Reaching Conservatives

A photo from last week in Grand Forks. They really did an amazing job there putting on this event. It blew me away.

I'm in my last week of the spring travel season. The marathon has been fantastic to run, but I can feel myself slowing as I see the finish ahead. The past three weeks have been particularly grueling, though very rewarding. If you are a regular reader, you've no doubt seen a slight dropoff in pace here on the blog. My apologies. I've got so much planned for this summer I can hardly wait.

This week of travel I'm going to visit what could be the first city with a high level commitment to a Strong Towns approach -- Hays, Kansas -- and I'm really excited about that. Then it is back to Maine, the one state I said last year that I feel I could move to without any hesitation. I experience a ton of enthusiasm for the Strong Towns message everywhere I go. Thank you, everyone, for helping to make that happen.

At CNU, I had the privilege of speaking in a session on "Bipartisan Placemaking: Reaching Conservatives". I got a lot of feedback on my presentation, which is kind of funny. Let me give you that background.

The game plan going in was that we'd all speak for "a few" minutes and then have a panel discussion. That sounded great and I was prepared to speak for a few -- meaning no more than four -- minutes. I was fourth of the four to speak and, as you'll see in the video below, I started speaking at the 48 minute mark, which gives you some indication right there of how the others panelists interpreted our charge. I say all of this not to register any complaint -- this is kind of how things roll at CNU and, plus, it was great fun -- but to let you know that what you are going to hear was almost entirely off the cuff.