Confluence Cordova: Connecting the Threads
A recreation center became a health project. A walking and biking network connected schools, health care, tourism and transportation. Ferry service connected to health, culture, education and the economy.
That was part of what happened when about 50 people from across Alaska's outdoor system gathered in Cordova for the 11th annual Confluence Summit and started working across the usual lines between agencies, sectors and funding programs.
Participants included state and federal land managers, Alaska Native corporations and organizations, nonprofits, economic development and health organizations, trails and recreation groups, tourism, motorized and non-motorized snowsports, businesses, state agencies, Cordova civic leaders and four T3 students.
Chugach Alaska Corporation joined us as a co-presenting sponsor, with participation from The Eyak Corporation, Native Village of Eyak and Chenega Regional Development Group. Together with state and federal agencies, businesses and community organizations, that brought different relationships to land, community, culture, business and public service into the same conversations.
Over two days — with fantastic Cordova weather — participants headed out on four Learning Journeys, joined a Sustainable Alaska lightning panel, heard two gubernatorial candidates discuss the outdoors and tourism, worked through the Regenerative Outdoors Visioning Project (ROVP), and spent several hours with the Alaska Municipal League mapping real Cordova projects against the partners and resources that could help move them forward.
Catch up
[WATCH THE GOVERNOR'S CANDIDATE FORUM →] Hear Dave Bronson and Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins discuss Alaska's outdoors and tourism. 52 minutes, full start to finish.
[WATCH SENATOR MURKOWSKI'S ADDRESS →] Hear Dave Bronson and Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins discuss Alaska's outdoors and tourism. 3 minutes
The projects don't fit neatly into the boxes
The Alaska Municipal League sessions made that especially visible. Participants worked with six actual Cordova ideas — including a recreation center, pedestrian connections, housing, ferry improvements, aging and elder companionship — and mapped the organizations and resources around them.
The same players kept showing up. The Native Village of Eyak/Eyak Corporation, City of Cordova and Cordova School District each appeared on five of the six project maps. Health care, transportation, public lands, economic development, education and recreation repeatedly overlapped.
That reinforced something we've been exploring throughout the Regenerative Outdoors Visioning Project: outdoors, health, livelihoods, transportation, culture and community are connected, even when the programs designed to support them aren't.
Funding helps. Capacity makes it useful.
Another theme ran through both the AML and ROVP work: communities need more than access to money. Participants talked about staff time, planning, facilitation, grant writing, implementation, local knowledge and relationships. One phrase that really resonated was “capacity infusion that's enduring.”
AML approached the same issue from another direction. Before pursuing funding, participants were asked to consider what accepting it actually requires: reporting, accountability, cash flow, organizational readiness and what happens when a grant ends.
The questions AML put in front of the group also fit closely with what we've been learning through ROVP:
Would we still want to do this work without the money?
Does it build on what we're already doing?
Do we have the partners and capacity it requires?
Could the strings attached compromise our independence or community trust?
Are we actually ready to deliver and report?
Those are close cousins to questions emerging through a possible ROVP decision lens: What are we trying to strengthen? Who defines what matters? Who benefits and who carries costs? Whose knowledge counts? What are we measuring? What capacity remains afterward?
Rather than developing that lens only on paper, one possible next step is to test it against real Alaska projects and decisions.
People want better access to what already exists
Another practical message from Confluence was: don't make every community start from scratch. People asked for better ways to find and share successful Alaska examples, proposals and templates; funding opportunities; research and economic data; health-and-outdoors resources; expertise and contacts; and lessons from communities that have already worked through similar problems.
That's timely because I was already planning an overhaul of the AOA website. Confluence gave me much better direction from the people who might actually use it. The goal isn't simply a nicer website. I'm looking at how the new site can better connect and organize:
an expanded AOA grant watch and other funding resources;
successful Alaska examples, proposals and templates;
research, economic data and useful talking points;
health, transportation, infrastructure and other resources that don't always get labeled “outdoor recreation”;
people and organizations with expertise to share; and
recordings and resources from the ROVP workshop sessions, Lunch & Learns and other AOA work.
COMING LATER THIS FALL → Preview the new AOA website.
Navigating the system — and changing it
The Cordova conversations also left us with a harder question. Much of what people identified would help communities work more effectively within Alaska's existing systems: find funding, understand programs, connect partners, share resources and build stronger projects.
Those are real needs, and AOA can help with some of them. ROVP has also been asking whether some of the systems themselves need to work differently. We had only an hour to explore possible ROVP next steps, and fewer than half of the original Confluence participants were still in the room. Three possibilities surfaced:
A Library of Alaska Examples + Tools to make useful knowledge easier to find and share.
A Community of Practice or Guild, potentially beginning with engagement around the next SCORP.
Policy and systems work, with better statewide outdoor recreation data emerging as one immediate need.
I'm not treating those as the new ROVP agenda. They're part of the harvest, and they need to be considered alongside what we learned through AML and the nine ROVP sessions that preceded Confluence.
What happens next
OCTOBER — PREVIEW THE NEW AOA WEBSITE
I'll use the direct feedback from Confluence to shape the website overhaul already underway, with better-connected funding resources, Alaska examples and tools, research and data, people and expertise, and ROVP and Lunch & Learn resources.
NOVEMBER — TEST THE SYSTEMIC QUESTION
With the Cordova and AML learning in hand, we'll reconvene around a more focused question: We have a better picture of what helps people navigate Alaska's current outdoor system. What would need to change about the system itself?
We'll look more deliberately at policy, coordination, funding and investment, community capacity, statewide data, planning and where responsibility falls through the cracks. The goal is to identify one to three systemic changes worth developing further, along with who needs to be involved.
THEN — FOLLOW THE WORK THAT HAS BOTH ENERGY + CAPACITY
We won't assume every good idea becomes an AOA project. We'll look at what people are willing to help carry, where partners have a role, what additional human capacity we can bring in, and what work can attract the financial resources needed to do it well.
One of the clearest messages from Cordova was that good work needs capacity that lasts. We need to apply that lesson to our own work too. In that sense, capacity becomes part of the test, not merely a prerequisite. If an idea is worth carrying forward, can we also build the relationships, shared ownership, human capacity and financial support needed to sustain it?
That includes how the work gets done — and who carries it.
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