Last Friday, Whitewater, Wisconsin’s City Manager, Kevin Brunner, included mention of an upcoming conference in his weekly report for February 12th. He announced that Whitewater and our local campus would jointly make a presentation to the “Fifth Annual Best Practices in Building University/City Relations
Conference.”
Here’s the full announcement:
City/University to Make Joint Presentation at Fifth Annual Best Practices in Building University/City Relations Conference
I received word this week that the City and UW-Whitewater have been selected to make a presentation at the 5th Annual Best Practices in Building University/City Relations Conference, to be held in Ames, IA, home of Iowa State University. The conference dates are Tuesday, June 1-Thursday, June 3, 2010. The presentation has been titled “Connecting from Scratch: City/University Collaboration on Development of Technology Park and Innovation Center”.
The Building University/City Relations Conference is sponsored by the International Town-Gown Association (ITGA). The ITGA is a membership-based, non-government organization, managed by a Board of Directors with a full-time professional and support staff consisting of a director and administrative assistant. Its purpose is to become the primary information resource point for common issues between institutions of higher learning and the communities in which they reside. The ITGA is the nation’s common link, bringing together practitioners from varying fields to address common issues and be a network of resources — including print and online publications, information databases, and programs, training materials, and consulting services — to help city and university leaders improve the quality of life in their communities.
The city manager got the title right. It certainly is connecting from scratch, and it’s still from scratch — the construction of the building has not yet begin, and will not be done until months after the conference. I suppose if someone wanted preliminary remarks on a project yet uncompleted, relying on public money, for a publicly-funded anchor tenant, this would be the presentation to
attend. Perhaps other communities will find useful tips for snatching federal grant money, and issuing municipal debt, while flacking it all in an unquestioning press.
A more sensible approach would surely be to wait until the building’s done being built, and the talk about what the whole effort was like.
Still, if there’s a nearby seminar on Using Federal Dollars for Resume-Padding, perhaps the two sessions could be combined for maximum synergy. Best-practice tips all-around, I’m sure.
There’s something silly and absurd about all this, for anyone not in a small circle of politicians, planners, bureaucrats.
There’s also something pathetic about needing to justify explain the importance of the International Town-Gown Association by writing that the “ITGA is a membership-based, non-government organization, managed by a Board of Directors with a full-time
professional and support staff consisting of a director and administrative assistant.”
The ITGA must be worthy, if it has two full-time employees. That’s actually admirable — it shows a high level of worker productivity. Ordinarily, businesses and associations with only two full-time employees are called mom and pop operations, and are found in small towns, in out-of-the-way places. The ITGA, on the other hand, is an international organization: the International Town-Gown Association. Two workers for an entire planet — impressive. So impressive, I’m surprised one doesn’t hear about the association every night on CNN and Fox. If they’d take even a single day off from working on the Ames, Iowa conference, I’m sure they could come up with a cure for swine flu, rickets, or some other terrible disorder.
Still, a worthy project should speak for itself, when it’s actually finished.