Bojan and I had the pleasure of attending the Charlotte Business Professional’s July Meeting last night at Andrew Blair’s over on Monford Drive.  The speaker for the meeting was Democratic Mayoral Candidate Anthony Foxx.  The event was well attended, and consisted of an hour or so of meet and greet followed by the candidate’s speech and some Q&A.  Hats off to Jason Mckinstry and friends for their hard work in making it all happen.  For those of you who don’t know anything about Charlotte Business Professionals, I encourage you to take a look at their website and consider joining up.  In these tough economic times, the more people you know, the better, and these are some great people.

At the risk of mixing business and politics, I have a few thoughts to share regarding Mr. Foxx, but before I get to those I want to make a shameless plug for one of our products.

We were fortunate to be able to work with Charlotte Business Professionals to provide a backdrop for the speech which, I believe, really added something to the production.  The display used was one of our Xpressions displays, used partially as a media backdrop and partially as a way to display sponsor advertising.  These displays set up in seconds, are very light weight because of the tension fabric, and are a great way to frame any sort of public event.

Our sponsor panel, was simple but cool and we received quite a few compliments on the display overall.  BTW, the display was designed in such a way as to be able to add sponsor logos in the future so if you are interested in being a sponsor please contact Jason for more information.  (My apologies for the quality of the photo, the lighting was terrible.)

On to my comments about Mr. Foxx.  Leaning Libertarian as I do, I generally am in favor of candidates who represent the potential for as little government intrusion into my life as possible. Traditionally, fewer Democrats, rather than more, fall into this category.   This was essentially my first introduction to Mr. Foxx and where he stands on issues that are important to me, I do not know.  I am, however, rather pleased with several things he had to say but most importantly I am impressed by how he said them.

I did not take notes and I do not have an audio recording of the speech so I cannot quote him directly.  I can say that one of the things that I found most refreshing was that he actually answered the questions that people asked him rather than deflecting them and tangentially addressing another subject.  I found him to be determined, sincere, informed, frank, honest and dare I say, real. Again, it was my first introduction to him and I do not know what his positions are on most issues, but he struck me as somebody I would be willing to listen to and could work with.  Given my political cynicism, that is a great start.

Of course my response could just be the effect of being in his physical presence.  If he did not have the capacity to convey trust, he wouldn’t be in the running.  At any rate, I was pleased to meet him and grateful for the opportunity to hear something about his life, where he has come from, and where he wants to take the city.  I look forward to learning more.

The Charlotte Business Professionals’ meeting for August will feature the Republican Mayoral Candidate and I look forward to attending and meeting him as well.  Hope to see you there.