Lowell's

To-Do List for Lexington: 4. Embrace Openness

(Part of the To-Do List for Lexington series.  Click here for an overview and links to the rest of the series.)

In January 2008, we were in early discussions to buy Lowell's.  Since Lowell's focused only on Toyota brands, I had a simple question: How many Toyotas, Lexuses, and Scions are in Lexington?

It seemed like a fairly straightforward question, and since the county and state kept vehicle registration records, it seemed like the answer should be easy to find - especially since Indiana freely published precisely the kind of data I needed, but not for Kentucky counties.

After trying internet searches and coming up empty, I contacted the Fayette County Clerk's office, who referred me to the state Department of Transportation.  After a few more phone calls, I learned that I'd need to file a request under the Open Records Act, specifying the exact data that I would need.  I later found that I'd also have to pay $225 to get the data.

It all seemed so needlessly bureaucratic: It was public information, after all - so why wasn't it more public?

What followed was 13 months of a couple dozen intermittent phone calls, a similar number of emails, maddening unresponsiveness, and inane forms (including a mandatory contract which required that I wouldn't use anyone's personal data, even though the data I requested contained no personal information - it was just counts of vehicles by county).

Finally, this past February, I got the report I needed.  Well, sort of.  It was in a file and format which was nearly useless.  And, we got it a full 7 months after we bought the business, so much of the urgency to get the data had dissipated.  Still, we eventually wrangled it into something we thought was interesting and informative, and published the results in early April as the Bluegrass Vehicle Report 2009.

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Bureaucracies often have a maddening, self-perpetuating logic wherein the only purpose of the bureaucracy appears to be to maintain the bureaucracy.  Laden with rules and restrictions, such organizations often turn their focus inward and forget their true purpose.  And rather than engaging with and serving their constituencies, they tend to serve the bureaucracy's interests.

In the process, bureaucracies become tangled, closed, unmovable beasts which are hostile to the very people they are bound to serve.

Our vehicle data experience is, unfortunately, all-too-typical.  But it doesn't have to be...

Lexington suffers from a bureaucratically-driven lack of openness (as does Kentucky at large).  And that lack of openness hinders our city's economic, social, and political progress.

Lexington needs to embrace openness.

There are (at least) two ways in which we can create a more open city: 

1. By creating more open information and information systems
2. By adopting more open approaches to how our city serves its citizens

Open Information
Portland, Oregon recently approved an economic development strategy which directed the city to open its information to the public in a structured, standardized format.  Portland is just one of the latest in a fast-growing list of progressive communities who are opening their data to their citizens.

Portland followed in the footsteps of San Francisco which - through DataSF.org - has created a clearinghouse of over 100 sets of up-to-date government data.  That data includes geographic information, crime statistics, transportation data, and measures of performance for key city departments. 

By standardizing this data and making it easy to download, San Francisco has enabled software developers to create rich new applications.  In just a few months, this move toward openness has spawned several mobile applications dedicated to anything from getting around the city to spotting neighborhood crime trends to finding places to take the kids.  It has even created a showcase of these applications, encouraging both users and developers to make use of the open data.

Indiana - for many years - has offered incredibly rich datasets on a wide variety of the state's data on Indiana University's StatsIndiana site.

By sharing this data - even when it is uncomfortable (like the crime data) - these places are enabling citizens to understand their communities better.  If the crime data highlights problems, so much the better - at least citizens know what they are dealing with, and the community can begin to address problems with knowledge and insight.

In short, these places are making their communities more livable, while simultaneously encouraging local entrepreneurs to leverage the data to create new applications and new businesses.

These places follow a few simple rules to create useful clearinghouses of data:

• Data should be standardized into a structured, machine-readable format so that it may be easily imported into databases and spreadsheets for use with other applications.
• Data should be updated regularly.  If possible, it should tap into data sources in real time.
  
• It should cover the widest possible array of government information - statistics, contracts, spending, performance, etc.  (Don't try to predict or direct what information will be needed - let citizens decide on their own.)

In addition, most of the places adopting open data standards are also standardizing on lower-cost open source software.  By adopting open source platforms like Linux (operating systems), Apache (web servers), MySQL (databases), and Ruby (software development), the cities are able to move away from expensive proprietary systems from Microsoft, Oracle, and PeopleSoft, while simultaneously tapping into a rich community of developers, applications, and support.

Lexington can and should learn from these cities.  

From an economic development standpoint, this kind of open information is crucial to business growth.  In Lowell's case, vehicle registration information would have been valuable for developing better, more informed business plans and strategies.  Such information is crucial to local businesses as they evaluate market opportunities in our city.  It would be equally critical for businesses who wish to locate in Lexington from the outside. 

And, most important, having more complete, more open information would help Lexington make better, more informed decisions and have smarter conversations about our future.  For example, we could have better evaluated the closure of South Limestone:

• How much traffic would be diverted to other streets?
• How much congestion would that cause?
• What are the environmental impacts of the increased congestion?
  
• How much commuter time would be lost?
• What are the costs to downtown businesses in lost customers, lost productivity, and lost services?
• What are the tax implications of those business and commuter losses?
• How did the bid process actually work?
• What did the bid documents say regarding daily work schedule, incentives, and overall timeframe?

Some of these questions may have been answered inside the Lexington-Fayette County Urban Government (LFUCG), but those answers didn't enter into the public discussions in a meaningful way.  If this data and these processes had been more open and transparent, the decisions made around the South Limestone project may have been very different.

Open Approaches
One of our most frequent critiques of LFUCG is the way in which it serves (or fails to serve) the interests of Lexington's citizens and economy.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the structure, timing, and conduct of LFUCG's Urban County Council meetings, which seem designed to suppress thoughtful public discourse.

The council holds a bewildering array of meetings with a variety of purposes, but two of the most important meetings are held on Tuesdays at 3 PM or on alternate Thursdays at 7 PM. Depending on the agenda, citizen input comes either at the very beginning or very end of the meeting.  Each citizen is limited to three minutes to speak to council.  In fact, both citizens and council members are placed on a visible countdown clock to limit their discussion times.

This format poses a number of problems:

• Participation.  Because of the timing of meetings, our ability to participate is restrained.  Most citizens have work or family obligations at 3 PM on a Tuesday.
• Beat the Clock.  Generally, the three-minute limit and the countdown clock stifle thoughtful civic discussion on complex and nuanced issues like CentrePointe, underground utilities, or South Limestone.  This is especially the case under the iron hand of Mayor Newberry, who - whatever his other qualities as an executive - is a ruthlessly efficient timekeeper.
• Timing.  Putting citizen commentary at the beginning or end of meetings divorces it from the council's discussion of those topics, which comes in the middle of the meeting.  Thus, citizen input is placed at the margins of the discussion instead of in the midst of it.
• Abuse.  The time limits, when coupled with parliamentary maneuvers, allow some council members to squelch the discussion when it goes in directions they don't like.  One council member is so adept at using this technique - on citizens and on fellow council members alike - that it should be named "the Myers" in his honor.

Such scheduling and time-allotment rules are relics of the last century: They seem more at home in the 1950's or 1850's than in 2009.  And they are leftovers of a bureaucracy which has lost its way - squelching civic discussion rather than contributing to it.  Worse, it shows disrespect and disdain for the very citizens those rules are supposed to serve.

LFUCG should adopt more open - and more modern - approaches to debating issues and to gathering citizen input.

[Note: What follows is excerpted from an old post which we feel framed the issue best.  Sorry to self-plagiarize.]

In an age of websites, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, every business has had to engage in conversations with customers on the customers' terms.  The ubiquity of the internet means that these tools are available to nearly everyone, nearly everywhere.  The latency of the internet means that the conversations don't have to happen at the same time - they can build over time.  The internet's ubiquity and latency forms the foundation of a new and better town hall.

Why should we all have to cram into a room at the same time?  Why should we have to play 'beat the clock' when talking about issues which are complex and nuanced?  Why should we have to forgo pressing business or personal matters to attend a meeting which is designed to be convenient for our representatives?

The internet provides the perfect public forum for every citizen to express his or her public policy views, ideas, and thinking.  Even better, our ideas can build on one another as we tinker with and improve the ideas of our neighbors.  Plus, conducting civic conversations on the internet can happen around the clock.  Citizens can participate in the public discussion when and where it is convenient for them, not for the elected representatives who serve them.  Isn't that the way it should be?

Further, every single representative should publish their conversations, thinking, dilemmas, trade-offs, beliefs and positions (and the transactions between them and other interested parties - like developers or investors or campaign contributors).  These records should be posted online for all citizens to see, comment on, debate, and improve.

The council members' emails are listed on the city's website, as are the mayor's newsletters.  But these are old, closed, one-way forms of communication.  They aren't vibrant community discussions.

So, do I want to see tweets that the mayor's advisor is picking up eggs?  Or a Facebook entry featuring the halloween costumes of the councilwoman's children?  Not particularly.  But we deserve to see real-time updates of their thinking on critical community issues.  We should know why they have changed their minds at the last minute.  They should tell us who they talked with and what they said.  After all, they are public officials.  We should see into a transparent civic machine which serves all of us.

What is clear is that a 19th-century civic apparatus has hamstrung our 21st-century community. The ancient contraption allows far too many secrets to hide within.  Whether our representatives and our governments use blogs, Twitter, Facebook, or some other platform matters far less than whether they start participating in open conversations with the people they serve.

The technology already exists.  Millions of people already use it.  Thousands of your constituents use it every day.  It's easy.  It's free.  And it will make Lexington better.  What are you waiting for?

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Lexington needs to adopt open, transparent, and up-to-date approaches to serving its citizens.  Lexington should also provide open information about the city so that we all can make smarter, more informed decisions.

Our lack of openness impedes our commerce.  It impedes our democracy.  It impedes our path to a better Lexington.

Let's change that.

Next: 5. Leverage Intellectual Capital

To-Do List for Lexington: 3. Local First

(Part of the To-Do List for Lexington series.  Click here for an overview and links to the rest of the series.)

When we spend a dollar in Lexington, what, exactly, happens to it?

It sounds like a silly kind of question, but it is actually quite essential to our city's economic vitality.

When we spend money in Lexington, some of that money is extracted out of the local economy (going to other parts of the country or of the world), and some continues to circulate inside the local economy.  Whatever amount stays in Lexington is available to help fund other purchases, other jobs, other investments, and other businesses. 

This is known as a "local multiplier effect".  As each dollar reverberates through the local economy, as it is re-used over and over for other purchases or investments, its effect becomes larger than just a dollar.

So understanding where money goes and how much remains in the local economy is important as we craft a sound economic development strategy for Lexington.

And, to a great extent, how much remains in Lexington depends on where we spend it.

A study by Civic Economics looked at Austin bookstores and found that out of every dollar spent in a national chain's bookstore, about 85 cents leaked out of the Austin economy.  That 85 cents "leaves" to pay national and international suppliers for the books, to distribute profits to owners (shareholders) around the world, to pay federal taxes, and to pay for support staff -- marketing, finance, administration, etc. -- located elsewhere.  The remaining 15 cents stayed in Austin (mainly in the form of local employee wages, local utilities, and local taxes).

When the study shifted its focus to a local bookstore, some interesting effects kicked in.  Because the owners were local, more profits stayed in Austin.  Because they used more local suppliers, more of that money stayed in Austin, as well.  The support staff was also local.  The net effect?  Out of every dollar spent at the local bookstores, 45 cents remained in Austin - 3 times as much.

If we apply the same rates to Lexington, that means that $100 spent at, say, locally-owned Morris Bookshop (no relation to this author, by the way) turns into $145 as the initial $100 sale ripples through the local economy, and other businesses realize an additional $45 in sales.  The same $100 spent at, say, the Hamburg Barnes and Noble yields only $115 for the local economy.  Are these numbers absolute?  No - but they do provide a relative measure of the value of a local purchase.

How representative is a bookstore to the rest of the economy?  It depends.

Books are manufactured things, and they tend to be manufactured 'somewhere else'.  That means that much of the money used to buy a book leaves the local economy pretty quickly.

If we look at businesses which produce goods or services with even more local content, then the money spent on those products tends to circulate through the local economy for much longer.   

Here at Lowell's, we did some back-of-the-envelope multiplier calculations.  Roughly half of our sales are goods (mainly car parts) and half are services (the expert labor of our technicians). 

The parts side of our business works a lot like the local bookstore - most of our suppliers are local parts distributors, but most of their suppliers are national distributors who get parts from Japan or China.  So the money spent on parts at Lowell's bounces around the local economy for a couple of rounds, but much of it eventually leaves Lexington because our parts are made overseas.

The services side of Lowell's, however, is very different.  Because our 'suppliers' (employees) are all local, the majority of each dollar spent on services at Lowell's circulates through the local economy for 3 rounds or more, with a little more leaking out of Lexington in each round. 

Our rough estimate is that each dollar spent at spent at Lowell's turns into at least 2 dollars for the local economy. 

And we aren't - by any means - the best example of a local multiplier.  

As the local content of goods or service ramps up, the multiplier compounds.  In some cases, the local multiplier could reach 5 or more: each dollar spent results in $5 recirculating through the local economy. 

A great example of this compounding is Good Foods Market, a local co-op which sells a lot of locally-produced items.  That local produce often uses local labor and local inputs, and the multiplier compounds quickly.

We often hear the phrase "Buy Local".  And it often sounds defensive or protectionist or even a bit naïve.  And sometimes it is.

But purchasing goods and services from local providers also pays hefty benefits for Lexington's economic health.  And finding those local providers is relatively easy, with sites like Kentucky Proud and Local First Lexington providing useful directories of local products and services.

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Lexington needs to think 'local' first.

Because of the way local purchases supercharge our economy (through the multiplier effect), prioritizing local business investment and development should be a cornerstone of Lexington's economic development strategy.

But it doesn't appear to be.

Commerce Lexington - our local chamber of commerce - is also commissioned by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) to marshal economic development efforts in our city.  More than any other organization, Commerce Lexington should understand the economic benefits of prioritizing local investments over external ones.  

Looking through Commerce Lexington's policy statements on economic development, they are filled with booster-speak - pushing incentives aimed at attracting new businesses (see our last post on why this strategy is deeply flawed).  And, we see nothing in those statements regarding prioritizing local business investment.

Other Lexington leadership seems to have overlooked the local multiplier as well.  LFUCG paid Vision Internet (based in California) $24,000 to redesign the lexingtonky.gov website.  Rather than injecting $48,000 into the Lexington economy (assuming a 2x multiplier) and helping sustain a local business, the city created a multiplier of 0 and drained $24,000 from the local economy.

And the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau contracted with New York's Pentagram to design the CVB's 'Big Lex' logo.  Regardless of your feelings about the logo itself (we didn't find it relevant), the CVB missed a big opportunity to contribute to Lexington's own thriving branding-and-design community.  They could have created a compelling story by working with a bigger, award-winning local firm like Elevation Creative.  Or, they could have partnered with a smaller, growing local firm like Martin Design Studios (who crafted the crisp, clean new logo for Lowell's).  Instead, CVB missed out on a chance to leverage local relationships to create a new logo and contribute to the community's economy.

Some observers might (rightly) be concerned about the effects of nepotism or cronyism if the government (or their agents) were to award such contracts to local firms.  The "good ole boy" network is alive and well throughout the city, but there are ways to ensure local preference while simultaneously ensuring that taxpayers are not being fleeced.  Several progressive communities throughout the country have identified and adopted rules for local government purchasing which do just that if a local bidder is within, say, 5% of the best non-local bid. 

Lexington should explore our options for implementing similar local-preference purchasing rules, so that our community may benefit from the local multiplier.

In any case, Lexington should make local business development and investment a cornerstone of its economic development strategy. 

Next: 4. Embrace Openness

To-Do List for Lexington: 2. Stop seeking saviors. Start making them.

(Part of the To-Do List for Lexington series.  Click here for an overview and links to the rest of the series.)

Last July, Florida Tile announced that it was relocating its headquarters to Lexington from Lakeland, Florida.  Kentucky's state government made a $3.7 million capital investment to bring 25 new Florida Tile jobs to Lexington.  Florida Tile estimates that the number of jobs may grow to as many as 51 in 10 years.  In October, Lexington's Urban County Council dropped the occupational license tax for Florida Tile to 1.25% from the normal 2.25% - a benefit of up to $1.3 million over the next 10 years.

How will 25 (or 51) new jobs pay back the millions of public dollars invested in bringing Florida Tile to Lexington?  It is doubtful that they will.  And that points out significant problems with Lexington's economic development strategy.

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In our last post (Get Real), we talked about the destructive effects of Lexington's booster mentality, which couples a self-deceiving optimism with a compulsive need to look good to others.  Boosters often pursue expensive, highly-visible, ego-driven civic projects with the promise of vague future rewards.

The economic development strategy which springs from such boosterism is one in which a great deal of effort and capital is expended to attract outside commerce to Lexington.  So boosters promote big civic investments (events, buildings, infrastructure projects, or incentives) with the hopes that those projects will entice new companies to invest or locate here.  And the underlying assumption is that the firms we attract to Lexington will - eventually - pay back the investments of effort and capital.

But this kind of economic development strategy has a number of irredeemable flaws:

• Waste.  Projects like the 2010 World Equestrian Games and CentrePointe are wildly speculative and profoundly inefficient ways to draw new commerce into our city.  And, when one looks at the numbers, it is doubtful that Florida Tile's incentive package will pay back taxpayers over the next 20 years - if they stick around that long.
• Loss of Power.  When we try to attract companies from outside Lexington, we cede significant negotiating power to the company we are courting.  That company can stay where they are, or go to a city other than Lexington.  We are prone to enter bidding wars with other desperate cities in the pursuit of desirable 'saviors', and the process becomes a race to the bottom: Who can offer the most lucrative incentives and conditions?
  
• Misguided.  These strategies pursue the wrong kinds of firms.  When we resort to incentives to, in essence, bribe companies to come to Lexington, what kinds of companies are we attracting?  Ones which are much more mercenary and which - by definition - have less investment in our community and its future than firms who are already here.  To be clear, every business should be concerned with improving  its bottom line.   But when public dollars are at stake, we must decide how to allocate those dollars based upon public benefit.  And underwriting mercenaries is not the best use of public funds.
• Hidden Penalties.  The incentives granted to companies like Florida Tile disadvantage already-local firms.  Those local firms not only help pay for the new firms' incentives through taxes, but they also don't get the financial subsidies, new facilities, or extended tax advantages that are often granted to newcomers.

This economic development approach - attract outside saviors to drive growth - also ignores a vital question: Where are these firms coming from?

Or, put differently: How is it that such firms even have the capability to expand to a city like Lexington?  How did they grow?  What did their home cities do to foster that growth?  And, most importantly, why isn't Lexington doing that to grow great businesses at home?

Lexington's leaders frequently look to similar American cities in the attempt to understand how those cities have grown and how they have built a great quality of life.  If we look at 'model' cities like Austin, Madison, Portland, and Pittsburgh, we see a very different economic development model at work. 

In fact, these cities suggest that the old booster model has it exactly backwards: Those cities invest in growth at home first, then outsider attraction follows.

Lexington should be asking a lot of questions about those cities:

• How did they foster key industries at home?  (For instance, how did Austin nurture the development of vibrant economies around semiconductors, computers, and music?)
• How did those cities redevelop key districts into vibrant contributors to their economic engines? (Think Sixth Street in Austin or The Pearl District in Portland.)
• What specific approaches did these cities use to leverage their relationships with local universities to drive economic growth?  (Think Carnegie Mellon or University of Wisconsin.)
• What infrastructural moves did they make to enhance the local economy? (Example: How did Austin Energy help the city save enough energy - even as Austin grew - to avoid building a new power plant?)
• What did they do to nurture and promote the careers of key locals?  (Think Michael Dell in Austin or Rebecca Ryan in Madison.)

And then Lexington needs to take a hard look inward and think about how those lessons apply here.  For instance:

• Who are Lexington's Michael Dells or Rebecca Ryans?  How would we know?
• What are the best ways to allocate economic development funds to cultivate growth in their businesses?
• Which districts in Lexington hold the most promise for redevelopment?  What specific lessons can we draw from, say, the Pearl District redevelopment process?
•  How can we leverage the University of Kentucky and Transylvania University as key resources for economic growth (and not think of them only as educational institutions)?

These cities suggest that Lexington should stop seeking external 'saviors', and instead focus on building up our city's internal competencies and infrastructure.  Then, outsiders might find our city desirable without requiring huge ransoms. 

Focusing on internal growth is, in fact, how cities like Austin, Madison, Portland, and Pittsburgh have fueled sustained growth over the past 20 years.  Lexington should follow their example.

Lexington should stop seeking saviors, and start making them instead.

How does that look?  Here are some initial ideas:

1. Make targeted investments. Instead of, for example, throwing $80 million at the World Equestrian Games in the speculative hope that the investment will draw future commerce from outside the city, make smaller, more targeted investments in growing specific businesses with specific growth measurements and targets (jobs, tax revenues, etc.).
2. Select target industries, and invest there.  Choosing particular industries will allow Lexington to develop self-reinforcing ecosystems around key technologies or competencies.  Lexington's mayor has frequently touted the "3 H's" strategy for Lexington's economic development: Horses, health care, and high-tech.  These might be valid industries to target, but we've allocated precious little development resources toward those goals and seen precious little progress in those areas. 
3. Oversee development with sharp business intellects.  Typically, Lexington's economic development has been overseen either by developer-driven boosters (Commerce Lexington) or by academics and architects (Downtown Development Authority).  Lexington needs to shift the balance to more entrepreneurial businesspeople who have experience in business growth and who understand which business models work and which don't.  
4. Prioritize business investment over infrastructure investment.  Projects like streetscapes and buried utility lines, while pretty, will contribute relatively little to Lexington in the way of tangible jobs or revenues.  And attempts to financially justify these projects frequently cross into sheer booster speculation about making better impressions.  Instead, we should focus on cultivating growing businesses and directly creating jobs and revenues with our development funds.
5. Think "local" first.  Supercharge our investments by prioritizing local businesses before external ones.  More on this in our next post in this series.

Rather than spend hundreds of millions of dollars on hope and speculation, we need to make smarter, more targeted investments with our public development dollars.  We need to run the business of growing our city like a business.  Anything less is a waste of our time and money.

Next: 3. Local First

To-Do List for Lexington: 1. Get Real

(Part of the To-Do List for Lexington series.  Click here for an overview and links to the rest of the series.)

Lexington suffers from a booster mentality.  That mentality dictates that we must constantly paint our city in the most favorable light.  And, often, the booster mentality buys into its own hype: "Everything is great; Everything is wonderful; No problems here!"  Boosters often champion ego-enhancing feel-good projects with questionable economic value.

The trouble with such unrelenting optimism is that it frequently crosses into rampant self-deception.  When things are going badly, the booster cannot admit it; Doing so would destroy their carefully-constructed mental image of the perfect city. 

The booster mentality partly stems from wanting to look good for others, for outsiders.  And, from an economic development standpoint, boosters look to attract commerce (businesses) from outside the city.

The trouble with such primping and preening is that an obsessive amount of effort is spent on cosmetic rather than substantive improvement.  By spending so much time trying to look good for the outside world, boosters often neglect very real problems at home.  And their self-deception means they have trouble even acknowledging the existence of such problems.

Boosterism takes a number of  forms, but follows a pretty standard recipe:

1. Hold out the promise of a vague future reward
2. Leverage that promise to justify current sacrifices
3. Question the patriotism, loyalty, intellectual ability, credibility, and / or intentions of all who question either the extent of the reward or the merit of the sacrifice
4. Never, ever admit that maybe the reward wasn't worth the sacrifice

We see this all over town.

With CentrePointe, there was the promise of the state's tallest building, containing a J.W. Marriott and a fictionalized Hard Rock Café.  Lexington would have status.  If it meant destroying some historic buildings and taking some gigantic leaps of faith, so be it.  And, if folks make too much of a fuss over the historic buildings, marginalize them and the block the buildings stood on.  And never, ever admit that the whole speculative venture was a mistake.

With streetscape projects, there was the promise that we'd look good for our out-of-town visitors while the world's eyes were upon us during the 2010 World Equestrian Games (WEG 2010).  By looking good to the world, Lexington might be able to attract more tourists. Or maybe businesses.  Or something.  If it means severing the most significant southside artery (South Limestone) for over a year and losing some downtown businesses along the way, so be it.  And, if folks make too much of a fuss over the cost ($88 million), dismiss their calculations without offering any of your own.  Or use silly diversionary tactics like forcing them to remove their logos from key presentations.  And never, ever admit that the project's execution and timing were poor.

Sport is a common justification for such development projects.  For the promise of "major league status", cities have destroyed historic neighborhoods or paid huge ransoms to attract (or keep) a major sports team or event (such as the Olympic Games).  Boosters cite the added visibility and prestige that comes with such status as justification enough.  But most such "investments" rarely pay off.

With WEG 2010, we have such an example of sports-led economic development right here at home.  And the promise of the world's attention and the event's prestige have become their own rationale for action - without regard for whether such action is truly justified by a real-world reward. 

Boosters assert that today's torn-up streets, empty blocks, disrupted commerce, and vast new facilities - often paid for with tens of millions of public dollars - will all be worth it...

Someday. 

They hold out the vague and unmeasured promise of future visibility, prestige, tourists, businesses, investments, and commerce.  In the meantime, they drain significant economic vitality from the city while pursuing future attention and dollars.  But the boosters of CentrePointe, streetscapes, and WEG rarely do a realistic accounting of the true value (or value destruction) of their ventures. 

In essence, boosterism is an incredibly expensive and inefficient form of untargeted advertising: Hundreds of millions of dollars thrown at the rest of the world in the faint hope that someone - anyone - will throw some of it back into our economy.  And, as we've written before, Lexington needs to focus less on advertising and promoting how great it is and focus more on actually being great.

Lexington needs to get real.

We need to get real about which community investments will actually pay dividends.

We need to get real about what is wrong (and what is right) with our community and about what it will take to craft a better Lexington.

We need to get real about the destruction wrought by unbridled boosterism.

Getting real isn't about ceasing to support our fine city.  It isn't about becoming negative - 'nay-saying' every project or bad-mouthing Lexington. 

It does mean that we start openly discussing and debating the merits and shortfalls of the investments our community makes.

Only by acknowledging that we have significant problems can we begin to wrestle with them.  I've written before that Lexington is too polite.  In conversation, we are so indirect that we avoid confronting our difficult issues. 

But we must.  We must begin to engage and debate our city's future.  We must get a full accounting for the folly, waste, and fraud which accompanies such unbridled boosterism.  We must redirect effort and attention from this glamorous-but-questionable boosterism to projects and investments which, while far less ego-boosting, will yield tangible economic benefits for our city.  And we must get real about the present state and future possibility of our city.

And getting real is what the rest of this series is about.

Next: 2. Stop seeking saviors. Start making them.

To-Do List for Lexington: An Overview

On November 8th, this blog will turn one year old.  It has been an interesting year, and the blog has turned into something very different than what we initially conceived.

One of the surprises: how much we ended up focusing on issues and ideas of local interest, especially those related to downtown Lexington. 

We've not been shy about offering our opinions on CentrePointe, on South Limestone, on Lexmark, on our local government, and on the future of our city, just to name a few.  And you've not been shy in offering your (often very different) opinions in return.  

We believe that Lexington is a really great city.  But we also believe it needs to be much better.  And we've got some ideas on how to get to that better future. 

So, as we end our first year of blogging, we thought it might be good to put together an agenda for our city.  Over the next several posts, we'll share ideas on improving Lexington.  Some will be ideas we've touched on before; some will be brand-new.  We'll focus a lot on our city's economic and urban development.

As we build out this list over the next week or so, please add your thoughts and comments.  We believe that an open discussion about our city is vital to crafting a better future for Lexington.

So think of this series as a conversation-starter.  Think of it as a love letter to what our city could be.  Think of it as the rantings of your local mechanic.

Think of it as a to-do list for Lexington.

To-Do List for Lexington

1. Get Real
2. Stop seeking saviors. Start making them.
3. Local First
4. Embrace Openness

This series is dedicated to my son, Carson, and to the future Lexington that he and his generation will inherit.

The Spotlight Effect

There's an old saw in business: "That which gets measured gets results". 

I have to admit I've always been a bit dismissive of that saying (usually attributed to the late business guru Peter Drucker).  In corporate life, I saw plenty of things that were measured which didn't get results.  The mere act of measuring something accomplishes nothing if effort doesn't also go into improving that 'something'.

But a couple of events over the past few weeks has me thinking about what does get results. 

Newtown Pike Extension
The first event was the much-acclaimed burial of utility lines along Lexington's Newtown Pike extension.  After Graham and Clive Pohl (of Pohl Rosa Pohl Architects) highlighted the discrepancy between the pretty artists' renderings of the extension and the actual plans for the construction that was about to begin.  Instead of the beautiful, pristine streets promised in the renderings, the extension would have been littered with utility poles and power lines.

LFUCG engineers cited the high relative cost of burying the utilities, estimating that putting them underground would add nearly $900,000 to the project's cost.

Since the extension will be a kind of "gateway" into Lexington, there was an outcry from many on the Urban County Council about how important it was for us to look good for visitors.  Our Vice Mayor was quoted as saying "We'll never get a second chance to make a first impression."  Local columnists and Lexington's online community jumped on the issue as well, and it snowballed.

Within a couple of weeks, city leaders lined up with Kentucky's Governor to announce that they had found the extra funds to put the utilities underground in the Governor's contingency fund.

I have to admit, I support putting utilities underground, but am dubious of the "first impression" argument.  The utilities are currently slated to go underground only on the Newtown Pike Extension.  The existing stretch of Newtown will still have above-ground utilities.  So a visitor's true first impression will still be filled with wires and poles from I-75 to Main Street, as seen in this shot of Newtown from this afternoon.

The Treeds Experiment
The second event was a little closer to home.  In the Treeds Experiment, I decided take up a challenge from an Urban County Councilmember to see how long it took to get a response from LFUCG's Division of Code Enforcement.  So, last Friday - just before the holiday weekend - I sent an email to Code Enforcement about a lot next to our main building which had become overgrown with tree-weeds, or "treeds".  

At the same time I sent the email, I posted an outline of the experiment on my blog, along with pictures of the overgrowth.  And I pledged to chronicle the responses I got from the city. 

This past Tuesday, the city's contractors showed up to clear the lot - less than one business day after my email and post.  Pretty impressive by any measure.  Code Enforcement hasn't addressed all of the concerns I outlined (the main drain in the lot is still clogged).  But, to be fair, they have addressed most of the public safety issues which accompanied the blight in that lot.

On Twitter, a couple of folks brought up valid points.  Russell and Ann both pointed out that Treeds had an unfair advantage - because I talked about it publicly, that may have helped artificially accelerate the responsiveness of the city.  (Indeed, within hours of my initial Treeds post, a city employee commented that the experiment would 'fail'.)

The Spotlight Effect
These two events both benefited from the "spotlight effect": When the public's spotlight turns to a particular issue, and that spotlight begins burning intensely, 'normal' reactions and 'normal' timelines are no longer acceptable.

Russell and Ann were right: my experiment wasn't 'normal', and the average citizen shouldn't expect that kind of responsiveness.

And others would point out that the Newtown Pike Extension wasn't 'normal' either - it was a one-time event which utilized one-time funds.  We shouldn't expect city officials to move that quickly to fix an oversight or mistake.

But we should. 

Everyone should get prompt action on valid complaints.  Everyone should expect city leaders to fix their mistakes, to do the right things, and to do them quickly.

But we can't wait for our leaders to do the right thing.  We need to push them.  We need to build bigger, brighter spotlights, and we need to shine those spotlights on the things that matter. 

It is up to us.

Building a Spotlight
What does it take to build an effective spotlight?  I can't claim to be an expert, but here are some of my thoughts culled from the past few days and weeks (feel free to contribute your own in the comments below):

• We must be more vocal.  We tend to be indirect folks here in Lexington.  It is awkward and impolite to complain; it is much better for the other person to do what they should.  But they don't.  And we stew.  And nothing much changes.  

It is time for that to change.  As out-of-character as it may be for many of us, we need to become much more vocal about what is wrong and what we expect.  Only then can things improve.

• We must join our voices.  When one person calls a city department, they are a complainer.  When several people call - and are joined by bloggers, columnists, and media - that's a movement. 

And a movement is what dislodged the status quo of the Newtown Pike Extension.  We need more movements in Lexington with more voices working in concert.  We need to utilize our public platforms - Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and papers - to draw others to our cause.

• We must be more visible.  When one person calls one other person at LFUCG, there's no spotlight.  No one else knows about the call, and no one else can amplify the sentiments expressed there. 

One of the reasons that Treeds got such a rapid response was probably the 'publicness' of the experiment.  That visibility helped the amplify the spotlight and, in all likelihood, accelerated the response.

• We must measure.  This statement isn't about micro-measuring every detail of every issue.  It is about documenting who we talked with and what they said, and holding them accountable for their actions (or lack thereof). 

Any regular reader of my posts knows that I'm not shy.  They know that I'm not afraid to use my platforms to try to build a movement.  In the past few months, my blogging and writing has become fairly visible.  (And, for what it is worth, I've got some like-minded friends.) 

So if you need a spotlight, let me help you.  If you see blight around campus or around downtown, let me know.  If your business is suffering from the South Limestone road closure, let me know.  If you have a great idea for our city, let me know.  If you see a problem which needs fixing, let me know.

Together, let's be more vocal.  Let's join our voices with others who agree.  Let's be more visible.  And, then, let's hold people accountable.

I want a better Lexington.  One where businesses aren't squeezed out of their locations by poorly-planned year-long road closures.  One where our government operates much more transparently.  One where blight is quickly and effectively addressed.  One which has a real (and realistic) urban development plan for downtown.  One which has a thriving arts and business community.  One which leverages its past to build a brighter future.  One which will make my son homesick if he ever leaves.

If you want that too, then join me - or rather, have me join you.  Tell me what matters. 

And I'll do my best to help you build a spotlight.  Let's make a better, faster Lexington.

Health care reform: A small business perspective

This week, we're finalizing our shop's health insurance requirements for the next year.  Our policy will be 25% more this year for the same coverage.  Last year, it grew by 16%.  Compounded, that's 45% in two short years.  No other cost increases on that scale for us.

As a small business, the spiraling costs of health care hit us particularly hard each year.  And the need for a new approach to health care is particularly acute, for us and for our employees.

I've been puzzling over health care for a long while - and I won't claim to have the answers here.  But I thought it could be helpful to step away from the town hall and cable channel histrionics and fear-mongering to share some observations on health care from a small business perspective.

Insurance companies are like casinos: The house always wins.
Insurance companies have received a lot of criticism during the health care reform debate.  But they are doing precisely what they are designed to do.  They make money for investors by taking bets on the health requirements of their customers. 

Insurance companies operate like casinos or racetracks: the table is always tilted in favor of the house.  They may lose big on a single 'jackpot', but across the full array of customers they nearly always win.  And when they don't win 'enough', they'll raise the cost of making bets with them. 

When we enter into agreements with insurance companies, we're always taking a sucker's bet that we're very likely to lose.  The only reason an insurance company takes our money is because they 'bet' that we won't need that amount of medical care.

Ultimately, as with the casino, the house wins.

The oddity of employer-provided health insurance.
We don't really question it much today, but it is just plain strange that something as personal and as private as health care is mediated by employers at all.  We don't usually involve our employers in house payments or banking or appliance purchases or car insurance.  But, somehow, we've come to expect them to provide health care insurance.

Employer-provided insurance is an historical artifact from negotiations between General Motors and labor unions in the late 1940's and early 1950's.  Charles Wilson, GM's CEO, saw it as a last-ditch concession to help prevent the 'nationalized healthcare' system that Harry Truman was championing - which Wilson saw as a threat to the integrity of the free enterprise system.  (Funny how many things just don't change.)  Soon, other employers adopted health care coverage as a standard part of their benefits packages, and employer-provided insurance became the norm.

But, really, why are we employers involved at all?

Leverage
One reason that employers remain involved is that they often have more buying power than individuals.  Over the past 60 years, we've been able to provide leverage which lets us negotiate somewhat better plans with insurers and medical providers. 

But small businesses have scant more negotiating leverage than an individual.  Often, our employees choose to get independent coverage rather than participate in our group plan. 

When Lowell's bid out to three other health insurance companies, the results were disheartening.  The other three companies offered rates that were 200% to 300% higher than our current rates with Anthem.  So we're 'trapped' with Anthem.

Expanding waistlines, increasing costs.
As a nation, we're getting a lot unhealthier.  We eat more.  We exercise less.  We sleep less.  We're in worse health.  We're living longer.  And we need more care.

We don't spend much time, effort, or money on the preventative health care and self-care which would help eliminate the much more expensive catastrophic care.  We're too busy to exercise.  We don't want to pay for the mammogram.  We don't like waiting in the doctor's office. 

And we require more medical care as a result.  Often, we get that care after a catastrophe built upon years of self-abuse: We have a heart attack.  Our knees fail.  The cancer spreads.  (We see the same phenomenon with routine maintenance in the car business - put it off, put it off, put it off, then replace an engine.)

Health care is getting more expensive, in part, because we are getting unhealthier.

Rising expectations, increasing costs.
We've come to expect more from our medical system.  We expect our doctors, staff, drugs, equipment, and facilities all to improve.  And we should expect improvement as medical science advances.

But those advances are costly.  The astronomical research and development costs for the medical 'miracles' of MRIs and cholesterol-fighting drugs and 'little blue pills' have to be paid for in some fashion.

And doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies won't simply absorb those costs.  They will pass them on to patients.

Health care is getting more expensive, in part, because health care is getting better.

There are no painless solutions.
We've seen politicians, lobbyists, pundits, and fellow citizens all offer various versions of 'painless' solutions to the healthcare problem.

They promise that government should bear more of the burden. Or that government shouldn't bear any of the burden.  Or that we just need full, universal insurance.  Or that insurance companies should pay.  Or drug companies.  Or hospitals.  Or doctors.  Or that we shouldn't have to pay for the chronically uninsured.  Or that we should just collar all the lawyers and their malpractice suits.  Or we should just have more competition.

Nobody says that we must bear the responsibility.  But we must.

If we refuse to provide insurance or government coverage for the roughly 45 million uninsured Americans, what happens to those who can't pay?  Hospitals and emergency rooms will still provide care.  Their costs will go up.  And they will pass those costs to other patients in the form of, say, an $8 dose of ibuprofen.  We pay.

If we provide government-paid health care to them (or to ourselves), what happens?  Our national deficit will rise.  This week's projection of a $9 trillion deficit over 10 years amounts to about $30,000 per man, woman, and child.  Which will have to be funded through taxes.  We pay.

If we have full universal coverage in a government program, what happens?  Because they don't bear the initial brunt of the costs, patients get more health care than they really need.  And doctors and medical institutions will happily provide (or suggest) that profitable care.  More deficit.   More taxes.  We pay.

If we squeeze insurance company profit (or put greater requirements on them), what happens?  They will likely refuse coverage for the riskiest, least profitable customers.  Unable to find private coverage, those customers will opt to go without coverage or to go with a public plan.  More $8 (or, now, $10) ibuprofen.  More taxes.  We pay.  

If we squeeze drug or equipment company profits, what happens?  They have less to invest in research and development.  They take fewer risks, and release fewer blockbuster drugs or fewer equipment breakthroughs.  Improvements in our medical care falter.  We pay.

If we collar lawyers and malpractice suits, what happens?  Doctors' malpractice insurance costs will likely go down.  But a few careless doctors who commit malpractice may inflict injury or death without significant penalty.  And who ultimately bears the cost of that irresponsibility and that injury or death?  We do.  We pay.

If we allow more competition between insurance companies, what happens?  The insurance companies look at the same basic actuarial tables.  They evaluate risks in the same way.  They put a price on the 'bets' they are willing to take in the same way.  And their prices remain about the same as without as much competition.  We pay.

We want ever-better medical care.  We are getting unhealthier.  We want someone else to pay for it.  But they won't.  We must bear the responsibility.  We must pay.

Can government, insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors get more efficient?  Sure.  Are there opportunities to eliminate waste?  You bet.  Can we patients get healthier and do more preventative care?  Absolutely.  But it will cost us in some way.

There are no painless solutions.  In the end, we all pay.

The moral obligation
"Is health care a right or a privilege?"

It is a question that we don't talk about enough, and which underlies much of the national divide about health care today.  Is health care a right to which all people are entitled?  Or, is it a privilege bestowed only upon those who have earned it?  

It is an interesting question, and the health care debate has hinged upon how people answer it.

Except that I think that it is the wrong question.

The "right or privilege" question presupposes that rights and privileges are somehow separable. I don't think that they are.

I think of health care in many of the same ways as I think of citizenship or, even, to being a human being.  As citizens and as humans, we have certain 'inalienable' rights.  Heck, our country was built upon them - "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".  

But those citizen's (and human) rights come with deep responsibilities.  We must participate.  We must act in certain ways.  We must work together to improve our nation and our well-being.  We can't abuse the fundamental rights we have been given.

For me, health care comes down to a moral issue.  I can't tolerate 45 million fellow citizens living without a safety net.  I can't tolerate wasteful spending on needless tests and procedures on the public dime.  I can't tolerate 45% increases in insurance costs over 2 years.  I can't tolerate 'competition' which triples my existing rates.  I can't tolerate people (including me, unfortunately) who don't take good enough care of themselves.

I can't tolerate the status quo.  Can you?

For me, health care is a citizen's right.  And an earned privilege.  We must strive to provide health care for fundamental human needs whenever possible, while simultaneously striving to ensure we grapple with the responsibilities that come along with that privilege.

So to the politicians, lobbyists, pundits, and citizens engaged in the public debate, I say: Grow up.  Step up to the plate.  Quit attacking.  Get realistic.  Have adult discussions.  Lose the scare tactics.  Work together.  Compromise.  Take responsibility.  Live up to your moral obligations.

Then, maybe, just maybe, we can build a better health care system.  For our nation.  And for one another.

What you told us: How Zappos would fix cars

This week we asked for your help in defining an astoundingly great car repair experience.  We summed it up this way: How would Zappos fix cars?

In Wednesday's post, we talked a little about what Zappos does and why customers love them, including the famous I Heart Zappos post.  And in the past two days, we've gotten some really great responses on Twitter, Facebook, and here on the blog - including one response from a Zappos employee!

Over on Facebook, Joan commented that she thought that Zappos was actually the "Lowell's of selling shoes".  (We heart Joan.)  We love that sentiment and will try to live up to it, but still think we have a lot to potential to improve our own customer service.

On Twitter, Jim suggested that Zappos "would come to your house and fix it at night while you slept".  Allan and Mari joked about needing to buy parts online from Amazon (an allusion to Zappos' recent purchase by Amazon.com).

But the strongest theme running through the comments: The need for greater transparency in auto repair.  I'll run through some of the comments, and then talk a little about what Lowell's does (and what we could do based on your comments).  On Twitter, Jupiter said he'd like to prevent that "being had" feeling, perhaps by getting greater detail on what was being repaired and why it was needed.  Ace Weekly chimed in "They would spoon you before giving you the bill?"  Here on the blog, Letha (a Zappos employee) shared a friend's experience with a body shop which sent her daily text messages about the status of her car after a wreck, including a countdown to when it would be ready.  Jim added this comment:

"The thing the frustrates me about car repair is the unexpected nature and size of the expense. It would be nice to provide as part of the service an educational piece that says here are the expected life cycles for key systems for your car and what you might expect to pay. And here are indicators of failure so we can start to diagnose these issues BEFORE they happen. At some point, owners need to start BUDGETING for system replacement and failure and that takes planning and information."

What's clear from this last batch of comments is that automotive service is all-too-frequently a kind of mysterious 'black box' where a car goes in one side and nasty, unpleasant surprises emerge from the other. 

At Lowell's we try to prevent such surprises in the following ways:

• On each invoice, we print a list of factory-recommended maintenance given vehicle mileage, including a rating of the severity or urgency of each one, and pricing.  We try to review that list with our customers when they pick up or drop off their vehicle.  We sometimes fail to discuss maintenance needs during busy pick-up and drop-off times.
• We always get customer approval before doing work on a vehicle, providing customers with estimates of the costs before we do the work.  If they are available, we'll also offer less-expensive alternatives, like fixing or cleaning a part instead of replacing it.  (Ace, we try to reduce the need for 'spooning' whenever possible.)
• When we call a customer to get approval, we tell them what a technician found and explain why action might be needed.

Based on your comments to us, here are some ideas of what we could do:

• Explainers.  For frequently-done maintenance and repair service items, we could provide detailed "explainer" sheets, including text and pictures regarding what the service is, why it is needed, and what a part might look like when it needs replacement. 
• Schedules.  With ongoing maintenance, it is easier to implement Jim's suggestion that we provide more of a roadmap of service.  And we do that, to some extent, with our list of factory-recommended maintenance.  But it is very difficult to predict with accuracy when something will break and require repair, and for many repairs there are few warning signs until something breaks.  When visible, we'll tell customers about signs like brake or belt wear or engine leaks.  One idea: We could take pictures of the actual parts that are wearing or of the places that are leaking, to show the thing that needs service.
• Convenience.  Not sure yet how we might do something like this, but Jim's other suggestion of working on vehicles overnight is interesting.  Perhaps we could pick a car up and have it back in the morning for very basic items, but a big part of our process is communicating back to customers about what we find (and they probably won't welcome updates at 2 in the morning).  But Jim's suggestion got us thinking: Are there other ways we could make getting auto service easier?
• Updates.  As a mechanical shop, most of our repairs are completed same-day, so we almost never have the 20-day delay in getting completed that Letha's friend had at the body shop.  But Letha's post got us thinking: Are there other ways you'd prefer to be contacted?  While the phone is our usual way of updating customers, we do frequently find ourselves in a kind of phone tag during the service approval process.  We could provide more contact alternatives: text messages, Twitter DM's (direct messages), etc. 

Which of these things would matter to you?  What other things would create an astounding car repair experience for you?

We really appreciate your thoughts, and please, keep giving us ideas on how to improve.

How would Zappos fix cars?

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make our shop a better place for our customers and our community.  We feel like we're pretty good at the basics.  Just a few examples:

• We have an expert staff who know how to get cars fixed.
• We have a lot of nice touches for customers who wait on their vehicles: 5-cent Cokes, complimentary coupons for a drink and snack at Third Street Stuff, and we encourage customers to take our waiting area magazines with them.
• For customers who can't wait around, we have a complimentary shuttle to take them back home or to work.  For longer repairs, we provide complimentary loaner vehicles.

These (and many other) touches have helped us a lot.

But "It can always be better" is my personal motto.  This isn't some pessimistic, glass-half-empty statement; it is a fundamental belief that we can always improve the way we do things.

So we've been thinking about companies that really excel in customer service, and one name keeps popping up: Zappos. 

Zappos is a world-class online shoe and clothing retailer who has gained a fanatical customer following because they do a lot of things right:

• They offer free shipping (both ways).  While not promised, the shipping is often next-day.
• They have a 365-day return policy.  If your shoes don't fit or don't look the way you expected, return them at no cost.
• They have round-the-clock customer service.
• They have a positive culture which puts a premium on providing astoundingly great customer service and having fun.
• They have an enthusiastic staff which has permission to make things 'right' for customers with frequent pleasant surprises like this one.

Zappos recently agreed to be acquired by Amazon.com, and there has been a lot of concern about their ability to maintain their unmatched customer service. 

But for us, Zappos presents an interesting question:

How would Zappos fix cars?

What would an astoundingly great car repair experience be like?  Please share your thoughts in the comments below. 

We can't wait to see what you come up with.

Pretty to Gritty: Thoughts on Lexington Streetscapes

Last week, Lexington's Downtown Development Authority held a "Downtown Improvements Public Forum" to share plans for renovating streetscapes along Limestone, Cheapside, Vine, and Main Streets.  (Controversial renovations on South Limestone are already underway.)  More 'open house' than 'forum', the lead agency for DDA's plans, Kinzelman Kline Gossman, had ringed the room with posters showing artists' renderings of what the streetscapes would look like and detailing guidelines for street and sidewalk construction. (Large PDF of the DDA streetscape plan here.)

Walking through the door, there was a telling moment.  There was an artist's rendering of what South Limestone would look like after the streetscape project was finished.  It was beautiful.  Except that it wasn't South Limestone.  The lone rendering of a South Limestone streetscape, while pretty, included non-existent buildings and storefronts.

Throughout my career, I've had the opportunity to manage relationships and to interact with numerous creative agencies: design firms, ad agencies, industrial designers, consultants, and the like.  I've had many opportunities to witness their creative processes at work.  I've also seen the common pitfalls of such creativity.  And Wednesday's open house struck a familiar chord. 

One of the most common pitfalls of creative work is to focus disproportionately on 'the pretty'.  'Pretty' is creative work in its purest, most idealistic form.  Pretty designs are often, as their name would imply, beautiful and inspiring.  And as long as inspiration is their primary goal, pretty designs can be useful.

But too often, pretty designs are seen as some kind of end point in the creative work.  After producing a a creative product, the agency - or, worse, their clients - see the work as complete.  They frequently choose not to get 'dirty' with the unglamorous implementation of the project.  Many design firms see implementation as too mundane, too pedestrian.  In their view, they should focus on the pure 'art' of their creativity; it is then up to the engineer, the website coder, or the construction foreman to do the arduous task of making the project match the pretty design.

And that is precisely the problem with pretty designs.

When the pretty design meets schedule constraints or cost constraints or other real-world constraints, it can fall apart.  When the engineer or construction worker runs up against physical realities, the pretty design often gets severely compromised, and becomes something considerably less pretty.

While pretty creativity gets accolades and awards, it usually only accounts for a small fraction (I'd guess 5 to 10%, based on my experience) of the real creative work on a project.  And that real creative work is what I would characterize as 'gritty' creativity: the practical, streetwise, action-oriented creativity which actually drives the project forward and finds creative solutions to real-world problems.  The success or failure of complex projects depends in great measure on how much 'gritty' creativity is employed within those projects.

The disconnect between pretty and gritty is the most common cause of failure in creative projects.

What I saw at the DDA's forum was an abundance of stylistic and architectural details.  They had detailed guidelines for how to design intersections and sidewalks.  They had beautiful renderings of what downtown streets could look like after the designs were applied.  They had very pretty designs for the future of our downtown.

But what was missing from the forum was any substantial gritty design work for the actual execution of the project.

In the wake of the uncoordinated and under-publicized closure of South Limestone for streetscape improvements, I - and many others in attendance - expected many more practical, gritty details about how the rest of 'Phase I' (Cheapside, Vine, and Main Streets) would be implemented.  Indeed, I had also hoped to find out more about how future phases would affect my business and those of my neighbors on North Limestone. 

The disconnect between ideal ("the pretty") and implementation ("the gritty") was troubling: Could we be headed for another South Limestone? 

In the South Limestone closure, many businesses seemed to have little time to prepare for losing a big chunk of customers for a year or more.  Commuters had little time to adapt to drastically altered traffic patterns.  While the city made some public parking available, that parking was a pedestrian-unfriendly 4 to 5 blocks away from some of the affected businesses.  In short, South Limestone needed some gritty design for the implementation and coordination of the project.

The pretty planning for downtown streetscapes has been underway for years.  But real-world work on Main, Vine, and Cheapside is slated to begin in just 3 to 4 months.  This short timeframe creates added urgency for understanding how the rest of the streetscape project will really work.  And the utter lack of gritty planning details in last week's meeting makes answers to the following questions even more important.

• Could all three streets, as with South Limestone, be completely closed?
• Which sections of which streets will be closed?  For what periods?  What is the planned sequence of closures?
• When can each business on the affected streets expect their businesses to be interrupted?
• How long will such business interruptions last?  What will those interruptions look like?  Where will they be most severe?
• How can we accelerate the project where business interruptions will be most profound?
• Can we sequence closures around business cycles?  Could retailers be least affected during the holiday shopping season?  Could work near outdoor cafés be completed by spring?
• How will the city or DDA assist businesses during the closures?  How will such assistance be more effective than what was done for South Limestone?  Targeted ad campaigns?  Special events?  Shuttle services from parking garages? 
• Will drivers need to find alternate routes (as with South Limestone)?
• What are the likely sources of project delay?  How will those be mitigated?
• What, precisely, are the future phases?  When are they slated?

To avoid the chaos that accompanied the South Limestone closure, the DDA and the city must begin mapping out the gritty planning of how this project gets executed.  And simply throwing such vital details to a construction contractor isn't acceptable. 

The streetscape project is certainly a pretty design.  But, if it is to be a successful urban development project - if it is to help us build a better, more vibrant city - then it must get much more gritty as well.

LexMobs on South Limestone?

The South Limestone streetscape project gets underway this morning.  Using Twitter, Lexington's Mayor announced that the closure will result in traffic delays of up to 45 minutes. 

From a public point of view, the closure seems hastily and poorly planned, although the promised streetscapes look wonderful.  The project stems from a noble goal: to better connect the University of Kentucky campus with downtown Lexington. 

But businesses lining South Limestone (SoLime) had little time to adapt to the closure, and I wonder how many can survive being starved of traffic for so long.  When Lexingtonians realize that there is a "mess" surrounding SoLime, they will stay away in droves.  (With a business just off of North Limestone, I'm concerned about the disruptions to our southside Lexington customers making it in to Lowell's.) 

There are a lot of great businesses along SoLime that would be a shame to lose: Sav's, Pazzo's, Tolly Ho, Failte, Sqecial Media, and many, many others.  Some (maybe all) of these are Lexington institutions.

How long could they operate without significant customer patronage?  How long could they retain employees?  How long can they make debt / rent payments?  How long can they pay bills?  How long can they survive?

So, here's a challenge for our readers: Let's go out of our way to demonstrate that we care about those businesses.

Beginning today, and continuing through the next month, let's pick one or two businesses to "flash mob" each day.  Let's get together to show, with our feet and our wallets, that we want those businesses to survive.  Let's show up.  And eat.  Or buy.  Or drink.  Let's refuse to let these businesses fail.

If our LexMobs get too big, that's OK - I'm sure that the plentiful nearby businesses would also love some of our overflow business.

Will this effort be well-organized and well-thought-out in advance?  Not a chance.  Will it be messy?  Yes.  Will it be chaotic?  Absolutely.  Will it be inconvenient?  Certainly.  Will you be too busy to interrupt your day?  Undoubtedly.

But that is precisely the point: to go out of our way to demonstrate we care for these businesses.

So... Let's LexMob South Limestone.  Look for more details on Twitter with the hashtags #LexMob and #SoLime.  See you there!

Update: The inaugural LexMob will be Wednesday, July 22nd @ Pazzo's Pizza Pub at 11:30 AM near Euclid on SoLime.  Can't make it?  We'll try for other times and places with future LexMobs!

Toward a Better Lexington

"It has taken five years on Council to understand what we can and cannot control."
Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council Member Kevin Stinnett, 7/2/2009

How do we make Lexington a better city?  Really better?  I have some ideas, but first we need to understand some of Lexington's fatal flaws in order to design something better...

A Broken City
As a relative newcomer to the inner machinery of our city (but a lifelong resident), I have spent a few months trying to figure out how Lexington 'works'.  As a downtown business owner, my focus has been on how we craft a functioning, vibrant, and livable city: How do we create a better Lexington?  And it has been a maddening exercise.  The more I delve into how decisions are made in Lexington - the more I understand what is actually going on - the more perplexed I become.  I am forced to conclude that our city is deeply, systemically, and utterly broken.

Lexington is an uncoordinated tangle of overlapping agencies, boards, task forces, committees, departments, rules, and processes.  Within this messy system, each organization is charged with its own distinctive - but often overlapping or conflicting - mission, mandate, authority, ability, accountability, and expertise.  Some of the organizations consist of long-term government administrators, some of elected officials, some of volunteers, others are quasi-governmental public/private agencies, and still others are fusions of all of these.

This highly fragmented machinery yields a city which fosters turf battles, redundant effort, convoluted processes, secrecy, uncertainty, and, as we have seen most recently, corruption.

The ultimate result is a profoundly inefficient city with an effectively paralyzed government. 

Scandalous
Lately, our local news has been rife with scandals and poorly-conceived, -designed, and -executed projects:

• Out of control spending sprees at the Airport, the Library, the Kentucky League of Cities, and the Kentucky Association of Counties.
• The scar of CentrePointe's failure with its phantom financier, phantom tower, phantom business model, and phantom jobs.
• The seemingly hasty and disorganized pending closure of South Limestone.

All of these scandals fit a disturbingly regular pattern: Inadequate oversight which leads to lax controls which permits gross mismanagement and/or outright waste of taxpayer dollars. 

Behind this pattern of scandal and appalling inefficiency lies Lexington's deeply flawed governing apparatus.  And when we observe that apparatus in action, we can begin to understand the root of the scandals.

Laurel and Hardy
Many Urban County Council meetings bear an astounding and troubling resemblance to a Laurel and Hardy "Who's on First?" sketch.  A prime example of this was last Thursday's Economic Development Task Force meeting (See Ace Weekly's wonderful reality-show spoof here for further examples).  A central question of last week's meeting was "Who is (really) responsible for economic development in Lexington?" 

At the outset, one councilmember stated, "It has taken five years on Council to understand what we can and cannot control."  Re-read that statement, because it is a profound indictment of our city's overcomplicated decisionmaking infrastructure.  Five years.  It takes five years for a councilmember to "get it" when they are steeped in it day-to-day?  How long will it take for an ordinary citizen? 

And by the way, despite the councilmember's assertion, I don't think the Council yet understands what they can and cannot control, as the ensuing conversation demonstrated.

The Task Force (Consisting of Urban County Council members) debated the Council's role in economic development relative to Commerce Lexington ("CLex", Lexington's semi-private chamber of commerce) and the Downtown Development Authority ("DDA", a corporation commissioned by the city and charged with helping redevelop downtown).  Both CLex and DDA have a board of directors and a staff of professionals.

What emerged from the discussion (chronicled best by Debbie Hildreth on her new blog about acclimating back to Lexington) is that the councilmembers have little clarity and little agreement on the respective roles, responsibilities, plans, and accountability of the Council, CLex, DDA, and the CLex and DDA boards.  Reading through Debbie's transcript, the councilmembers' statements are filled with stale bromides, helpless complaints, quick answers and utter confusion.  It all becomes tragically comic when you see how our elected officials are not even remotely on the same page.

And it is no wonder that our Council is befuddled.  The situation is actually far more complicated than just the Council, CLex, and DDA.  Within the Council itself, there are a bewildering array of committees and task forces, all of which could lay legitimate claim to economic development.  There is, of course, the Economic Development Task Force.  But there is also the Infill and Redevelopment Task Force.  There is the Planning Committee.  But there is also the Budget and Finance Committee.  And the Outside Agency Oversight Committee.  And the Corridors Committee.  (But wait, there's more!)  There are staff professionals within Lexington's Division of Planning.  There are volunteers who serve on the Planning Commission.  And with CentrePointe, there is the Courthouse Area Design Review Board, which issues the building permits for the site.

Within this ridiculous balkanization of our government, who has the jurisdiction, the responsibility, and the accountability for building a better Lexington?  Everyone and no one at once.  And therein lies the problem.

All of these organizations can claim they spearhead Lexington's development into a better city.  All of them "own" a piece.  But ultimately, none appear truly accountable for actual on-the-ground progress. 

The Lyric
With a noble project like the restoration of the Lyric Theater, who is in charge?  Who takes the lead on coordinating and executing the Lyric's redevelopment?

The Lyric could plausibly fall under the auspices of the DDA.  Or CLex.  Or the Infill and Redevelopment Task Force.  Or the Economic Development Task Force.  Or the Planning Commission.  Or, even, the Corridors Committee.  Ultimately, though, responsibility fell to another shard in the splintered machine: the Lyric Theater Task Force (who, by the way, appeared to do a great job).

And while the Lyric task force optimized the project for the theater's redevelopment, it isn't at all clear where this project falls within the wide array of potential development opportunities in our city.  It isn't clear how the Lyric was connected to our other urban initiatives.  In a fiscally-strapped economic environment, was the Lyric the best possible allocation of public funds?  We can't really tell, because we haven't really prioritized such development projects by return on our public investment.

Destination 2040: Destined to Fail
Some councilmembers have pointed to the Destination 2040 report as a roadmap for Lexington to follow in its development endeavors.  Destination 2040 is an admirable vision of the future constructed by our citizens.  It is filled with interesting ideas and initiatives to help improve our city.  But it is most certainly not a roadmap. 

Destination 2040 lacks clear prioritization of the initiatives it proposes.  It fails to identify adequate operational details of how to fund, structure, and execute the components of the Destination 2040 vision.  And, most of all, it fails to address the profound structural inefficiencies within Lexington which have long hampered such well-intentioned visions.

::

Toward a Better Lexington

What kinds of structural changes are needed in Lexington?  I have a few ideas.  I hope that you will add more. 

Transparency
When I began to look at how our city works, I quickly joined the chorus of advocates for greater transparency in how decisions get made in Lexington and throughout Kentucky. 

And that advocacy has begun to pay dividends (whether the results of our actions or not).  As local officials take their first baby steps on Twitter, and as more of our citizens engage in local decisionmaking through attending meetings in person, watching them on public access television (GTV3), or following vibrant discussions on Twitter, one fact has become abundantly clear to me: Transparency is not enough.  Not nearly enough.

While transparency has helped reveal the scandals and issues facing our city, transparency alone won't really solve them.  Don't get me wrong - we're now starting to see into the machine.  It's just that we're learning that the machine is completely dysfunctional.

Comprehensive Urban Development
Whatever 'system' we have in place today, it isn't one which promotes sustained urban development.  I use the term urban development purposefully here: It is more than mere city planning; It is more than simply promoting our city; It is more than just economic development.  Urban development looks at our city as a functioning engine of economic and social progress, and strategically deploys our city's 'fabric' - spaces, corridors, amenities, people, businesses, buildings - to maximize sustainable advancement in our economy, in our social lives, in our physical environment, and in our aesthetic surroundings.

In short, it looks at how we intentionally design a better-functioning, vibrant, and livable city.

Simplification
It is clear that the splintered approach to bettering our city is failing.  Our continuous scandals and perpetual lack of progress cement that conclusion, as does the bewildering overlap of dozens of separate well-intentioned but poorly-conceived organizations.

My proposal: Eliminate today's governmental tangle by collapsing the DDA, Planning Commission, the Division of Planning, and the LFUCG Economic Development Office (for starters) into a single, centralized, and well-staffed organization with the clear mandate, clear authority, and clear accountability for successfully implementing our city's urban development initiatives.  

Focus
Concentrating urban development authority in a single organization will only work if we provide them with crystal-clear priorities on what is important.  With dozens of possible initiatives, visions like the Destination 2040 report lack clear priorities.  In essence, it declares that everything is important.  And in trying to do everything, we'd fail to accomplish anything.

We need to provide such an organization with guiding principles on what's important (and what isn't).  Is the organization designed to maximize tax revenue, jobs, infill, downtown density, or something else? 

From out of these principles, we should set realistic and quantifiable goals: "3000 new jobs by the end of 2010"; "$30 million in new tax revenues by 2012"; "10% higher residential density in downtown by 2014"; etc. 

My initial thoughts are that the core principles and the goals attached to them should be outlined by the Urban County Council.  That said, I'd like to see a way to balance continuity and change: As a city, we probably don't want long-term initiatives derailed by short-term political changes.  But we also don't want to 'lock in' failing projects merely for the sake of continuity.

From these principles and goals, staff professionals should derive the best 4 or 5 initiatives for achieving the established goals.  Would the Lyric Theater have emerged as one of the 4 or 5 best possible urban development projects?  I don't know, but I have my doubts.  It doesn't appear to scale very well on "jobs" or "revenues" dimensions.  But, of course, neither does CentrePointe at present.  Would we risk destroying surrounding businesses to "beautify" South Limestone's streetscapes?  I don't know, but I have my doubts.

Accountability
When the Economic Development Task Force met last week, councilmembers bemoaned the $400,000 provided to Commerce Lexington to bring new business to the area.  To date, there's little proof that this 'investment' has paid dividends.  How much business?  How many jobs?  What new tax revenue?  CLex really isn't accountable to the Council, so there's no real penalty for not delivering.  Where'd the $400,000 go?  The Council would like to know, too...

When we make the transformation to a simplified and focused urban development authority, we must have accountability for progress on these development initiatives.  Do they adhere to our principles?  Are they meeting our goals?  Are they successful?  If so, who gets rewarded?  If not, who gets fired?

::

Do I expect my proposed system to be adopted?  Not really.  But I would like for our leaders to begin to discuss seriously reforming how our city's decisionmaking machinery functions.  And the system which emerges must be more transparent, more simplified, more focused, and more accountable. It must help us build a better Lexington.

A modest proposal to end blight

Comprehensive Care Parking Lot

Every morning when I walk into work at Lowell's, I see 8-foot-tall tree-weeds growing through unkempt hedges and spilling over into the public sidewalk.  I see a planter adjoining our building, burgeoning with weeds and grass and the massive stump of a long-dead tree.  I see a pitted, crumbling parking lot with clogged drainage.

Many customers assume it is our lot.  It does adjoin our building.  And they can't see the sign declaring "Comprehensive Care Center Parking Only".

116 Mechanic Street

Across the street I see a tiny old shotgun house with a gigantic half-rotted tree looming ominously over both the house and the main Lowell's parking lot.  After the ice storm and other storms this spring, downed branches lay in the asphalt front yard of the house.  For over two months.

Absentee owners neglect both properties.  Neighboring businesses have conducted the most of the maintenance on the properties over the past couple of years.  In effect, they are abandoned.

As a business owner, I worry about the effect it has on Lowell's famously loyal customers.  Even if they cherish us and the service we provide, I'm genuinely concerned about the ability of such eyesores to repel visitors to the shop.

I often talk with nearby business owners, who share my concern for the negative effects of these properties on our neighborhood.

* * *

Many folks have wondered why I have been so vocal on the CentrePointe mess.  There are many reasons, but one of the biggest is that the abandoned properties surrounding Lowell's have given me firsthand experience the negative effects of blight like the CentrePointe scar.

There are many such highly-visible, blighted, non-productive and apparently abandoned properties in Lexington: CentrePointe in Downtown, Lexington Mall on Richmond Road, and Continental Inn on New Circle at Winchester are some of the most apparent.  But there are numerous smaller examples littering our city.

Just like the properties surrounding our shop, the absentee owners seek to avoid any and all expenses.  They avoid capital gains taxes by refusing to sell their properties.  They avoid maintenance expenses by refusing to invest to make their properties economic contributors to the community.  They avoid property taxes by refusing to improve their decrepit real estate.

Such abandoned properties generate near-zero direct contributions to the economy.  Moreover, they generate negative economic effects for surrounding properties and businesses: They drive away business and drive down property values.

* * *

It is time for such neglect to end.  It is time to make sure that lazy landowners are motivated 1) to improve their holdings and 2) to transform their properties into contributors to our community's economic engine.

My modest proposal: Implement a 'blight tax'.  Lexington landownders whose property qualifies as 'blighted' would have to pay a moderately severe annual blight tax.

The definition of 'blighted' would need to be worked out, but should include an assessment of the property condition, as well as proof of substantial progress on needed improvements.  We could start with Division of Code Enforcement standards.

To overcome their avoidance of maintenance expenses, property taxes, and/or capital gains taxes, I'd propose that the blight tax have some teeth: Say, 35% to 50% of assessed property value per year.

In the CentrePointe case, the blight tax would generate $8 to $12 million per year of revenue to the city until the developers improve their land.  When historical buildings were demolished to make way for CentrePointe, many rationalized that the old buildings were greater eyesores than the pit which remains today.  I disagree.  But a blight tax may also have helped prevent the demolition-by-neglect which occurred on that block over the years.

I would imagine the former Lexington Mall and Continental Inn properties would generate amounts similar to CentrePointe, given their sizes and their locations on busy thoroughfares.

Such tax revenue could be specifically allocated to offsetting the effects of blight: community improvements to sidewalks, bike paths, streetscapes, parks, community centers, business incubators, community ventures, and the like.  If property owners avoid the blight tax by making their properties more valuable (i.e., by improving them), then all the better.

To create a vibrant city, we need to ensure that Lexington doesn't have the economic scars that blight leaves behind: dead spots which contribute little (or which actually destroy) monetary value in our community.

My proposal is the blight tax.  What's yours?

A better brand for Lexington

Lexington's leaders are busy picking a new brand for our city.

Sorry, gang.  You don't get to decide.

Last week, the Urban County Council's Planning Committee considered the city identity possibilities of the blue horse that Pentagram (an international design firm) crafted for the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau.  The committee forwarded the discussion on to the full Council. 

Unfortunately, the Blue Horse Debate is a waste of time, talent, money, and attention.

Our representatives fail to realize that Lexington's brand is largely out of their hands.  And it certainly isn't in Pentagram's hands.  Whether they choose to promote a blue horse or a spotted yak is irrelevant to Lexington's brand. 

Telling versus Earning
Marketers (and leaders) suffer from a kind of conceit.  The marketers' conceit is that they can tell us what their brand means.  They fail to realize that brands are reputations which are earned.

A brand isn't a declaration.  It isn't an intention or a vision.  It isn't what leaders say it is, no matter how well it is designed and researched.  It isn't a great ad campaign or a really slick logo or a lyrical tag-line.  It is certainly not a marketing function.

Brands arise from all of our experiences with that product or that city, not from what the leaders of any company or city want them to be (or say they are).

The best brands don't tell people they're great.  They earn greatness.

If people believe that Lexington is a boring town, then (unfortunately) that is part of our brand.  If people believe that we are a technology backwater, then that, too, is part of our brand.

This is scary because our brand is pre-set in peoples' minds, and it takes a lot of hard work to be good enough to dislodge entrenched perceptions.

It is scary because it isn't about saying we're better; it is about actually BEING better.  Really better, not just in-our-marketing-plan 'better'.  Not just approve-a-message/logo/strategy-in-a-meeting 'better', either.

We have to earn a reputation for better schools, better businesses, better technologies, better leaders (and not just at LFUCG, either), better conversations, better people, and better visions of the future.  And we can't buy that reputation from any design or branding firm.

To improve our brand, we have to truly transform Lexington.

Inertia
So why do our representatives persist in their silly pursuit of the blue horse?

Over the years, I've frequently witnessed something I call institutional inertia.  Institutional inertia happens when individuals in an organization don't really feel responsible for (or influential upon) the success of the organization.

In those cases, the easiest thing to do is just stay the course, even if that course is doomed to failure...  When inertia raises its ugly head, it is often, maddeningly, the powerful (those who think they have the most to lose) which become the most hostile to change and most determined to stay the destructive course.  Doing nothing is always easier than doing the right thing, especially when doing the right thing is a lot of hard work.

And paying someone to design an 'identity' is an easy-but-doomed course for improving Lexington's brand.  There is no 'magic bullet' for crafting a better brand for our city.

If we want a better brand for Lexington, then make sure our city is an attractive, welcoming place for our visitors.  Ensure that our people are knowledgeable, warm, and friendly.  Create rich, distinctive, and memorable experiences for both our citizens and our visitors.  Foster the growth of vibrant businesses and arts communities that make Lexington a compelling place to work and play.

Then, perhaps, Lexington will earn the better brand we are seeking.

Update: 4/28 Cross-posted to both Ace Weekly and Transform Lexington.

Full disclosure: In a previous job, Rob severed his firm's relationship with Pentagram.

[where: 200 E Main St, Lexington, KY, 40507]

Making Twitter work

A couple of weeks ago, Oprah began using Twitter.  Some saw her adoption of the service as a milestone that Twitter had gone mainstream.  Others decried it as a sure sign that the Twitter fad was about to flame out.

Why all the fuss about Twitter? 

I have to admit that I just didn't get it.  At first.  In this post, I'll talk about how I learned to love Twitter. In my next post, I'll talk about Why twitter matters.

How Twitter works

Twitter is a microblogging service which allows users to post messages of 140 characters or less.  These messages - called 'tweets' - chronicle what the user is doing / reading / thinking in that moment.  You can follow other users, and they can follow you as well.  [Note: There are privacy settings in Twitter which allow you to protect who sees your tweets.]

Because the messages are limited to 140 characters, a kind of Twitter shorthand code has developed to convey key concepts.  Responses to other users contain an 'at' sign (@) before their user name - so, for instance, other Twitter users respond to my posts with an '@robmorris2'.'

When discussing a particular topic, users often apply a hashtag (a pound sign - #) to their post.  Right now, there are a lot of #swineflu hashtags in the twitterverse as people tweet about the current flu outbreak in Mexico, the US, and New Zealand. 

Many users want to share interesting stories or blog posts with their followers.  But because regular web addresses (URL's) can run 60 or 70 characters, many people use URL 'shorteners' to compress a web address to just 16 or so characters.  So many of Twitter's addresses are from the bit.ly, is.gd, tr.im, or similar odd-looking domains.

When users want to share someone else's tweet with their followers, they often 're-tweet it'.  They do so with 'RT' and the user's @name.  So, when I saw a Dave Winer tweet that I thought was worth sharing, I shared it this way: "RT @davewiner: Why NPR is Thriving (They’re Not Afraid of Digital Media). http://tr.im/jH5o".

Critical Mass
Twitter gives you some basic tools to help you find and add other friends who use the service.  When I first started using Twitter, I added a few close friends.  I twittered something about what I was doing, careful to use my 140 character allotment.

And nothing happened.  I really wondered what this Twitter fuss was all about...

Only one of my friends really used the service more than a few times a month.  And he (@billder - well worth following) was in Portland, used a bewildering array of #'s and @'s, was talking with folks I didn't know, and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it all.

I posted to Twitter once or twice a week through January.  And then I drifted away until April.

After listening to an audiobook of What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis on Twitter), the prominent blogger of the BuzzMachine blog, I decided to give Twitter another try.

I followed many more folks the second time around: local and national news sites; favorite authors, bloggers, and personalities; technology sites; interesting companies and their executives; and whatever else I found interesting.

When I got up to about 50 people, Twitter started to get really intriguing.  With more and more interesting people sharing more and more interesting thoughts, links, and re-tweets, Twitter suddenly became much more vibrant.

Going Real-time
But there was something which still didn't work for me: the Twitter web page.  As a static page with maybe 20 tweets on it, I had to keep reloading.  If a lot of folks were tweeting, I often missed important tweets from friends in the flurry of tweets from other, more prolific users.

It was (and is) all a bit chaotic. 

But there are solutions.  Twitter has allowed software developers to graft their products onto the Twitter platform.  There are a bevy of such products out there: Seesmic, Twhirl, TweetFon, Tweetie, and many others.  Each has different features and functions.

My current favorite is desktop software called TweetDeck.  With TweetDeck, Twitter finally came alive and started making sense for me.  In other words, I finally 'got' Twitter. 

There are four key features of TweetDeck which make it work for me.

First, TweetDeck auto-refreshes.  This means that I get nearly-live updates as soon as they happen.  For me, it transforms Twitter from a static web page into a real-time social messaging system.

Second, TweetDeck lets me create groups of people that I can follow.  This means that I can group folks according to how important they are to me or by which parts of my life they belong to.  By default, TweetDeck has an 'All Friends' column which contains live tweets from everyone I follow.  But I created another column which has tweets from folks that I really want to pay attention to.  The 'groups' feature let me create some order out of Twitter's chaos, and helped ensure that I didn't miss important local or topical or personal tweets.

Third, the software made tweeting easier.  TweetDeck has a lot of built in stuff to respond to (@) or re-tweet (RT) other users.  It lets me shorten a URL right inside the interface. 

Fourth, TweetDeck has a search function which allows me to monitor what anyone in the twitterverse is saying about a particular topic (like, say, "Toyota") live.  So I can get a sense of what is happening with things that are important to me right now.

These four features of TweetDeck (some of the other Twitter software has them too) brought Twitter to life for me.  They allowed me to connect with new people and have new conversations that would otherwise never have happened. 

Making Twitter Work
What made Twitter 'work' for me was 1) making sense of its shorthand, 2) following a critical mass of other users to make things interesting, and 3) using a 'live' interface (for me, TweetDeck) which catapulted the service from a website into a many-to-many conversation.

In my next post, I'll talk about Why Twitter matters.

Why Twitter matters

[In my previous post, I described how I made Twitter work for me.  If you'd like to see how I got the most out of Twitter, click here.]

It took me a while to understand Twitter, as documented in my last post.  I'm certainly not the most prolific or most informed user, but I've come to gain some insights about Twitter that I haven't seen a lot of other commentators pick up on.  These are by no means exclusive to Twitter, but I think it is the platform which most embodies these characteristics today:

1. New kinds of connection.  More than any other medium I've come across, Twitter enables new kinds of social interactions.  Conversations become multilateral public events, instead of one-way or two-way forms of communication.  And those conversations can coalesce around personal, local, or topical interests.  I can dip in and out of many different conversations happening simultaneously.  If I have nothing interesting to say about an interesting topic, I can just observe while others contribute.


2. The new news.  As a news junkie, I used to troll blogs and websites for the latest information on what was happening in business, in technology, in Lexington, and in the world-at-large.  Now, Twitter serves as my news station.  I can easily ignore tweets which I don't find interesting, but follow links which are of interest.  What is best is that this news is already vetted by folks I respect and trust.
   
   Further, Twitter's hashtag convention allows me to follow what topics are 'hot' through tools like TwitScoop, which is enabled by default in TweetDeck (see my last post if this last passage looks like Greek to you).  The news on Twitter often unfolds long before mainstream media picks it up.  In Ace Weekly (@AceWeekly), Kakie Urch (@ProfKakie) put together an excellent analysis of how Twitter acted as the new news in the #amazonfail case, including how long it took traditional media to even notice, while the twitterverse was exploding in outrage.  (As I write this, a friend of mine, @JasonOney, is mounting a campaign to save the NBC series Chuck, using the #savechuck tag.  And he's got friends marching with him.  Look out NBC.)


3. Twitizenship. What the #amazonfail and #savechuck cases (among many thousands more) demonstrate is a new form of online citizenship, characterized by immediacy, openness, and cause-centered organization.  This 'twitizenship' can create what some call 'flash mobs': groups which form nearly instantly in either the virtual or physical worlds.  Twitizens expect speed, transparency, and action from both businesses and civic leaders.
   
   My favorite recent example: Kickeball at CentrePointe Parque.  Where?  Let me explain.  Using Twitter and Facebook, a flash mob formed around the idea of playing a kickball game on the pit of rubble in Lexington where CentrePointe is not being built.  So, last Friday at 5:30 PM, they had a game - and a wonderful bit of public theater and civil disobedience.  It was quick.  And you can read the best account here (Thanks, @KeeganFrank) and see the best video here (Thanks, Mick Jeffries).  You should check out these accounts, because the local media completely whiffed on coverage over the ensuing 24 hours.  I left work to go to the pit and witness the game (but not to participate - I was chicken, and I didn't want to get arrested).
   
   This is a fun example, but I hope my main point shines through: Twitter allows citizens to form into and disband from interest groups at lightning speed.  These groups have higher expectations of their leaders and of businesses, who must respond with greater speed and openness.  Those who fail to respond will surely #fail. 

Twitter's platform allows for new social formations which are important, and will be changing the way we interact, the way we get our news, and the way we create a better city, state, nation, and planet.  Governments, businesses, and citizens must adapt to this changed world, or they will be left behind.

Those are my thoughts on why Twitter matters.  What are yours?

The UnTower Manifesto: 1. Truth

[Note: The UnTower Manifesto is a three-part series about responding to the failure of CentrePointe.  You can read the full story of that failure here.]

As the CentrePointe project becomes the UnTower scandal, a general consensus has developed which agrees that CentrePointe will never be built on the crater that its developers rushed to create. 

A critical question, then, is this: If CentrePointe will not be successfully constructed, how should Lexington move forward in the wake of the UnTower scandal?

There is the obvious question of how to proceed with the colossal scar in the middle of our city.  But there is also the less obvious - but, ultimately, more important - issue of changing how Lexington works in order to prevent the next UnTower catastrophe.  Let me start there, and we'll return to the issue of what to do with the site.

Toward a Better Lexington
The details of how UnTower happened have slooowly trickled out from the developers.  Their secrecy, lack of candor, intimidation, outright deception, and possible fraud have sharpened questions about how decisions have been made throughout the project's approval process.  UnTower has exposed how opaque and how ill-informed our mayor's and our Urban County Council's decision-making processes have been.  And, if you look closely enough, the scandal shows us how Lexington should improve.

So, how did this fiasco happen?  The details have been covered many times from many, many, many quarters, so I'll simply summarize the key themes:

• Throughout UnTower, the developers have maintained great secrecy about the financing and the business model behind their development.  As details have emerged, neither looks viable.
• The developers claim their project is 'private', but have pressured the public to provide approvals and special Tax Increment Financing (TIF) for the project, with much of the TIF dependent upon a vibrant long-term business model which they don't have.
• The developers, the mayor, and some council members have not shared how and when they learned about key elements of and issues with UnTower which led to its ultimate demise.
• The developers, the mayor, and much of the council have responded to pointed and informed questions about the project with vague, non-responsive answers.  Often, they refused to respond at all.
• While there was public discussion about the decisions our government was making, the conversation was muffled by their timing and format.

In the end, the whole affair had a distinct 'backroom deal' flavor to it which left more questions than answers: How were these decisions made?  What information went into the decisions?  What information was withheld?  What information was fabricated? Who talked with whom about the project?  When did they talk? 

All of the questions have raised a bigger question: How is it possible that our community doesn't have absolute clarity into how decisions are made by our elected representatives?

In my business, if we failed to clearly explain how a vehicle was repaired, we'd lose customers.  If we came across as less-than-honest, our loyal customers would fire us.  If we refused to meet with a customer to address their complaints, they would tell their friends and family.  If we didn't make things right when we screwed up (and, yes, that does happen occasionally), our reputation would suffer.  In the end, our business would fail.

With UnTower, our community's 'business' failed us.

Clarity.  Explanation.  Honesty.  Availability.  Accountability.  These are the pillars of a transparent business that customers can believe 'does things right'.  A healthy, vibrant business which grows and prospers.

We wouldn't accept anything less than these qualities from a business.  And we shouldn't accept anything less from Lexington.

In an age of websites, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, every business has had to engage in conversations with customers on the customers' terms.  The ubiquity of the internet means that these tools are available to nearly everyone, nearly everywhere.  The latency of the internet means that the conversations don't have to happen at the same time - they can build over time.  The internet's ubiquity and latency forms the foundation of a new and better town hall.

Why should we all have to cram into a room at the same time?  Why should we have to play 'beat the clock' when talking about issues which are complex and nuanced?  Why should we have to forgo pressing business or personal matters to attend a meeting which is designed to be convenient for our representatives?

The internet provides the perfect public forum for every citizen to express his or her public policy views, ideas, and thinking.  Even better, our ideas can build on one another as we tinker with and improve the ideas of our neighbors.  Plus, conducting civic conversations on the internet can happen around the clock.  Citizens can participate in the public discussion when and where it is convenient for them, not for the elected representatives who serve them.  Isn't that the way it should be?

Further, every single representative should publish their conversations, thinking, dilemmas, trade-offs, beliefs and positions (and the transactions between them and other interested parties - like developers or investors or campaign contributors).  These records should be posted online for all citizens to see, comment on, debate, and improve.

The council members' emails are listed on the city's website, as are the mayor's newsletters.  But these are old, closed, one-way forms of communication.  They aren't vibrant community discussions.

So, do I want to see tweets that the mayor's advisor is picking up eggs?  Or a Facebook entry featuring the halloween costumes of the councilwoman's children?  Not particularly.  But we deserve to see real-time updates of their thinking on critical community issues.  We should know why they have changed their minds at the last minute.  They should tell us who they talked with and what they said.  After all, they are public officials.  We should see into a transparent civic machine which serves all of us.

What is clear is that a 19th-century civic apparatus has hamstrung our 21st-century community. The ancient contraption allows far too many secrets to hide within.  Whether our representatives and our governments use blogs, Twitter, Facebook, or some other platform matters far less than whether they start participating in open conversations with the people they serve.

The technology already exists.  Millions of people already use it.  Thousands of your constituents use it every day.  It's easy.  It's free.  And it will make Lexington better.  What are you waiting for?

[Continued in: The UnTower Manifesto: 2. Consequences]

[where: E Main St & N Limestone St, Lexington, KY 40507]

The UnTower Manifesto: 2. Consequences

[Note: The UnTower Manifesto is a three-part series about responding to the failure of CentrePointe.  You can read the full story of that failure here.]

The consequences for UnTower should rest on the people who perpetrated the scandal: The mayor, some council members, and the developers.  Let's start with the mayor.

In other venues, I've seen the mayor talk with his skeptics with apparent openness and graciousness.  He was quite articulate.  He listened to their concerns and seemed to hear them.

But the last several months have shown a repeated abdication of his duties in the face of scandal.  This pattern first emerged with the airport staff's misappropriation of public funds in their credit-card-and-travel scandal, where the mayor displayed a perplexing tendency to drag his feet.  Now, as CentrePointe devolves into the UnTower scandal, the mayor has shown a similar lack of initiative to lead on his citizens' behalf.  Instead, he has resorted to 'happytalk' to defend what is clearly a failed project.

Meanwhile, the vice mayor has been active and vocal in challenging both scandals.  The effect: a grassroots effort to draft him to run for mayor in 2010, complete with its own Facebook fan page and glowing coverage in local media.  The current mayor seems to have no such dialog with the citizens he serves, and seems to have generated little enthusiasm for a 2010 run.

The mayor needs to begin to lead with candor, action, and transparency - beginning with complete clarity around what happened to create UnTower - or his constituency will chase him from office.

The same can be said for the members of the Urban County Council - especially those who rubber-stamped the UnTower project without adequate scrutiny or analysis.  They must assume a more actively transparent posture - including using the tools and technologies to have conversations with the people they serve - or they, too, will be removed from office by their increasingly-informed electorate. Their citizens will no longer tolerate the kinds of hijinks and misdirection that characterized UnTower.

Finally, there are UnTower's developers.  What should happen to them?

The scar in the middle of town is their property.  But the destruction of the block and the special tax status endowed on the block were public events, with public investments and public impacts.  If anyone doubts the public impacts, just talk with businesses bordering the UnTower eyesore about its effects as a customer-repellent.

So here's my modest proposal for penalizing their deception.

First, the council should explore all options for rescinding the block's special Tax Increment Financing (TIF) status.  TIF was granted under conditions which no longer seem to apply, and the developers no longer appear to have earned that special status.

Second, the council should - to the extent it is able - strictly re-define acceptable future uses of the property in light of the UnTower scandal.  Given that the developers contributed to the scandal with their hollow promises and continual lack of disclosure, I would hope that our council would be particularly stringent with requirements for how the property functions as part of our community and that they would set a strict timetable for the developers to act.

The developers misled us to gain advantage; now they should pay the price.

[Continued in: The UnTower Manifesto: 3. Beyond UnTower]

[where: E Main St & N Limestone St, Lexington, KY 40507]

The UnTower Manifesto: 3. Beyond UnTower

[Note: The UnTower Manifesto is a three-part series about responding to the failure of CentrePointe.  You can read the full story of that failure here.]

The final piece of the UnTower puzzle is what to do with the pit now that the historic buildings are gone and the promised tower cannot be built. 

Up front, let me declare that I don't have all of the answers regarding what needs to be done with the block.

But I do have some general principles which we might start to apply to the site.

• Create a vibrant destination which attracts in-town residents, weekday workers, other folks from throughout the Bluegrass, and tourists.
• Make that destination a distinctive place which no other city has (and this doesn't need to be a towering monument to ego)
• Create public and private spaces within the destination which allow the community to create shared experiences while also providing a much needed economic boost
• Balance the types of uses within the development to include an attractive mix of retail, nightlife, dining, and lodging options
• Ensure local businesses have significant presence within the development to help supercharge the local economy
• Ensure that the space is well-integrated with the surrounding community and that its design promotes circulation throughout surrounding businesses and public spaces
• Build it soon.  Remove the eyesore that the UnTower scandal left behind.

So lets look at these principles in more detail.

Destination.  If we want the UnTower block to directly feed the local economy, we need it to function as a destination for both our visitors and our community.  The previous imposing design did not encourage local residents to participate in the space.

Distinctive Place.  The new development should, to the extent possible, function as a signature place for Lexington.  Much like Keeneland and our horse farms showcase Lexington as a city like no other, the new development should showcase our city, our region, and our people.  Portland, Austin, Miami, Chattanooga, Denver, and even Louisville have these memorable and distinctive signature places.  Lexington should, too.  A distinctive place will draw people (and dollars) into our community; A forgettable one will not.

Public and Private Spaces.  The most effective places (like those in the cities above) combine public spaces with private enterprise.  Thus, memorable shared experiences can also feed the local economy.

Balanced Use.  Others have proposed using the block for a single kind of use - say, a new basketball arena.  Such dedicated uses of the property would be counterproductive to our economic engine.  To get the biggest economic bang for the buck, we should encourage a unique and balanced mix of stores, restaurants, attractions, clubs, and perhaps a unique 'boutique' hotel.  (My best-ever customer experience was at a Kimpton Hotel, which made for a hugely positive impression of Portland in general.  What if Lexington could wow its visitors like that instead of giving them a bland cookie-cutter hotel?)

Local Businesses.  To supercharge the impacts of the dollars spent within the new development, we should try to ensure that many of the businesses located there (30%? 50%?) are local businesses.  This will yield two big benefits.  First, it would contribute to the distinctive character of the place.  Second, it would keep a significant portion of that money in Lexington.

Integration.  When CentrePointe was proposed, many derided the design as too fortress-like and too disconnected from the city fabric.  The UnTower scandal offers an opportunity to correct that mistake.  The new development could more thoroughly integrate with several aspects of downtown development.  The site borders Phoenix Park, Courthouse Plaza, and the History Museum / old Courthouse / Cheapside complex.  An 'open' design would promote circulation through those spaces (and into surrounding businesses) and would better integrate with our other urban initiatives (such as our street improvement plans).

Build Soon.  Regardless of the type of development we ultimately put on the UnTower block, we probably have missed our window for using it to improve our city's appearance for the World Equestrian Games in 2010.  Nonetheless, we cannot allow the crater left by UnTower to remain. 

Is this list comprehensive enough (or even correct)?  Probably not.  Feel free to point out what I got wrong or what I missed.

In any case, this is the kind of civic discussion that the citizens of Lexington must engage in if we are to build a better community - and if we are to heal the scar in the middle of our city.

[where: E Main St & N Limestone St, Lexington, KY 40507]

Discovery tale: Do you have a Bugatti in the garage?

The recent discovery of a classic, rare, and dusty 1937 Bugatti in an old English garage got me thinking.

The Bugatti fits neatly into the popular imagination as a kind of "discovery tale".  Discovery tales are those romantic, hopeful stories about finding some valuable piece of treasure in an unexpected place.

The discovery tale permeates our culture:

• The Rembrandt (or Picasso) in the attic
• The winning Lotto ticket
• The mid-19th-century stock certificate left by a long-lost aunt
• The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
• The gambler who wins the big jackpot in Vegas
• The starlet discovered in the drugstore
• The search for El Dorado
• Cinderella
• The Antiques Roadshow

These are all stories built around the discovery tale.  Usually, the tales result in untold millions for the "discoverers": the family who found the Bugatti will be getting nearly $4.5 million.

It is a compelling story.  Except that it is totally unrealistic.

Don't get me wrong -- I really like these stories, too.  As long as they are treated as fun, fantastical tales.

When the discovery tale becomes a personal strategy for wealth or success, it is a problem.  It is deadly when it becomes a build-it-and-they-will-come business strategy.

It is a problem in two ways.  First, it promotes faith in a highly unlikely outcome.  What do I mean?  Let's be generous and suppose that there are 100,000 Bugattis (or Rembrandts or jackpots or stock certificates) in the world.  Only a fraction of those Lotto tickets are going to be found in any one year (it took nearly 50 years for the family to find the Bugatti - there's a reason that such discoveries are so rare and notable).  Again, let's be generous and assume that 5% of these (5,000 or so) are discovered per year.

At this point, there is literally a one-in-a-million chance that you will be the discoverer of the next Bugatti in 2009.  And that's after being generous with our assumptions.

If you are now tinkering with the assumptions -- "Maybe there are really a million Bugattis and there's really a 20% chance of finding one..." -- please STOP.  It is nice to hope, but it is destructive to manipulate the odds in order to justify hoping.

The second big problem with discovery tale strategies is that they are passive.  Discovery tales encourage waiting and hoping as a substitute for industry and ingenuity.  People put off getting a better job or starting their own business while they wait for "things" to get better or for their lottery ticket to come in. 

So am I a total cynic?  No.

Everyone has undiscovered treasure.  But you don't find it.  You use it.  Your treasure lies in your hands and between your ears.  You are the garage -- go make your rare Bugatti.

[where: United Kingdom]