After a 5.5 hour drive north, I finally made it to Everett for the AWC conference! Everett selected “Everett: Be Surprised!” as their city slogan. Here’s a key quote from their ec dev director about the slogan:
“It just sounded better than ‘Everett, it doesn’t stink anymore,‘ ” joked Lanie McMullin, the city’s new economic development director. “People don’t expect what they see here. They don’t expect the mountains or the islands.”
Here are some more fun facts about Everett that are worth sharing (thanks, Wikipedia):
Everett is home to the largest public marina on the west coast of the United States[8] and is the western terminus of the western segment of U.S. Route 2. It is also home to Boeing‘s assembly plant for the 747, 767, 777 and the new 787. Boeing’s Everett facility is known for being the largest building in the world by volume at 116.5 million cubic feet.
I’m really excited for this conference because the theme is “resiliency.” Tomorrow’s keynote is Denis Hayes from the Bullitt Foundation and he’s talking about “resilience pioneers, some data, hunches, values, and personal reflections.”
I love the idea of talking and thinking about resiliency as a broad local government topic. Problem solving is a constant in a local government career, and the ability to be nimble and recover quickly is a critical skill for local government professionals. Similar to last year’s AWC conference, I’m impressed by the thoughtfulness of Tonia, Candice, Alicia and the rest of the AWC conference planning team!
It’s come to my attention that Kent’s posts are more (ahem.) “fun” than mine. I’m going to try to spice my posts up a bit, but I encourage you to follow along with all of our guest bloggers (me, Kent, Chris, Luke and Ben) during this week of the AWC and ILCMA/WCMA conferences.