Strong Towns National Gathering Sept 12-14

We are super excited to announce that the Strong Towns National Gathering will be September 12-14, 2014 in Minneapolis. Why are we doing a National Gathering? 

The Strong Towns Staff, Fellows, Members and local volunteers are going to create an event as a pilot-model to show what a Strong Towns ‘conference’ looks like. This will set the stage for similar events at a regional level so there can be 10-15 or so of these within carpool/train distance of everyone in the country in 2015 and 2016. 

We’ll have some amazing speakers, exhibits, learning walks and do-tank activities, engage with a big city neighborhood and a nearby small town and also spend some time charting the course for Strong Towns for the next two years. And have a serious amount of time to enjoy the company of the amazing people who are Strong Towns Members.

The Skinny

Name: The Strong Towns National Membership Gathering
Dates: September 12-14, 2014
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota (with some nearby excursions)
Venues: Sabathani Commmunity Center, the streets and sidewalks of the Kingfield neighborhood and significant length of Nicollet Avenue
Cost: Approximately $100-$125

Please take this one question poll RIGHT NOW to help us gauge how many of you might be coming. 

The event will begin at noon on Friday and conclude at noon Sunday. Friday morning, we’ll be offering a separate Boot Camp workshop for those of you interested in a more in depth technical based interaction with Chuck.

Program

We will have three tracks of sessions: Learn, Do and Lab, all of which will contain different settings and explorations, so don’t expect to be sitting in a room watching other people’s powerpoints all weekend. You are the program. The neighborhood is the classroom and meeting space. Hopefully, we’ll be able to have a few sidewalk-based breakout sessions.

In general, we will have a keynote and breakout on Friday afternoon, a mobile workshop block on Saturday morning, keynotes and breakouts on Saturday afternoon and early evening. Sunday morning, we’ll be doing a wrapup and action planning for any ideas that popup throughout the course of the weekend.

Logistics

The Gathering will be neighborhood based and centered at 38th Street and Nicollet Avenue, in the south Minneapolis neighborhood of Kingfield. We will be utilizing restaurants and community meeting spaces within walking distance of that intersection, with the opportunity to retire in the evenings to our Uptown commercial district, as well as Lyn-Lake and Eat Street neighborhood centers.  We’ll have lots of excellent local restaurants to choose from and we are going to round up a few of our exceptional food trucks as well.

We know that most of you will be funding the trip out of your own pocket, so we are trying to keep costs as low as possible for a total trip of registration, hotel, food and incidentals. The details are being finalized this month.

Please take this one question poll TODAY to help us plan for how many people might be coming. 

Thanks to all of our Members who have already taken the survey - it's still the same question.

Look for registration coming up at the beginning of April! 

38th and Nicollet at Community Event in 2013