Practitioner's Edge Workshop Series Wraps Up
Jan 31, 2012 | Author: Greg Lagana
The Center for Economic Development’s Practitioner’s Edge series wrapped up after delivering three well received workshops and seminars. These included:
Seminar on Market Assessment for Retail Site Decisions
Methods for assessing the viability of potential retail locations (ex: for grocery stores) are crucial competencies for retail firms, real estate developers, community bankers, and economic development practitioners and planners alike.
This seminar was presented by Jake Cowan of LISC. Jake is a program manager at LISC’s MetroEDGE division, and project manager for LISC’s Institute for Comprehensive Community Development.
Jake went over the basics of trade area analysis and market assessment using examples from MetroEdge/LISC’s work in Chicago and Pittsburgh. He also gave a brief overview of MetroEdge’s approach for assessing the needs of neighborhood business districts.
Seminar: “Landing Your First Job in Economic Development”
A casual information session presented in partnership with the Heinz Career Center.
This seminar was presented by Andrew Levine, President/Chief Creative Officer, Development Counsellors International (DCI). DCI is a long established consultancy in economic development specializing in economic development and travel marketing, with clients including over 400 cities, regions, states, and countries. See http://www.aboutdci.com/ ).
Andy covered three cases studies of DCI’s work, including publicizing Toledo’s transition from “Glass to Solar”, strategically addressing an unfairly negative image of Columbian tourism through the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and DCI’s widely recognized Colorado Loves California campaign. The seminar finished up with a concrete talk on landing a job in economic development.
Workshop in basic uses of input output models in economic impact studies
The uses (and abuses) of input-output models of regional economies are a mainstay for regional strategy as well as advocacy in the area economic and community development, and a key tool for applied research or consulting in the field. This workshop covered some basic uses of IMPLAN 3.0 for typical local economic impact studies. Students worked directly with the IMPLAN 3.0 software, completing exercises as a group and individually. A case study was assigned.
The workshop was lead by Greg Lagana, Projects Director of the Center for Economic Development at Heinz College.
The purpose of the Practitioner’s Edge series is to go beyond discussion panels and give Heinz students exposure to some of the more practice specific skills in these fields, skills complementary to the more generalized skills conferred by our core and method courses. Topics are selected based on student interests, along with feedback from surveys of students and alumni working in economic development and related fields.
Contact: glagana@andrew.cmu.edu for more on this series.
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