Hello from Seattle -- Attending the ASPA Conference

Hello, Texans MPA Nation from the grand city of Seattle, WA. Yours truly attending the annual conference of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA). I am having breakfast in the iconic, for hash browns if you can believe it, US Courthouse Café. Good food, reasonably priced -- try it if you are ever here. But, I am more than just a pretty face in this city attending just another conference -- I'm a professor representing Tarleton SU and public administration among a host of like minded individuals.

This is the grand prix, if you will, of associations for our discipline, public administration.

But, while I am sitting here enjoying the food and people watching, I ponder what is going on in those peoples' lives that I am a voyeur of?

What I "see" is people walking to someplace from somewhere else. Determined. Oblivious, outwardly so at least, to me and my presence and gaze. I have purpose to my gandering -- wondering really, if those peeps have any idea of the number of people, processes and policies handled by public administrators that were involved in making it possible for their relatively safe saunter?

I am struck by the streets, buildings, signs, street lights, by the police officer that just rolled by on his 3-wheeled Segway, and all the  other activities that created this place for walking, living, working and recreating. The not so invisible hand of public administration was apparent, if not visible now or ever, to anyone who would take the time (but why in the world would they) to see what I was seeing.

These things that make places function -- and repeated hundreds of thousands of times every day all over the world -- and I was awestruck at the impacts that public administration has.

Peeps -- kinship of the public administration world -- you all are very important cogs in the mechanisms of government and governance. You are what makes communities, states, nation-states or city-states exist and function.

If you serve the public, you rock and I thank you for your service.

I will make more posts as I experience the conference.

Stay tuned.

Dr. GM Cox
Asst. Professor
Director, MPA Program
Tarleton State University