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WUSF Commentary on Dr. Robert Putnam - Story Peter
Kageyama at Global Village on the Move, Perth, Australia |
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Tour
of Australia 2005 Creative Capital is an ongoing series of public forums that discusses the nature of creativity, innovation and communities and will bring in speakers from all over the world to share their insights. The first event of the series featured Richard Florida as the keynote speaker, and included me as a follow-on speaker to tell about the Creative Tampa Bay experience. For those of you who have seen Richard speak, you know how compelling a speaker he is, so the idea of following him on stage was a bit intimidating, but clearly an opportunity that could not be missed. Over 300 people gathered for the luncheon in an upscale downtown hotel in Perth on Thursday the 17th. Much like the first time Richard came to Tampa Bay, there was a lot of excitement and anticipation in the room that ranged from business and technology leaders, to government and arts and cultural representatives. Recall that Creative Tampa Bay is an outgrowth of that speech, where Richard articulated his ideas and "lit the fire" of change in our community that we continue to build upon. I was very excited to be seeing this process begin in Perth. Richard debuted some new ideas that are featured in his new book, The Flight of the Creative Class, which will be released in April. He highlighted the global competition for talent and expounded upon the previously developed concepts of technology, talent and tolerance. He warned that the US appears to be undermining its great competitive advantage of attracting the best and brightest from around the world in the name of security and nationalism. That provides great opportunities to countries such as Australia to capitalize on the outflow of talent.
The next day, Larry and I again shared the stage with Richard during two panel discussions, one with the business leadership of Western Australia and the other with the regional government representatives of the City and of the State of Western Australia. The
response to our story was very enthusiastic and people said, very
encouraging to them. We need to understand that there are people
and communities all over the world that are watching us, and noting
what we do. We owe it ourselves and many others to continue to strive
for creative and innovative communities and become a model that
others can follow and look to as a source of inspiration. |
After
Richard spoke, I was given 15 minutes to share the "real world"
example that is Creative Tampa Bay. I shared the history of the
organization, our ongoing development, our successes and our effect
on our community. In presenting this to a far away audience, I was
struck by how far we have come in a short period of time. As we
sit inside the organization or the community, we often only see
how much there is yet to do. For me, this was an opportunity to
reflect and be very proud of what Creative Tampa Bay has done, and
what we have become. In summarizing the lessons learned from CTB,
I told the audience not to wait for others to do something and not
to ask for permission to act. "Change requires champions" I said,
and urged them all to become those community champions.  |
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