Friday October 28 Schedule
(X)ponential Impact; It All Comes Down To Trust and Generosity | |||
| 6:45am | Morning Ride/Run (Optional) (X)pand your body and your mind. No better way to start the day than a brisk run or bike ride! Check out Roanoke on foot with Star City Striders and your (X)po peers; 3, 5 and 7 mile run options available. Free loaner bicycles with maps for a lovely ride along Roanoke’s river greenway path. Hotel Roanoke entrance for runners; City Market Building downstairs for cyclists. | ||
| 8:15am | “Start the Mornin’ Right” Breakfast This is a great time to share ideas with new friends and colleagues, and to connect with featured (X)po thought leaders: Theaster Gates, Nicco Mele, Kennedy Smith, Bob Lambert, Mia Birk, Ed Walker, Toni Blackman, and others. | ||
| 9am | Welcome to the Fab Friday Line-Up (X)po host Ed Walker prepares us for a mind-blowing day of Big Ideas presented by the amazing folks propelling those ideas into action, and introduces our Fab Friday mavens, Toni Blackman and Kennedy Smith. Today’s starting fireworks are courtesy of Toni Blackman, America’s International Champion of Hip-Hop Culture. An award-winning artist, her steadfast work and commitment to hip-hop led the U.S. Department of State to select her as the first ever hip-hop artist to work as an American Cultural Specialist. Kennedy Smith is one of the nation's foremost experts on commercial district revitalization and development, independent main street businesses, and economically and environmentally sound community development. She also plays a wicked mandolin and has a killer sense of humor. | ||
| 9:20am | Joyride: Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet: The Keys to Transforming Communities and Empowering People, One Pedal Stroke at a Time Mia Birk is an environmental advocate, bicyclist, and alternative transportation activist. Her journey began in the heart of car-culture USA with a car-addicted youth in Dallas, Texas. Breaking away from home and a typical sedentary American lifestyle, Mia settled in Portland, Oregon, where she and a cast of larger-than-life characters led Portland’s transformation into the nation’s most bicycle-friendly city. Mia is here to talk about her transformational work and sees bicycling as a win-win strategy for maintaining health, safety, budget, and community connection. | |
| 9:45am | Must See TV! Katherine Walker, PhD, is founder of the Batten Leadership Institute at Hollins University. What began as a simple question of how people spend their free time (e.g., watching TV, surfing the interwebs, gaming, etc.) quickly escalates into a fast-paced series of events with a couple of surprise endings... one of which was on CNN. Come hear the fascinating story of how a community performance art project created a rupture, revealed fractures, and ultimately built a bridge between the arts and great government. | ||
| 10:10am | Get Out of Your ZipCode! Beth Macy talks about the role of journalism in helping communities understand the increasingly diverse range of voices in their midst. A 2010 Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, Macy also teaches literary journalism at Hollins University and writes freelance articles and essays, most recently for O, The Oprah Magazine; Parade magazine; The Chronicle of Higher Education and American Journalism Review. | ||
| 10:35am | Digging Deeper into the Tough Questions: Interactive Discussion with Mia Birk, Katherine Walker, Beth Macy, Kennedy Smith, Toni Blackman and You, the (X)po Audience. | ||
| 11:15am | Toni Blackman Presents Sisters of the Circle Toni Blackman, Hip-Hop Ambassador, has been working with Sisters of the Circle for several years. Sisters is an after-school performing arts program for refugee and immigrant young women ages 14-18. The Sisters have also worked closely with poet Nikki Giovanni. The cumulative result of working intimately with these internationally acclaimed artists over multiple semesters has had groundbreaking results. | ||
| 11:45pm | Short Break This is a great time to grab a copy of Mia’s book, Joyride (she’ll be happy to sign it too), as well as other (X)po speaker’s books. We didn’t hand out those groovy tote bags for nothin’...fill ‘em up with great books! Check out the Ram's Head Bookseller book station in Charter Hall. | ||
| 12pm | Locavore Lunch at Charter Hall: The Future's in the Dirt - Creating Local Food Systems for Vibrant Communities, Heathy Eco-Systems, and Durable Prosperity Ben Hewitt's most recent book is Making Supper Safe: One Man’s Quest to Learn the Truth About Food Safety (Rodale). From dumpster diving to the battle over food rights, genetically engineered salmon, and the interplay between humans and the bacteria they consume, Ben explores the untold story of food safety with humor and good-natured skepticism. | ||
| 1pm | Afternoon Break Grab a fresh cup from local roaster Red Rooster Coffee, whose mission begins with social, environmental and economic consciousness. "Every step of our process is developed by first listening to our conscience and basing decisions on our desire to enact change for the better. Fortunately, by bringing you the highest quality organic and fair trade coffee available we are also able to help farmers across the world make a living wage and reduce our impact on the environment." | ||
| 2:05pm | News from the Front: Introducing Some of the Best Ideas of the Year! Kennedy Smith is considered one of the world's leading experts on downtowns, downtown economics, independent business development, and the economic impact of sprawl, with a career in downtown revitalization spanning 23 years. She created the retail market analysis methodology now used by most historic downtowns in the US. Kennedy’s unique perspective abounds as she shares the concepts and projects she is most excited about this year in the realm of big ideas for small cities. Here she introduces our amazing afternoon ‘pop-up’ series, News from the Front, multi-media presentations about people, ideas, projects, and partnerships having (X)ponential impact in small cities and towns and abroad. | ||
Faces of Roanoke Photographer Brett Winter Lemon's portrait documentary of a small city. | |||
Food and Fun in Davis, California: Farms, Our Downtown, and the Tour de Cluck Joe Krovoza is Mayor of Davis, California. Among the programs Joe and the residents have pioneered and developed there are a concert and community market venue which attracts 7,000 - 10,000 spectators in a weekly rotating slate of music acts. Fittingly, the "most bike-friendly city in America" hosts the US National Bicycle Hall of Fame, the Davis Bicycle Film Festival, and one of the best-established bikeshare programs in the US. | |||
| Where the Action Is: Bonz Hart, CEO/Founder of Meridium speaks on growing an international firm with offices from Bangalore to Malta, and why choosing a small city as its new world headquarters brings opportunities and challenges in talent recruitment and retention. | |||
California Biketopia: How Bikes, Planning, and Recreation Are Transforming Fairfax, California and Marin County Warren Karlenzig, CEO of Common Current, an urban planning firm in Marin County CA, will share interesting combinations of locavore and recreational events in Fairfax, California. | |||
The Placemaking Miracle of Good Government and Non-Recourse Financing Costa Canavos works with the Virginia Housing Development Authority to make impossible projects become reality in some of Virginia’s smallest and most economically devastated localities. Learn how Virginia uses good government to make extraordinary achievement happen in unexpected places. | |||
What Small Cities Need to Know: Responsible Journalism in a New Era Mary Kimm is editor and publisher of The Connection Newspapers, a group of award-winning weekly newspapers serving the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. | |||
A New Generation of Customer Service Marek Zareba is a small-city entrepreneur with a mission to push the boundaries of modern customer service. Leveraging new technology and focusing on real-time feedback, his company, Engagn, is able to help businesses improve their operations while delivering better customer experiences. | |||
Putting the Community Property Owner in the Driver's Seat Cleve Ricksecker offers a quick primer on the use of Business/Special Improvement Districts as a mechanism to fund change in Small Cities | |||
Incubating Place through Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper Interventions “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper” (LQC) describes a low-cost, high-impact incremental framework for improving your community now. By capitalizing on the creative energy of the community to efficiently generate new uses and revenue for places in transition, the LQC development strategy has produced some of the world’s most successful public spaces - ones that are lower risk and lower cost. Drawing upon international case studies ranging from Buffalo, New York to Newcastle, Australia, Ken Farmer of Project for Public Spaces will explore the potential for small scale "Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper" placemaking interventions to support and celebrate the creative, entrepreneurial spirit of your local community. | |||
Reversing the Play Deficit: Why Every Voice Counts! Danielle Marshall, Director of Community Engagement at Kaboom.org, explains the play deficit in America and how it is harming our children. We can fight this deficit by constructing innovative, kid-inspired playspaces, sharing knowledge and tools, and building a national movement to save play. | |||
The Unserviced Workforce Stuart Mease is Director of Undergraduate Career Services in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech. His aim is “connecting people” to create mutually beneficial relationships. In this talk Stuart explains the ‘Unserviced Workforce’: who this includes, what this means, and its impact on individuals and the community. | |||
Making Cities Smarter Cities have never been more vital to our global society, yet in many cases outdated infrastructure and operations have hampered their ability to act as drivers of economic opportunity and provide a high quality of life for citizens. Today, however, new, smarter technologies are being tapped by bold city leaders to transform these urban centers and enable them to be even more vibrant as hubs of society. Kris J. Lichter shows us how IBM is working with cities around the world to explore a wide range of transformational opportunities that are truly making cities smarter. | |||
| 5pm | Mingle Mingle, It’s Cocktail Hour This is a fantastic time to meet fellow attendees and presenters, share ideas, and compare notes on (X)po content and phew, we covered a lot of territory today. Surely your mind is excitedly full of new information. Time to hang with the speakers of the day and extend those thoughts and conversations into the evening. (X)po has a bunch of fun offerings for you tonight so grab a Star Hill brew or a cup of Red Rooster Coffee and some evening tapas to keep you going - the day has really just begun! | ||
| 5-11pm | Choose Your Own Adventure: A Symphony of Things To Do in Roanoke, VA Ride a mini-bike down Mill Mountain with a gaggle of fun-infused Star Bombers, tour our beautiful Taubman Museum of Art, dine at our local eateries, take our local Liar’s Tour by foot, check out the Sweded Film Fest at our local micro-cinema... but whatever you choose to do, save some energy for the (X)po Rooftop Party at SkyRanch, the low-key and up-tempo open house at Ed and Katherine’s place (see details below). | ||
| 5-7pm O. Winston Link Museum is a groovy retrofitted passenger station dedicated to the photography of O. Winston Link, the twentieth-century railroad photographer known for spectacularly capturing the nuances between steam railroading and rural culture. Tonight the Museum remains open until 7pm and invites (X)po attendees to view permanent exhibits as well as This Great Nation Will Endure, photographs of the Great Depression from the FDR Library. | |||
| 5-8pm The Taubman Museum of Art At the heart of downtown Roanoke, the new 81,000 square-foot Taubman Museum of Art proves an arresting landmark for visitors. As Roanoke's most contemporary structure, it provides an analog for the city's evolution from industrial and manufacturing town to technology-driven city. Tonight the Museum invites (X)po attendees to tour the Museum and its current exhibitions. | |||
| 5:15pm Opening Exhibition Reception Attend Roanoke College Olin Hall Galleries’ Opening Reception for internationally known artist Mark Fox, who will be creating a site-specific installation entitled Outbreed. Fox creates multimedia installations that incorporate the artist’s own distinct lexis of images and text as well as integrating religious and mythological decrees. Meet the artist and enjoy light fare. | |||
6:30pm Local Liar’s Walking Tour of Roanoke Hear about Roanoke’s true history on the Liar’s Tour. Join members of the improv group Big Lick Conspiracy on an enlightening walking tour of Downtown Roanoke. Discover Completely True and Not At All Made Up On the Spot facts about Roanoke’s history, landmarks, and colorful political figures. Tour departs from the Campbell Avenue entrance of the City Market Building. | |||
| 7pm Sweded Film Fest at Shadowbox Micro-Cinema In Michel Gondry's film, Be Kind Rewind, Jack Black and Mos Def invent the process of "sweding," in which they take classic films and remake them into short films using virtually nonexistent budget, amateur actors, and insane amounts of creativity. Well, that’s exactly what we asked regional filmmakers to do, with a spooktacular twist. Be prepared for lots of fake blood and blood-curdling laughs. 22 Kirk Avenue (last night’s Locavore Street Fest Location). | |||
| 8pm StarBomb Bike Adventure We know you’ve noticed our Giant Neon Star, atop Mill Mountain! Want to check it out up close? We’ll take you topside where you can snap some photos, wave hello to the Star webcam, and spectate at a Roanoke-only sport called StarBomb: adults in crazy, zany costumes zooming down the mountainside at night on teeny-tiny bicycles. Intrigued? Meet us at Flannery’s Pub (corner of Kirk Avenue and Jefferson Street) at 7:30pm for a Spooky Margarita and ride to the top of the mountain with the StarBombers, departing from Flannery’s at 8pm. Got the itch to join the Bomb? Grab an (X)po bike and come along! Afterwards the fun continues at SkyRanch for the evening rooftop party. | |||
| 8-11pm (X)po Rooftop Party at SkyRanch Come one, come all, and come as you are to the open-house gathering at (X)po hosts Katherine and Ed’s apartment, atop the Hometown Bank building. Look for the black awning at 204 South Jefferson Street and someone will be there to greet you, check your name off the list, and welcome you to the building. Once you enter their apartment on the 12th floor, just follow the noise upstairs to their roof. We’ll have beer, wine, heavy hors d’oeuvres, music, fun, and great views. And if the weather is bad, we’ll bring the party inside! | |||
| Please note, schedule is subject to change | |||
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