Pullen Park speech

Pullen Park ribbon-cutting

Here are my written remarks from the Pullen Park dedication Saturday. I frequently compose my speeches on the fly but Pullen Park is important so I spent more time on this one.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting for this day for 124 years!

Today we celebrate the grand opening of a park that actually opened 124 years ago. Hard to believe, isn’t it? I did a little research to get a better idea of what Pullen Park’s first grand opening must have been like.

On that day in March 22nd, 1887 when Mr. Stanhope Pullen donated the land that created Pullen Park, N.C. State University was a mere fifteen days old. Fayetteville Street – where this morning’s Christmas Parade took place – had only been paved for a decade. Raleigh sprawled to almost two square miles and had a booming population of 13,000; qualifying it as the fifth largest city in our state.
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Raleigh wants a startup spark

Raleigh is building a startup environment. Software company CEO Josh Whiton gets it:

But the talent is too spread out around the city, says Josh Whiton, the 31-year-old CEO of TransLoc, a software company next to downtown’s Moore Square that makes web sites and apps for mass transit systems.

“We’ve got a lot of good companies, but they’re miles apart from each other,” Whiton said. “There’s not the serendipitous running into each other when you go to the coffee shop.”

“Durham has that concentration. That’s what Raleigh needs.”

It’s not a stretch to say I’ve worked for more startup companies than just about anyone. And Whiton is right on the money. This is what Raleigh needs to focus on with its entrepreneurial efforts: creating a startup scene. It’s all about those serendipitous meetings. Foster that feeling and success will follow.

What it takes to accomplish this is essentially what it takes to make any kind of development take place in the city: it all starts with staking a flag someplace, so to speak. Find a part of town that offers the “raw materials” that might make for interesting work places. Look for a place with “good bones,” as the real estate industry calls it. Then designate this place as the startup area and sell it with PR. It helps to attract an “anchor tenant,” which for Raleigh might be Red Hat.

Then wait. And wait. Then wait some more. And commit to nurture it with whatever it needs. Listen to the companies there to see what it might need. Look around for any good ideas being implemented in other places.

Like Whiton said, there are plenty of successful startups born here in Raleigh. We’ve got a great foundation. Now we just need to focus this activity in one area and help it grow!

via Raleigh wants a startup spark – Local/State – NewsObserver.com.

Coverage of Pullen Park

Here are a few links to the media coverage of the Pullen Park grand opening.

News14 Carolina’s story features a quote from my speech and a good shot of the Turner kids during the ribbon-cutting.

Pullen Park ribbon-cutting

NBC17 also had a good story but only has a brief clip of the Turners during the ribbon-cutting:

WTVD sent a reporter and had a brief story but didn’t post the story video.

T. Keung Hui wrote a story for the News and Observer but there’s no mention of me (nor any pictures of the ribbon).

As far as I can tell, WRAL didn’t even show up. I guess they had their hands full with the parade coverage.

Occupying the high ground

My thoughts on the whole Occupy Wall Street movement have just changed considerably. I just watched the video of UC Davis Chancellor Katehi walking to her car, surrounded by thousands of completely-silent student protesters. Calling it the “Walk Of Shame,” the silent protest was in response to Katehi’s order which resulted in the egregious pepper spraying of a dozen peaceful protesters on the UC Davis campus Friday.

As Garance Franke-Ruta of The Atlantic points out, Friday’s unprovoked attack was much worse than the above video shows, with police holding the peaceful students and directly pepper-spraying them in the face and throat.
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Parade and Pullen

Posing after the parade

Wow, what a day! As a volunteer and boardmember with Mordecai Historic Park, I was offered the opportunity to march in today’s Raleigh Christmas Parade. This is the second year I was offered this opportunity but through a scheduling snafu Mordecai missed out on the parade. I had gotten the whole family excited about it then only to be disappointed. We were determined not to miss our parade chance this year and fortunately we were not disappointed.

We got to Mordecai around 8 AM, about 30 minutes before we were due to line up for the parade. Having gotten our costumes a week before, we were all decked out in 19th century clothes (though the timeframes varied considerably). We met the park staff and other volunteers who were participating and boarded the Raleigh Trolley for the parade.
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Some see nothing wrong with reporter being detained

I’m appalled at the number of knuckle-draggers weighing in on the N&O executive editor John Drescher’s column today about the detainment of a reporter covering the take-down of the protesters in the abandoned Chrysler building in Chapel Hill. It seems there are quite a few who see nothing wrong with the police detaining a reporter in contradiction to our country’s First Amendment rights. Some apparently think she got what she deserved.

Here’s what the cops should do in the future: check a reporter’s credentials. If the credentials check out, kindly ask the reporter to move out of the way and go back to your work. Do not handcuff the reporter as the reporter will not harm you. And certainly do not order them to cease taking pictures from a pulic location as this would most assuredly be a violation of First Amendment rights.

I don’t think this will go away anytime soon, and nor should it.

Time for OWS to embrace the co-op movement?

An op-ed on Al Jazeera looks at how the Occupy Wall Street movement could revive interest in cooperative businesses.

Head into Liberty Plaza in Lower Manhattan, and one is immediately struck by the self-governing nature of the “Occupy” encampment.

A community which adheres to non-hierarchical decision making, Occupy conducts General Assembly meetings which are transparent and open to the public. Meals too are prepared communally, and there’s even a public library. On the other hand, it’s not as if Occupy is putting novel ideas into practice, since the encampment harks back historically to the co-operative movement.

via Time for OWS to embrace the co-op movement? – Opinion – Al Jazeera English.

University, Inc.

I’ve often considered going back to college. Then I read stuff like this from NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson, citing the reasons for a massive 29% tuition hike:

With classes in some cases growing from 200 students to 300, faculty members struggle against a growing tide of test grading and other mundane chores, Chancellor Randy Woodson told the trustees committee.

“It takes them out of the business of being scholarly, of doing research and of moving the economic engine of this state forward,” Woodson said.

Let me translate this for you: “Those pesky students who are trying to learn are keeping us ivory-tower types from trying to pad our resumes and the university’s coffers. They should fork over their money and just shut up.”

Is it any wonder I’m disillusioned with higher education? Is it also any wonder that these schools’ big-time college sports programs get away with what they do?

The other side of town: Southeast Raleigh’s problems and promise

The Independent’s Bob Geary takes a good, in-depth look at Southeast Raleigh.

It’s Sunday morning and I’m on my way to Martin Street Baptist Church in Southeast Raleigh. For two years, it’s been the high ground in the political fight for control of the Wake County school system: the church, as a gathering place for the defenders of diversity; and Southeast Raleigh, the historically black area of the city and the county with all its problems and its promise.

via The other side of town: Southeast Raleigh’s problems and promise | News Feature | Independent Weekly.

It’s the new vegetable

Alluding to the ridiculous news that Congress voted to make pizza a vegetable, a neighborhood wag replied to an email post about an upcoming event from the Raleigh City Farm with this:

“I wonder if the Raleigh City Farm folks will be planting pizza.”

Glad to know Congress is being so productive.

Looking deeper, the whole “four food groups” thing has long been manipulated by farmers more concerned about food sales than nutrition. No wonder we have an obesity epidemic in America.