It’s something that I think about a lot (especially when we’re trying to hire someone), but I didn’t have a ready answer – partly because there is no simple answer, but partly because I hadn’t really ever taken the time to write one down.  Below is a list of ideas and comments, in no particular order, that came out when I put the question to the wider Summersault staff.  I hope that you’ll contribute your own thoughts and suggestions, and I’ll pass the list back to the Chamber and anyone else I can find who might be in a position to work on some of these things.

1. If there were more resources and locations in town that catered to the “do it yourself” computer builder/hacker, we might see an increase in people building up their own skill sets.  Opening a Freegeek location here would be a great start.
2. We need more social venues and public spaces that aren’t “the bar scene.”  Coffee shops with free wireless access and decor/atmosphere appealing to the 20s/30s crowd are usually ideal.
3. Technology toys are a luxury, and consumption of them is probably not going to flourish in Richmond right now, especially in a depressed economy.  But, there are a small population of people with dollars to spend on high tech stuff.
4. Some of the existing computer hardware businesses in town are geared toward fixing broken computers, instead of getting people excited about what’s possible with technology, or catering to “gadget lust.”   If a computer business could provide an experience more like what you get when you walk into an Apple Store (technology is fun/cool/interesting, not hard/frustrating), they might serve as a better gathering place or hub for local geeks.
5. Perhaps obviously, more technology-oriented businesses in town will yield a larger number of people, conversations, potential hires, skill-sets, etc.   Having more diverse businesses here in general adds to the appeal of Richmond, and allows geeks to find what they want locally without leaving for Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis.
6. There’s a strong crossover for geeks with bike culture and people generally interested in alternative transportation.  Other hobbies that have a “do it yourself” quality to them are generally found thriving within geek culture, so promoting those (especially cycling) could help.
7. We need more opportunities for conversation and networking among geeks and people interested in technology.  Whether it’s classes or seminars or informal meals, tech people need low-pressure ways to gather. We noted that environment at events hosted by the “Young Adult Professionals” is generally not friendly to introverted geek types.
8. Younger children need to be encouraged to share and learn about any interest they might have in technology, and given opportunities to really explore it.
9. Local higher education institutions need to do a better job of incorporating the “Linux culture” into their programs.  A number of local technology businesses (including Summersault) have trouble finding qualified candidates for our technical positions because the local educational offerings are geared toward an entirely different paradigm.
10. Richmond sometimes needs more “presentable” spokespeople for different parts of its geek culture.  Sometimes the awkwardness and relaxed attire and unique personal hygiene standards that come with being a geek are not conducive to effective public relations and messaging.
11. Richmond needs to generally be more open to a culture of subcultures – it’s okay for people to  have hobbies, interested, specializations that don’t fit into some single notion of the “mainstream” way of life here.  We should support and encourage that, not alienate it.
12. The creative arts are a huge part of encouraging a strong geek culture – when there are artistic endeavors like theater, music-making, film-making, etc. going on in a community, geeks have more opportunities to thrive.

When I asked our group a more direct question about specific actions that an entity like the Chamber of Commerce could take to support geek culture here, we came up with a few ideas:

1. Fund a grant for expanding the existing Hardware Cooperative into a Freegeek location.
2. Provide sponsorship for events and gatherings geared toward geeks, but let some geeks organize it.
3. Work toward having reliable wireless internet access across the city
4. Include the geek demographic as a target in the marketing that you do for your organization and the city as a whole.

That was the result of our initial brainstorm.  What do you think it means to grow a geek culture in Richmond (or in your own community)?

It’s at 3:30 PM at Ivy Tech Community College, 3421 Johnson Hall – I hope you can join us.

In case you won’t be able to attend, here’s a list of 12 reasons that it’s a good idea to support the production and consumption of locally grown food (adopted from a list produced by The Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association):

1. Freshness – Locally-grown organic fruits and vegetables are usually harvested within 24 hours of being purchased by the consumer. Produce from California can’t be that fresh.
2. Taste – Produce picked and eaten at the height of freshness tastes better.
3. Nutrition – Nutritional value declines, often dramatically, as time passes after harvest. Because locally-grown produce is freshest, it is more nutritionally complete.
4. Purity – Eighty percent of American adults say they are concerned about the safety of the food they eat. They worry about residues of pesticides and fungicides. These materials are not permitted in an organic production system either before or after harvest.
5. Regional Economic Health – Buying locally grown food keeps money within the community. This contributes to the health of all sectors of the local economy, increasing the local quality of life.
6. Variety – Organic farmers selling locally are not limited to the few varieties that are bred for long distance shipping, high yields, and shelf life. Often they raise and sell wonderful unusual varieties you will never find on supermarket shelves.
7. Soil Stewardship – Soil health is essential for the survival of our species. Conventional farming practices are rapidly depleting topsoil fertility. Creating and sustaining soil fertility is the major objective for organic growers.
8. Energy Conservation – Buying locally grown organic foods decreases dependence on petroleum, a non- renewable energy source. One fifth of all petroleum now used in the United States is used in Agriculture. Organic production systems do not rely upon the input of petroleum derived fertilizers and pesticides and thus save energy at the farm. Buying from local producers conserves additional energy at the distribution level.
9. Environmental Protection – Soil erosion; pesticide contamination of soil, air, and water; nitrate loading of waterways and wells; and elimination of planetary biodiversity are some of the problems associated with today’s predominate farming methods. Organic growers use practices that protect soil, air, and water resources; and that promote biodiversity.
10. Cost – Conventional food processes don’t reflect the hidden costs of the environmental, health and social consequences of predominate production practices- of, for instance, correcting a water supply polluted by agricultural runoff, or obtaining medical treatment for pesticide induced illness suffered by farmers or consumers. When these and other hidden costs are taken into account, as they should be, locally grown organic foods are seen clearly for the value they are, even if they cost a few pennies more.
11. A Step Toward Regional Food Self Reliance – Dependency on far away food sources leaves a region vulnerable to supply disruptions, and removes any real accountability of producer to consumer. It also tends to promote larger, less diversified farms that hurt both the environment and local economies/communities. Regional food production systems, on the other hand, keep the food supply in the hands of many, providing interesting job and self-employment opportunities, and enabling people to influence how their food is grown.
12. Passing on the Stewardship Ethic – When you buy locally produced organic food you cannot help but raise the consciousness of your friends and family about how food buying decisions can make a difference in your life and the life of your community; and about how this basic act is connected to planetary issues.

What might an improved attentiveness to local food consumption look like in your community?

On one hand, you’ve got the City painting a picture of being left out of the key parts of the relationship the EDC has with its Richmond constituents, having to fork over $730,000 without appropriate representation.

You’ve got a County official noting that the City is as well represented on the EDC board as the County or other entities, and that things are working just fine as they are, while the Chamber president notes that there may be a conversation to be had, but that the current actions being taken are too poorly timed.

What’s going on here?  Everyone seems to be making reasonable statements on the matter that represents the point of view of the entities they serve, but it sounds like they’re having the conversation with each other for the first time on the pages of the newspaper. ARGH!

If indeed the “conversation” was triggered by a City Council resolution refusing to designate its usual fund contribution to the EDC budget, then that seems like a really poor way to start things off. It sets up a battle full of pressure points and high-stakes leveraging, and needlessly sensationalizes the issue. Councilman Phil Quinn noted that they’re trying to “send a statement” – why do that with a public vote, when you could do it in a meeting, e-mail message or even postal mail? I suspect we’d be a lot farther along if there’d been in-person meetings between City, County, and Chamber officials trying to hash this out before going public with it, and while I don’t know firsthand that there wasn’t one, I suspect that they skipped that part.

By the same token, County and Chamber officials should not have responded in kind for a news story, using the media for power plays. When you say things like “it doesn’t make any sense to me,” or “this is extremely untimely” for the press, it’s a kind of public disapproval and shaming, even paternalistic finger-wagging, that can only serve to inflame whatever tensions might already exist. It also makes us look like we’re a community in chaos, which is exactly what economic development efforts don’t need. Instead, officials should have either refrained from commenting in any detail while noting that conversations are ongoing, or at least framed their concerns more positively – “We’re concerned about the timing and the reasoning here, but we’re ready to work with each other to understand everyone’s needs and broker a solution that works best for our citizens.” Would that have been so hard?

Yes, I’m basing all of this unsolicited advice on a single Pal-Item news story, and there may be other pieces of the puzzle not yet reported, but I think the theme here is not a new one for our community.

I’ve discussed the kinds of power struggles that are already built into the structure of our community building organizations, and when you throw in poor (or total lack of) communication on top of that, things are only going to get worse. I think it’s fine for community leaders to act shrewdly in the fulfillment of their vision for a better Richmond and Wayne County, but this cannot involve closing the door to dialog with other stakeholders – early and often.  Too frequently, we hear about one organization or government entity “scratching its head” at the actions of another, and then we throw up our hands and wonder why there’s little public confidence in our prospects for economic revitalization. Let’s connect some dots here, folks.

Mayor Sally Hutton is quoted as saying that “The bottom line is we want to work together…We will work something out.” Let’s hope that, for everyone involved, there’s not only an intention to work together but some actual mechanisms by which that might happen. These community leaders need to get in a room together TODAY, and they shouldn’t leave until they’ve got a joint media statement prepared that lays out a much more positive path forward. Richmond and Wayne County deserve at least that level of collaboration.

Update on 1/6/09: in an article today, the Pal-Item notes that the City Council has approved their contribution to the EDC’s budget, contingent upon a future appointment to the board.  This comes in the form of a 1-year agreement instead of the usual 4-year term.  According to the article, “No time frame was set for the first meeting between representatives of the city and county.”  This also comes on the same day as an announcement about the new EDC President.

It seems like QUITE an unfortunate juxtaposition to me to have this kind of announcement in that kind of setting.

Malls like the Richmond Square Mall certainly provide great shopping opportunities, but tend to be populated by businesses that are not locally owned and that give less back to the local economy and community over the long run than businesses that are locally owned. In most “buy local” campaigns across the country, one of the primary goals is to get shoppers to expand their notion of shopping opportunities beyond “the mall” to once again consider what small business districts and downtowns have to offer.

If Richmond residents think that buying local just means going to a shop within city limits, the potential impact of the buy-local message is diluted as their dollars leave the community for corporate headquarters elsewhere.

I asked the Chamber and Mayor’s office to reconsider the venue – feel free to do the same if you’re so inclined.

But one only has to look at the long list of community building organizations and entities in Richmond – and the overlap, duplication, and even competition that some of them represent for each other – to wonder if maybe this isn’t an area where we’re actually holding ourselves back instead of moving ourselves forward.

Consider, in no particular order:

• City of Richmond (including the Mayor’s office, City Council, various commissions and committees)
• Wayne County Government (commissioners, council, and related entities)
• Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce
• Main Street Richmond Wayne County
• Richmond/Wayne County Convention and Tourism Bureau
• The Economic Development Corporation
• The Richmond Depot District
• Richmond Art Works
• Wayne County Vision
• Neighborhood Services Clearinghouse
• Institute for Creative Leadership
• Preserve Richmond
• Wayne County Foundation
• WayNet.org
• United Way of Whitewater Valley

All of these organizations, while having some significantly different areas of focus and programming, are essentially working on the same core issue: how to make Richmond and Wayne County a better place to live, work and play.

They approach that question differently, for sure. Some are funded by taxpayer dollars while others seek membership fees and grants. Some have brick and mortar operations with paid staff while others are made up of a few key people who meet when and where they can. But all of them are trying to build up our community.

I wonder, then, if Richmond and Wayne County is benefiting from the work of these organizations as much as it could or should. If you add up all of the budgets and person-hours and fundraising galas and community events and networking gatherings and the like, are we really seeing the results that we should if those same resources were being put to work by a smaller number of organizations, or even one organization? Or is there some fragmentation, or even severe limitation, that comes from having so many proverbial cooks in the proverbial kitchen?

And the above list is just the organizations working on community building at a fairly broad level – if you start to look at organizations working on specific issues like environmental awareness and sustainability, education, youth programs, housing, or providing social services to those in need, you can make whole separate lists with all new kinds of overlap and duplication of efforts, all right here in one little city that doesn’t even have an Indian restaurant!

Sometimes the overlap is just logistical or administrative: everyone having their own calendar of events, for example, that the average citizen doesn’t have a hope of knowing to check when they want to find out what’s happening in town. Sometimes the duplication or perception of duplication is more substantial: every year about this time, small businesses start getting bombarded with letters asking for charitable gifts or membership renewals for the coming year, and they have to decide how best to support their community, hoping their dollars go as far as possible. In turn, the soliciting organizations have to spend their time and resources reiterating the value they bring to the area, just to make sure they aren’t lost in the noise.

This doesn’t seem like the most effective way to operate.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that the work of any one of these organizations isn’t needed or valuable, or that their mission and approach aren’t sound. In fact, I support many of them with my time and dollars, and have been fortunate to call many of their leaders and advisers friends over the years. Some of them do collaborate and enjoy strong partnerships, and many of them can point to significant and lasting successes they’ve had here. Diversity of approach and funding, sometimes with a little duplication, can be essential.

But I also can’t help but indulge in some thought exercises:

What if some of these organizations were better at communicating openly and honestly with each other not only about shared values and goals, but about their concerns, egos and territorial sensitivities?

What if some of these organizations could truly collaborate, share resources, or even merge programs?

What if we didn’t take the impact and relevance of some of these organizations for granted, grilling some on why they’re still a good value, and praising others more for the under-appreciated work they do?

What if we decided that our community needed a new approach?

We are complex enough beings that we can simultaneously understand how our community is hurting in a lot of ways, and also how good we have it and much possibility there is for the future.

Old minds think: “How do we stop these bad things from happening?“

New minds think: “How do we make things the way we want them to be?“

Let’s make sure our community building efforts are actually working to make things the way we want them to be.

I’m so glad that the Chamber is focusing on the relationship between agribusiness and the energy crisis that we face as a nation and as a planet. I’m also glad that the solutions we’re talking about are keeping in mind a systems approach – how the inputs and outputs from a particular industrial or energy-generating process can be used as efficiently as possible.

But I hope that whatever solutions we pursue take into account that there is a tremendous amount of energy that goes into making our agricultural system work, and so any energy solutions derived from it must take that cost into account. The USDA recently noted that ethanol generates little more energy than it takes to produce. Some scientists have shown that ethanol production consumes 6 units of energy for every 1 it produces.

Richard Manning, in his Harper’s 2004 essay The Oil We Eat, says:

“Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1. And this understates the problem, because at the same time that there is more oil in our food there is less oil in our oil. A couple of generations ago we spent a lot less energy drilling, pumping, and distributing than we do now. In the 1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for every barrel of oil we spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process returns only ten, a calculation that no doubt fails to include the fuel burned by the Hummers and Blackhawks we use to maintain access to the oil in Iraq.”

In other words, it might be unwise to treat an agricultural system that depends so heavily on oil as a promising option for replacing oil. (As Tom Philpott also summarized in his blog entry on the matter.)

I hope the Chamber continues to pursue these important issues, and I’m glad these conversations are happening in our community and ABOUT our community. We just need to make sure that we’re addressing the real issues that underly the energy crisis at hand.

As it’s sometimes said about charitable giving, I think you have to give your time and energy “until it feels good.” But in the end, it’s not about the number of organizations you’re involved in or the number of hours you’ve spent giving of yourself. It’s about whether or not you’ve made a difference in the lives of those around you.

I’m grateful for having a life that allows me to give of my time, and I’m grateful for those moments when it does seem a difference is being made. Thanks to the Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce for their recent award honoring my service with their Legislative Committee.

Did you watch or attend the debates (or listen to them)? What did you think?

As the Palladium-Item notes, the burden of making these important choices should not fall on the folks who have mouths to feed, bills to pay, and very real short-term concerns to address. The responsibility instead falls on those who have the luxury of looking at the long term – the Chamber of Commerce, the Economic Development Corporation, the City and County governments, and the myriad private and public organizations and individuals who participate in the conversation about “what’s best for our community.” These entities should not be scared into pursuing just any opportunity for bringing jobs to town, because this approach will only reinforce the slow and steady erosion of Richmond’s diversity, heritage, and values, even if it does sprinkle some new jobs into the mix for now. Instead, they should discern a larger vision for how they can shape and mold Richmond’s future economic growth to benefit not only the current citizens, but also the generations to come. This means breaking away from our historical approach of “precedent equals justification” and “bottom line jobs created”, and taking some risks in the name of preserving and building on what Richmond was, is, and can be.

This driving vision should not only be reflected in the mission statements of these economic development entities, but also codified in the laws and policies that guide our economic choices as a community. Most of the existing zoning laws and ordinances are focused on specifying what activities are prohibited – chemicals you can’t use, the way properties/buildings can’t look, the land uses that aren’t acceptable, and so on; it would seem that a community intent on providing a better future for its citizens would also specify the activities and business decisions that are desirable, that will be supported and encouraged by the city planners.

To that end, I propose that we should at least carefully consider these kinds of questions about a given opportunity, if not adopt something like them as a formal standard for how we allocate resources and making decisions:

1. Will the new business contribute positively to Richmond’s image and character as a place where you’d want to grow up, live, raise your children, retire, etc.?
2. Will the new business compete with existing businesses in a way that will limit their continued growth and success (especially if the existing business is locally owned and operated and the new one is not)?
3. Will the new business contribute to strong local business districts and the identity of Richmond’s neighborhoods?
4. Will the new business minimize its impact on the harm to physical resources of Richmond’s landscape – re-using existing structures where possible, avoiding environmental degradation, etc?
5. Will the new businesses proactively consider quality of life issues in Richmond, not only of its employees, but also of the neighboring businesses and residents affected by its presence? Will it treat these people with concern and respect for their wants and needs?

Again, those are just rough examples; a more thorough approach like Richmond’s current work to develop a new comprehensive plan would be required to create a complete list of the questions our community needs to ask of potential new members, and how we should measure the responses. One of the hardest parts, of course, will be the public fall-out when we do come to the point of saying “there may be some immediate jobs down that path, but there’s long-term security in this other direction” or even, to a particular potential new employer, “we really don’t want you here.” Those looking for work may cringe and complain that they are being let down, and the politicians whose popularity and re-electability are tied up in public perception of economic choices may question any such approach. For a true positive driving vision to take root, then, a shift in thinking (and the accompanying personal sacrifices and compromises) for all involved will be required.

As I’ve said before, we have the ability, not to mention the duty, to take these important choices seriously. I’m glad the Palladium-Item is at least partly acknowledging that duty and the complexities of taking it on; I hope that the community leaders involved in these efforts — and all of us, really — will stand back and consider the big picture of their role in shaping Richmond’s future, not just the immediate economic impact.