It's a wrap on Workforce Innovations

We had a great time in New Orleans with Workforce Innovations. About 200+ representaitives from WIRED regions attended the conference. Most of the content will be up on the Workforce Innovations site soon.

In the meantime, check out Innovating Networks for a bunch of content related to the conference.

Here are my takeaways at from the conference:

• Workforce3One is a powerful repository of digital content. On the second day of Workforce Innovations, ETA distributed a book "WOrkforce Solutions". We need to find more and better ways for people to interact and connect with this content. These are initiatives funded by the DOL and organized by sector:
  

• Advanced manufacturing
• Aerospace
• Auutomotive
• Biotechnology
• Construction
• Energy
• Financial Services
• Forestry
• Geospatial Technology
• Health Care
• Hospitality
• Information Technology
• Retail
• Transportation

• There's a good shot agt getting the WIRED reigons in the Great Lakes together on a regular basis. This is an excitiing prospect.
  
• James Vander Huist gave me perhaps the biggest ah-ha moment, when he suggested that we recruit young professionals and interns in each WIRED region to contirbute to WIRED Nation. James has agreed to help me follow up.
  
• We have a ways to go to get people comfortable with Web 2.0 tools, but we're making a good start with WIRED Nation and Innovating Networks. Hopefully, as the Federal government embraces these tools more completely, we'll see agencies providing federal workers with more flexibility to blog and act as "trusted guides" to the public workforce system. 
• The story of the Warren Featherbone Company is so interesting, and it's almost mythical. A compny staqrts out making featherbones for women's corsets. Plastics comes along and blows them away. The company moves to "own" the market for rubber pants used over infant cloth diapers. Pampers comes along and blows them away. Now, the company moves on to education.