#summitnyc

October 23, 2014 kicked off the Municipal Art Society's (MAS) annual two-day summit. This year's theme was Equity, Place, and Opportunity, addressing the need to create an urban environment that supports economic growth and opportunity while also fostering a sense of place and community.

Of particular interest was the panel on Safeguarding the Entrepreneurial City, introduced by Yeohlee Teng, designer for her own eponymous fashion label, and moderated by MAS's own president and serial entrepreneur Vin Cipolla. 

Panelists included Rachel Newton Bellow, co-founder of Mind + Matter Studio, the latest marketing and communication platform; Michelle Byrd, president of Run It By Byrd, Inc., a consulting practice providing strategic direction and advisory counsel; Jefferson Mao, urban planning student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and blogger on issues relating to immigration, entrepreneurship and local economic development at Flushing Exceptionalism; and Colin Miles, co-founder & CEO of Wikiburg, a civic platform for open collaboration and collective activism. 

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Colin to further discuss his ideas on connecting people online in hopes of spurring collective action to make change offline. We talked a lot about the process of "concepting" and he made me realize that we, as a team, need to better articulate our goal(s). He has also generously offered to meet with our group together and to think over our Design Team's insights for potential solutions.