Future Economy Council Meeting #8 (10/15/2009)

This is the audio and a short summary of each of the segments that constituted this meeting. As usual this was a very good discussion.

Part One Audio Link

In Part One of this meeting Terry Bledsoe addressed the issues of Broadband and the Stimulus Funds (American Recovery Act). There is $4.7 billion available to be divided between infrastructure, public computing centers, and sustainable broadband adoption.

Question 1 - What is the definition of Broadband? 768 kb/sec

Question 2 - Are you only seeing the ones (bids) out of North Carolina? Terry explain that they saw the initiative pertaining to NC and the group of states that NC is associated with.

Question 3 - Is this going to be an enhancement of capacity or is it going to be about getting those with only landline access an increase to what the state calls Broadband? That is e-nc's main initiative, to get people some sort of "Broadband" access.

Question 4 - Do the authorities understand the need (in the near future) for increased capacity? There isn't a huge pot of funding available to alleviate the problem.

Question 5 - So we are going to have to do this on the local level? Most likely. Houston Harris stated that that isn't a bad thing. I stated that I believe we have more control that way. Steve Ivester stated that he had spoken with a CEO from Corning who stated that the municipality can build the system and bidding out access to capacity. This is the European model.

Question 6 - If someone wins an award are they obligated to spend the money by a deployment time or can they spend it as they wish? There is a requirement of deployment and implementation in two years.

*** Danny Hearn gave an intro about the Intra-City Visit, the visit to the Centennial Campus, the relationship with our local Manufacturing Solutions Center, the ASU-Partnership and a possible Millennial campus located here, Education Matters, and Relocation Marketing and Population Growth. Here is a link to the entire Intra-City Event Proceedings.


Part Two Audio Link
Part two starts out with Dr. Sid Connor discussing the beginning of the Millennial Campus. His explanation was excellent. Steve Ivester talked about the New Definition of Campus. Danny continued on with the Apple-Google corridor issue. Houston asked about ancillary businesses that can be related to Apple. Talked about the incubator and possible associations with this corridor. Danny says we can't wait to for the next big announcement. Growth can come from the Pixelspace's and Michael Neely's of this community. Further, Danny talked about the Manufacturing Solutions Center and introduced Terry's presentation of the FEC that took place at the Intra-City Visit.

Terry went over the presentation from the Intra-City Visit. Here is a link to Terry's Presentation made during the Intra-City Visit.


Part Three Audio Link
Terry continues on with the presentation. One question was about can you manage your people in 140 characters or less (Twitter)? Houston made an excellent point about the bandwidth meeting the need and you need to make sure that they match up. The more options and accessibility, the better.

We have a lot of talent here in Catawba County that we need to find out about and utilize. How many businesses started up in someone's basement or garage. We need to look at more than Economic Development to do this. What are we doing to encourage creativity? Is there a willingness and passion to learn factored into our culture? Something does attract people to Catawba County, what is it? How do we get some kids back and how do we raise incomes some?
Doug Rongo talks about "How do we change the ambition and skill of the workforce?"

Part Four Audio Link
The last segment starts out with Houston talking about options and opportunity. We got into an excellent discussion about underemployment and the step-up process. We have people who are working jobs that they are overqualified for. If they can step-up and find a job that better matches and/or utilizes their skill set, then it allows those unemployed people who have lesser skills ( lower qualified) to have a job. We need to create a step-up process, that is the reason I want to see the High Skilled jobs come to Catawba County.

Terry says that leadership needs to take the adice of sharing, partnerships, advice, and working together. They have the advantages and need to take all of this and move forward.

Rick Smyre talked about the Master Capacity Building studies and how it will be offered.