Sunday Conversation Sunday Conversation

What does the city of the future look like? That's a valid question, especially given the realities facing the modern worker after the coronavirus pandemic. Bill Fulton's new book “Place and Prosperity: How cities help us to connect and innovate” is a collection of essays, blogs, and columns written to help shape future thinking on cities. More accurately, though, Place and Prosperity is a collection of experiences. The Auburn native has a long, impressive resume of experiences having served as mayor of Ventura, California and later as planning director for the City of San Diego. He also spent 8 years at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

For area colleges the last 12 months have been incredibly complicated. There were shutdowns, reopenings, contact tracing, testing, and now vaccination- all on top of running an academic institution. This week we caught up Keuka College President Amy Storey to talk about that. We also spent some time talking about the academic year that's wrapping up now.

Maureen Ballatori leads 29Design Studio in Geneva. That has been a driving force in her life, and last year- the company pivoted to a new niche in marketing. It paid off big time with a number of high profile awards collected for their work during 2020. This week we talk with her about the future of marketing, and about the honesty businesses (big and small!) MUST have with customers or prospects.

This week we sit down with one of the newest members of our podcast network: Alexandra Ackerman is a life-long fan of the Syracuse Crunch.  Beyond spending a vast majority of her life as a fan of the team- she has also professionally reported on them for over a decade. She's written for SB Nation, has been an editor for RawCharge.com, and now writes for The Sin Bin- a minor league hockey news website. 

In 2019 Alexandra launched a podcast. It's called Syracuse Speaks, and is one of the best produced independent podcasts I've come across in my professional career. 

Our Sunday Conversation with Alexandra Ackerman is live now. We talked about her career, balancing life- and sports, writing on the internet, launching her podcast, and all of the other exciting stuff she is doing to celebrate local, professional sports.

Her podcast 'Syracuse Speaks' will now be syndicated on FingerLakes1.com as part of a new agreement to bring more incredible local content to our visitors. Click here if you want to check out some recent episodes of Syracuse Speaks.

Guy Cosentino has served as host of two crucial public affairs programs that air in the Cayuga County-area. They're produced in conjunction with Cayuga Community College. He's been hosting for around 20 years, and before that, served as mayor of the City of Auburn. 

This week our Sunday Conversation features a lengthy talk with Cosentino about his time at City Hall, improving the public's understanding of important issues through one-of-a-kind interviews, and the condition of public policy in modern America.

Since graduating from Syracuse University Eric Devendorf has made the community in Central New York a priority. He's worked hard to give back each day, and when the pandemic began- he saw how desperately needed it was. Over the last several months the CNY Cares, Inc. initiative has been working to raise funds for small businesses crushed by the coronavirus pandemic. This week on the Sunday Conversation we caught up with Eric to discuss the progress they are making, and eyed expansion of the program.