Today we walked into class and were surprised by a visit to the Oaklander. The Oaklander is a hotel on Bigelow Blv that is right in the hub of Oakland. We met with Teresa who works with human resources at the hotel. We took a tour of the different floors including the famous restaurant that overlooks the city and a new restaurant development on the ground floor. It was interesting to hear about her experiences working with the hotel and how they have to manage their business 24/7. After this, we took an uber to the Ice House studio in Lawrenceville and met with Kara Kimicata with the Lawrenceville corporation. She talked a lot about the history of Lawrenceville and how they reclaimed the neighborhood after years of it being an unkept place. One of the things that stood out to me was the cookie tour and how they capitalized on one of the slower months of the businesses there. They also regularly meet with different businesses in the community and discuss ongoing and future developments within the community. This reminded me of Carrigart and how they should get together and discuss the best course of action to collaborate and improve foot traffic in their community. This can be a social gathering, or more of a professional meeting, but should ultimately be done for the good of the community. The way Lawrenceville really was able to turn around their community for the better is very inspiring. Other small towns that are looking for more involvement in the community should look at Lawrenceville for inspiration on how they can come together to assist and promote local businesses. We also went to Field Day, a coworking space similar to gteic in Ireland, and met with Zachary Ciccone. He talked about the coworking space in great detail, but one of the things that resonated with me was the things he had to say about COVID 19. It was a very hard time for him and his business as they essentially lost all their customers. He talked about how COVID transformed the digital world and how it has become normalized to be flexible in terms of where people work. This was really good for the coworking space as more and more people choose to go to them to get their work done. Similar to gteic, Field Day gets most of their customers from within the area but always hosts to those who travel to work there. Overall, I saw a lot of parallels between the coworking spaces and how hospitality and the environment they are in really make a difference.