[beyeas]

Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but I just wanted to say that I thought David Fleming did an excellent job at the Smart Community Initiative workshop today.

He is the executive director for the North End Business Association. I guess I had assumed that it was going to be another long talk by a grey haired "don't take away my on street parking" kind of guy. I was surprised to find that David is a young and dynamic guy, and potentially someone to watch in this city over the coming years.

He had a rather amusing discussion, for example, in which he compared the process of how companies choose where to locate with the movie Moneyball; i.e. it is not about the traditional measures any more, but the sum of all the data analytics that define the business and cultural environment.

He also gave a great example of how small changes can have an impact. One night he had noticed musicians playing in a small public area (along Gottingen I think) that previously he had never even seen anyone in, but that night had people hanging around listening to the music. He went around to local businesses and proposed that they each put in $150 and every Thursday through the summer he would hire musicians to play there. They then looked at the results and found that it significantly changed how people viewed the block. Instead of simply keeping their head down and going from point a to point b, they lingered. Instead of the perception of it being an unsafe neighbourhood, the instead had the perception of it being a hip neighbourhood... all because they heard music playing and saw people sitting around enjoying it.

Anyway, just wanted to pass all that on as I was quite impressed with David. Great to see someone in the 30s (?) age bracket move to this city and then make a positive difference with some non status quo thinking.