National Bike Summit Summary
COGGS
Sunday, March 25, 2012
March 20-22nd saw COGGS attend our second National Bike Summit, an annual event put on by the League of American Bicyclists that is the primary advocacy and lobbying opportunity for cycling that attracts over 800 attendees. This year COGGS chair, Adam Sundberg, attended and was accompanied by Mayor Don Ness and IMBA Midwest Regional Director Hansi Johnson. Prior to our departure we worked with Jordan Sundberg of Tin Cup Design to craft a brochure about the Duluth Traverse. Special thanks to photographers Hansi and Ryan Marshik for the awesome images that we used.
Thursday at the Summit IMBA held several forums on off-road cycling advocacy and then the entire Summit started that evening with a dinner and speaker. We used this evening as a key networking opportunity that was extremely successful. Hansi, Don and I got to give Duluth Traverse brochures to Steve Flagg, owner of Quality Bicycles Products, and John Burke, owner of Trek, which led to some great conversations with them about the scope of the project and the great support we've gotten from our city and state government, as well as National Bike Summit main sponsor, Bikes Belong.
Wednesday was a day full of classes where we were able to come away with several key next steps for COGGS to implement to further our organization and advance the Duluth Traverse. One key moment of the day was attending a forum and listening to a speaker from the Trust for Public Land, an organization that advises organizations on how to get project supporting voting opportunities on ballots during election years. As we were sitting during his presentation, were were surprised to find that his key case study was the State Legacy funding (which COGGS and the City of Duluth has received $250,000 from). But even more, his next slide was a map of the Duluth Traverse and he stated that the DT was the kind of project that directly benefits from these type of campaigns. As we had no prior communication to this speaker beforehand, we were blown away that our project was his key success story! After the Summit the networking opportunities continued and we got to meet Gary Fisher himself at a social gathering sponsored by Trek.
Thursday saw our opportunity to thank Senator Amy Klobochar for her vital work to keep the Recreational Trails Program funding in the Senate's transportation bill and also to express our desire for Congressman Chip Cravaack to do the same as this bill is coming to the House. To be able to plead our case with our own city's Major was a very powerful opportunity to get our point across. Duluth is truly fortunate to have Don Ness as our man at the helm.
A huge thanks to Hansi Johnson for helping COGGS connect with so many influential people who can potentially aid the Duluth Traverse to completion. IMBA was able to donate COGGS admission to the Summit ($500) and Hansi's connections provided value far surpassing that. This is another great example of how COGGS decision to become an IMBA Chapter is well worth it.
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