The delegation visit was initiated through Tim Nicholls' desire, as Chairman, to involve more actively the Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Chamber, the Canterbury Development Corporation, and tertiary educational institutions in our Sister City links with Seattle.
The intention was to encourage 'Smart City' and 'City State' development in the form of an electronic corridor.
It was considered important that a delegation travel to Seattle, in a 'fact finding mission' role, to prepare for the intended visit of Mayor Garry Moore in the year 2000.
Organisations and individuals were written to prior to the visit and provided with background details and a programme to enable the Delegation to cover a wide range of interest areas
The delegation comprised both Sister City representatives and business delegates, with the aim of promoting Canterbury opportunities and forging sustainable trade bridges.
Weekly planning meetings of the prospective participants followed, culminating in a pre departure function hosted by the Canterbury Development Corporation.
Seattle Committee Sister City Delegates
The Sister City Committee arranged meetings for the delegation with Mayor Paul Schell, the University of Washington, and visits and formal meetings and functions with the Sister City Foundation in Seattle, including an evening boat cruise on Lake Washington and a Thank You function at the Seattle Yacht Club.
Mayor Paul Schell warmly welcomed the connection with Christchurch. It was established that the two cities have synergies for 'Smart City' and 'City State' development. He welcomed the intended visit of Mayor Garry Moore to Seattle in 2000, and in 2001 for the Asia Pacific Mayors’ Conference. Mayor Schell encouraged the idea of investigating the possibility of a direct air link being established between our cities, and said this might be established due to the proximity of a significant manufacturing hub for Boeing in Brisbane, Australia.
Tim Nicholls, as Chairman of the planning meetings that lead to the Seattle visit, was keen to have a widely varied group of people representative of Christchurch on the Delegation. The foray was intended to complement efforts to find new 'Smart City' avenues and to encourage 'City State' development using the Seattle's expertise. The visit to the University of Washington was co-ordinated by Tim Nicholls in conjunction with Bridgett Chandler, Assistant Vice President for Regional Affairs, Office of the Executive Vice President. Her husband was hospitalised but despite this and the University having not opened for the term, a programme was arranged and grew from strength to strength as the day progressed. There is huge scope for a follow up to be co-ordinated by Dr Ian Hall of the College of Education. The University of Washington has enormous growth development from which we in Christchurch can benefit.
The University has a three year programme of ‘vision growth’, with an energetic master plan, and a digital network establishing the next generation Internet Two. Development of fluency in electronic communications and digital manipulation are also aspects of its development programme . The University has 27,000 full time students, and 100,000 on shorter courses; 14,000 are turned down annually. It spends $US700m annually on research, and is second in the United States for receiving federal science and engineering funding.
There was a considerable amount of time spent renewing contacts with all the people who have been involved in this Sister City relationship since 1981. Many contacts have continued for years. A two-part meeting was held with the Seattle~Christchurch Board, and discussions were focussed on the future role of our Sister City connection. Martin Moore (ex Christchurch) is now the Chairman in Seattle and he was very helpful in matters pertaining to our visit. Dr John Bollard, the NZ Consular Agent, and his wife Eve were involved in these discussions.
It was good to see the Delegation members using the local restaurants, shops and 'places to go' in the remodelled 'downtown' Seattle. A fine dinner took place in Elliott's fish restaurant on the first night in Seattle and this set the week off to a good start for the Delegation.
A visit to the top of the Columbia Tower (the tallest building on the West Coast of the USA) was a further opportunity to meet with the well known Bruce McCaw and Craig Stewart of his Foundation. This was followed up later in the week with a visit to of Bruce McCaw's Motor Racing Museum in Bellevue. It was quite a thrill to see
Bruce McLaren's World Championship racing car and a replica Stutz that had been made in New Zealand.
An official visit was arranged with Air New Zealand staff to the Boeing plant at Everett. Quite expansive!
Tim Nicholls spent a further week in Seattle to share time with Faculty from the Lakeside school where he once taught. This high school (where Bill Gates was a student) is moving on with its appointment recently of a new Head, and discussions with the school ranged over new approaches to teaching history, international education trends and fitting the education system to the Knowledge Economy.
The three student scholars from Christchurch were attending the University Prep School under the guidance of Patrick Grant, who is also a Sister City Board member. Tim Nicholls had meetings with various people regarding the exchange programme, including the Principal and Deputy Principal. There is enthusiasm for the programme that has been set up. Tim Nicholls and the Scholars were also able to talk to the school at a special assembly.
Tim Nicholls had discussions with the technical head of a new company, Digital Intelligence, which is setting new international standards in computer photo work and also with Councillor Jan Drago and travel industry representatives at Down Under Answers. A further meeting with Bruce McCaw allowed discussion on the extension of our interests in the future.
We are grateful to Tim Charoenying, who studies at Berkerley University in political economics, for his willingness to be in Seattle to assist the Chairman. Tim Charoenying's sister, Tiffany, had given input to our planning meetings in Christchurch on her student visit 'down under', and it was good to have youthful voices comment on aspects of our Seattle work.
The programme was a very busy working two weeks!
Put together the business programme for the visit in conjunction with Leeann Watson of the Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce. They worked through the Seattle Trade Alliance, the umbrella organisation under which the Seattle Chamber of Commerce sits.
They had meetings with the Seattle Trade Alliance, Technology Alliance, Washington Software Association, Washington Biotechnology Association, Urban Development Council, Jan Drago, the Deputy Mayor, different departments of the University of Washington, Alliance of Angels (a group of high net worth individuals who help small business to become established), Washington State Trade Association, economic development agencies for Snohomish and King Counties, the Seattle City Economic Development Group, presented a seminar to a group of business people and joined the Delegation in a meeting with Mayor Paul Schell.
Greater Seattle and Washington State are extremely well geared to develop effective international trade relations, are actively bench-marking and pursuing global alliances, particularly in the 'new economy' areas of high technology software, biotechnology and environmental technology, and were interested in a partnership with Christchurch and Canterbury. They expressed interest in being part of a smart region network to develop this concept.
Visited Seattle to assess educational initiatives in the K-12 school system, local educational TV and University of Washington extra-curricular programmes. This was to establish how some of these might be used in Christchurch initiatives. At the same time they explored the possibility of establishing practical links between education parties in both locations. Visits were made to:
Renton School District (Contact: Randall Turner, ex Boeing and
the IT Coordinator for Renton)
Renton provides telephone and IT networks for all schools
in district. If they were starting again now would use
a voice over IP approach. Economies of scale are achieved
by coordinating it through the district.
There is a potential role for ThincNZ in conjunction with Canterbury Education Services. They provide linkage to the K20 pipe and main internet for fixed cost/annum. They employ only some 4 technicians for 24 schools and around 2000 computers. Randall Turner indicated that a problem with nlink was that it couldn't be accessed by web browser technology.
KCTV
Ti Locke, a very experienced distance learning teacher,
was organiser of educational programmes in KCTS, a
PBS TV station. Once a year she travels to an American
conference to buy video programmes for their channel.
She suggests we check out the international contact she gave us to access this source of material. She pays about $US75,000 for 400 hours of programmes. This is intended for a target audience of about 120,000 people. She shares the local educational broadcasting role with KBTC Tacoma, which focuses on adult education, and ITFS for Boeing employees. She has good English materials from BBC and Channel 4 that she recommends. It would be good to have a person like her in control of CTV education initiatives. She had visited Christchurch 20 years ago and would be interested in a trip down under. She recommended contact with Clancy Wolf about video streaming. She recommended we look at the South Carolina TV education model for further information. In regard to web based material, she was not aware of any significant collectives yet.
Kent
School District (Derry Lyons, IT coordinator)
Their school district contains 29 elementary, 7 junior
high and 4 high schools and Serves 26,000 children,
1600 teachers and 9000 computers.
The District has been working steadily on an integrated system for 4/5 years. Particularly noted was how existing databases on school records, administration, attendance, finances with smart interfaces for web browser access were combined.
Each school was responsible for its own website within the overall network. Teachers and parents had instant access to a wealth of relevant data on students. Students were free to identify from a browser interface how much or little was available about themselves to others. Had two resource teachers who were supporting the whole District. These were Ann McGlore (primary) and Diana Eggers (secondary). Thew gave us to believe that we might come to some arrangement about swapping St Martin's or Riccarton teachers for say three months. They were carrying out also a lot of professional development programmes for teachers to maintain their registration status. They showed us some good on-line material from Meacher Junior High and Tom Robison at Kentridge High. They recommended we should look also at www.learningspace.org initially funded by US West Telco.
Their website is www.kent.wednet.edu. Wednet is the state-wide internet channel that is being developed as the K20 network and will link ultimately into the UW Internet Two system.
University
of Washington
There were two parts to this visit. One was a general
visit to promote links with the University ahead of
a rejuvenation of higher education links next year from
Canterbury and Otago institutions. The second was a
visit James Harrison arranged in advance with UW Outreach
and UWTV for Dennis Chapman and himself.
David Fenner, Director of International Programs and Exchanges, provided background on UW's external relationships. Of about 200 other College links worldwide only about 50% were active currently. He stressed that it was less the formal arrangements than the personal links that were significant. A cross-university link with Auckland had been initiated at a world conference of universities some three weeks previously. Financial dimensions of exchanges were not complicated and were well established.
Part of problem for any university was to engage what he called the contemplative staff in such exchanges.
Information was provided also about the approaches to the use of IT in learning at all levels. UW is only one of the 10 Internet Two nodes to be linking this to schools. It is concerned particularly with science, maths and technology and has a k12 Institute developing new approaches in this area. Also mentioned was a recent paper concerned with Fluency in Technology, which had been commissioned by the National Research Council, a sub-committee of the National Academy of Sciences. Apparently the Gates Foundation was starting to fund some form of technology alliance. The McCaw Foundation was working with the Centre for Mind Brain Learning, part of UW Leadership Institute, to look at learning in children up to 5. We saw some interesting extracts on this work from the web site run for UW students.
Some ten research universities had set up an education portal R1.edu to improve quality of on line education.
A person from the new ventures area talked about the role of UW in commercialising its own ideas. The level of funded research from outside parties put UW at about number two in the USA.
Of the 4000 staff, 400 were full-time researchers, 400 were purely lecturers and the balance had a mixed role.
There was some interesting discussion on IP and particularly that invented by undergraduates. UW sought to share this with the students in return for helping its development. The general model for post-graduates and staff was a three way split of value on a valuation reduced by legal patenting or other registration costs.
US companies were more inclined to invest in their universities as they received tax breaks to do so. This has brought about an increasing proportion of corporate research in universities in the US over the past 20 years. As a result, universities were becoming more used to having to deliver tangible deliverables within an agreed period of time.
University
of Washington Outreach
Dennis Chapman and James Harrison met also with Dr Mona
Kunselman who was providing professional development in
support for teachers using integrated science Mesa modules.
The mesa modules were attractive in that they were examining
technology and maths in context. At the same time UW Outreach
was providing support and credits for the continuing development
teachers.
Brian Palliser hosted by Lt. Steve Brown of the Seattle Police Department and was given tour of the Police Headquarters and a briefing on the operations of the Department, with particular emphasis on the Department's Mountain Bike Patrol (inner city), Community Policing and Traffic enforcement; Brian met with other
Senior Police Officers during the tour. Brian later attended a meeting at Boeing Field with Troopers of the Washington State Patrol and was given a familiarisation flight in the Patrol's fixed wing traffic patrol aircraft, and saw first hand the effectiveness of airborne traffic surveillance and the versatility of an aircraft in Police operations.
Material was delivered to the Seattle Police and the Washington State patrol from the LTSA and City Council on traffic safety initiatives and 'Neighbourhood Support', and a basis for future exchanges of ideas and initiatives between our Police, LTSA and City on policing and traffic safety issues was established.
It is hoped that any future Delegation to Seattle will include representatives of the Police, the LTSA and the City to further these initiatives.
AAA
A formal letter of introduction was delivered by Brian
to the American Automobile Association (AAA) in the State
of Washington and contact made with the Seattle office.
It is hoped to create links between the AAA in Washington
and the New Zealand AA’s Canterbury-West Coast District,
which is headquartered in Christchurch.
Rotary
A letter of greeting was delivered by Brian from the President
of the Rotary Club of Christchurch to the President of
the Rotary Club of the University District of Washington,
which is the sister club to the Rotary Club of Christchurch.
Brian attended a Rotary function to renew friendships
with Seattle Rotarians and to meet the President elect.
Brian was briefed on current international programmes
between the Seattle based club and Rotarians in Ethiopia
and discussed the possibility of linking the Seattle,
Adelaide and Christchurch Clubs to resource future assistance
programmes. It is planned that the Clubs will now exchange
newsletters and look to the enhancement of relationships
as Sister Clubs and to broaden Sister City links.
Dorenda Britten made very important contacts with key administrative bodies and a number of private galleries, with many of which her company plans to create exchange programmes. She plans to return in 2000 and extend her contacts into the industrial design sector. She found that Seattle provided an excellent example of partnerships in action.
Dr Gordon focused on initiatives and organisations that were concerned with leading edge environmental work, and visited several organisations in relation to this.
‘Grow with Grace’ is the slogan of the organizations involved. Although they have achieved great success with environment projects, they have not done so well with the social ones. One project being looked currently at is a way of protecting salmon, which has environmental benefits, protects them, and provides jobs. Sustainable Seattle has done a lot of work in the community with regard to the quality of life, but seems to be struggling with where it goes next. One of its problems appears to be a low community awareness of what it’s doing. There are over 500 environmental companies in the Seattle area, 85% of which provide services, and 15% provide products.
Pacific Northwest Laboratories are involved in, amongst other things, waste reduction and treatment processes (i.e. tyres and paper), food safety and quality, biomaterials and satellite image processing.
Real gains could be made by having a secondment of like staff between the two Councils.
John Shivas accompanied Brian Palliser on the visit to the Seattle Police Department. He was very impressed with the feeling of energy and growth in Seattle. He visited various City Council departments in relation to community-type activities i.e. water and roading, and spent a full day with Delegation members at the University of Washington investigating opportunities for exchanges of staff and students. He met also with Trade Alliance people to investigate business opportunities.
Hamish Doig joined the Delegation meetings with Mayor Paul Schell and the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. He had particular interests in inner city living and development, and joined in other meetings during the visit.
Went to Seattle to pursue business opportunities, and reported considerable success with a major customer. He also went to establish linkages regarding the Smart City concept, to link in with the New Zealand government ‘Bright Future’ package. He liaised with other business interests in Canterbury which wanted to investigate whether Seattle had opportunities for their businesses.
Leeann Co-ordinated the programme in conjunction with Larry Podmore of the Canterbury Development Corporation.
As a result of this visit the relationships between the CECC and the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce have been strengthened and will provide an excellent platform for members planning future visits to Seattle.
The CECC has developed also relationships with other external organisations that can be of assistance to CECC and their core activities such as the City of Seattle and its website, the Office of Economic Development and the various Alliances that have been established within the Chamber.
"The visit to Seattle was extremely successful given the diverse range of people I met with, both within the Chamber of Commerce and the City of Seattle.
It has provided further ideas we can look at within our Chamber to add further value to our membership and generate additional revenue sources.
The structure of the Seattle Chamber and the way they have incubated alliances within the Chamber and then set them up independently is an interesting model and one I believe we can learn from.
While the visit was a brief one and a lot was crammed into the week I was there, I feel I achieved everything I set out to and more. It is now up to us to ensure we make use of the information I have brought back and utilise it to add further value to our members."
And in conjunction with the Canterbury Development Council and the Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce ('Value-added partnerships') to: