Thank you and congratulations to Allan Mulrooney, Stephen Carolan, Leah Fairman, Liam Horan and Pauline Leonard for organizing the Western Development Commission 2023 ConnectedHubs summit in Tullamore, Ireland.
This event brought together people, from many different backgrounds and organizations, who all shared one focus: How the workforce shift to distributed teams, supported with neighborhood coworking spaces could help revive the economies of smaller towns and rural communities across Ireland.
There was a great mix of researchers, policy experts, economic developers, people running coworking spaces/hubs and their allies. To me, some highlights were: Yoshio Tsuda‘s session on his beautiful “Morino-Office” space and details of his economic development work in Nagano, Japan. Fergal McPartland and The Shed Distillery Of PJ Rigney showcasing how the Drumshambo Food Hub is helping local entrepreneurs start global commercial food businesses. Deirdre Frost‘s data analysis and metrics showing the value of all this work. And I spoke about my research on the benefits of distributed teams – for employers, employees and for economic developers with coworking spaces in smaller towns and rural communities. (To watch the recording, click here.)
To show just how important this work is viewed nationally, Simon Coveney, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment as well as Heather Humphreys, Minister for Rural and Community Development each gave presentations detailing how various new policies were supporting this work. There was also a session showing how Interreg Europe is helping share these policy lessons with other regional governments across the European Union.
I really enjoyed the different sessions and getting to meet the humans leading hubs in different communities. After the conference was over, I drove to visit several of these hubs in different parts of the countryside. Each was uniquely different, each in a way that fit within their local community, and each in scenic beautiful parts of the island. (More details on that tour in another post.)
The event, the practical optimism of the people and the tour was very inspiring and uplifting. Thank you, all.
(Updated 17mar2024: Add link to video recording.)