Government

Nearly 80 participants leave for Bloomington a week from this Sunday. The discussions to be held during the visit should spark some interesting dialogue both during the event and once back in Orange County. The visit is split up into a series of Conversations with topics including: Community Branding, Economic Development, A Thriving Downtown, Student Housing, University-Community Partnerships,Innovations in Government, Community Colleges: Entrepreneurship and Workforce Development, and K-12 Education. There will also be time for one-on-one conversations with our counterparts. On the second day there will be field trips to a trail, theater, high school, museum, or art center (I hope to go visit the Bloomington Community Orchard).

The Twitter hashtag for the visit is #ICV2012. I plan to tweet during the visit (@mollsdemarco), and I imagine a number of others will as well.

I've long been skeptical of the bi-annual Inter-city Visits organized by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, err sorry, that's actually the Chamber-owned Partnership for a Sustainable Community. The intention to visit a community and learn from their successess and failures is a good one. But the reality of an expensive trip with the wealthy and powerful of Chapel Hill - where the learning stops when the return flight touches down at RDU - is a little different.