Google workers playing volleyball at work. Image credit Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“Philadelphia has become the go to place for young adults. You know a cool place for smart people to be. You know, like the Google workers who get to play volleyball at work.”

That was just one of the bold goals that was overheard Tuesday night at an unusual town hall meeting in Philadelphia. I say unusual because most of the time when you gather a bunch of folks to talk about the region’s future, it can sometimes sound like a gripe session of what’s wrong everything.

Harris Sokoloff writes down "traits" of how Philadelphia is seen by others in the year 2020

The workshop was held at WHYY and led by the civic engagement team of Chris Satullo and Harris Sokoloff. Satullo now works at WHYY as our Executive Director for News and Civic Dialogue. The two are the founders of Penn Project for Civic Engagement.

More than 30 people gathered Tuesday night to imagine Philadelphia as the global hot spot for "Eds and Meds" jobs.

The goal of this week’s pow wow was to get some of the region’s best minds from the education and life sciences sector (or “eds and meds”) to imagine how this area becomes a global hot spot on those areas. The fun part about that night was Satullo and Sokoloff used an exercise that was akin to reverse engineering an IPOD. Imagine the Philly region already being a global hot spot and then explain how we got there. That’s more fun, starting with cool companies where you can play volleyball and still invent the next Viagra.

If Philadelphia can ever become a global hot spot for jobs, participants repeatedly said regional cooperation must improve

Satullo is writing up a big report on the workshop but till then I’ll share with you a few of the things I overheard.

*Business and political leaders are going to have to able to agree on a single powerful vision for bolstering the region as the preeminent spot for the best jobs in life sciences.

*Money will have to be put on the table to help attract the right mix of innovative companies to the region.

*It would be great if young students could visual a clear path on how to get a good paying job in these sectors. What classes they should take and what advanced training they might need.

*Cities and counties need to stop competing against one another.

*We need to make the region more attractive for venture capitalist who would  create more start up money for innovative companies.

*We need to stop viewing ourselves as a third world city.

This power point slide wasn’t shown Tuesday night, but in getting participants prepared for the night Satullo sent out an email that included a recent presentation by Select Greater Philadelphia that showed where Philadelphia ranks nationally as a life sciences center. (Hint: It’s No. 2 in all of the United States.)  I’ll leave you with this slide because it’s a great reminder to all us who call the region home.

Finally, if you have the time, check out this opinion piece Satullo wrote back in 2007 about why the Philadelphia “Eds and Meds” sectors are under performing other powerhouse regions around the nation as a source of innovations and jobs.

The group agreed to keep talking about how to make progress on the many ideas generated Tuesday night, chief among them how better to tell Philadelphians the good news about the region where they live, especially the good news about eds and meds.

Related link: Hear Chris Satullo’s radio commentary on how “eds and meds” could be the region’s ticket to a decent future, if we could only get over our nostalgia over Philly’s industrial legacy.

This forum was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Center for Media Engagement.