Back in 2011, I remember sitting around a fire pit with my husband talking about our frustrations with the stock market and the economic recession the country seemed to now be pulling out of,but you could hardly tell by looking around our own neighborhood. We weren't resilient on a community level at that time and it wasn’t until the recession hit that we realized what a lack of resiliency looked like. Clients and I would have these conversations also, about how cool it would be if we could do something more meaningful and helpful besides the status quo with investment dollars, but not knowing how an average investor could go about doing that.
That curiosity mixed with frustration is what led me on a multi-year journey of information gathering. It wasn’t until 2016, when I stepped into the very first national ComCap conference in Portland, Oregon, that I felt like I had finally found the one place where I could ask all the questions I’d been trying to ask for years. It wasn’t so much that the speakers had all the answers – the value was in knowing that we and our Michigan network were not unique in asking all the questions. Together, we stumbled into examples of how others had answered the questions, which was powerful.
Encouragement, access to leaders, examples to look at, and coalition-building with your local peers is what a well-curated conference can give you. This is why I am over the moon about ComCap19 coming to Detroit the week of June 11th!
One way to know if you should attend this event or any of the wraparound events that are supporting it is to ask yourself if your local economy is something you would include in the list of things you value. Do you care about the direction it will head? If the answer is yes, then this is for you – regardless of your day job, how much money you may or may not feel you have, or how much you may or may not know about how towns build and grow. If you value your town’s future, you should be at ComCap19. I look forward to seeing you there!
