Building a Wise Local Economy: Recent Episodes
Della Rucker
Content from Della's platforms, including Wise Economy Workshop, Econogy, the American Independent Business Alliance, and Engaging Cities. Topics include innovations in economic development and community revitalization, urban planning, experiential learning, kick-starting innovation, civic technology, open data and public engagement.
In the first conversations of the Know, Better, Do Better series, Della has a deep talk with Nahamani Yisrael about Black entrepreneurship and business management, and the challenges and opportunities these founders face. And they laugh a lot, too.
Local nonprofits often feel like they are at the mercy of elected officials and city staff, and they often feel that their nonprofit status and their minimal staff prevents them from being able to do much of anything - other than respond in a crisis.
None of that needs to happen.
In this interview, I talk with Theodora Skeadas, Executive Director of Cambridge Local First in Cambridge, Mass. about how her organization is advising and collaborating with elected officials and city staff. And they are doing that despite the fact that they have no full time staff!
How can we best help the next generation of entrepreneurs? Perhaps not the way you think. Kemo drops truth and shares some of the insights that formed Trep House. You won't think about capital the same way again!
We all have a lot to learn and to do right when it comes to how the environments we build impact the people who live there. Join Della and Kristen to talk about the unintended (and sometimes intended) ways that city design and city policy impact people who do not fall within the majority’s narrow bands. Having worked and written on these issues for more than 10 years, Kristen’s voice shows many of us what we have not seen, but must understand and act upon.
We often want to think that creating the kind of community where people can do great things requires fancy buildings, and cool cafes, and street art and the like. But Wisconsin’s Nick O’Brien has been building exactly those kinds of communities in places that don’t have these — and getting impressive results. Join us while we explore community-building in a whole new way, leveraging the power of people in collaboration to get transformation going
What can a small business owner do now, when their markets and channels and all their old assumptions have been thrown into chaos?mugshot
Answer? They can play their way to a new strategy, a new tribe and a renewed sense of purpose. Join Della and Jaime Izurieta of Storefront Mastery as we explore a new strategy for evaluating and planning for the future of any small business, building from the factors that made someone work and fight for that business in the first place. And we’ll hear the story of the businesses that started the Hopscotch — a struggling bookstore in a desperately struggling country that found renewed purpose and new opportunities.
Being an entrepreneur or business owner is hard, and being a Black entrepreneur or business owner can be even harder. And if you come from a background with little income or family wealth, even seemingly small challenges can derail you. We will explore the outsized importance of coaching and training, what microlending requires and why that’s so neccessary and so hard for conventional banks to do, and more. You don’t want to miss this conversation with one of the few organizations in the US that provides business training and coaching and microfinance lending for low-income entrepreneurs and small business owners.
It’s no secret that the world facing independent businesses was changing fast before we ever heard of a COVID — and the pandemic has accelerated those changes. But there’s more to thriving in the coming era than setting up an Instagram page. As one of the leaders of the entrepreneurship ecosystem groundswell nationwide, Enoch has a deep and wide perspective on how the fundamentals of business, and business in community, is changing. You will not want to miss this insightful and encouraging conversation.
Community nonprofits often struggle to develop the kinds of collaborative relationships with local governments that lead officials to trust you in times of crisis. But that’s exactly what Dane Buy Local did — and it has resulted in over $10 million that they are distributing to businesses that need it on behalf of Dane County, Wisconsin. We will talk with Colin Murray, Executive Director of Dane Buy Local, about how that relationships developed, what that required of the nonprofit and how that is impacting the community and Dane Buy Local today.
People who run economic development and local business organizations know that they have to get good, useful, reliable information out to their community — and do it NOW. But too many of the resource guides and directories coming out since the pandemic consist of small-text laundry lists that give the overwhelmed user a headache before they get to anything they can use. Which isn’t surprising, since “User Interface Expert” and “Tech Genius” isn’t on most of our resumes.
But Cambridge Local First didn’t let that stop them.
You won’t want to miss this deep dive into the technologies, tools, design strategies and more that Cambridge Local First and its partners have been using to make it easy for businesses and residents to find the foods, services, and resources that they want. Join us as we explore the tech that’s not only possible, but being used right now!
Economic crises like the COVID-19 pandemic throw a harsh light on how crucial and fragile our local independent businesses are -- and how inadequate most traditional economic development methods are for meeting those needs.
In this interview with Anatalio Ubalde, CEO of SizeUp,
Anatalio and Della dissect why conventional Business Recruitment and Expansion methods fail, and explore how powerful new data tools can transform how we help local businesses.
As communities re-evaluate their budgets and programs in the wake of the COVID-19 upheavals, thinking through new ways to find and deploy funding sources becomes more important than ever. Della and Danielle Steinhauser of CT Consultants share a friendly, honest and enlightening conversation about how our local governments and partners can find and use funds and other resources for our long-term resilience.
In times of crisis and fear, forward-thinking emotional intelligence matters more than ever. And as the pandemic and future crises accelerate our momentum into the economy of the future, we need to pause, take in diverse feedback, and communicate with empathy more than we ever have before. Branding wizard, coach and speaker Christina Aldan helps us understand how we can transform our management, our businesses and organizations, and our communities.
In the middle of a pandemic, when small business owners are scrambling, what can a local business organization do to help? Isaac and Della discuss five key strategies for providing practical assistance. Great advice and encouragement for small business owners and for Main Street managers, downtown development organizations, economic developers, and more. Recorded April 17, 2020
Della sits down with Derek Peebles, Executive Director of the American Independent Business Alliance to talk about the present and the future of the organization that helped launch the #buylocal movement more than 20 years ago. That present and future involve more inclusion, more advocacy and more outreach than ever before.
Della Rucker and Derek Peebles explain Asset Based Community Development. Recorded in Dayton, Ohio, in December 2016
Della Rucker of Wise Economy Workshop and EngagingCities talks to Rob Sentz of EMSI about why just being able to pull data out of their platform isn't enough and what they are doing about it. Good info for economic developers, open data, civic hackers and people who try to make decisions on the basis of decent information.
Bobbi Fay of CDF in Clarkston, Georgia, talks to Della Rucker of the Wise Economy Workshop about doing meaningful public engagement in a community where almost half the residents are foreign-born and more than 10 languages are spoken.
Della outlines some of the overlooked issues that can prevent retail revitalization efforts from working and overviews some strategies for addressing those shortcomings and enable real economic revitalization. The sound quality of the introduction is less than ideal, but don't let that scare you off-the rest is good.
Della Rucker and Bill Lutz talk about the Citizen Academy in Piqua, Ohio - an innovative and award-winning community engagement initiative that gives residents of this city first-hand experience with how their local government works. Do you teach your residents to write grants or show them how the sewer scope works? Perhaps you should!
Della talks to Bill Lutz about the rebirth of the Fort Piqua Hotel -- a great example of a small community leveraging the range of resources available to reclaim one of its greatest assets
Della Rucker interviews Chris Schock of the Clinton County Regional Planning Commission and Taylor Stuckert of Energize Clinton County about their innovative strategies for dealing with their community's economic disaster.