The Civic Process -

The model for engaging communities in the work of the community has, like everything else, changed dramatically.  Most communities are struggling with this process, we as a country are struggling with this process, this piece from Ed Morrison, offers some interesting insights on the model they are working on...

- Agile strategies for sustainable development -

"In an industrial economy, metrics (and the impulse to measure everyone by the same yardstick, e.g., jobs) emphasize control and undercut experimentation. In a sustainable economy -- an economy reliant on flexible, adaptive networks -- metrics provide a critical tool for learning and evaluation to figure out "what works". "

"In building sustainable communities, the civic process for developing and launching collaborative investments is what matters."

Workforce - Human Capital -

Don't call people "human capital"... seriously they are people.  When workforce development professional's get together they talk about being "demand driven" and "engaging employers"... the idea is simple, find out what the employer's in your region need, train people for those jobs, and everyone's happy.  This was a great model in 1989... not so much today.

Why?

- knowledge becomes obsolete at the speed of light, the current model assumes we can train someone one time and they'll keep that job for the forseeable future. Not in this dynamic, global economy.  The shelf life of companies is very short, much less the shelf life of employee's.
- 50+% of all new jobs are temp or part-time jobs.  The consultant is the new model.
- Nobody asks the worker what they want... do they want to be a widget? what do they like to do?  what are they passionate about? where are their skill sets?  How can we possibly assume none of that matters?

Setting the terms of debate... continued

I thought this was a fascinating factoid -

"Just to put in perspective the degree to which these government funds make private foundation resources look like chump change, if every penny of the Gates Foundation 2010 grant budget had gone to K-12 education, it could have paid for less than one full day of nationwide schooling. In other words, the US government spends more each day on education than the Gates Foundation spends across all their programs each year."
Read the rest by clicking HERE

Ultimately, we assume Gates is spending so much money he must deserve to be leading the conversation on education reform. yet, what he spends is a drop in the bucket compared to what taxpayers invest, who appear to have very little say in our schools "reform" agenda.

MIT and Freaks -

Interesting piece in the Guardian about MIT - The MIT factor: celebrating 150 years of maverick genius

It ends with this quote from Chomsky -
"I was just left alone to my own devices. Other people took days off to run their businesses; I went off as an antiwar activist. But no one ever objected. MIT is a very free and open place."

The entire piece points out the weirdos, the diversity, the strangeness that is MIT - which reminded me of this bit by Tom Peters -

Why Do I love Freaks? - By Tom Peters:
(1) Because when Anything Interesting happens … it was a freak who did it. (Period.)
(2) Freaks are fun. (Freaks are also a pain.) (Freaks are never boring.)
(3) We need freaks. Especially in freaky times. (Hint: These are freaky times, for you & me & the [fill in whoever you want here]....)
(4) A critical mass of freaks-in-our-midst automatically make us-who-are-not-so-freaky at least somewhat more freaky. (Which is a Good Thing in freaky times—see immediately above.)
(5) Freaks are the only (ONLY) ones who succeed—as in, make it into the history books.
(6) Freaks keep us from falling into ruts. (If we listen to them.) (We seldom listen to them.) (Which is why most of us—and our organizations—are in ruts. Make that chasms.)

What are you doing in your community to embrace the freaks?

Better than Unemployment Insurance -

Germany has a much better system of UI than we do in the States - the German system encourages employers to keep their folks on the payroll, albeit at reduced hours...

"There is an economy, however, that has figured its way around the Great Recession. Unemployment in Germany is lower now than it was before the downturn (not to mention lower than in Denmark, now, too).

Germany has done well because its labor-market institutions encourage employers to cut hours not workers. Instead of laying off 20 percent of workers, say, a firm can instead lower the average hours of its employees by 20 percent. Both accomplish the same goal, but from a social point of view, cutting hours is much better because it shares the pain more equally and keeps workers tied to their jobs."

Read more by clicking HERE -

If you don't believe the world has changed...

Ten years ago... make that 5 years ago... o.k., three years ago... if you had an idea for a business, how would you have raised $50,000 to get it off the ground?  I guarantee you, you wouldn't have done it like - Freaker USA did -

Click here

Be sure and watch the video... does your community need a Grilled Cheese Sandwich Party?  Does your community need to support ALL of it's entrepreneurs?