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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.
  

A couple of months ago, Maine's Office of Innovation released a review of its cluster strategy. Launched about five years ago, the strategy is designed to focus resources on investments with the highest probability of transforming the state's economy.

The report includes a particularly useful drawing of how the emerging and established clusters connect.

We will be seeing more use of visual tools to explain cluster strategies. The reason is simple. The concept of clusters is inherently spatial. The focus is not only on geographic proximity but (and this factor is more important) on the relationships among organizations and firms.

These drawings also highlight another, trend: the move toward more organic descriptions of economic activity and away from more traditional, mechanistic visual models.

As we move to integrate business clusters and occupational clusters, we will see career pathways in the form of maps. Again, the complexity of these connections (they are not linear) makes maps most useful.

You can read more about the Maine cluster initiative here.

The attachments include the Maine reports.

One of the great advantages of the WIRED initaitive comes in building new approaches to project-based learning in high schools. Here's an excellent example from Denver metro in biosciences:

A cutting-edge project designed to deliver hands-on training and equipment to Denver Metro high school teachers has come to a successful conclusion, and as a result, high school students throughout the region have had the opportunity to conduct more than 6,000 DNA-related experiments in the classroom during the 2007-08 school year.

Read more.

The project is designed to equip high school teachers and students with hands-on instruction in molecular biology and information about careers in Colorado’s bioscience industry.

The Community College of Aurora has launched this initiative and maintains a web site (Opening Minds to Bioscience) where you can learn more.

In the wake of BIO 2008, two important bioscience initiatives have appeared.

The first is in California, where  the Southern California Biomedical Council (SoCalBio), BIOCOM and BayBio, which together represent life science firms and research organizations across California,  announced an alliance to promote the state’s life science industry. You can read more here.

The second is in Georgia, where a group of communities and organizations around Atlanta announced their first regional branding initiative in the life sciences. according to news reports: "The Innovation Crescent Work Ready Region will focus on establishing a stronger link between education and workforce development for life sciences companies." Read more.

In Washington yesterday, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation released an important study on the impact of career academies. The report represents the first rigorous evaluation of career academies.

After evaluating graduates from nine career academies, the authors found that eight years after graduation, the career academy graduates had significantly higher employment and earnings.

The report also dispels one of the more dangerous myths we share today: that career and technical education in high school limits post secondary options.

To quote from the summary (in language that is a bit stilted, but you'll get the idea):

The findings demonstrate the feasibility of improving labor market preparation and successful school-to-work transitions without compromising academic goals and preparation for college. Investments in career-related experiences during high school can produce substantial and sustained improvements in the labor market prospects and transitions to adulthood of youth. In fact, Career Academies are one of the few youth-focused interventions that have been found to improve the labor market prospects of young men.

There are about 2,500 career academies across the U.S. Ft. Wayne is one city that has committed itself to this strategy.

You can can read more about the report here and here.

You can download a copy of the report here.

Georgia has launched a new regional aliance designed to provide workforce training to the state's growing life sciences businesses. As the article notes:

One goal is to recognize the region that stretches from Cobb County to Gwinnett County as a "unique hub of life science talent."

The campaign incorporates the efforts of 18 communities and organizations that together formed the Innovation Crescent Regional Partnership.

You can read more: Initiative aims to promote metro biotech industry. Here's another story about the alliance.

Here's an article from the Huntsville Times: (The original article is here.)

10 Reasons Tennessee Valley Corridor is a technology hotspot

Wednesday, May 28, 2008 Huntsville Times

1. Institutions that Collaborate - Major research universities, the nation's only multi-purpose national science laboratory, a major DOE national security complex and NASA space flight center, plus booming DoD research and engineering installations - all working together to solve problems and grow new business opportunities.

2. Brainpower at Work - The South's highest concentrations of scientists, engineers and PhDs - ready to turn scientific knowledge into technological solutions - in a region that first gained fame on such historic projects as Manhattan and Apollo.

3. World-Class Innovation - An international leader in research, innovation and scientific application in advanced manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, energy, environment, homeland security, med-tech, nanotech, national security, supercomputing, transportation and so much more.

4. Technology-Driven Talent - An educated and available workforce, groomed with a strong regional work ethic, from more than 50 local Corridor colleges and universities, and attracted from all around the world.

5. National Leadership Through Regional Cooperation - Smart, savvy federal leaders, teamed with pro-business state and local governments, working together to attract and deploy billions in research funds to meet national needs and advance regional success.

6. Lower Business Costs - A right-to-work region with one of the lowest-tax burdens in the nation, affordable utilities through TVA, and a series of SmartParks designed with technology support systems to help businesses turn a profit, succeed and expand.

7. Putting Ideas to Work - A place where entrepreneurs can turn ideas into products with the help and support of regional tech transfer, business incubation and venture capital support.

8. Affordable Family Living - Lower housing costs, lower personal tax burdens, easier commutes, comparable schools - all with the same great amenities and opportunities as the nation's other top technology hot spots.

9. Work and Play - Attract the talent of tomorrow in a region with four distinct seasons, the nation's most visited national park, and enough music, lakes, mountains, museums, whitewater, food and hospitality to stay constantly energized and entertained.

10. Location. Location. Location. - Check out the Tennessee Valley Corridor, a technology-rich oasis in the heart of the nation's fastest-growing business region, close to all of the materials, markets and brainpower needed for tomorrow's business success.

Prosperity demands rapid adaptation or, if you prefer, resilience.

Building a stronger regional economy comes from seeing with new eyes. How can our existing assets connect to new opportunities?

Here's an article out of Akron about the adaptation of manufacturing firms to new opportunities in health care markets. The trend revealed itself recently in a forum in Northeast Ohio. Read more.

As Doug Hall, former P&G exec and founder of Eureka Ranch notes, innovation opportunities can emerge anywhere. The process, however, requires discipline, and Doug has been introducing this discipline to smaller manufacturers nationwide though the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Doug has been in West Michigan, and we have introduced Eureka Winning Ways to companies in North Central Indiana.

Here's an example of an opportunity: Replacing vinyl shower curtains with less toxic materials. Folks in Massachusetts are looking at that one: "New shower curtain smell’ dangerous to health, environment".

The opportunities will multiply as our universities and businesses learn to collaborate. Read this opinion piece out of Seattle: Educating a new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.

The Philadelphia region has launched the Philadelphia Biotechnology and Life Sciences Institute to expand training in the life sciences. The trianing initiative starts with a summer internship program for high school students. 

[O]ne key goal of the program is to place high-school seniors in paid internships during the summer months at a company and/or laboratory in the Philadelphia area. Over time, he hopes to expand the institute’s programs to every one of the city school district’s high school regions, which would allow for between 200 and 250 students in the institute’s programs. 

One industry executive comments: 

“Starting an advanced training program at the secondary school level is very helpful and much needed to bring in a body of young students who really have a feel for science already and a direction — a pathway toward further training and focused training on special disciplines. That’s very helpful,” he said. “We need that chain to fill the pipeline and make people available for hire.”

Read more.

The article refers to a workforce report conducted by the Delaware Valley Innovation Network. You can download it here. 

You can read more about the WIRED grant activity taking place in the Delaware Valley from this press release. 

Southeast Michigan WIRED is funding the launch of a new internship initiative to be run by the Detroit Chamber.

Read more here and here.

During the Mackinac conference, attendees learned of some of the latest data on the migration patterns for Michigan college graduates. You can see the slides below:

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Internships for high school and college students represent a "complex sale". They do not sell themselves. Pormoters of these initiatives need to make personal presentations. Here's an example from the Ft. Wayne Chamber.

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One of the best regional internship sites I have found is My Beanstalk from the Capital Region around Albany. The site includes a good example of how to outline the value proposition for employers in an "employer's guide" to internships. 

At IndianaWIRED in North Central Indiana, we have been working with our statewide internship program, Indiana Intern Net, to explore different ways to "scale up" the sales process. So, for example, we have been experiementing with webinars and on-line tutorials.

Stephen Goldsmith is a former mayor in Indianapolis and now a professor at the Kennedy School of Government. He has written extensively about government reform, and he has written a book on governing through networks.

This framework makes a lot of sense in workforce development, where the role of effective local workforce investment boards is evolving toward becoming a vital hub in a network of individuals and organizations committed to developing talent.

At the recent WIRED Academy in Boston, Goldsmith offered some observations on the role of government in the workforce development system. One of his most important observations, I thought: We cannot solve horizontal problems with vertical solutions.

That is, we cannot address the challenges of talent development by simply more categorical programs out of Washington. Rather, we need Washington -- ETA, EDA and the other federal agencies - to become active investment partners in regional strategies.

Goldsmith advises us to think less in terms of government programs and more in terms of creating public value. This new approach to networked government raises new challenges for designing new systems of accountabillity. These are exactly the issues that we are struggling with in designing new metrics for WIRED.

Here's a recording of Goldsmith's presentation.

You can also learn more about Goldmith's thinking by reading his book, Governing by Network.

Here's a Powerpoint that summarizes some of his main points.

 GolsmithPPT.ppt (4.4 MB)

Mississippi has a drop-out problem...but then again, we all do. While Mississippi's graduation rate from high school is 64.1%, the nation's is about 70%. 

State officials in Mississippi are set on reducing their drop-out rate by 50% in five years. 

As a recent article from Hattiesburg, Mississippi points out:

The economic reality of an undereducated class is staggering.

Dropouts from the Class of 2007 will cost Mississippi almost $3.9 billion in lost wages and taxes over their lifetime, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national policy and advocacy organization based in Washington.

Dropouts cost Mississippi $458 million each year, Bounds said. The number comes from money spent on social services, including medical care and prison. It also figures in lost revenue in taxes based on what all those dropouts might have made in income had they completed high school.

More than 13,000 students drop out every year in Mississippi, according to the Mississippi Department of Education.

The dropout rate for black and Hispanic students is close to 50 percent nationwide, according to the America's Promise Alliance, a Washington-based nonprofit collaborative chaired by Alma Powell and founded by her husband, Gen.Colin Powell. In Mississippi, about 57 percent of blacks graduate compared to 71 percent of whites.

Dropouts earn about $9,200 less per year than high school graduates.

Read more.

Here are some basic resources to learn more about reducing dropouts: 

1. Alliance for Excellent Education
   
2. America's Promise Alliance
   
3. The Silent Epidemic report from the Gates Foundation
4. National Dropout Prevention Center