Kent County booth at the annual MACo convention

Earlier this month, I traveled to Ocean City for the second time this summer, this time to represent Kent County's Office of Tourism and Economic Development at the annual Maryland Association of Counties (MACo) convention.  I was fortunate enough to be accompanied by Mrs. Cunningham, of connect.the.dots. fame, who's design eye gave zest to our booth (see pic below).

After setting up our booth on Wednesday afternoon, we were feted at a cocktail reception at Fagers Island restaurant that was hosted by Funk & Bolton law offices, a wonderful social gathering that allowed for lots of networking.  I then spent all day Thursday manning our booth, meeting vendors, talking with employees and representatives from other counties, and generally spreading the word about all the good works that have been going on recently in Kent County.  There was a steady flow of visitors through the exhibit hall for most of the day.  It still amazes me the number of "giveaways" that the exhibitors provide and the convention-goers gobble up...bags and bags of them.  Thursday evening found us at the Sunset Grille in West OC dining on mahi mahi, tuna, crab imperial, and countless other goodies, all thanks to our hosts from Standard Solar.

On Friday, Mrs C and I kept up the message spreading at our booth for the better part of the day, handing out brochures along with free note pads and lemon meringue-flavored salt water taffy.  It seemed there were more families visiting the exhibit hall during this session, probably in concert with family vacation time at the beach.  The day was shorter than the previous, but still we had decent attendance in the hall.  Commissioners stopped by, and we also had a chance to converse briefly with U.S. Senator Ben Cardin who admitted that he was aware of all the cool projects going on in the county.

Our thanks to Bernadette Van Pelt and Michelle Wood of the County's Office of Tourism and Economic Development for putting together all of the display materials for us to transport down to the convention.  Also, special thanks to the Town Creek Foundation for supporting our work to help Maryland's municipalities increase use of renewable energy systems, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and move toward a healthy and sustainable future for the Chesapeake Bay region.

Briggs Cunningham mans the Kent County booth at the 2012 Maryland Association of Counties convention in Ocean City in August.

Briggs Cunningham is Climate Action Coordinator at the Center for Environment & Society, and can be contacted here.