community of choice Archives • FAUX REAL THO

Riffing with Dave Bangert

A few weeks ago, Journal & Courier Opinions page editor Dave Bangert conducted an interview with yours truly to delve deeper into how Think Lafayette fits into the new Community of Choice era. He honed in on the idea that we are a love letter to Lafayette, a celebration of what we get right and an…

Behind Signage, City Code, Street Art, and the Banana House

At question this month in West Lafayette is the sudden presence of the “banana house” and whether or not it should be allowed to stay or if it must go. Many locals in local media turned out with lots of opinions about the banana house: some grumbled about graffiti and street art in highly visible…

Can a Music Video Make Your City Desirable?

Fort Wayne, Indiana, has been on the bad end of some press lately, from being named the fattest and dumbest city in the nation, to the most riddled with cholesterol. Ouch. This, along with the ever-present issue of brain drain, inspired a promotional campaign that pulled together the city’s hip-hop scene to make a video…

Sticking Around Lafayette

In 2010, novelist Patricia Henley wrote a thoughtful piece for the Smithsonian magazine on how she came to the Lafayette area, her decision to make this her home, and the persistent conversation among other Indiana writers who are “always trying to decide whether to go or stay.” I happened across this essay again the other…

TL Profiles: Ed Finkler on the GLA Open Source and Development Community

TL: For nine years, Ed Finkler served as web lead and security researcher at The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) at Purdue University. He participated in open source web app development in his free time for years, including developing Spaz, a long-running, award-winning micro-blogging client. Today Ed is a…

Seeking A Cure for Brain Drain

Earlier this month, we were proud to report that Lafayette, Indiana, was ranked among the top smartest cities in the United States. We could conclude that our scores were artificially high because of the number of students represented in the area, but their findings controlled for age and thus they believe that the number of…

A Bridge, A Rainbow, and a McCommunity of Choice

After avoiding the heat and the crowd at the Taste of Tippecanoe for a couple of years, I was pleasantly surprised at the size of the event and the mix of folks it drew to the downtown district last Saturday. It was a good time — there was a lot to see, tons of food,…

Lafayette Area Ranked 2nd Smartest In the Nation

Richard Florida reports that Lafayette, Indiana, ranks as one of America’s top brainiest cities. It’s true, we’re wicked smart. This study used gaming software called Lumosity (think the computer games that you use to procrastinate when you should be compiling your TPS reports) to measure not only how we perform on tests, but how we…