Food for thought...

One of the perks of my job is getting to go to big lunch events in Charlotte, and recently, that was the Foundation for the Carolinas' annual meeting and 50th anniversary celebration lunch. These things are always at the Convention Center, and asking if they have a vegetarian option always creates a little stir (they're kind enough to always do, but they tend to bring it out about 10 min after everyone else gets their food, which puts me at the center of all kinds of attention I don't want). But I digress from the main reason I'm writing about this. The best part about these lunches is they always have a great speaker (some greater than others), and I always leave feeling motivated and pensive about what I have just heard.

The speaker at this recent lunch was Malcolm Gladwell of The Tipping Point fame. He had a lot to say, but 2 things stuck with me - the notion of connectors, and how quickly a city can change. The average person knows ~35 people and has ~3 circles (i.e. work, church, school, etc.), but connectors know ~250 people and are part of 12-20 circles, or as he put it, they're part of circles they're not even aware of. It stuck with me because I'm definitely one of the average, but I can aspire to be more one day. The other thing was about how Charlotte can determine its destiny and how it looks a decade from now or 10 decades from now, but more importantly, it can change into what it wants to be within a decade (and not a generation or two as is commonly thought to take for cities to change). There are definitely things in the works to make sure that as we grow as a city, we don't become a city of haves and have-nots, full of groups of alienated people, etc. The fact that this change can take place so quickly became apparent to me when I picked up The Charlotte Observer today. There was an article about how when we hosted the Final Four in '94, we had to create a makeshift downtown with food & entertainment opportunities because there were only 15 restaurants and 1 nightclub in downtown Charlotte at the time. In '08, as we play host to the CIAA & the ACC Tournaments, and then some of the NCAA games, we have over 100 restaurants and 50 nightclubs in that same area! This city still has a lot of work to do on a lot of fronts, but I am amazed and proud of how our downtown has transformed into a great place not only to work, but also live and play.