by ROBERT PITTMAN, Executive Director and Founder, Janus Institute
The New Year’s holiday is a time when people tend to reflect on recent successes and failures as well as evaluate paths and options going forward. This practice is epitomized by the image of the Roman God Janus on ancient coins looking backwards and forwards simultaneously. To me that symbolizes a key aspect of economic development – communities should embrace change and strive to improve themselves (looking forward) but at the same time understand and preserve many of the unique characteristics and strengths that got them to the dance to begin with.
The Janus Institute and Forum are named for this Roman God because we believe in the philosophy of communities (and economic development professionals) embracing progress and change while remaining true to fundamental strengths. We’ve been doing a bit of this double-sided assessment ourselves as we contemplate a future that will undoubtedly be one replete with change (hopefully for the better) as the Institute (in conjunction with Conway Data) expands the Forum in both scope and geography. We have learned so much since we began with a dozen or so economic developers “on the porch” in Rabun County Georgia identifying and dissecting key issues facing the attendees and their communities. The rest, as they say, is history. Our format proved to be unique and extremely popular and we grew to the point where we needed different venues across the country to give more economic developers a chance to participate in a Forum, yet stay true to our heritage by limiting attendance at each Forum to promote the best possible peer learning and networking.
As we grew we began to invite a few site consultants and corporate real estate executives to each Forum because we knew the benefits from the interchange of knowledge would become even stronger by looking at the whole “value chain” of corporate investment and job creation – from the companies who begin the process to the consultants who often manage it, then through to the economic developers and community officials who work to win the projects for their communities. The widening of our scope to look at this larger value chain has been a resounding success because we did just as we advise in this column – we embraced (and created) change, yet remained true to our core strengths and our primary mission of providing a “safe” haven in which economic developers feel comfortable sharing their expertise in a great peer-networking setting.
For Janus Institute and Conway Data personnel, this holiday season will be even more than unwrapping presents (and taking back shirts that don’t fit), spending time with family and loved ones, and overindulging. We are busy planning our next Janus Forum starting February 28th at Amelia Island, Florida. We are grateful to all our sponsors, including Enterprise Florida for being our host sponsor for the second year in a row. The Janus Forum at Amelia Island promises to be another great event with guest consultants and corporate executives, but most of all with our invited roster of leading economic developers. Our state directors Forum that runs in conjunction with the regular Forum is also shaping up nicely, and the interaction among them and the other attendees is always interesting and informative. Please review our program information elsewhere in this Reporter and contact us to inquire about attending. Thanks, and happy holidays to you!