From 20 through 25 of June 2010, the City of Chicago served as host of the Annual Transatlantic Network 2020 summit. The theme of the 2010 TN2020 Chicago summit was ‘Using technology for positive change,’ and this thread featured throughout all the programming. The week long, immersive programme engaged, in a mutually beneficial way, the City of Chicago, its communities, organisations, institutions, businesses and people.  The programmatic elements focused on current transatlantic issues and mapped to the three TN2020 focus areas – creativity and innovation, sustainability and building community resilience.

There was a great deal of interest in the work of the network during the Chicago summit.  In an effort to make it as interactive as possible, we engaged Sarah Evans and her team at Sevans Strategy who along with a number of the TN2020 members, developed a strategy that engaged social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to produce new content that was then aggregated on blog.tn2020.org.

The summit also featured discussion and support from individuals including:

• Sir Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Group
• William Hague, UK Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
• Congressman Bobby Rush (D – 1st/IL)
• Eboo Patel, member of President Obama's Advisory Council and founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC)
• Bruce Mau, Chief Creative Officer of Bruce Mau Design

With over 30 project ideas generated, and a plan for activity over the next 12 months, the summit closed with the members having established a solid network of connections and ideas moving forward.

Post-summit, the British Council is committed to continuing to support the work of TN2020 and is looking to the members of the network to act as catalysts to drive activity forward. For more information about the Chicago Summit, please download the TN2020 Chicago Summit Report.