Well, here we are.
Right now I’m posting from the ballroom in the Delta Hotel, where Canadian Construction Association President John Schubert is discussing asset management and public-private partnerships. The language he’s using to discuss it is obviously hella business-y, but with municipalities looking more and more at P3s, that’s no surprise. So I’m half-listening and half-updating you, the prairie dog‘s Monday afternoon blog readers. Hi, Barb, basically.
I’m planning on a couple more updates today, which I’m going to have to whip up rapid-fire or else post at the close of the conference today, since I’m not invited to the mayor’s reception and dinner at Casino Regina at 6 p.m. Since the summit is a packed, rapid-fire event, I’ll be trying to focus on these highlights.
– Over lunch, reps from IBM’s Smarter Cities initiative will be presenting on… something. But it should be interesting.
– At one o’clock, during the summit’s “rejuvenation break,” CUPE has a press conference to launch a guide to “the other side” of P3s. I’ll be livetweeting that one.
– The Greenfield Prize of the “Morph My City” competition, which is an award going out to a proposal to turn empty land in (or presumably around, because that’s how this city works) Regina into a modern & sustainable community, gets handed out at 3:30 today; the finalists are from Toronto, New York, and Missoula, Montana, so it should be interesting to see what ideas they have for our burg.
Plus, you know, interviews and stuff, assuming I can hack it. Paul Dechene will be checking in on the summit tomorrow, and I’ll be back on Wednesday to wrap up. If you have thoughts for us – things you think we should pay attention to, people you think we should talk to – feel free to let us know in the comments. And you can follow me on Twitter, where I post as @warmandpunchy, although I can’t promise anything interesting and also that’s my personal account so, you know, fair warning about the amount of butt jokes.