Project Confidential has spent considerable time documenting the absurdities of economic development. It now seems appropriate to present those findings directly to the people responsible.
Put Project Confidential on a stage in front of people who have survived the board meetings, ribbon cuttings, strategic planning retreats, and the consultant's forty-minute overview of a sixty-minute report, and something remarkable happens. An entire room begins recognizing itself.
Nobody is being sold to. Nobody is being asked to embrace a new leadership philosophy. Instead, there is that wonderful moment when a laugh arrives half a second late because everyone realizes the joke is uncomfortably accurate. Someone turns to the person beside them and quietly says, "That was us."
This is not another forty-five minutes of inspirational leadership principles, stock photography, and a closing quote attributed to someone who probably never said it. It is the profession recognizing itself out loud, in front of perhaps the only audience on earth that understands why any of this is funny.
This is something different.
There will be slides. There will be video. There may be props. There will almost certainly be references to site selectors, strategic plans, consultants, elected officials, ribbon cuttings, workforce studies, speculative buildings, and the mysterious prospect who was extremely interested right up until the moment they stopped returning emails.
And underneath the satire, there is genuine affection for the profession. Economic development is important work, populated by smart, committed people doing extraordinarily complicated things while maintaining the appearance that everything is completely under control. The work matters. The people matter. And occasionally, the circumstances are ridiculous.
For forty-five minutes, we can stop pretending otherwise.
Economic development deserves at least one evening when everyone in the room can laugh about the things everyone in the room already knows.
The Person Responsible
The presentation is brought to life by David Petr, Founder and Publisher of Project Confidential, a former economic development executive who spent years working inside the profession before deciding to document its peculiarities for public consumption.
David has led economic development organizations, worked with communities across the country, navigated the politics, survived the presentations, and participated in more strategic planning exercises than any reasonable person should be expected to endure.
He understands the people who make economic development work, the pressures they face, and the remarkable things they accomplish. He also knows that almost every great economic development story has a second version that is considerably funnier and probably shouldn't appear in the annual report.
He has sat on both sides of the table. And he has the slides to prove it.
Bringing Project Confidential to Your Event
Project Confidential is available for annual banquets, economic development conferences, trade shows, retreats, and other gatherings of people who have voluntarily chosen this profession.
Twenty minutes, thirty minutes, or forty-five minutes. A ballroom, a conference room, a trade show theater, or wherever the program has been relocated at the last minute.
The presentation is developed for the room. This is not a recycled corporate keynote with your organization's name inserted onto Slide 3. The material draws on the audience, the occasion, and the particular absurdities that economic developers immediately recognize but rarely discuss in public.
The objective is simple: give everyone in the room something to laugh about, something to recognize, and preferably several things they will still be discussing at the next conference.
Project Confidential began as a writing project, and that remains its first responsibility. The live presentation is an extension of that work, an opportunity to bring the stories, observations, and occasional uncomfortable truths to an audience that understands them better than anyone.
We do not intend to take ourselves too seriously. We have attended enough economic development conferences to know where that leads.
A Word About Expectations
We assume there will be banquet chicken. There is almost always banquet chicken. We will treat it with the respect it deserves and ask no further questions.
We expect the ballroom to be too cold. We expect the program to run long. Someone will have made a last-minute change to the PowerPoint. There is a reasonable possibility that the person introducing David will read his biography directly from a piece of paper despite having met him several times.
None of this is an obstacle.
We have worked in economic development for a very long time.
Let's Give Them Something to Talk About
We would be delighted to be part of your event.
Pricing varies depending on the location, format, audience, and how elaborate we decide to make the whole thing. There is no agent, no elaborate rider, and no requirement that someone stock a dressing room with sparkling water imported from Europe.
Tell us what you are planning, who will be in the room, and what you would like the audience to walk away talking about. If the date works and the room is one that would appreciate the humor, we will build a presentation around it.
We will take it from there.