Day 0? (The Official Conference Starts Tomorrow; State Coordinators/Architects Meetings Last Night and Today)

Editor's Note: For the sake of brevity, we are suspending our normal format of the contributors name, title, yada, yada, yada. We will be using first and last names only. Once the conference is over, we will return to our regularily scheduled format.

Joe Borgstrom- We arrived late yesterday afternoon to the beautiful Palmer House Hotel off of State Street in Chicago. If you haven't been here before you really should, especially if you are into historic preservation. My friend Todd Barman from the National Main Street Center put it perfectly when we spoke yesterday and he called it, "the Sistine Chapel of hotels." Its hard not to walk into people here because everyone is looking at the ceiling!

Last night was the first unofficial function of the conference with a dinner of the state coordinators. I fully acknowledge I am NOT the coordinator of the program (Laura is) but these are wonderful and smart people, so I naturally want to pick their brains over a good meal. I had the good fortune to sit next to the legendary Thom Guzman from Iowa's Main Street program. Thom is widely regarded as the "godfather" of Main Street and Iowa's program the best in the nation. They've been a coordinating program for 20+ years. Our program has been doing this for six. I learned a few things last night. First, Thom is one of the most genuinely open and honest people I've met. Second, I was pleasantly surprised to hear we were doing many of the same things in regards to approaches with local communities. Every state program does things differently. When we're doing many of the same things as one of "the best" that gives me confidence we're doing right by our communities. Lastly, there's still a lot more we can do.

I'm looking forward to picking the brains of some more of our collegues here like Jeff Seigler from Ohio's Main Street program, Cary Tyson from Arkansas, Stephanie Redmond from New Mexico, Jeff Sandler from Virginia and a ton others. Stay tuned! Another packed day is ahead!