliberation — preferably a more open and dynamic kind — to capture all of the ideas and insights that go undocumented and forgotten week-after-week.
I’m disinclined to oppose any kind of public forum — and I sincerely hope everything goes well on Thursday. My complaint is that these kinds of challenges and opportunities should never stop being discussed in public — i.e. online.
I’m a fan of the the “Beyond Crisis” special report the Free Press has been doing. I can’t seem to improve on their “six key areas” idea (as much as I’d like to ;-) … It deserves more coverage by bloggers etc in the city, including me. We should be building more discussion around it.
Btw, TechAlliance deserves credit for (very) recently getting a shiny new sociable site — the first institutional site I know of in London with an RSS feed… I just can’t wait to see more!